DRAMA ; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



DRAMA; DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 



643 



private individuals was frequently not inferior to that of sovereigns ; 

 women lived much more in society, and acted a much more important 

 part than among the Greeks, through which independence they fully 

 participated in the overwhelming tide of corruption, and the external 

 refinement by which it was accompanied. With these essential differ- 

 ences in the social system, an original Roman comedy would have been 

 a most interesting phenomenon, and would have enabled us to view 

 those conquerors of the world under an aspect altogether new. That 

 this however was not accomplished in the comosdia tiigata, the indifferent 

 manner in which it is mentioned by the ancients will hardly leave us 

 room to doubt. Quintilian himself tells us in plain terms that the 

 Latin literature was lamest in comedy. 



With respect to tragedy, it must first of all be observed that the 

 Grecian theatre was not introduced into Rome without considerable 

 changes in its arrangement ; that the chorus no longer had a place in 

 the orchestra (wherein the most distinguished spectators, the senators 

 and knights, now sat), but remained on the stage itself. At the very 

 introduction, too, of the regular drama, Livius Andronicus, a Grecian 

 by birth, and the earliest tragic poet and actor of Rome, in the mono- 

 dies (lyrical pieces chanted by a single person, and not by the chorus), 

 separated the singing from the mimetic dancing, so that the latter 

 alone remained to the actor ; and instead of the former, a boy stood 

 beside the flute-player, and accompanied him with his voice. Among 

 the Greeks in better times, the tragic singing and the accompanying 

 rhythmical gestures were so simple, that one person was sufficient to 

 do at the same time the most ample justice to both. The Romans, 

 however, it wuuld seem, preferred separate skill to harmonious unity. 

 Hence arose their fondness, at an after period, for pantomimes, of 

 which the art was, in the time of Augustus, carried to the greatest 

 perfection. From the names of the most celebrated of the performers, 

 Pylades, Bathyllus, &c., it would appear that those who practised this 

 mute eloquence in Rome were Greeks ; and the lyrical pieces which 

 their dancing expressed were also delivered in the Grecian language. 

 Roscius frequently played without a mask, and in this respect probably 

 dul not stand alone ; but so far as we know, there never was any such 

 instance among the Greeks. 



In the tragic literature of the Romans there are two epochs : the 

 first is that of Livius Andronicus, Nsevius, Enniux, and also of Pacuvius 

 and Attius, who both flourished somewhat later than Plautus and 

 Terence ; and the second, the refined epoch of the Augustan age. The 

 former produced only translators and imitators of Greek models ; but 

 it is probable that they succeeded better in tragedy than in comedy. 

 Klevattd expression usually appears rather stiff in a language not suffi- 

 ciently cultivated, although it is attainable by perseverance ; but to 

 catch the negligent grace of social raillery, we must ourselves be pos- 

 nrnnrrl of humour and refinement. Here, however, as in the case of 

 Plautus and Terence, we have not a single fragment of the Greek ori- 

 ginals to enable us to judge of the accuracy and general felicity of the 

 copies ; but a speech of considerable length of the ' Freed Prometheus' 

 of Attius is hardly unworthy of ^Eschylus, and is also, in versification, 

 much more polished than the productions of the Latin comic writers 

 generally are. This earlier style was carried to perfection by Pacuvius 

 and Attius, whose pieces kept their place on the stage, and seem to 

 have had many admirers down to the time of Cicero, and even later. 



The contemporaries of Augustus were ambitious of measuring their 

 j with the Greeks in a more original way. The number of ama- 

 teurs who attempted to shine in tragic composition was particularly 

 great ; and we find mention made even of works of the emperor him- 

 self. Hence there is strong reason for supposing that Horace wrote 

 his epistle to the Pisos chiefly with a view to deter those young men 

 from so dangerous a career, as they were probably infected by the 

 prevalent literary passion without possessing the requisite talents. 

 One of the most renowned tragic poets of that age was Asinius Pollio, 

 a man* of impassioned disposition, as Pliny informs us, and who, in 

 works, was fond of whatever bore the same character. It was 

 he who brought with him from Rhodes the well-known group of the 

 Farnesian Bull, and erected it at Rome. Ovid, who tried so many 

 departments of poetry, likewise attempted tragedy, and was the author 

 of a ' Medea ; ' and Quintilian asserts that he proved here, for once, 

 what he could have done had he chosen to restrain himself, instead of 

 yielding t<> his natural propensity to diffuseness. 



These and all the other tragic attempts of the Augustan age have 

 perished Yet, according to all appearances, the loss to the interests 

 of dramatic art is not very great. The Grecian tragedy had at first to 

 struggle in Rome with all the incgnveniences of a plant removed to a 

 foreign soil : the Roman religion was in some degree related to the 

 Greek, though by no means so completely the same as many have 

 supposed ; but the heroic mythology of the Greeks was merely intro- 

 duced into Rome by the poets, and was in nowise connected with the 

 i-il recollections. 



From the sole specimen of the tragic talent of the Romans that 

 remains to us it would, however, be unfair to draw a conclusion as to 

 the productions of better times : we allude to the ten tragedies which 

 gn under the name of Seneca. [SENECA, in BIOG. Div.] 



