The Theory of Greek Tragedy 25 
fury, commotion and vociferation; and yet when you come to 
look inside for the internal drama which all this outward show 
and circumstance should body forth, what hollowness and vacuity 
you find! While as for the vaunted violences of the romantic 
stage they too miss the mark as often as not. Critics have wasted 
their ingenuity in trying to defend the sanguinary ending of King 
Lear. In spite’ of the spiritual interest and importance of the 
murder which closes Othello, it is a fair question whether Shake- 
speare has not overreached himself in strangling Desdemona in 
public. In all such cases the mind is so shaken or distracted by 
the physical act as to be incapable of attending to its ethical im- 
port. The impression, so far from being enhanced, is blunted by 
the theatrical exaggeration. 
On the other hand, such a poem as Goethe’s Iphigenie goes to 
the opposite extreme. Admirable as it is in its own way, it is 
lacking both in dramatic action and in theatrical activity. It has 
nobility; but it is the nobility of reflection, not of passion. No 
wonder that Goethe himself could never see it performed with 
patience. And yet tragedy, while representing passion, does not 
represent it for its own sake. Tragedy implies an aim, an end or 
purpose to be accomplished—a labour, wovov, an exertion. There 
is a fatal necessity constraining the dramatis personae to act and 
causing an interplay of motives, a fluctuation of emotion. To use 
the phraseology of the day, a play is not static but dynamic. It 
involves will, volition; it is not a mere state of feeling or even a 
succession of such states—but rather an agitation of spirit. Hence 
the necessity of a metabasis, as Aristotle calls it, or reverse of for- 
tune. And it is just the point of drama that this revulsion of feel- 
ing should be capable of visible translation. Of all modern dram- 
atists it is Shakespeare who combines most effectively this dra- 
matic movement with theatrical activity. It is another and not the 
least of his many superiorities that he should so often succeed at 
once in setting up a genuine dramatic action in the souls of his 
people and in expressing so perfectly that inner revolution by an 
outward and physical animation. In Racine’s tragedy, perfect in 
its kind as it is, there is always, it must be acknowledged, a dispo- 
sition to repress the latter element in accordance with the proprie- 
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