The _Seven against Thebes_ is a patriotic drama, ‘crammed full of the spirit of war,’ as the poet himself describes it, and also full of speeches. The male characters talk; what little action there is in the play falls to the women of the chorus. Their first song, for example, when they call on the gods to save them from the ravages of war, was probably accompanied by more vigorous movements than anything in the rest of the tragedy. The unsympathetic male, Eteocles, addresses them, it is true, as ‘unbearable creatures’ and ‘detestable animals,’ and says, ‘For my own part, I never want to share my house with any womankind, nor take them to my troubles and my joys;’ but his remarks are strictly in keeping with his unpleasant character, and the poet instinctively relies on the female characters for his chief dramatic interest. So in the _Persians_, a chronicle play composed mainly of choral odes and messengers’ speeches, the queen-mother, Atossa, takes the first place in the action, and the psychological contrast lies between her womanly strength and Xerxes’ manly weakness. In the _Prometheus_, certainly, most of the characters—gods and demi-gods—are males, but they have little dramatic significance. As far as they are concerned, the play is a good example of what Maeterlinck calls the ‘static drama.’ The characters stand still, _and talk_. The action is in the hands of the female characters, the pathetic figure of the wandering cow-maiden, Io, and the contrasted group of the mermaid chorus, the daughters of the sea. These latter are perhaps the most charming of all the poet’s creations, and the fragrance that heralds their approach, when, casting away modesty, they venture to appear before a man, spreads through the whole play. Sympathising, but not quite without merriment; inquisitive, but staunch in the hour of danger; they are just such characters as Nausicaa herself. In these three plays, then, the feminine interest has forced its way, as it were, into the plot, which in its first form offered women no place. The _Seven against Thebes_, a ‘fragment from the table of Homer,’ differs chiefly from the epic in the feminine element that has been imported by the chorus; the _Persians_, dealing with the same events as those described by Herodotus, has for its point of difference the prominence given to the female character, Atossa; the _Prometheus_, which tells the story of the conflict between the fierce young god and the philanthropic old demiurge, relies for its dramatic interest largely on the episodes of the Nereides and Io; episodes which, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with the main plot.