"This, however, is a digression; the question before us is whether
Aristophanes really liked AEschylus or only pretended to do so. It
must be remembered that the claims of AEschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides, to the foremost place amongst tragedians were held to be as
incontrovertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto to
be the greatest of Italian poets, are held among the Italians of
to-day. If we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in
Florence, finding himself bored by all the poets I have named, we
can yet believe he would be unwilling to admit that he disliked them
without exception. He would prefer to think he could see something
at any rate in Dante, whom he could idealise more easily, inasmuch
as he was more remote; in order to carry his countrymen the farther
with him, he would endeavour to meet them more than was consistent
with his own instincts. Without some such palliation as admiration for
one, at any rate, of the tragedians, it would be almost as dangerous
for Aristophanes to attack them as it would be for an Englishman now
to say that he did not think very much of the Elizabethan
dramatists. Yet which of us in his heart likes any of the
Elizabethan dramatists except Shakespeare? Are they in reality
anything else than literary Struldbrugs?
"I conclude upon the whole that Aristophanes did not like any of the
tragedians; yet no one will deny that this keen, witty, outspoken
writer was as good a judge of literary value, and as able to see any
beauties that the tragic dramas contained as nine-tenths, at any rate,
of ourselves.
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