Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/505

* DRAMA. said to have introduced comedy into Attica early in the sixth century B.C., but before it was encour- aged at Athens it eanie to a considerable devel- opment elsewhere, particularly among the Do- rians of Sicily, where nourished Kpichamius and Sophron. the inventor of mimes. The his- tory of Athenian comedy is familiarly dividvxl into the three periods of the Old, Middle, and New Comedy. The best-known writers of the first were Cratimis, Crates, Kupolis, and .Vristi)i)hanes, ■who is its great exemplar. Organized in a man- ner similar to tragedy, but with a chorus of twenty-four and an additional element called the parabasis, in which the audience was directly addressed, it dealt frankly in personalities, was largely political, and did not hesitate to carica- ture the leading men of the day. Jliddle Comedy marks the beginning of a period when freedom of speech was less imlimitcd, and when the follies and foibles of whole classes rather than of indi- viduals furnished the butt of the comedian's ridi- cule. The chorus lost its connection with the drama and was dropped. In the so-called Xew Comedy of ilenander and Philemon, at the begin- ning of the third century B.c, the tendency seems to liave been brought to its logical development. Instead of to political questions of the day. the comic writer devoted himself to the exhibition of ridiculous complications of social life, in a society which with its simplicity had lost much of its virtue. Types were develo|>ed which are still familiar upon the stage, such as the gullible old man, the dissipated son, and the tricky and impu- dent servant, who may be called a sort of male prototype of the soubrette. This later Greek comedy is chiefly known to ns through the adap- tations of the Roman comedians Plautus and Terence, RoMAX Dbama. Comedy appears to have been the sort of poetry most natural to the Romans, who had not on the whole great dramatic gifts. Comic elements existed in the satttnv of the early Latin towns. Yet the Romans borrowed, accord- ing to the common account, their first idea of a play, during a period of national despondency (B.C. 364, Livy, vii. 2), from the Etruscans, from whom came their word histrio, an actor (whence our 'histrionic") : the effusions of sportive humor in the rude farces known as fnhuI(F AteUaiiw, came to them from the Oscans: those called mimes they took from ilagna Gra?cia : their lit- erary drama was almost wholly an imitation of the Greek. The drama was one of the earliest branches of literature to be cultivated at Rome, There were both comedies and tragedies by T,iv- ius Andronieus, Xofvius, and Ennius, and trage- dies by Pacuvius and Attius, beside-; others less known, all patterned after Greek originals, but practically none of these works have come down t<i us. Xspvius is celebrated for haviiiL' got into trouble by ridiculing prominent people in imita- tion, it is said, of the Old Comedy at Athens. Practically all we have of Roman comedy belongs to the works of Plautus and Terence, of the class called pnlUnlw. closely adhering to their Greek models in scene and snbiect. in distinction from the so-called lonntw, which had Roman subjects. Plintus was once a poor day-laborer: Terence a Carthaginian slave ; and the style of each is ch.iracteristic. Plautus has a degree of rough vigor and broad jocularity, while Terence is more refined and delicate in his wit and characteriza- tion. Both those writers .based their work upon 437 DRAMA. the Xcw Comedy of the school of .Menander and Philemon. One change of form is to be noted in particular: the prologue ceased to be the first act of the play, and became the species of de- tached explanation which it has since remained. Tragedy, more as literature than for acting upon tlic stage, continued to be cultivated by many of the writers of the .ugustan Age and later, w ilh the expressed ambition of rivaling the Greeks. Of all these attem|)ts, however, we iiave only the ten rhetorical dramas which are credited to the philosoi)ber .Seneca, though theyare certainly not all his. One of them, the Octaiki, is of the class called ])r(rtexta: with Roman historical sub- jects; the others are all from (ireek mythology. With the general decline of popular taste under the Empire, all 'legitimate" ilrania fell into de- cline, and the stage was held by dancers and pan- tomimes, some of whom became immensely popu- lar favorites. The most celebrated of Roman actors is Roscius, to whose excellence Cicero tes- tifies. Indian DRAitA. Another national drama which has been said to be derived from that of the Greeks is that of India : this, however, is a disputed point, and Indian drama is now generally thought to be of independent growth. Like the Greek, it arose in a religious connection, along with the dances and songs of the iiopular festi- vals. The Hiiiiiu drama, however, has no trag- edy and makes far more of the motive of romantic love than does that of the Greeks. Kalidasa, one of the earliest names in its history, as well as the greatest, has been commonly assigned to the first century B.C., but recent criticism places him several centuries later. The best period of .San- skrit drama, then, was from about the fourth to the ninth century a.d. A peculiar feature of the Indian plays, though not without some Greek parallel, is the use of different dialects for diflfer- ent characters. Gods and heroes and men of high position speak .Sanskrit : women and men of low rank speak various forms of Prakrit. The best-known Sanskrit play is the Sakini- tala of Kalidasa. It was translated by Sir Wil- liam .Jones in 1780. and is an heroic love drama of great beauty. Kalidasa is also the author of a five-act play, called Vikramorrasi (The Hero and the Xymph). Xext in importance among Hindu dramatists was Bhavabluiti. a Brahman of Southern India in the eighth century: two of his three plays concern the adventures of Rama, the hero of the epic Rninniiiuta, on which, indeed, are founded several of the later Indian dramas. Two other noted plays are the Mrirrhnkntika (The Toy Cart), a drama of social life, in ten acts, credited to a king named Sudraka, of the sixth century, and I'atiiarnli (The Pearl Xeck- lace), a romantic piece sui)|)Oscd to have been written by King Sriharsha, of the seventh cen- tury. With the coming of the Mohammedans, the drama in India gradually declined, ami, though Sanskrit plays have been written in modern days, they are farely acted. Chinese Dbama. The only other Oriental branch of the drama that requires men- tion is the Chinese, which, in spite of the an- tiquily of other Chinese literature, is compara- tively modern. There are reasons for thinking it to have been derived from the Tatars, though it has commonly been {onsidi-red an evolution from the native songs and dances. In the eighth centurv A.n. a sort of academv of music, known