oi oe i t a“eat — University of Virginia ae PN1 721 .B4 1927 > a Dp fr .g= es A short y of the d tN I Ul i — -_ ys oN 5Pe Atemel ey ri 1 4 < t { H ees~d Arts. 1¢€ hool of Liberal and Appl Charles Rann Kennedy tt Sc Benne Y = —_— r K ~” —_ 2 J + = ~ - — > XS ~~ o — Matthison as Medea. MacCord. 1) (Qe de dith Wynne ) E | Tr) 3. Photo JengA SHORT HISTORY OF THE DRAMA By MARTHA FLETCHER BELLINGER NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANYCOPYRIGHT, 1927, BY HENRY HOLT AND.CQMPANY ee te ° PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PE aeeal F 4 4 F { To JANIE THE DEAREST OF COMPANIONS AT THE PLAYose ’PREFACE The basis of this book is a series of lectures given before various classes and study groups, among others the Century Theater Club of New York and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In conducting such courses I found that an outline survey of the drama of past centuries is a necessary preliminary to a just understanding of any play. Modern drama especially, to be rightly estimated, needs to be aligned beside the drama of other periods. The history of this art is continually presenting to the student the revival of old themes, the resurrection of stock characters, and the recurrence of stock situations ; as a consequence what often seems strikingly orig- inal to the novice in the art is but the reincarnation of an ancient favorite of the boards. I have had three main objects in the writing of the book: I. to offer an easy narrative of the history of the art, giving occasional attention to forms of production and to theories of construction, but in the main trying to tell who the chief playwrights were and what they tried to do; 2. to supply a book which could handily be used as a reference work by critics, teachers, playwrights and students generally ; 3. to indicate here and there the effective results gained by criticism, by conscious efforts on the part of reformers, or by the more or less organized revolt against established forms. So far as has been possible I have read representative plays; and while sometimes bewildered by the difference of opinion among scholars of repute concerning certain plays and move- ments, I have generally come to the conclusion that my readers would enjoy best having the varied opinions set before them and being allowed to judge for themselves. In the Supplement I have supplied a short reading list of books about the drama ; v ts ) 3 ¥,v1 PREFACE also a chronological list of the chief playwrights of each period with dates and the titles of important plays. I wish here to thank the many authors whose opinions I have consulted. I wish also to express my acknowledgments to several librarians and their assistants, especially to those of Columbia University, of the University of Chicago, and of the Public Library of New York City, for lendiy help and the opportunity of seeing unusual books and pamphlets. My sincere thanks go to a friend and a classical scholar, Henrietta Josephine Meeteer, Ph.D., formerly head of the classical de- partment at Swarthmore Col lege; to Roy C. Flickinger, Ph.D., head of the classical department at Northwestern University, both of whom have made valuable suggestions and corrections ; and to my husband, Franz Bellinger, Ph.D., for constant help in the preparation of the manuscript. It is unnecessary to add that no one of these helpers is responsible for whatever opin- ions or errors may appear. In so brief a history many interesting playwrights must either be omitted or too sketchily considered; but I have tried to present the pageant of play-acting from its human and charming side. My sincere hope is that the story here set forth may enhance the pleasure of going to the play, and may perhaps arouse an appreciation of the rich background w hich lies behind even the most unpretentious theatrical entertain- ment. iM. E.. B: Wayne, Maine. June, 1927.CONTENTS SECTION ONE: UNCONSCIOUS DRAMA AND CHAPTER re Mh IIT. Vile VII. Vit 1X X. le PRIMITIVE LEGENDS DANCING AND PLAyY-ACTING : How THE STORY-ITELLERS SUPPLIED DRA- MATIC THEMES . 3 : How THE PLAy-ACTOR AND THE STORY- TELLER COMBINED TO MAKE DRAMA SECTION Two: CLAssic DRAMA AESCHYLUS, THE First GREAT PLAYWRIGHT SoPpHOCLES, THE Most POLISHED OF THE TraAcic PoETS “EURIPIDES, THE HUMAN” ARISTOPHANES AND THE GREEK COMEDY WRITERS i ARISTOTLE, CLASSIC TECHNIQUE, AND THE LATER GREEK DRAMA GREEK PLots, THEATRES, COMPETITIONS, AND AUDIENCES How GREEK DRAMA INVADED ROME Horace, RoMAN SPECTACLES, AND THE DE- CAY OF THE CLASsIC DRAMA SECTION THREE: DRAMA OF THE ORIENT XII. InpIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN . ‘ ; SECTION Four: DRAMA OF THE MIDDLE AGES XIII. A TuHousanp YEARS OF QUIESCENCE AND THE BEGINNINGS OF SACRED DRAMA Vil PAGE IQ 7 ef) ais Ca) Cy 99 115 ee nod ugottts . ™vill CHAPTER XIV. XV. XVI. CONTENTS MysTERIES AND MIRACLES ON THE CON- TINENT MvsTERIES AND PAGEANTS IN ENGLAND MorALITIES, INTERLUDES, AND FARCES OF THE MIDDLE AGES SEecTION FIVE: THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. DRAMA NATIONAL DRAMA: ITALY TO 1700 NATIONAL DRAMA: SPAIN TO 1700 TRAGEDY IN FRANCE BEFORE 1700 CoMEDY IN FRANCE BEFORE I700 Tue Kinps oF ENGLIsH DRAMA BEFORE 1700 ELIZABETHAN Pxiay-HovuseEs, ACTORS, AND AUDIENCES THE SCHOLAR POETS : : : SHAKESPEARE . : A é ; SEcTION S1x: MODERN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. DRAMA Tue First HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND THE RESTORATION DRAMATISTS THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND . Tue EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE, ITALY, AND SPAIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIA ‘ : ; ; FRANCE: 1800-1875 THE VICTORIANS AND THEIR PREDE- CESSORS ‘ 2 : é : PAGE 147 159 167 280 292 302CHAPTER XXXII. XXXII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. CONTENTS GERMANY, AUSTRIA, ITALY, AND SCANDI- NAVIA: 1800-1875 : : : ‘ : IBSEN, STRINDBERG, AND THE DRAMATIC AWAKENING : : ‘ : THE LAst FIFTY YEARS ON THE CONTINENT Tue Last Firry YEARS IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND : : : : : : DRAMA IN RUSSIA . ‘ ‘ ; : : DRAMA IN AMERICA ‘ ; 2 - : LATEST PHASES OF DRAMA . : : A BriEF READING LIST FOR STUDENTS OF THE DRAMA A SUPPLEMENT CONTAINING A CHRONOLOG- ICAL List OF PLAYWRIGHTS, WITH DATES AND REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS : : INDEX A : : , é ; s : ix PAGE 310 317 326 338 W aS N No ®W W OV U1 1fish OF ILLUSTRATIONS Edith Wynne Matthison as Medea .. . Frontispiece FACING PAGE Setting for the Garden Scene, The Little GlayiGari. | LOG Mystery-stage in the 16th Century . - + + -: 126 Jesus and the Apostles. From the Oberammergau Pas- SION eiay, : : ; : ‘ = 126 WINEIOWIAG OF TRAST. 9 ee ln BF Mrs. Fisk in Sheridan’s The Rivals. . ‘ ; , 200 Firmin Gemier as Mephistopheles in Faust. ; 5 (288 Interior, by Maurice Maeterlinck . . « - » 832 The Dybbuk as produced by the “Habima” Troupe . 5. 246 The Playmakers Theatre, Chapel Hill, North Carolina . 370SECTION ONE UNCONSCIOUS DRAMA AND PRIMITIVE LEGENDS; ifCHAPTER I DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING Religious Dances, it may be observed, are sometimes ecstatic, sometimes pantomimic. . . . Pantomimic dances, with their effort to heighten natural expression and to imitate natural process, bring the dancers into the divine sphere of creation and enable them to assist vicariously in the energy of the gods. The dance thus be- comes the presentation of a divine drama.—Havetock EL is, The Dance of Life. Among certain peoples of the Malay Peninsula, there is sometimes enacted a play which has for its subject the pun- ishment of coquetry. A young girl appears, wreathed with flowers and ready for the dance. She is looking for a husband. A youth approaches with gifts for her, and sings of birds, sun- shine, and the joys of wedded love. She does not listen, but with a toss of her head she dances away. Still entreating her the youth follows; but she eludes him, and he retires in con- fusion and anger. A second admirer comes on, and a third; but each is rejected by the reckless maiden, who flouts their offerings and humiliates them. Presently the situation 1s changed by the appearance of three other young girls, who quickly capture the disappointed suitors and dance off with them. The girl then sees her mistake and begins to cry. At sight of her contrition the first man returns and renews his suit; but this time he proposes to make her his second wife only; and with this offer she has to be content. Drama defined. It requires no great stretch of imagination to link this bit of primitive play-acting with the art of the drama as we know it today. The single “scene” described above may be given without any special setting or costumes, without music, footlights, prompter, or scenery. In its whole length no word need be spoken for its complete understanding. 