Folkways, by William Graham Sumner

A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages,
Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals

CHAPTER XVII

POPULAR SPORTS, EXHIBITIONS, AND DRAMA

Limits of the study, Introduction. — Literature and drama in ethology. — Public amusements of the uncivilized; reversion to archaic, "natural" ways. — Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented. — Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions. — Origin of the Athenian drama. — Drama and worship; customs derived from the mysteries. — The word "God." — Kinship yields to religion as social tie. — Religion and drama; syncretism. — Beginnings of the theater at Rome. — Gladiatorial exhibitions. — Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions. — The folk drama. — The popular taste; realism; conventionality; satire. — Popular exhibitions. — Ancient popular festivals. — The mimus. — Modern analogies. — Biologs and ethologs. — Dickens as a biolog. — Early Jewish plays. — The Roman mimus. — The Suffering Christ; Pseudo-querolus. — The mimus and Christianity. — Popular phantasms. — Effects of vicious amusements. — Gladiatorial games. — Compromise between the church and popular customs. — The cantica. — Passion for the games. — German sports. — The mimus from the third to the eighth century. — The drama in the Orient. — Marionettes. — The drama in India. — Punch in the West. — Resistance of the church to the drama. — Hrotsvitha. — The jongleurs; processions. — Adam de la Halle. — The flagellants. — Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions. — Protest against misuse of churches. — Toleration of jests by the ecclesiastics. — Fictitious literature. — Romances of roguery. — Picaresque novels. — Books of beggars. — At the beginning of the sixteenth century. — The theater at Venice. — Dancing; public sports. — Women in the theater and on the stage. — The commedia del arte. — Jest books; Italian comedy at Paris. — Commedia del arte in Italy. — Summary and review. — Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will. — Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress.

Limits. The cases of public amusement and entertainment which shall here be mentioned are such as were within the limits of usage and accepted propriety at the time. They are not cases of vice or of disputed propriety at the time. Drunkenness, gambling, bull baiting, cockfighting, and prize fighting are amusements which have entered into the mores of groups and subgroups, as bullfighting still does in Spain, but they were limited to classes or groups, or they were important on account of the 561excess, or they were disapproved by great numbers or by the ecclesiastical authorities. They would, therefore, lie outside the mores, to which the cases to be noticed belonged. The theater in England in Charles II's time testified to a depraved taste and a low standard of morals, but it was temporary and indeed limited in time. In different groups also the moral standards are unequal at the same time, and the mores are on different levels. There is a wider limit now for romances and dramas in France than in English-speaking countries. The cases which now interest us are those of long and wide currency, which the mores have firmly established according to current standards, even though moralists may have inveighed against them sometimes, as the same class now sometimes denounces all dancing.

The cases here to be noticed are further illustrations of the fact that the mores can make anything right, and can protect anything from condemnation, in addition to those in the last two chapters.

614. Literature and drama in ethology. Poetry, drama, and literary fiction are useful to ethology in one or the other of two ways: (1) they reveal facts of the mores; (2) they show the longings and ideals of the group, — in short, what the people like and wish for. The second division includes mythology, fairy tales, and extravaganzas. The taste for them, if it exists, is a feature of the mores, but in fact such a taste is hardly ever popular. It is a product of culture. Myths, legends, proverbs, fables, riddles, etc., are popular products.

615. Public amusements of the uncivilized. Reversion to archaic, "natural" ways. We find in savage life, almost universally unless the group has been crushed by conquest or misfortune, festivals, games, dances, and orgies, which are often celebrated with masks and dramatic action. The motives are fidelity to the traditions of ancestors, entertainment, sex excitement, war enthusiasm, and occult influence in aid of the food quest. The dramatic representation of sex attraction and of the ways of animals is often intensely graphic, and it gives great pleasure to the spectators. An occult effect, to bring about what is desired in war or the chase by enacting it in a dance or play, 562involves demonism, the existing form of religion. Therefore religion, dramatic dances, music, songs, emotional suggestion, and sex stimulation are intertwined from low barbarism or savagery. Experience of the perils and pains of sexual excess and overpopulation force the development of folkways of restraint, which are customary and conventional regulations of primary natural impulses. At the recurring points of time at which the festivals are held there is often a reversion from the moral status created by the later mores to the ancient "natural" ways, because the later ways are a reflection on the ancestors who were "uncultivated." Their ghosts will be displeased at the new ways and will inflict ill fortune on the group. The festival is not a time at which to emphasize the novelty, but to set it aside and revert to old ways. How far back shall the reversion go? What is "natural"? As no one ever has known from what depths of beastliness, rendered more acute by some intelligence, man came, no one has ever known what "nature" would be. Men reverted actually to some ancient custom of their ancestors beyond which they knew nothing, and which therefore to them seemed primitive and original. The festivals were always outside of the routine of regular life. We, for a holiday frolic, relax, for ourselves and our children, the discipline of ordinary life; for instance, on the Fourth of July. In the theater we make allowances for what we would not tolerate in the street or parlor. That a thing is in jest is, and always has been, an excuse for what is a little beyond the limit otherwise observed. It was a favorite Arab jest to fasten the train of a woman's dress, while she was sitting, to the waist of it, so that when she arose her dress would be disordered.1987 She must learn to guard herself.

616. Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented. In the mythical period of Chaldea the worship of the Great Mother Ishtar (the patroness of sex attraction, but a goddess whose love was a calamity to all her husbands,1988 perhaps a mythical representation of the perils and pains of sex) was a setting loose of sex passion from the later societal ("moral") regulations, 563in favor of the original passionate impulse of sex and reproduction. The festival was, therefore, a period of license. The seat of the licentious rites, and of sacral prostitution, was Uruk, the city of the dead (i.e. of ancestors), where men liked to be buried (in order to join their ancestors).1989 The Tammuz (Adonis) worship was connected with the worship of Ishtar, the relation between the god and the goddess being different in different myths. The Tammuz worship was a dramatic enactment of the death and resurrection of the god (connected with the decay and renewal of the world of vegetation), with corresponding lamentations and rejoicings of the worshipers.1990 In Mexico we find a parallel pantomime of the nature process at a religious harvest festival, the pantomime being used for occult magic, in order to get good crops in the next season. Obscene figures and rites were used. There is a maize goddess who is the "Mother of the Gods." The union of the sun god with the earth gives fertility, so that the food supply is at stake in these rites and notions.1991 This most absorbing interest of mankind drove men's minds along the same lines of world philosophy. The "Mother of the Gods," by her sex activity, brought about growth on earth and became goddess of lewdness and filth, just as the German Corn-mother became a harlot. So the goddess by whose activity the earth bears flowers was honored at a festival at which boys and girls nine or ten years old became senselessly drunk and perpetrated sex vice. This was at a religious festival.1992 Here then we find reversion to more primitive sex mores, and dramatic representation of a myth, conjoined in religion, on the very threshold of the higher civilization. The reversion to primitive sex mores to satisfy notions of duty to religion and ancestors comes to us as an incomprehensible violation of "primary instincts," which we have inferred from ideas that we can trace back beyond any known origin, which we suppose to be universally accepted, and which seem to us axiomatic as to social welfare. The only way to understand the case is to take the standpoint of the mores of that time. The mores contained the answer to the questions: How far back shall 564we go? What shall be the degree of license at the festival? At the limit fixed by custom the mores extend their sanction over the function and make it "right." Another source of barbaric festivals may be noticed. Men won victories over the elements and over beasts before they won victories over each other. This is true of remote antiquity and of primitive society. It is also true of the Middle Ages. The destruction of great beasts, demons, and other monsters led to dramatic and religious festivals. Magnin1993 thinks that he could make a cycle of beasts, of which Reineke Fuchs would be the last link, anterior to the cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne.

617. Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions. Therefore: What shall be the limit of toleration in theatrical and other exhibitions with respect to dress, language, gesture, etc., in order to define propriety, is altogether a matter of the mores. It is not conceivable that the Lysistrata of Aristophanes could be presented on any public stage in Christendom. The whole play is beyond the toleration of modern mores. We meet with jugglers in Homer,1994 also mountebanks and tumblers.1995 The kubisteteres spun around on the perpendicular axis of the body, and are compared to the wheel of the potter. Then they pitched down head-foremost, like plungers or tumblers turning somersaults. Some archæologs have thought that the play of these persons had some analogy with that of the cubic stones which were so prominent in the cult of the Phrygian Cybele. If that analogy is accepted, then the pyramidal dance must be regarded as originally hieratic and consecrated to Cybele. That dance was at first aristocratic, but speedily became popular and descended to the mountebanks.1996

618. Origin of Athenian drama. The theater originated in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve. Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious doctrines, in order to get 565the powerful effects in suggestion which dramatic action exerts. Many myths presented acts such as later mores could not tolerate. Allowance had to be made for the representations, as we now make allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism, even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and ignorant. They were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation, except some ritual acts. There was no solemnity in the surroundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid."1997 The Athenian drama, in the fifth century B.C., went through an amazing development and reached high perfection. The art of the theater was especially cultivated. As to the effect of the dramas on the character of the spectators, it is to be noticed that they were presented only once in the year, at the greater festival of Dionysus in the spring, and that then a large number of plays were represented. The spectators, at Athens, were a very mixed assemblage and included the populace, "who remained populace in spite of any beautiful verses which they might chance to hear." They cared only to be amused, "just like modern audiences."1998

619. Dramatic taste and usage in worship. Customs derived from the mysteries. About the time of Christ, by syncretism all the religions took on a dramatic form in their ritual, with liturgies and responses, on account of the attractiveness of that form for worshipers. The Christian year was built up as a drama of the life of Christ. The ceremony of the mass was produced by an application of modes of worship which, so far as we can learn, were devised and used in the mysteries. "There is unmistakable evidence that a marriage ceremony of a religious nature existed, and that this ceremony stood in close relation to 566a part of the ritual of the mysteries. In fact, the marriage was, as it were, a reproduction by the bride and bridegroom of a scene from the divine life, i.e. from the mystic drama. The formula, 'I escaped evil: I found better,' was repeated by the celebrant who was initiated in the Phrygian mysteries; and the same formula was pronounced as part of the Athenian marriage ceremony. Another formula, 'I have drunk from the kymbalon,' was pronounced by the initiated; and drinking from the same cup has been proved to have formed part of a ceremony performed in the temple by the betrothed pair." "It is an extremely important fact that the human marriage ceremony was thus celebrated by forms taken from the mysteries; and the conclusion must be that the human pair repeat the action in the way in which the god and goddess first performed and consecrated it, and that, in fact, they play the parts of the god and goddess in the sacred drama. This single example is, as we may be sure, typical of a whole series of actions."1999

620. The word "god." "That man when he dies becomes a god was considered already in the fourth century B.C. to be part of the teaching conveyed in the mysteries."2000 This meant no more than the earlier notion that when a man died he became a ghost. The word "god" was used in senses very strange to our ears,2001 and to quote an expression of any writer of the beginning of the Christian era in which he uses the word "god," and to give to that word our sense of it, is to be led into great error. The age was one which put all its religion in dramatic form and acted it out. It was an age with a gift for manufacturing rites and liturgies.

