ture was destined to be monopolised by a caste of priests; and this difference in social development has left its marks in certain differences of the Chinese and Indian dramas. The prologue of the Indian play, Málatí and Mádhava, shows how the Indian dramatist, addressing himself to a cultured audience acquainted with Sanskrit, valued artistic qualities such as fertility of imagination, harmony of style, diversity of incident. But the purpose of the Chinese drama is not artistic but moral; it is "to present the noblest teachings of history to the ignorant who cannot read;" "to present upon the stage," as the Chinese penal code puts it, "real or fictitious pictures of just and good men, chaste women, affectionate and obedient children, which may lead the spectators to the practice of virtue." In the Pi-pa-ki (or "History of a Lute"), a Chinese drama in twenty-four scenes represented at Peking in 1404 A.D., there are indeed some signs of artistic criticism—variety of incidents and greater individuality of character, for example; but the Youen Collection of Chinese plays, an anthology which belongs to the thirteenth century, altogether subordinates art to didactic moralising. So important, indeed, is this didactic purpose that it has produced a feature of the Chinese drama not to be found in any other theatre of the Hast or West—the singing personage. "In all Chinese plays," says Sir John Davis,[1] "there is an irregular operatic species of song which the principal character occasionally chants forth in unison, with a loud or soft accompaniment of music as may best suit the sentiment or action of the moment." "It was not enough for the Chinese," says M. Bazin,[2] "to have laid down moral utility as the end of their dramatic representations; they must also discover
- ↑ Introduction to the Sorrows of Han.
- ↑ Théâtre Chinois, Introduction, p. xxx.
