Again, it seems to me that when you praise comedy
and tragedy, you have forgotten that in each of them
there is a special form of dance; that is to say, the
tragic is the Emmeleia and the comic the Cordax,
though sometimes a third form, the Sicinnis, is included also. The Sicinnis, though regarded as the characteristic dance of the satyr-play, was sometimes presented in comedy. But since at the outset you gave greater
honour to tragedy and comedy and cyclic fluteplayers and singing with the lyre than to the dance,
calling these competitive and therefore grand—
come, let us now compare each one of them with the
dance. And yet, suppose we omit the flute, if you
do not mind, and the lyre, since they are parts of the
dancer’s paraphernalia.
 
As far as tragedy is concerned, let us form our
first opinion of its character from its outward semblance. What a repulsive and at the same time
frightful spectacle is a man tricked out to disproportionate stature, mounted upon high clogs, wearing
a mask that reaches up above his head, with a mouth
that is set in a vast yawn as if he meant to swallow
up the spectators! I forbear to speak of pads for



 

the breast and pads for the paunch, wherewith he
puts on an adscititious, counterfeit corpulence, so that
the disproportion in height may not betray itself
the more conspicuously in a slender figure. Then
too, inside all this, you have the man himself bawling
out, bending forward and backward, sometimes
actually singing his lines, and (what is surely the
height of unseemliness) melodising his calamities,
holding himself answerable for nothing but his voice,
as everything else has been attended to by the poets,
who lived at some time in the distant past. To be
sure, as long as he is an Andromache or a Hecuba,
his singing can be tolerated; but when he enters
as Heracles in person and warbles a ditty, forgetting
himself and taking no shame either for the lion-skin
that he is wearing or for the club, a man in his right
mind may properly term the thing a solecism. I.e., it is in art what a solecism is in grammar. 

 

And by the way, the charge you were bringing
against the dance, that men imitate women, would
be a common charge against both tragedy and
comedy. Indeed, in them the female parts outnumber the male!

 

Moreover, comedy accounts the
ridiculousness of the masks themselves as part of
what is pleasing in her; for example, the masks of
Davuses and Tibiuses, Names of slaves in comedy. and of cooks.
 On the other hand, that the appearance of the
dancer is seemly and becoming needs no assertion
on my part, for it is patent to all who are not blind.
His mask itself is most beautiful, and suited to the
drama that forms the theme; its mouth is not wide
open, as with tragedy and comedy, but closed, for
he has many people who do the shouting in his
stead.

 
 In the past, to be sure, they themselves
both danced and sang; but afterwards, since the




 

panting that came of their movement disturbed their
singing, it seemed better that others should accompany them with song.