ancient history, the events of a recent voyage, or a barely completed
crime. The sage backward glance of the Chorus is quick to discover in
present ruin a punishment for past crime; so that the plot becomes in a
manner a picture of the resistless laws of moral justice. Speeches, a
moralizing Chorus, actions not performed but reported in detail, a sense
of divine retribution for sin, these are perhaps the qualities which,
apart from the poetry itself, we recall most readily as typical of a
Greek tragedy. These Seneca modified by the introduction of acts and
scenes, a subordination of the Chorus, and an exaggerated predilection
for long sententious speeches; he also added a new stage character known
as the Ghost. Seneca's elevation, to the dogmatic position of laws, of
the unities of Time, Place and Action, rules by no means invariable
among his older and greater masters, has been the subject of much
debate, but, on the whole, the verdict has been hostile. According to
these unities, the time represented in the play should not greatly
exceed the time occupied in acting it, the scene of the action should
not vary, and the plot should be concerned only with one event. This
last law was generally accepted, by Elizabethans, in Tragedy at least.
The other two, though much insisted on by English theorists, such as Sir
Philip Sidney, met with so much neglect in practice that we need devote
no space to the discussion of them.

Having thus hastily summarized the larger superficial characteristics of
classical drama, we may return to _Gorboduc_ and inquire which of these
were adopted in it and with what modifications. We find it divided into
five acts and nine scenes. A Chorus, though it takes no other part,
sings its moralizing lyrics at the end of each act except the last.
Speeches of inordinate length are made--three consecutive speeches in
Act I, Scene 2, occupy two hundred and sixty lines--the subject-matter
being commonly argumentative. Only through the reports of messengers and