621. Kin yields to religion as social tie. This was due to a great ethnological change which was then coming to its culmination. The kin tie, which had been the primitive mode of association and coherence of groups, began to break down in the sixth century B.C. in Greece. It was superseded by the social tie of a common religious faith and ritual. The Pythagorean and Orphic sects developed this tie. They had a revelation of the 567other world, a system of mystic and cathartic rites, which cleared men of ritual uncleanness, purified them, and "saved" them. The cathartic rites were a means of warding off evil spirits and did the work of the old shamans.2002 The sectarian brotherhood of the initiated, the "church," the faith, the contrast of ordinary life with the ecstatic emotions of the mysteries, the consequent antagonism of the "flesh" or the "world," and the "spirit," were easy deductions from the teaching and ritual of the sects.2003 It was all concentrated in the godlikeness, divinity, or immortality of the human soul, with the mystic notions of union between the soul and God. "Mysticism, as doctrine and theory, grew up from the soil of a more ancient practice in worship." "The worship of Dionysus must have furnished the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."2004 The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was demonism, superstitious anxiety about the world of demons, who floated around men and stretched their hands out of the surrounding darkness to seize them. It was from these that men wanted to be "saved." Atonement was to be made to the chthonic gods, for they were displeased at ritual uncleanness, and the chthonic cults had the other world in view.2005 The uncleanness was ritual, and hence it came from anything far out of the regular order, either by abomination or holiness. The rabbis held that the handling of the Scriptures defiled the hands and called for ceremonial washing (Num. xix. 8, 10).2006

622. Combination of religion and drama. Syncretism. The interest of all this for our present purpose is the combination of religious ideas with dramatic representation. Processions of all kinds easily turn into such representations. Rites and ceremonies 568are but a form of drama. Symbols and emblems have the same character. The old religions were subjected to criticism, which means that they had lost their authority. They did not verify when the attempt was made to use them for societal needs. Slaves, merchants, soldiers, etc., afloat in the world, associated from choice and contributed traditions from the whole known world. Then syncretism began, and a body of sectarian notions was formed. There was a new totemism, a breaking down of national religion, a spirit of propaganda, and a setting forth of the whole in all dramatic forms.2007 In the sects women were admitted, a fact of double significance. It was an emancipation for the women and a peril for the sect. The doubt with which the mysteries are now regarded is due to the uncertainty as to the relations of the sexes in them. The word "orgy" originally meant worship, or rites, then secret rites, that is, mysteries. The sense in which the word has come down to us shows the notion about secret meetings which became commonly accepted.

The customs which had grown out of religious interest had reached the desire for entertainment and pleasure. They satisfied it and stimulated it, and the religious element might be forgotten.

623. Beginnings of the theater at Rome. The Floralia were instituted at Rome in 240 B.C. They were celebrated by courtesans with processions, lascivious pantomimes, etc. They are said to have come from Greece.2008 In the same year Livius Andronicus presented at Rome the first play translated from the Greek. In 154 the first permanent theater was established there against great opposition. In 146 the first theater outside the circus, with seats, was provided.2009 All mimic actions were foreign to the austere mores of the early Romans, but in the second century B.C. the mores changed through the growth of wealth and contact with other nations. Young Romans learned from actors to sing and dance, acts which their ancestors thought unworthy of free persons. The earliest plays were called saturae, because they were 569mixed dialogues, music, and dances. The sense of the word was closely that of "farce" in the Middle Ages,2010 i.e. an episode or intermezzo of a comic character interjected into a drama. The saturae contained an Etruscan element, but atellans were entirely Etruscan. They were comic and grotesque, and got their name from Atella (i.e. Aversa or Santo Arpino) in Campania. They could be played by persons who did not on that account lose their places in their tribes or their right to serve in the legion. No personalities at all were allowed on the Roman stage. Cynicism and obscenity characterized the Oscan style.2011 In 55 B.C. the younger Cato was present at the Floralia. The populace hesitated to call, in his presence, for the stripping of the mimae. He left in order not to hinder the celebration from taking its usual course.2012 Valerius Maximus2013 says that the pantomime was brought to Rome from Etruria, the Etruscans having brought it from their old home in Lydia. We see from the epigrams in the first book of Martial that at the Roman theater in the first century of the Christian era incidents of the Roman mythology were made into dramas and represented in pantomime.

624. Gladiatorial exhibitions. The gladiatorial exhibitions are supposed to have been of Etruscan origin in the form of funeral games. Games to rejoice the ghosts, sacrifices of prisoners, a chance given to a prisoner to fight for his life, are steps of a development of which we find many examples. The Romans showed the pitilessness and inhumanity of their mores in the development they gave to the gladiatorial exhibitions. "Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the Second Punic War. It was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness."2014 Some murmurs of dissent arose from the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era, — Plutarch, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,2015 — but at that time the popular sentiment had not 570faltered at all in its love and zeal for the gladiatorial shows and beast contests on account of any doubt whether the exhibitions were "right." Tertullian, at the end of the second century, wrote a tract, Ad Nationes, in which he criticised the theater, and also another, De Spectaculis, against the public entertainments. Although the latter is chiefly controversial against heathen and heathenism, it contains direct and noble arguments against the games of the arena on account of their inhumanity. He says that the games were at first connected with funerals, and that the theater was a temple of Venus, under cover of which the games won a footing. That would mean, then, that they were at first under a convention of time, place, occasion, and religion. Correctly understood, therefore, what happened at Rome was that the convention was broken over and the exceptional rite was made the everyday usage, the religious sentiment being disregarded and the sensual entertainment alone being valued. When we have reached this point we can understand the original place of the games within the intellectual horizon of the nation, and also the deep demoralization which they caused in later times. They were consonant with early Roman mores which were warlike. Cicero thought them an excellent school to teach contempt for pain and death. He cited gladiators as examples of bodily exercise, courage, and discipline. He seems to have known that some disapproved of the exhibitions, and he was disposed to agree with them if the gladiators were others than criminals condemned to death.2016 A usage which is consonant with the tastes, mores, and world philosophy of a people need work no corruption on them, for it is under taboos and conventions; but if all the restraints are taken away it enters into their life for just what it is in its character, — sensual, cruel, bloody, obscene, etc. What had been savage and bloodthirsty when the Romans were warriors became base and cowardly when they never risked their own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take rôles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, in order to entertain the Roman crowd. Such rôles were Prometheus, Dædalus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Attys; Pasiphae and the bull, 571and Leda and the swan were also enacted. In Martial's Epigrams, Book I, the cases are mentioned where a woman fought with a lion; Laureolus, a robber, was crucified and torn, as he hung on the cross, by a bear; Dædalus, when his wing broke, was precipitated amongst bears who tore him to pieces; and Orpheus was torn by a bear. These exhibitions were recognized as indecencies.2017 Later the exhibitions had no limit.2018 "From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Roman character became more and more indurated under the influence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendor."2019 "It is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the stately buildings within whose enclosure for centuries the populace were regaled with the sufferings and the blood of the noblest creatures of the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers and lions to these scenes."2020

625. Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions. The Romans carried gladiatorial exhibitions wherever their conquests extended. "The Teutonic regions of the North and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate traveling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows. Plutarch urges public men to banish or to restrain these exhibitions in their cities. When the Athenians, from an ambition to rival the splendor of Corinth, were meditating the establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first to overturn their altar of Pity. The apostles of Hellenism, — Dion, Plutarch, and Lucian, — were unanimous in condemning an institution which sacrificed the bravest men to the brutal passions of the mob."2021 At Byzantium the lack of any 572standard of decency and propriety in the exhibitions was even more complete, and they lasted indefinitely.2022 Constantine in 325 A.D. absolutely forbade gladiatorial exhibitions, because bloody shows were unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators. His laws, however, failed of effect.2023 At the end of the fourth century Symmachus, "who was regarded as one of the most estimable pagans of his age," collected some prisoners to fight in honor of his son. They committed suicide to escape the destiny for which he designed them. He lamented the misfortune which had befallen him from their "impious hands," but endeavored to calm his feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates and the precepts of philosophy. He will not, he says, use such people any more, but Libyan lions, more docile than men.2024 He serves to point a moral on the mores of his age.

