all the relief, the
play and mobility, that an actor needs. His earthly representative
could be but a grand reciter. In the "Persians," not only the
theatrical, but the dramatic effect is wanting--it is splendid poetry
put into various mouths, but there is no collision of passions, no
surprise, no incident, no plot, no rapid dialogue in which words are
but the types of emotions. In the "Suppliants" Garrick could have
made nothing of Pelasgus. In the "Seven before Thebes" there are not
above twenty or thirty lines in the part of Eteocles in which the art
of the actor could greatly assist the genius of the poet. In the'
trilogy of the "Agamemnon," the "Choephori," and the "Orestes,"
written in advanced years, we may trace the contagious innovation of
Sophocles; but still, even in these tragedies, there is no part so
effective in representation as those afforded by the great characters
of Sophocles. In the first play the hypocrisy and power of
Clytemnestra would, it is true, have partially required and elicited
the talents of the player; but Agamemnon himself is but a thing of
pageant, and the splendid bursts of Cassandra might have been
effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the
second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the
gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably
task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last
play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which
opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies
sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the
end in which an eminent actor could exhibit his genius.

But when we come to the plays of Sophocles, we feel that a new era in
the drama is created; we feel that the artist poet has called into
full existence the artist actor. His theatrical effects [375] are
tangible, actual--could be represented to-morrow in Paris--in London--
everywhere. We find, therefore, that with Sophocles has passed down
to posterity the name of the great actor [376] in his principal plays.
And I think the English reader, even in the general analysis and
occasional translations with which I have ventured to fill so many
pages, will perceive that all the exertions of subtle, delicate, and
passionate power, even in a modern actor, would be absolutely
requisite to do justice to the characters of Oedipus at Coloneus,
Antigone, Electra, and