3Foe ee H 5 } / | / t ot 4 DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING It is a story told by imitation. Every play, from this little drama of slighted love to Hamlet or The Emperor Jones, is composed of the two elements: story or literary element, and imitation or play-acting. In pantomimes and farces the play- acting element is more important; but sometimes, especially in decadent eras, the literary element is given the greater promi- nence, and we have closet drama and problem plays. It is evident that in the ideal play the good story will be combined with the opportunity for good pantomime. When that end is achieved, we have, for example, an Gdipus or a Cyrano de Bergerac. In its essentials, therefore, the art of drama is sim- ply telling a story by means of imitation. Dancing, with mimicry, is one of the ancient accomplishments of man, inseparably connected with religion, warfare, the get- ting of wives and the getting of food. The movements of animals were imitated, costumes and masks were devised, the cries of the young were skilfully repeated. Since death was often associated with the idea of reincarnation in the form of some animal, it was but natural that many primitive rituals, intended to ensure protection for the living, should imitate the movements and cries of beasts. A further incentive to imitation and play-acting was the wide-spread belief in sympathetic magic, which is based on the idea that the imitation of an event will bring that event to pass. When the savage wants rain, he climbs a tree and goes through the motions of pouring water from a bucket upon the ground. A second performer strikes two stones together to represent thunder, while a third waves a firebrand until the sparks fly in imitation of lightning. If a warrior wishes the death of an enemy, he makes a clay image and sticks it full of thorns and nails. If the hunter wishes to enlist the help of the gods he pretends to chase his prey, and when the vic- tim is caught he goes through the motions of killing and skin- ning him. Thus the image of the deed is made, and the ac- tuality will soon follow.’ A play called The Battle of the Corn is an Indian ritual de- 1 Several of the illustrations used in this chapter have been taken from The Drama of Savage Peoples, by Loomis Havemeyer.DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING 5 signed to win the favor of the gods in whose hands lies the prosperity of the crop. A slight setting is arranged, the front of which is made to represent roughly a field of maize. On the background are painted the symbols of the tribe. The per- formance begins by the appearance of angry demons represent- ing Hail, Drought, Storm, and the like. These devils rush in, trampling down and destroying the grain. Presently come the owners of the field, hastening to the rescue of their crops. They attack the demons and wrestle with them, until at last the struggle becomes a pitched battle. A wounded demon falls, yelling in pain, and the defenders spring forward with renewed energy. A mortal falls, and the demons dance for joy. Just as the triumph of the devils seems assured, a new champion comes into the fight on the side of the rescuers, and the tide is turned. The weary men gather their strength for one more onslaught, the evil forces are put to rout and the crop is saved. This play, though more complex than many primitive scenes, can of course be performed entirely without words. War dances. Rituals preceding wars often take the form of rather elaborate pantomimes, also based upon the idea of sympathetic magic. The dancers pretend to steal upon their foes, to discover and chase them, finally to slaughter them and join in the march of victory. These ceremonies are often like the pictures painted round a vase, merely a succession of inci- dents that might begin anywhere. Sometimes, however, a more subtle arrangement is contrived, with the outlines of a real plot. From one of the tribes of Sumatra comes a war play with a dramatic situation, though still no words are required. The scene is some distance from the place where a battle has been in progress. A weary warrior sits on the ground, pluck- ing a thorn from his foot. His weapons are lying near, and he keeps a sharp lookout. In spite of his watchfulness, how- ever, one of the enemy (supposedly) creeps up stealthily from behind and attacks him. He makes what defense he is able, but he is soon overcome, receiving the death wound and going through gruesome contortions. At last his head is cut off and the victor holds it up in triumph; but, as now for the first time the assailant has a clear view of the face, he discovers } a Ed =" F * 3 j / my6 DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING that he has killed not one of the enemy, but his own brother. There follows a lengthy portrayal of grief and remorse. Primitive plays a school for youth. Play-acting and danc- ing occupy an important place in the social system of many tribes. There exist mystic societies, in possession of tribal se- crets, initiation into which is a solemn ritual. The selected candidates, generally boys of suitable birth and skill, having arrived at the proper age, are cleansed by ceremonial and brought into the presence of the elders. With dancing, music, and pantomime, the instructors then enact the legends con- cerning their famous warriors and huntsmen. In some cases these exercises extend over a period of years and include a whole system of education for youth. In each dance or pan- tomime there is a sermon, or a lesson in geography, history, or craftsmanship. One of the strange dramatic relics from the remote past is a “kind of nocturnal Egyptian Passion Play.” ? It is the por- trayal of the struggle between Osiris, god of light, and Set, god of darkness, and was enacted at night on the shore of a lake near the great temple at Sais. It was given with pomp and splendor, Osiris being robed in white, and the whole perform- ance carried on to the accompaniment of music. Set, the enemy, hunts down the carrier of light and buries him beneath the waters of the lake: but Horus, son of Osiris, avenges the death of his father in a bloody battle. After the combat, Osiris again appears as the ruler of the shadow land of death. The symbolism of the conquest of Day by Night is obvious: and perhaps the still deeper symbolism of the conquest of Good by Evil, with the final rescue of the Good. Certain ceremonies are of the nature of elaborate prayers for favorable weather and protection from disaster. One of the most noted of these ceremonies is the Rain Dance of the Hopi Indians. It is in reality a complex and highly symbolic play, lasting at least nine days and requiring for its perform- ance some twenty warriors, all of whom must belong to cer- tain tribes. There is the representation of a long series of events, the essential feature of which is the journey of a “stain- * Edward A. MacDowell, Critical and Historical Essays.DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING 7 less youth” to the underworld, in order to learn the secret of the rain. One of the first adjuncts to the early dancing ceremonies was the drum, or some other simple percussion instrument, with which to mark the rhythm. Sometimes the audience sang or clapped, while the braves went through the movements of the dance. The next step was the use of chanting, the singing of appropriate songs, and the elaboration of the instrumental music. The Dionysiac procession. To the historian of the drama the most important of all early rituals were the dithyrambic choruses and dances with which the festivals of Dionysus were celebrated by the Greeks. We know comparatively little about them. Looking back in the light of later developments, how- ever, we can see that there were two groups of participants : those in the sacrificial processions through whom tragedy de- veloped; and the bacchanalian revelers through whom, a little later, developed comedy. The former were dressed in goat skins and represented the companions of the god. Singing the dithyrambic hymn they marched to the altar and sacrificed a goat. It may have been true also that certain incidents in the life of Dionysus were enacted, and that one of the leaders of the procession himself impersonated the god. The second group of participants was called the komos (comus). The members of this group also paraded at the Dionysiac festivals, acted out crude farcical incidents, and imitated coarse episodes. Up to the middle of the seventh century before our era, these Greek ceremonies were probably in no way superior to many other examples of unconscious drama. In them, as in nearly all the early rituals, the three arts of singing, dancing and play-acting were combined. Significance of unconscious drama. These few examples il- lustrate perhaps fully enough the extent and character of the great body of “unconscious drama,” a large portion of which must have come into existence long before the art of writing was commonly known. The plays were often more or less improvised; though the tendency was, of course, for them to settle into form as they were handed down from one genera- F 4 b ES 5 i o / > "1STALIN oF en a ene era eT 8 DANCING AND PLAY-ACTING tion to the next. As they were witnessed ‘n the beginning of history, so they may