626. The folk drama. The culture classes pass by the sports of the "vulgar" with contempt; but the student of the mores cannot do so. The tastes of the crowd are manifested in them. We read the great dramas which have become a part of the world literature, and we form from them our ideas of the current intellectual interest of the time of their origin and of the society in which they were produced. Such inferences need to be corrected. They are certainly erroneous. The Greeks were not all of them, nor any of them all the time, on a plane of classical severity and correctness. Far from it. They were realistic, egoistic, cold, cruel, and fond of sensual pleasure.2025 The great dramas, epics, etc., were enjoyed only by the real upper strata of the society, just as is the case in regard to Shakespeare amongst us. The great populace of no society has ever found its amusement in purely intellectual suggestions. With us popular amusement is found in the circus, negro minstrels, the variety show, opera bouffe, the spectacle, and ballet, and it attaches to parody and burlesque, "knock-down business," buffoonery, and broad 573allusion. Stupidity is always funny. Everything which breaks over the social taboo is funny. A violation of propriety, accidental disorder of the dress, grotesque postures, vulgar gestures of derision or defiance, blows, painful accidents and mishaps, — if not too serious, — deformations of the body (humpbacks), epithets and nicknames, slang and other abuses of language (like mispronunciation by foreigners), vituperation, caricature and burlesque of respectable types like the pedant, dandy, Puritan, imbecile, or the rich and great, always raise a laugh in the crowd and are relished by the crowd. They are constant elements of farce and fun. They have been so for three thousand years. Jugglery and feats of strength and skill excite wonder until they become familiar. They are proofs of individual capacity. They do not give amusement like the points which have just been mentioned and which have been repeated to generation after generation. The crowd always delights in any degradation of the things which the selected classes prefer and try to impose on all. They rejoice to see the restrictions trampled upon which they hear preached as the rules of life. In opera bouffe classical heroes, gods of the classical mythology, royalty, nobles of the mediæval type, feudalism, dominies, are turned to ridicule. The crowd worships its heroes fanatically while they are in fashion, but it likes to turn about and roll them in the mud of satire, in order to teach them who made them and how easily it can unmake them. Aristophanes derided all which was serious in the Athenian social system. Long before Don Quixote was written chivalry was treated with derision. Satire is a reversal of respect and admiration.

627. The popular taste. Realism. Conventionality. Satire. That which is realistic and graphic appeals to the popular and uneducated taste, not that which is conventional, regulated, and refined according to rule and standard. That which is realistic reproduces all the facts of life. If the mirror is held up to nature it will show some nasty things. The social taboos began in superstitious fear, but they formed a series of conventional folkways under which some acts and facts of life were veiled from sight, knowledge, speech, and publicity. Other lesser 574conventions were grafted on these, and produced the great mass of usages within which our lives are passed. That which is artistic is the highest form of conventional refinement. Realism antagonizes and breaks through all these conventions and taboos, which are always a strain upon those who are not brought up in them from infancy. Therefore we hear demands for realism and naturalness from those who weary of the strain and do not want to submit to it. The conventionalities define respectability, and respectability has always been sneered at. In all comedy it is made ridiculous. The husband was possessed of conventional rights in which he was protected by society so that he had a secured and uneventful status. In comedy his rights have been violated and his security has been broken. The crowd has always enjoyed this. It rejoiced to see the wife deceive the husband, and the adulterer fool him. The latter represented freedom and cleverness at war with philistinism. On the other hand, all the taboos and conventions which have penetrated the masses and become familiar to them from infancy are fiercely defended by them (e.g. female dress and the taboo on man's dress for females). The popular magazines and the "great moral shows" religiously respect the standards of the crowd. That which is broad is funny, but there is always a limit of toleration. What is prudish, puritanical, fastidious, affected, pharisaical, etc.? These adjectives are in use, and they apply to things which are beyond a line which is undefined and indefinable. It depends on the codes and standards of the group. Realism presents everyday experience, no humbug, the world as it is. It must, therefore, be cynical and ruthless to all conventions. It shows the meanness of greatness, the other side of virtue, the weakness of heroes. No doubt it is great fun to pour scorn and ridicule on all who assume to be better than we are, and to look down on us. The easiest way to do it is to show up their weaknesses, follies, and sins. Here is another task for the satirists. Satire in comedy may be a gratification of envy. The rôle of Pierrot is dangerous to him who exercises it. In fact no man is fit for it. Where does any one get a charter to be censor of all the rest? He will certainly become proud, arrogant, self-seeking, and 575tyrannical. Each one satirizes follies which are not to his taste, or sins to which he is not tempted. Satire to be artistic and permanently effective must be marked by light and shade. It always exaggerates what it wants to impress on the attention, but to do this artistically it must subdue other elements. This is very difficult to accomplish when for popular effect it must use big brushes and glaring colors.

628. Popular exhibitions. From the time of Homer we can trace popular exhibitions which accompanied the theatrical forms above described as an inferior class of the same species. The popular exhibitions were marked by the features which have been described (sec. 626), to which we may add bloodshed and cruel rites.

629. Ancient popular festivals. The thargelia were ancient sanguinary festivals celebrated in Greece in honor of Apollo and Diana. Two men, or a man and a woman, were immolated in Attica, to expiate the sins of the people. "The circular dances of the Greeks around the victims, or later around the altar, can only be compared with the songs and furious dances of the Iroquois and Brazilians around their prisoners."2026 At Athens also the kronia were festivals of Saturn. The notion that there was a period of original liberty and equality "at the beginning" was entertained at that time, and this festival was held to represent it. Also on Crete there were festivals of Mercury. In Thessaly the peloria were a festival, the name of which was derived from Pelor, the man that brought news that an earthquake had drained the valley of Tempe. The sacea were a festival at Babylon similar to the saturnalia. A slave in each house, including the palace of the king, ruled as a house sovereign for five days. The leading idea was to reverse or invert everything in ordinary life. The kordax was an ancient dance of the old comedy, with indecent gestures, in which the human figure was caricatured according to all the deformations which it underwent by vice or sensuality. All the effects of gluttony and Bacchic excess were caricatured in the figure of Silenus. The old woman fond of wine lost all modesty under the influence of wine.2027 The leaders of the choruses, in a 576later time at Athens, offered reminders of primitive barbarism and of the immolation of human beings, and a representation of savage nudity, but they presented no image which was ridiculous or base. Tragedy had a long struggle to become separate from lyric forms, but Æschylus at last accomplished the separation. This was really the separation of the high literary drama from the popular mimus. After ten centuries of glory in Greece tragedy was lost again under the lyric form.2028 The popular drama, however, lasted on until to-day, and it has never changed its characteristic elements.

630. The mimus. The essence of the mimus is in pantomime as the name denotes. It imitates facts of life and behavior and is, therefore, essentially realistic. It may well be derived from the mimetic dances of nature peoples, in which beasts, warriors, and lovers are imitated, with jest and satirical exaggeration of characteristic traits. In the folk drama in its simplest forms nothing has ever been written. The actor, assumed a rôle and improvised all which he had to say in trying to act it out. His responsibility for the rôle was far greater than that of an actor in a culture drama. The actor, by repeating a rôle, produced a representation of it which was personal to himself and which he perfected. The most interesting and marked characters became fixed. A large number of them are now established in literature and have become known all over the world. The latest instance of such a type is, perhaps, Lord Dundreary. The word mimus appears in Greece in the fifth century B.C. The mimus was a picture of life or, more exactly, an unwritten parody of life. It was divided into grades and the actors into castes. Women had previously appeared as jugglers and mountebanks. They now appeared amongst the actors of the popular drama. This made the exhibitions questionable according to Greek standards. The exhibitions were given by wandering companies. While actors of the culture drama always wore masks, those of the mimus were the first to appear unmasked;2029 later others imitated them. At the present day the theatrical exhibitions which may be seen on the outskirts of a fair in central Europe well represent the ancient mimus. 577The marionettes were an early offshoot of the mimus, and the modern Punch-and-Judy show is a descendant in part of both. For the mores the mimus and the marionette theater are a thousandfold more important than the great tragedies, but the former have left no mark on history. They never were written down; the actors are dead; their reputation is forgotten. The mores contain the effect as a fact but no explanation of it. From the time of Alexander the Great that which is common, popular, realistic prevailed in politics and literature. The heroic and ideal-poetic declined and was made an object of satire in the mimus. "The trivial, prosaic, and libertine taste of the Macedonian princes of Egypt and Syria at last reigned alone in enslaved Greece." Then, under different forms and names, nothing remained but mimes, realistic representation of common life.2030 The Olympian gods and Homeric heroes were burlesqued for fun. The mimus won acceptance at courts and in higher circles. It was developed into the so-called "hypothesis" and won a place on the stage. The most distinguished maker of hypotheses was Philistion,2031 who lived at the beginning of the Christian era. They became popular throughout the Greco-Roman world in the first centuries of the Christian era.2032 The emperor Tiberius caused actors to be expelled from Italy as disturbers of the peace, and because the old Oscan farce, once amusement for the common people, had become indecent.2033 Out of the common origin of all dramatic exhibitions (sec. 616) the mimus kept the corn demons, or growth demons, which always commanded the interest of husbandmen. The actors of this rôle wore masks in which the features of a low and sensual countenance were greatly exaggerated. An artificial phallus (sec. 473) was worn outside of the dress, and the entire region of the hips was enlarged so as to produce a conventional, extravagant, and stereotyped figure, like the modern clown, punch, or Mephisto, being, in fact, in some measure, their ancestor.2034 Greek vases represent these 578figures. The same set of ideas and course of thought has been traced in Mexico in connection with crop interests and growth demons.2035 There also the public rites at festivals passed by imperceptible steps into dramatic representations with dogmatic meaning or magical significance.

631. Modern analogies. The end man of the negro minstrel troupe is a modern creation like the Greek phlyax, for he is a buffoon of the plantation-negro type, with every feature exaggerated to the utmost, so that he is unreal and a caricature; but the exaggerations direct attention to familiar facts and display characteristic features which are a cause of merriment. The rise, development, and decline of negro ministrelsy illustrate, within our observation, many features in the history of popular comedy. It originated in fun making by the imitation of a foreign group, whose peculiar ways appeared to be ridiculous antics. Then the negro was used to burlesque and satirize the weaknesses, follies, and affectations of whites. The negro plantation hand is a type which is disappearing and interest in him is declining. He is no longer available for direct study or derived satire.

