Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays, Vol. 1: Critical and Historical
Philoctetes, the two most beautiful plays of Sophocles, is the plot striking but how exquisite is the delineation of the characters of Antigone and cedipus, in the former tragedy, particularly in their interview with Polynices, and the various descriptions of the scene itself which the Chorus furnishes! In the Philoctetes, again, it is the contrast between the worldly wisdom of Ulysses, the inexperienced frankness of Neoptolemus, and the sim plicity of the af?icted Philoctetes, which constitutes the principal charm of the drama. Or we may instance the spirit and nature displayed in the grouping of the characters in the Prometheus, which is almost without action the stubborn enemy of the new dynasty of gods Oceanus trimming, as an accomplished politician, with the change of affairs; the single-hearted and generous Nereids; and Hermes, the favourite and instrument of the usurping potentate. So again, the beauties of the Thebae are almost independent of the plot; it is the Chorus which imparts grace and interest to the actionless scene; and the speech of Antigone at the end, one of the most simply striking in any play, has, scientifically speaking, no place in the tragedy, which should already have been brought to its conclusion. Then again, amid the multitude of the beauties of the irregular Euripides, it would be obvious to notice the character of Alcestis, and of Clytemnestra in the Electra; the soliloquies of Medea; the picturesque situation of Ion, the minister of the Pythian temple the opening scene of the Orestes and the dialogues between Phaedra and her attendant in the Hippolytus, and the old man and Antigone in the Phcenissae - passages nevertheless which are either un connected with the development of the plot, or of an importance superior to it.
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