two men and a woman—a troop sufficient for a wide variety of plot.
Among other more highly civilized Asiatic peoples, the traces of the dramatic art are either few or late. The originally Aryan Persians exhibit no trace of the drama in their ample earlier literature. But in its later national development the two species, widely different from one another, of the religious Persian.drama or mystery and of the popular comedy or farce have made their appearance—the former in a growth of singular interest.
Of the Persian téaziés (lamentations or complaints) the subjects are invariably derived from religious history, and more or less directly connected with the “martyrdoms” of the house of Ali. The performance of these episodes or scenes takes place during the first ten days of the month The téaziés.of Muharram, when the adherents of the great Shi’ite sect all over Persia and Mahommedan India commemorate the deaths of the Prophet and his daughter Fatima, the mother of Ali, the martyrdoms of Ali himself, shamefully murdered in the sanctuary, and of his unoffending son Hasan, done to death by his miserable guilty Deianira of a wife, and lastly the never-to-be-forgotten sacrifice of Hasan’s brother, the heroic Hosain, on the bloody field of Kerbela (A.D. 680). With the establishment in Persia, early in the 16th century, of the Safawid (Sufi) dynasty by the Shi’ites, the cult of the martyrs Hasan and Hosain secured the official sanction which it has since retained. Thus the performance of these téaziés, and the defraying of the equipment of them, are regarded as religious, and in a theological sense meritorious, acts; and the plays are frequently provided by the court or by other wealthy persons, by way of pleasing the people or securing divine favour. The plays are performed, usually by natives of Isfahan, in courtyards of mosques, palaces, inns, &c., and in the country in temporary structures erected for the purpose.
It would seem that, no farther back than the beginning of the 19th century, the téaziés were still only songs or elegies in honour of the martyrs, occasionally chanted by persons actually representing them. Just, however, as Greek tragedy was formed by a gradual detachment of the dialogue from the choric song of which it was originally only a secondary outgrowth, and by its gradually becoming the substance of the drama, so the Miracle Play of Hasan and Hosain, as we may call it, has now come to be a continuous succession of dramatic scenes. Of these fifty-two have, thanks to the labours of Alexander Chodzko and Sir Lewis Pelly, been actually taken down in writing, and thirty-seven published in translations; and it is clear that there is no limit to the extension of the treatment, as is shown by such a téazié as the Marriage of Kassem, dealing with the unfortunate Hosain’s unfortunate son.[1] The performance is usually opened by a prologue delivered by the rouzékhán, a personage of semi-priestly character claiming descent from the Prophet, who edifies and excites the audience by a pathetic recitation of legends and vehement admonitions in prose or verse concerning the subject of the action. But the custom seems to have arisen of specially prefacing the drama proper by a kind of induction which illustrates the cause or effect of the sacred story—as for instance that of Amir Timur (Tamerlane), who appears as lamenting and avenging the death of Hosain; or the episode of Joseph’s betrayal by his brethren, as prefiguring the cruelty shown to Ali and his sons. At the climax of the action proper Hosain prays to be granted at the day of judgment the key of the treasure of intercession; and the final scene shows the fulfilment of his prayer, which opens paradise to those who have helped the holy martyr, or who have so much as shed a single tear for him. It will thus be seen that not only is this complex and elaborate production unapproached in its length and in its patient development of a long sequence of momentous events by any chronicle history or religious drama, but that it embodies together with the passionately cherished traditions of a great religious community the expression of a long-lived resentment of foreign invasion—and is thus a kind of Oberammergau play and complaint of the Nibelungs in one.
The other kind of Persian drama is the témacha (= spectacle), a kind of comedy or farce, sometimes called teglid (disguising), performed by wandering minstrels or joculatores called loutys, who travel about accompanied by their bayadères, and amuse such spectators as they find by their The témachas.improvised entertainments, which seem to be on much the same level as English “interludes.” A favourite and ancient variety of the species is the karaguez or puppet-play, of which the protagonist is called kétchel péhlévan (the bald hero).
The modern Persian drama seems to have admitted Western influences, as in the case of such comedies as The Pleaders of the Court, and, avowedly, Monsieur Jourdan and Musla’li Shah, of whom the former steals away the wits of young Persia by his pictures of the delights of Paris.
There is no necessity for any reference here to the civilization or to the literature of the Hebrews, or to those of other Semitic peoples, with whom the drama is either entirely wanting, or only appears as a quite occasional and exotic growth. Dramatic elements are apparent in Hebrew literature.two of the books of the Hebrew scripture—the Book of Ruth and the Book of Job, of which latter the author of Everyman, and Goethe in his Faust, made so impressive a use.
From Polynesia and aboriginal America we also have isolated traces of drama. Among these are the performances, accompanied by dancing and intermixed with recitation and singing, of the South Sea Islanders, first described by Captain Cook, and reintroduced to the notice of students South Seas; Peru.of comparative mythology by W. Wyatt Gill. Of the so-called Inca drama of the Peruvians, the unique relic, Apu Ollantay, said to have been written down in the Quichua tongue from native dictation by Spanish priests shortly after the conquest of Peru, has been partly translated by Sir Clements Markham, and has been rendered into German verse. It appears to be an historic play of the heroic type, combining stirring incidents with a pathos finding expression in at least one lyric of some sweetness—the lament of the lost Collyar. With it may be contrasted the ferocious Aztek dramatic ballet, Rabinal-Achi (translated by Brasseur de Bourbourg), of which the text seems rather a succession of warlike harangues than an attempt at dramatic treatment of character. But these are mere isolated curiosities.
6. Dramatic Elements in Egyptian Culture
The civilization and religious ideas of the Egyptians so vitally influenced the people of whose drama we are about to speak that a reference to them cannot be altogether omitted. The influence of Egyptian upon Greek civilization has probably been overestimated by Herodotus; but while it will never be clearly known how much the Greeks owed to the Egyptians in divers branches of knowledge, it is certain that the former confessed themselves the scholars of Egypt in the cardinal doctrine of its natural theology. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul there found its most solemn expression in mysterious recitations connected with the rites of sepulture, and treating of the migration of the soul from its earthly to its eternal abode. These solemnities, whose transition into the Hellenic mysteries has usually been attributed to the agency of the Thracian worship of Dionysus, undoubtedly contained a dramatic element, upon the extent of which it is, however, useless to speculate. The ideas to which they sought to give utterance centred in that of Osiris, the vivifying power or universal soul of nature, whom Herodotus simply identifies with the Dionysus of the Greeks. The same deity was likewise honoured by processions among the rural Egyptian population, which, according to the same authority, in nearly all respects except the absence of choruses resembled the Greek phallic processions in honour of the wine-god.
That the Egyptians looked upon music as an important science seems fully established; it was diligently studied by their priests, though not, as among the Greeks, forming a part of general education, and in the sacred rites of their gods they as a rule permitted the use of flute and harp, as well as of vocal music. Dancing was as an art confined to professional persons; but though the higher orders abstained from its practice, the lower indulged
- ↑ Translated by Comte de Gobineau, in his Religions et philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris, 1865).
