This critic holds that Alfieri's
tragical ideal was of such a simplicity that it would seem derived
regularly from the Greek, but for the fact that when he felt
irresistibly moved to write tragedy, he probably did not know even the
names of the Greek dramatists, and could not have known the structure
of their dramas by indirect means, having read then only some
Metastasian plays of the French school; so that he created that ideal
of his by pure, instinctive force of genius. With him, as with the
Greeks, art arose spontaneously; he felt the form of Greek art by
inspiration. He believed from the very first that the dramatic poet
should assume to render the spectators unconscious of theatrical
artifice, and make them take part with the actors; and he banished
from the scene everything that could diminish their illusion; he would
not mar the intensity of the effect by changing the action from
place to place, or by compressing within the brief time of the
representation the events of months and years. To achieve the unity of
action, he dispensed with all those parts which did not seem to him
the most principal, and he studied how to show the subject of the
drama in the clearest light. In all this he went to the extreme, but
he so wrought "that the print of his cothurnus stamped upon the field
of art should remain forever singular and inimitable.
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