Unity of action is strictly enjoined by Hindu theory, though not invariably observed in practice. Episodical or prolix interruptions are forbidden; but, in order to facilitate the connexion, the story of the play is sometimesThe “unities.”carried on by narratives spoken by actors or “interpreters,” something after the fashion of the Chorus inHenry V., or of Gower inPericles. “Unity of time” is liberally, if rather arbitrarily, understood by the later critical authorities as limiting the duration of the action to a single year; but even this is exceeded in more than one classical play.4The single acts are to confine the events occurring in them to “one course of the sun,” and usually do so. “Unity of place” is unknown to the Hindu drama, by reason of the absence of scenery; for the plays were performed in the open courts of palaces, perhaps at times in large halls set apart for public entertainments, or in the open air. Hence change of scene is usually indicated in the texts; and we find5the characters making long journeys on the stage, under the eyes of spectators not trained to demand “real” mileage.
With the solemn character of the higher kind of dramatic performances accord the rules and prohibitions defining what may be called theproprietiesof the Indian drama. It has been already seen that all plays must have a happyProprieties.ending. Furthermore, not only should death never be inflictedcoram populo, but the various operations of biting, scratching, kissing, eating, sleeping, the bath, and the marriage ceremony should never take place on the stage. Yet such rules are made to be occasionally broken. It is true that the mild humour of thevidūshakais restricted to his “gesticulatingeating” instead of perpetrating the obnoxious act.6The charming love-scene in theSākuntalā(at least in the earlier recension of the play) breaks off just as the hero is about to act the part of the bee to the honey of the heroine’s lips.7But later writers are less squeamish, or less refined. In two dramas8the heroine is dragged on the stage by her braid of hair; and this outrage is in both instances the motive of the action. In a third,9sleeping and the marriage ceremony occur in the course of the representation.
The dramatic construction of the Indian plays presents no very striking peculiarities. They open with a benediction (nāndī), spoken by the manager (supposed to be a highly accomplished person), and followed by “someConstruction.account” of the author, and an introductory scene between the manager and one of the actors, which is more or less skilfully connected by the introduction of one of the characters with the opening of the play itself. This is divided into acts (ankas) and scenes; of the former anātākashould have not fewer than 5, or more than 10; 7 appears a common number; “the greatnātāka” reaches 14. Thus the length of the higher class of Indian plays is considerable—about that of an Aeschylean trilogy; but not more than a single play was ever performed on the same occasion. Comic plays are restricted to two acts (here calledsandhis). In theory the scheme of an Indian drama corresponds very closely to the general outline of dramatic construction given above; it is a characteristic merit that theScenes and situations.business is rarely concluded before the last act. The piece closes, as it began, with a benediction or prayer. Within this framework room is found for situations as ingeniously devised and highly wrought as those in any modern Western play. What could be more pitiful than the scene inSākuntalā, where the true wife appears before her husband, whose remembrance of her is fatally overclouded by a charm; what more terrific than that inMālatī and Mādhava, where the lover rescues his beloved from the horrors of the charnel field? Recognition—especially between parents and children—frequently gives rise to scenes of a pathos which Euripides has not surpassed.10The ingenious device of a “play within the play” (so familiar to the English drama) is employed with the utmost success by Babhavūti.11On the other hand, miraculous metamorphosis12and, in a later play,13vulgar magic lend their aid to the progress of the action. With scenes of strong effectiveness contrast others of the most delicate poetic grace—such as the indescribably lovely little episode of the two damsels of the god of love helping one another to pluck the red and green bud from the mango tree; or of gentle domestic pathos—such as that of the courtesan listening to the prattle of her lover’s child, one of the prettiest scenes of a kind rarely kept free from affectation in the modern drama. For thedénouementin the narrower sense of the term the Indian dramatists largely resort to the expedient of thedeus ex machina, often in a sufficiently literal sense.14
Every species of drama having its appropriate kind of hero or heroine, theory here again amuses itself with an infinitude of subdivisions. Among the heroines, of whom not less than three hundred and eighty-four types are saidCharacters.to be distinguished, are to be noticed the courtesans, whose social position to some extent resembles that of the Greekhetaerae, and association with whom does not seem in practice, however it may be in theory, to be regarded as a disgrace even to Brahmans.15In general, the Indian drama indicates relations between the sexes subject to peculiar restraints of usage, but freer than those which Mahommedan example seems to have introduced into higher Indian society. The male characters are frequently drawn with skill, and sometimes with genuine force. Prince Samsthanaka16is a type of selfishness born in the purple worthy to rank beside figures of the modern drama, of which this has at times naturally been a favourite class of character; elsewhere,17the intrigues of ministers are not more fully exposed than their characters and principles of action are judiciously discriminated. Among the lesser personages common in the Indian drama, two are worth noticing, as corresponding, though by no means precisely, to familiar types of other dramatic literatures. These are thevitā, the accomplished but dependent companion (both of men and women), and thevidūshaka, the humble associate (not servant) of the prince, and the buffoon of the action.18Strangely enough, he is always a Brahman, or the pupil of a Brahman—perhaps a survival from a purely popular phase of the drama. His humour is to be ever intent on the pleasures of a quiet life, and on that of eating in particular; his jokes are generally devoid of both harm and point.
Thus, clothing itself in a diction always ornate and tropical, in which (as Rückert has happily expressed it) the prose is the warp and the verse the weft, where (as Goethe says) words become allusions, allusions similes, and similesDiction.metaphors, the Indian drama essentially depended upon its literary qualities, and upon the familiar sanctity of its favourite themes for such effects as it was able to produce. Of scenic apparatus it knew but little. The plays were usually performed in the hall of a palace; the simple devices by which exits and entrances were facilitated it is unnecessary to describe,Scenery and costume.and on the contrivances employed for securing such “properties” as were required (above all, the cars of the gods and of their emissaries),19it is useless to speculate. Propriety of costume, on the other hand, seems always to have been observed, agreeably both to the peculiarities of the Indian drama and to the habits of the Indian people.
The ministers of an art practised under such conditions could not but be regarded with respect, and spared the contempt or worse, which, except among one other great civilized people, the Greeks, has everywhere, at one period orActors.another, been the actor’s lot. Companies of actors seem to have been common in India at an early date, and the inductions show the players to have been regarded as respectable members of society. In later, if not in earlier, times individual actors enjoyed a widespread reputation—“all the world” is acquainted with the talents of Kalaha-Kandala.20The managers or directors, as already stated, were usually gifted and highly-cultured Brahmans. Female parts were in general, though not invariably, represented by females. One would like to know whether such was the case in a piece21where—after the fashion of more than one Western play—a crafty minister passes off his daughter as a boy, on which assumption she is all but married to a person of her own sex.
