This is evident, as well from the constant continuance of the Chorus upon the stage, as from the difficulty of dividing any of the remaining Greek dramas into five acts, which shall bear any reasonable proportion to one another. The more natural division, and that which is sanctioned by the authority of Aristotle, is into Prologue, which extends from the opening of the drama to the first interlude or chorus ; Episode, which includes all between the first and last interludes; Exode, which comprises the remainder from the last interlude to the close. Considering, however, the different acceptation in which the word prologue is now used, it will perhaps be more intelligible to an English reader, if the whole drama be regarded as one long piece of a single act.

It cannot be decidedly pronounced whether the "Iaußa (which, in the following translation, are rendered by the usual metre of tragedy, blank heroic verse,) were accompanied with music or not. The former supposition seems

the more probable, since music, according to Aristotle, was one of the essential parts of Tragedy. The recitation may possibly have been a kind of slow and solemn chant;-and wherever it is observed that sudden and abrupt transitions occur in the metre, a question or answer being frequently conveyed in a single word, there it may be supposed that the music was suddenly changed. It is certain that the Greek music possessed, in a peculiar degree, the power of expressing the passions; love, hatred, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, frenzy, jealousy, despair, were alternately depicted by its magic influence; and that too in such perfection, that the effect of even dramatic illusion would not for an instant be impeded or impaired.

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It will appear somewhat singular, that, with very little exception, the entire action of the play is supposed to pass in one and the same place: in the dipus Tyrannus, the Antigone, the Trachiniæ, and the Electra, before the vestibule of a palace; in the Edipus Coloneus, on

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the verge of a grove dedicated to the Furies; in the Philoctetes, near a cave on the coast of Lemnos. This arises from the extreme rigour of the rules which the ancient dramatists prescribed to themselves, respecting what are called the Unities. These Unities are threefold,-of Action, of Time, and of Place. We may define the Unity of Action to be, a concentration of the interest into one or two principal characters, with such a continuity of it through the whole drama, that the spectators' thoughts may be exclusively directed to the developement of one catastrophe. Thus the detection of the guilt of Edipus in one tragedy and his death in another; the execution of Creon's tyrannical edict on the generous and devoted Antigone; the destruction of Hercules by the malignant subtilty of the Centaur; the liberation of Philoctetes from his captivity in Lemnos; and the triumph of Electra and Orestes over the murderers of their father ;these are the points on which our attention is riveted from the first; and, in the tendency of

every incident to produce the anticipated result, the Unity of Action is exemplified. The only instance in which Sophocles has violated it appears in the Ajax, where the action is continued after the death of the hero. This, how

ever, may be accounted for by the peculiarity of the heathen superstition respecting the interment of the dead. The Unity of Time requires that the whole action should be comprised within the space between the rising and the setting of the sun. This rule Sophocles has disregarded in his Trachiniæ, where the voyage to Euboea and back is performed during the representation, even in the short interval while the Chorus is singing an ode. The Unity of Place, as we have already intimated, confines the action to a single place; the exception to which rule occurs also in the Ajax, where indeed the nature of the action requires it, as the Chorus separates into two parties, each headed by a leader, in search of Ajax. It is, nevertheless, possible that the scene here may open, and discover Ajax be

hind. The observance of these rules, it will readily be seen, must have been an oppressive and almost intolerable restraint on the "free

flights" of genius; yet it is a circumstance highly creditable to Sophocles, that while he is more attentive to the Unities than either of his rival dramatists, his plots are more conformable to probability, his incidents more consistent with the tenor of real life.

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The Greeks had a great aversion to the introduction of many characters upon the stage at the same time. The general restriction in this respect, we are not prepared to say that it may not have been violated in particular instances,--seems to have been, that there should not be more than three' actors, beside the Chorus, actually engaged in the dialogue; and that, if the appearance of a greater number on the

192.

Nec quarta loqui peronsa laboret.-Hor. Ars. Poet.