Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/432

412 412 DRAMA [ROMAX. iopus. than in the Greek, the stage (pulpitum) not being separated from the first rows of the audience by an orchestra occupied by the chorus ; and this led in earlier times to the absence of masks, variously-coloured wigs serving to distinguish the age of the characters. Roscius, however, is said (in con sequence of an obliquity of vision disfiguring his counten ance) to have introduced the use of masks ; and the in novation, though disapproved of, afterwards maintained itself. The tragic actors wore the crepiJa, corresponding to the cothiirnus, and a heavy toga, which in the prwtexta had the purple border giving its name to the species. The conventional costumes of the various kinds of comedy are likewise indicated by their names. The comparative nearness of the actors to the spectators encouraged the growth of that close criticism of acting for which Italy has always been famous, and which manifested itself in all the ways familiar to modern audiences. Where there is criti cism, devices are apt to spring iip for anticipating or direct ing it ; and the evil institution of the claque is modelled on Roman precedent. In fine, though the art of acting at Rome must have originally formed itself on Greek example and precept, it was doubtless elaborated with a care un known to the greatest Attic artists. Its most famous representatives were Gallus, called after his emancipation Q. Roscius Gallus (d. c. 62 B.C.), who, like the great &quot; English Roscius,&quot; excelled equally in tragedy and comedy, and his younger contemporary Clodius ^Esopus, a Greek by birth, likewise eminent in both branches of his art, though in tragedy more particularly. Both these great actors are said to have been constant hearers of the great orator Hortensius ; and Roscius wrote a treatise on the relations between oratory and acting. In the influence of oratory upon the drama are perhaps to be sought the chief among the nobler features of Roman tragedy to which a native origin may be fairly ascribed. d of ths The ignoble end of the Roman and with it of the ancient classical drama has been already foreshadowed. The elements of dance and song, never integrally united with the dialogue in Roman tragedy, were now altogether separated from it. While it became customary simply to recite tragedies to the small audiences who continued (or, as a matter of courtesy, affected) to appreciate them, ntomi- the pantomimus commended itself to the heterogeneous multitudes of the Roman theatre by confining the performance of the actor to gesticulation and dancing, a chorus singing the accompanying text. The species was developed with extraordinary success already under Augustus by Pylades and Bathyllus ; and so popular were these entertainments, that even eminent poets, such as Lucan (d. 65 A.D.), wrote the librettos for them, of which the subjects were generally mythological, only now and then historical, and chiefly of an amorous kind. A single masked performer was able to enchant admiring crowds by the art of gesticulation and movement only. In what direction this art tended, when suiting itself to the demands of a recklessly sensual age, may be gathered from the remark of one of the last pagan historians of the empire, that the introduction of pantomimes was a sign of the general moral decay of the world which began with the beginning of the monarchy. Comedy more easily lost miis. itself in the cognate form of the mimus, which survived all other kinds of comic entertainments because of its more audacious immorality and open obscenity. Women took part in these performances, by means of which, as late as the 6th century j a mima acquired a celebrity which ulti mately raised her to the imperial throne. Meanwhile the wnfall regular drama had lingered on, enjoying in all its forms the imperial patronage in the days of the literary revival under Hadrian (117-138) ; but the perennial taste for the spectacles of the amphitheatre, which reached its climax in man ,ma. the days of Constantino the Great (306-337), hastened the downfall of the dramatic art in general. It was not absolutely extinguished even by the irruptions of the northern barbarians ; but a bitter adversary had by this time risen into power. The whole authority of the The dra Christian church had, without usually caring to distin- and the guish between the nobler and the looser elements in the Christia drama, involved all its manifestations in a consistent con- dem nation ; and when the faith of that church was acknowledged as the religion of the Roman empire, the doom of the theatre was sealed. This doom was not undeserved ; for the remnants of the literary drama had long been overshadowed by entertainments such as both earlier and later Roman emperors Domitian and Trajan as well as Galerius and Constantino had found themselves obliged to prohibit in the interests of public morality and order, by the bloody spectacles of the amphitheatre, and by the maddening excitement of the circus ; the art of acting had become the pander of the lewd or frivolous itch of eye and ear ; and the theatre had contributed its utmost to the demoralization of a world. The attitude taken up by the Christian church towards the stage was in general as un avoidable as its particular expressions were at times heated by fanaticism or distorted by ignorance. Had she not visited with her anathema a wilderness of decay, she could not herself have become what she little dreamt of becoming the nursing mother of the new birth of an art which seemed incapable of regeneration. Though already in the 4th century actors and mounte- Survm banks had been excluded from the benefit of Christian the rair sacraments, and excommunication had been extended to those who visited theatres instead of churches on Sundays and holidays, and though similar enactments had followed at later dates, yet the entertainments of the condemned profession had never been entirely suppressed, and had even occasionally received imperial patronage. Gradually, how ever, the mimes and their fellows became a wandering fraternity, who doubtless appeared at festivals when they were wanted and vanished again into the deepest obscurity which has ever covered that mysterious existence a stroller s life. It was thus that these strange intermediaries of civilization carried down such traditions as survived of the acting drama of pagan antiquity into the succeeding ages. While the scattered and persecuted strollers thus kept alive something of the popularity, if not of the loftier traditions, of their art, neither, on the other hand, was there an utter absence of written compositions to bridge the gap between ancient and modern dramatic literature. In the midst of the condemnation with which the Christian church visited the stage, its professors, and votaries, we find individual ecclesiastics resorting in their writings to both the tragic and the comic form of the ancient drama. These isolated productions, which include (in the latter part of the 4th century) the Passion of Christ, usually attributed to St Gregory Nazianzen, were doubtless mostly written for educational purposes, whether Euripides and Lycopliron, or Menander, Plautus, and Terence served as the outward models. The same was probably the design of the famous &quot; comedies &quot; of Hrotsvitha, the Benedictine nun of Gandersheim, in Eastphalian Saxony, which associate them selves in the history of Christian literature with the spiritual revival of the 10th century in the days of Otto the Great. While avowedly imitated in form from the comedies of Ter ence, these religious exercises derive their themes martyr doms, 1 and miraculous or otherwise startling conversions 2 Ecdesi; Ilrotsvi 1 Gollicanus, Part ii. ; Sapientia.
 * Gallicanus, Part i. ; Callimachus; Abraham; Paphnutius.