thies, in the senses and emotions, in the imaginations and intellect of his audience. This is the reason why the drama discloses in some respects better than any other branch of literature the average character of the age.[1] Orestes on the stage is driven to crime and madness by the effects of a long descent of inherited sin, but the feelings and beliefs which make his story tragic are in the heads and hearts of the Athenian audience.
The Ali or Hosein of the Persian passion-plays are figures splendidly and tragically beautiful, not as the æsthetic workmanship of any writer, but because they are seen through mists of religious faith by the devout audience of the tekya. The sensuality of a Vanbrugh lived in the hearts of his audience before it walked his stage. The refined intrigue of a Molière or Sheridan was performed to the life dramatised. This is why the Roman plays of Ben Jonson courtly circles before it was were a failure, while those of Shakspere succeeded. What mattered it whether the Catiline of Sallust or the Sejanus of Tacitus were presented to Elizabethan men and
- ↑ M. Bazin (Théâtre Chinois, introduction, p. li) makes some observations on literature in general, and the drama in particular, as reflecting the forms of social life, which may be here translated. "We have already remarked that literary productions initiate us more rapidly and sometimes more accurately in the secrets of social institutions than works apparently more serious; and we do not fear to maintain that probably not a single Chinese play exists which does not throw light on some facts altogether ignored. Thus, the comedy translated by Davis has determined the true position of the legal concubine contrasted with the legitimate wife. Before the publication of that comedy the oblations of the Chinese at the tombs of their parents were often mentioned; but did we know the prayers which they recite in these mournful ceremonies or the terms of the ritual they employ? Does not the first drama of this (M. Bazin's own) collection furnish an example of marriage brought about by order of the emperor, and for the celebration of which the couple and the parents are freed from the formalities prescribed by custom and the rites? The piece called The Singer similarly presents us with the formula of contract-of-sale in the case of a child; moreover, we find in it a scene which, as far as the evidence goes, proves that the sale was simply a mode of adoption. Such facts, it must be admitted, were at least very obscure points in Chinese character and custom."
