The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor,
Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810

Author: Various

Editor: Stephen Cullen Carpenter

Release Date: October 31, 2008 [EBook #27109]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

Vol. I. MAY, 1810. No. 5.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER V.

_Conclusion of the Greek Drama._

MENANDER.

Menander, as has been said in the last chapter, once more rescued the
stage of Greece from barbarism. In the death of Aristophanes was
involved the death of "the middle comedy," which rapidly declined in the
hands of his insufficient successors. The poets and wits that came after
him, wanted either the talents, the malignity, or the courage to follow
his example, to imitate him in his daring personalities, or to adopt his
merciless satyrical style. They followed his steps, only in his feeble,
pitiful paths, and contented themselves with writing contemptible
buffoon caricature parodies of the writings of the greatest men. The new
comedy never could have raised its head, had the middle comedy continued
to be supported by a succession of such wits as Aristophanes, with new
supplies of envenomed personal satire. Fortunately, however, the stage
was pretty well cleared of that pernicious kind of writing when
_Menander_, the amiable and the refined, came forth and claimed the bay.

This celebrated writer, who justly obtained the appellation of "prince
of the new comedy," was a native of Athens, and was born three hundred
and forty-five years before the birth of Christ. He was educated under
the illustrious Theophrastus, from whom he learned philosophy and
composition. While a brilliant genius directed him to comic poetry, his
natural delicacy, his refined taste, his moral rectitude, and true
philosophy controlled his fancy, imparted to his comedie