that of the city as a self-developed community—the city commonwealth. In the drama of the city commonwealth we may not meet certain interesting features of the Chinese and Indian theatres—the prominence of physical nature, for example. In the same drama we may not find such a variety of character as in that of a national capital like Elizabethan London. But in the narrow range of the city commonwealth we shall perhaps be able to trace the effects of social evolution on the form and spirit of the dramatic spectacle with greater clearness than in the complicated life of modern nations, or the comparatively motionless society of India and China.
Still it must not be supposed that the dramas of the East are altogether unlike that of Athens. The singing-character of the Chinese theatre, for example, reminds us in some respects of the Athenian chorus, only that (like Shakspere's use of the chorus) an individual actor here takes the place of the Athenian group. Indeed, the lyrical drama of Japan presents so many likenesses to the Athenian that we shall here quote Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain's description of the origin and form of this Eastern theatre.
"Towards the end of the fourteenth century," says Mr. Chamberlain,[1] "in the hands of the Buddhist priesthood, who during that troublous period had become almost the sole repositories of taste and learning, arose the lyric drama, at first but an adaptation of the old religious dances, the choric songs accompanying which were expanded and improved. The next step was the introduction of individual personages which led to the adoption of a dramatic unity in the plot, though the supreme importance still assigned to the chorus left to the performance its mainly lyric character till, at a some-
- ↑ * Japanese Classical Poetry, p. 13.