be seen today among Indians and other tribal peoples. Unlike most of the plays produced on what we call the civilized stages of the world, the unconscious dramas were always given for some purpose other than entertainment. Usually they were a part of a religious ritual in which the tribe more or less participated. There was little distinction between spectators and performers. Lessons in conduct were incul- cated, the history of the tribe was taught, the principles of courage and honor were exemplified. Most of the religious ideas familiar today,—such as the belief in a Spirit, in the power of intercession, in immortality, and in the appearance of a Saviour for the tribe,—these were all portrayed. Fur- thermore, the subjects used were the same subjects which are in use today: the fight of man against fate or against great odds; the warfare of sex; the tragedy of mistaken vengeance; the symbolic presentation of the changes from night to day, or from winter to spring. The art of the stage is rooted in these practices of primitive peoples, from whom the play-actor learned the making and use of disguises, the manner of painting the body or draping it with skins, the way to use animal faces and heads, the making of headdresses and masks, and the imitation of the sounds of animals and of nature. The early ceremonies were the school for historic drama, and the stories told by tribesmen are the very stories which have been told and retold on the stages of the world. Moreover, while civilized drama has had long peri- ods of quiescence, seeming to have disappeared, unconscious drama has persisted. 7CHAPTER II HOW THE STORY-TELLERS SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES In books lies the soul of the whole past time: the articulate, audible voice of the past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.—THoMAsS CARLYLE. However interesting may be the unconscious drama of primi- tive peoples, there is nevertheless a wide gap between it and the conscious art of the historic stage. Unsophisticated play- acting needed the cross fertilization of a sister art—that of the story-teller—before the new art of the drama could be created. This new art was a fusion of play-acting and story-telling: masterpieces of epic poetry interpreted by masters of imitation. Long before the playwright appeared the pantomime and the epic had reached a high degree of perfection; and when the playwright at last came, he was little troubled about the in- vention of plots. He took what he thought good, from what- ever source offered itself. He was in a sense a composite prod- uct of the play-actor and the story-teller, both of whom were most interested in portraying an exciting experience. Now a fight, a conflict, is the most exciting experience in the world; and primitive legends all have for their subject some sort of struggle,—men against gods or demons, heroes against the ene- mies of the tribe, rebels against tyrants, laws of god against the commands of men. Conflicts such as these became the prime material of the playwright. Chief sources of story material used in drama, There are four principal sources from which the playwrights of various periods have drawn material for their plots or fables. They are (1) the ancient mythologies; (2) the Bible and other sacred books, together with the associated legends about saints and holy places; (3) tales of chivalry and knighthood, Italian 9 i nyo ” c M r {IO HOW THE STORY-TELLERS novelle, and the like, all generally grouped together under the name of medieval romances; (4) chronicles and other historical records. These four groups are not of course mutually ex- clusive. They overlap at many points; but asa working classi- fication they will serve. Mythology. In many nations there exist legends, half heroic and half religious, which appear to have preceded the begin- nings of written literature. These legends were preserved, probably often much improved, and handed down to succeed- ing generations by professional story-tellers, whose business it was to entertain the court, the camp, or the marketplace. In Greece these story-tellers were called rhapsodes, in northern countries skalds, in Celtic countries bards, in medieval Europe minstrels or gleemen. Through these bards were disseminated legends going back to the dawn of history, exaggerated re- ports of commonplace events, or sometimes the composite rec- ord of several tribal heroes whose exploits came to be ascribed to a single popular figure. Patriotism, self-sacrifice, pride, and courage were favorite themes. One of the earliest examples of this class is the story of Job. Its text, as we have it in the Bible, is probably corrupted by numerous additions and deletions. As it stands, it appears to belong as much to drama as to pure literature; and it seems likely, as certain biblical scholars hold, that its author intended it to be enacted, but was opposed by the Jewish priesthood. It offers a good deal of spirited dialogue, thereby differing from most of the examples of unconscious drama described in the first chapter. Though Job is a work of religious speculation, yet the changes of situation, the suspense, the strokes of mis- fortune and the subsequent relief are of the nature of drama, and excellent drama at that. Beneath the outward struggle of the hero are speculations upon the nature of God, his relation- ship to man, and the purposes for which men live and die. In it are many eloquent passages upon the beauty and wonders of nature ; there are pathos, irony, wit. The combination of play- acting quality, good story, and sombre strength make the same 1 Produced in America about 1912 by Mr. Stuart Walker.SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES II appeal on the stage today that they might have made some thirty centuries ago. Of all the ancient mythologies, that of the Greeks has been most freely drawn upon by playwrights. During the time of Solon and the Pisistratide (sixth century, B.c.) the national legends and myths were collected into what was known as the Epic Cycle, considerable portions of which have now been lost. This Cycle included the history of the Trojan War, the legends of the House of Atreus (the Atride), of Laius and Cdipus (the Labdacide), of Hercules, Ajax, Philoctetes, Jason and the Golden Fleece, besides many other well known stories. By ancient writers this Epic Cycle was commonly attributed to Homer. At the period when the effort towards preserving the myths was being made, the Persians were threatening; and within a generation they had actually invaded Grecian terri- tory. The dissemination of the legends undoubtedly had its effect in arousing the spirit of national pride, and in thus help- ing the Greeks to resist the invasions of what was then the dominant oriental power. For the historian of drama, however, the important point is that all but one of the extant Greek tragedies are based upon incidents related in the Epic Cycle. Even concerning the lost plays, there is record of only two or three cases, in the entire history of Greek tragedy, when the Homeric poems were not used as a source book. Sometimes a slight episode, occupying but a few lines in the poem, was elaborated into a full length play; sometimes new characters were invented and associated with the well known hero; and sometimes the entire emphasis was changed, so that a minor character in the poem became the hero of the play. Let us glance for a moment at some of the stories contained in the Epic Cycle. Probably the most used of all the stories of the world is that of the House of Atreus. It contains the great characters of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Ores- tes, Cassandra, and Iphigenia, as well as some of the most fa- mous scenes of all literature. The Oresteia of A‘schylus, the only complete trilogy extant, is built upon it. Sophocles, Eu-12 HOW THE STORY-TELLERS ripides, Voltaire, Alfieri, and Dryden all wrote plays upon the single theme of the revenge of Orestes; and this list includes only the most distinguished names. The sacrifice of Iphigenia has tempted the giants of literature, being used at least once by Sophocles, twice by Euripides, and twice by Goethe. The Latin poets, Nzvius and Ennius, composed tragedies on the subject. The play of Euripides called Iphigema in Aulis was translated into Latin by Erasmus in 1524. An Italian version appeared in 1560. At least three French versions of the same play appeared during the seventeenth century before Racine wrote his [phigénie. Gluck’s opera, based on the play of Racine, was performed in 1674. The play of Euripides was translated into German by Schiller, and many English versions have been made. More than twenty operatic compositions, be- sides that of Gluck, have been made with the Aulis plays as a basis, while nearly a dozen composers have essayed to put the Tauris story into operatic form. The myth of the Labdacide has proved almost equally fer- tile as a source of play material. It includes the CGedipus legend, and supplies us with the deathless character of Antigone. Three of the most