Attic drama

“ We wonder why the dramatist should have placed creatures so sensitive and highly wrought in situations which are so crudely appalling; and the incongruity is not shaken off until we remember the nature of the material upon which the poet is constrained to work. For the Attic dramatists went for the subjects of their poetry directly to stories out of the primitive past—old legends which, though sometimes very beautiful, nearly always contain elements of cruelty and horror. The reason why they did this is interesting, and explains some curious points about Greek Drama. ”

“ At the first glance the prospect is not very promising; love altogether, as we have seen, plays a very subordinate part in the Attic drama, while that form of love which we are immediately considering, seems at first sight to be especially neglected. And indeed, to a certain extent, this is really the case, for very obvious reasons. In the early days of tragedy, when the love-element was well-nigh entirely excluded, in obedience to the then artistic canons, it was not to be expected that exception would be made in favour of this particular form of it ”

“ Supplices.—The exceptional interest of the Supplices is due to its date. Being nearly twenty years earlier than any other extant play, it furnishes evidence of a stage in the evolution of Attic drama which would otherwise have been unrepresented. Genius, as Patin says, is a “puissance libre,” and none more so than that of Aeschylus; but with all allowance for the “uncontrolled power” of this poet, we may feel confident that we have in the Supplices something resembling in general structure the lost works of Choerilus, Phrynichus, Pratinas and the 6th-century pioneers of drama. ”

“ The Greek drama owed its power to the qualities of regularity and simplicity: the strength of the modern lies in subtlety and multiplicity. The external conditions of the Attic theatre, no less than the prevailing spirit of Greek tragic art, forced this simplicity and regularity upon the ancient dramatists. These conditions do not occur in the modern world. We have our little theatres, our limited audience, our unmasked actors, our scenical illusions, our freedom in the choice of subjects. ”

“ First let it be noted how they mutually depend one upon another: neither tragedy nor the Sicilian mime could greatly influence early Attic comedy until actors, as distinct from a chorus, were introduced, nor could their influence be long delayed after the actors came. ”

“ He stands nearer to the modern world than either of his predecessors; and though with him Attic tragedy loses its highest beauty, it acquires new elements of familiar human interest.
In Attica, as in England, a period of rather less than fifty years sufficed for the complete development of the tragic art. The two distinctive characteristics of Athenian drama are its originality and its abundance. The Greeks of Attica were not the only inventors of drama, but they were the first people who made drama a complete work of art. ”

“ The Attic Tragedy of the fifth century must of its own accord, even if the conscious purpose of the dramatists had not tended in the same direction, have developed into an artistic product based on psychological interest. The real theatre of that drama must inevitably have become the interior of its hero’s mind. ”

“ With actors, impersonation became possible for the first time in Attic comedy. Besides the nondescript chorus and chorus leaders, there were now performers who could assume the identity of real or imaginary characters and carry a rôle or, by a change of mask, several rôles through the play. The importance of all this is too obvious to require amplification. It marked the birth of dramatic comedy at Athens. Through the introduction of actors, comedy became amenable to several other influences. Tragedy could at once make itself felt. ”

“ As exhibiting human agents under certain conditions Manners. of time and place, and of the various relations of life, the action of a drama, together with the characters engaged in it, and the incidents and circumstances belonging to it, must more or less adapt itself to the external conditions assumed. From the assumption of some such conditions not even those dramatic species which indulge in the most sovereign licence, such as Old Attic comedy, or burlesque in general, can wholly emancipate themselves ”

“ Therefore to push the subtlety and multiplicity of tragic composition to the utmost—to arrange for the most swift and sudden changes of expression in the actor, for the most delicate development of a many-sided character, for the most complicated grouping of contrasted forms, and for the utmost realization of imaginative incidents—is the glory of a Shakespeare or a Goethe. The French dramatists made the mistake of clinging to the beggarly elements of the Attic stage, when they had no means of restoring its colossal grandeur. ”

“ That the deified human beings were not after death assigned to places already held in reverence? Such a possibility is obvious to any Folk-lore student, and local traditions should in each case be carefully examined before the contrary is definitely asserted.
So far as the origins of Drama are concerned the Ode quoted later from the Naassene Document is absolute and definite proof of the close connection existing between the Attis Mystery ritual, and dramatic performances, i.e., Attis regarded in his deified, Creative, 'Logos,' aspect, not Attis, the dead youth. ”

“ Every one of us, every day of his existence, is the hero of a drama based upon the true observation of life, and a very tiresome drama too, as a rule, and we all want to see dramas in the theatre that take us out of ourselves. You seem to think that we can and ought to have a drama like the novels of Meredith, which I believe nobody ever reads, or the pictures of Whistler, that are simply ridiculous, or the ugly music of Strauss—I don't mean the one who writes waltzes. ”

“ Yet the fact that Beau Austin, in spite of being ‘put on’ by so eminent an actor-manager as Mr Beerbohm Tree, was no great success on the stage, is a fair proof that the piece lacked some of the essentials, good or bad, of dramatic success. Now a drama, like a picture or a musical composition, must have a certain unity of key and tone. You can, indeed, mingle comedy with tragedy as an interlude or relief from the strain and stress of the serious interest of the piece. But you cannot reverse the process and mingle tragedy with comedy. ”

