Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/25

 THE RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 7 of nature. This was the case in India and in those parts of Italy where scenic entertainments existed before the introduction of the Greek drama. But in Greece this was so, not only in the be- ginning, but as long as the stage existed; and the circumstance, which gave to the Attic drama its chief strength and its highest charms, was its continued connexion with the state-worship of Bacchus, in which both Tragedy and Comedy took their rise. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by our knowledge of the fact that the drama of modern Europe, though derived from that of ancient Greece, exhibits no trace of its religious origin. The element which originally constituted its whole essence has been overwhelmed and superseded by the more powerful ingredients which have been introduced into it by the continually diverging tastes of succeeding generations, till it has at length become nothing but a walking novel or a speaking jest-book. The plays of Shak- speare and Calderon (with the exception, of course, of the Autos Sacramentales of the latter) are dramatic reproductions of the prose romances of the day, with the omission of the religious ele- ment which they owed to the monks 2, just as the Tragedies of ^schylus and Sophocles would have been mere epic dramas, had they broken the bonds which connected them with the elementary worship of Attica. But this disruption never took place. In ancient Greece the drama retained to the last the character which it originally possessed. The theatrical representations at Athens, even in the days of Sophocles and Aristophanes, were constituent parts of a religious festival ; the theatre in which they were per- formed was sacred to Bacchus, and the worship of the god was always as much regarded as the amusement of the sovran people. 1 "Like that of the Greeks, the Hindu drama was derived from, and formed part of, their religious ceremonies." Quarterly Rev. No. 89, p. 59. The comparative antiquity of the Greek and Indian drama is regarded very diflFerently by the most eminent orientalists. For while Weber thinks it " not improbable that even the use of the Hindoo drama was influenced by the performance of the Greek dramas at the courts of Greek kings" {Indische Skizzen, p. 28), Lassen will not allow such an origin of the Indian drama, which he considers to be of native growth {Indische Alterthums- kunde, ii. p. 1157). Even supposing however that the Indian drama was as old as the time of Asoka II. {Asiat. Res. xx. p. 50; Lassen, 11. p. 502), it is admitted (Lassen, i. 616, 625 ; II. 507) that Krishna, who stood in intimate connexion with the origin of the Hindoo theatre, was specially worshipped in the Saurasenic or eastern district (Arrian, Ind. viii. 5), and there is every reason to believe that he was an imported deity ; so that the Indian stage, even if aboriginal, may have derived its most charac- teristic features from the Greek. 2 Malone's Shakspeare, Vol. iii. pp. 8 sqq. ; Lessing, Geschlchte der Engl. Sckau- liihne (Werke, XV. 209).