atment.
The Greek tragedy is composed from a definite point of view, with the
aim not merely to represent but also to interpret the theme. Underlying
the whole construction of the plot, the dialogue, the reflections, the
lyric interludes, is the intention to illustrate some general moral law,
some common and typical problem, some fundamental truth. Of the elder
dramatists at any rate, Aeschylus and Sophocles, one may even say that
it was their purpose--however imperfectly achieved--to "justify the
ways of God to man." To represent suffering as the punishment of sin is
the constant bent of Aeschylus; to justify the law of God against the
presumption of man is the central idea of Sophocles. In either case the
whole tone is essentially religious. To choose such a theme as Lear, to
treat it as Shakespeare has treated it, to leave it, as it were,
bleeding from a thousand wounds, in mute and helpless entreaty for the
healing that is never to be vouchsafed--this would have been repulsive,
if not impossible, to a Greek tragedian. Without ever descending from
concrete art to the abstractions of mere moralising, without ever
attempting to substitute a verbal formula for the full and complex
perception that grows out of a representation of life, the ancient
dramatists were nevertheless, in the whole apprehension of their theme,
determined by a more or less conscious speculative bias; the world to
them was not merely a splendid chaos, it was a divine plan; and even in
its darkest hollows, its passes most perilous and bleak, they have their
hand, though doubtful perhaps and faltering, upon the clue that is to
lead them up to the open sky.

It is consonant with this account of the nature of Greek tragedy that it
should have laid more stress upon action than upon character. The
interest was centred on the universal bearing of certain acts and
situations, on the light which the experience represented threw on the
whole tendency and course of human life, not on the sentiments and
motives of the particular personages introduced. The characters are
broad and simple, not developing for the most part, but fixed, and
fitted therefore to be the mediums of direct action, of simple issues,
and typical situations. In the Greek tragedy the general point of view
predominates over the idiosyncrasies of particular persons. It is human
nature that is represented in the broad, not this or that highly
specialised variation; and what we have indicated a