BOOK I
MINSTRELSY
C’est une étrange entreprise que celle de faire rire les honnêtes gens.—J.-B. Poquelin de Molière.
Molière est un infâme histrion.—J.-B. Bossuet.
CHAPTER I
THE FALL OF THE THEATRES
[Bibliographical Note.—A convenient sketch of the history of the Roman stage will be found in G. Körting, Geschichte des griechischen und römischen Theaters (1897). The details given in L. Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine (vol. ii, 7th ed. 1901), and the same writer’s article on Die Spiele in vol. vi of Marquardt and Mommsen’s Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer (2nd ed. 1885), may be supplemented from E. Nöldechen’s article Tertullian und das Theater in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xv (1894), 161, for the fabulae Atellanae from A. Dieterich, Pulcinella (1897), chs. 4-8, and for the pantomimi from C. Sittl, Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer (1890), ch. 13. The account in C. Magnin, Les Origines du Théâtre moderne (vol. i, all published, 1838), is by no means obsolete. Teuffel and Schwabe, History of Latin Literature, vol. i, §§ 3-18 (trans. G. C. W. Warr, 1891), contains a mass of imperfectly arranged material. The later history of the Greek stage is dealt with by P. E. Müller, Commentatio historica de genio, moribus et luxu aevi Theodosiani (1798), vol. ii, and A. E. Haigh, Tragic Drama of the Greeks (1896), ch. 6. The ecclesiastical prohibitions are collected by W. Prynne, Histriomastix (1633), and J. de Douhet, Dictionnaire des Mystères (1854), and their general attitude summarized by H. Alt, Theater und Kirche in ihrem gegenseitigen Verhältniss (1846). S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Roman Empire (2nd ed. 1899), should be consulted for an admirable study of the conditions under which the pre-mediaeval stage came to an end.]
Christianity, emerging from Syria with a prejudice against disguisings[1], found the Roman world full of scenici. The mimetic instinct, which no race of mankind is wholly without, appears to have been unusually strong amongst the peoples of the Mediterranean stock. A literary drama came into being in Athens during the sixth century, and established itself in city after city. Theatres were built, and tragedies and comedies acted on the Attic model, wherever a Greek foot trod, from Hipola in Spain to Tigranocerta in Armenia. The great capitals of the later Greece, Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum, rivalled Athens itself in their devotion to the stage. Another development of drama, independent of Athens, in Sicily and Magna Graecia, may be distinguished as farcical rather than comic. After receiving literary treatment at the hands of Epicharmus and Sophron in the fifth century, it continued its existence under the name of mime (μῖμος), upon a more popular level. Like many forms of popular drama, it seems to have combined the elements of farce and morality. Its exponents are described as buffoons (γελωτοποιοί, παιγνιογράφοι) and dealers in indecencies (ἀναισχυντογράφοι), and again as concerning themselves with questions of character and manners (ἠθολόγοι, ἀρεταλόγοι). They even produced what sound singularly like problem plays (ὑποθέσεις). Both qualities may have sprung from a common root in the observation and audacious portrayal of contemporary life. The mime was still flourishing in and about Tarentum in the third century[2].
Probably the Romans were not of the Mediterranean stock, and their native ludi were athletic rather than mimetic. But the drama gradually filtered in from the neighbouring peoples. Its earliest stirrings in the rude farce of the satura are attributed by Livy to Etruscan influence[3]. From Campania came another type of farce, the Oscum ludicrum or fabula Atellana, with its standing masks of Maccus and Bucco, Pappus and Dossennus, in whom it is hard not to find a kinship to the traditional personages of the Neapolitan commedia dell’ arte. About 240 B. C. the Greek Livius Andronicus introduced tragedy and comedy. The play now became a regular element in the spectacula of the Roman festivals, only subordinate in interest to the chariot-race and the gladiatorial show. Permanent theatres were built in the closing years of the Republic by Pompey and others, and the number of days annually devoted to ludi scenici was constantly on the increase. From 48 under Augustus they grew to 101 under Constantius. Throughout the period of the Empire, indeed, the theatre was of no small political importance. On the one hand it was the rallying point of all disturbers of the peace and the last stronghold of a public opinion debarred from the senate and the forum; on the other it was a potent means for winning the affection of the populace and diverting its attention from dynastic questions. The scenici might be thorns in the side of the government, but they were quite indispensable to it. If their perversities drove them from Italy, the clamour of the mob soon brought them back again. Trajan revealed one of the arcana imperii when he declared that the annona and the spectacula controlled Rome[4]. And what was true of Rome was true of Byzantium, and in a lesser degree of the smaller provincial cities. So long as the Empire itself held together, the provision firstly of corn and secondly of novel ludi remained one of the chief preoccupations of many a highly placed official.
The vast popular audiences of the period under consideration cared but little for the literary drama. In the theatre of Pompey, thronged with slaves and foreigners of every tongue, the finer histrionic effects must necessarily have been lost[5]. Something more spectacular and sensuous, something appealing to a cruder sense of humour, almost inevitably took their place. There is evidence indeed that, while the theatres stood, tragedy and comedy never wholly disappeared from their boards[6]. But it was probably only the ancient masterpieces that got a hearing. Even in Greece performances of new plays on classical models cannot be traced beyond about the time of Hadrian. And in Rome the tragic poets had long before then learnt to content themselves with recitations and to rely for victims on the good nature, frequently inadequate, of their friends[7]. The stilted dramas of Seneca were the delight of the Renaissance, but it is improbable that, until the Renaissance, they were ever dignified with representation. Roughly speaking, for comedy and tragedy the Empire substituted farce and pantomime.
Farce, as has been noticed, was the earliest traffic of the Roman stage. The Atellane, relegated during the brief vogue of comedy and tragedy to the position of an interlude or an afterpiece, now once more asserted its independence. But already during the Republic the Atellane, with its somewhat conventional and limited methods, was beginning to give way to a more flexible and vital type of farce. This was none other than the old mime of Magna Graecia, which now entered on a fresh phase of existence and overran both West and East. That it underwent considerable modifications, and probably absorbed much both of Atellane and of Attic comedy, may be taken for granted. Certainly it extended its scope to mythological themes. But its leading characteristics remained unchanged. The ethical element, one may fear, sank somewhat into the background, although it was by no means absent from the work of the better mime-writers, such as Laberius and Publilius Syrus[8]. But that the note of shamelessness was preserved there is no doubt whatever[9]. The favourite theme, which is common indeed to farce of all ages, was that of conjugal infidelity[10]. Unchaste scenes were represented with an astonishing realism[11]. Contrary to the earlier custom of the classical stage, women took part in the performances, and at the Floralia, loosest of Roman festivals, the spectators seem to have claimed it as their right that the mimae should play naked[12]. The mimus—for the same term designates both piece and actor—was just the kind of entertainer whom a democratic audience loves. Clad in a parti-coloured centunculus, with no mask to conceal the play of facial gesture, and planipes, with no borrowed dignity of sock or buskin, he rattled through his side-splitting scenes of low life, and eked out his text with an inexhaustible variety of rude dancing, buffoonery and horse-play[13]. Originally the mimes seem to have performed in monologues, and the action of their pieces continued to be generally dominated by a single personage, the archimimus, who was provided with certain stupidi and parasiti to act as foils and butts for his wit. A satirical intention was frequently present in both mimes and Atellanes, and their outspoken allusions are more than once recorded to have wrung the withers of persons of importance and to have brought serious retribution on the actors themselves. Caligula, for instance, with characteristic brutality, had a ribald playwright burnt alive in the amphitheatre[14].