Appearances indicate that the next Assembly will be of the first importance. Many will probably meet J. B. Gough—the hero of a thousand platforms—for the last time. Dr. Deems is to come among us once more, and the original Fisk Jubilee Singers will be there, and they have no equals in reproducing the fast vanishing songs of the plantation.
EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.
THE GREAT GREEK DRAMATISTS.
The Greek drama, which is now before our C. L. S. C. students in its English rendering, presents many interesting aspects to the modern mind. We are well aware that this statement will surprise some readers; but let them consider a few facts. Is it not a remarkable thing that the Greek drama, which the world will not suffer to be forgotten, was all produced in the space of about half a century? And compare the fact with our own history, noting that English drama of the imperishable type is all gathered into a single brilliant period, of which Shakspere is the central light in dramatic poetry. Æschylus was born in 525 B. C., Sophocles in 495, and Euripides in 480. The three are nearly on a level in merit, Æschylus having the more force, and his compeers in dramatic fame more of the refinements of art. They are not three Shaksperes in one constellation, but three orbs whose combined light is less than that of our English poet. No one has satisfactorily explained why the tragic drama should so isolate itself in the centuries of a people; but it may be said to be a rule that if a people produce a great drama at all, this choice fruit will appear only in a single period. But since Greece and England are the only nations having a great tragic stage—for we do not reckon the French drama as in the first rank—the rule has no well-defined value. It is remarkable, too, that the great epic poets are more numerous than the great masters of tragedy. Greece, indeed, is known to us for one epic and three tragic poets; but every great people before ours has had a respectable epic poem, whereas in most nations tragic poetry is rare or inferior. The great tragedies are so few that one may easily know them and prize them. No other form of literature presents us with so few masterpieces.
Another good aspect of the drama in Greece is that it came in the period of the full-flowering of Greek egotism, or if the phrase is happier, of Greek patriotism. Here, too, we may find an analogy in the England of Shakspere. The age of Elizabeth is easily fixed upon as that of self-satisfied British patriotism. It is also true that alike in the Athens of the dramatists and the London of Shakspere there was the stir and bustle and heroic energy of national life. It is not to be overlooked that the dramatists of Greece, like the literary statesmen of England were in public life. They sought and held office; and, indeed, they, like Socrates, were soldiers besides. Æschylus fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, the three great battles of his country. Shakspere did not do his work on the Avon, but in the din of London, and many a thing which surprises us in his plays may be explained by the close and uninterrupted contact of the dramatist with the active men of his time. He learned, for example, all his law phrases in convivial association with lawyers, much as he learned scripture by hearing the prayer-book read in the churches. (He always quotes the prayer-book, never the Bible.) So in Athens, our statesmen-dramatists lived in the full press of life, and their drama reflects the opinions and proverbs of their day. Men of the lamp could not have caught the spirit and attitude of the Athenian mind toward the problems of life which underlie the Greek plays. The just-enough and not too much or too little of philosophy—the mean between dogmatic theology and crude irreligion—the man of the world, and he alone, can hit. We may safely reason that while many forms of literature can be best wrought by men out of the world, some forms seem to require their producers to be in the world and of the world; and among these, the drama is especially reserved to men who combine practical experience with erudition, and also possess the indescribable mystery of genius. The student will be well repaid for his pains who struggles to understand the spirit—a strange one to us—which is peculiar to the Greek drama, the singular aspects and functions of religion, and the mode in which it is apparently held fast by the tragic poet, who is also a man of the world. There are also profitable studies to be made of those glimpses of unchanging human nature which the tragedies afford us. One theory is that we study old classics in order to know an older and extinct type of mankind: a truer view is that the virtues and vices of the elder man are simple and undisguised by social varnish. In any case, the student who understands, for example, the woman Medea, has a useful lesson in “the proper study of mankind.”