King Lear is not rude or primitive, although the subject belongs to
prehistoric times in Britain. Nor is Goethe's Faust mediaeval in
spirit as in theme. So neither is the Oedipus Rex the product of
'lawless and uncertain thoughts,' notwithstanding the unspeakable
horror of the story, but is penetrated by the most profound estimate
of all in human life that is saddest, and all that is most precious.

Far from being naive naturalists after the Keats fashion, the Greek
tragic poets had succeeded to a pessimistic reaction from simple Pagan
enjoyment; they were surrounded with gloomy questionings about human
destiny and Divine Justice, and they replied by looking steadily at
the facts of life and asserting the supreme worth of innocence,
equity, and mercy.

They were not philosophers, for they spoke the language of feeling;
but the civilization of which they were the strongest outcome was
already tinged with influences derived from early philosophy--
especially from the gnomic wisdom of the sixth century and from the
spirit of theosophic speculation, which in Aeschylus goes far even to
recast mythology. The latter influence was probably reinforced,
through channels no longer traceable, by the Eleusinian worship, in
which the mystery of life and death and of human sorrow had replaced
the primitive wonder at the phenomena of the year.

And whatever elements of philosophic theory or mystic exaltation the
drama may have reflected, it was still more emphatically the
repository of some of the most precious traditions of civilized
humanity--traditions which philosophy has sometimes tended to
extenuate, if not to destroy.