Part 1
# Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Drama" to "Dublin": Volume 8, Slice 7 ### By Various
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Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally printed in subscript. Letter subsctipts are preceded by an underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective paragraphs.
(4) Letters topped by Macron are represented as [=x].
(5) Letters with a dot below are represented as [x.].
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
Article DRAMA: "Incomparably the most important of recent additions to the literary drama is Thomas Hardy's vast panorama of the Napoleonic wars, entitled The Dynasts (1904-1908)." 'Incomparably' amended from 'Imcomparably'.
Article DRAVIDIAN: "Their languages form an isolated group, and it has not been possible to prove a connexion with any other family of languages." 'form' amended from 'from'.
Article DRAWING: "The same analogy may be observed between two of the senses in which the French verb tirer is frequently employed." 'French' amended from 'Frech'.
Article DRAWING: "Although the modern Italians have both traire and trarre, they use delineare still in the sense of artistic drawing, and also adombrare." 'in' amended from 'is'.
Article DREDGE and DREDGING: "... the illustration of the geographical distribution of marine animals, and the more accurate determination of the fossils of the Pliocene period." 'illustration' amended from 'illlustration'.
Article DRENTE: "... and in 1818 the Society of Charity (Maatschappij van Weldadigheid) was formed with Count van den Bosch at its head." 'Weldadigheid' amended from 'Weldadigkeid'.
Article DRENTE: "In later times forest culture was added, and the Gerard Adriaan van Swieten schools of forestry, agriculture and horticulture were established by Major van Swieten in memory of his son." 'Swieten' amended from 'Sweiten'.
Article DREW: "From 1861 to 1892 she had the management of the Arch Street theatre in Philadelphia." 'From' amended from 'Fom'.
Article DRIFT: "Thus it is possible to speak of a snow-drift, an accumulation driven by the wind; of a ship drifting out of its course; of the drift of a speech, i.e. its general tendency." 'accumulation' amended from 'accumlation'.
Article DUBLIN: "But the old jealousy arose in the reign of George I., and in the reign of George III." 'jealousy' amended from 'jealously'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME VIII, SLICE VII
Drama to Dublin
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
DRAMA (part) DRONFIELD DRAMBURG DROPSY DRAMMEN DROPWORT DRANE, AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DROSHKY DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF, ANNETTE ELISABETH DRAPER DROSTE-VISCHERING, CLEMENS AUGUST DRAUGHT DROUAIS, JEAN GERMAIN DRAUGHTS DROUET, JEAN BAPTISTE DRAUPADI DROWNING AND LIFE SAVING DRAVE DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV DRAVIDIAN DROZ, ANTOINE GUSTAVE DRAWBACK DROZ, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER JOSEPH DRAWING DRUG (district of British India) DRAWING AND QUARTERIN DRUG (medicine) DRAWING-ROOM DRUIDISM DRAYTON, MICHAEL DRUIDS, ORDER OF DREAM DRUM DREDGE and DREDGING DRUMMOND, HENRY (1786-1860) DRELINCOURT, CHARLES DRUMMOND, HENRY (1851-1897) DRENTE DRUMMOND, THOMAS DRESDEN DRUMMOND, WILLIAM DRESS DRUNKENNESS DRESSER DRURY, SIR WILLIAM DREUX DRUSES DREW DRUSIUS JOHANNES DREW, SAMUEL DRUSUS, MARCUS LIVIUS DREWENZ DRUSUS, NERO CLAUDIUS DREXEL, ANTHONY JOSEPH DRUSUS CAESAR DREYFUS, ALFRED DRYADES DRIBURG DRYANDER, JONAS DRIFFIELD DRYBURGH ABBEY DRIFT DRYDEN, JOHN DRILL DRYOPITHECUS DRINKING VESSELS DRY ROT DRIPSTONE DUALISM DRISLER, HENRY DUALLA DRIVER, SAMUEL ROLLES DU BARRY, MARIE JEANNE BÉCU DRIVING DU BARTAS, GUILLAUME DE SALUSTE DROGHEDA DUBAWNT DROIT DUBBO DROITWICH DU BELLAY, GUILLAUME DRÔME DU BELLAY, JEAN DROMEDARY DU BELLAY, JOACHIM DROMORE DUBLIN (county of Ireland) DROMOS DUBLIN (city of Ireland) DRONE
DRAMA. (Continued from Volume 8 Slice 6.)
