The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810

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  [Transcriber's Note:

  Typographical errors are listed at the end of the text.

  The printed book contained the six Numbers of Volume I with their
  appended plays. The Index originally appeared at the beginning of
  the volume; it has been included at the end of the journal text of
  Number 1 (Project Gutenberg EBook #22488), before the play.
  Pages 109-188 refer to the present Number.]




THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.


Vol. I.  FEBRUARY 1810.  No. 2.




HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER II.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA IN GREECE--ORIGIN OF
TRAGEDY--THESPIS--AESCHYLUS, "THE FATHER OF THE TRAGIC ART"--HIS
ASTONISHING TALENTS--HIS DEATH.


It has been already remarked that at a very early period, considerably
more than three thousand years ago, the Chinese and other nations in the
east understood the rudiments of the dramatic art. In their crude,
anomalous representations they introduced conjurers, slight of hand men
and rope dancers, with dogs, birds, monkies, snakes and even mice which
were trained to dance, and in their dancing to perform evolutions
descriptive of mathematical and astronomical figures. To this day the
vestiges of those heterogeneous amusements are discernible all over
Indostan: but that which will be regarded by many with surprise, is that
in all countries pagan or christian the drama in its origin, with the
dancings and spectacles attending it have been intermixed with divine
worship. The Bramins danced before their god Vishnou, and still hold it
as an article of faith that Vishnou had himself, "in the olden time"
danced on the head of a huge serpent whose tail encompassed the world.
That very dance which we call a minuet, has been proved by an ingenious
Frenchman, to be the same dance originally performed by the priests in
the temple of Apollo, and constructed by them, to be symbolical of the
zodiac; every figure described by the heavenly bodies having a
correspondent movement in the minuet: the diagonal line and the two
parallels representing the zodiac generally, the twelve steps of which
it is composed, representing the twelve signs, and the twelve months of
the year, and the bow at the beginning and the end of it a profound
obedience to the sun. About the year four hundred after the building of
the city of Rome, the Romans, then smarting under great public calamity,
in order to appease the anger of heaven, instituted theatrical
performances, as feasts in honour of their gods. The first Spanish plays
were founded, sometimes on the loves of shepherds, but much more
frequently on points of theology, such as the birth of Christ, the
passion, the temptation in the desert and the martyrdom of saints. The
most celebrated dramatic poet of Portugal, Balthazar, wrote dramas which
he called AUTOS chiefly on pious subjects--and the prelate Trissino, the
pope's nuncio, wrote the first regular tragedy, while cardinal Bibiena
is said to be the author of the first comedy known in Italy, after the
barbarous ages. The French stage began with the representation of
MYSTRIES, by the priests, who acted sacred history on a stage, and
personated divine characters. The first they performed was the history
of the death of our Saviour, from which circumstance the company who
acted, gave themselves the name of THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE PASSION: and
in England one single paper which remains on record, proves that the
clergy were the first dramatists. This paper is a petition of the clerks
or clergy of St. Paul's to king Richard the Second, and dated in 1378
which prayed his majesty to prohibit a company of _unexpert_ people from
representing the history of the Old Testament, to the great prejudice of
the said clergy, who had been at great charge and expense to represent
the same at christmas.

It would be little to the purpose, to dwell longer on that part of the
history of the drama, which lies back in the darkness of remote
antiquity. Having shown that it did exist, in some shape or other, of
which but very imperfect traces remain, and of course very inadequate
notions can be collected, all further inquiry backward would be but the
loss of so much time and trouble. The scope of human knowledge is
extended at too heavy a price when the industry which might be more
usefully applied, is exercised in hunting down origins into the
obscurity of times so extremely distant. Where the greatest pains have
been lavished on that sort of research, little knowledge has been
gained; and the most diligent inquirers have been compelled either to
confess that they were baffled, or rather than own their disappointment,
to substitute fable for fact, and pass the fictions of imagination for
historical truths.

It is in the records of Greece the dramatic art first presents itself in
the consistent shape and with the circumstantial detail of authentic
history.