celebrity as distinguished as Roscius, and exercised, as many of his profession have since done, an arbitrary authority over the unfortunate dramatic authors. It is recorded by the satirist, that Statius the epic poet might have starved, had he not given up to this favourite of the public, upon his own terms doubtless, the manuscript of an unacted performance. Paris was put to death by Domitian out of jealousy.

If the actors rose to be persons of importance in Rome, the dramatic critics were not less so. They had formed a code of laws for the regulation of dramatic authors, to which the great names of Aristotle and Horace both contributed their authority. But these will be more properly treated of when we come to mention the adoption of the ancient regulations by the French stage.

Having thus gone hastily through some account of the ancient stage, from its rise in Greece to its transportation to Rome, we have only to notice the circumstances under which it expired.

Christianity from its first origin was inimical to the institution of the stage. The Fathers of the Church inveigh against the profaneness and immodesty of the theatre. In the treatise of Tertullian, De Spectaculis, he has written expressly upon the subject. The various authorities on this head have been collected and quoted by the enemies of the stage, from Prynne down to Collier. It ought, however, to be noticed, that their exprobration of the theatre is founded, first, upon its origin, as connected with heathen superstition; and secondly,

on the beastly and abominable license practised in the pantomimes, which, although they made no part of the regular Drama, were presented nevertheless in the same place, and before the same audience. "We avoid your shows and games," says Tertullian," because we doubt the warrant of their origin. They savour of superstition and idolatry, and we dislike the entertainment, as abhorring the heathen religion on which it is founded." In another place he observes, the temples were united to theatres, in order that superstition might patronise debauchery, and that they were dedicated to Bacchus and to Venus, the confederate deities of lust and intemperance.

It was not only the connexion of the theatre with heathen superstition, that offended the primitive church; but also the profligacy of some of the entertainments which were exhibited. There cannot be much objected to the regular Roman Dramas in this particular, since even Mr Collier allows them to be more decorous than the British stage of his own time; but, as we have already hinted, in the Ludi Scenici, the intrigues of the gods and the heroes were represented upon the stage with the utmost grossness. These obscene and scandalous performances thus far coincided with the Drama, that they were acted in the same theatres, and in honour of the same deities, and both were subjected to the same sweeping condemnation. They were not, however, absolutely or formally abolished, even when Christianity became the religion of the state. Tertullian and St Austin both speak of the scenic representations of their own day, under the distinct

characters of tragedy and comedy; and although condemned by the church, and abhorred by the more strict Christians, there is little doubt that the ancient theatre continued to exist, until it was buried under the ruins of the Roman Empire.

MODERN DRAMA.

The same propensity to fictitious personification, which we have remarked as common to all countries, introduced, during the dark ages, a rude species of Drama, into most of the nations of Europe. Like the first effort of the ancients in that art, it had its foundation in religion; with this great difference, that as the rites of Bacchus before, and even after the improvements introduced by Thespis, were well enough suited to the worship of such a deity, the religious Dramas, mysteries, or whatever other name they assumed, were often so unworthy of the Christian religion on which they were founded, that their being tolerated can be attributed only to the gross ignorance of the laity, and the cunning of the Catholic priesthood, who used them, with other idle and sometimes indecorous solemnities, as one means of amusing the people's minds, and detaining them in contented bondage to their spiritual superiors.

In the Empire of the East, religious exhibitions of a theatrical character appear to have been instituted about the year 990, by Theophylact, patriarch of Constantinople, with the intention (Warton surmises) of weaning the minds of the people from

the Pagan revels, by substituting Christian spectacles, partaking of the same spirit of license. His contemporaries give him little credit for his good intentions. 66 Theophylact," says Cedrenus, as translated by Warton, "introduced the practice, which prevails to this day, of scandalizing God and the memory of his saints, on the most splendid and popular festivals, by indecent and ridiculous songs, and enormous shoutings, even in the midst of those sacred hymns which we ought to offer to divine grace for the salvation of our souls. But he having collected a company of base fellows, and placing over them one Euthynicus surnamed Casnes, whom he also appointed the superintendent of his church, admitted into the sacred service diabolical dances, exclamations of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the streets and brothels."-The irregularities of the Greek clergy, who, on certain holidays, personated feigned characters, and entered even the choir in masquerade, are elsewhere mentioned. (Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. ii., p. 370.) These passages do not prove that actual mysteries or sacred Dramas were enacted on such occasions; but probably the indecent revels alluded to bore the same relation to such representations, as the original rites of Bacchus to the more refined exhibitions of Thespis and Susarion.

There has been some dispute among theatrical antiquaries, in which country of Europe dramatic representations of a religious kind first appeared. The liberal and ingenious editor1 of the Chester

[The author's friend, James H. Markland, Esq. of the Temple.]

Mysteries has well remarked, (in his introduction to that curious and beautiful volume,) that a difficulty must always attend the enquiry, from the doubts that exist, whether the earliest recorded performances of each country were merely pantomimes, or were accompanied with dialogue.

The practice of processions and pageants with music, in which characters, chiefly of sacred writ, were presented before the public, is so immediately connected with that of speaking exhibitions, that it is difficult to discriminate the one from the other.

We are tempted to look first to Italy; as it is natural that the tragic art should have revived in that country in which it was last exercised, and where traditions, and perhaps some faint traces, of its existence were still preserved.

"The first speaking sacred Dramas," says Mr Walker, " was Della Passione di nostro Signore Gesu Christo, by Giuliano Dati, Bishop of San Leo, who flourished about the year 1445." (Walker's Essay on the Revival of the Drama in Italy, p. 6.) This elegant author does, indeed, show that Italian scholars, and particularly Mussato, the Paduan historian, had composed two Latin Dramas upon something like the classical model, about the year 1300. Yet, although his play upon the tyranny and death of Ezzlino obtained him both reputation and honour, it does not appear to have been composed for representation on the stage, but rather to have been a dramatic poem, since the progress of the piece is often interrupted by the poet speaking in his own person.