The Foreign Quarterly Review (Volume 24)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ...evidence to warrant the scepticism of a modern critic. The doubts as to the Iphigenia originate, we believe, with Herr Gruppe, concerning whose valuable work we shall have occasion to say more immediately. But what sort of a thing in truth is this Euripidean prologue? Schlegel has compared it to the speaking labels which come out of the mouths of the figures in old paintings; and the comparison is not merely humorous, as some have observed, but literally and 'EAfx-sv Etti Trt TfayoiSi rtfxvoH;--troWa yap Eij Tuv tiyynt ifutw a Ov$k; Tv fffo cLurov ' To yaj Ev - Tov SgetcaTof rw iiiroQirlv tittTuvtuy, Kai Toy axpoamv ixririf yiLpayaiyEiv etf To storgos-fley, Eug(7Ti5ou rsvvfjia To Te rafijvEiav xat ir'Karvt; Eeiv Ta hiyojnya. Ketl nrny gpfximay orotxiXXEiv stristtis-u TEa( i/fyxs yappm, ' xai yyx/xa; Ho-ayfiy tf-WEEtf Hal xaXa Too yirox lUEV-?T 90fo oljv strikingly true. The Euripidean prologue is a formal and detailed piece of self-heralding by some principal character in the play, which in the infancy of the dramatic art--in Phrynichus and.Eschylus--might have been tolerated; but in Euripides is altogether without palliation. It is the clumsy blunder of a rhetorician, who takes delight in tricking out in an elaborate statement of the cases, what ought to be elicited by natural dialogue, or quietly educed by befitting soliloquy. A more undramatic, antidramatic invention Euripides could not have stumbled on. Take for instance the prologue to the Iphigenia in Tauris, which begins like the pedigree of a race-horse, as far back as the memory of famous ancestry reaches. Tleop o TavrakeiOQ eg Tiiiaav jioliiv Soaiaiv iirnoiQ Olvofiaov yafiti Kopijv, c rjc 'Arptvc, efiXairrev' 'Arpe'we Se Traig...