The Indian drama would, if only for purposes of comparison, be invaluable to the student of this branch of literature. But from the point of view of purely literary excellence it holds its own against all except the very foremost dramas of theSummary.world. It is, indeed, a mere phrase to call Kālidāsa the Indian Shakespeare—a title which, moreover, if intended as anything more than a synonym for poetic pre-eminence, might fairly be disputed in favour of Babhavūti; while it would be absolutely misleading to place a dramatic literature, which, like the Indian, is the mere quintessence of the culture of a caste, by the side of one which represents the fullest development of the artistic consciousness of such a people as the Hellenes. The Indian drama cannot be described as national in the broadest and highest sense of the word; it is, in short, the drama of a literary class, though as such it exhibits many of the noblest and most refined, as well as of the most characteristic, features of Hindu religion and civilization. The ethics of the Indian drama are of a lofty character, but they are those of a scholastic system of religious philosophy, self-conscious of its completeness. To the power of Fate is occasionally ascribed a supremacy, to which gods as well as mortals must bow;22but, if man’s present life is merely aphase in the cycle of his destinies, the highest of moral efforts at the same time points to the summit of possibilities, and self-sacrifice is the supreme condition both of individual perfection and of the progress of the world. Such conceptions as these seem at once to enfold and to overshadow the moral life of the Indian drama. The affections and passions forming part of self it delineates with a fidelity to nature which no art can afford to neglect; on the other hand, the freedom of the picture is restricted by conditions which to us are unfamiliar and at times seem intolerable, but which it was impossible for the Indian poet’s imagination to ignore. The sheer self-absorption of ambition or love appears inconceivable by the minds of any of these poets; and their social philosophy is always based on the system of caste. On the other hand, they are masters of many of the truest forms of pathos, above all of that which blends with resignation. In humour of a delicate kind they are by no means deficient; to its lower forms they are generally strangers, even in productions of a professedly comic intention. Of wit, Indian dramatic literature—though a play on words is as the breath of its nostrils—furnishes hardly any examples intelligible to Western minds.
The distinctive excellence of the Indian drama is to be sought in the poetic robe which envelops it as flowers overspread the bosom of the earth in the season of spring. In its nobler productions, at least, it is never untrue to itsPoetry of the Indian drama.half religious, half rural origin; it weaves the wreaths of idyllic fancies in an unbroken chain, adding to its favourite and familiar blossoms ever fresh beauties from an inexhaustible garden. Nor is it unequal to depicting the grander aspects of nature in her mighty forests and on the shores of the ocean. A close familiarity with its native literature can here alone follow its diction through a ceaseless flow of phrase and figure, listen with understanding to the hum of the bee as it hangs over the lotus, and contemplate with Sākuntalā’s pious sympathy the creeper as it winds round the mango tree. But the poetic beauty of the Indian drama reveals itself in the mysterious charm of its outline, if not in its full glow, even to the untrained; nor should the study of it—for which the materials seem continually on the increase—be left aside by any lover of literature.
3. Chinese Drama
Like the Indian drama, the Chinese arose from the union of the arts of dance and song. To the ballets and pantomimes out of which it developed itself, and which have continued to flourish by the side of its more advanced forms, the Chinese ascribe a primitive antiquity of origin; many of them originally had a symbolical reference to such subjects as the harvest, and war and peace. A very ancient pantomime is said to have symbolized the conquest of China by Wu-Wang; others were of a humbler, and often of a very obscure, character. To their music the Chinese likewise attribute a great antiquity of origin.
There are traditions which carry back the characters of the Chinese drama to the 18th century before the Christian era. Others declare the Emperor Wan-Te (fl. abouta.d.580) to have invented the drama; but this honour is more usually given to the emperor Yuen-Tsung (a.d.720), who is likewise remembered as a radical musical reformer. Pantomimes henceforth fell into disrepute; and the history of the Chinese drama from this date is divided, with an accuracy we cannot profess to control, into four distinct periods. Each of these periods, we are told, has a style, and each style a name of its own; but these names, such as “Diversions of the Woods in Flower,” have little or no meaning for us; and it would therefore be useless to cite them.
The first period is that of the dramas composed under the T’ang dynasty, froma.d.720 to 907. These pieces, calledTchhouen-Khi, were limited to the representation of extraordinary events, and were therefore, in design at least, a species of heroic drama. The ensuing times of civil war interrupted the “pleasures of peace and prosperity” (a Chinese phrase for dramatic performances)—which, however, revived.
The second period is that of the Tsung Dynasty, from 960 to 1119. The plays of this period are calledHi-Khio, and presented what became a standing peculiarity of the ChineseClassical age.drama, viz. that in them figures a principal personagewho sings.
The third and best-known age of the Chinese drama was under the Kin and Yuen dynasties, from 1125 to 1367. The plays of this period are calledYuen-PenandTsa-Ki; the latter seem to have resembled theHi-Khio, and to have treated very various subjects. TheYuen-Penare the plays from which our literary knowledge of the Chinese drama is mainly derived; the short pieces calledYen-Kiawere in the same style, but briefer. The list of dramatic authors under the Yuen dynasty, the most important period in Chinese literary annals, which covered the years 1260 to 1368, is tolerably extensive, comprising 85, among whom four are designated as courtesans; the number of plays composed by these and by anonymous authors is reckoned at not less than 564. In 1735 the Jesuit missionary Joseph Henry Prémare first revealed to Europe the existence of the tragedyTchao-Chi-Cu-Eul(The Little Orphan of the House of Tchao), which was founded upon an earlier piece treating of the fortunes of an heir to the imperial throne, who was preserved in a mysterious box like another Cypselus or Moses. Voltaire seized the theme of the earlier play for a rhetorical tragedy,L’Orphelin de la Chine, in which he coolly professes it was his intention “to paint the manners of the Chinese and the Tartars.” The later play, which is something less elevated in the rank of its characters, and very decidedly less refined in treatment, was afterwards retranslated by Stanislas Julien; and to the labours of this scholar, of Sir J. F. Davis (1795-1890) and of Antoine Bazin (1799-1863), we owe a series of translated Chinese dramas, among which there can be no hesitation whatever in designating the master-piece.
The justly famousPi-Pa-Ki(The Story of the Lute) belongs to a period rather later than that of the Yuen plays, having been composed towards the close of the 14th century by Kao-Tong-Kia, and reproduced in 1404, under the MingPi-Pa-Ki.dynasty, with the alterations of Mao-Tseu, a commentator of learning and taste.Pi-Pa-Ki, which as a domestic drama of sentiment possesses very high merit, long enjoyed a quite exceptional popularity in China; it was repeatedly republished with laudatory prefaces, and so late as the 18th century was regarded as a monument of morality, and as the master-piece of the Chinese theatre. It would seem to have remained without any worthy competitors; for, although it had been originally designed to produce a reaction against the immorality of the drama then in fashion, especially of Wang-Chi-Fou’s celebratedSi-Siang-Ki(The Story of the Western Pavilion), yet the fourth period of the Chinese drama, under the Ming dynasty, from 1368 to 1644, exhibited no improvement. “What”Decline and decay.(says the preface to the 1704 edition ofPi-Pa-Ki) “do you find there? Farcical dialogue, a mass of scenes in which one fancies one hears the hubbub of the streets or the ignoble language of the highways, the extravagances of demons and spirits, in addition to love-intrigues repugnant to delicacy of manners.” Nor would it appear that the Chinese theatre has ever recovered from its decay.