10. MEDIEVAL DRAMA
Ecclesiastical and monastic literary drama.
Hrosvitha.
While the scattered and persecuted strollers thus kept alive something of the popularity, if not of the loftier traditions, of their art, neither, on the other hand, was there an utter absence of written compositions to bridge the gap between ancient and modern dramatic literature. In the midst of the condemnation with which the Christian Church visited the stage, its professors and votaries, we find individual ecclesiastics resorting in their writings to both the tragic and the comic form of the ancient drama. These isolated productions, which include the [Greek: Christos paschôn] (_Passion of Christ_) formerly attributed to St Gregory Nazianzen, and the _Querolus_, long fathered upon Plautus himself, were doubtless mostly written for educational purposes--whether Euripides and Lycophron, or Menander, Plautus and Terence, served as the outward models. The same was probably the design of the famous "comedies" of Hrosvitha, the Benedictine nun of Gandersheim, in Eastphalian Saxony, which associate themselves in the history of Christian literature with the spiritual revival of the 10th century in the days of Otto the Great. While avowedly imitated in form from the comedies of Terence, these religious exercises derive their themes--martyrdoms,[1] and miraculous or otherwise startling conversions[2]--from the legends of Christian saints. Thus, from perhaps the 9th to the 12th centuries, Germany and France, and through the latter, by means of the Norman Conquest, England, became acquainted with what may be called the literary monastic drama. It was no doubt occasionally performed by the children under the care of monks or nuns, or by the religious themselves; an exhibition of the former kind was that of the _Play of St Katharine_, acted at Dunstable about the year 1110 in "copes" by the scholars of the Norman Geoffrey, afterwards abbot of St Albans. Nothing is known concerning it except the fact of its performance, which was certainly not regarded as a novelty.
The joculatores, jongleurs, minstrels.
These efforts of the cloister came in time to blend themselves with more popular forms of the early medieval drama. The natural agents in the transmission of these popular forms were those _mimes_, whom, while the representatives of more elaborate developments, the "pantomimes" in
## particular, had inevitably succumbed, the Roman drama had left surviving
it, unextinguished and unextinguishable. Above all, it is necessary to point out how in the long interval now in question--the "dark ages," which may, from the present point of view, be reckoned from about the 6th to the 11th century--the Latin and the Teutonic elements of what may be broadly designated as medieval "minstrelsy," more or less imperceptibly, coalesced. The traditions of the disestablished and disendowed _mimus_ combined with the "occupation" of the Teutonic _scôp_, who as a professional personage does not occur in the earliest Teutonic poetry, but on the other hand is very distinctly traceable under this name or that of the "gleeman," in Anglo-Saxon literature, before it fell under the control of the Christian Church. Her influence and that of docile rulers, both in England and in the far wider area of the Frank empire, gradually prevailed even over the inherited goodwill which neither Alfred nor even Charles the Great had denied to the composite growth in which _mimus_ and _scôp_ alike had a share.
How far the _joculatores_--which in the early middle ages came to be the name most widely given to these irresponsible transmitters of a great artistic trust--kept alive the usage of entertainments more essentially dramatic than the minor varieties of their performances, we cannot say. In different countries these entertainers suited themselves to different tastes, and with the rise of native literatures to different literary tendencies. The literature of the _troubadours_ of Provence, which communicated itself to Spain and Italy, came only into isolated contact with the beginnings of the religious drama; in northern France the _jongleurs_, as the _joculatores_ were now called, were confounded with the _trouvères_, who, to the accompaniment of _vielle_ or harp, sang the _chansons de geste_ commemorative of deeds of war. As appointed servants of particular households they were here, and afterwards in England, called _menestrels_ (from _ministeriales_) or _minstrels_. Such a _histrio_ or _mimus_ (as he is called) was Taillefer, who rode first into the fight at Hastings, singing his songs of Roland and Charlemagne, and tossing his sword in the air and catching it again. In England such accomplished minstrels easily outshone the less versatile gleemen of pre-Norman times, and one or two of them appeared as landholders in Domesday Book, and many enjoyed the favour of the Norman, Angevin and Plantagenet kings. But here, as elsewhere, the humbler members of the craft spent their lives in strolling from castle to convent, from village-green to city-street, and there exhibiting their skill as dancers, tumblers, jugglers proper, and as masquers and conductors of bears and other dumb contributors to popular wonder and merriment. Their only chance of survival finally came to lie in organization under the protection of powerful nobles; but when, in the 15th century in England, companies of players issued forth from towns and villages, the profession, in so far as its members had not secured preference, saw itself threatened with ruin.
