While then there is, as we should naturally expect, plenty of Greek poetry which is simply the spontaneous expression of passionate feeling, unrestrained by the consideration of ethical or other ends; yet if we take for our type (as we are fairly entitled to do, from the prominent place it held in Greek life), not the lyrics but the drama of Greece, we shall find that in poetry even (as was to be expected) to a higher degree than in music and the plastic arts, the beauty sought and achieved is one that lies within the limits of certain definite moral pre-suppositions. Let us consider this point in some detail; and first let us examine the character of Greek tragedy. Section 6. Tragedy. The character of Greek tragedy was determined from the very beginning by the fact of its connection with religion. The season at which it was performed was the festival of Dionysus; about his altar the chorus danced; and the object of the performance was the representation of scenes out of the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle of legends familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom might be allowed to the poet in his treatment of the theme, whatever the reflections he might embroider upon it, the speculative or ethical views, the criticism of contemporary life, all must be subservient to the main object originally proposed, the setting forth, for edification as well as for delight, of some episodes in the lives of those heroes of the past who were considered not only to be greater than their descendants, but to be the sons of gods and worthy themselves of worship as divine. By this fundamental condition the tragedy of the Greeks is distinguished sharply, on the one hand from the Shakespearian drama, on the other from the classical drama of the French. The tragedies of Shakespeare are devoid, one might say, or at least comparatively devoid, of all preconceptions. He was free to choose what subject he liked and to treat it as he would; and no sense of obligation to religious or other points of view, no feeling for traditions descended from a sacred past and not lightly to be handled by those who were their trustees for the future, sobered or restrained for evil or for good his half-barbaric genius. He flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour of the discoverer of a new continent; shaped and re-shaped it as he chose; carved from it now the cynicism of Measure for Measure, now the despair of Hamlet and of Lear, now the radiant magnanimity of the Tempest, and departed leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a series of mutually incompatible landscapes.