as it may, Tragedy--as
also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with
the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs,
which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow
degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed.
Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there
it stopped.

Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance
of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles
raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting.
Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for
one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric
form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced
the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry
was of the Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing. Once
dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure.
For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial: we see it
in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more
frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters,
and only when we drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to
the number of 'episodes' or acts, and the other accessories of which
tradition; tells, must be taken as already described; for to discuss
them in detail would, doubtless, be a large undertaking.

V

Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type,
not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being
merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness
which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the
comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.

The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors
of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history,
because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the
Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then
voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets,
distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or
prologues, or increased the number of actors,--these and other similar
details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came originally from
Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first wh