Book Description

This book is an attempt to cover the whole field of Greek Tragedy. My purpose throughout has been twofold. Firstly, I have sought to provide classical students with definite facts and with help towards a personal appreciation of the plays they read. My other intention has been to interest and in some degree to satisfy those “general readers” who have little or no knowledge of Greek. This second function is to-day at least as important as the first. Apart from the admirable progress shown in Europe and the English-speaking world by many works of first-rate Greek scholarship, in the forefront of which stand Jebb’s monumental Sophocles, Verrall’s achievements in dramatic criticism, and the unrivalled Einleitung of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,—the magnificent verse-translations of Professor Gilbert Murray, springing from a rare union of poetic genius with consummate scholarship, have introduced in this country a new epoch of interest in Greek drama among many thousands who are unacquainted with the language. Even more momentous is the fact that the feeling of educated people about drama in general has been revolutionized and reanimated by the creative genius of Ibsen, whose penetrating influence is the chief cause of the present dramatic renaissance in Great Britain. Two important topics have been given more prominence than is usual in books of this kind: dramatic structure and the scansion of lyrics. It might have been supposed self-evident that the former of these is a vital part, indeed the foundation, of the subject, but it has suffered remarkable neglect or still more remarkable superficiality of treatment: criticism of the Greek tragedians has been vitiated time and again by a tendency to ignore the very existence of dramatic form. It is a strange reflection that the world of scholarship waited till 1887 for the mere revelation of grave difficulties in the plot of the Agamemnon. Examining boards still prescribe “Ajax vv. 1-865,” on the naïve assumption that they know better than Sophocles where the play ought to end. Euripides has been discussed with a perversity which one would scarcely surpass if one applied to Anatole France the standards appropriate to Clarendon. Throughout I have attempted to follow the working of each playwright’s mind, to realize what he meant his work to “feel like”. This includes much besides structure, but the plot is still, as in Aristotle’s day, “the soul of the drama”. Chapter VI, on metre and rhythm, will, I hope, be found useful. Greek lyrics are so difficult that most students treat them as prose. I have done my best to be accurate, clear, and simple, with the purpose of enabling the sixth-form boy or undergraduate to read his “chorus” with a sense of metrical and rhythmical form. With regard to this chapter, even more than the others, I shall welcome criticism and advice.