Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/204

176 masks worn on occasion by the lower classes. What is quite clear is that the masks worn by the satyric chorus (and consequently the parts played by the chorus) were not those of deceased ancestors; they were masks representing the goat-shaped spirits who figured in the folk-lore of the Peloponnese. If tragedy points back to the worship of deceased ancestors, the satyric drama points back to the worship of spirits.

There remains the third form of Greek drama, viz. comedy. In Greek comedy—as in tragedy and the satyric drama—the chorus was always masked, and men alone, not women, might wear the mask. The who sung the, from which "comedy" gets its name, were bands of young men who came forth at harvest festivals singing their song in chorus, evidently an essential part of the harvest-home. Unfortunately no piece of evidence has been preserved to us to show what sort of masks the singers wore or whom they were supposed to impersonate. It is easy to conjecture that at a harvest-home it would be a vegetation-spirit which was expected to appear. But that is mere conjecture. What we do know, however, is important, viz. that in comedy, as in tragedy and the satyric drama, there was no acting without masks and no masks without acting.

I have said that of all the many kinds of chorus that performed in ancient Greece, the only one that wore masks was the dramatic chorus, that the members of the dramatic chorus were men alone—unlike the dithyrambic chorus, of which the members might be women—and that this limitation of the mask to men indicates that the custom had descended to the civilised Greeks from their uncivilised forefathers. Of their uncivilised forefathers we know little. If we are to argue about them we must argue on the analogy of other uncivilised tribes. Here I have only time to say that the custom of wearing masks is widely prevalent amongst savages, and that the wearers of the masks