It has been described how Greek tragic drama arose from the choruses singing round the altar of Dionysus. Greek comedy springs from the same source. There were two sides to a Greek festival, as there are two sides to Christmas Day. The serious part of the festivity developed serious poetry and serious action. The light, sportive, and satirical part developed humorous verse and humorous action. It is easy to see how both dramatic kinds would originate from these two different aspects of the feast. From beginnings as rude as those of tragedy was developed the comedy of Aristophanes or of Menander, which in its turn, begat that of Plautus and Terence at Rome, and thence of Shakespeare’s predecessors in England and of Molière in France. Even the comic opera of to-day bears a wonderfully close resemblance to plays of Aristophanes, with whom occur almost the same bizarre situations and humours as in Gilbert’s very modern eccentricities. Comedy, like tragedy, had its chorus, chanting appropriate odes during the intervals of acting. And be it noted that the Greek drama, whether tragic or comic, was literary. It bears to be read as much as to be acted; it is a work of conscientious art. In tragedy the writing is pure poetry. In comedy it is humour and wit, biting, sparkling, often coarse and very personal, but always full of life. There was some defence for personality. Comedy, like tragedy, served to give various lessons to the Athenians. Greece possessed no newspapers, and in their place the comic stage served even more than now to criticize fads, to chastise political and private misdoings. So long as it was what is called the “Old Comedy” of Aristophanes it availed itself only too fully of these licences. But when its attacks on politics or private persons became intolerable, its wings were clipped by law, and in the “New Comedy” of Menander we find another tone, the tone of Molière or of Ben Jonson, the treatment of social types, the comedy of domestic intrigue. Of the whims of the “Old Comedy” the following may serve as a specimen. In the _Birds_ of Aristophanes two enterprising Athenians persuade the birds to build a city in the clouds—“Cloud-cuckoo-town” it is called—by which the ungrateful gods are to be cut off from men, and so forced to come to terms. This is the central idea. Twenty-four persons, equipped as different birds, form the chorus, and give the name to the piece. The central conception, however, is but a peg on which to hang attacks upon the follies of the day, and particularly follies in contemporary politics. Neither parties nor men are spared. Nevertheless the piece is always comedy; it cultivates “the laughable”; it is never mere diatribe. * * * * *