admired of the extant plays of Sophocles were founded on it. A‘schylus, Euripides, Voltaire, and many lesser poets have drawn upon it for dramatic themes. As in the myth of the Atridz, the situations can be so transformed in their moral implications as to afford a variety of plots. The story of Prometheus furnished A*schylus material for a trilogy, and gave Shelley one of his greatest subjects. The myths of Hercules and Hippolytus, each, formed the basis for plays by Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, and Racine. The three greatest Greek playwrights used in turn each of the following stories: the return of the Trojan captives, the Argonautic Ex- pedition with its story of Medea, the fate of Andromache, the legends of Ajax, Hecuba, and Helen. Nine other myths were used by both A%schylus and Sophocles. When national drama, in different countries, began to take shape after the Renais- sance, these Greek plots were rewritten again and again by French and Italian writers of tragedy; and the poets of today are still using the same themes.SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES 13 Sacred books as sources of plots. The famous myths and symbolical legends of the Orient, in many cases, are embedded in what are known as the sacred books. The Asiatic play best known to Europeans, Sakuntala, is founded upon events re- lated in the sacred book of the Hindus, the Mahabharata. The No plays of Japan are uniformly founded upon legends con- nected with sacred shrines and holy people. Many of the char- acters in the long oriental plays have powers far exceeding those of mere mortals, and are looked upon, by the populace at least, as partaking more or less of the divine nature. The most striking illustration, however, of the use of sacred litera- ture as a source for play material is in the drama of the Middle Ages, which was based on Bible stories and the traditions con- nected with the lives of saints. Professor Flickinger has pointed out that what the Homeric poems were to the Greek dramatists, the Bible and biblical legends were to the makers of pageants, miracles, and mysteries during the six centuries when these forms of entertainment flourished in England and Central Europe. Medieval romances. The third great source of plot material consists of epics and legends collected in different countries during the Middle Ages. As the rhapsodes. had traveled about Greece reciting the Homeric poems, so the skalds, gleemen, and minstrels of Europe went from court to court, or from baronial hall to feudal fortress, chanting their songs, and relating their tales of love, death, and glory on the field of battle. There is a known list of two hundred and thirty skalds who flourished between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Their songs fill more than two hundred volumes. The two Eddas—the Elder Edda in unrhymed verse, and the Younger Edda in prose— recite the story of Sigurd, Brunhild, the Volsungs, and the Rhinegold. In Germany the Middle Ages produced the Book of Heroes (Heldenbuch) and the Song of the Nibelungs, with the stories of Attila, Theodoric the Great, Siegfried, called the Achilles of the North, Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther. Among the romances of chivalry are those relating to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, those centering about Amadis of Gaul, and still a third relating to the court of Charlemagne } ? ;14 HOW THE STORY-TELLERS and his Paladins. Dramatic and full of beauty and symbolism as these tales are, they have so far been much less used than the myths of Greece. In Spain, where the institution of chivalry took firmest root, the thrilling tales of Don Roderigo and other knights fill more than seventy volumes. These old romances expressed, in a special way, religious and national characteristi¢s, and fur- nished material not only for Spanish writers, but for dramatists of other countries. Botta describes this wealth of literary ma- terial as “a mine which has unceasingly been wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and which still remains unexhausted.” In many countries, heroic tales crystallized into epic poems; but in Italy they, with romantic legends of all sorts, were gath- ered into novelle, or short prose novels. Stories, already cur- rent for generations, were retold with witty and often ribald additions, and in time were turned into such collections as the Decameron, and so disseminated all over Europe. The Decam- eron, consisting of one hundred lively tales, was published in Italy in 1353. Not only Italian playwrights, but, in the course of time, the greatest writers of England, Denmark, and France borrowed from these stores of romance. In 1566 William Paynter published sixty of the Decameron stories in English under the title The Palace of Pleasure; and in a few years thirty more of the novels were printed in England. As is well known, the story of Romeo and Juliet, as well as several situa- tions in other plays, were taken by Shakespeare from Italian sources; and the germ of many a character, now familiar to every reader of English drama, may be found either in Boc- caccio, Cinthio, or some other Italian novelist. The Arabs never developed a drama of their own, but from ancient times they were famous for their professional story- tellers. Jinns, fairies, demons, and beautiful female spirits, called Peris, lived in these Arabian romances, together with the characters which inhabit the world of trade and barter. This oriental background has had a perennial fascination for drama- tists; but it has so far proved difficult to reproduce success- fully on the stages of the western world.SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES 15 History as plot material. The fourth and last great source of plot material lies in the historians and chroniclers, espe- cially Plutarch, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, and Stow. The first Italian tragedy of the Renaissance, Sofonisba, is based on a story found in Livy; but it was Plutarch who in- spired the greater number of modern European playwrights. He was born in Cheronea, Greece, about 46 a.p., and wrote studies of forty-six Lives in which, in every case, a Roman was made to parallel a Greek. The Lives, familiar now to every school child, were first translated into English by Sir Thomas North and published in 1579. North made his trans- lation from the French version of Amyot. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died about 1152, was possibly a Benedictine monk; he was certainly made Bishop of St. Asaph not long before his death. It appears that he was at Oxford in the year 1129, at which time he was probably al- ready at work on his Historia Regum Britannia, or History of the Kings of Britain. Two editions, and two translations, of this work made their appearance during the twelfth century, and many later chroniclers seem to have regarded it as a vera- cious account of early British history. It was written in Latin, translated into Anglo-Norman, and back again into “semi- Saxon or transitional English.” More than one Elizabethan writer drew upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia before Shakespeare found therein the weird story of “King Leir.” Raphael Holinshed, the most important among the authors of Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, died about 1580. The work was probably begun about 1548, and two editions were published during the sixteenth century, the first in 1578. Holinshed and the other contributors to the Chronicles drew upon Geoffrey of Monmouth to some extent. John Stow, 1525-1604, was the son of a tailor and an all-round, competent historian for his time. He produced A Summary of English Chronicles in 1561, translated and published the Chronicle of Matthew Paris in 1571, and the Historia Brevis of Thomas Walsingham a few years later. His Survey of London ap- peared only two years before the end of the century. The work which was of most interest to playwrights, however, was16 HOW THE STORY-TELLERS probably his Annales, or a Generale Chronicle of England from Brute until the present yeare of Christ 1580. The facts in these and other chronicles were often mixed with invention and superstitious ideas; but they formed a gold- mine for dramatists, especially for those of the time of Eliza- beth. Out of them came Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Tambur- laine, The Jew of Malta, and a score of other plays. Shake- speare rarely ever used contemporaneous plot material, but he crept up rather close to his own time in Henry Viti Other writers took curious events, such as would today make merely a newspaper headline, and transposed them into terms of drama. The stories of the Cid and of Faust, half legendary and half historical, traveled abroad, the one from Spain and the other from Germany, finding important dramatizers in for- eign countries. The four groups, thus briefly indicated, give an idea of the richness of the reservoir from which the playwrights of twenty centuries have drawn a large proportion of