out food. We have further seen that
ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the
chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the
Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that
is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before
us.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12.

[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.)

[21] I, 43. 2.

[22] _Quaest. Graec._ XII.

[23] _Op. cit._

[24] _Quaest. Symp._, 693 f.

[25] The words "in Spring-time" depend on an emendation to me
convincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1.

[26] IX.

[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151.

[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439.

[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402.

[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228.

[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424.

[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442.

[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438.

[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503.

CHAPTER V

TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON ("THING DONE") AND THE DRAMA

Probably most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time
think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their
temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or
very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that,
whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are
odd effects, conventions, suggestions.

For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or
heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds
unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine
thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put
off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is
regularly given, and usually at considerable length, in a "messenger's
speech." The messenger's speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and
though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real
dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has
sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all
these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation,
good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he
finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into
floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in
silence.

Then again, specially if the play be by Euripide