Library of the World's Best Literature  

"But should a work of art, above all of dramatic art, be set upon any pedestal at all ? Should not the dramatist, rather, hold the mirror up to nature, bid living men and women walk and talk before us? It is in part the old antagonism, actual or supposed, of Idealism, or Classicism, against Realism, that has raged so long about the name of Euripides. There is much to be said, and truly said, on both sides; but certainly Euripides is, for us, by far the most important of the Attic dramatists. He influenced far more than any other the later course of his art ; hastened the fusion of tragedy and comedy in the society melodrama of Menander and Philemon; dominated the Roman stage, and through it, modern dramatic art."--Library of the World's Best Literature (1897) edited by Charles Dudley Warner