The Theatre of the Greeks; Or, the History, Literature, and Criticism of the Grecian Drama with an Original Treatise on the Principal Tragic and Comic Metres (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 Excerpt: ...that forms the charm of a Tragedy, or of the circus-games, or even of the beast-fights. In these we see a display of address, strength, and courage, bright qualities, and allied to the spiritual and moral capacities of man. The kind of satisfaction which we feel in a beautiful Tragedy from our sympathy in the violent situations and heart-rending sorrows there represented, is, either the feeling of the dignity of human nature, awakened by mighty exemplars; or the trace of a higher Order of Things impressed on the apparently irregular course of events, and therein mysteriously revealed; in both of these together. The true reason therefore why Tragedy need not be shy of even the harshest subject is this: that a spiritual and invisible Power can be measured only by the resistance which it encounters from an exterior Force, which may be measured by the senses. Man's moral freedom, therefore, can only reveal itself in the encounter with the sensual impulses; so long as no higher call summons it into conflict with these, it either really slumbers within him, or seems at least to slumber, since his place might suitably be filled even by a mere animal being. In the conflict alone does the Moral Nature approve itself; and if therefore we must needs exhibit the Aim of Tragedy as a lesson, let it be this: that to maintain the claims of the soul to a nature intrinsically godlike, the earthly being is to be nothing heeded; that for this all sorrows must be endured, all difficulties overcome. Gn all that concerns this point I would refer to the section on the Sublime in Kant's " Critique of the Judgment" (Kritik der Urtheilskraft), which to be quite perfect, wants nothing but a more definite reference to the Tragedy of the Ancients; with' which this Philosopher ...