Survivals and adaptations of pagan festive ceremonies and usages.
In any attempt to explain the transmission of dramatic elements from pagan to Christian times, and the influence exercised by this transmission upon the beginnings of the medieval drama, account should finally be taken of the pertinacious survival of popular festive rites and ceremonies. From the days of Gregory the Great, i.e. from the end of the 6th century onwards, the Western Church tolerated and even attracted to her own festivals popular customs, significant of rejoicing, which were in truth relics of heathen ritual. Such were the Mithraic feast of the 25th of December, or the egg of Eostre-tide, and a multitude of Celtic or Teutonic agricultural ceremonies. These rites, originally symbolical of propitiation or of weather-magic, were of a semi-dramatic nature--such as the dipping of the neck of corn in water, sprinkling holy drops upon persons or animals, processions of beasts or men in beast-masks, dressing trees with flowers, and the like, but above all ceremonial dances, often in disguise. The sword-dance, recorded by Tacitus, of which an important feature was the symbolic threat of death to a victim, endured (though it is rarely mentioned) to the later middle ages. By this time it had attracted to itself a variety of additional features, and of characters familiar as pace-eggers, mummers, morris-dancers (probably of distinct origin), who continually enlarged the scope of their performances, especially as regarded their comic element. The dramatic "expulsion of death," or winter, by the destruction of a lay-figure--common through western Europe about the 8th century--seems connected with a more elaborate rite, in which a disguised performer (who perhaps originally represented summer) was slain and afterwards revived (the _Pfingstl_, Jack in the Green, or Green Knight). This representation, after acquiring a comic complexion, was annexed by the character dancers, who about the 15th century took to adding still livelier incidents from songs treating of popular heroes, such as St George and Robin Hood; which latter found a place in the festivities of May Day with their central figure, the May Queen. The earliest ceremonial observances of this sort were clearly connected with pastoral and agricultural life; but the inhabitants of the towns also came to have a share in them; and so, as will be seen later, did the clergy. They were in particular responsible for the buffooneries of the feast of fools (or asses), which enjoyed the greatest popularity in France (though protests against it are on record from the 11th century onwards to the 17th), but was well known from London to Constantinople. This riotous New Year's celebration was probably derived from the ancient Kalend feasts, which may have bequeathed to it both the hobby-horse and the lord, or bishop, of misrule. In the 16th century the feast of fools was combined with the elaborate festivities of courts and cities during the twelve Christmas feast-days--the season when throughout the previous two centuries the "mummers" especially flourished, who in their disguisings and "_viseres_" began as dancers gesticulating in dumb-show, but ultimately developed into actors proper.
The liturgy the main source of the medieval religious drama.
Tropes.
Thus the literary and the professional element, as well as that of popular festive usages, had survived to become tributaries to the main stream of the early Christian drama, which had its direct source in the liturgy of the Church itself. The service of the Mass contains in itself dramatic elements, and combines with the reading out of portions of Scripture by the priest--its "epical" part--a "lyrical" part in the anthems and responses of the congregation. At a very early period--certainly already in the 5th century--it was usual on special occasions to increase the attractions of public worship by living pictures, illustrating the Gospel narrative and accompanied by songs; and thus a certain amount of action gradually introduced itself into the service. The insertion, before or after sung portions of the service, of tropes, originally one or more verses of texts, usually serving as introits and in connexion with the gospel of the day, and recited by the two halves of the choir, naturally led to dialogue chanting; and this was frequently accompanied by illustrative fragments of action, such as drawing down the veil from before the altar.
