Remembrance of this fact has led many modern readers who have never seen a Greek play to conceive Greek tragedy as formal and rigid. This is much the same error as supposes Greek architecture and statuary to have been white. It is an illusion of time. Greek buildings and statues became white when no hands were left to restore their colors. Greek tragedies became formal and rigid when they passed from the stage to the closet, when they lost the rhythms of dance and of phrase. With every revival of them upon the modern stage the illusion is dispelled. Indeed, it can be broken by merely reading them aloud. Nevertheless, though they show to an exceptional degree that larger movement which Aristotle found to be a dramatic essential, they were stately in gesture and in lines. Even without the associations of religion, the very size of the theater would have precluded the facial play that is a main reliance of modern acting, and induced in the open air a delivery sometimes oratorical and always large. The tragic mask and cothurnus were adaptations to a great open-air space. To the same physical conditions were adapted the rendition and the lines themselves.[3] The diction of Greek tragedy, though varying widely of course from poet to poet, has certain recognizable constants. It is generally sonorous, sententious, and, to a degree never surpassed, direct. It realizes fully the emotional appeal of rhythm; for though its dialogue has less rhythmical variety than Shakspere’s, it rarely lapses into monotony, and it is relieved by the abundant imagery and metrical variety of the chorus. Greek tragic dialogue is typically austere. It rarely amplifies, for it is poetry, not oratory;[4] but it makes every word count dramatically. The ideal of economy is felt even in the diction. Passages of narrative, such as those of messengers, are made dramatically effective not only by situation, but by variations of tone and tempo. Effects of style may seem to have preoccupied criticism too much unless we remember that the Athenian audience was habitually sensitive to rhythm, and that it was never distracted by novelty of story from attention to the dramatist’s art. That the final touch of this art was the rhythmical finishing of the lines there can be no doubt.