THE FEAST At ten in the morning next day the feast began with a drama from Sophocles, which was performed in the open air.

The theatre was in the gardens between the wall and the inner stockade; the spectators sat on the slope, tier above tier; the actors appeared upon a green terrace below, issuing from an arbour and passing off behind a thick box-hedge on the other side of the terrace.

There was no scenery whatever.
Aurora had selected the Antigone.

There were not many dramatists from whom to choose, for so many English writers, once famous, had dropped out of knowledge and disappeared.

Yet some of the far more ancient Greek and Roman classics remained because they contained depth and originality of ideas in small compass.