Character in Sophocles

Critics are always reminding us that character-drawing in Greek tragedy was a very different thing from what we meet in the modern theatre, different and (it is implied) perhaps more limited or rudimentary. But this contrast between ancient and modern is too vague to be illuminating: we need to define exactly what kind of difference it is before we can decide whether it is important. In drama meant for live performance it can hardly be a difference of technique , since every playwright is limited to two basic means of character-drawing, what his figures say and do and what other people say and do to them and about them. Nor can there be much significance in differences of convention.