Being largely balked in this matter, the Greeks characteristically turned the limitation to good account. The mask-makers did not attempt to fashion a detailed portrait—that would have suffered from the same difficulty as the naked human physiognomy; like our newspaper cartoonists, they reduced each character to the fewest possible traits, which were suggested in bold strokes and were easily recognizable by even the most remote spectator. Under close inspection representations of ancient masks seem grotesque and even absurd (Figs. 4, 8, 17-21, 66, and 68 f.), but it must be remembered that distance would to a great extent obliterate this impression. Moreover, such masks were admirably adapted to, and at the same time reinforced, the Greek tendency to depict types rather than individuals (see pp. 213 and 266 f.). On the modern stage masks are practically unknown. We must not allow that fact to prejudice us against their possible effectiveness. So respectable an authority as Mr. Gordon Craig declares “the expression of the human face as used by the theaters of the last few centuries” to be “spasmodic and ridiculous,” that “the mask is the only right medium of portraying the expressions of the soul as shown through the expressions of the face,” and that they “will be used in place of the human face in the near future”; and Mr. Cornford testifies to the baffling, tantalizing effect of a similar device at the Elizabethan Stage Society’s representation of Marlowe’s _Doctor Faustus_.[309]