DRAMA 



1854 



DRAMA 





cate says, "You must book your plays in our 

 theaters, or they will get no hearing"; and to 

 the actor, "You must play in our theaters, or 

 you will get no employment." Such a system 

 tends to discourage independence on the part 

 of the actor, and it reacts on the playwright. 

 An outsider cannot get his plays produced in 

 any theater which will insure him a wide hear- 

 ing. Furthermore, the members of the Syndi- 

 cate have a tremendous influence with the 

 press, and in some cases they control dramatic 

 critics. In New York a theatrical manager 

 may forbid a dramatic critic who has criticised 

 one of his productions to enter his theater. 



The Beginnings of European Drama. Many 

 centuries before the Christian Era the ancient 

 Greeks were accustomed to celebrate with mu- 

 sic and dance the festival of Dionysus, their 

 god of wine, and the Greek drama was the 

 outgrowth of the songs of the festival chorus 

 (see CHORUS). Verses and dialogues were in- 

 troduced in the course of- time, and early in the 

 sixth century B.C. an actor was added to the 

 chorus. Aeschylus (525 B.C.), the first great 

 writer of tragedy, introduced a second actor; 

 he was also the first to make use of appropriate 

 scenery and costumes. As time passed the 

 chorus became secondary to the action of the 

 play, and Sophocles, one of the successors of 

 Aeschylus, introduced a third actor. Aeschylus, 

 Sophocles and Euripides formed the great trio 

 of tragic poets. 



Comedy, which developed side by side with 

 tragedy, was the outgrowth of the fun and frolic 

 of the rustic festivals held in honor of Dionysus. 

 Early in the history of comedy the chorus dis- 

 appeared. Ancient Greek tragedy was religious 

 in character; comedy was used to hold up to 

 ridicule the prominent men of the day, and 

 from this phase it passed to the ridicule of the 

 weaknesses of humanity in general. The great- 

 est of the Greek writers of comedy was Aris- 

 tophanes. His greatest comedy is undoubtedly 

 The Clouds, in which Socrates is ridiculed. 



The Middle Ages. The typical dramatic 

 forms of medieval Europe had their birth in 

 the services of the Christian Church. In order 

 to make the Bible teachings more vivid and 

 impressive, the clergy began to present the 

 chief episodes in the life of Christ in the form 

 of little plays, especially during the celebration 

 of the great festivals of Easter and Christmas. 

 Gradually these plays were banished from the 

 churches, and were performed on the streets and 

 in the public squares by actors. 



Three important forms of the medieval drama 



developed : the mystery play, based upon Bible 

 stories centering particularly about the life of 

 Christ; the miracle play, a series of episodes 

 taken from the life of some saint; and the 

 morality play, which was really a sermon in 

 dramatic form, its characters being types of cer- 

 tain virtues and vices. Everyman, one of the 

 best morality plays in English, was revived in 

 1902 and 1903 in England and America by the 

 Ben Greet players. The Passion Play, per- 

 formed every tenth year at Oberammergau, is 

 a form of mystery play. 



The Drama in England. The various forms 

 of the religious drama were long popular in 

 England, but in the fifteenth century the re- 

 vival of learning awakened an interest in the 

 old classic plays, and the regular English drama 

 began to take form. Schoolmasters trained 

 their pupils to act the comedies of the Roman 

 dramatists, Terence and Plautus, and about 

 1536 Nicholas Udall, head master of Eton, 

 wrote the first English comedy, Ralph Roister 

 Doister. This was followed fifteen years later 

 by the first English tragedy, Gorboduc. 



During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 

 English drama reached its highest degree of 

 excellence in the plays of Shakespeare. With 

 the passing of the Elizabethan Era the drama 

 began to decline. In 1642 the theaters were 

 closed by the Puritans, but on the restoration 

 of Charles II in 1660 interest in them revived. 

 The chief dramatist of the Restoration Period 

 was John Dryden, whose plays, as well as those 

 of his contemporaries, reflect the coarseness and 

 corruption of the age in which they were pro- 

 duced. The eighteenth century produced ad- 

 mirable examples of the English comedy ol 

 manners, notably Richard B. Sheridan's The 

 Rivals and The School for Scandal, and Olivei 

 Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. 



The poetic plays of Tennyson, Swinburne and 

 Browning, though not suited to presentation on 

 the stage, are excellent representatives of the 

 nineteenth-century literary drama. Notable 

 writers of the acted drama include Bulwer 

 Lytton, Shirley Brooks, Charles Reade, Dion 

 Boucicault, Oscar Wilde and W. S. Gilbert. 



Prominent English dramatists of the modern 

 period are Bernard Shaw, Granville Barker. 

 Somerset Maugham, Haddon Chambers, Henry 

 Arthur Jones, Arthur W. Pinero, James A. 

 Barrie and John Galsworthy. Shaw is the most 

 brilliant and original of those dramatists who 

 aim to give on the stage a picture of the life 

 and characteristics of the times, and he has 

 become an international figure. C.W.K. 