their plots, situa- tions and characters. The classic poets ignored all sources but the first; the makers of the sacred drama of the Middle Ages ignored all but the second. Dramatists of the Renaissance, and especially the Elizabethans, widened and enlarged the field until at last the world of the stage, at its best, was all but as broad as the field of life itself. Modern plays are not better plays, in themselves, than the ancient masterpieces; but the modern stage, taken by and large, exhibits a greater variety of character, a wider range of problems, than the stage of any earlier time. Characteristic themes of the story-tellers. The themes which occupied the play-actors of primitive peoples, we found, were those connected with war, hunting, the getting of food, and, to a slighter degree, the getting of wives. There were exhibi- tions of rebellion against authority, the salvation of the tribe by the suffering of innocence, and the exaltation of family or tribal traditions. These themes were also part of the stock in trade of the professional story-teller. In the course of our study we shall have to name and rename these world-themes : a.SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES 17 taking vengeance for personal or family wrongs, every form of chase and struggle, patriotism, family feuds, romantic love (this especially in modern times), the adventures of national and tribal heroes, and the fight against real or fancied tyranny. The actors in these struggles, both in primitive plays and in primitive legends, included supernatural beings, gods and demons, wrestlers, warriors and champions, ambitious tyrants and overconfident kings. Not until modern times was the middle-class or low-born person introduced into the serious drama of any nation. In comedy, however, slaves, traders, parasites and the like have always found a place. The affairs of women, and women characters, for many centuries were of little interest to the playwrights. For one character such as Antigone or Phedra, there were certainly a score of salient male characters. In both unconscious drama and in legends there has been perpetuated the memory of practices which, in Europe at least, long ago disappeared: such, for example, as the habit of infant exposure, or instances of the marriage of brother and sister. Importance of national and historical themes. History has constantly been remade by the playwright; or, if not remade, at least illuminated with a light more dazzling and alluring than that of the historian. Who would know or care about Lear or Tamburlaine, were it not for a few pages engrossed with gorgeous poetry and burning with passion? Kings, warriors, and local champions have acquired a universal quality, a halo of symbolism, which they never had in life or in the pages of the historian. As national monuments, these creations are of importance. When national ideals were forming, they helped to establish a heroic tradition. They supplied a kind of train- ing school, a standard of thought and conduct. Schlegel says: “A single monument, like that of the Cid, is more valuable to the people than whole libraries of wit and genius without na- tional associations.” General progress of the art. The growth of the dramatic art has not been a continuous advance from rudimentary forms towards an ever increasing standard of perfection; rather, its progress has been through sudden spurts of achievement fol- Pe b= % 3 * 3 i : asoder ug | : | { | ee ee 18 SUPPLIED DRAMATIC THEMES lowed by a return to almost primitive forms. The first period produced plays perfect in their own way; the last period can do no more. If the advance of the art were to be roughly represented by a chart, it would show a gradually rising line, with several breaks for mountain peaks. H Athens England 16th —17th! 6th B.C. pres Japan 16th France 14th THE CHART OF DRAMA The highest of these breaks, or mountain peaks, represent the achievements of Greece, Spain, Elizabethan England, and France. Smaller but still remarkable peaks stand for India in the fourth century and Japan in the fourteenth. On the whole, the trend of the art has been upward. Those periods are im- portant in which new subjects, new ideas of national character, more complex situations, and greater technical skill have ap- peared. If we find it interesting to ask: What sort of man did the ancients admire? How will a man act when driven by ambition or fear or selfishness or love? Is anything, in the heart of man, stronger than self-interest? If we are desirous of asking these and similar questions, it is in drama that we shall find answers.CHAPTER III HOW THE PLAY-ACTOR AND THE STORY- TELLER COMBINED TO MAKE DRAMA Let us not deceive ourselves. Art is indissolubly bound up with men’s spiritual forces. What we learn from... the Athens of Socrates is this: that art is able to assert man’s moral nature at moments when it seems in other spheres to have been paralyzed or vitiated. —J. AppINcTon SyMmonps, The Renaissance in Italy. We have already spoken of the Greek Dionysiac festivals, and how, roughly speaking, there were two groups of cele- brants: the goat-singers (tragodoi) from whose hymns and ceremonies developed tragedy; and the group of revelers (komos) through whom, at a slightly later date, comedy devel- oped. The hymn sung by the goat chorus in the sacrificial procession was called the dithyramb, and at first it was prob- ably little more than a crude drinking song, often improvised. Arion, who flourished about 625 B.c., appears to have organ- ized it into a hymn with a prescribed form and meter. By tradition the dithyrambic chorus numbered fifty voices and was accompanied by the flute. The subjects of the verse were al- ways episodes from the life of Dionysus, the god of the vine, of music, and of poetry. It is supposed that the leader, with the singers, must often have indulged in pantomimic exercises suited to the story. In the meantime, while the dithyrambic chorus was taking definite shape, the Homeric legends were becoming more and more familiar through th recitations of the rhapsodes, who were we me guests at the c yurts of kings, at banquets, in the camps iu at popular festivals. The tales which they sung or recited were of long-forgotten battles, of Olympian gods, and of superhuman heroes. Thus in Greece, during the sixth and fifth centuries before our era, the play-actors and the story- tellers encountered each other, with mutual profit. The bards 19_ren ene ne ae ee eae ee oe Ce = - eee Te } - 20 HOW PLAY-ACTOR AND STORY-TELLER furnished the plots, while the Dionysiac revelers or worshipers did the mumming; with the result that the unconscious drama of earlier days leaped suddenly into a more complex art. The sum of the two arts, however, unlike the sum in arithmetic, was more than the two put together,—it was a new creation. One by one the Greek legends were refashioned. The strug- gle of the hero was made to stand out against a background of singing and dancing, “turning points” were emphasized, the climax was prepared for and rounded out. Nietzsche has pointed out, in The Birth of Tragedy, the combination of what he called the Dionysian and the Apollonian elements, that is, the choral and the epic. The singing of the chorus, with the dancing, became the framework within which the given story unfolded itself. Character took on a new importance, irrelevant or inartistic details of the original legend were slurred over or omitted, and each story was constructed with an eye to design, “with a beginning, a middle, and an end.” The designer was the playwright. Furthermore, each detail of the story was contrived in such a way as to be interpreted by the play-actor, with the help of singers and dancers, and the whole performance was then shifted to a public dancing place near the shrine of Dionysus. The spectators no longer took part in the performance, which now became partly a religious ceremony, partly an entertainment given by playwright and actors, and exposed to the admiration, indifference, or censure of the crowd. The play, formerly improvised, was now care- fully planned and written down. Dancers and actors were gradually differentiated ; and through this differentiation evolved the professional actor. These changes, naturally, came about only by a series of steps, some of which can be traced. Thespis. If tradition were to be taken literally, Thespis should be accounted as the Barnum of his age; for to him have been accredited striking innovations in the way of enter- tainment. His actual achievements, however, are sufficiently important. He belonged to the sixth century B.c., and came from Icaria, an important center of Dionysian worship. It is probable that he was a leader of one of the dithyrambic cho- ruses; and his chief service to drama was the “invention” of theCOMBINED TO MAKE DRAMA 21 actor, or answerer (hypocritos), whose business it was to im- personate in turn each of the characters about whom the leader of the chorus was talking. Of course the play-actor had ex- isted long before the time of Thespis; but with a difference. The