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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ors speak through fixed masks. All fine inflection 

 is lost ; all change of facial expression sacrificed 

 to massive groupings and stately poses, regulated 

 by the shrill pipe and the meagre harp. But 

 still there is in the dramas of ^Eschylus, Eu- 

 ripides, and Sophocles, a breadth of expression 

 which enables the soul to shake itself free from 

 its accidental surroundings and enter into gen- 

 eral sympathy with the wider life of humanity. 

 It is this escape into the ideal which the modern 

 self-conscious spirit most needs : this merging of 

 discordant self in the universal harmony which 

 drew Wagner toward the theatre of the Greeks. 

 There we start from the gods, the ideal repre- 

 sentatives of human thought and emotion. Zeus 

 is in Agamemnon, Ares in Achilles, Artemis in 

 Iphigenia, Aphrodite in Phaedra; and there is 

 something prophetic and sublime in the spon- 

 taneous growth of these types beneath the hu- 

 man touch until they transcend the gods and con- 

 quer Olympus itself. Cassandra is greater than 

 the gods in her consciousness of injustice ; Pro- 

 metheus is sublime in his godlike defiance of 

 Fate ; Antigone triumphs through voluntary sac- 

 rifice — it is the inexorable progress of the hu- 

 man conscience toward a higher Olympus, a purer 

 deity — men come from gods, but excel the gods ; 

 then follows the inevitable decline, " the dusk of 

 the gods," and, lastly, the assertion of man's di- 

 vinity and the rehabilitation through man of the 

 divine idea. 



This thought Christianity should eternally 

 present ; but as its votaries unhappily trampled 

 upon one-half of human life, and caricatured the 

 other all through the middle ages, the Renais- 

 sance insisted upon reviving the types of Greek 

 beauty and force, in order to restore the balance 

 and reassert the place and dignity of the down- 

 trodden senses. That protest, in the teeth of 

 our modern religious narrowness, will continue 

 to be popular until the reconciliation between 

 the old and the new world-spirit is reached in a 

 higher, freer life, recognizing and making room 

 for the development in due balance of every part 

 of human nature. The Greek view of life may 

 not be adequate, but it had elements which we 

 want ; and to study art we must still go to Ath- 

 ens. Within his limits the Greek remains our 

 supreme standard. 



For what the Greek was, and for what he 

 saw, his theatre found an almost perfect art-form. 

 The dance or science of pantomimic motion was 

 part of his daily education. His body was trained 

 in the Pahestra, or gymnasium, and his life was 

 one of constant drill to enable him to take part 



in the games and national festivals. The elastic 

 tongue of Homer had been enriched and fired by 

 a hundred poets before the full development of 

 the Greek drama, and hymns and songs, set to 

 rhythmic and choral melodies of every character 

 and variety, supplied him with ready emotional 

 utterance upon all occasions. Add to this the 

 profound enthusiasm which still accompanied the 

 ancient rites, the Delphic oracles and the Eleu- 

 sinian mysteries, and we have all the materials 

 which were woven into one harmonious whole by 

 yEsehylus — poet, warrior, stage-manager, and re- 

 ligious devotee. 



The soul of the Greek drama, freed from ac- 

 cidental associations, must now be melted down 

 in the new crucible. Wagner found there an in- 

 tense earnestness of purpose — the devout por- 

 trayal of a few fundamental types — the large, 

 clear outline like the frieze of the Parthenon — a 

 simple plot and well-developed phases of feeling 

 as pronounced and trenchant as the rhythmic 

 motions of the dramatis per sonce ; and lastly he 

 found — what he found not in Shakespeare — the 

 Greek chorus. This gave its binding intensity to 

 the whole drama — this provided the universal ele- 

 ment in which the actors lived, and moved, and 

 had their being. The chorus ever in motion — a 

 band of youths or maidens, priests or supernat- 

 ural beings, fluid and expressive, like the emo- 

 tions of the vast and earnest assembly ; the cho- 

 rus bore aloft a wail over the agonies of Philoc- 

 tetes — a plaint for Iphigenia — a questioning of 

 the gods for Cassandra ; it enveloped the stage 

 with floods of passionate declamation ; it rushed, 

 it pointed, it swayed, it sighed, and whispered in 

 broken, pathetic accents ; it was like the sobbing 

 of the sea on a rocky strand — the sound of the 

 waves in Ionian caves — the wild rush of the tem- 

 pest answering back man's passionate plaint, and 

 fitting the simple feelings of the great types on 

 the stage with an almost elemental intensity of 

 expression. The mysterious variety of Greek 

 metres, the varied spasmodic rhythms, can only 

 be understood when the vision of the Greek cho- 

 rus rises before us in its eager bursts of appro- 

 priate but fitful activity. That changing chant, 

 that harsh ringing progression of notes on the 

 Greek scales of which Gregorians are still the 

 Christian relics, we should not call it music ; it 

 was not melody, much less harmony, but it was 

 sound inflections marvelously used to drill dec- 

 lamation, posture, and pantomime. The soul of 

 it has transmigrated in these latter clays — it has 

 become the Wagnerian orchestra. 



Turn back now, for a moment, to the Shake- 



