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The characteristic quality, according to Aristotle, which is possessed by the Socratic dialogs, by the Homeric epics, and by the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and which classifies them together as poetic, is not verse but mimesis, imitation. Exactly what Aristotle meant by imitation has furnished subsequent critics with an excuse for writing many volumes.
"That reminds me of the German commentators who find in the Agamemnon of AEschylus or the OEdipus of Sophocles or the Hamlet of Shakespeare motives and purposes of which the authors could never have dreamed, and give us a metaphysical, beer-and-tobacco, High-Dutch Clytemnestra or Antigone or Lady Macbeth. No, my boy, More was a simple sailor, and had no idea of satirizing anything."
Aeschylus, poet and soldier, writing a hundred and fifty years later, in his "Seven Against Thebes," puts into the mouth of the chieftain Eteocles this address to the women: "It is not to be borne, ye wayward race; Is this your best, is this the aid you lend The state, the fortitude with which you steel The souls of the besieged, thus falling down Before the images to wail, and shriek With lamentations loud?
Therefore, as when Phrynichus and Aeschylus brought tragedy to discourse of fictions and misfortunes, it was asked, What is this to Bacchus? so methinks, when I hear some pedantically drawing a syllogism into table-talk, I have reason to cry out, Sir, what is this to Bacchus?
On leaving St.-Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a house situated on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indoor occupation was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, to whom he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' was not begun till his return to London in the later autumn.
An astounding number of Germans know Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare better than we do, but they know nothing, and care nothing, for the sizzling, crackling stream of purposeless incident, and sterile comment, that pours in upon the readers of American newspapers, and which has had its part in making us the largest consumers of nerve-quieting drugs in the world.
In his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. He paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects to the level of common life. He was the pet of the Sophists, and was pantheistic in his views.
Swinging his stick aloofly, he stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, "That, sir, is the AEschylus Shelley had in his pocket when he was drowned." Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol was drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that AEschylus left him cold. It seemed to be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was merely a very old book.
But the genius of the author never grasps, in their wholeness, the characters which he attempts to copy; they are distorted images of the Greek originals, and the shadowy grandeur of the godlike heroes of Aeschylus stands forth in corporeal vastness, and appears childish and unnatural, like the giants of a story-book.
We have seen how a single actor was added to the chorus by Thespis, who caused him to represent in succession all the persons of the drama. Aeschylus added a second actor in order to obtain the contrast of two acting persons on the stage; even Sophocles did not venture beyond the introduction of a third.
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