Euripides--and this is the solution of the riddle just propounded--felt
himself, as a poet, undoubtedly superior to the masses, but not to
two of his spectators: he brought the masses upon the stage; these
two spectators he revered as the only competent judges and masters
of his art: in compliance with their directions and admonitions, he
transferred the entire world of sentiments, passions, and experiences,
hitherto present at every festival representation as the invisible
chorus on the spectators' benches, into the souls of his stage-heroes;
he yielded to their demands when he also sought for these new
characters the new word and the new tone; in their voices alone he
heard the conclusive verdict on his work, as also the cheering promise
of triumph when he found himself condemned as usual by the justice of
the public.
Of these two, spectators the one is--Euripides himself, Euripides _as
thinker,_ not as poet. It might be said of him, that his unusually
large fund of critical ability, as in the case of Lessing, if it did
not create, at least constantly fructified a productively artistic
collateral impulse. With this faculty, with all the clearness and
dexterity of his critical thought, Euripides had sat in the theatre and
striven to recognise in the masterpieces of his great predecessors, as
in faded paintings, feature and feature, line and line. And here had
happened to him what one initiated in the deeper arcana of Æschylean
tragedy must needs have expected: he observed something incommensurable
in every feature and in every line, a certain deceptive distinctness
and at the same time an enigmatic profundity, yea an infinitude, of
background. Even the clearest figure had always a comet's tail attached
to it, which seemed to suggest the uncertain and the inexplicable.
The same twilight shrouded the structure of the drama, especially the
significance of the chorus. And how doubtful seemed the solution of
the ethical problems to his mind! How questionable the treatment of
the myths! How unequal the distribution of happiness and misfortune!
Even in the language of the Old Tragedy there was much that was
objectionable to him, or at least enigmatical; he found especially
too much pomp for simple affairs, too many tropes and immense things
for the plainness of the characters. Thus he sat restlessly pondering
in the theatre, and as a spectator he acknowledged to himself that he
did not understand his great predecessors. If, however, he thought the
understanding the root proper of all enjoyment and productivity, he had
to inquire and look about to see whether any one else thought as he
did, and also acknowledged this incommensurability. But most people,
and among them the best individuals, had only a distrustful smile for
him, while none could explain why the great masters were still in the
right in face of his scruples and objections. And in this painful
condition he found _that other spectator,_ who did not comprehend,