INTRODUCTION.
Difficulties of the Drama.—The perusal of dramatic works is attended with difficulties of a special kind. Epic poetry abounds with aids to the imagination. Situations are described, characters indicated, motives explained. Although the early epics were meant to be recited and not read, the only serious demand they make upon a reader is that of continuous attention. And if it sometimes requires an effort to realise the drift of lyric poetry, yet, when the single mood of feeling which has prompted the poet is once caught, he is sure to make himself understood, even though his words are no longer sung. But Drama, as the most concentrated and concrete form of imaginative creation, can never be fully presented in writing or in print; and few readers can even dimly picture to themselves the effect which would be produced on a fit audience by the right performance either of single scenes or of a whole play.
This, which is true of all dramatic writing, is pre-eminently applicable to those masterpieces of tragedy which, symbolising as they do each of them some comprehensive aspect of human life, must indeed "be acted ere they may be scanned."
Intelligent study may, however, to some extent supply the want of representation; and the purpose of this little book is to afford some assistance towards a just appreciation of the remaining works of Sophocles, who is certainly the most perfect of the world's tragic writers, although he is surpassed in grandeur by his predecessor Æschylus, and by our own Shakespeare in expansiveness and fulness.
