136 Charles Davidson — HJnglish Mystery Plays. 



attained their richest flowering in the Divina Commedia and the 

 Fairy Queen. The true drama demands material that can be made 

 one with the actor. The profoundest philosophy can be presented, 

 as in Hamlet or King Lear, but it must be presented indirectly 

 through the life, or the results arising from the life, of the actor. 



The tragic drama demands situations that shall excite the deepest 

 emotions in the spectator, and as agent a soul great enough to combat 

 mighty influences, that the beholder's liveliest sympathy may be 

 called into action. Can these conditions be met by a drama that 

 attains its climax in a thank-ofl'ering ? If not, then, after the sym- 

 bolical drama was established in the Christian liturgy, further dra- 

 matic advance was impossible. The service might be loaded with 

 ornament — incense, genuflections, vestments ; but these could only 

 cloud the simple dramatic outline of the early liturgy. The passage 

 to true dramatic expression remained impossible. 



Meanwhile, the old drama had sunk into utter darkness, beneath 

 the contempt of men and through the puerility and grossness of its 

 matter. For five centuries the world waited for the drama. From 

 the Christian worship, its proper source, it could not come without 

 some essential change within the liturgy itself, yet the thought of 

 Europe was wholly taken up with the story of the Christ and the 

 wonderful plan of salvation which had been elaborated by the 

 theologians. 



It is true that there are signs that a drama might have arisen in 

 time from another source. The pastoral of Theocritus had devel- 

 oped in dialogue. Whether, without the aid of the religious drama, 

 it could have acquired sufiicient plot of dramatic quality to form 

 even the pastoral drama which later spread through Western Europe, 

 is an interesting question. Its indebtedness to the religious drama 

 can be plainly seen in Spain, where Enzina^ used the church drama 

 as an aid to the pastoral, and set the type for Spain and Portugal. 

 But the passage from pastoral to tragedy would have been a giant 

 stride, and proved unnecessary, for within the liturgy grew up the 

 needful tragic motive, and from that sprang the religious drama. It 

 becomes our next task to show the shifting of standpoint within the 

 liturgy which arose from the acceptance of a new theological dogma, 

 to detect the introduction of a genuinely tragic moment, and to trace 

 the growth of dramatic expression within the church service itself. 



1 Ticknor, vol. 1, p. 345. 



