Instead of a regal hall in Thebes, I protest I took it for the boudoir of
Antigone. It was painted in light colors, an error which was abominable,
though possibly meant by the artist (but quite unnecessarily) as a proper
ground for relieving the sumptuous dresses of the leading performers. The
doors of entrance and exit were most unhappily managed. As to the dresses,
those of Creon, of his queen, and of the two loyal sisters, were good:
chaste, and yet princely. The dress of the chorus was as bad as bad as
could be: a few surplices borrowed from Episcopal chapels, or rather the
ornamented _albes_, &c. from any rich Roman Catholic establishment,
would have been more effective. The _Coryphaeus_ himself seemed, to
my eyes, no better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or
boring, and wearing a _blouse_ to hide his working dress. These ill-
used men ought to 'strike' for better clothes, in case Antigone should
again revisit the glimpses of an Edinburgh moon; and at the same time they
might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hindrances to a perfect
restoration of a Greek tragedy, lie in peculiarities of our theatres that
cannot be removed, because bound up with their purposes. I suppose that
Salisbury Plain would seem too vast a theatre: but at least a cathedral
would be required in dimensions, York Minster or Cologne. Lamp-light gives
to us some advantages which the ancients had not. But much art would be
required to train and organize the lights and the masses of superincumbent
gloom, that should be such as to allow no calculation of the dimensions
overhead. Aboriginal night should brood over the scene, and the sweeping
movements of the scenic groups: bodily expression should be given to the
obscure feeling of that dark power which moved in ancient tragedy: and we
should be made to know why it is that, with the one exception of the
_Persae_, founded on the second Persian invasion, [11] in which
Aeschylus, the author, was personally a combatant, and therefore a
_contemporary_, not one of the thirty-four Greek tragedies surviving,
but recedes into the dusky shades of the heroic, or even fabulous times.