Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Dodwell, Edward" to "Drama" / Volume 8, Slice 6

by Various

The historical sketch of the drama attempted in the following pages will best serve to indicate the successive growth of national dramatic species, many of which, by asserting their influence in other countries and ages than those which gave birth to them, have acquired a more than national vitality.

The art of acting, whose history forms an organic though a distinct part of that of the drama, necessarily possesses a theory and a technical system of its own. But into these it is impossible here to enter. One claim, however, should The art of acting. be vindicated for the art of acting, viz. that, though it is a dependent art, and most signally so in its highest forms, yet its true exercise implies (however much the term may have been abused) a creative process. The conception of a character is determined by antecedents not of the actor’s own making; and the term originality can be applied to it only in a relative sense. Study and reflection enable him, with the aid of experience and of the intuition which genius bestows, but which experience may in a high degree supply, to interpret, to combine, and to supplement given materials. But in the transformation of the conception into the represented character the actor’s functions are really creative; for here he becomes the character by means which belong to his art alone. The distinctiveness which he gives to the character by making the principal features recognized by him in it its groundwork—the consistency which he maintains in it between groundwork and details—the appropriateness which he preserves in it to the course of the action and the part borne in it by the character—all these are of his own making, though Its means. suggested by the conception derived by him from his materials. As to the means at his disposal, they are essentially of two kinds only; but not all forms of the drama have admitted of the use of both, or of both in the same completeness. All acting includes the use of gesture, or, as it has been Gesture. more comprehensively termed, of bodily eloquence. From various points of view its laws regulate the actor’s bearing, walk and movements of face and limbs. They teach what is aesthetically permitted and what is aesthetically pleasing. They deduce from observation what is appropriate to the expression of particular affections of the mind and of their combinations, of emotions and passions, of physical and mental conditions—joy and grief, health and sickness, waking, sleeping and dreaming, madness, collapse and death—of particular ages of life and temperaments, as well as of the distinctive characteristics of Speech. race, nationality or class. While under certain conditions—as in the masked drama—the use of bodily movement as one of the means of expression has at times been partially restricted, there have been, or are, forms of the drama which have altogether excluded the use of speech (such as pantomime), or have restricted the manner of its employment (such as opera). In the spoken drama the laws of rhetoric regulate the actor’s use of speech, but under conditions of a special nature. Like the orator, he has to follow the laws of pronunciation, modulation, accent and rhythm (the last in certain kinds of prose as well as in such forms of verse as he may be called upon to reproduce). But he has also to give his attention to the special laws of dramatic delivery, which vary in soliloquy and dialogue, and in such narrative or lyrical passages as may occur in his part.

The totality of the effect produced by the actor will in some degree depend upon other aids, among which those of a purely external kind are unlikely to be lost sight of. But the significance of costume (q.v.) in the actor, like that of Costume. decoration and scenery (see [Theatre]) in an action, is a wholly relative one, and is to a large measure determined by the claims which custom enables the theatre to make, or forbids its making, upon the imagination of the spectators. The actor’s real achievement lies in the transformation which the artist himself effects; nor is there any art more sovereign in the use it can make of its means, or so happy in the directness of the results it can accomplish by them.

2. Indian Drama

The origin of the Indian drama may unhesitatingly be described as purely native. The Mahommedans, when they overran India, brought no drama with them; the Persians, the Arabs and the Egyptians were without a national theatre. It would be absurd to suppose the Indian drama to have owed anything to the Chinese or its offshoots. On the other hand, there is no real evidence for assuming any influence of Greek examples upon the Indian drama at any stage of its progress. Finally, it had passed into its decline before the dramatic literature of modern Europe had sprung into being.

The Hindu writers ascribe the invention of dramatic entertainments to an inspired sage Bharata, or to the communications made to him by the god Brahma himself concerning an art gathered from the Vedas. As the word Bharata Origin. signifies an actor, we have clearly here a mere personification of the invention of the drama. Three kinds of entertainments, of which the nātya (defined as a dance combined with gesticulation and speech) comes nearest to the drama, were said to have been exhibited before the gods by the spirits and nymphs of Indra’s heaven, and to these the god Śiva added two new styles of dancing.

The origin of the Indian drama was thus unmistakably religious. Dramatic elements first showed themselves in certain of the hymns of the Rig Veda, which took the form of dialogues between divine personages, and in one of which is to be found the germ of Kālidāsa’s famous Vikrama and Urvāsī. These hymns were combined with the dances in the festivals of the gods, which soon assumed a more or less conventional form. Thus, from the union of dance and song, to which were afterwards added narrative recitation, and first sung, then spoken, dialogue, was gradually evolved the acted drama. Such scenes and stories from the mythology of Vishnu are still occasionally enacted by pantomime or spoken dialogue in India (jātras of the Bengalis; rāsas of the Western Provinces); and the most ancient Indian play was said to have treated an episode from the history of that deity—the choice of him as a consort by Laxmi—a favourite kind of subject in the Indian drama. The tradition connecting its earliest themes with the native mythology of Vishnu agrees with that ascribing the origin of a particular kind of dramatic performance—the sangīta—to Krishna and the shepherdesses. The author’s later poem, the Gītagovinda, has been conjectured to be suggestive of the earliest species of Hindu dramas. But, while the epic poetry of the Hindus gradually approached the dramatic in the way of dialogue, their drama developed itself independently out of the union of the lyric and the epic forms. Their dramatic poetry arose later than their epos, whose great works, the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana, had themselves been long preceded by the hymnody of the Vedas—just as the Greek drama followed upon the Homeric poems and these had been preceded by the early hymns.

There seems, indeed, no reason for dating the beginnings of the regular Indian drama farther back than the 5th century a.d., though it is probable that the earliest extant Sanskrit play, the delightful, and in some respects incomparable, Mrichchhakatīkā (The Toy Cart), was considerably earlier in date than the works of Kālidāsa. Indeed, of his predecessors in dramatic composition very little is known, and even the contemporaries who competed with him as dramatists are mere names. Thus, by the time the Indian drama produced almost the earliest specimens with which we are acquainted, it had already reached its zenith; and it was therefore looked upon as having sprung into being as a perfect art. We know it only in its glory, in its decline, and in its decay.

The history of Indian dramatic literature may be roughly divided into the following periods.

I. To the 11th Century a.d.—This period virtually belongs to the pre-Mahommedan age of Indian history; but already to that second division of it in which Buddhism had become a powerful factor in the social as well as in the moral First period (classical). and intellectual life of the land. It is the classical period of the Hindu drama, and includes the works of its two indisputably greatest masters. The earliest extant Sanskrit play is the pathetic Mrichchhakatīkā (The Toy Cart), which has been dated back as far as the close of the 2nd century a.d. It is attributed (as is not uncommon with Indian plays) to a royal author, named Sūdraka; but it was more probably written by his court poet, whose name has been concluded to have been Dandin. It may be described as a comedy of middle-class life, treating of the courtship and marriage of a ruined Brahman and a wealthy and large-hearted courtesan.