Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature

Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading…. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. —SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. Address on the opening of the Eton Library , 1833.
Preface of the Translator.
Author's Preface.
Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel.
Introduction—Spirit of True Criticism—Difference of Taste between the Ancients and Moderns—Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art—Division of Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic Poets.
Definition of the Drama—View of the Theatres of all Nations—Theatrical Effect—Importance of the Stage—Principal Species of the Drama.
Essence of Tragedy and Comedy—Earnestness and Sport—How far it is possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original Languages—Winkelmann.
Structure of the Stage among the Greeks—Their Acting—Use of Masks—False comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera—Tragical Lyric Poetry.
Essence of the Greek Tragedies—Ideality of the Representation—Idea of Fate—Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations—Import of the Chorus—The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology— Comparison with the Plastic Arts.
Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks—Various styles of Tragic Art —Aeschylus—Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus—His remaining Works.