primitive play-actor was one of a group, whose main busi- ness was the ritual prescribed. Skill was of secondary impor- tance. The actor, as he now for the first time made his ap- pearance, was a specialized performer, taking a part which lay far beyond the powers of the other participants. It was “in- vention” of the actor in the sense that a crude and haphazard custom was lifted out of the class of primitive activities and placed where it could develop into a fine art. About the time of Thespis (but whether inaugurated by him we do not know) other important changes were made in the practice of Dionysian worship. Until then it is probable that events in the life of Dionysus always formed the subject of the dithyrambic hymn; now other themes, especially those embod- ied in the Homeric poems, were introduced. The performance was not improvised, as formerly, but planned out in advance; and the metrical form of the verse, which had been trochaic, was changed to iambic. The Thespian show also seems to have been the first to travel from place to place; though it is most likely that the performances were always given at the Dionysiac shrines and around an altar. The Thespian play. Simple indeed was this first attempt at drama, and yet in principle quite different from the informal plays described in the first chapter. First appeared the actor, who delivered a short explanatory speech telling who the char- acters were in the coming play, where the action was supposed to take place, and, most likely also, what the point was. The chorus (which for some time after Thespis was to be the most important feature of the performance) then marched in; or perhaps it came with a solemn dance, singing the dithyramb. Meanwhile the actor had disappeared. At the end of the first hymn, or ode, he reappeared in costume and acted out, or nar- rated in a lively manner, the episode which was “on” at the moment. Sometimes he carried on a spicy dialogue with the leader of the chorus. When the first episode was finished, he . amare is i 5 ;22 HOW PLAY-ACTOR AND STORY-TELLER again disappeared, and the chorus chanted another hymn. In the second pause he reappeared in different character, and so on until the end of the entertainment. The performance must have been something like an enlarged ballad, with alternating dialogue and refrain; or perhaps even more like the modern vaudeville, in which independent “turns” succeed each other. It is obvious, in such an arrangement, that the actor must have some easily accessible place for making the changes in his masks and costume. For this purpose Thespis built a little hut, the Greek word for which is skéné, to which the actor could retire. This early skéné, which became of course our “scene,” was purely a mechanical necessity, and not at all de- signed for decoration or identification of place. The Thespian tradition. In his time Thespis not only acted the chief parts himself—rdles of god, king, messenger, or vic- tim—but he also wrote his own pieces, so far as they were written, trained his chorus, and was his own manager. It is thought that he not only used masks but also pigments to dis- guise the face of the actor. He appeared privately at Athens as early as 560 B.c., without the assistance of the state; but in 534 B.C., nine years before the birth of Aé‘schylus, the old stroller took part in the first’ public competition in tragedy at the City Dionysia in Athens, and received the first prize. On one occasion Solon, archon of Athens and a contemporary of Thespis, condescended to witness a play. When the actor ap- peared before the wise man at the close of the performance, Solon rebuked him for “trying to deceive the people with his imitation gods and goddesses.” Importance of Thespian changes. The performance was not yet very dramatic, nevertheless it marks the difference between primitive, imitative dances and the drama of the schools. Un- fortunately, no manuscripts are preserved illustrating this tran- sition stage. In the thirty years between the last appearance of Thespis and the first play of A‘schylus in 499 B.c., many writers must have experimented with the new form, but no complete work has survived. From the story-tellers there is a wealth of material; but from the Dionysiac plays there re- main in all only a few fragme. s of the dithyrambic choruses: a.COMBINED TO MAKE DRAMA 23 twenty-eight lines from a fine work by Pindar, invoking the good will of the gods, and one or two other fragments. The forerunners. The names of three playwrights are known: Pratinas, Cheerilus, and Phrynicus. In the contest in tragedy at the City Dionysia in 499 B.c., Cheerilus and Pratinas were successful, while among the defeated candidates was the youthful Aéschylus. There are records to the effect that Che- rilus wrote one hundred and sixty plays, won the prize thirteen times, and lived for some years into the fifth century. Pratinas contented himself with the well known Dionysiac incidents, gave them a humorous turn, treated them with con- siderable license and freedom, and so established the satyr play,—a form in which the goat-skin dress was retained for the chorus, though some of the newer features of tragedy were also employed. Chcerilus was also a writer of satyr plays. Phrynicus was the most famous of the three forerunners, and in a literary sense the boldest. He struck out audaciously and used an event from recent Athenian history in a play called The Capture of Miletus. At the performance, people wept with emotion, so profound was the impression made; but in the end the state fined Phrynicus for portraying an event un- flattering to the Athenians. Aristophanes called him a “writer of beautiful dramas.” He had the reputation of being the first playwright among the Greeks to represent female characters on the stage—that is, to use masks representing women—and also of inventing many new and graceful movements for the dancers. Ancient critics, however, attribute to him as his chief merit the ability to lend more pathos, beauty, and dignity to his tragedies. 2» ? Ey 3 | ioo CAN Ferre - iS nTwat nemo ‘i SECTION TWO CLASSIC DRAMAI . . . ee eA — y i / ' | Perr S ae oayCHAPTER IV ZESCHYLUS, THE FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT . .. poetry has a universal and a.moral function. ... It is an art that has all time and all experience for its natural subject mat- ter, and all the possibilities of being for its ultimate theme.— Grorce SANTAYANA, Poetry and Religion. Of all the miracles which dazzle mankind in the history of literary genius, none is more amazing than the advent of ZEschylus. In his art he was bound by innumerable ties to Thespis and the forerunners, and to the half savage dancers round the drum; yet he reached far beyond them. Those primitive rituals and dances are alien to us, while 7Eschylus speaks as one of ourselves. With him appeared probably the first written play. He took the scattering, haphazard exercise of Thespis and made of it a coherent art form. He also began to think about the questions and problems with which we are still concerned, and tried to embody them in his work. He steps from the dim light of the primitive world into the rela- tively broad daylight of modern times; and he ushers in the great cycle of Greek drama which, in the space of a century, ran its course and decayed. Life of Zschylus. 525-456 B.c. The last recorded public appearance of Thespis was in 534 B.c. Nine years after that, at Eleusis, not far from Athens, Aéschylus was born, in a fam- ily belonging to the ancient Attic nobility. He and his brother Cynegeirus fought with distinction in various engagements against the invading Persians, and their portraits were included in the famous picture of the battle of Marathon on the Painted Porch at Athens. The first appearance of A®schylus in the competitions for tragedy was made, as has been noted, in 499 B.C., against Pratinas and Cheerilus, and was unsuccessful. The excitement of the contest brought such a great crowd of 27 es a } Ps % *) 4 % 3 | / : }23 2eSCHYiEUS, PIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT spectators to the theater that the wooden benches broke down. After this first appearance and defeat, A®schylus left Athens for Sicily; but in 490, the year of Marathon, he must have been back in Athens. Between the battles of Marathon and Salamis he achieved the first of his thirteen successes in the competitions. In 468 he was defeated by the young Sophocles. 