It is an interesting fact that the four men who have been accepted as the greatest writers who have yet appeared, used either the epic or the dramatic form.  It can hardly have been accidental that Homer and Dante gave their greatest work the epic form, and that Shakespeare and Goethe were in their most fortunate moments dramatists.  There must have been some reason in the nature of things for this choice of two literary forms which, differing widely in other respects, have this in common, that they represent life in action.  They are very largely objective; they portray events, conditions, and deeds which have passed beyond the stage of thought and have involved the thinker in the actual historical world of vital relationships and dramatic sequence.  The lyric poet may sing, if it pleases him, like a bird in the recesses of a garden, far from the noise and dust of the highway and the clamour of men in the competitions of trade and work; but the epic or dramatic poet must find his theme and his inspiration in the stir and movement of men in social relations.  He deals, not with the subjective, but with the objective man; with the man whose dreams are no longer visions of the imagination, but are becoming incorporate in some external order; whose passions are no longer seething within him, but are working themselves out in vital consequences; whose thought is no longer purely speculative, but has begun to give form and shape to laws, habits, or institutions.  It is the revelation of the human spirit in action which we find in the epic and the drama; the inward life working itself out in material and social relations; the soul of the man becoming, so to speak, externalised.

The epic, as illustrated in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” deals with a main or central movement in Greek tradition; a series of events which, by reason of their nature and prominence, imbedded themselves in the memory of the Greek race.  These events are described in narrative form, with episodes, incidents, and dialogues, which break the long story and relax the strain of attention from time to time, without interrupting the progress of the narrative.  There are heroes whose figures stand out in the long story with great distinctness, but we are interested much more in what they do than in what they are; for in the epic, character is subordinate to action.  In the dramas of Shakespeare, on the other hand, while action is more constantly employed and is thrown into bolder relief, our deepest interest centres in the actors; the action is no longer the matter of first importance; it is significant mainly because it involves men and women not only in the chain of external consequences, but also in the order of spiritual sequences.  We are deeply stirred by our perception of the intimate connection between the possibilities which lie sleeping in the individual life, and the tragic events which are set in motion when those possibilities are realised in action.  In both epic and drama men are seen, not in their subjective moods, but in their objective struggles; not in the detachment of the life of speculation and imagination, but in vital association and relation with society in its order and institutions.  With many differences, both of spirit and form, the epic and the drama are at one in portraying men in that ultimate and decisive stage which determines individual character and gives history its direction and significance.