ABSTRACT
Drama begins in religion. The celebrants of some rite mime an incident in their religious history. The ancient dramatist had absolutely none of the resources that the modern can employ for creating scenic illusion. The whole secret of the Greek tragic poets lies in making use of these very restrictions to obtain dramatic and poetical values of a very remarkable kind. It seems the best way of showing their method to give a brief analysis of a particular tragedy. The tragedy was taken as an example by Aristotle, under whose authority people can take shelter. It is the Oedipus Tyrannus (or Rex) of Sophocles. The Merove of Matthew Arnold is more than an imitation, it is a replica of a Greek tragedy. All the parts are there, and all in the right proportion. The poet’s lyrical impulse carries everything before it, so that even the spoken parts are not much more than lyrics in blank verse.