In theory, no drama could be more consistently elevated in purpose and in tone than the Chinese. Every play, we learn, should have both a moral and a meaning. A virtuous aim is imposed upon Chinese dramatists by an articleTheoretical aims.of the penal code of the empire; and those who write immoral plays are to expect after death a purgatory which will last so long as these plays continue to be performed. In practice, however, the Chinese drama falls far short of its ideal; indeed, according to the native critic already cited, among ten thousand playwrights not one is to be found intent upon perfecting the education of mankind by means of precepts and examples.
The Chinese are, like the Hindus, unacquainted with the distinction between tragedy and comedy; they classify their plays according to subjects in twelve categories. It may be doubted whether what seems the highest of these isReligious drama.actually such; for the religious element in the Chinese drama is often sheer buffoonery. Moreover, Chinese religiouslife, as reflected in the drama, seems one in which creed elbows creed, and superstitions are welcome whatever their origin. Of all religious traditions and doctrines, however, those of Buddhism (which had reached China long before the known beginnings of its drama) are the most prominent; thus, the theme of absolute self-sacrifice is treated in one play,23that of entire absorption in the religious life in another.24The historicalHistorical.drama is not unknown to the Chinese; and although a law prohibits the bringing on the stage of “emperors, empresses, and the famous princes, ministers, and generals of former ages,” no such restriction is observed in practice. InHan-Kong-Tseu(The Sorrows of Han), for instance, which treats a national historic legend strangely recalling in parts the story of Esther and the myth of the daughter of Erechtheus, theDomestic.emperor Yuen-Ti (the representative, to be sure, of a fallen dynasty) plays a part, and a sufficiently sorry one. By far the greater number, however, of the Chinese plays accessible in translations belong to the domestic species, and to that subspecies which may be called the criminal drama. Their favourite virtue is piety, of a formal25or a practical26kind to parents or parents-in-law; their favourite interest lies in the discovery of long-hidden guilt, and in the vindication of persecuted innocence.27In the choice and elaboration of such subjects they leave little to be desired by the most ardent devotees of the literature of agony. Besides this description of plays, we have at least one love-comedy pure and simple—a piece of a nature not “tolerably mild,” but ineffably harmless.28
Free in its choice of themes, the Chinese drama is likewise remarkably unrestricted in its range of characters. Chinese society, it is well known, is not based, like Indian, upon the principle of caste; rank is in China determinedRange of Characters.by office, and this again depends on the results of examination. These familiar facts are constantly brought home to the reader of Chinese plays. TheTchoang-Yuen, or senior classman on the list of licentiates, is the flower of Chinese society, and the hero of many a drama;29and it is a proud boast that for years “one’s ancestors have held high posts, which they owed to their literary successes.”30On the other hand, a person who has failed in his military examination, becomes, as if by a natural transition, a man-eating monster.31But of mere class the Chinese drama is no respecter, painting with noteworthy freedom the virtues and the vices of nearly every phase of society. The same liberty is taken with regard to the female sex; it is clear that in earlier times there were few vexatious restrictions in Chinese life upon the social intercourse between men and women. The variety of female characters in the Chinese drama is great, ranging from the heroine who sacrifices herself for the sake of an empire32to the well-brought-up young lady who avers that “woman came into the world to be obedient, to unravel skeins of silk, and to work with her needle”33—from the chambermaid who contrives the most gently sentimental ofrendezvous,34to the reckless courtesan who, like another Millwood, upbraids the partner of her guilt on his suing for mercy, and bids him die with her in hopes of a reunion after death.35In marriage the first or legitimate wife is distinguished from the second, who is at times aci-devantcourtesan, and towards whom the feelings of the former vary between bitter jealousy36and sisterly kindness.37
The conduct of the plays exhibits much ingenuity, and an aversion from restrictions of time and place; in fact, the nature of the plot constantly covers a long series of years, and spans wide intervals of local distance. The plays are divided into acts and scenes—the former being usually four in number, at times with an induction or narrative prologue spoken by some of the characters (Sie-Tsen). Favourite plays were, however, allowedConstruction and conduct of plots.to extend to great length; thePi-Pa-Kiis divided into 24 sections, and in another recension apparently comprised 42. “I do not wish,” says the manager in the prologue, “that this performance should last too long; finish it to-day, but cut out nothing”—whence it appears that the performance of some plays occupied more than a single day. The rule was always observed that a separate act should be given up to thedénouement; while, according to a theory of which it is not always easy to trace the operation, the perfection of construction was sought in the dualism or contrast of scene and scene, just as the perfection of diction was placed in the parallelism or antithesis of phrase and phrase. Being subject to no restrictions as to what might, or might not, be represented on the stage, the conduct of the plots allowed of the introduction of almost every variety of incidents. Death takes place, in sight of the audience, by starvation,38by drowning,39by poison,40by execution;41flogging and torture are inflicted on the stage;42wonders are wrought;43and magic is brought into play;44the ghost of an innocently-executed daughter calls upon her father to revenge her foul murder, and assists in person at the subsequent judicial enquiry.45Certain peculiarities in the conduct of the business are due to the usages of society rather than to dramaturgic laws. Marriages are generally managed—at least in the higher spheres of society—by ladies professionally employed as matrimonial agents.46The happy resolution of thenodusof the action is usually brought about by the direct interposition of superior official authority47—a tribute to the paternal system of government, which is the characteristic Chinese variety of thedeus ex machina. This naturally tends to the favourite close of a glorification of the emperor,48resembling that of Louis XIV. at the end ofTartufe, or in spirit, at all events, those of the virgin queen in more than one Elizabethan play. It should be added that the characters save the necessity for a bill of the play by persistently announcing and re-announcing their names and genealogies, and the necessity for a book by frequently recapitulating the previous course of the plot.