With pagan Rome fell ancient dramatic art. Nevertheless there are 



one or two links of connection between the ancient drama and that of 



the middle ages, which modern writers have not always observed. 



are even still existing some fragments of a play in Greek iambics 



AllTS AND SCI. DIV. VOL. III. 



on a Jewish Scripture subject, taken from the Exodus or departure of 

 the Israelites from Egypt. The principal characters are " Moses, 

 Sapphora, and God from the bush," that is, God speaking from the 

 burning bush. Moses delivers the prologue in a speech of sixty lines, 

 and his rod is turned into a serpent on the stage. The author of this 

 piece, a Jew named Ezekiel, is supposed by Warton, the historian of 

 English poetry, to have written it after the destruction of Jerusalem, 

 to inspire his dispersed and captive brethren with hopes of deliverance 

 under a new Moses, and to have composed it in imitation of the Greek 

 drama, at the close of the 2nd century. (See the edition and German 

 translation of L. M. Philipson, Berlin, 1830, 8vo.) 



It appears that in the first ages of Christianity any one connected 

 with the theatre was not allowed baptism. Among " the fathers," 

 Cyril declares that when in our baptism we say " I renounce thee, 

 Satan, and all thy works and pomps," those pomps of the devil are 

 stage-plays and the like vanities. Tertullian, in like manner, affirms 

 that they who in baptism renounce the devil and his pomps cannot go 

 to a stage-play without turning apostates. Augustine, Cyprian, Basil, 

 and Clement of Alexandria are no less vehement on the same point ; 

 and Chrysostom exclaims loudly against such as could listen to a 

 comedian with the same ears with which they heard an evangelical 

 preacher. 



But when the blind zeal of the fathers against all heathen literature 

 had been ironically seconded by the emperor Julian with an edict for- 

 bidding any Christian to be taught in the heathen schools or to make 

 use of that learning, two ecclesiastics of that time, of considerable 

 learning, undertook to supply in some degree the deficiency of instruc- 

 tion and entertainment experienced by their Christian brethren from 

 the operation of Julian's law. These were Apollinarius, bishop of 

 Laodicea, and his father, a priest of the same city. [APOLLINARIUS, 

 in Bioo. Div.] The latter not only, in treating Scriptural subjects, 

 imitated on a large scale the great epic and lyric poets of Greece, but 

 also turned various historical passages of the Old and New Testament 

 into comedies and tragedies after the Greek model. Gregory Nazian- 

 zenus, archbishop of Constantinople, is -said to have written plays ; one 

 only of those attributed to him is extant, a tragedy entitled ' Christ's 

 Passion ; ' stated to be an imitation of Euripides, but made up, in fact, 

 of scraps from that author. It is not known whether the religious 

 dramas of the Apollinarii perished so early as some of their other 

 writings, which were ordered to be destroyed for the very common 

 offence of heresy ; but certain it is that the species of literary culture 

 which they endeavoured to supply gradually disappeared before the 

 progress of Constantine's establishment. 



In the general extinction of polite literature and liberal art, which 

 darkened for so many centuries the moral face of Europe, every trace 

 of truly dramatic performance or composition seems to have disap- 

 peared. The Saturnalian pageants the Feast of Fools, the Feast of 

 the Ass, &c., exhibited during that long interval, chiefly at the 

 Christmas and New Year festivities, claim mention here, not as bearing 

 much affinity to, but merely as in some degree filling up the place of, 

 the old theatrical portion of the religious celebrations. To arrive once 

 more at any indication of the general existence of what can with pro- 

 priety be called a religious drama, we must descend to a later period 

 of European history. And as in each of the great nations of uioJera 

 Europe this religious drama gave way but gradually before that rise 

 of the modern stage which accompanied the revival of letters, and has 

 even, in one of those nations, strongly maintained its ground until very 

 recent times, so as to become permanently incorporated, as it were, 

 with the national theatre, we can most conveniently and effectively 

 give such more particular notice of it in each nation as we have to 

 present to our readers, in combination with the rapid view which we 

 have to take of the rise and progress of the modern stage in each of 

 the five great literary countries of Europe, namely, in Italy, Spain, 

 France, Germany, and England. 



Italian Drama. After the long sleep of the true dramatic and 

 theatrical spirit in the middle ages, which began to dawn again in 

 mysteries and moralities independent of classical models, the first 

 endeavour to imitate the ancients in their theatre, as in other depart- 

 ments of art and poetry, was made by the Italians. Nevertheless, 

 apart from the religious plays, we find in the earliest dramatic attempts 

 of modern Italy upon secular subjects a thorough independence of the 

 classical rules. It is needless to follow through a series of now 

 unknown names of persons who have written plays or translated them 

 from the ancient classic authors. It will be sufficient to state that 

 the Italians never ha 1 a national drama in the higher sense of the 

 word. The comedies of Porta possess some merit, and the plays of 

 Alfieri [ALFIERI, in Bioo. Div.], composed upon a strictly classical 

 model, are admirable and powerful works, but they have no pretence 

 to nationality, though intended to promote a desire for freedom 

 among his countrymen. The Italians, however, were fond of theatrical 

 representations, and Trissino, Ariosto, Bibbiena, and Macchiavelli, all 

 wrote comedies in imitation of the antique. 



But something new was required ; and Ottavio Rinnuccini invented 

 the melodrama, which more commonly took the name of ojierapcr mtisica, 

 .UK! which we now briefly term the opera. The magic power of this 

 union of music with the romantic drama completed the triumph of 

 the latter among the Italians of the 17th century; for not only was 

 this musical melo-drama thenceforward their prime theatrical favourite, 



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