DRAMA. 



85 



Drafaa.^ trains, that gave an air of dignity to his performers. 

 In order to form any just idea of this primitive form 

 of tragedy which .ivschylus introduced, we must, in 

 the first place, dismiss the idea inculcated by the ge- 

 neral mode of printing the Greek plays, that they were 

 divided, like our oven, into five acts The allusion of 

 Horace, it is true, to that number of acts, shews that 

 the Romans had such a division ; but the ancient Greek 

 drama was undivided. The oldest editions of the Greek 

 tragedies do not so much as mark a separation of the 

 scenes ; and the word ccf does not occur in that trea- 

 tise of Aristotle, which gives us a definition of every 

 part of the national drama. The only acknowledged 

 division applied to tragedy, by the critic already men- 

 tioned, was its beginning, middle, and end, the pro- 

 logue, episode, and e.vode, a division rather formed 

 by the mind of the reader or spectator, than presented 

 mechanically to his eye. The prologue was not like 

 that address to the audience, which passes with us by 

 that name ; it was the opening or exposition of the 

 piece, containing all the circumstances necessary to be 

 known, and which might (according to Aristotle) give 

 an insight into the plot. By the episode was meant all 

 the part of the piece containing the substance of the 

 plot; and the exode contained all the unravelling or ca- 

 Remarks on tastrophe. But the most remarkable feature of differ- 

 ncu-nt ence between the ancient drama and our own, was the 

 chorus, a group of personages not uninterested in the 

 issue of the events that were going on, but acting chief- 

 ly as advisers and confidents of the principal characters. 

 As the principal chancters were supposed to lie too bu- 

 sy and impassioned in the course of events, the chorus 

 uttered whate\ ,-<-flections the scene suggested ; 



they augmerted tin- >'.<<i,.u of the scene by their pa- 

 rades, and they be''ghtcwl the delight by their music, 

 and (though it ill arrords with our idea of the serious 

 drama) by their dancing. In fact, the ancient Greek 

 tragedy must have borne a strong resemblance to the 

 modern Italian opera. The numlwr of pcr-ons com- 

 posing the chorus was prdbably at first indeterminate. 

 \ Ins, we are told, brought no less than fifty into 

 his Kumonides, but was obliged, by the civil authority, 

 to reduce them to twelve. Sophocles was afterwards 

 permitted to add three, a limitation which, we have 

 reason to imagine, became a rule to succeeding poets. 

 To modern popular taste, as indeed experience has 

 proved it, nothing is less conducive to dramatic illu- 

 sion, than a group of such half neutral and moralizing 

 personages as the ancient chorus exhibited. Yet the 

 chorus has found its advocates even among a high or- 

 der of men of taste and genius. Milton, in his zeal 

 for classic lore, wrote his Samson Agonistes, on the se- 

 verest model of antiquity ; and Mason endeavoured, 

 though without much success, to familiarise a British 

 audience with the lyrical strophes and antistrophes of 

 Muon'ude- choral poetry. In justification of this attempt, he coil- 

 Hence of the tends, in a letter prefixed to his Elfrida, that whatever 

 play-makers may have gained by rejecting die chorus, 

 the true poet has lost considerably by it. For he has 

 lost a graceful and natural resource to the embellish- 

 ment of picturesque description, sublime allegory, and 

 whatever else comes under the denomination of pure 

 poetry. " Shakespeare," he says, " had the power of 

 introducing this naturally, and, what is most strange, of 

 joining it with pure passion; but I make no doulit, if 

 we had a tragedy of his formed on the Greek model, 

 we should find in it more frequent, if not nobler in- 

 rtances of his high poetical capacity. I think you have 

 a proof of this in those parts of his historical plays, 



which are called choruses, and written in the common Dram*, 

 dialogue metre. And your imagination will easily con- Masol ^ s de _ 

 ceive, how fine an ode the description of the night pre- f ence $ t ], c 

 ceding the battle of Agincourt would have made in his chorus. 

 hands, and what additional grace it would receive from 

 that form of composition." He proceeds, in another 

 letter, to notice that superior variety and majesty, which 

 the chorus necessarily added to the scene of the drama, 

 by uniting the harmony of the lyre to the pomp of the 

 buskin. The point on which he chiefly insists is, that 

 of its being a vehicle for moral and sentiment, so mate- 

 rial that he conceives nothing can atone for the want of 

 it. In these parts of the drama (he says) where the 

 judgment of a mixed audience is most likely to be mis- 

 led by what passes before the view, the chief actors are 

 generally too much agitated by the furious passions, or 

 too much attached by the tender ones, to think coolly, 

 and impress on the spectator a moral sentiment proper- 

 ly. A confident, or servant, has seldom sense enough 

 to do it ; never dignity enough to make it regarded. 

 Instead, therefore, of these, the ancients were provided 

 with a band of distinguished persons, not merely capa- 

 ble of seeing and hearing, but of arguing, advising, 

 ar.J reflecting." " If you ask me, (he continues,) how 

 it augmented the pathetic ? I cannot give you a better 

 answer than the Abbe Vatry has done in his disserta- 

 tion on the subject, publislied in the Memoires de I'A- 

 cad. tics Infer. &c. It effected this," says he, " both in 

 its odes and dialogue. The wonderful power of music 

 and the dance is universally allowed ; and as these 'were 

 always accompaniments to the ode, there is no doubt 

 but they contributed greatly to move the passions. It 

 was necessary, that there should be odes or intermedes, 

 but it was also necessary, that these intermedes should 

 not suffer the minds of the audience to cool ; but, on 

 the contrary, should support and fortify those passions 

 which the previous scenes had already excited. No- 

 thing imaginable could produce this effect better than 

 the choral songs and dances, which filled the mind with 

 ideas corresponding to the subject, and never failed to 

 add new force to the sentiments of the principal per- 

 sonages. In the dialogue, also, the chorus served to 

 move the passions, by shewing to the spectators other 

 spectators strongly affected by the action. A spectacle 

 of sui h a kind, as is fitted to excite in us the passions 

 of terror and pity, will not of itself so strongly affect 

 - when we see others also affected by it. The 

 painters have generally understood this secret, and have 

 had recourse to an expedient similar to that of the cho- 

 rus of the poets. Not content with the simple repre- 

 sentation of an historical event, they have also added 

 groups of assistant figures, and expressed in their fa- 

 ces tiie different passions which they would have their 

 picture excite. Nay, they sometimes enlist into their 

 service even irrational animals. In the slaughter of the 

 Innocents, Le Brun was not satisfied with expressing 

 all the hoiTor of which the subject is naturally capable 

 he has also painted two horses, with their hair standing 

 on end, and starting back, as afraid to trample on the 

 bleeding infants. This is an artifice which lias been 

 often employed, and which has always succeeded. A 

 good poet should do the same ; and Iphigenia should 

 not be suffered to appear in the theatre, without being 

 accompanied with persons capable of feeling her mis- 

 fortunes." Specious as these arguments are, the reflect- 

 ing reader may have probably anticipated many an- 

 swers to them. 



If the chorus excluded those nuisances of the mo- 

 dern stage, insipid confidents, who are introduced only 



