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xxxii General Introduction
Critics tend to attack him for the inadequate carpentering of his plays.
Perhaps his reply would be that he really did not care if he overworked
the awkward deus ex machina, if at the same time he had been successful
in portraying completely the inner states of his characters and their
problems, in scenes of individual dramatic intensity. It is therefore easy
to see how Euripides broke the ground for the modern drama by his
freedom in handling plot and his minute study of character. He may
be the inferior of Aeschylus and Sophocles in scale and grandeur, but
by virtue of his own particular excellences he laid down the lines along
which dramatic art has developed. As one critic has well said, "Remove
Euripides and the modern theatre ceases to exist." 18
There remains to consider Sophocles, the great mediating figure between
Aeschylus and Euripides. He was born about 495 B.C., some ten
years or so before the birth of Euripides, and lived to the great age of
ninety, when he died about 405 B.C., surviving his younger contemporary
by approximately a year. The poet's family was wealthy, and
he himself served in public office on several occasions. In the main,
however, he devoted himself completely to the theatre and in all wrote
about one hundred twenty-five plays of which now there are but seven
extant, and unfortunately none of these derives from the first twentyfive
years of his creative activity. His plays met with wide popular success,
as is indicated by his twenty victories in tragic competition. Unlike
Euripides, who, as we have already noted, became bitterly disillusioned
towards the end of his life, and whose works show evidence of this
change of temper, Sophocles in his plays seems to maintain a consistent
and firm approach to the problems of tragedy.
Because of his well-nigh perfect craftsmanship as well as his depth of
understanding, critics have always found Sophocles most difficult to appraise.
They all too often utter empty-sounding cliches on the "calm
and serenity" of Sophocles' attitude towards life, and hence they are
prone to argue that he lived a serene and calm life himself. They even
point to his good fortune in having died before the defeat of Athens.
There is much about Sophocles' formulation of life, as it is seen through
the medium of his tragedies, that gives foundation for these critical
utterances, but we must not forget that the purity and the clarity of the
formulation could only have resulted from a deep experience of life that
must have been at best difficult. After all Sophocles lived through the
same years that brought disillusion to Euripides, but the elder poet
apparently had enough strength to hold his views steadily, and to rise
above the forces which seem to have broken Euripides' spirit.
Sophocles' mastery of dramatic technique is apparent in all his plays,
38 D. C. Stuart, The Development of Dramatic Art (New York, 1928) p. 100.