since Eve ate of the magic fruit, that she might be as a god,
knowing good and evil, and found, poor thing, as most have since, that it
was far easier and more pleasant to know the evil than to know the good.
But that theatre was built that men might know therein the good as well
as the evil. To learn the evil, indeed, according to their light, and
the sure vengeance of Ate and the Furies which tracks up the evil-doer.
But to learn also the good--lessons of piety, patriotism, heroism,
justice, mercy, self-sacrifice, and all that comes out of the hearts of
men and women not dragged _below_, but raised _above_ themselves; and
behind all--at least in the nobler and earlier tragedies of AEschylus and
Sophocles, before Euripides had introduced the tragedy of mere human
passion; that sensation tragedy, which is the only one the world knows
now, and of which the world is growing rapidly tired--behind all, I say,
lessons of the awful and unfathomable mystery of human existence, of
unseen destiny; of that seemingly capricious distribution of weal and
woe, to which we can find no solution on this side the grave, for which
the old Greek could find no solution whatsoever.

Therefore there was a central object in the old Greek theatre, most
important to it, but which does not exist in our theatres, and did not in
the old Roman; because our tragedies, like the Roman, are mere plays
concerning love, murder, and so forth, while the Greek were concerning
the deepest relations of man to the Unseen.

The almost circular orchestra, or pit, between the benches and the stage,
was empty of what we call spectators--because it was destined for the
true and ideal spectators--the representatives of humanity; in its centre
was a round platform, the [Greek text]--originally the altar of
Bacchus--from which the leader of these representatives, the leader of
the Chorus, could converse with the actors on the stage and take his part
in the drama; and round this thymele the Chorus ranged, with measured
dance and song, chanting, to the sound of a simple flute, odes such as
the world had never heard before or since, save perhaps in the
temple-worship at Jerusalem. A chorus now, as you know, means merely any
number of persons singing in full harmony on any subject. The Chorus was
then in tragedy, and indeed in the higher comedy, what Schlegel well
calls 'the ideal spectator,'--a personified reflection on the action
going on, the incorporation into the r