it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater
compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the
stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic
tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the
Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing. Once dialogue had
come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the
iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial: we see it in the fact
that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than
into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we
drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to the number of 'episodes'
or acts, and the other accessories of which tradition; tells, must be
taken as already described; for to discuss them in detail would,
doubtless, be a large undertaking.



V

Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type,
not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being
merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness
which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the
comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.

The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors of
these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history, because
it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon
granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then
voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets,
distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or