ent; shaped and re-shaped it as he chose; carved from it
now the cynicism of _Measure for Measure_, now the despair of _Hamlet_
and of _Lear_, now the radiant magnanimity of _The Tempest_, and
departed leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a series of mutually
incompatible landscapes.

What Shakespeare gave, in short, was a many-sided representation of
life; what the Greek dramatist gave was an interpretation. But an
interpretation not simply personal to himself, but representative of the
national tradition and belief. The men whose deeds and passions he
narrated were the patterns and examples on the one hand, on the other
the warnings of his race; the gods who determined the fortunes they
sang, were working still among men; the moral laws that ruled the past
ruled the present too; and the history of the Hellenic race moved, under
a visible providence, from its divine origin onward to an end that would
be prosperous or the reverse according as later generations should
continue to observe the worship and traditions of their fathers
descended from heroes and gods.

And it is the fact that in this sense it was representative of the
national consciousness, that distinguishes the Greek tragedy from the
classical drama of the French. For the latter, though it imitated the
ancients in outward form, was inspired with a totally different spirit.
The kings and heroes whose fortunes it narrated were not the ancestors
of the French race; they had no root in its affections, no connection
with its religious beliefs, no relation to its ethical conceptions. The
whole ideal set forth was not that which really inspired the nation, but
at best that which was supposed to inspire the court; and the whole
drama, like a tree transplanted to an alien soil, withers and dies for
lack of the nourishment which the tragedy of the Greeks unconsciously
imbibed from its encompassing air of national tradition.

Such then was the general character of the Greek tragedy--an
interpretation of the national ideal. Let us now proceed to follow out
some of the consequences involved in this conception.

In the first place, the theme represented is the life and fate of
ancient heroes--of personages, that is to say, greater than ordinary
men, both for good and for evil, in their qualities and in their
achievements, pregnant with fateful issues, makers or marrers of the
fortunes of the world. Tragic and terrible their destiny may be, but
never contemptibl