Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/16

4 elaboration of ritual led to the insertion of new melodies in the recognized services. These melodies were originally sung to vowel sounds only, but soon words came to be written for them, and before the end of the ninth century several distinct schools of composition arose, represented by such authors as Adam of St. Victor and Notker of St. Gall. These texts, often closely based on scripture, and known as 'tropes,'were introduced at many different points of the office. In particular they attached themselves to the 'introit,' the chant sung by the choir at the beginning of Mass as the celebrant approaches the altar. Lending themselves to division between the two halves of the choir, they readily fell into the form of dialogue, and it is such a one, from the office for Easter Day, that claims our immediate attention. 'Quem quaeritis in sepulcro, o Christicolae?' sang one semi-chorus, in the words of the angel at the empty tomb. 'Iesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o coelicolae,' replied the other for the mourning women. 'Non est hie, surrexit sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulcro' resumes the angelical voice, and then the whole choir takes up the introit, 'Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia.' Here already we have something like an embryonic play, and if, as seems possible, it was chance more than anything else that made this, rather than various other dialogued tropes, the starting-point of the modern drama, at least the chance was a happy one.

Dialogue of a sort had been achieved, it remained to introduce mimesis. No doubt this crept in