The liturgical mystery.
This practice of interpolations in the offices of the church, which is attested by texts from the 9th century onwards (the so-called "Winchester tropes" belong to the 10th and 11th), progressed, till on the great festivals of the church the epical part of the liturgy was systematically connected with spectacular and in some measure mimical adjuncts, the lyrical accompaniment being of course retained. Thus the _liturgical mystery_--the earliest form of the Christian drama--was gradually called into existence. This had certainly been accomplished as early as the 10th century, when on great ecclesiastical festivals it was customary for the priests to perform in the churches these offices (as they were called). The whole Easter story, from the burial to Emmaus, was thus presented, the Maries and the angel adding their lyrical _planctus_; while the surroundings of the Nativity--the Shepherds, the Innocents, &c.--were linked with the Shepherds of Epiphany by a recitation of "Prophets," including Vergil and the Sibyl. Before long, from the 11th century onwards, _mysteries_, as they were called, were produced in France on scriptural subjects unconnected with the great Church festivals--such as the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Adam (with the fall of Lucifer), Daniel, Lazarus, &c. Compositions on the last-named two themes remain from the hand of one of the very earliest of medieval play-writers, Hilarius, who may have been an Englishman, and who certainly studied under Abelard. He also wrote a "miracle" of St Nicholas, one of the most widely popular of medieval saints. Into the pieces founded on the Scripture narrative outside characters and incidents were occasionally introduced, by way of diverting the audience.
The collective mystery.
These mysteries and miracles being as yet represented by the clergy only, the language in which they were usually written is Latin--in many varieties of verse with occasional prose; but already in the 11th century the further step was taken of composing these texts in the vernacular--the earliest example being the mystery of the Resurrection. In time a whole series of mysteries was joined together; a process which was at first roughly and then more elaborately pursued in France and elsewhere, and finally resulted in the _collective mystery_--merely a scholars' term of course, but one to which the principal examples of the English mystery-drama correspond.
Mysteries, miracles, and morals distinguished.
The productions of the medieval religious drama it is usual technically to divide into three classes. The _mysteries_ proper deal with scriptural events only, their purpose being to set forth, with the aid of the prophetic or preparatory history of the Old Testament, and more especially of the fulfilling events of the New, the central mystery of the Redemption of the world, as accomplished by the Nativity, the Passion and the Resurrection. But in fact these were not kept distinctly apart from the _miracle-plays_, or _miracles_, which are strictly speaking concerned with the legends of the saints of the church; and in England the name _mysteries_ was not in use. Of these species the miracles must more especially have been fed from the resources of the monastic literary drama. Thirdly, the _moralities_, or _moral-plays_, teach and illustrate the same truths--not, however, by direct representation of scriptural or legendary events and personages, but allegorically, their characters being personified virtues or qualities. Of the moralities the Norman _trouvères_ had been the inventors; and doubtless this innovation connects itself with the endeavour, which in France had almost proved victorious by the end of the 13th century, to emancipate dramatic performances from the control of the church.
The clergy and the religious drama.
The attitude of the clergy towards the dramatic performances which had arisen out of the elaboration of the services of the church, but soon admitted elements from other sources, was not, and could not be, uniform. As the plays grew longer, their paraphernalia more extensive, and their spectators more numerous, they began to be represented outside as well as inside the churches, at first in the churchyards, and the use of the vulgar tongue came to be gradually preferred. A Beverley Resurrection play (1220 c.) and some others are bilingual. Miracles were less dependent on this connexion with the church services than mysteries proper; and lay associations, gilds, and schools in particular, soon began to act plays in honour of their patron saints in or near their own halls. Lastly, as scenes and characters of a more or less trivial description were admitted even into the plays acted or superintended by the clergy, as some of these characters came to be depended on by the audiences for conventional extravagance or fun, every new Herod seeking to out-Herod his predecessor, and the devils and their chief asserting themselves as indispensable favourites, the comic element in the religious drama increased; and that drama itself, even where it remained associated with the church, grew more and more profane. The endeavour to sanctify the popular tastes to religious uses, which connects itself with the institution of the great festival of Corpus Christi (1264, confirmed 1311), when the symbol of the mystery of the Incarnation was borne in solemn procession, led to the closer union of the dramatic exhibitions (hence often called _processus_) with this and other religious feasts; but it neither limited their range nor controlled their development.
