Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/200

172 was a song, a choral song; and the chorus that sang it also danced. But dance and song together are not acting. To act is to perform a part and personify a character, whereas in the dithyramb neither the leader of the dithyramb nor the chorus acted any part or personified any character. The dithyramb was essentially narrative poetry; and narrative, even when sung and accompanied by dancing, is not acting. To act is to play a part; and in the dithyramb no one, until very late times, when the drama had established itself, plays any part. It is, therefore, vain to quote Aristotle, and to seek the origin of tragedy in the dithyramb.

In ancient Greece there were three kinds of acting—tragedy, comedy, and the satyric drama. Any conjecture, therefore, as to the origin of the Greek drama, to be satisfactory, should account for all three forms, and should not—like Aristotle's conjecture—leave two of the three forms unaccounted for. If we wish to frame a conjecture that will be a satisfactory working hypothesis, we should look for some feature which is, on the one hand, present in all three forms of the drama, and which, on the other hand, is absent from the performance of all other forms of choral poetry. There is such a feature, which is not only common to all three forms of the Greek drama but is peculiar to them alone in Greek literature and art, and is not to be found in the performance of the dithyrambic or any other chorus. That feature, common to all three forms of the Greek drama and found in them alone, is the fact that masks were worn in dramatic performances, and were never worn in the performances of the dithyrambic chorus, or indeed of any chorus whatever save the chorus of the drama. It is therefore on the wearing of masks that I propose to base my conjecture as to the origin of the Greek drama. And, inasmuch as the wearing of masks is a custom which exists amongst many peoples who have not attained to civilisation, and which survives in the folk