Page:Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama.djvu/23

Rh of noble birth, sprung from a race of gods or kings. The expression of all feelings is allowed, but preponderance is to be given to love and heroism. There must be not less than five, nor more than ten, acts of mingled prose and verse. The Sanskrit tongue itself, as the learned or court language, is spoken by gods, Brahmans, heroes, kings, and men of good birth and position in general. Women and the lower classes of men speak various dialects of the Prākrit language, the old vernacular tongue of India. Among the Prākrits the most important is the Śaurasenī, the form usually found in the dramas, the Mahārāṣṭrī being confined to the poetical stanzas. The rules for distinguishing the various individual kinds of characters are all carefully classified and divided; so far does this subdividing go that no less than three hundred and eighty-four types of heroine are given. In practice, of course, this is never carried out, but it must be acknowledged that the great defect of the Sanskrit drama is that in general it is too conventional, with the result that originality and life are sacrificed for a hackneyed arrangement and a stereotyped manipulation of threadbare sentiments and action.

In the invention of plots the dramatists show little fertility of imagination; on the other hand cleverness is certainly clearly shown in the way in which the details of the plot are worked out and the development of the intrigue is presented. In the majority of cases the plot is somewhat as follows: the hero, who is usually a king or a prince and already has one or more wives, at the opening of the play suddenly becomes enamored of the charms of some girl or nymph. Although she is equally in love with him she is too bashful and modest to let her passion be observed. Hope and fear alternately cheer and dismay both hero and heroine. She confides in some girl friend, he in the jester, who is always a brahman, but a person of slow intelligence whose uncouth attempts at wit seem often lacking in every element of humor. The jester,