One peculiarity of the Chinese drama remains to be noticed. The chief character of a play represents the author as well as the personage; he or she is hero or heroine and chorus in one. This is brought about by the hero’s (or heroine’s)The principal personage who sings.singingthe poetical passages, or those containing maxims of wisdom and morality, or reminiscences and examples drawn from legend or history. Arising out of the dialogue, these passages at the same time diversify it, and give to it such elevation and brilliancy as it can boast. The singing character must be the principal personage in the action, but may be taken from any class of society. If this personage dies in the course of the play, another sings in his place. From thePoetic diction.mention of this distinctive feature of the Chinese drama it will be obvious how unfair it would be to judge of any of its productions, without a due appreciation of the lyric passages, which do not appear to be altogether restricted to the singing of the principal personage, for other characters frequently “recite verses.” In these lyrical or didactic passages are to be sought those flowers of diction which, as Julien has shown, consist partly in the use of a metaphorical phraseology of infinite nicety in its variations—such as a long series of phrases compounded with the word signifyingjetand expressing severally the ideas of rarity, distinction, beauty, &c., or as others derived from the names of colours, birds, beasts, precious metals, elements, constellations, &c., or alluding to favourite legends or anecdotes. These features constitute the literary elementpar excellenceof Chinese dramatic composition. At the same time, though it is impossible for the untrained reader to be alive tothe charms of so unfamiliar a phraseology, it may be questioned whether even in its diction the Chinese drama can claim to be regarded as really poetic. It may abound in poeticornament; it is not, like the Indian, bathed in poetry.
On the other hand, the merits of this dramatic literature are by no means restricted to ingenuity of construction and variety of character—merits, in themselves important, which no candid criticism will deny to it. Its master-pieceMerits of the Chinese drama.is not only truly pathetic in the conception and the main situations of its action, but includes scenes of singular grace and delicacy of treatment—such as that where the remarried husband of the deserted heroine in vain essays in the presence of his second wife to sing to his new lute, now that he has cast aside the old.49In the last act of a tragedy appealing at once to patriotism and to pity, there is true imaginative power in the picture of the emperor, when aware of the departure, but not of the death, of his beloved, sitting in solitude broken only by the ominous shriek of the wild-fowl.50Nor is the Chinese drama devoid of humour. The lively abigail who has to persuade her mistress into confessing herself in love by arguing (almost like Beatrice) that “humanity bids us love men”;51the corrupt judge (a common type in the Chinese plays) who falls on his knees before the prosecuting parties to a suit as before “the father and mother who give him sustenance,”52may serve as examples; and inPi-Pa-Kithere is a scene of admirable burlesque on the still more characteristic theme of the humours of a competitive examination.53If such illustrations could not easily be multiplied, they are at least worth citing in order to deprecate a perfunctory criticism on the qualities of a dramatic literature as to which our materials for judgment are still scanty.
While in the north of China houses are temporarily set apart for dramatic performances, in the south these are usually confined to theatres erected in the streets (Hi-Thaï).Scenery and costume.Thus scenic decorations of any importance must always have been out of question in the Chinese theatre. The costumes, on the other hand, are described as magnificent; they are traditionally those worn before the 17th century, in accordance with the historical colouring of most of the plays.Actors.The actor’s profession is not a respectable one in China, the managers being in the habit of buying children of slaves and bringing them up as slaves of their own. Women may not appear on the stage, since the emperor K’ien-Lung admitted an actress among his concubines; female parts are therefore played by lads, occasionally by eunuchs.
4. Japanese Drama
The Japanese drama, as all evidence seems to agree in showing, still remains what in substance it has always been—an amusement passionately loved by the lower orders, but hardly dignified by literature deserving the name. Apart from its native elements of music, dance and song, and legendary or historical narrative and pantomime, it is clearly to be regarded as a Chinese importation; nor has it in its more advanced forms apparently even attempted to emancipate itself from the reproduction of the conventional Chinese types. As early as the close of the 6th century Hada Kawatsu, a man of Chinese extraction, but born in Japan, is said to have been ordered to arrange entertainments for the benefit of the country, and to have written as many as thirty-three plays. The Japanese, however, ascribe the origin of their drama to the introduction of the dance calledSambāsoas a charm against a volcanic depression of the earth which occurred in 805; and this dance appears still to be used as a prelude to theatrical exhibitions. In 1108 lived a woman called Iso no Zenji, who is looked upon as “the mother of the Japanese drama.” But her performances seem to have been confined to dancing or posturing in male attire (otokomai); and the introduction of the drama proper is universally attributed to Sarnwaka Kanzaburō, who in 1624 opened the first theatre (sibaïa) at Yeddo. Not long afterwards (1651) the playhouses were removed to their present site in the capital; and both here and in the provincial towns, especially of the north, the drama has since continued to flourish. Persons of rank were formerly never seen at these theatres; but actors were occasionally engaged to play in private at the houses of the nobles, who appear themselves to have taken part in performances of a species of opera affected by them, always treating patriotic legends and callednō. The mikado has a court theatre.
The subjects of the serious popular plays are mainly mythological—the acts of the great spirit Day-Sin, the incarnation of Brahma, and similar themes—or historical, treating of the doings of the early dynasties. In these theSubjects of the plays.names of the personages are changed. An example of the latter class is to be found in thejōruri, or musical romance, in which the universally popular tale ofChiushingura(The Loyal League) has been amplified and adapted for theatrical representation. This famous narrative of the feudal fidelity of the forty-sevenronins, who about the year 1699 revenged their chief’s judicial suicide upon the arrogant official to whom it was due, is stirring rather than touching in its incidents, and contains much bloodshed, together with a tea-house scene which suffices as a specimen of the Japanese comedy of manners. One of the books of this dramatic romance consists of a metrical description, mainly in dialogue, of a journey which (after the fashion of Indian plays) has to be carried out on the stage. The performance of one of these quasi-historical dramas sometimes lasts over several days; they are produced with much pomp of costume; but the acting is very realistic, andhari-kariis performed, almost “to the life.” Besides these tragic plays (in which, however, comicintermezzosare often inserted) the Japanese have middle-class domestic dramas of a very realistic kind. The language of these, unlike that of Chinese comedy, is often gross and scurrilous, but intrigues against married women are rigidly excluded. Fairy and demon operas and ballets, and farces andintermezzos, form an easy transition to the interludes of tumblers and jugglers. As a specimen of nearly every class of play is required to make up a Japanese theatrical entertainment, which lasts from sunrise to sunset, and as the lower houses appropriate and mutilate the plays of the higher, it is clear that the status of the Japanese theatre cannot be regarded as at all high. In respect, however, of its movable scenery and properties, it is in advance of its Chinese prototype. The performers are, except in the ballet, males only; and the comic acting is said to be excellent of its kind. Though the leading actors enjoy great popularity and very respectable salaries, the class is held in contempt, and the companies were formerly recruited from the lowest sources. The disabilities under which they lay have, however, been removed; a Dramatic Reform Association has been organized by a number of noblemen and scholars, and a theatre on European lines built (seeJapan).
