4. The Audience
A drama like the Sanskrit demanded the full attention of a cultivated audience, and it is assumed or expressly asserted, as in the dramas of Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Bhavabhūti, that the spectators are critical and experienced. The Nāṭyaçāstra[30] requires from the ideal spectator (prekṣaka) keen susceptibility and excellent judgement, with ability to make his own the feelings and emotions of the characters depicted by the actors. But it is admitted that there are the usual degrees among the spectators, good, medium, and indifferent; the question of the success of a drama depends on the judgement of the critic [[370]](prāçnika), who is to possess every possible good quality to fit him for the delicate task. The audience, as it is to share the feelings of the characters, is expected to show them by the usual outward signs; laughter, tears, cries, hair standing on end, jumping up from their seats, clapping with the hands and other manifestations of pleasure, horror, fear, and other sentiments are both proper and natural.
The rules for placing the patron at whose bidding the drama is performed, Sabhāpati, and his guests, are elaborate.[31] He sits himself on the Lion Throne, the equivalent of the royal box, with the ladies of his harem on the left, and on the right the personages of highest importance, such as the vassal princes of a great king like Harṣa. Behind the latter are the treasurer and other officers, and near them the learned men of the court, civil and religious, including the poets, and in their midst the astrologers and physicians. On the left again are the ministers and other courtiers; all around are maidens of the court. In front again of the king are Brahmins, behind the bearers of fans, radiant in youthful beauty. On the left in front are the reciters and panegyrists, eloquent and wise. Guards are present to protect the sacred person of the sovereign.
How far the dramas were viewed by the public in general we cannot say; the rules regarding the play-house contemplate the presence of Çūdras, but that is a vague term, and may apply to a very restricted class of royal hangers on. We have the general rule[32] that barbarians, ignorant people, heretics, and those of low class should not be admitted, but such prescriptions mean very little. There must, it is clear, have been the utmost variation in the character of the audience according to the place and circumstances of representation. At great festivals, when plays were given in the temples, there must have been admission for as many as could be crowded in; in private exhibitions the audience may well have been more select. The fact that the dramas must have been largely unintelligible to all save a select few of the audience would not matter much; a drama was essentially a spectacle; in many cases its subject was perfectly familiar to the [[371]]audience, and the elaborate use of conventional signs must have been enough to aid many of the audience in following roughly the nature of the proceedings.
When such dramatic exhibitions became rare we do not know; it is certain that in the eleventh century in Kashmir they were not uncommon; Kṣemendra advised aspirants to poetic fame to improve their taste by the study of such representations.[33] Doubtless the Mahomedan conquest seriously affected the vogue of the classical drama, which was obnoxious to Mahomedan fanaticism as being closely identified both with the national religion and the national spirit of India. The kings, who had been the main support of the actors and poets alike, disappeared from their thrones or suffered grave reverses in fortune. The tradition of dramatic performances gradually vanished. Other causes contributed to this end; the divorce between the language of the stage and that of the people steadily increasing with the passage of time made the Sanskrit drama more and more remote to the public, and the Mahomedans made it lose its position as the expression of the official and court life of the highest circles.[34] [[373]]
[1] Bloch, Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903–4, pp. 123 ff. [↑]
[2] ii; cf. JPASB. v. 353 ff.; Çilparatna (ed. TSS.), pp. 201 ff. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, p. 54. [↑]
[3] For the Greek theatre, which presents certain points of similarity but many of difference, see Dorpfeld, Das griechische Theater; Haigh, Attic Theatre (3rd ed.); a brief summary is given in Norwood, Greek Tragedy, pp. 49 ff. [↑]