632. Biologs and ethologs. The Greek phlyax (the play) passed to southern Italy in the fourth century B.C., whence it was transmitted to Rome and confused with the atellan. It became very popular, and lasted until the fifth century A.D.2036 Reich divides the mimes into two classes: (1) biologs, i.e. those who represent individual types, e.g. an unfaithful wife, an imbecile husband, a fatuous nobleman, a physician, etc.; (2) ethologs, i.e. those who impersonate some feature in the mores of the time and satirize it, e.g. faith in miracles, fondness for drink or gambling, sycophancy to the rich, or "getting on in the world." This is a very important distinction and one which illuminates the connection between the drama and the mores. Socrates was an etholog, although not an actor. He spent sarcasm, irony, and humor on the ways of the Athenians of his time.2037 Aristophanes was another, Rabelais was another, Erasmus was an inferior one. In his Colloquies and Praise of Folly he is more of a preacher, but 579his aim is to influence by graphic satirical description. In our day the comic papers attempt the task of the etholog. They try to satirize manners and men. A comic paper owned or subsidized by a political party is the sorriest representative of Pierrot that the world has yet seen. The biolog personates an individual type, like an aberration of human nature, which may be found anywhere and at any time. The etholog personates a specimen of a class which helps to characterize a period. Dandies exist at all times, but vary in detail. The fatuity and vanity of all dandies are features for the etholog; the follies of the dandy of a period belong to the biolog. Beau Brummel would be a model for a biolog. The etholog is apt to overlook his best subjects. He cannot himself escape from his own times enough to recognize them. He never satirizes the reigning features. The American etholog never satirizes democracy, or the politician, or the newspaper. The etholog wants a big party or a strong sentiment behind him. It is not until after skepticism about a ruling "way" has formed in the minds of a large section of the masses that the etholog makes himself the mouthpiece of it. We have no satire yet on militarism, or imperialism, or the Monroe doctrine. A protective tariff is a grand object for satire, but so long as the masses believe in it satire is powerless. The same is true of any folkway so long as it is not yet doubted. Satire is then blasphemy. While a way is prevalent there is pathos about it (sec. 178), as there is now amongst us about democracy, but there never can be satire, and pathos at the same time, in the same society, about the same thing. One might have believed that nothing need be sacred to the theaters of Paris, but a few years ago a play was written which set the French Revolution in a different light from the now consecrated commonplace in regard to it. It was found impossible to produce it. A marionette player and his wife made fun of Père Duchesne on the boulevard during the Revolution. Both were guillotined.2038 These facts limit very much the high moral function sometimes ascribed to satire. It never gets into action until the mischief is done. It never squelches a folly at its commencement. That 580function belongs to educated reason, but educated reason is not in the masses.

633. Dickens as a biolog. Charles Dickens was a biolog. His novels contain very little evidence of the manners and customs of his time, and what they do contain is forced and untrue. He invented characters whose names have become common nouns and adjectives for individual types which are found in all societies at all times (Pecksniff, Micawber, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep, etc.), but which may, at a time, be especially common and produce fine specimens.

634. Early Jewish plays. Ezekiel (an Alexandrian Jew, fl. c. 200 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the exodus from Egypt, with the same motive as the mystery plays, — the edification of the faithful. Herod Atticus (♰c.180 A.D.), having caused the death of his wife, Regilla, was not satisfied with the expiations in the usual funeral rites. He built, as a monument to her, a theater with a roof.2039 Ezekiel's play on the exodus was presented in Herod's theater. Nicholas of Damascus (b. 74 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the story of Susanna.2040

635. Roman mimus. The mimus, in the Greco-Roman empire, stereotyped its figures for a period, since of course they did not change suddenly or greatly. In the Roman mimus the recurring features were the pursuit of legacies, the impotency of men, the stupidity of the clown, blows and other physical violence. The fixed types were: old women as drunkards, sorceresses, go-betweens, peddlers, and panders; men as scholasticus (the pedant and learned imbecile), Ardalio (a character introduced by Philistion), the fatuous, fussy old man, and then the Christian, a type which was kept up for several centuries.2041 These personages, remaining unchanged in character, were put in various assumed positions and conjunctures. The actors had to invent the dialogue and work out the situation. The characters have come down to us as Punch, Harlequin, Pantaloon, etc.2042 581Punch (=Pulcino, Pulcinella) is only a Neapolitan rendering of Maccus, a character in the atellans. "Maccus," in Etruscan, meant a little cock.2043 Christian antiphonal singing, like the Greek mystery acts of Dionysus, helped to develop the drama.2044 In the first centuries of the Christian era "obscenity dominated the theater." "It was no longer a school of patriotism, recalling the heroes of the early ages or criticising the misdoings of contemporaries. It was a scene of vice and corruption for actors and spectators. There was nothing represented but the adventures of deceived husbands, adulteries, intrigues of libertines, incidents in lupanars. The only characters represented were shameless women and effeminate men. The most shameful things were exhibited. Everything which ought to be respected was there degraded. Virtue was mocked and the gods were derided. The actor caused the taste for evil things to penetrate the mind of the spectator; he stimulated ignoble and criminal passions, and, familiar as he was with vice, he blushed sometimes at the shameful rôle which he was forced to play before the crowd."2045

636. "The Suffering Christ." "Pseudo-Querolus." In the fourth century the Christians tried to use the theater for their purposes. The drama The Suffering Christ is attributed to Gregory of Nazianz. It represents the passion of Jesus as understood by the Nicene theologians. It consists of twelve hundred and seventy-three verses taken more or less exactly from the tragedies of Euripides and patched together. Lintilhac2046 says it is now the accepted opinion that it cannot be of remoter origin than the eleventh century, so that the most noteworthy fact about it would be that it is a Greek liturgical play of even date with the earliest western plays of that class. In it the Virgin Mary is a pagan woman, who uses verses of Hecuba and Medea, and thinks of suicide.2047 Another play of the fourth century, which is mentioned as important in the history of the drama, is the Pseudo-Querolus. It is an imitation of Plautus. Querolus 582is the forerunner of Molière's Misanthrope and so a biolog, — a permanent type of person.2048 Dramas representing martyrdom and other Christian incidents were presented with very great realism.2049

637. The mimus and Christianity. The mimus opened war on Christianity. The religion was unpopular and hated. It set itself against the mores of the society at the time. It was scoffed at just as Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists have been scoffed at since and for the same reasons. It shared the unpopularity of the Jews, who came before the heathen world claiming the isolation of superiority, exclusive favor of God, ascendancy by rights over all the world. To the pagans the Christians seemed to make a great fuss about nothing. The mimus seized the popular sentiment and gave it expression. The Christian became the clown and simpleton. Christian rites were parodied and ridiculed. Martyrdoms were represented on the stage, the martyr being the buffoon. The heathen gods were taken under the protection of the mimus, instead of being burlesqued as they had been for several centuries. This mockery ran through the Roman empire until the end of the fourth century, when the church got the protection of the state against public insult, but Christianity fell under the dominion of heathen mores. The great ecclesiastics of the fifth century preached fiercely against the theater, not because of the insults of the theater against the church, for they were silenced, but on account of the action of the theater upon Christian mores. Chrysostom denounced the theater on account of the manners of actresses in the mimus, on account of false hair, paint, exposed bodies, uncovered heads, melodies, gross language, gestures, strife, representations of adultery and other sex vice, and because it was the school of intrigue and seduction. This became the attitude of the church towards the theater.2050

638. Popular phantasms. Although the crowd likes to see realistic representations of life, and also likes to see in the drama that ridicule of the cultured classes which seems like a victory 583over them, yet it also loves fantastic scenes, and acts in which the limitations of reality are left behind and imaginary luck and joy are represented, — such as magical transformations, fairy tales, and realms of bliss. Extremes of realism and phantasm meet in the folk drama. After the fifth century the sense of societal decline and loss was strong in the popular mind. It was felt that the world was failing. There was a contempt for life.2051 Pagan society was ennuyé. "It wanted to laugh. It wanted games and dances to make gay the last hours which separated it from its fall."2052 Salvianus says that the Roman world died laughing.2053

639. Effects of vicious amusements. Vicious amusements provoke all kinds of vicious passions. Excitement, sensuality, frivolity, and meanness go together. Lecky2054 points out the contrast between the conduct of the Romans of the time of Marius, who refused to plunder the houses of the opposing faction when Marius threw them open, and that of the Romans of the time of Vespasian, who enjoyed the fun and plunder of his war with Vitellius in the streets of Rome. "The moral condition of the empire is, indeed, in some respects one of the most appalling pictures on record."

640. Gladiatorial games. The mores of the Romans of the third century B.C. (sec. 624) seized upon the gladiatorial contests as something suited to the genius of the Roman people, and, as the Romans gained wealth and power by conquest and plunder, with numerous war captives, they developed the sport of the arena to a very high point. Then the sport reacted on the mores and made them more cruel, licentious, and cowardly. It required more and more extravagant inventions to produce the former degree of pleasure. The Romans were fond of all torture and showed great invention in connection with it, both for beasts and men. Children amused themselves by torturing beasts and insects, making them draw loads, and making fowls and birds fight. They loved the sight of pain and bloodshed 584and found their greatest pleasure in it.2055 Under Nero women fought in the arena. This was forbidden under Severus. A law, probably of the time of Nero, forbade masters to give their slaves to fight beasts. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. Marcus Aurelius forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators, and he tried to limit the gladiatorial exhibitions. They were far too popular.2056 It is thus that amusements and mores react on each other to produce social degeneration. The whole social standard of "right" moves down with the moral degeneracy, and at no stage is there a sense of shame or wrongdoing in the public mind in connection with what is customary and traditional at the time. There is no contrast between facts and standards. The great Christian ecclesiastics of the fourth and fifth centuries denounced the public amusements and tried to keep the Christians away from them. They tried to convert actors. They pointed out the subtle corruption of character produced by feigning vice. Gladiators were not admitted to baptism unless they repented and renounced their profession.2057 In 325 Constantine forbade gladiatorial combats as unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the use of condemned criminals in the arena. These laws were powerless.2058

