Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/107

 A. w. sciilegel's general survey of the drama. 89 the appropriate expression of voice, mien, and gesture, and moreover annex thereto those visible actions, of which otherwise the audience would need to be apprised by narrative. Still farther : these vicegerents of the creatures of his imagination are required to appear in the costume belonging to their assumed rank, and to the times and country in which they lived ; partly for the sake of closer resem- blance ; partly, because even in dress there is something characteristic. Lastly, he requires that they should be environed by a locality in some measure similar to that in which he makes the incidents to have taken place, because this also helps to realize the fiction ; that is to say, he will have scenery. Now here is a theatre complete. It is plain that the very form of dramatic poetry, that is, the exhibition of an action by dialogue without the aid of narrative, implies the theatre as the necessary complement. We grant, there are dramatic works not originally designed for the stage, and indeed not likely to be particularly effective there, which nevertheless read excellently. But I very greatly question whether they would make the same vivid impression upon a reader who had never witnessed a play nor heard one described. We are habituated, in reading dramatic compositions, to fancy to ourselves the acting. The invention of the theatre and theatrical art seems a very obvious and natural one. Man has a great turn for mimic imitation ; in all lively transposing of himself into the situation, sentiments, and passions of others, he assimilates himself to them in his exterior, whether he will or no. Children are perpetually going out of them- selves ; it is one of their favourite sports to copy the grown people they have oppor- tunity of observing, or indeed whatever else comes into their heads ; and with their happy pliancy of imagination, they can make all alike serve their turn, to furnish them with the insignia of the assumed dignity, be it that of a father, a schoolmaster, or a king. There remains but one step more to the invention of the Drama; namely, to draw the mimic elements and fragments clear off from real life, and confront the latter with these collectively in one mass ; yet in many nations this step never was taken. In the very copious description of ancient Egypt in Herodotus and others, I do not recollect any indication of this. The Etruscans on the contrary, so like the Egyptians in many other particulars, had their theatrical games, and, singular enough, the Etruscan term for "actor," histrio, has survived in living languages even to the most recent times. The whole of Western Asia, the Arabians and Persians, rich as their poetical literature is in other departments, know not the Drama. Neither did Europe in the middle ages : upon the introduction of Christianity the old dramas of the Greeks and Romans were set aside, partly because they had reference to heathen ideas, partly because they had degenerated into shameless immorality; nor did they revive until nearly a thousand years later. So late as the fourteenth century we find in that very complete picture which Boccaccio has given of the then existing frame of society, no trace whatever of plays. Instead of them they had simply their Conteurs, Menestriers, and Jongleurs. On the other hand, it must by no means be supposed that the invention of the Drama was made only once in the world, and was passed along from one nation to another. The English circumnavigators found among the islanders of the Southern Ocean (a people occupying so low a grade in point of intel- lectual capacity and civilisation) a rude kind of drama, in which a common incident of life was imitated well enough to be diverting. To pass to the other extremity of the world: that nation from which perhaps all the civilisation of the human race emanated, I mean the Indians, had their dramas for ages before that country was subjected to any foreign influence. They possess a copious dramatic literature, the age of which ascends backward nearly two thousand years. Of their plays (Nataks) we are at present acquainted with one specimen only, the charming Sacontala, which, with all