CHAPTER IV.
HIS PLOTS.
33. When we speak of the plot of a play in the modern sense, we mean that ingenious complication of the action which keeps the spectator interested as to its progress and curious as regards the final result. In this sense very few Greek plays have any plot, and its earliest use may be traced to the inventive genius of Euripides. The earlier dramatists illustrated some well-known legend, some celebrated mythical catastrophe, and sought by loftiness of style and nobility of sentiments to instruct and awe the spectator by drawing various lessons from a familiar tradition. The deeper moral meaning, the hidden spiritual forces engaged, the display of character under the strain of great misfortunes—these were the topics which gave the Greek drama its matter, to be expressed in noble language and with dignified accessories. The dramas of Æschylus (and of Sophocles at first) were therefore not dramas of plot or intrigue, but of character or of situation. In many of them, such as the Supplices and Persæ of Æschylus, or the Œdipus at Colonus of Sophocles, there is no plot at all, but a series of scenes grouped around some central figure or situation, as in the Samson Agonistes of Milton. We find several such plays among those of Euripides also, who seems often to have reverted to this old and simple form of tragedy for peculiar reasons of his own. There is therefore a propriety in speaking of dramas of plot as a separate class of Greek tragedies,
