130 Charles Davidson — English Mystery Plays, 



THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN THE LITURGY. 



The tragic drama demands a noble soul seeking expression amid 

 adverse conditions, or held back from its goal through collision with 

 opposing circumstance. When the ideal dies out from society the 

 drama dies, or lives only as an echo of the masters so long as the 

 remembrance of former ambitions dwells in the minds of men. For 

 this reason the Roman drama died. At best it Avas but an echo of 

 the Greek, since ideality was not a Roman trait, At worst, when the 

 integrity of the Roman had yielded to a disbelief in all high aims, it 

 became abhorrent to all right-thinking men. The vulgar called for 

 realistic brutality in the amphitheatre and for beastly lust upon the 

 stage, and the nobles, with a cynicism born of negations, hastened 

 to do their biddino;-. The o^enius of the drama forsook the staQ^e for 

 the byeways and hedges, whe.re, as mime and farce, it could still 

 appeal to nature in the primitive man. 



The Western world was again without a drama. It had broken 

 the traditions that bound it to the old, and must seek in some new 

 channel for thoughts worth}" of dramatic expression. The early 

 Greeks found such in the worship of Dionysus ; the inheritors of 

 their worn-out civilization felt in the profoundest sense a dynamic 

 idea in the Christian faith. 



We have, then, to seek the sources of the new drama in the Chris- 

 tian ideals. 



The climax of a tra2:edv in life was reco2:nized in the marvelous 

 self-sacrifice of Christ. Around the Eucharist, the memorial of 

 thanksgiving for that death and resurrection, grew up the Christian 

 worship. As a fit approach to that solemn feast, various acts of 

 preparation were introduced, until, as a result, an established mode 

 of 23rocedure, a formal liturgy, expressed the devotion of the disciple 

 not less by action than by word. 



At first the familiar worship of the synagogue suggested appro- 

 priate additions ; and prayers^ in common, consisting of praise, 

 reading, and supplication," formed a fit introduction to the Eucha- 



1 Acts 2, 42. 2 Burbidurp. p. 3. 