641. Compromise between church and customs. The maiuma (mock sea fight on the Tiber in May) was forbidden, probably under Constance, a prohibition which was repeated by Theodosius. Arcadius tried to allow it again, under conditions that propriety be observed, but it was impossible, and he forbade all immodest exhibitions. Theodosius forbade magistrates to be present at exhibitions after midday, when the most obscene and bloody were presented, except on the anniversaries of his own birth and accession. He also forbade actresses to use fine clothes and jewels, and forbade Christians to be actors. Leo I ([symbol: cross] 461) forbade that any Christian woman, free or slave, should be compelled to be an actress or meretrix.2059 Salvianus describes,2060 585in very emphatic but general terms, the public exhibitions in Gaul and Africa in the second half of the fifth century. There was, he says, scarcely a crime or outrage which was not represented on the stage, and the spectators enjoyed seeing a man killed or cruelly lacerated. All the earth was ransacked for beasts. All the senses were outraged by indecencies. Nevertheless, on any day on which performances occurred the churches were empty. The Christians, as we see, lived in the mores of their age, and all these things had centuries of tradition behind them. Salvianus and other ecclesiastics were not heeded because they derived their standards from Christian dogmas, and those standards were far removed from the current mores. The church was forced to compromise. It allowed feasts, fairs, and games near the churches. It converted heathen festivals, with processions, lights, and garlands, into Christian festivals and usages. It borrowed the attractions of the worship of Isis, Mithra, and Cybele, and adopted all the means of suggestion employed in their rites. The great ecclesiastics were divided as to this policy. Augustine put an end, so far as his jurisdiction went, to the feasts in the churches in honor of martyrs, with singing, dancing, and drinking, although they were very popular.2061 He complained earnestly of the indecency of the exhibitions of his time.2062 "Especially at the festivals in honor of the heathen gods, and in civil celebrations, the ancient religious practices were renewed, not infrequently degenerating into shameless immorality, yet protecting civil usages. The patriot, the philosopher, the skeptic, and the pious man had to make a capitulation with those ancient religious practices, for they were not, in truth, emancipated from them at heart, and they did not know of anything better to replace what those practices did for society."2063 So the philosopher, patriot, skeptic, and pious man always have to compromise with the ancient and existing mores. Salvianus2064 says that poverty caused the great exhibitions to cease. It was advancing poverty and misery which put an end to all the old forms of amusement. It was not the church or 586Christianity. The Christian rites and festivals alone remained. Modern Spanish bullfights appear to be a survival of the old sports of the arena. Bullfights were introduced into Italy in the fourteenth century. They were general in the fifteenth century. The Aragonese brought them to Naples and the Borgias to Rome.2065 We hear of a kind of gladiatorial exhibition at some festivals in India early in the nineteenth century.2066 There were gladiators also in Japan2067 and in Mexico.2068

642. The cantica. Roman drama ran down to pantomime with explanatory recitation, that is, cantica. From the seventh to the tenth century few dramas were produced with dialogue. Some biblical narratives, legends of saints, and profane compositions from that time exist, which are probably cantica, to be accompanied by pantomime at fairs or in church porches.

643. Passion for the games. It certainly was not on account of any decline in the taste for amusement that the games declined. In the fifth century, when the Vandals were besieging Carthage, "the church of Carthage was crazy for the games," and the cries of those dying in battle were confused with those of the applauding spectators at the games. The leading men of Treves were gratifying their love of feasting when the barbarians entered their city.2069 The people of Antioch were in the theater when the Persians surprised them, about 265 A.D.2070

644. German sports. Amongst the Germanic nations, from a very early period, popular amusements consisted in pantomimes, mummery with animal masks, horseplay by clowns, etc. The feast of Holda, or Berchta, during the first twelve days of January, was an especial period for those sports. From the sixth century there was also a pantomime of the strife of winter and spring.2071

645. The mimus from the third to the eighth century. As the culture drama fell into neglect the mimus was left in possession of the field. The culture drama, as we have seen, was built 587upon and above the mimus, and has the character of a high product which could be maintained only in a peaceful and prosperous society whose other literary and artistic products were of a high grade. With a failure of societal power the highest products disappeared first, but the low and vulgar mimus, which had been disregarded but had amused the crowd during prosperity, continued to exist. In the third, fourth, and fifth centuries the mimus existed throughout the Roman world and was very popular. In the fifth century it flourished at Ravenna, and perhaps it continued later in the same form as in the East. It can be traced in Italy in the sixth century, after which its existence is doubtful. In the seventh century the theater was a thing of the past, but the mimus still existed. The ascetics of Charlemagne's time disapproved of it and got legislation against it, but the laws were of no avail. The ecclesiastics were fond of the mimus. It was in the hands of strolling players of the humblest kind. It coarsened with the general decay. All court festivals needed the mimus for the festivities.2072

646. Drama in the Orient. There is no drama in Mohammedan literature and it appears that there is no original drama in the Orient.2073 The mimus declined in the West in the disaster of the fifth century, but in the Byzantine empire it lasted until the Turkish conquest, so that it appears that if there is any historical connection between modern and ancient drama it must be through Byzantium.2074 The actors at Byzantium kept a certain traditional license in the face of the emperor and court which was not without social and political value.2075

647. Marionettes. Marionettes are mentioned in Xenophon's Symposium. They were of more ancient origin. The puppet play was used as a means of burlesquing the legitimate theater and drama. It passed to the Turks as the puppet shadow play, in which the hero Karagöz is the same as Punch in figure, character, and acts. This puppet play spread all over the Eastern world. Lane2076 says of it in Egypt, in the first half of the nineteenth century, that it was very indecent. Reich2077 describes 588an indecent shadow play. A special form of it was developed in Java, the wajang-poerva, with figures of the pantin type, operated by strings and levers. This amusement is very popular in Java and very representative of the mores. Whether these oriental forms of the mimus were derived from the Greco-Roman world is uncertain. The mimus is so original and of such spontaneous growth that it does not need to be borrowed.

648. The drama in India. In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit, — realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.2078 Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the story is that of a Brahmin of the noblest character, who marries a courtesan, she having great love for him. The courtesan gives to the Brahmin's son a toy wagon of gold for his own made of clay. The name of the play comes from this trivial incident in it. A wicked, vain, and shallow-pated prince intervenes and is taken as a biolog, or standing type of person. Modern Hindoo dramas require a whole night for the representation. They represent the loves and quarrels of the gods and other mythological stories. "The actors are dressed and painted in imitation of the deities they represent, and frequently the conversations are rendered attractive by sensual and obscene allusions, whilst in the interludes boys dressed in women's clothes dance with the most indecent gestures. The worst dances that I have ever seen have been in front of an image and as a part of the rejoicings of a religious festival. Crowds of men, women, and children sit to watch them the whole night through."2079 The history of Ram is also enacted in pantomime in northern India. The text of the Ramayana is read and days are spent in acting it, by a great crowd, which moves from place to place, and naïvely plans to act city incidents in cities, forest incidents in forests, boat episodes on ponds, and war episodes or battles on great fields.2080

589649. Punch in the West. Punch was brought to Italy in the fifteenth century.2081 Polichinelle, as developed in France, is distinctly French. The model is Henri IV. The hump is an immemorial sign of the French badin-ès-farces. "Polichinelle seems to me to be a purely national (French) type, and one of the most spontaneous and vivacious creations of French fantasy."2082 The puppet play of Punch and Judy has enjoyed immense popularity in western Europe. The Faust legend has been developed by the puppets.2083 With the improvements in the arts people became more sophisticated. The puppets were left to children and to the simplest rural population, not because the mores improved, but because people were treated to more elaborate entertainments and the puppets became trivial. Punch is now a blackguard and criminal, who is conventionally tolerated on account of his antiquity. He is not in modern mores and is almost unknown in the United States. He is generally popular in southern Europe. To the Sicilians "a puppet play is a book, a picture, a poem, and a theater all in one. It teaches and amuses at the same time."2084 Then it still is what it has been for three thousand years.

650. Resistance of the church to the drama. The council in the palace of Trullo, at Constantinople in 692,2085 adopted canons forbidding clerics to attend horse races or theatrical exhibitions, or to stay at weddings after play began, also pantomimes, beast combats, and theatrical dances, also heathen festivals, vows to Pan, bacchanal rites, public dances by women, the appearance of men dressed as women, or of women dressed as men, and the use of comic, tragic, or satyric masks. All the Dionysiac rites had been forbidden long before. These canons prove that those rites were still observed. These clerical rules and canons do not represent the mores and they never overruled the mores at Constantinople. They only bear witness to what existed in the mores late in the seventh century, and 590they were an attempt to purify the usages which had been taken over by compromise from heathenism. In the sixth century in the West dances in church were often forbidden. The only stock of ideas in the eighth and ninth centuries were fantastic notions of nature, heaven and hell, history, supernatural agents, etc., which notions the ecclesiastics had an interest to teach. Dramatic representation was a means of teaching. The external action corresponded closely with the mental concept or story. From the time of Charlemagne pantomimes, tableaux, etc., set forth incidents of biblical stories and the resurrection, ascension, etc. The mores of the age seized on these modes of representation and gave method and color to them. All the grossness, superstition, and bad taste of the age were put into them. Satan and his demons were realistically represented, and the mass was travestied by ecclesiastics in a manner which we should think would be deeply offensive to them.2086 It was another case of conventionality for a limited time and place. Some of the clergy no doubt enjoyed the fun; others had to tolerate what was old and traditional. The folk drama reawakened as burlesque, parody, satire. The evil characters in the Scripture stories (Pharaoh, Judas, Caiaphas, the Jews) all fed this interest. All persons and institutions which pretended to be great and good and were not such provoked satire (clergy, nobles, warriors, women). The drama, introduced to show forth religious notions, served also to set forth others (social, political, city rivalry, class antagonisms). The "mass of fools" was a complete parody of the mass, with mock music and vestments and burlesque ceremony. In the "mass of innocents" children took the place of adults and carried out the ceremony as a parody. At the "feast of the ass" an ass was led into church and treated with mock respect. This last degenerated into obscenity, indecency, and disorder. Bulls and edicts against it were long vain. It was popular as a relief from restraint.2087 It continued the function of the Saturnalia, which had been a grand frolic 591and relaxation. The ecclesiastics tolerated these outbursts, perhaps because they saw that the lines could not be drawn very tightly without such relaxation. From the eleventh century the ecclesiastics opposed any automatic figure. They construed the making of such a figure as an attempt to call the saints, etc., to life again. The skill employed also seemed to them like sorcery.2088 "There was not an ecumenic, national, or diocesan council in whose canons may not be found severe and peremptory reproofs of all sorts and qualities of drama, of actors, and of those who run to see plays."2089 This became the orthodox attitude of the church to the theater. There were complaints of the attendance of clerics and people at theatrical exhibitions until the tenth century. Then they cease because the church ceremonies were more interesting and better done.2090 The Christian drama reached the height of its hieratic development between the ninth and twelfth centuries.2091

651. Hrotsvitha. Klein2092 puts as the next important literary work of dramatic composition after the Pseudo-Querolus the works of the nun Hrotsvitha. In the tenth century she wrote six comedies in Latin, in imitation of Terence, her purpose being to show the superiority of the conventual conception of love to the worldly theory, and of religious passion to erotic passion. In the introduction she apologizes for her realistic descriptions of erotic passion, which she says was necessary for the argument implicit in her plays. She introduces God as a character, and miracles as a means of bringing about the dénouement at which she wants to arrive. It became the custom in mediæval drama to reach, by introducing a miracle, the moral result which current dogma required.2093 The situations and intrigue are generally very unedifying. To our taste the plays seem very unfit to be acted by nuns before nuns.

