Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/24

 n THE RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA. employ. Yet we find that native art was, strictly speaking, non- existent among them. The few symbols which they employed in their early days were borrowed from Egypt or Chaldaea ; and when, in the most flourishing epoch of their monarchy, their powerful and wealthy king wished to build a temple to the true God, he was obliged to call in the aid of his idolatrous neighbours the Tyrians^. Nay more, it would not be fanciful to connect the sub- sequent idolatry of Solomon with his patronage of the fine arts. It is remarkable, too, that the first trace of a dramatic tendency in the lyric poetry of the Israelites is visible in an idyll attributed to the same prince. And far as the book of Job is from any dramatic intention, the dialogues of which it mainly consists must be added to the many proofs which have been adduced of the com- paratively modern date, and foreign origin, of that didactic poem 2. Even the incomplete metrical system of the Hebrews, as compared with the wonderful variety and perfection of Greek prosody, must be regarded as furnishing supplementary evidence of the inartificial character and antimimetic tendencies of the early inhabitants of Palestine.' So also in modern times, long after the drama had ceased to exhibit any traces of its original connexion with the rites of a heathen worship, and when it was looked upon merely as a branch of literature, or as an elegant pastime, in proportion as Christian nations adhered to or abhorred the sensual rites which the Church of Rome borrowed from heathendom, when it assembled its priest-ridden votaries within the newly-consecrated walls of a profane Basilica, — in the same proportion the drama throve or declined, and, in this country, either inflicted vengeance on the hapless author of a Ilistriomastix, or concealed its flaunting robes from the austere indignation of Smectymnuus, To return, however, to the more immediate influences of poly- theism and idolatry on the origination of the ancient drama, we observe that the dramatic art, wherever it has existed as a genuine product of the soil, has always been connected in its origin with the religious rites of an elementary worship^; that is, with those enthusiastic orgies which spring from a personification of the powers ^ I Kings vii. 13. 2 Ewald, poetisch. Bilcher des alten Bundes, ill. p. 63. ^ In connexion with the Phallic rites of Hindostan and Greece, we may mention that in the South Sea Islands, at the time of Cook's second voyage, a birth was represented on the stage. See Siivern iiher Aristoph. Wolken, p. 63, note 6.