5. Persian and other Asiatic, Polynesian and Peruvian Drama
Such dramatic examples of the drama as may be discoverable in Siam will probably have to be regarded as belonging to a branch of the Indian drama. The drama of the MalaySiam.populations of Java and the neighbouring island of Sumatra also resembles the Indian, to which it may have owed what development it has reached. The Javanese, as we learn, distinguish among the lyrics sung on occasions ofJava, Sumatra, &c.popular significance thepanton, a short simile or fable, and thetcharita, a more advanced species, taking the form of dialogue and sung or recited by actors proper. From thetcharitathe Javanese drama, which in its higher forms treats the stories of gods and kings, appears to have been derived. As in the Indian drama, the functions of the director or manager are of great importance; as in the Greek, the performers wear masks, here made of wood. The comic drama is often represented in both Java and Sumatra by parties of strollers consisting oftwo men and a woman—a troop sufficient for a wide variety of plot.
Among other more highly civilized Asiatic peoples, the traces of the dramatic art are either few or late. The originally Aryan Persians exhibit no trace of the drama in their amplePersian.earlier literature. But in its later national development the two species, widely different from one another, of the religious drama or mystery and of the popular comedy or farce have made their appearance—the former in a growth of singular interest.
Of the Persiantéaziés(lamentations or complaints) the subjects are invariably derived from religious history, and more or less directly connected with the “martyrdoms” of the house of Ali. The performance of these episodes orThe téaziés.scenes takes place during the first ten days of the month of Muharram, when the adherents of the great Shi’ite sect all over Persia and Mahommedan India commemorate the deaths of the Prophet and his daughter Fatima, the mother of Ali, the martyrdoms of Ali himself, shamefully murdered in the sanctuary, and of his unoffending son Hasan, done to death by his miserable guilty Deianira of a wife, and lastly the never-to-be-forgotten sacrifice of Hasan’s brother, the heroic Hosain, on the bloody field of Kerbela (a.d.680). With the establishment in Persia, early in the 16th century, of the Safawid (Sufi) dynasty by the Shi’ites, the cult of the martyrs Hasan and Hosain secured the official sanction which it has since retained. Thus the performance of thesetéaziés, and the defraying of the equipment of them, are regarded as religious, and in a theological sense meritorious, acts; and the plays are frequently provided by the court or by other wealthy persons, by way of pleasing the people or securing divine favour. The plays are performed, usually by natives of Isfahan, in courtyards of mosques, palaces, inns, &c., and in the country in temporary structures erected for the purpose.
It would seem that, no farther back than the beginning of the 19th century, thetéaziéswere still only songs or elegies in honour of the martyrs, occasionally chanted by persons actually representing them. Just, however, as Greek tragedy was formed by a gradual detachment of the dialogue from the choric song of which it was originally only a secondary outgrowth, and by its gradually becoming the substance of the drama, so theMiracle Play of Hasan and Hosain, as we may call it, has now come to be a continuous succession of dramatic scenes. Of these fifty-two have, thanks to the labours of Alexander Chodzko and Sir Lewis Pelly, been actually taken down in writing, and thirty-seven published in translations; and it is clear that there is no limit to the extension of the treatment, as is shown by such atéaziéas theMarriage of Kassem, dealing with the unfortunate Hosain’s unfortunate son.54The performance is usually opened by a prologue delivered by therouzékhán, a personage of semi-priestly character claiming descent from the Prophet, who edifies and excites the audience by a pathetic recitation of legends and vehement admonitions in prose or verse concerning the subject of the action. But the custom seems to have arisen of specially prefacing the drama proper by a kind of induction which illustrates the cause or effect of the sacred story—as for instance that of Amir Timur (Tamerlane), who appears as lamenting and avenging the death of Hosain; or the episode of Joseph’s betrayal by his brethren, as prefiguring the cruelty shown to Ali and his sons. At the climax of the action proper Hosain prays to be granted at the day of judgment the key of the treasure of intercession; and the final scene shows the fulfilment of his prayer, which opens paradise to those who have helped the holy martyr, or who have so much as shed a single tear for him. It will thus be seen that not only is this complex and elaborate production unapproached in its length and in its patient development of a long sequence of momentous events by any chronicle history or religious drama, but that it embodies together with the passionately cherished traditions of a great religious community the expression of a long-lived resentment of foreign invasion—and is thus a kind of Oberammergau play and complaint of the Nibelungs in one.
The other kind of Persian drama is thetémacha(= spectacle), a kind of comedy or farce, sometimes calledteglid(disguising), performed by wandering minstrels orjoculatorescalledloutys, who travel about accompanied by theirbayadères,The témachas.and amuse such spectators as they find by their improvised entertainments, which seem to be on much the same level as English “interludes.” A favourite and ancient variety of the species is thekaraguezor puppet-play, of which the protagonist is calledkétchel péhlévan(the bald hero).
The modern Persian drama seems to have admitted Western influences, as in the case of such comedies asThe Pleaders of the Court, and, avowedly,Monsieur Jourdan and Musla’li Shah, of whom the former steals away the wits of young Persia by his pictures of the delights of Paris.
There is no necessity for any reference here to the civilization or to the literature of the Hebrews, or to those of other Semitic peoples, with whom the drama is either entirelyHebrew literature.wanting, or only appears as a quite occasional and exotic growth. Dramatic elements are apparent in two of the books of the Hebrew scripture—theBook of Ruthand theBook of Job, of which latter the author ofEveryman, and Goethe in hisFaust, made so impressive a use.
From Polynesia and aboriginal America we also have isolated traces of drama. Among these are the performances, accompanied by dancing and intermixed with recitation and singing, of the South Sea Islanders, first described bySouth Seas; Peru.Captain Cook, and reintroduced to the notice of students of comparative mythology by W. Wyatt Gill. Of the so-called Inca drama of the Peruvians, the unique relic,Apu Ollantay, said to have been written down in the Quichua tongue from native dictation by Spanish priests shortly after the conquest of Peru, has been partly translated by Sir Clements Markham, and has been rendered into German verse. It appears to be an historic play of the heroic type, combining stirring incidents with a pathos finding expression in at least one lyric of some sweetness—the lament of the lost Collyar. With it may be contrasted the ferocious Aztek dramatic ballet,Rabinal-Achi(translated by Brasseur de Bourbourg), of which the text seems rather a succession of warlike harangues than an attempt at dramatic treatment of character. But these are mere isolated curiosities.
