Word: ancients
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...poetry. But in most of the accompanied parts of the play the music is set to the Latin measure and this makes it necessary for the speaker to follow that measure as it existed in Latin. And thus we may get approximately, at any rate, the effect of ancient classic verse. Thus the play becomes a study in ancient poetry as well. In the modern delivery of poetry the verse as a strain or melodic phrase is almost lost sight of. "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on," represents in a manner...
...original as the English. Others have changed a few consonantal sounds, in accordance with the usage even of the early centuries of our era, but the vowels have been preserved by them without significant change. In English, however, no sound is sufficiently preserved to be understood by an ancient Roman. It was this ultra perversion of the Roman sounds that led to the adoption of the present system. As a change was necessary there seemed no better course than to adopt the pronunciation which according to sufficient evidence was, so far as any approximation can be made to a foreign...
...rite, a fact which accounts for the extremely conventional character and frequent unreality of the earliest Greek drama. Our modern dramatic realism is a thing of very late development and, though a Roman play was in one sense far from being religious, it retained many traces of its ancient origin. The religion of the Greeks and Romans was almost entirely free from introspection, self-abasement, and asceticism. Their attitude towards the gods was chiefly one of hilarious gratitude. In worship they offered among other things the time which naturally would be devoted to business; and the natural opposite of labor...
There is another way in which a Latin play is instructive. Ancient poetry was a thing entirely distinct from anything which we call by that name in English. English syllables have essentially no length, though we do have a slight tendency to lengthen the accented syllables. This is the forest primeval, etc., is not dactylic in any real sense, nor is Twinkle, twinkle, little star trochaic. In fact, we could hardly write trochees or dactyls at all in English, certainly not so that one would recognize them as such without being told. Two-syllable feet are Pyrrhics and three-syllabled...
...plays are established features in England, both pronunciation and music are there modernized; and, although once before a Latin play was given in this country, the pronunciation of the Roman Catholic church was then used. No Latin play has ever been given in modern times that so nearly reproduces ancient conditions as does the Phormio. It has meant an immense amount of work; hardly any of the actors had ever made a study of dramatic expression before, and, even if they had, they were confronted by problems which no actor ever faced before. To master these problems has meant...