THE history of the growth of the drama is one of the most fascinating chapters in the record of the spiritual life of the race. So closely is it bound up with that life that the unfolding of this art appears, wherever one looks deeply into it, as a vital rather than a purely artistic process. That art has ever been conceived as the product of anything less rich and deep than an unfolding of life shows how far we have been separated by historic conditions from any first-hand contact with it, any deep-going and adequate conception of what it is, and what it means in the life of the race. It requires a great effort of the imagination to put ourselves into the attitude of those early men who had the passions and were doing the work of men, but who had the fresh and responsive imagination of childhood; who were so closely in touch with nature that the whole world was alive to them in every sight and sound. Personification was not only natural but inevi

table to a race whose imagination was far in advance of its knowledge. Such a race would first create and then devoutly believe the story of Dionysus: the wandering god, master of all the resources of vitality; buoyant, enthralling, mysterious, intoxicating; in whom the rising passion, the deep instinct for freedom, which the spring let loose in every imagination, found visible embodiment; the personification of the ebbing and rising tide of life in Nature, and, therefore, the symbol of the spontaneous and inspirational element in life; the personification of the mysterious force of reproduction, and therefore the symbol of passion and license.

The god was entirely real; everybody knew that a group of Tyrrhenian sailors had seized him as he sat on a rock on the seashore, bound him with withes, and carried him to the deck of their tiny piratical craft; and everybody knew also that the withes had fallen from him, that streams of wine ran over the ship, vines climbed the mast and hung from the yards, garlands were twined about the oars, and a fragrance as of vineyards was breathed over the sea. Then suddenly a lion stood among the sailors, who sprang overboard and were changed into dolphins; while the god, taking on his natural form, ran the ship into port. Such a being, appealing alike to the imagination and the passions, personifying the most beautiful mysteries and giving form to the wildest longings of the body and the mind, could not be worshipped save by rites and ceremonies which were essentially dramatic.

The seed-time and harvest festivals furnished natural

occasions for such a worship; the worshippers often wore goatskins to counterfeit the Satyrs, and so gave tragedy its name. Grouped about rude altars, in a rude chorus, they told the story of the god's wanderings and adventures, not with words only, but with gesture, dance, and music. The expression of thought and feeling was free from self-consciousness, and was like a mirror of the emotions of the worshipper. This ballad-dance, which Mr. Moulton describes as a kind of literary protoplasm because several literary forms were implicit in it and were later developed out of it, was a free, spontaneous, natural act of worship; it was also a genuine drama, which unfolded by easy gradations into a noble literary form. The frequent repetition of the story threw its dramatic element into more striking relief: the narrative gradually detached itself from the choral parts and fell to individual singers; these singers separated themselves from the chorus and gave their parts increasing dramatic quality and distinctness; until, by a process of rude and almost unconscious evolution, the story was acted instead of narrated, and the dramatic poet, when he arrived, found all the materials for a complete drama ready to his hand. It is sober history, therefore, and not figurative speech, that the drama was born at the foot of the altar.

And more than eighteen hundred years later the drama was born again at the foot of the altar. Whatever invisible streams of tradition may have flowed from the days of a declining theatre at Rome through the confused and largely recordless life of the early Middle Ages, it may

safely be assumed that the modern drama began, as the ancient drama had begun, in the development of worship along dramatic lines. In the history of fairy tales and folk-lore, the explanation of striking similarities between the old and the new is to be sought, probably, in the laws of the mind rather than in the direct transmission of forms or materials. When spiritual and intellectual conditions are repeated, the action or expression of the mind affected by them is likely to be repeated. In every age men of a certain temperament dramatize their own experience whenever they essay to describe it, and dramatize whatever material comes to their hand for the purpose of entertaining others. The instinct which prompts men of this temper to make a story of every happening by selecting the most striking incidents, rearranging them, and heightening the effect by skilful grouping, has made some kind of drama inevitable in every age. When the influence of Menander, modified and adapted to Roman taste by Terence, Plautus, and their successors, was exhausted, farces, with music, pantomime, and humorous dialogue, largely improvised, met the general need with the coarse fun which suited a time of declining taste and decaying culture. The indecency and vulgarity of these purely popular shows became more pronounced as the Roman populace sank in intelligence and virtue; the vigour which redeemed in part their early license gave place to the grossest personalities and the cheapest tricks and feats of skill.

The mimes, or players, carried this degenerate

drama into the provinces, where taste was even less exacting than in Rome, and the half-heathen world was entertained by cheap imitations of the worst amusements of the Capital. At a still later date, in market-places, on village greens, in castle yards, and even at Courts, strolling players recited, postured, sang, danced, played musical instruments, and broke up the monotony of life at a time when means of communication were few, slow, and expensive. It is difficult for modern men to realize in imagination the isolation of small communities and of great castles in the Middle Ages. The strolling player was welcome, not only because he was entertaining, but because he brought the air of the remote world with him.

The vulgarity and indecency of shows of such an origin, everywhere adapting themselves to popular taste at a time when popular taste was coarse to the last degree, were inevitable. Then, as now, society had the kind of entertainment for which it asked; then, as now, the players were bent on pleasing the people. The Church, having other ends in view, tried to purify the general taste by purifying the amusements of the people, and in the fifth century the players of various kinds — mimes, histriones, joculatores were put under formal ecclesiastical condemnation. The Church not only condemned the players; she excluded them from her sacraments.

The players continued to perform in the face of ecclesiastical disapproval, and they found audiences; for the dramatic instinct lies deep in men, and the only way to shut out vulgar and indecent plays is to