Specimens of Greek Tragedy

Specimens of Greek Tragedy

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Title: Specimens of Greek Tragedy Aeschylus and Sophocles
Author: Goldwin Smith
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7073] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 6,
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SPECIMENS OF GREEK TRAGEDY ***

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SPECIMENS OF GREEK TRAGEDY
Translated By
GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L.

AESCHYLUS AND SOPHOCLES

1893

PREFACE.
Greek drama, forerunner of ours, had its origin in the festival of
Dionysus, god of wine, which was celebrated with dance, song, and
recitative. The recitative, being in character, was improved into the
Drama, the chief author of the improvement, tradition says, being
Thespis. But the dance and song were retained, and became the Chorus,
that peculiar feature of the Greek play. This seems to be the general
account of the matter, and especially of the combination of the lyric
with the dramatic element, so far as we can see through the mist of an
unrecorded age.
Thirlwall, still perhaps the soundest and most judicious, though not the
most vivid or enthusiastic, historian of Greece, traces the origin of the
Drama to "the great choral compositions uniting the attractions of
music and action to those of a lofty poetry, which formed the favourite
entertainment of the Dorian cities." This, he says, appears to have been
the germ out of which, by the introduction of a new element, the
recitation of a performer who assumed a character and perhaps from the
first shifted his mask, so as to exhibit the outlines of a simple story in a
few scenes parted by the intervening song of the Chorus, Thespis and
his successors unfolded the Attic Tragedy. Of the further development

of the Drama in the age of Pericles, Thirlwall says:--
"The drama was the branch of literature which peculiarly signalised the
age of Pericles; and it belongs to the political, no less than to the
literary, history of these times, and deserves to be considered in both
points of view. The steps by which it was brought through a series of
innovations to the form which it presents in its earliest extant remains,
are still a subject of controversy among antiquarians; and even the
poetical character of the authors by whom these changes were effected,
and of their works, is involved in great uncertainty. We have reason to
believe that it was no want of merit, or of absolute worth, which caused
them to be neglected and forgotten, but only the superior attraction of
the form which the drama finally assumed. Of Phrynichus in particular,
the immediate predecessor of Aeschylus, we are led to conceive a very
favourable opinion, both by the manner in which he is mentioned by
the ancients who were acquainted with his poems, and by the effect
which it is recorded to have produced upon his audience. It is clear that
Aeschylus, who found him in undisputed possession of the public
favour, regarded him as a worthy rival, and was in part stimulated by
emulation to unfold the capacities of their common art by a variety of
new inventions. These, however, were so important as to entitle their
author to be considered as the father of Attic tragedy. This title he
would have deserved, if he had only introduced the dialogue, which
distinguished his drama from that of the preceding poets, who had told
the story of each piece in a series of monologues. So long as this was
the case, the lyrical part must have created the chief interest; and the
difference between the Attic tragedy and the choral songs which were
exhibited in a similar manner in the Dorian cities was perhaps not so
striking as