ABSTRACT
Having undertaken to tell in modern English verse one of the stories of old Greek tragedy, it is not strange that Mr Browning should have made his selection from Euripides. In Æschylus there is an intense belief in the supernatural: men are the sport of the gods; the gods themselves are the creatures of destiny. In Sophocles this view of things is much toned down and softened; but belief in the supernatural realities is almost as vividly portrayed: Æschylus is almost as strictly religious a poet as Sophocles. In Euripides, however, religion passes into philosophy. Vivid and impressive as are his tragedies, he shows in them that he hardly believes in the great powers which he describes, or rather that he partly believes them to be forces under human control and partly uses them as convenient phrases for expressing the operation of that general law of nature to which men are forced to submit and which is uniform in its method, one and absolute by whatever various names it may be known. That, clearly, is the view of life, and its secrets, with which Mr. Browning is most in accord, and he shows it very notably in the beautiful ‘transcript’, as he calls it, which he has here made of the tragedy of Alcestis.