“ At the instant when it is reached, when all obstacles are removed, the curtain falls, and the young people have no further existence for us. But in the practical world the play goes on. The curtain rises again, the same personages reappear, only they frequently play different parts, and what was before a comedy or a melo-drama often changes into a tragedy. ”

“ Both tragedy and comedy, [865] properly so called, took their rise in Attica, and there only, in the ancient world, flourished and grew up to perfection. The theatre, in fact, formed at length a part of the constitution, and, probably, the worst part, its tendency being to foster personal enmities, to stir the sources of malice, and, while pretending to purge off the dross of the passions by the channels of sorrow and mirth, to induce habits of idleness and political apathy, by affording in the brilliant recesses of a mock world a facile refuge from the toils and duties of the real one. ”

“ In this way, far more than through any sense of restriction, the habit of taking dramatic personages from the early Greek myths aided the fall of Attic tragedy; for though, as has been often observed, the tragedians were by no means tied down to any one view of a mythical character, their use of these types must have strongly militated against the seriousness of tragedy as soon as individualism of character came to be expected by the audience. Comedy, accordingly, after a time stepped into the shoes of tragedy, and applied to its own purposes the worn-out properties of the tragic stage. ”

“ Nor are the reproaches and exhortations of her brother Melantius powerful enough to change a woman of her character so swiftly and completely. An audience, absorbed in the emotion of the moment, may overlook such faults of characterization in the theatre. As it reviews the play in calmer mood, however, it ranks it, no matter how poetic as a whole or how well characterized in particular scenes, not as a drama which interprets life, but as mere entertainment. Even perfect characterization of some figures, when the chief are mere puppets, cannot make us accept the play as more than pure fiction. ”

“ As to romance, I might have known, if I had considered the subject, that wherever youth and maiden are, there is the certainty of romance and the chance of tragedy. I might have known that the important thing in a drama is, what the characters are, and what they do, not the scenes where they stand while they are acting. In the theatre, people are looking at the lover and the lady, not at the balustrade and the tower. ”

“ The contests between these two parties are the main subject of the early Attic comedy.
Literature and art, however, were not, during the Peloponnesian war, affected by the corruption of morals. The works of this period exhibit not only a perfection of form but also an elevation of soul and a grandeur of conception, which fill us with admiration not only for those who produced them, but for those who could enjoy such works of art. A step farther, and the love of genuine beauty gave place to a desire for evil pleasures, and the love of wisdom degenerated into an idle use of words. ”

“ Does it state its problem clearly, so that everyone can comprehend it, develop its angle absorbingly, and end, not merely stop, with complete satisfaction? Could one little scene be added, or even one little passage be left out, without marring the whole? Is it true to life—truer than life? If it is all this, it is good drama.
Good drama is therefore more than plot. It is more than story plus characters, dialogue, acting, costumes, scenery—it is more than them all combined. ”

“ The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine—forgets so completely that it often prides itself on having forgotten. ”

“ The play, the characters and the audience are lost in the debris both literally and artistically. Our object in dramatic expression is to enthrall, not to paralyze. Every distraction of attention [Pg 160] from the elemental mediums of pure art is an obstacle thrown into the clear channel of receptivity. Spectacles are for the most part acts that concern themselves and not deeds that are an intrinsic part of the drama. The characters and the action step back as it were, while the precipitated spectacle usurps the stage and the attention. Unlike the circus, drama has no legitimate side-shows. ”

“ To the silent pressure of these unrelated spectators he responds by seeking the broadest basis for his play, by appealing to elemental human sympathy, by attempting themes with more or less of universality. It is because the drama is the most democratic of the arts that the dramatist cannot narrow himself as the novelist may, if he chooses; and it is because this breadth of appeal is inherent in the acted play that Aristotle held the drama to be a nobler form than the epic. ”

“ That absolute power which we have attributed to the dramatic poet over his creatures, may be limited by circumstances: and in the Greek theatre it was in fact restricted by peculiar causes. None but gods or heroes could act any prominent part in the Attic tragedy; and as the principal persons were all celebrated in the national poetry, their deeds and sufferings were in general familiar to the audience. ”

“ The hundred and one springs of local and sectional life must have time to furrow their common channel into the seething sea of life at large, and social questions and problems make themselves felt, if not crystallized, before the throbbing pulse of the big national heart can find its reflex in a great literature—and specifically in the drama—of a social character. ”

“ The spectator who shouts his warning and advice to the heroine when the villain is approaching is, in the theatre, the only true believer in the hand of God; and he is liable to find it in a drama lower than the best.” The art of the drama is one which imposes upon drama the obligation of depicting at once the inner processes of life realistically, and the external aspects of life delusively. ”

“ Likewise, on a larger scale, the layman habitually fails to distinguish between a mere theatric entertainment and a genuine drama. A genuine drama always reveals through its imagined struggle of contesting wills some eternal truth of human life, and illuminates some real phases of human character. But a theatric entertainment may present merely a deftly fabricated struggle between puppets, wherein the art of the actor is given momentary exercise. ”

“ His tragedies were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts, and the very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of Attic tragedy. ”

“ The immediate flaw or ripple of the moment, and the next and the next, will then take up the tale, like the speakers in a dialogue which gradually unfolds the subject of the play. Below the surface, behind the outer aspect of his mind, we do not penetrate; this is drama, and in drama the spectator must judge by appearances. When Strether's mind is dramatized, nothing is shown but the passing images that anybody might detect, looking down upon a mind grown visible. ”