6. Dramatic Elements in Egyptian Culture
The civilization and religious ideas of the Egyptians so vitally influenced the people of whose drama we are about to speak that a reference to them cannot be altogether omitted. The influence of Egyptian upon Greek civilization has probably been overestimated by Herodotus; but while it will never be clearly known how much the Greeks owed to the Egyptians in divers branches of knowledge, it is certain that the former confessed themselves the scholars of Egypt in the cardinal doctrine of its natural theology. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul there found its most solemn expression in mysterious recitations connected with the rites of sepulture, and treating of the migration of the soul from its earthly to its eternal abode. These solemnities, whose transition into the Hellenic mysteries has usually been attributed to the agency of the Thracian worship of Dionysus, undoubtedly contained a dramatic element, upon the extent of which it is, however, useless to speculate. The ideas to which they sought to give utterance centred in that of Osiris, the vivifying power or universal soul of nature, whom Herodotus simply identifies with the Dionysus of the Greeks. The same deity was likewise honoured by processions among the rural Egyptian population, which, according to the same authority, in nearly all respects except the absence of choruses resembled the Greek phallic processions in honour of the wine-god.
That the Egyptians looked upon music as an important science seems fully established; it was diligently studied by their priests, though not, as among the Greeks, forming a part of general education, and in the sacred rites of their gods they as a rule permitted the use of flute and harp, as well as of vocal music. Dancing was as an art confined to professional persons; but though the higher orders abstained from its practice, the lower indulgedin it on festive occasions, when a tendency to pantomime naturally asserted itself, and licence and wanton buffoonery prevailed, as in the early rustic festivals of the Greek and Italian peoples. Of a dance of armed men, on the other hand, there seems no satisfactory trace in the representations of the Egyptian monuments.
7. Greek Drama
Whatever elements the Greek drama may, in the sources from which it sprang, have owed to Egyptian, or Phrygian, or other Asiatic influences, its development was independent and self-sustained. Not only in its beginnings, butReligious origin.so long as the stage existed in Greece, the drama was in intimate connexion with the national religion. This is the most signal feature of its history, and one which cannot in the same degree or to the same extent be ascribed to the drama of any other people, ancient or modern. Not only did both the great branches of the Greek drama alike originate in the usages of religious worship, but they never lost their formal union with it, though one of them (comedy) in its later growth abandoned all direct reference to its origin. Hellenic polytheism was at once so active and so fluid or flexible in its anthropomorphic formations, that no other religious system has ever with the same conquering force assimilated to itself foreign elements, or with equal vivacity and variety developed its own. Thus, the worship of Dionysus, introduced into Greece by the Phoenicians as that of the tauriform sun-god whom his worshippers adored with loud cries (whenceBacchusorIacchus), and the god of generation (whence hisphallicemblem) and production, was brought into connexion with the Dorian religion of the sun-god Apollo. Apollo and his sister, again, corresponded to the Pelasgian and Achaean divinities of sun and moon, whom the Phoenician Dionysus and Demeter superseded, or with whose worship theirs was blended. Dionysus, whose rites were specifically conducted with reference to his attributes as the wine-god, was attended by deified representations of his original worshippers, who wore the skin of the goat sacrificed to him. These were thesatyrs. Out of the connected worships of Dionysus, Bacchus, Apollo and Demeter sprang the beginnings of the Greek drama.
“Both tragedy and comedy,” says Aristotle, “originated in a rude and unpremeditated manner—the first from the leaders of the dithyramb, and the second from those who led off the phallic songs.” This diversity of origin, and the distinction jealously maintained down to the latest times between the two branches of the dramatic art, even where they might seem to come into actual contact with one another, necessitate a separate statement as to the origin and history of either.
The custom of offering thanks to the gods by hymns and dances in the places of public resort was first practised by the Greeks in the Dorian states, whose whole system of life was organized on a military basis. Hence theOrigin of tragedy.dances of the Dorians originally taught or imitated the movements of soldiers, and their hymns were warlike chants. Such were the beginnings of thechorus, and of its songs (calledpaeans, from an epithet of Apollo), accompanied first by the phorminx and then by the flute. A step in advance was taken when the poet with his trained singers and dancers, like the Indiansŭtra-dhāra, performed these religious functions as the representative of the population. From the Doricpaeanat a very early period several styles of choral dancing formed themselves, to which the three styles of dance in scenic productions—the tragic, the comic and the satyric—are stated afterwards to have corresponded. But none of these could have led to a literary growth. This was due to the introduction among the DoriansThe dithyramb.of thedithyramb(fromδῖος, descended from Zeus, andθρίαμβος, the Latintriumphus), originally a song of revellers, probably led by a flute-player and accompanied by the music of other Eastern instruments, in which it was customary in Crete to celebrate the birth of Bacchus (the doubly-born) and possibly also his later adventures. The leader of the band (coryphaeus) may be supposed to have at times assumed the character of the wine-god, whose worshippers bore aloft the vinecladthyrsus. The dithyramb was reduced to a definite form by the Lesbian Arion (fl. 610), who composed regular poems, turned the moving band of worshippers into a standing or “cyclic” chorus of attendants on Dionysus—a chorus of satyrs, atragicor goat chorus—invented a style of music adapted to the character of the chorus, and called these songs “tragedies” or “goat-songs.” Arion, whose goat-chorus may perhaps have some connexion with an early Arcadian worship of Pan, associated it permanently with Dionysus, and thus became the inventor of “lyrical tragedy”—a transitionLyrical tragedy.stage between the dithyramb and the regular drama. His invention, or the chorus with which it dealt, was established according to fixed rules by his contemporary Stesichorus. About the time when Arion introduced these improvements into the Dorian city of Corinth, the (likewise Dorian) families at Sicyon honoured the hero-king Adrastus by tragic choruses. Hence the invention of tragedy was ascribed by the Sicyonians to their poet Epigenes; but this step, significant for the future history of the Greek drama, of employing the Bacchic chorus for the celebration of other than Bacchic themes, was soon annulled by the tyrant Cleisthenes.
The element which transformed lyrical tragedy into the tragic drama was added by the Ionians. The custom of the recitation of poetry by wandering minstrels, calledrhapsodes(fromῥάβδος, staff, or fromῤάπτειν, to pieceThe rhapsodes.together), first sprang up in the Ionia beyond the sea; to such minstrels was due the spread of the Homeric poems and of subsequent epic cycles. These recitations, with or without musical accompaniment, soon included gnomic or didactic, as well as epic, verse; if Homer was a rhapsode, so was the sententious or “moral” Hesiod. The popular effect of these recitations was enormously increased by the metrical innovations of Archilochus (from 708), who invented the trochee and theiambus, the latter the arrowy metre which is the native form of satirical invective—the species of composition in which Archilochus excelled—though it was soon used for other purposes also. The recitation of these iambics may already have nearly approached to theatrical declamation. The rhapsodes were welcome guests at popular festivals, where they exercised their art in mutual emulation, or ultimately recited parts, perhaps the whole, of longer poems. The recitation of a long epic may thus have resembled theatrical dialogue; even more so must the alternation of iambic poems, the form being frequently an address in the second person. The rhapsode was in some sense an actor; and when these recitations reached Attica, they thus brought with them the germs of theatrical dialogue.
