Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/424

404 DRAMA [CHEEK. (coryphaeus) may. be supposed to have at times assumed the character of the wine-god, whose worshippers bore aloft the vine-clad thyrsus. The dithyramb was reduced to a definite form by the Lesbian Arion (fl. 610), who composed regular poems, turned the moving band of worshippers into a stand ing or cyclic chorus, invented a style of music adapted to the character of the chorus the tragic or goat style and called these songs goat-songs, or tragedies. Arion thus became the inventor of lyrical tragedy & transition stage between the dithyramb and the regular drama. His invention, or the chorus with which it dealt, was established according to fixed rules by his contemporary Stesichorus. About the same time that Arion introduced these improve ments into the Dorian city of Corinth, the (likewise Dorian) Families at Sicyon honoured the hero-king Adrastus by tragic choruses. Hence the invention of tragedy was ascribed by the Sicyonians to their poet Epigeries ; but this step, significant for the future history of the Greek drama, of employing the Bacchic chorus for the celebration of other than Bacchic themes, was soon annulled by the tyrant Clisthenes. The element which transformed lyrical tragedy into the tragic drama was added by the lonians. The custom of the recitation of poetry by wandering minstrels called rhajisodcs (from pa/?Sos, staff, or from pd-Trrui, to piece together) first sprang up in the Ionia beyond the sea ; to such minstrels was due the spread of the Homeric poems and of subsequent epic cycles. These recitations, with or without musical accompaniment, soon included gnomic or didactic, as well as epic, verse ; if Homer was a rhapsode, so was the sententious or " moral " Hesiod. The popular effect of these recitations was enormously increased by the metrical innovations of Archilochus (from 708), who in vented the trochee and the iambus, the latter the arrowy metre which is the native form of satirical invec tive the species of composition in which Archilochus - excelled though it was soon used for other purposes also. The recitation of these iambics may already have nearly approached to theatrical declamation. The rhapsodes were welcome guests at popular festivals, where they exercised their art in mutual emulation, or ultimately recited parts, perhaps the whole, of longer poems. The recitation of a long epic may thus have resembled theatrical dialogue ; that of alternating iambic poems, the form being frequently an address in the second person, even more so. The rhapsode was in some sense an actor ; and when these recitations reached Attica, they thus brought with them the germs of theatrical dialogue. The rhapsodes were actually introduced into A.ttica at a very early period ; the Iliad, we know, was chanted at the Brauronia, a rural festival of Bacchus, whose worship had early entered Attica, and was cherished among its rustic population. Meanwhile the cyclic chorus of the Dorians had found its way into Attica and Athens, ever since the Athenians had recognized the authority of the great ceutre of the Apolline religion at Delphi. It therefore only remained for the rhapsodic and the cyclic in other words, for the epic and the choral elements to coalesce ; and this must have been brought about by a union of the two accompaniments of religious worship in the festive rites of Bacchus, and by the domestication of these rites in the ruling city. This occurred in the time of Pisistratus, perhaps after his restoration in 554. To Thespis (535), said to have been a contemporary of the tyrant and a native of a Diacrian deme (Icaria), the invention of tragedy is accordingly ascribed. Whether his name be that of an actual person or not, his claim to be regarded as the inventor of tragedy is founded on the statement that he introduced an actor for the sake of relieving the Dionysian chorus. This actor, the representative of the rhapsodes, and doubtless, at first, generally the poet himself, instead of merely alternating his recitations with the songs of the chorus, addressed his speech to its leader the coryphaeus with whom he thus carried on a species of dialogue. The chorus stood round its leader upon the steps of the Bacchic altar (thymele), the actor was placed upon a table. This table is the predecessor of the stage, for the waggon of Thespis is a fiction, probably due to a confusion between his table and the waggon of Susarion. It is a significant minor invention ascribed to Thespis, that he disguised the actor s face first by means of a pigment, afterwards by a mask. In the dialogue was treated a myth relating to Bacchus or some other deity or hero. Whether or not Thespis actually wrote tragedies (and there seems no reason to doubt it), and although both the cyclic chorus and rhapsodic recitation continued in separate use, tragedy was now in existence. The essential additions afterwards made to its simple framework were remarkably few. J^schylus added a second actor, and by reducing the functions of the chorus further established the dialogue as the principal part of the action. Sophocles added a third actor, by which change the preponderance of the dialogue was made complete. If the origin of Greek comedy is simpler in its nature Origin than that of Greek tragedy, the beginnings of its progress conu ^ are involved in more obscurity. It is said to have been invented by Susarion, a native of Megaris, whose inhabi tants were famed for their coarse humour, which they communicated to their colonies in Sicily. In this island, to this day the home of spontaneous mimicry, comedy was said to have arisen. In the rural Bacchic vintage-festivals bands of jolly companions (KW/AOS, properly a revel con tinued after supper) went about in carts or afoot, carrying the phallic emblem, and indulging in the ribald licence of wanton mirth. From the song sung in these processions or at the Bacchic feasts, which combined the praise of the god with gross personal ridicule, and was called comus in a secondary sense, the Bacchic reveller taking part in it was called a cowiws-singer or comoedvs. These phallic proces sions, which were afterwards held at Athens as in all Greek cities, imparted their character to Old Attic comedy, whose essence was personal vilification. Thus independent of one another in their origin, Greek The sa tragedy and comedy never actually coalesced. The satyr- u drama, though in some sense it partook of the nature of both, was in its origin as in its history connected with tragedy alone. Pratinas of Phlius, a contemporary of JEschylus in his earlier days, is said to have restored the tragic chorus to the satyrs, i.e., he first produced dramas the same in form and theme as the tragedies, but in which the dances were different and entirely carried on by satyrs. The tragic poets, while never writing comedies, henceforth also composed satyr-dramas ; but neither tragedies nor satyr- dramas were ever written by the comic poets, and it was in conjunction with tragedies only that the satyr-dramas were performed. The theory of the Platonic Socrates, that the same man ought to be the best tragic and the best comic poet, was never exemplified in practice. The so-called Tragi- hilaro-trayedy or trayi-comedy of later writers, thought in cunit l b some of its features to have been anticipated by Euripides, 1 in form nowise differed from tragedy ; it merely contained a comic element in its characters, and invariably had a happy ending. The serious and sentimental element in the comedy of Menander and his contemporaries did far more to destroy the essential difference between the two great branches of the Greek dramatic art. The history of Greek which virtually alwa} T s remained Period; Attic tragedy divides itself into three periods. jedy.

Alcestis; Orcstfs.