7Eschylus made many visits to Sicily, and seems finally to have adopted that island as his home, under the patronage of Prince Hieron. He must have returned frequently to Athens, however, in order to act in his plays and to superintend their production. Although greatly admired by the Athenians, yet he was almost mobbed on one occasion under suspicion of hav- ing revealed the Eleusinian mysteries. At his trial he was ac- quitted. He died at Gela, Sicily, in his seventieth year. The legend is that he was seated out of doors, writing, when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on it and killed him. He was buried in the public tombs of Gela with great pomp and magnificence. Over his tomb was inscribed an epitaph which, it was said, was composed by him- self, mentioning the fact that he had fought at Marathon, but saying nothing of his work as a poet. The seven extant plays. /Eschylus wrote about ninety plays, seven of which have been preserved. The Suppliants is prob- ably the earliest of these. The story, taken from the Epic Cycle, tells how the fifty daughters of Danaus, sought in mar- riage by their cousins, the fifty sons of A®gyptus, fled for pro- tection to a place near Argos. The fifty suitors overtook them and through a messenger commanded the maidens to give them- selves up; but at this point the king of Argos interfered, send- ing the suitors off about their business. The play closes with a hymn of thanksgiving sung by the chorus. The Persians. This play offers the only instance in the 7Eschylean tragedies of the use of a plot taken from other than Homeric sources. It was written to celebrate the final defeat of the armies of Xerxes, but was not exhibited until 472, seven years after the hostile army had departed, never to return. The scene is laid in Persia, among the very enemies against whom the Greeks had fought for more than eleven years. The , WestZESCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT 29 successive scenes give the narrative of the defeat and ruin of the Persian forces. One sees the oriental setting, the fear of the down-trodden subjects in the presence of their despotic ruler, the votive offerings and libations of Queen ‘Atossa, and finally the sorrow and wailing of Xerxes and his courtiers at the news of disaster. It is easy to imagine how such a play would feed the secret pride and exultation of a Greek audi- ence. It is, however, far more than a boastful picture of Greek triumph and Persian defeat; rather is it a moral lesson on the subject of tyranny, designed to touch the heart and conscience of every oppressor, whether Greek or barbarian. The Seven Against Thebes. A single incident connected with the CEdipus legend is made the basis of this play, whose underlying theme is the fulfilment of a curse. Of the two sons of C£dipus, Eteocles and Polynices, the prophecy had been made: “They shall divide their inheritance with the sword in such a manner as to obtain equal shares.” When the play begins, Eteocles is in possession of the city, while Polynices with an army of Argive soldiers advances to attack it. In the battle which follows by the walls of Thebes, both brothers are killed. Their “equal share” is a grave. Antigone, the sister, here appears for a moment, announcing her determination to give her rebel brother the decent burial which had been denied him. Prometheus Bound. This play shares with the Agamemnon the distinction of being the most admired of the A‘schylean dramas. It has perhaps influenced more literary people than any other classic work. Like The Suppliants and The Seven Against Thebes, it was probably part of a trilogy. Prometheus is the friend and teacher of mankind. His services to men have brought upon him the enmity of Zeus who, through his messenger Hermes, demands that Prometheus shall consent to give up his practice of helping mortals and acknowledge him, Zeus, as the rightful ruler of Olympus. The Firebringer proudly and bitterly refuses, whereupon Zeus condemns him to long ages of punishment. He is chained to a rock by an abyss in the Caucasus. A vulture tortures him perpetually, and finally he is thrown into Tartarus. Before this catastrophe, Ml F a ; fi i iELL 30 ASCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT however, there comes the promise of release and the justifi- cation of the hero. Concerning this play Haigh, one of the ablest of modern critics, has said: “The central idea of the play—that of a god submitting of his own free will to ages of torment, in order to rescue mankind from their degradation—is a concep- tion so sublime, and so alien to the usual spirit of Greek re- ligion, that some of the early fathers perceived in it a dim presentiment of the Christian doctrine. But the drama may be regarded from many points of view. It may be looked upon, not only as a noble example of self-sacrifice, but also as a type of man’s struggle against destiny, or of the conflict be- tween liberty and oppression. ... The great charm of the Prometheus Bound lies in its varied and perennial sugges- tiveness.” The trilogy. The regulations of the annual competitions were probably somewhat elastic, especially during the earlier part of the fifth century; but it is understood that in general each poet exhibited three tragedies and one satyr play, the four pieces being performed in succession in the course of a single day. Before A®schylus the poets had used for these plays, so far as we know, three different subjects; but ZEschylus saw a way of deepening the impression by making the three tragedies all part of one story. Thus rose the trilogy. Each play is technically complete, yet gains in strength and meaning by being linked with the other two. The only extant example of this form is the celebrated Oresteia, which com- prises the Agamemnon, The Libation Pourers (Chephort), and The Benign Ones (Eumenides). The fourth play, a satyric drama called Proteus, is lost. In each play there is a distinct dramatic situation; but it is possible to regard the trilogy as a single three-act play, as it probably would have been written by a modern playwright. The story of the Oresteia. The plot, taken of course from the Homeric poems, tells of the sorrow and successive disasters falling upon the House of Atreus. Its theme is the working out of hereditary guilt. The Agamemnon begins with the watchman’s announcing the return of the warrior-king afterZESCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT 31 his long absence at Troy. When he appears, bringing with him his captive maiden Cassandra, Clytemnestra greets her husband with scornful, haughty words which sound dutiful, but have a sting in their double meaning. Then with the help of her lover she murders him. The second play, The Libation Pourers, shows how Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges the death of his father by murdering his mother and her companion A®gisthus. The third play, The Benign Ones, pictures Orestes pursued by the Furies, brought to trial at Athens, and at last obtaining pardon. With his purification, the Furies are transformed into protectors, and the long course of guilt and suffering is finished. Changes made by Zéschylus. Working conditions and ma- terials, such as the outdoor setting, the use of masks, the pres- ence of the chorus with its dancing and singing, were all in- herited by ZEschylus from the more primitive drama. The main characters and events of his plot were supplied by the legend. The single actor had already been “invented” by Thespis. One of the first things Aéschylus did was to introduce a second actor. ‘This innovation, made thirty years after Thespis had taken the first step, was a momentous event. Somewhat later Sophocles brought a third actor on the stage, and Aeschylus quickly adopted the new style. Of course dum- mies were used, as in the scene where Prometheus was nailed to the rock; and in one or two later tragedies it seems as if a fourth actor would have been required. In general, however, after the early work of Sophocles Greek tragedy was limited to the three-actor play. The physical setting of such a drama as Prometheus was probably somewhat more elaborate than that of any primitive play. Certain characters arrive on the stage in a wagon drawn by “a winged beast.” Chariots had already become theatrical property, and other mechanical devices soon made their ap- pearance. The custom rose for each entering personage by way of introduction to state distinctly his name, place of resi- dence, and his office. Frequently also there was given, through the words of the prologue or one of the actors, a description of the scene of the play, with the landscape features. Such de-a! F 32 #ARSCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT scription, direct or indirect, is of course one of the stock the- atrical devices. “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!” was only one of Shakespeare’s ways of localizing his scene. The ZEschylean chorus, composed originally of the singers of the dithyramb, was continuously present. In the time of Thespis and the early years of A%schylus it was by far the most important portion of the play. The extant tragedies of ZEschylus, however, show a gradual but definite change. In The Suppliants, an early work, more than half the lines are given to the chorus, and the greater part of the dialogue is between a single actor and the chorus, while the second actor has but a slight part. In the succeeding plays, however, the choral passages are much reduced in length, while the dialogue is prolonged and made far more important. In The Sup pliants the fifty maidens form the chorus, but after a time A‘schylus reduced the number to twelve; and from then