drama or not is a question which has been asked
innumerable times, and which can never receive a perfectly conclusive answer. Dr. Farmer in his lively essay on the learning of Shakespeare "acquitted our great poet of all piratical depredations on the Ancients." Professor Churton Collins, on the other hand, has done his beat to prove that Shakespeare had read the Greek tragedies, at least in Latin translations. But a case which depends upon parallel passages can never be effectively defended; in the first place. because poets, like the inventors of fairy-stories, often happen on the same thought; and secondly, because the oral instruction of scholars may do almost as much for those who have small Latin and less Greek as a patient study of the originals. Professor Lewis Campbell, how- ever, is of those who believe that Shakespeare created his own dramatic form. "I am far from saying," he writes, "that there is no link of affiliation between the modern and ancient forms, although I maintain that our national drama was directly evolved from native antecedents, however in- directly modified through the interest which the Renaissance had awakened in the glories of antiquity." And, indeed, the divergences in form and style are more conspicuous than the similarities. The drama of Shakespeare was, above all, complex. It despised the sterner unities of time and place. It encouraged digressions and underplots. It mixed the ludicrous with the serious, and interrupted a tragic solemnity with the comic extravagances of buffoons. Herein it affords a complete contrast to the scrupulous restraint of the Greeks, and for this cause it has remained half unintelligible to many generations of Frenchmen, from Voltaire to M. Fagnet Again, the refinement of the Greeks could not endure the spectacle of death. As Agamemnon in the picture covers his face when his daughter is to be sacrificed, so the Greek tragedians preferred to announce by a messenger the violent deaths which overtook their hapless heroes. The last scene of Hamlet, or the violent death of Desdemona, would have appeared monstrous to an Athenian audience, which heard with equanimity that Jocasta had killed herself behind the scenes, and that Oedipus had put out his own eyes. Nor are these the only points of difference. The Greeks were less interested in character than in action, while Shakespeare is so intent to put living men and women on the stage that he uses action chiefly to develop or to illustrate the character of his personages. But it should be remembered that the Eliza- bethan dramatist was allowed a freedom which was impossible to the Greeks. The drama of Athens owed not a little of its beauty to the restraining force of religious tradition. Aeschylus and Sophocles could choose neither their fables nor their dramatis personae outside the limits of their myths, and they were compelled to make types rather than to draw characters. Their experience of life, though never useless, could be betrayed only in small touches or delicate suggestion. But the drama of Shakespeare was untram- melled. The dramatist, though he too, like the Greeks, found his plots ready made, could pour the knowledge of his own time into the bottles of ancient history. He need not treat Holinshed, Plutarch, and Bandello with the same respect which the mythology of Greece imposed upon Sophocles. He could people the Rome of Caesar with Englishmen of his own age, and if he laid the scene in Elsinore or Venice, he merely gave romantic names to the London he knew so well. But despite these dissimilarities, Shakespeare and Sophocles still hold the world's attention, because Classic and Romantic alike
portray the human and eternal emotions. Professor Lewis Campbell admirably illustrates this common point of interest. "The Ajax of Sophocles," says he, "appealed to an Athenian audience through their pride in their memories of Salamis, and their adoption of the son of Telamon as a national hero. But the drama owes its nnfading interest to the poet's • Tragic Drama in deschylve, Sophocles, and Shakespeare : an Essay. By Lewis Campbell, MA. London Smith, Elder, and Co. [7s. 6d.1
profound realisation of the effect of wounded honour on the mind of a soldier." It is this wounded honour which makes the Ajax live to-day, and proves that the greatest poet of Greece already felt in his tragedies the same motives which influenced Shakespeare.
After all, love and hate, joy and regret, hope and anger, are the motives of most dramas, and here Shakespeare and the Greeks are at one. It is in form and style that they are most violently divided. To some differences we have already alluded ; there remains the greatest divergence of all,—the divergence of style. Now, romance is not a more choice of material; it is besides an outlook upon life and a method of expression. While the Classic delights to reduce his art to its lowest terms, to practise always a wise economy of speech, the Romantic loves elaboration for its own sake ; he delights to set his personages in varying lights. Above all, it is his practice to embroider his diction with all the flowers of fancy. And thus we arrive at the essential difference between Sophocles and Shakespeare. The Greek and the Englishman may look upon life with the same profound understanding ; but in expression they are poles asunder. The thigtV AcIyoc of Sophocles is chaste and cold as white marble ; the verse of Shakespeare is brilliant with all the hues of imagination, and unrestrained as a mountain torrent.
Professor Campbell has described with equal subtlety and clearness the ancient and modern drama, keeping an eye open for divergences and similarities. His opinions are always moderate and just. He rightly points out that " Aeschylean tragedy has more resemblance to a cantata than to a modern drama." Even when Aeschylus wrote of the Persian War and showed to Athens its own triumph, he raised • the drama above the level of present history by austerity of treatment. In Professor Campbell's words, "the Athenians are taught to feel a compassion for a fallen foe ; they are warned against the danger of overweening pride, and they are instructed to attribute their success, not to man's power or wisdom, but to those free institutions which are the gift to them of Athena." Many wise things be has also to say of Sophocles and Shakespeare ; but he takes no account of the difference in actors and acting. The Greek drama, with its three actors and a chorus, was more remote from the realism of the modern stage than the drama of Shakespeare. Lest the actors should presume to give their own interpretation of their parts, they were prudently hampered by huge masks and heavy-soled sandals. In those wise days, indeed, the mummer was not invented, and Sophocles, though he spoke a part in one of his own dramas, was still regarded merely as a poet. Nor even in Shake- speare's time was the actor supreme master of the stage. Hamlet, we imagine, was asked to recite rather than to "create" the Prince of Denmark. In brief, the great differ- ence between the drama of to-day and the drama of all other days is the actor, who now governs the playwright while he attracts the populace. But had Shakespeare and Sophocles not been alike immune from his influence, Professor Camp- bell would not have had so noble a tale to tell. In con- clusion, we recommend this excellent book to our readers, which is the more difficult to review because on every page it suggests points of discussion, and shows us pleasant paths whereby we may digress.
CLASSIC CHRISTIAN ART.*
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