652. Jongleurs. Processions. In the eleventh century abbeys and cathedrals were built. At the beginning of the century the 592basilicas of the churches were repaired throughout Latin Christendom.2094 The Jongleurs of the twelfth century were the popular minstrels. "Poet, mountebank, musician, physician, beast showman, and to some extent diviner and sorcerer, the jongleur is also the orator of the public market place, the man adored by the crowd to whom he offers his songs and his couplets. Questions of morals and politics, toothache, pious legends, scandalous tales about priests, noble ladies, and cavaliers, gossip of grog shops, and news from the Holy Land were all in his domain."2095 In the second third of the twelfth century the vulgar language began to displace the Latin in church, especially in dramas.2096 Processions were in the taste and usage of the Middle Ages and Renaissance for both civil and religious pomp and display. The dresses, banners, arches, etc., contributed to the spectacle, and all took on a dramatic character for, on a saint's day or other occasion, the exhibition had a second sense of reference to the story of the saint, or the success in war of the king or potentate. The latter sense might be dramatically set forth, and generally was at least suggested. Tableaux and dramatic pantomime in the streets were combined with the processions. Mythological subjects as well as incidents of Christian history were so represented. All classes coöperated in these functions. Poets and artists of the first rank assisted. The contribution of these functions to the development of the drama is obvious. In modern times the taste for processions is lost, and the cultivated classes refuse to participate, but when the whole population of a city took part in setting forth something they all cared for, the social effect was great, and the whole proceeding nourished dramatic taste and power. In Italy the pantomime with song and dance, or ballet, had its origin in the procession.2097 In the churches arrangements were made, with elaborate machinery, for exhibiting representations of Scripture incidents. Godfrey, Abbot of St. Albans (♰1146) wrote a play on the life of St. Catharine "such as was afterwards called 593a miracle." The Annunciation was represented in St. Mark's, Venice, in 1267. In Germany the mysteries were partly in German from the end of the thirteenth century.2098

653. Adam de la Halle. De Julleville2099 puts Adam de la Halle as the first comic writer in France, in point of time. He wrote the Jeu de la Feuillée about 1262. It is described as a "scenic satire rather than a comedy." It is local, personal, and satirical, and includes miracles and capricious inventions without much regard to probability. It stands by itself and is not the first of a series. The notion of a connection between comedy and bodily deformity was now so firmly established that Adam was called the "Humpback of Arras," although he was not humpbacked at all.2100 Association of acts and ideas is always very important in all folkways and popular mores. At Florence, in 1304, on boats on the Arno, devils were represented at work. The bridge on which the spectators stood broke down under the crowd, and it was said that "many went to the real hell to find out about it."2101 At Paris, in 1313, at the celebration of the knighting of the sons of Philippe le Bel, devils were represented tormenting souls.2102

654. Flagellants. The flagellants exerted some of the suggestions of the processions, and they used dramatic devices to set forth their ideas, to say nothing of the dramatic element in the self-scourging. They were outside of the church system, and acted on their own conception of sin and discipline, like modern revivalists. They reappeared from time to time through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They meant to declare that the asserted correlation between goodness and blessing did not verify, and they were at a loss for a doctrine to replace it. Their antiphonal singing turned into dialogue, and then became drama at the end of the thirteenth century.2103

655. Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions. The mediæval plays were presented in churches or on the open spaces on the streets in front of them, at Florence. Later this became 594customary in all cities.2104 The old idea had been that churches were common public property, a universal rendezvous for every common interest. Dedications of churches and feasts of martyrs had been general merrymakings. D'Ancona collects dicta of councils and popes condemning dramatic actions in churches, and the singing of lewd songs and dancing by women.2105 The language used implies that the songs, gestures, acts, and suggestions connected with the performances in the churches were lewd and indecent. The populace, while using the license, well perceived its incongruity and impropriety, and this stimulated the satire, which was so strong a feature of the late Middle Ages and which produced the farce. The mysteries and moralities for a time gave entertainment, but they became tedious. The farce was at first "stuffing," put in to break up the dullness by fun making of some kind and to give spice to the entertainment, just as meats were farcies to give them more savor. It grew until it surpassed and superseded the sober drama. The populace did not want more preaching and instruction, but fun and frolic, relief from labor, thought, and care. The take-off, caricature, burlesque, parody, discerns and sets forth the truth against current humbug, and the pretenses of the successful classes. The fool comes into prominence again, not by inheritance but by rational utility. The fifteenth century offered him plenty of material. As a fool he escaped responsibility. This rôle, — that of the badin in France, the gracioso in Spain, arlequino in Italy, Hanswurst in Germany, — becomes fixed like the buffoon (maccus) in the classical comedy. In France, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the basochiens were young clerks and advocates who were studying law and who made fun of law proceedings. They met with only limited toleration. Their satire was not relished by the legal great men. In the fourteenth century they took up moralities overweighted with allegory but broken up by farces. In the fifteenth century the Enfans sans Souci were another variety of comédiens. Their emblem was the cap with two horns or ass's ears.2106 The life of St. Louis was 595represented in tableaux at Marseilles in 1517.2107 The Passion was represented in the Coliseum until 1539, when Paul III forbade it. Riots against the Jews had been provoked by the exhibition.2108

656. Protest against misuse of churches. It may be said that there was never wanting a dissenting opinion and protest amongst the ecclesiastics about the folk drama in the churches. In 1210 Innocent III forbade such exhibitions by ecclesiastics. Then the fraternities began to represent them on public market places. The "festival of fools" at Christmas time was originally invented to turn the heathen festivals into ridicule. When there were no more heathen it degenerated into extreme popular farce. Thomas Aquinas consented to the mimus, if it was not indecent.2109 The synod of Worms, in 1316, forbade plays in churches. Such plays seem to have reached their highest perfection in the fourteenth century.2110 Plays of this type gave way in the fifteenth century to "moralities," with allegorical characters, which prevailed for a long time, the taste for allegory marking the mental fashion of the time. The council of Basle forbade plays in churches (1440).2111

657. Toleration of jests by the ecclesiastics. The ecclesiastical authorities were very patient with the folk theater for its satires on the clergy, the church, and religion. They heeded only attacks on "the faith." "We are astonished to meet, in a time which we always think of as crushed under authority, with such incredibly bold expressions against the papacy, the episcopate, chivalry, and the most revered doctrines of religion such as paradise, hell, etc."2112 Lenient suggests as reasons the divisions and factions in church and state and the current contempt for popular poetry. In the fifteenth century, in France, the popular drama expressed the class envy of the poor against the rich. In the mystery play Job (1478) the "Pasteur" says: "The great lords have all the goods. The poor people have nothing but pain and adversity. Who would not be irritated [at such a state of things]?" The passion plays of the Rhine valley followed 596those of France. Those of the fourteenth century lacked the rude jests and ghoulish interest of those of France in the fifteenth. The street public never tired of the horrors of executions, or of the low gaiety of funerals, etc. The "sot" first appeared in the Passion de Troyes at the end of the fifteenth century. He was long popular.2113

658. Fictitious literature. Fictitious literature, after printing became common, was greatly increased, especially in Italy and Spain. Through the dialogued story it led up to the drama. At the end of the fifteenth century F. de Rojas wrote a dialogued story, Calisto e Melibœa, about two distressed lovers. The heroine is Celestina, a bawd who helped them out of their troubles. The book is generally named after her, and she became a fixed character in drama and fiction. The noble bawd, however, is an artificial creation of literature and never could be a biolog. It is not true enough. The Spaniards also developed a new form of the mystery play, — the autos sacramentales. These plays represented some Scriptural incident, but the rôles were taken by allegorical figures. They were regularly represented on the festival of Corpus Christi, in the afternoon, on the public square. They satisfied the taste of the people for religiosity, if not religion. Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote a story, Mandragore, which in its day enjoyed great popularity. A man in Paris heard of the beauty of a lady at Florence. He went to the latter place to see her and fell in love with her. Her husband was an imbecile who greatly desired a child. He persuaded his wife to receive the stranger. She and the lover contracted an enduring relation. Cardinal Bibbiena wrote a comedy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Calandra, which was esteemed as a great work. The intrigue consists of quiproquos produced by twins, a male and a female, who exchange dress. Many classical stories are introduced. Lope de Vega (1562-1635) wrote autos and comedies. He wrote eighteen hundred comedies, four hundred autos, and a great number of other pieces, — in all, it is said, twenty-one million verses.2114 Calderon (1600-1681) 597continued on the same lines. The servant-buffoon was the time form of the buffoon. All these productions furnished models and material for the poets and dramatists of other countries. The comedies are always long and wordy and generally tedious. They run in fixed molds, and have unyielding conventions to obey. Rarely have they ethological value.

