Comedy, like Tragedy, owes its origin to the union of music, song, dance, and Pantomime; Tragedy to the dithyrambick, and Comedy to the phallica; and each of them (emulating Pantomime), began to form themselves into dramatic imitations; each studied to adopt a measure suited to their purpose:—­Tragedy, the more lofty, chose the tetrameter; and comedy, which aimed at familiarity, the iambic.  But, as the style of tragedy improved, Nature herself, says Aristotle, directed the writers to abandon the capering tetrameter, and to embrace that measure which was most accommodated to the purposes of dialogue; whence the iambic became the common measure of both Tragedy and Comedy.

Sophocles brought on a third actor, which number was not exceeded in the Greek tragedies during the same scene.  Horace alludes to this, “nec quarta loqui persona laboret,” (Let not a fourth person strive to speak):  but it was not observed in comedy.  Players of second parts were obliged to speak so low as not to drown the voice of the chief actor.  Tyrants were always played by subalterns.  The women were only dancers (and Pantomimists).  Female parts were performed by eunuchs.

On the Grecian stage, those performers who devoted themselves entirely to the Art of Miming originally came from Sicily and southern Italy, though the exact period is difficult to determine with any degree of certainty.

The figures of tragic or comic actors were known by the long and strait sleeves which they wore.  The servants in comedy, below the dress with strait sleeves, had a short cassock with half-sleeves.  That the characters might be distinguished (a difficulty in this respect arising from the size of the theatres) parasites carried a short truncheon; the rural deities, shepherds, and peasants, the crook; heralds and ambassadors, the caduceus; kings, a long, straight sceptre; heroes, a club, etc.  The tunic of tragic actors descended to the heels, and was called palla.  They generally carried a long staff or an erect sceptre.  They who represented old men, leaned upon a long and crooked staff.

The first Greek theatre at Athens (says Fosbroke, in his “Antiquities,”) was a temporary structure of boards, removed after the performances were closed.  This fashion continued till the erection of the theatre of Bacchus, at Athens, which served as a model for the others.  The Greek theatre was no more than a concave sweep, scooped out of the hollow side of a hill, generally facing the sea.  The sweep was filled with seats, rising above each other, and ascended by staircases, placed like the radii of a circle.  This semi-circular form was adopted not merely for convenience of vision, but for an aid to the sound.  This range for spectators was called the coilon or hollow.  The area below was the conistra, or pit.  There was no superstructure for a gallery, but around the rim of the building were porticos, by which the spectators