Progress of the medieval drama in Europe.
It is impossible to condense into a few sentences the extremely varied history of the processes of transformation undergone by the medieval drama in Europe during the two centuries--from about 1200 to about 1400--in which it ran a course of its own, and during the succeeding period, in which it was only partially affected by the influence of the Renaissance. A few typical phenomena may, however, be noted in the case of the drama of each of the several chief countries of the West; where the vernacular successfully supplanted Latin as the ordinary medium of dramatic speech, where song was effectually ousted by recitation and dialogue, and where finally, though the emancipation was on this head nowhere absolute, the religious drama gave place to the secular.
France.
In France, where dramatic performances had never fallen entirely into the hands of the clergy, the progress was speediest and most decided towards forms approaching those of the modern drama. The earliest play in the French tongue, however, the 12th-century _Adam_, supposed to have been written by a Norman in England (as is a fragmentary _Résurrection_ of much the same date), still reveals its connexion with the liturgical drama. Jean Bodel of Arras' miracle-play of _St Nicolas_ (before 1205) is already the production of a secular author, probably designed for the edification of some civic confraternity to which he belonged, and has some realistic features. On the other hand, the _Theophilus_ of Rutebeuf (d. c. 1280) treats its Faust-like theme, with which we meet again in Low-German dramatic literature two centuries later, in a rather lifeless form but in a highly religious spirit, and belongs to the cycle of miracles of the Virgin of which examples abound throughout this period. Easter or Passion plays were fully established in popular acceptance in Paris as well as in other towns of France by the end of the 14th century; and in 1402 the _Confrérie de la Passion_, who at first devoted themselves exclusively to the performance of this species, obtained a royal privilege for the purpose. These series of religious plays were both extensive and elaborate; perhaps the most notable series (c. 1450) is that by Arnoul Greban, who died as a canon of Le Mans, his native town. Its revision, by Jean Michel, containing much illustrative detail (first performed at Angers in 1486), was very popular. Still more elaborate is the Rouen Christmas mystery of 1474, and the celebrated _Mystère du vieil testament_, produced at Abbeville in 1458, and performed at Paris in 1500. Most of the Provençal Christmas and Passion plays date from the 14th century, as well as a miracle of St Agnes. The miracles of saints were popular in all parts of France, and the diversity of local colouring naturally imparted to these productions contributed materially to the growth of the early French drama. The miracles of Ste Geneviève and St Denis came directly home to the inhabitants of Paris, as that of St Martin to the citizens of Tours; while the early victories of St Louis over the English might claim a national significance for the dramatic celebration of his deeds. The local saints of Provence were in their turn honoured by miracles dating from the 15th and 16th centuries.
It is less easy to trace the origins of the comic medieval drama in France, connected as they are with an extraordinary variety of associations for professional, pious and pleasurable purposes. The _ludi inhonesti_ in which the students of a Paris college (Navarre) were in 1315 debarred from engaging cannot be proved to have been dramatic performances; the earliest known secular plays presented by university students in France were moralities, performed in 1426 and 1431. These plays, depicting conflicts between opposing influences--and at bottom the struggle between good and evil in the human soul--become more frequent from about this time onwards. Now it is (at Rennes in 1439) the contention between _Bien-avisé_ and _Mal-avisé_ (who at the close find themselves respectively in charge of _Bonne-fin_ and _Male-fin_); now, one between _l'homme juste_ and _l'homme mondain_; now, the contrasted story of _Les Enfants de Maintenant_, who, however, is no abstraction, but an honest baker with a wife called Mignotte. Political and social problems are likewise treated; and the _Mystère du Concile de Bâle_--an historical morality--dates back to 1432. But thought is taken even more largely of the sufferings of the people than of the controversies of the Church; and in 1507 we even meet with a hygienic or abstinence morality (by N. de la Chesnaye) in which "Banquet" enters into a conspiracy with "Apoplexy," "Epilepsy" and the whole regiment of diseases.