240 PLYxMOUTII INSTITUTION. 



recollections of the Drama of our own country, to which that of 

 Greece bears scarcely any resemblance. He spoke of the compa- 

 rative perfectness with which that interesting branch of her litera- 

 ture has come down to us. And though many plays have been 

 lost, and the names of some dramatic writers were all we knew of 

 them, still enough remains to enable us to form a pretty correct 

 opinion of the style of the three great tragedians and of the gene- 

 ral state of the art. The origin of Tragedy and the innovation of 

 Thespis were related, and the sudden change which took place 

 within the period of fifty years was thus stated. Instead of a 

 waggon and a few wine-besmeared rustics, we have a theatre of 

 a size collosal when compared with ours; machinery, dresses 

 and decorations, which were the subject of laws, and the defraying 

 the expence of which became a public honour, and not unfrequently 

 a matter of the state. For an audience, not a few vine-dressers 

 and countrymen, but the whole assembled people of Athens, her 

 allies and tributaries. The prize was no longer a vile goat, or a 

 goat-skin of tlie newest wine; but one, for the decision of which 

 solemn judges were appointed, whicli was contended for by the 

 master-spirits of the age; and which when once obtained ensured 

 the lasting fame of him who gained it. 



The times of the dramatic representations, the spring and 

 autunmal festivals of Bacchus — the mask — the buskin — the diffi- 

 culties and labours of the poet in preparing his play for repre- 

 sentation — the nature of the office of choregus — the chorus, with 

 some strictures on its trite moralizing and its feeble sympathy — 

 were then brought forward. An account of (Kschylus, Sophocles, 

 and Euripides with remarks on the Prometheus Vinctus, Ajax, 

 Q'dipus ilex, (Edipus Coloneus, Electra, Alcestis, Ilippolitus, 

 Ileraclida;, Supplices, &c. followed, and the lecturer concluded 

 with these words of a celebrated critic. 



Nothing can be more dignified or stately than the old tragedy 

 of the Greeks. Its characters were demigods or heroes ; its sul>- 

 jects were the destinies of those lives of the mighty which had 

 their beginning among the eldest deities. In their works we see 

 the catastrophe from the beginning, and feel its influence at every 

 step as we advance majestically along the solemn avenue which 

 it closes. There is little struggle; the doom of the heroes is 

 fixed on high, and they pass in sublime composure to fulfil their 

 destiny. Their sorrows are awful, their deaths religious sacrifices 

 to the power of heaven. The glory which plays around their 

 heads is prognostic of their fate. All things are tinged with 

 sanctity and beauty in the Greek tragedies. Bodily pain is made 

 sublime; destitution and wretchedness are rendered sacred, and 

 the very grove of the furies is represented as ever fresh and green. 

 How grand is the suffering of Prometheus — how sweet the resol- 

 ution of Antigone — how appalling yet how magnificent the last 

 vision of Cassandra — how tender yet how mysteriously awful the 

 death of (Edipus. 



n. p. HKARDER, PLYMOtTH. 