on the chorus takes its place as a secondary though still necessary part of tragedy, composed of appropriate characters, such as a council of elders, courtiers in the palace of Xerxes, lawgivers, or sympathetic expositors of the story. Occasionally they appear as prophetic attendants to whom a happier future is visible. Whatever changes he made, 7¢schylus always remained ele- mental and simple. He delighted in picturesque narrative and phrases, such as “starry-kirtled night.” He speaks of the wrath of God as “trampling with heavy foot upon the nations of Persia.” He put more color and variety into the costumes of the chorus and actors, and elaborated the dance movements. For his time he was a specialist in novelties, such as torch-light processions and choral effects of a striking character. ne used different rhythms in depicting varying moods, suddenly transforming the expectations of the audience from delight into anxiety and grief. Sometimes his characters indulge in talk which at the moment seems trivial, but turns at a phrase into tragic intensity, mystery, or dread. He was a master of the dramatic situation and of climax, having an eye for what was theatrical and spectacular in the best sense. “The world,” writes Haigh, “has seldom seen a more splendid com-ZESCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT 33 bination of the arts of poetry, music, dancing and stage man- agement than was produced under the guidance of his genius.” Patriotic and religious ideas. Like most of the earlier Athenian poets, Aischylus was intensely national. His plays reveal a constant care and anxiety for Greece and the traditions of greatness which she had inherited. The Persians is in a sense the earliest specimen of Greek history in existence. It was composed in the full flood of national pride, in the face of the humiliation of the enemy. A¢schylus sings, “Impregnable the walls of Athens stand, Her fearless children are her bulwarks sure.” Aristocratic in his principles, A®schylus believed that the gov- ernment of the state should lie upon the shoulders of the educated and the well-born. The rights of suppliant and guest are sacred. Hospitality is one of the paramount duties. Lib- erty, reverence for the gods, generous suffering for the good of others, and the ancient noble heritage of the Greeks,— these are topics on which he loves to dwell. His moral earnest- ness is apparent in each one of his plays. To him Zeus was the sublime and just ruler of the universe, punishing sin and evil. There are laws of right and good in accordance with which man must live; but patience in suffering disarms even the wrath of the gods and brings rest at last. Mixed with this deeply religious temperament were all sorts of ancient superstitions, mingled with a tinge of wholesome skepticism. In his plays, as in some of the examples of primi- tive drama, there are lessons in geography, in the history of civilization, and in the origin of human customs. The very core and kernel of one of his greatest plays, the Prometheus, is the spectacle of an undefeated will struggling against an enthroned power. AEschylus placed the wreath of immortality upon him whose courage and determination held fast in the face of threatened disaster. The eclipse of ZEschylus. Revered as A‘schylus was in his life and honored in his death, yet there rose a generation that laughed at his archaic diction and ridiculed his plots. Even within his own century, his simplicity was often scoffed at. 4 ) Fs i ii34 #ESCHYLUS, FIRST GREAT PLAYWRIGHT Aristotle, writing a century after his death, evidently regarded him as one who had served well in his time, but was then out of date. Beside Sophocles and Euripides he seemed antiquated. To the modern reader or spectator his scenes sometimes seem somewhat childish or improbable; and yet it is easy to accept his fabulous, mysterious world of gods and heroes, which has the same reality and truth that the ancient fables have, only many times magnified and filled with poetic imagination. The genius of Atschylus was flaming and volcanic, suggesting a comparison with Marlowe, who, like A®schylus, ushered in a brilliant period of dramatic creation. With his remarkable gifts—his poetic power, his fertile imagination, his flair for the thing that was theatrically effec- tive, and his passionate earnestness for the right and good— Aéschylus was a worthy founder of one of the world’s greatest arts. For the Greeks he fixed and determined absolutely the form of the tragic drama. It was left to later playwrights to make plots more nearly perfect, and to achieve a more exquisite finish; but in all essentials, classic tragedy was moulded by feschylus. It was as the great originating genius of drama that he was honored at Athens. Although ordinarily a tragedy was exhibited but once in the city, yet after the death of Aéschylus a special law was passed, authorizing the reproduc- tion of his plays, annually, at the City Dionysia. A grant of money from the public treasury was made to defray the cost. This distinction was not conferred upon any other poet during the fifth century.CHAPTER V SOPHOCLES, THE MOST POLISHED OF THE TRAGIC POETS Creep gently, ivy, gently creep, Where Sophocles sleeps on in calm repose; Thy pale green tresses o’er the marble sweep, While all around shall bloom the purpling rose. There let the vine, with rich, full clusters hang, Its fair young tendrils fling around the stone; Due meed for that sweet wisdom which he sang, By Muses and by Graces called their own. Simmias of Thebes, translation by Plumptre. In Sophocles the supreme poetic gift was united with an almost unparalleled dramatic power, and with him the cycle of Greek tragedy came to its perfection. Technically he in- herited practically everything. The setting of the stage and its appliances, the art of acting, the management of the chorus and the general structure of the play—all these matters had been worked out by A®schylus and his predecessors. Magnifi- cent as the work of Aéschylus had been, it was left to Sophocles to build up a more intricate yet symmetrical plot, to achieve a more polished verse, and to inculcate in his plays a more subtle and profound wisdom. Life of Sophocles. 495-406 or 405 B.c. Colonos was the birthplace of Sophocles, who celebrated the beauties of his native town in one of the extant plays. As a lad of fifteen years he was probably sent away from home, with the women and children, to a place of safety when the Persians under Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.c. When, after their defeat, the day came for the celebration of the victory of the Greeks, the boy Sophocles was chosen to lead the triumphal procession. During his youth the wooden theater which had broken down at the time of the competition of /®schylus against 3536 SOPHOCLES, THE MOST POLISHED Cheerilus and Pratinus was replaced, in part at least, by stone. During this period also A*schylus came to the height of his fame. The work of the elder poet must have had great influ- ence upon the youth. In 468 he entered the competitions against A‘schylus, when the two men were respectively twenty- seven and fifty-seven years of age. The legend is that the excitement over this contest was so great that the Archon Cimon resorted to the unusual method of taking with him to the play his ten generals representing the ten tribes of Attica, and known to be above any suspicion of unfairness. These generals he bound to act as judges. The play submitted by Sophocles was probably the Triptolemos, which received the prize. The text, except for a few fragments, is lost. For twenty-nine years after his first success, Sophocles reigned supreme on the Athenian stage, though he did not always receive the first award. Of his hundred or more plays, seven are preserved. Like A%schylus and his forerunners, he acted both as director and stage manager; but, on account of his weak voice, early in life he withdrew as an actor. The Antigone, composed some time before 440 B.c., was greatly admired. A report, long current, had it that the Antigone brought to its author the odd reward of being appointed a general in the army of Pericles. He received flattering invita- tions from princes of neighboring states to make his home with them; but he seems never to have left Athens except in the course of official duty. In the year 440 he lost the prize for tragedy to Euripides, and in 431 lost it again to Euphorion, the son of Aéschylus. When, towards the end of his life, news came of the death of his younger rival Euripides, Sopho- cles dressed himself in mourning and marched to the altar at the head of the funeral procession. He lived to a great age, loved, respected, and successful to the end. His life has been likened to that of Goethe, with its many years of fruitful activity, its comparative tranquillity, and its singleness of pur- pose. After his death, the Athenians remembered him by making a yearly sacrifice in his honor. The seven extant plays. Probably the earliest of his sur- viving plays is the Antigone, always a favorite among classical