659. Romances of roguery. The "romances of roguery" were closely akin to the popular drama as exponents of popular tastes and standards. It is very possible that the romances were derived from the tastes.2115 The clever hero has been a very popular type in all ages and countries. He easily degenerates into the clever rogue. The rogue is an anti-hero to offset the epic hero. There was in France, in the thirteenth century, "a bold rogue, Eustache le Moine, who became the central hero of a roman, which set forth his life and deeds as thief and pirate."2116 In Germany Till Eulenspiegel was a rascal who lived in the first part of the fourteenth century and around whose name anecdotes clustered until he became an anti-hero. There were in Germany popular tales which were picaresque novels in embryo. Those about Eulenspiegel were first reduced to a coherent narrative in 1519. Hemmerlein was an ugly and sarcastic buffoon of the fourteenth century. Hanswurst was a fat glutton of the fifteenth century who aimed to be clever but made blunders. Pickelhering, in Holland, was of the same type.2117 In England, in the sixteenth century, Punch began to degenerate. He took away the rôle of "Old Vice," and became more and more depraved, — a popular Don Juan, a type of physical and moral deformity.2118 The play was popular. The marionettes, being only dolls and sexless, escaped the onslaught of the Puritans.2119

660. Picaresque novels. The picaresque novels do not deal with love, but with intrigues for material gain in the widest sense. Lazarillo de Tormes is counted as the first of these. It is attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and is thought to have been produced about 1500. The best known of the class is Gil Blas. The hero lives by his wits, has many vicissitudes, 598and plays and suffers many cruel practical jokes. The Spanish stories of Quevedo and Perez are coarse but never obscene. The view of women, however, is low. They are fickle, shallow, vain, and cunning. The church is "gingerly handled," but the clergy are derided for immorality, hypocrisy, and trickiness.

661. Books of beggars. A variety of the picaresque species was the "books of beggars." An English specimen of this variety is Audley's Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561). Mediæval social ways produced armies of vagabonds, beggars, and outcasts, who practiced vice and evil ways and cultivated criminal cleverness. The picaresque stories illustrate their ways.

662. At the beginning of the sixteenth century. Isabella d'Este describes a play at Ferrara, in 1503, in which the Annunciation was represented, angels descending from heaven by concealed machinery, etc. There was also a moresca, a ballet or pantomime dance, with clowns and beasts, and blows and other clown tricks. Another very noteworthy incident is the enactment, at Urbino in 1504, of a "comedy," in which the recent history of that city was represented, including the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia, the conquest of Urbino by Cesar Borgia, the death of Alexander VI, and the return of the Duke of Urbino. This application of the dramatic method to their own recent history, which had been indeed dramatic, shows the high development of graphic and artistic power, which is also shown by the other arts of the time. Ladies did not then abdicate their prerogative to judge and condemn the propriety of artistic products offered to them. Isabella declared the Cassaria "lascivious and immoral beyond words," and forbade her ladies to attend the performance of it at the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to her (Isabella's) brother.2120 In France, in the sixteenth century, imitations of classical dramas held the stage. The Protestants sought to use the drama for effect on the populace.2121 St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), as Archbishop of Milan, carried on a war against exhibitions of all kinds. He maintained that they were indecent.2122

599663. The theater at Venice. The first tragedy produced in Italy was written by Albertino Mussato, a Paduan, early in the fourteenth century in imitation of Latin dramas. The subject was the conflicts of Padua with Ezzelino da Romano. Albertino's work was not imitated, for the mysteries held the stage until the end of the fifteenth century. They were represented on stages erected in public places of the cities. At Venice were invented momaria, in which there was no theatrical illusion, but brio, joviality, and irony. They began at weddings, where after the wedding feast some one, impersonating an heroic personage, narrated the great deeds of the ancestors of the spouses, with numberless exaggerations and jest, from which the name momaria, or bombaria, was derived. The companies of the calza figured in all gay assemblies at Venice from 1400 to the end of the sixteenth century. They renewed the Latin comedies and "carried festivity and good taste even into the churches." Theatrical exhibitions became the favorite amusement of the Venetians, and were presented not only in private houses but also in monasteries, although secular persons were not present.2123

664. Dancing. Public sports. From the early Middle Ages the ecclesiastical authorities disapproved of dancing, but the people were very fond of it and never gave it up. The poems and romances are full of it.2124 Some usages of dancing in Germany were very gross. The man swung his partner off the floor as far as he could. If any woman refused to dance with any man, it occurred sometimes that he slapped her face, but it was disputed whether this was not beyond the limit.2125 The usages at the carnival were very gross and obscene.2126 All popular sports were coarse and cruel. It seemed to be considered good fun to torment the weak and to watch their helpless struggles. Birds were shot, and beasts baited, in a way to give pain and prolong it. At Nuremberg the "cat knight" fought with a cat hung about his own neck, which he must bite to death in order to be knighted 600by the bürgermeister. Blind people were shut in an inclosed space in the market place with a pig as a prize, which they were to beat with sticks. The fun was greatest when they struck each other. This amusement is reported from many places in central Europe.2127 "Nothing amused our ancestors more than these blind encounters. Even kings took part at these burlesque representations." At Paris they were presented every year at mid-lent.2128

665. Women in the theater and on the stage. No young women were allowed to be present at the commedia del arte in the first times of the principate at Florence. Masi2129 says that this was true in general of all Italy. Later they were addressed in the prologue, which became customary, and so they must have been present. Popular opinion still held that they ought to stay at home, as of old. They were never on the stage. De Julleville says2130 that women in France in the Middle Ages were present at the freest farces. In the middle of the sixteenth century, in Italy, wandering players began to employ women for female parts. The Italian comedians, when they went to Paris, continued this custom there.2131 Philip II of Spain forbade women on the stage.2132 French actresses appeared at London in 1629; they were allowed in 1659.2133 Innocent XI, in 1676, forbade the employment of women on the stage.2134

666. The "commedia del arte." In Italy the commedia del arte was the continuation or revival of the mimus. The speeches were impromptu; the characters and rôles were stereotyped. The action and speeches must have grown by the contributions of talented men who played the parts from generation to generation. The characters have become traditional and universal.2135 Such were Maccus (later Polichinella) of Naples, Manducus or 601the French Croquemitaine, Bucco, a half-stupid, half-sarcastic buffoon, Pappus (the later Venetian Pantalon) the fussy old man, and Casnar, the French Cassandre. Scaramucca or Fracassa was added to satirize the Spanish soldier. He was recognized as the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.2136 The Spanish trooper was a boastful coward. He called himself the son of the earthquake and lightning, cousin of death, or friend of Beelzebub.2137 At the marriage of Alphonso d'Este comedies of Plautus were acted for effect and conventional pretense, but they were considered tiresome, and interludes of pantomime, ballet, clown tricks, peasant farce, mythology, and fireworks were introduced to furnish entertainment.2138

667. Jest books. Italian comedy at Paris. In the sixteenth century the theater became entirely secular, and amusement and religion were separated as a consequence of the general movement of the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages serious men collected jests and published jest books, which were collections of the jokes made by the mimus, just as modern jests have been made by negro minstrels, circus clowns, and variety actors.2139 At the end of the sixteenth century the Italians, "suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties, and immortalizing street jokes by the genius of masked comedy."2140 The commedia del arte took this course. It was open to every chance of political and social influence. It became the recognized Italian comedy and was transported to the north as such. In each province of Italy the fixed characters were independently developed, so that variations were produced. The type of play reached a climax in the middle of the seventeenth century. Then it declined for lack of competent actors. It was the realism of everyday life. It tended always back again to the mountebanks, jugglers, rope dancers, etc.2141 The lazzi were "business" which gave the actors time to improvise. In the 602sixteenth century Italian comedians began to play at Paris in Italian. The Italian actresses undressed on the stage much and often, so that "Italian comedy" came to mean vulgar and licentious comedy. The Parlement of Paris held that the plays were immoral. Many of them are said to have been obscene.2142 Madame de Maintenon having heard that they were immoral, they were forbidden in 1697.2143 The Italian comedy struggled on, however. For a long time no women visited it, but in the eighteenth century a comedy called Arlequin, Empereur dans la Lune became celebrated. It was a satire on the France of the time. Women ignored the grossness for the sake of the satire.2144 The plays of the Italians were all either farces for pure fun or satires on the mores of the time. "Many were satires on women." In one of these last, the saying was ascribed to Aristotle, upon seeing a tree from the limbs of which four women were hanging, "How happy men would be, if all trees bore that fruit." Women were currently represented as empty-headed, vain, fond of pleasure, frivolous, and fickle. Lawyers were also a favorite object of satire.2145 In the Italian theater écriteaux were hung up, on which the speeches were written and the audience joined in singing the couplets.2146

668. "Commedia del arte" in Italy. In Italy the commedia del arte went through many vicissitudes. At Venice, late in the eighteenth century, Gozzi undertook to revive it by composing what he called "fables." They were fairy extravaganzas, based on Mother Goose stories or fairy tales. They were in part improvised, but in part written, either in prose or verse, in order to make sure of the essential points of the action. The older custom had been to prepare only a scenario, in which the story was told in brief outline, with the allotment of parts in the production.2147 Pantaleone, in the commedia del arte, is sad, — an imbecile, dissolute old man. Gozzi gave him brio and bonarietà , with cordiality and humor. Goldoni, who got into a war with 603Gozzi, made Pantaleone a philistine, who used good sense against the follies of fashion. No women were present at these comedies at Venice at this time.2148

Scherillo2149 quotes Perucci, that at the end of the seventeenth century the folk theater was obscene in word and act beyond the ancient comedies. If that is true, it is only a detail of the degeneracy of Italy from the middle of the sixteenth century.

669. Summary and review. It is evident that amusement and relaxation are needs of men. The fondness for exhibitions and theatrical representations can be traced through history. The suggestion is direct and forcible. It can be made to play upon harmful tastes as well as upon good ones. There is nothing to guide it or decide its form and direction except the mores, — the consenting opinion of the masses as to what is beneficial or harmful. The leading classes try to mold this opinion. The history shows that the mores can make anything right, and protect any violation of the sex taboo or of ordinary propriety. There is no subject in regard to which the mores need more careful criticism than in regard to amusements. The standard and the usage degenerate together unless there is control by an active and well-trained taste and sense. The popular taste and sense are products of inherited mores. It is this reflex action of habitual acts and experiences which makes the subject difficult. All the primary facts and the secondary or remoter reflections are intertwined as in an organic growth, and all go together. The facts exert constant education, and every positive effort to interfere with the course of things by primitive education must be content to exert slight effects for a long time. Wealth and luxury exert their evil effects through amusement. Poverty cuts down these products of wealth and brings societies back to simplicity and virtue. Men renounce when they cannot get. The periods of economic and social decay have cut off the development of forms of amusement, arrested vice, and forced new beginnings.

670. Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will. The history shows that amusements are a pitfall in which 604good mores may be lost and evil ones produced. They require conventional control and good judgment to guide them. This requirement cannot be set aside. Amusements always present a necessity for moral education and moral will. This fact has impressed itself on men in all ages, and all religions have produced Puritan and ascetic sects who sought welfare, not in satisfying but in counteracting the desire for amusement and pleasure. Their efforts have proved that there is no solution in that direction. There must be an educated judgment at work all the time, and it must form correct judgments to be made real by a cultivated will, or the whole societal interest may be lost without the evil tendency being perceived.

671. Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress. It is clear from the history that amusements have gone through waves upward and downward, but that the amplitude of the waves is very small. It is true that the shows of the late Roman empire were very base, and that the great drama has gone very high by comparison, but the oscillation between the two entirely destroys anything like a steady advance in dramatic composition or dramatic art. This is a very instructive fact. It entirely negatives the current notion of progress as a sort of function of time which is to be expected to realize itself in a steady improvement and advance to better and better. The useful arts do show an advance. The fine arts do not. They return to the starting point, or near it, again and again. The dramatic art is partly literary and partly practical handicraft. Theater buildings improve; the machinery, lights, scenery, and manipulation improve. The literary products are like other artistic products: they have periods of glory and periods of decay. It is the literary products which are nearest to the mores. They lack all progress, or advance only temporarily from worse to better literary forms.

1987 Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 85.

1988 Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 580.

1989 Tiele-Gehrich, Relig. im Altert., I, 160.

1990 Barton, Semitic Origins, 85.

1991 Archiv für Anthrop., XXIX, 129.

1992 Ibid., 138, 150.

1993 Origines du Théâtre Moderne, 60.

1994 Il., XVI, 750; XVIII, 604.

1995 Il., XVIII, 601.

1996 Magnin, Origines du Théâtre Moderne, 178.

1997 Ramsay, Relig. of Greece and Asia Minor, Hastings's Dict., Addit. vol., 120.

1998 Beloch, Griech. Gesch., I, 579, 592.

1999 Ramsay in Hastings's Dict., Addit. vol., 129-130.

2000 Ibid., 125.

2001 Boissier, Religion Romaine, I, 132.

2002 Rohde, Psyche, II, 70.

2003 Ibid., 34.

2004 Ibid., 3.

2005 Wobbermin, Beeinflussung des Urchristenthums durch das Mysterienwesen, 21

2006 W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 426. See sec. 565.

2007 W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 357-359.

2008 Wissowa, Relig. of the Romans, 163.

2009 Magnin, Origines du Théâtre Moderne, 324, 463.

2010 Magnin, Origines, 304.

2011 Ibid., 304-317.

2012 Val. Max., II, x, 8.

2013 II, IV, 7.

2014 Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 236.

2015 Cf. Lecky, Eur. Morals, I, 285; Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 235.

2016 Tusc. Disp., II, 17.

2017 Martial, II, Introd.

2018 Scherr, Kult. Gesch., 181.

2019 Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 235.

2020 Ibid., 238.

2021 Ibid., 240.

2022 Gibbon, Chap. XL, i.

2023 Schmidt, La Société Civile dans le Monde Romain et sa Transformation par le Christianisme, 469.

2024 Ep., II, 46; Migne, Patrol. Latina, XVIII, 190.

2025 Reich, Der Mimus, 32.

2026 Magnin, Origines, du Théâtre Moderne, 30.

2027 Ibid., 51.

2028 Magnin, Origines, 33, 38-40.

2029 Reich, Der Mimus, 527.

2030 Magnin, Origines, 161.

2031 Reich, Der Mimus, 12.

2032 Ibid., 27-29.

2033 Tacitus, Annales, IV, 14.

2034 Preuss (Archiv für Anthrop., XXIX, 182) suggests that Falstaff's fatness may be a survival of one of the physical features of the stereotyped buffoon.

2035 Archiv für Anthrop., XXIX, 133.

2036 Reich, Der Mimus, 679, 682.

2037 Ibid., 360.

2038 Magnin, Marionettes, 188.

2039 Lucian, Demonax, 33.

2040 D'Ancona, Origine del Teatro in Italia, I, 15.

2041 Reich, Der Mimus, 58, 436, 470, 505.

2042 Magnin, Origines du Théâtre Moderne, 321.

2043 Magnin, Origines, 47.

2044 D'Ancona, I, 45.

2045 Schmidt, La Société Civile dans le Monde Romain, 98.

2046 Théâtre Serieux du M. A., 13 note.

2047 D'Ancona, I, 372.

2048 Klein, Gesch. des Dramas, III, 599, 638.

2049 D'Ancona, I, 372.

2050 Reich, 80, 93, 95, 107, 117.

2051 Schmidt, La Société Civile dans le Monde Romain, 113.

2052 Ibid., 101.

2053 De Gubernat. Dei., VII.

2054 Eur. Morals, I, 264.

2055 Grupp, Kulturgesch. der röm. Kaiserzeit, I, 200.

2056 Magnin, Origines, 435.

2057 Schmidt, 251-253.

2058 Ibid., 469.

2059 Ibid., 451, 466, 477.

2060 De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 10, 15, 38, 44-55.

2061 McCabe, St. Aug., 238.

2062 De Civit. Dei, II, 27.

2063 Harnack, Dogmengesch., I, 116.

2064 De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 42.

2065 Gregorovius, Lucret. Borgia, 220.

2066 Dubois, Mœurs de l'Inde, II, 331.

2067 JAI, XII, 222.

2068 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, II, 305.

2069 Salvianus, De Gubernat. Dei, VI, 69, 71, 77.

2070 Ammianus Marcel., XXIII, v, 3.

2071 Grimm, Deutsche Mythol., 166, 440.

2072 Reich, Der Mimus, 785-810.

2073 Ibid., 622.

2074 Ibid., 48, 133.

2075 Ibid., 191.

2076 Mod. Egypt, II, 125.

2077 Der Mimus, 656.

2078 Klein, Gesch. des Dramas, III, 84.

2079 Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, 225.

2080 Globus, LXXXVII, 60.

2081 Reich, Der Mimus, 669, 673, 676.

2082 Magnin, Marionettes, 121-122.

2083 Ibid., 343.

2084 Alec-Tweedie, Sunny Sicily, 173, and Chap. XI.

2085 Hefele, Conciliengesch., III, 304.

2086 Scherr, D. F. W., I, 245.

2087 Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 422; Du Cange, s. v. "Festum Asinorum."

2088 Magnin, Marionettes, 58.

2089 D'Ancona, Origini del teatro in Italia, I, 12.

2090 Ibid., I, 49.

2091 Magnin, Origines du Théâtre Moderne, XXV.

2092 Gesch. des Dramas, III, 646.

2093 Magnin, Théâtre de Hrotsvitha.

2094 Lintilhac, Théâtre Sérieux du M. A., 18.

2095 Lenient, La Satire, 23.

2096 Lintilhac, Théâtre Sérieux du M. A., 34.

2097 Burckhardt, Renaissance, 401.

2098 D'Ancona, I, 62, 78, 86.

2099 La Comédie en France au M. A., 19.

2100 Magnin, Marionettes, 121.

2101 D'Ancona, I, 88.

2102 Ibid., 89.

2103 Ibid., 98-107.

2104 D'Ancona, Origini del Teatro in Italia, I, 344.

2105 Ibid., I, 47.

2106 Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 324-340.

2107 Scherr, D. F. W., II, 124.

2108 D'Ancona, I, 282.

2109 Summa, II, 2, qu. 168, art. 3.

2110 von Schack, Gesch. der Dramat. Lit., I, 35.

2111 Session XXI, sec. 11.

2112 Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 29.

2113 Lintilhac, Théâtre Serieux du Moyen Age, 106, 123, 133, 167.

2114 Zarate, Liter. Españ., II, 308, 423, 451.

2115 Chandler, Romances of Roguery, 191.

2116 Ibid., 9.

2117 Magnin, Marionettes, 298.

2118 Ibid., 255-265.

2119 Ibid., 233.

2120 Gregorovius, Isabella d'Este, 212, 251, 255, 264; Burckhardt, Renaissance, 316.

2121 De Julleville, La Comédie en France au M. A., 183, 331.

2122 Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, Chap. VI.

2123 Molmenti, Venezia nella Vita Privata, 297-299.

2124 Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress of M. A., 241.

2125 Angerstein, Volkstänze, 30.

2126 Schultz, D. L., 414.

2127 Barthold, Hansa, III, 177.

2128 Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress of M. A., 220; Schultz, D. L., 409; Scherr, Kult. Gesch., 623.

2129 Teatro Ital. nel Sec. XVIII, 232.

2130 Comédie en France au M. A., 23.

2131 Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, 72.

2132 Chandler, Romances of Roguery, 159.

2133 Magnin, Marionettes, 233.

2134 D'Ancona, Origine del Teatro in Italia, I, 341.

2135 Burckhardt, Die Renaissance, 318. In Gozzi's Memoirs (ed. Symonds) may be seen good colored plates representing these fixed characters of the commedia del arte.

2136 Scherillo, La Commedia del Arte, 90, 114.

2137 Ibid., 95.

2138 Burckhardt, 316.

2139 Reich, Der Mimus, 473.

2140 Symonds, Catholic Reaction, I, 55.

2141 Masi, Teatro Ital. nel Sec., XVIII, 229.

2142 Bernardin, Comédie Ital. en France, 9, 12, 13.

2143 Ibid., 52.

2144 Bernardin, Com. Ital. en France, 27.

2145 Ibid., 42.

2146 Ibid., 90.

2147 Gozzi's Memoirs (Symond's trans.).

2148 Masi, Teatro Ital., 89, 232, 264.

2149 La Commedia del Arte, 50.

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