The Shape of Greek Tragedy

Abstract

When this paper was first written, a few months ago, it was christened ‘Greek Tragedy and Modern Religious Worship’. But this name will not describe it properly. Its subject is not modern religious worship, but Greek tragedy. I hope to use what we know about modern religious worship to help our understanding of Greek tragedy, and not vice versa. And I wish, at the outset, to stress the word ‘worship‘—‘religious worship’, nor ‘religion’, not ‘religious belief’. We are to consider rather the outward form than the inward content of religion as we know it to-day. And the same is true of what is, as I have said, my real subject. I will not attempt any general account of Greek tragedy. I am concerned with one aspect of it only, its outward form. We have, preserved to us through twenty-three centuries and more, thirty-three specimens of it, all (with one possible exception) by one or other of the three great masters of tragic poetry. That is to say, the words of these plays have been preserved. We know less than we could wish, to be sure, of other things upon which the total effect of an ancient tragedy depended: the buildings and scenery, the dresses, the gestures, the dancing, the music, and much besides. Still, even of these things we know something and can safely guess more; we have the words, and may claim to understand their meaning fairly well; putting all together, we may say that we know what the form of a Greek tragedy was. That this form is interesting and beautiful, most of those who have been able to make its acquaintance are disposed to agree. But it is also a strange form. It does and must appear strange to those who have read modern plays, and seen modern plays performed, and then come to read Greek tragedies, whether in Greek or in English, and even, with luck, to see Greek tragedies performed. The feeling of strangeness wears off, like other things, with time and familiarity, to a great extent; but it seldom wears off completely. We may cease to wonder that an old Greek play is so unlike a modern play; we never quite cease to wonder that an old Greek play is what it is.