The dramatic instinct and faculty are native in man in all times and conditions. When David was afraid of his life in the house of Achish, king of Gath, “he played the madman, scrabbling on the posts of the gate and letting his spittle fall down on his beard.” But a theatre is a fruit only of a high civilization, and it always reflects that civilization. In India it seems to have been at first an appanage of the palace, designed to give amusement to the king and his nobles and favorites. It presented poetic descriptions of nature, romantic pictures of life, songs, dances, and satires. In the Hindoo temples also were sometimes enacted mythological religious and mystical dramas by the priests and their assistants, less with theatrical machinery than in words and movements, representing avatars of the gods, notably the avatars of Vishnu as Rama and Krishna, supernatural adventures, transmigrations, and scenes in other worlds. In China and Japan the drama was in ancient times, as it still is, largely confined to the illustration of history, presenting in long-drawn performances minute pictures of legendary or historic personages, events, costumes, manners, and customs. But it was in Egypt, where the priesthood was so distinct a caste, so powerful an order, possessed of so much secret knowledge and mechanism, that the doctrines and ritual of religion itself were first wrought into a drama of the most sensational and appalling kind. In the depths of the temple, with pomp of numbers and dresses, with music, gorgeous and terrible scenery, artificial thunders and lightnings, heavens and hells were unveiled, the dead shown in their immortal state, celestial spirits and demons and deities were revealed, and such lessons were enforced as suited the purposes of the managers of the spectacle. It was a tool in the hands of the priests to play on the fears and hopes of the people, who were taught to regard what they saw not as anything artificial but as a vision of the supernatural. This was the drama of the cryptic church, the theatre of the priestly conclave.
In Greece, as in Egypt,—possibly derived thence,—the earliest theatre and drama were religious and secret. In the Bacchic and Eleusinian and other mysteries, the incarnation, penance, death, and resurrection of some god were represented, and in connection with the spectacle various religious and philosophical doctrines were taught in symbolic shows. Every art of influencing the imagination and the senses was here employed,—the imposing forms and gestures of the hierophant and his helpers impersonating the demiurgus and his train,—light and darkness, colors, strange noises, music, incantations, rhythmic processions, enchanting and maddening dances. But, as there was in Greece no distinct priesthood separate from the rulers and leaders of the state, the intense interest and power of this mode of impression could not remain sequestered from the people and confined to a few sacred legends. The great freedom and restless intelligence and critical personal emulation of the Greeks soon brought forth from its seclusion this fascinating and peerless method of teaching, planted it on an open stage, applied it to sacred and political subjects, to character and experience, and gave the world the first public theatre of the people. Still retaining in its best examples its original religious dignity and solemnity, it added many other qualities, developed comedy alongside of tragedy, and in its combination of ideal and satirical types and manners rendered the stage a mirror for the mimic reflection of the real scenes of human life. Thus it escaped from privacy and priestly management into publicity under the direction of a literary and political class. It was wielded for the threefold purpose of moral and religious impression, of social or party influence, and of displaying various styles of character and behavior for popular amusement and edification.
In Rome the drama was modified and varied in some particulars from its Greek model, but no new feature was added. It nearly lost its religious quality, became more exclusively social and sensational, extended its range only to profane and degrade it into the barbarity of the circus and the arena. The Greek poet dealing with the simulated woes of the soul was displaced by the Roman gladiator dealing in the real agonies of the body, and the supernal beauty of classic tragedy expired in the applauded horrors of butchery.
As the drama and the theatre in the Oriental and in the Classic world had a priestly and religious origin and character, so was it with their revival and first development in Christendom. The early Christian Church regarded the games, spectacles, and plays of the moribund civilization amidst which it arose in regenerating energy, with intense abomination, as intimately associated with and characteristic of the idolatrous pagan faith, the persecuting pagan power, and the corrupt pagan morals, against whose insidious influence and threatening array the new type of belief and life had to maintain itself. Tertullian and other distinguished Christian fathers fulminated against the actors and their associates excommunication in this world and damnation in the next. But after a while, as the young religion got established, spread among millions of adherents, and had itself a vast popular sway to uphold and extend, the love of power and the spirit of politic conformity entered into it. Seeing what a strong attraction for the public was inherent in the spectacular drama, with its costume, scenery, dialogue, and action, and what a power it possessed for insinuating persuasion and instruction, the church began to adopt its methods, modified to suit the new ideas and situation. First the bait of amusement, sport, and burlesque was thrown out to draw in and please the rabble by licensing to be held in the church the Feast of Asses, the Feast of Fools, and other like riotous and farcical mummeries borrowed with certain alterations from the pagan Saturnalia. Then, to add a serious element of edification, the priests dramatically constructed and enacted in Miracle-Plays, Mysteries, and Moralities the chief events in Scriptural history, the outlines of dogmatic theology, the lessons of practical duty, and the claims of ecclesiastical authority, seeking thus to draw the crowd and teach and drill them to obedience. The virtues and vices of men, temptation, death, judgment, were allegorized, personified, and brought on the stage to impress the rude audience. The Creation, the Flood, the Crucifixion, the Day of Judgment, were represented. God, Christ, the Virgin, angels, the devil and his imps, were shown. John Rastale, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, composed a Merry Interlude to serve as a vehicle of science and philosophy, explaining the four elements and describing various strange lands, especially the recently discovered America. The characters were Nature, Humanity, Studious Desire, Sensual Appetite, a Taverner, Experience, Ignorance, and a Messenger who spoke the prologue. These plays, simple, crude, fantastic, grotesque, as they were, suited the tastes of the time, administered fun and terror to the spectators, who alternately laughed and shuddered while the meaning of the creed and the hold of its power sank deeper into their souls. There was a mixture in it of good and evil, recreation and fear, truth and superstition, fitted to the age and furnishing a transition to something better.
“When friars, monks, and priests of former days
Apocrypha and Scripture turned to plays,
The Festivals of Fools and Asses kept,
Obeyed boy-bishops and to crosses crept,
They made the mumming Church the people’s rod,
And held the grinning bauble for a God.”