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But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the drama was a larger and higher form of art.
Why, as the tragedians say, endeavor to crush the noblest and best emotions that ever warm the boo-zum of man? Chivalrous sentiment and admiration for beauty, chivalrous desire to pursue it and catch it and call it your own, I understand it all, my dear boy!
But he or they did know the Aias of Sophocles, according to Mr. Collins: so did the author of Romeo and Juliet. Now all these sorts of parallels between Shakespeare and the Greeks are, Mr. Collins tells us, not to count as proofs that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians.
Dramatic recitations were by no means excluded from these mixed entertainments, since among the players whom Lucius Anicius caused to appear in 587 in Rome, tragedians are expressly mentioned; there was however no exhibition of plays in the strict sense, but either whole dramas, or perhaps still more frequently pieces taken from them, were declaimed or sung to the flute by single artists.
And about the farther part of the Salaminian coast, he was met by a pinnace, out of which one spake thus to him: Thou indeed, Adimantus, fliest, having betrayed the Grecians; yet they overcome, and according to their desires have the better of their enemies." For what should hinder him from erecting a tragical machine, who by his boasting excelled the tragedians in all other things?
Upon which, in great anger, Eumenes and Mentor came to Alexander, and loudly complained, saying that the way to be regarded was to throw away their arms, and turn flute-players or tragedians; so much so that Alexander took their part and chid Hephaestion; but soon after changed his mind again, and was angry with Eumenes, and accounted the freedom he had taken to be rather an affront to the king, than a reflection upon Hephaestion.
Edgeworth was careful to train not only the reasoning powers, but also the imaginative faculty of his children; he delighted in good poetry and fiction, and read aloud well, and his daughter writes: 'From the Arabian Tales to Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and the Greek tragedians, all were associated in the minds of his children with the delight of hearing passages from them first read by their father.
Through the tempest and storm, the brutality and lust of the Greek tragedians, and even of the barbarous times on which Shakspeare builds many of his plays, through the night of Judaical back-slidings, idolatry, and carnal commandments, we patiently wait, and gladly hail the morning of the Sun of Righteousness.
An attention to comfort in this respect is to me so essential, that in returning to England I always provide myself with a plentiful stock of boots and shoes, although not to the same degree that one of our celebrated tragedians practised this precaution, having furnished himself with thirty-six pair to the no small amusement of the Dover custom-house officers when they overhauled his luggage.
The Grecian tragedians certainly allowed themselves a great latitude in changing the circumstances of their myths, but the alterations were always consistent with the general and prevalent notions of the heroic age.
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