CHAPTER V.
DRAMAS OF CHARACTER AND OF SITUATION—THE CYCLOPS.
47. We only have two plays remaining which can strictly be called character plays—that is to say plays in which the whole interest centres on the study of a single or very few personages, as is commonly the case in the plays of Sophocles. And these two plays chance to be plays in which the passion of love is the phase of humanity specially brought out. We know that this side of human nature, especially in the female sex, was a favourite study with Euripides, and exposed him to special censure from many critics. But there is no reason to believe that he did not compose character plays in which the intellectual or ethical side was predominant. Such were apparently the Philoctetes, in which Ulysses played the part of a large and wise statesman, and the Melanippe, in which the intellectual side was so predominant as to give a title (ἡ σόφη, the wise), to the play. And, indeed, in extant plays there is no want of splendid ethical character drawing. Still the criticism is probably true, that even in such cases the intellectual side occupied our poet too exclusively, and that owing to this peculiarity none of his men (except perhaps the boy Ion) have taken a permanent place in literature. For while the portraiture of intellect may be interesting, nothing will speak to the heart of every age except moral excellence.
