Professor White on the Stage in Aristophanes.

In the next number of the Harvard Philological Studies a monograph on the existence of the Greek stage from the evidence furnished in the plays of Aristophanes, by Professor John Williams White, will appear, which will doubtless attract a general interest not only among authorities on Greek antiquities and trained scholars but also among those who have read Greek drama as literature only. For the settlement of the, question as to whether the principals in a Greek play acted on a long, narrow ledge, the Vetruvian stage, ten feet above the great circles of the orchestra where the chorus were grouped, or whether actors as well as chorus performed in the orchestra, is of great importance even to the general reader, as the whole stage action is involved. Until very lately, scholars following the scholiast have interpreted Greek drama from the standpoint of the existence of a stage, basing their opinions first on the authority of the scholia and certain phrase. which were taken to refer to the passages up or down of the actor as he went up the stairs to the stage from the orchestra or decended to the orchestra from the stage; secondly, on the inferences which it seemed could be drawn from from ruins of Greek theatres. In 1890 Dr. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, the noted authority on Greek antiquities and first secretary of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, published his conclusions, the results of a careful architectural study of the theatre of Dionysius at Athens, which were to the effect that the proscenium which had generally been considered the front wall of the stage was really the support of the scenery and furnished a background for both actors and chorus who played in the orchestra. The announcement of such results attained by a trained architect as well as scholar lead Professor White, who had long been dissatisfied with the adaptablity of the old theory to the practical setting of a play, to undertake a thorough investigation of Aristophanes with view to effectually confuting Dorpfeld's conclusions or establishing them without a doubt. It was evident that in an author with as keen a sense of motive and as much dramatic action as Aristophanes sufficient internal evidence would be scattered through his eleven palys to settle the point in dispute. The difficulty was to collect and arrange this matter scientifically. This Professor White has done in his monograph, putting it in the form of an argument. First, he has collected the passages which may be taken to prove the existence of a stage, in which the words commonly meaning "go up" and "go down" occur, and has skillfully shown that in Aristophanes' time they were used simply as stage terms in the sense of "go on" or "go off," this signification arising from the early Greek religious processions where the first actor mounted a wheeled plat form to deliver his verses in honor of the god. Next he discusses the "positive testimony against the existence of a stage furnished by Aristophanes," under five argumentative heads. "First, the argument from mingling of chorus and actors; second, from the close of the plays; third, from impossible situations; fourth, from the over-crowded 'stage,' and last, from the argument from probability." Under these five heads Professor White has collected all the passages which bear upon each particular argument and with great skill has arranged them to speak for themselves. The conclusions which he then draws are, in the light of the exhuastive and absolutely complete collection of facts, clearly inevitable. The plays of Aristophanes, at all events, could not have been produced upon the stage described by Vitruvius Pollio in his work on architecture. Thus Professor White byliterary methods has obtained the same results as Dr. Dorpfeld from his architectural investigations in the ruins of Greek theatres of the period of Aristophanic comedy.

The scholarly and scientific methods employed throughout the essay permit of little doubt but that a Harvard man will shortly be recognized as having greatly aided in the settlement of this important and much disputed question.