$6 Virginia Shropshire Heath 



Could there be a more dramatic application of these sacred rites, 

 a more absolute instance of tragedy, terrible and inevitable? 



" The essence of tragedy," Mr. Courteney^ declares, " is always 

 a conflict between a great law or power, universal or world wide 

 in its scope, and the free will of the individual." 



Such is the pitiable plight of the Dakota mother. On the one 

 side comes the deep and irresistible call of a mother's love ; on the 

 other, the even more compelling demand of a divine power. The 

 frail human resistance against this moral force is hopeless, utterly 

 hopeless, yet that resistance must be made, so ingrained in the 

 soul is parental love. The hapless Dakota mother is caught in the 

 toils of fate quite as inextricably as ever was Antigone. 



This dramatic material, grounded upon religious integrity, 

 presents a typical Greek situation. The tragic incident, involv- 

 ing those " near and dear to one another,"^" " through pity 

 and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions,"^^ 

 further establishes the Greek analogy. This theme is not suited 

 to the less avowedly moral treatment of the romanticist. The 

 grand, superhuman acceptance of the decree of fate, ringing out 

 in the self-restraint-exalted song of the god-punished mother is 

 indicative of a calm of the highest and most philosophical order. 

 There is none of the complaint, none of the undying rebellion of 

 the individual against divine ruling. No more is there the con- 

 ciliatory note of the Christian heaven, where all is at last righted. 

 In the truly Greek spirit, the inevitable is accepted, calmly and 

 bravely, in full accord with moral order and there is an end to it.^^ 



And yet, for all its Greek conception, M. Stopfer^^ would prob- 

 ably agree that Shakespeare's dramatic scheme^* is best adapted 

 to its development. Several years are involved in the plot, 

 change of place is necessitated, and truly Shakespearean growth 



^ Courteney, The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient and Modern Drama, 1900. 



1° Aristotle's Poetics, XIV, Butcher translation. 



11 Aristotle's Poetics,, YI, Butcher translation. 



^2 See Frye, Corneille: the Neo-classic Tragedy and the Greek, Sec. II. 



^■' Stopfer, Shakespeare et les Tragiqtics Grecs. 



^* Sherman, What Is Shakespeare? igcyz. 



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