The rhapsodes were actually introduced into Attica at a very early period; theIliad, we know, was chanted at the Brauronia, a rural festival of Bacchus, whose worship had early entered Attica, and was cherished among its rusticInvention of the tragic drama.population. Meanwhile the cyclic chorus of the Dorians had found its way into Attica and Athens, ever since the Athenians had recognized the authority of the great centre of the Apolline religion at Delphi. From the second half of the 6th century onwards the chorus of satyrs formed a leading feature of the great festival of Dionysus at Athens. It therefore only remained for the rhapsodic and the cyclic—in other words, for the epic and the choral—elements to coalesce; and this must have been brought about by a union of the two accompaniments of religious worship in the festive rites of Bacchus, and by the domestication of these rites in the ruling city. This occurred in the time of Peisistratus, perhaps after his restoration in 554. To Thespis (534), said to have been a contemporary of the tyrant and a native of an Attic deme (Icaria), the invention of tragedy is accordingly ascribed. Whether his name be that of an actual person or not, his claim to be regarded as the inventor of tragedy is founded on the statement that he introduced an actor (ὑποκριτής, originally, “answerer”), doubtless, at first, generally the poet himself, who, instead of merely alternating his recitations with the songs of the chorus, addressed his speech to its leader—thecoryphaeus—with whom he thus carried on aspecies of “dialogue.” Or, in other words, the leader of the chorus (coryphaeus), instead of addressing himself to the chorus, held converse with the actor. The chorus stood round its leader in front of the Bacchic altar (thymelē); the actor stood with thecoryphaeus, who had occupied a more elevated position in order to be visible above his fellows, on a rude table, or possibly on a cart, though the wagon of Thespis may be a fiction, due to a confusion between his table and the wagon of Susarion. In any case, we have here, with the beginnings of dialogue, the beginning of the stage. It is a significant minor invention ascribed to Thespis, that he disguised the actor’s face first by means of a pigment, afterwards by a mask. In the dialogue was treated some myth relating to Bacchus, or to some other deity or hero. Whether or not Thespis actually wrote tragedies (and there seems no reason to doubt it), Phrynichus and one or two other poets are mentioned as having carried on choral tragedy as set on foot by him, and as having introduced improvements into its still predominating lyrical element. The step which made dramatic action possible, and with which the Greek drama thus really began, was, as is distinctly stated by Aristotle, taken by Aeschylus. He added a second actor; and, by reducing the functions of the chorus, he further established the dialogue as the principal part of tragedy. Sophocles afterwards added a third actor, by which change the preponderance of the dialogue was made complete.
If the origin of Greek comedy is simpler in its nature than that of Greek tragedy, the beginnings of its progress are involved in more obscurity. Its association with religious worship was not initial; its foundations lay in popularOrigin of comedy.mirth, though religious festivals, and those of the vintage god in particular, must from the first have been the most obvious occasions for its exhibition. It is said to have been “invented” by Susarion, a native of Doric Megaris, whose inhabitants were famed for their coarse humour, which they communicated to their own and other Dorian colonies in Sicily, to this day the home of vivacious mimic dialogue. In the rural Bacchic vintage festivals bands of jolly companions (κῶμος, properly a revel continued after supper) went about in carts or afoot, carrying the phallic emblem, and indulging in the ribald licence of wanton mirth. From the song sung in these processions or at the Bacchic feasts, which combined the praise of the god with gross personal ridicule, and was calledcomusin a secondary sense, the Bacchic reveller taking part in it was called acomus-singer orcomoedus. These phallic processions, which were afterwards held in most Greek cities, and in Athens seem to have early included a “topical” speech as well as a choral song, determined the character of Old Attic comedy, whose most prominent feature was an absolute licence of personal vilification.
Thus independent of one another in their origin, Greek tragedy and comedy never actually coalesced. The “satyr-drama,” though in some sense it partook of the nature of both, was in its origin as in its history connected withThe satyr-drama.tragedy alone, whose origin it directly recalled. Pratinas of Philus, a contemporary of Aeschylus in his earlier days, is said to have restored the tragic chorus to the satyrs;i.e.he first produced dramas in which, though they were the same in form and theme as the tragedies, the choric dances were different and entirely carried on by satyrs. The tragic poets, while never writing comedies, henceforth also composed satyr-dramas; but neither tragedies nor satyr-dramas were ever written by the comic poets, and it was in conjunction with tragedies only that the satyr-dramas were performed. The theory of the Platonic Socrates, that the same man ought to be the best tragic and the best comic poet, was among the GreeksTragi-comedy.never exemplified in practice. The so-called “hilaro-tragedy” or “tragi-comedy” of later writers, perhaps in some of its features in a measure anticipated by Euripides,55in form nowise differed from tragedy; it merely contained a comic element in its characters, and invariably had a happy ending. It is an instructive fact that the serious and sentimental element in the comedy of Menander and his contemporaries did far more to destroy the essential difference between the two great branches of the Greek dramatic art.
Periods of Greek Tragedy.—The history of Greek—which to all intents and purposes remained Attic—tragedy divides itself into three periods.
I.The Period before Aeschylus(535-499).—From this we have but a few names of authors and plays—those of the former being (besides Thespis) Choerilus, Phrynichus and Pratinas, all of whom lived to contend with Aeschylus for the tragic prize. To each of them certain innovations are ascribed—for instance the introduction of female characters to Phrynichus. He is best remembered by the overpowering effect said to have been created by hisCapture of Miletus, in which the chorus consisted of the wives of the Phoenician sailors in the service of the Great King.
II.The Classical Period of Attic Tragedy—that of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and their contemporaries (499-405). To this belong all the really important phases in the progress of Greek tragedy, which severally connect themselves with the names of its three great masters. They may be regarded as the representatives of successive generations of Attic history and life, though of course in these, as in the progress of their art itself, there is an unbroken continuity.
Aeschylus (525-456) had not only fought both at Marathon and at Salamis against those Persians whose rout he celebrated with patriotic price,56but he had been trained in the Eleusinian mysteries, and strenuously asserted theAeschylus.value of the institution most intimately associated with the primitive political traditions of the past—the Areopagus.57He had been born in the generation after Solon, to whose maxims he fondly clung; and it was the Dorian development of Hellenic life and the philosophical system based upon it with which his religious and moral convictions were imbued. Thus even upon the generation which succeeded him, and to which the powerful simplicity of his dramatic and poetic diction seemed strange, the ethical loftiness of his conceptions and the sublimity of his dramatic imagination fell like the note of a mightier age. To us nothing is more striking than the conciliatory tendencies of his conservative mind, and the progressive nature of what may have seemed to his later contemporaries antiquated ideals.
