the eyes of his audience in a manner equally bold and astonishing. Even
Barthelemy's description of the Grecian stage is not a little confused,
and his subjoined plan extremely incorrect; where he attempts to describe
the acting of a play, the _Antigone_ or the _Ajax_, for instance, he goes
altogether wrong. For this reason the following explanation will appear
the less superfluous [Footnote: I am partly indebted for them to the
elucidations of a learned architect, M. Genelli, of Berlin, author of the
ingenious _Letters on Vitruvius_. We have compared several Greek tragedies
with our interpretation of Vitruvius's description, and endeavoured to
figure to ourselves the manner in which they were represented; and I
afterwards found our ideas confirmed by an examination of the theatre of
Herculaneum, and the two very small ones at Pompeii.].

The theatres of the Greeks were quite open above, and their dramas were
always acted in day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. The Romans, indeed,
at an after period, may have screened the audience, by an awning, from the
sun; but luxury was scarcely ever carried so far by the Greeks. Such a
state of things appears very uncomfortable to us; but the Greeks had
nothing of effeminacy about them; and we must not forget, too, the
mildness of their climate. When a storm or a shower came on, the play was
of course interrupted, and the spectators sought shelter in the lofty
colonnade which ran behind their seats; but they were willing rather to
put up with such occasional inconveniences, than, by shutting themselves
up in a close and crowded house, entirely to forfeit the sunny brightness
of a religious solemnity--for such, in fact, their plays were [Footnote:
They carefully made choice of a beautiful situation. The theatre at
Tauromenium, at present Taormino, in Sicily, of which the ruins are still
visible, was, according to Hunter's description, situated in such a manner
that the audience had a view of Etna over the back-ground of the
theatre.]. To have covered in the scene itself, and imprisoned gods and