Connected with this original awfulness of the Greek tragedy, and possibly
in part its cause, or at least lending strength to its cause, we may next
remark the grand dimensions of the ancient theatres. Every citizen had a
right to accommodation. _There_ at once was a pledge of grandeur. Out
of this original standard grew the magnificence of many a future
amphitheatre, circus, hippodrome. Had the original theatre been merely a
speculation of private interest, then, exactly as demand arose, a
corresponding supply would have provided for it through its ordinary
vulgar channels; and this supply would have taken place through rival
theatres. But the crushing exaction of 'room for _every_ citizen,' put an
end to that process of subdivision. Drury Lane, as I read (or think
that I read) thirty years ago, allowed sitting room for three thousand
eight hundred people. Multiply _that_ by ten; imagine thirty-eight
thousand instead of thirty-eight hundred, and then you have an idea of the
Athenian theatre. [7]
Next, out of that grandeur in the architectural proportions arose, as by
necessity, other grandeurs. You are aware of the _cothurnus_, or buskin,
which raised the actor's heel by two and a half inches; and you think that
this must have caused a deformity in the general figure as incommensurate
to this height. Not at all. The flowing dress of Greece healed all _that_.
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