Sophocles (495-405) was the associate of Pericles, and an upholder of his authority, rather than a consistent pupil of his political principles; but his manhood, and perhaps the maturity of his genius, coincided with the greatSophocles.days when he could stand, like his mighty friend and the community they both so gloriously represented, on the sunny heights of achievement. Serenely pious as well as nobly patriotic, he nevertheless treats the myths of the national religion in the spirit of a conscious artist, contrasting with lofty irony the struggles of humanity with the irresistible march of its destinies. Perhaps he, too, was one of the initiated; and the note of personal responsibility which is the mystic’s inner religion is recognizable in his view of life.58The art of Sophocles may in its perfection be said to typify the greatest epoch in the life of Athens—an epoch conscious of unequalled achievements, but neither wholly unconscious of the brief endurance which was its destiny.
Euripides (480-406), as is the fate of genius of a more complex kind, has been more variously and antithetically judged than either of his great fellow-tragedians. His art has been described as devoid of the idealism of theirs,Euripides.his genius as rhetorical rather than poetical, his morality as that of a sophistical wit. On the other hand, he has been recognized not only as the most tragic of the Attic tragedians and the most pathetic of ancient poets, but also as the most humane in his social philosophy and the most various in his psychological insight. At least, though far removed from the more naïf age of the national life, he is, both in patriotic spirit and in his choice of themes, genuinely Attic; and if he was “haunted on the stage by the daemon of Socrates,” he was, like Socrates himself, the representative of an age which was a seed-time as well as a season of decay. His technical innovationscorresponded to his literary characteristics; but neither in the treatment of the chorus, nor in his management of the beginning and the ending of a tragedy, did he introduce any radical change. To Euripides the general progress of dramatic literature nevertheless owes more than to any other ancient poet. Tragedy followed in his footsteps in Greece and at Rome. Comedy owed him something in the later phases of the very Aristophanes who mocked him, and more in the human philosophy expressed in the sentiments of Menander; and, when the modern drama came to engraft the ancient upon its own crude growth, his was directly or indirectly the most powerful influence in the establishment of a living connexion between them.
The incontestable pre-eminence of the three great tragic poets was in course of time acknowledged at Athens by the usage allowing no tragedies but theirs to be performed more than once, and by the prescription that oneThe great tragic masters and their contemporaries.play of theirs should be performed at each Dionysia, as well as by the law of Lycurgus (c. 330) which obliged the actors to use, in the case of works of the great masters, authentic copies preserved in the public archives. Yet it is possible that the exclusiveness of these tributes is not entirely justifiable; and not all the tragic poets contemporary with the great writers were among the myriad of younglings derided by Aristophanes. Of those who attained to celebrity Ion of Chios (d. before 419) seems to have followed earlier traditions of style than Euripides; Agathon, who survived the latter, on the other hand, introduced certain innovations of a transnormal kind both into the substance and the form of dramatic composition.59
III. Of the third period of Greek tragedy the concluding limit cannot be precisely fixed. Down to the days of Alexander the Great, Athens had remained the chief home of tragedy. Though tragedies must have begun to beThe successors of the great masters at Athens.acted at the Syracusan and Macedonian courts, since Aeschylus, Euripides and Agathon had sojourned there—though the practice of producing plays at the Dionysia before the allies of Athens must have led to their holding similar exhibitions at home—yet before the death of Alexander we meet with no instance of a tragic poet writing or of a tragedy written outside Athens. An exception should indeed be made in favour of the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who (like Critias in his earlier days at Athens) was “addicted to” tragic composition. Not all the tragedians of this period, however, were Athenians born; though the names of Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, Iophon, the son of Sophocles, and Euripides and Sophocles, the nephew and the grandson respectively of their great namesakes, illustrate the descent of the tragic art as an hereditary family possession. Chaeremon (fl. 380) already exhibits tragedy on the road to certain decay, for we learn that his plays were written for reading.
Soon after the death of Alexander theatres are found spread over the whole Hellenic world of Europe and Asia—a result to which the practice of the conqueror and his father of celebrating their victories by scenic performancesThe Alexandrians.had doubtless contributed. Alexandria having now become a literary centre with which even Athens was in some respects unable to compete, while the latter still remained the home of comedy, the tragic poets flocked to the capital of the Ptolemies; and here, in the canon of Greek poets drawn up by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus (283-247), Alexander the Aetolian undertook the list of tragedies, while Lycophron was charged with the comedies. But Lycophron himself was included in all the versions of the list of the seven tragic poets famed as the “Pleias” who still wrote in the style of the Attic masters and followed the rules observed by them. Tragedy and the dramatic art continued to be favoured by the later Ptolemies; and about 100b.c.we meet with the curious phenomenon of a Jewish poet, Ezechiel, composing Greek tragedies, of one of which (theExodusfrom Egypt) fragments have come down to us. Tragedy, with the satyr-drama and comedy, survived in Alexandria beyond the days of Cicero and Varro; nor was their doom finally sealed till the emperor Caracalla abolished theatrical performances in the Egyptian capital ina.d.217.
Thus Greek tragedy is virtually only another name for Attic; nor was any departure from the lines laid downThe tragedy of the great masters.by its three great masters made in most respects by the Roman imitators of these poets and of their successors.
Tragedy was defined by Plato as an imitation of the noblest life. Its proper themes—the deeds and sufferings of heroes—were familiar to audiences intimately acquainted with the mythology of the national religion. To suchSubjects of Greek tragedy.themes Greek tragedy almost wholly confined itself; and in later days there were numerous books which discussed these myths of the tragedians. They only very exceptionally treated historic themes, though one great national calamity,60and a yet greater national victory,61and in later times a few other historical subjects,62were brought upon the stage. Such veiled historical allusions as critical ingenuity has sought not only in passages but in the entire themes of other Attic tragedies63cannot, of course, even if accepted as such, stamp the plays in which they occur as historic dramas. No doubt Attic tragedy, though after a different and more decorous fashion, shared the tendency of her comic sister to introduce allusions to contemporary events and persons; and the indulgence of this tendency was facilitated by the revision (διασκυή) to which the works of the great poets were subjected by them, or by those who produced their works after them.64So far as we know, the subjects of the tragedies before Aeschylus were derived from the epos; and it was a famous saying of this poet that his dramas were “but dry scraps from the great banquets of Homer”—an expression which may be understood as including the poems which belong to the so-called Homeric cycles. Sophocles, Euripides and their successors likewise resorted to the Trojan, and also to the Heraclean and the Thesean myths, and to Attic legend in general, as well as to Theban, to which already Aeschylus had had recourse, and to the side or subsidiary myths connected with these several groups. These substantially remained to the last the themes of Greek tragedy, the Trojan myths always retaining so prominent a place that Lucian could jest on the universality of their dominion. Purely invented subjects were occasionally treated by the later tragedians; of this innovation Agathon was the originator.65