26 P. HH. Frye 
ties of society and to rely too exclusively upon recitation alone to 
carry the dramatic action. As a matter of fact Corneille’s most 
admired effects are usually an affair of eloquence, even oratory. 
In this respect too much altogether has been made of the so 
called statuesqueness and plasticity of Greek tragedy. As long as 
the performance was supposed to be confined to an impossibly 
high and shallow stage, along which the actors were silhouetted 
like the figures in a bas-relief, such a conception was perhaps un- 
avoidable. But with the orchestra as the site of the action it is 
no longer necessary or plausible. That Greek acting had little of 
the minute realism which characterizes ours, is undoubtedly true. 
But that it was prevailingly declamation and recitation, that it 
wanted stage-effect, the text of Electra should be sufficient to dis- 
prove, to say nothingof Aristotle’scommentary. Indeed,on the 
strength of the devices that I have been speaking of—peripeteia, 
agnition, and pathos—M. Lemaitre goes so far as to rebuke Aris- 
totle for his sensationalism. Very well. But what does M. Le- 
maitre expect? What is tragedy if it is not sensational? And while 
Greek acting lacked realism, there must have been a breadth, a 
masSiveness, a gravity about it more suitable to the desperate 
purposes of tragedy, for that dark and sinister background, than 
our painstaking pastiche of common reality, of the speaking 
voice and the daily face. 
IV 
From this sort of criticism there is danger of carrying away 
a false and one-sided idea of the subject. In the end Greek 
tragedy does leave an impression of dignity, repose, and serenity, 
more or less suggestive, perhaps, of the epithet statuesque. But 
the satisfaction resides, as I have already indicated, in its treat- 
ment, not in its subject matter. In the latter aspect it is, if any- 
thing, more terrible, monstrous, and revolting than our Eliza- 
bethan tragedy of blood. In the German Sturm und Drang 
itself there is nothing to exceed the story of the Atreides, upon 
which the Oresteia and the two Electras are based. The re- 
proaches that Voltaire addressed to Hamlet might just as well 
have been addressed to the Oedipus. The mere repetition of 
324 
