CHAPTEE Y. THE PROPER CLASSIFICATION OF GREEK PLAYS. ORIGIN OF COMEDY. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, histoid, 'pastoral, pastoral- comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-histoi'ical-pastoral, scene individahle, or poem unlimited. For the law of writ and the law of liberty these are the only men. Shakspeare. IT is generally stated that there were three kinds of Greek Plays, and three only — Tragedy, Comedy, and the Satyrical Drama. It will be our endeavour in the present chapter to examine this classification, and to see whether some better one cannot be pro- posed. With a view to this it will be proper to inquire into the origin of the comical and satyrical dramas, just as we have already investigated the origin of Tragedy, and to consider how far the Satyrical Drama differed from or agreed with either the Tragedy or Comedy of the Greeks. The word Tragedy — rpar/oi^ca — is derived of course from the words Tpdyo^ and 0^877. The former word, as we have already seen, is a synonym for adrvpo^^ : for the goat-eared attendant of Dionysus was called by the name of the animal which he re- sembled, just as the shepherd or goatherd was called by the name of the animal which he tended, and whose skin formed his clothing^. Tpajo)Bia is therefore not the song of a goat, because a goat was the prize of it; but a song accompanied by a dance performed by persons in the guise of satyrs, consequently a satyric dance; and we have already shown how Tragedy in its more modern sense arose from such performances. At first, then. Tragedy and the 1 See above, p. 40, note 4.
- The word Tltyrus signifies, according to Servius, the leading ram of the flock ;
according to other authorities it means a goat: and some have even supposed it to be another form of Satyrics. See the passages quoted by Miiller, Dor. iv. ch. 6, § 10, note (e).
