lie in the middle—in other words, that the interest should centre in the second play. In any case, the symmetry of the trilogy was destroyed by the practice of performing after it a satyr-drama, probably as a rule, if not always, connected in subject with the trilogy, which thus became a tetralogy, though this term, unlike the other, seems The tetralogy.to be a purely technical expression invented by the learned.[1] Sophocles, a more conscious and probably a more self-critical artist than Aeschylus, may be assumed from the first to have elaborated his tragedies with greater care; and to this, as well as to his innovation of the third actor, which materially added to the fulness of the action, we may attribute his introduction of the custom of contending for the prize with single plays. It does not follow that he never produced connected trilogies, though we have no example of such by him or any later author; on the other hand, there is no proof that either he or any of his successors ever departed from the Aeschylean rule of producing three tragedies, followed by a satyr-drama, on the same day. This remained the third and last stage in the history of the construction Complicated actions. of Attic tragedy. The tendency of its action towards complication was a natural progress, and is emphatically approved by Aristotle. This complication, in which Euripides excelled, led to his use of prologues, in which one of the characters opens the play by an exposition of the circumstances under which its action begins. This practice, though ridiculed by Aristophanes, was too convenient not to be adopted by the successors of Euripides, and Menander transferred it to comedy. As the dialogue increased in importance, so the dramatic significance of the chorus diminished. While in Aeschylus it mostly, and in Sophocles occasionally, takes part in the action, its songs could not but more and more approach the character of lyrical intermezzos; and this they openly assumed when Agathon began the practice of inserting choral songs (embolima) which had nothing to do with the action of the play. In the general contrivance of their actions it was only natural that, as compared with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should exhibit an advance in both freedom and ingenuity; but the palm, due to a treatment at once piously adhering to the substance of the ancient legends and original in an effective dramatic treatment of them, must be given to Sophocles. Euripides was, moreover, less skilful in untying complicated actions than in weaving them; hence his frequent resort[2] to the expedient of the deus ex machina, which Sophocles employs only in his latest play.[3]
The other distinctions to be drawn between the dramatic qualities of the three great tragic masters must be mainly based upon a critical estimate of the individual genius of each. In the characters of their tragedies, Aeschylus and Sophocles avoided those lapses of dignity with Characters.which from one point of view Euripides has been charged by Aristophanes and other critics, but which, from another, connect themselves with his humanity. If his men and women are less heroic and statuesque, they are more like men and women. Aristotle objected to the later tragedians that, compared with the great masters, they were deficient in the drawing of character—by which he meant the lofty drawing of lofty character. In diction, the transition is even more manifest from Diction.the “helmeted phrases” of Aeschylus, who had Milton’s love of long words and sonorous proper names, to the play of Euripides’ “smooth and diligent tongue”; but to a sustained style even he remained essentially true, and it was reserved for his successors to introduce into tragedy the “low speech”—i.e. the conversational language—of comedy. Upon the whole, however, the Euripidean diction seems to have remained the standard of later tragedy, the flowery style of speech introduced by Agathon finding no permanent favour.
Finally, Aeschylus is said to have made certain reforms in tragic costume of which the object is self-evident—to have improved the mask, and to have invented the cothurnus or buskin, upon which the actor was raised to loftier stature. Euripides was not afraid of rags and tatters; Improvements in costume, &c.but the sarcasms of Aristophanes on this head seem feeble to those who are aware that they would apply to King Lear as well as to Telephus.
Periods of Greek Comedy.—The history of Greek comedy is likewise that of an essentially Attic growth, although Sicilian comedy was earlier in date than her Attic sister or descendant. The former is represented by Epicharmus (fl. 500), and by the names of one or two other poets. It probably had a chorus, and, dealing as it did in a mixture of philosophical discourse, antithetical rhetoric and wild buffoonery, necessarily varied in style. His comedies were the earliest examples of the class distinguished as motoriae from the statariae and the mixtae by their greater freedom and turbulence of movement. Though in some respects Sicilian comedy seems to have resembled the Middle rather than the Old Attic comedy, its subjects sometimes, like those of the latter, coincided with the myths of tragedy, of which they were doubtless parodies. The so-called “mimes” of Sophron (fl. 430) were dramatic scenes from Sicilian everyday life, intended, not for the stage, but for recitation, and classed as “male” and “female” according to the sex of the characters.
Attic comedy is usually divided into three periods or species.
I. Old comedy, which dated from the complete establishment of democracy by Pericles, though a comedy directed against Themistocles is mentioned. The Megarean farcical entertainments had long spread in the rural districts of Attica, and were now introduced into the city, where The Old comedy.from about 460 onwards the “comus” became a matter of public concern. Cratinus (c. 450–422) and Crates (c. 449–425) first moulded these beginnings into the forms of Attic art. The final victory of Pericles and the democratic party may be reckoned from the ostracism of Thucydides (444); and so eagerly was the season of freedom employed by the comic poets that already four years afterwards a law—which, however, remained only a short time in force—limited their licence. Cratinus,[4] an exceedingly bold and broad satirist, apparently of conservative tendencies, was followed by Eupolis (446-after 415), every one of whose plays appears to have attacked some individual,[5] by Phrynichus, Plato and others; but the representative of old comedy in its fullest development is Aristophanes (c. 444–c. 380), a comic poet of unique and unsurpassed genius. Dignified by the acquisition of a chorus (more numerous—twenty-four to twelve or afterwards fifteen—though of a less costly kind than Aristophanes. the tragic) of masked actors, and of scenery and machinery, as well as by a corresponding literary elaboration and elegance of style, Old Attic comedy nevertheless remained true both to its origin and to the purposes of its introduction into the free imperial city. Its special season was at the festival of the Lenaea, when the Athenians could enjoy the fun against one another without espying strangers; but it was also performed at the Great Dionysia. It borrowed much from tragedy, but it retained the phallic abandonment of the old rural festivals, the licence of word and gesture, and the audacious directness of personal invective. These characteristics are not features peculiar to Aristophanes. He was twitted by some of the older comic poets with having degenerated from the full freedom of the art by a tendency to refinement, and he took credit to himself for having superseded the time-honoured cancan and the stale practical joking of his predecessors by a nobler kind of mirth. But in daring, as he likewise boasted, he had no peer; and the shafts of his wit, though dipped in wine-lees and at times feathered from very obscene fowl, flew at high game.[6] He has been accused of seeking to degrade what he ought to have recognized as good[7]; and it has been shown with complete success that he is not to be taken as an impartial or accurate
- ↑ One satyr-drama only is preserved to us, the Cyclops of Euripides, a dramatic version of the Homeric tale of the visit of Odysseus to Polyphemus. Lycophron, by using the satyr-drama (in his Menedemus) as a vehicle of personal ridicule applied it to a purpose resembling that of Old Attic Comedy.
- ↑ Ion; Supplices; Iphigenia in Tauris; Electra; Helena; Hippolytus; Andromache.
- ↑ Philoctetes.
- ↑ Archilochi; Pytine (The Bottle).
- ↑ Maricas (Cleon); Baptae (Alcibiades); Lacones (Cimon).
- ↑ Knights.
- ↑ Clouds.
