Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/458

444 as it may, however, the general implication remains the same. There arose in Christendom, as in Greece, a sacred drama performed by priests and representing incidents in the sacred story; and if our secular drama did not directly descend from this Christian religious drama, then it indirectly descended from the original pagan religious drama.

Along with the rise of the secular drama have arisen minor differentiations. The separation between actor and dramatist, though still not complete, has become greater; most dramatic authors are not actors. And then the dramatic authors are now distinguished into those known as producers chiefly of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce, burlesque.

We meet here with no exception to the general law that segregation and consolidation are parts of the evolutionary process. Beginning with Greece we trace the tendency even among the poets. Curtius remarks that "poetry like the other arts was first cultivated in circles limited after the fashion of guilds." And the religious character of these guilds is shown by the further statement that "schools of poets came to form themselves which were . . . intimately connected with the sanctuary."

Naturally the process readily took place with those occupied in combined representations; for they, as a matter of necessity, existed as companies. But there early arose more definite unions among them. Mahaffy says, concerning the Greeks, that—

"Inscriptions reveal to us the existence of guilds of professionals who went about Greece to these local feasts, and performed for very high pay."

And he further states that—

The actors' "corporation included a priest (of Dionysus) at the head, who still remained a performer; a treasurer; dramatic poets of new tragedies and comedies and odes; principal actors of both tragedy and comedy. . . and musicians of various kinds."

From Rome, for reasons already indicated, we do not get much evidence. Still there is some.

The authorities. . . out of regard for the Greek Andronikos "conceded to the guild of poets and actors a place for their common worship in the temple of Minerva."

Nor do modern days fail to furnish a few, though not many, illustrations of the integrating tendency. A slight organization is given by the Actors' Benevolent Fund. The dramatic writers have an agency for collecting the amounts due to them for the performance of their pieces, and are to that extent combined. And then we have a special newspaper, The Era, which forms a medium for communication, by advertisements, between all kinds of stage-performers and those who wish to engage them, as well as an organ for representing the interests of the stage and the semi-dramatic music-hall.