proportion of lyric declamation, executed by a number of persons who occupied a middle or intermediate position between the principal dramatic characters on the stage (the protagonists) and the audience who witnessed the solemn show. The food, the pabulum, of the dramatic art was in the two cases as different as were the religion, the manners, the modes of thought and action at the two periods which we have thus contrasted. The Greek dramatist drew his materials from the rich storehouse of pagan mythology, the black annals of his ancient kings, and the legends of his national heroes: in these he found ample materials for his scenes; and the whole was bound together by one pervading principle, in the highest degree moving and sublime-the over-ruling and incessant action of the dramatic fate. These grand and awful events were familiar to the audience from their infancy; they were calculated to gratify to the highest degree. the national vanity and patriotic enthusiasm: every Athenian felt himself the country man, many the descendants, of Theseus or of Edipus; and when we reflect upon the intensity of the patriotism which characterised the citizens of the little republics of Greece, together with the delicate sense of the beautiful which seemed peculiarly innate in the Hellenic character, we shall find that their dramatists were as amply provided with materials for their art as with rewards for its triumphant exercise. In the Middle Ages the external manifestations of the art were all changed, but the art itself remained the same. The rude populations of chivalric Europe, the serfs of England, France, and Germany, could have felt but very imperfectly any sentiments addressed to their patriotism. Ignorant, barbarous, and oppressed, how could men love their country, who could not call their wives and children their own? How could men, reduced to a mere brutish state of animal obedience, feel their hearts swell within them at the mimic representation of great exploits? As to the mere abstract perception of the beautiful, such a feeling could not exist in their minds. What strings were left in the human heart undeadened and capable of responding to the touch of genius? We answer, the sense of wonder. Catholicism, with all its miracles, its legends, its enthusiasm, had supplanted the paganism of classical antiquity. We are not inclined to consider the credulity of the ancients, at least at the period when the Greek drama reached its highest pitch of splendour, as very deeply seated, or likely to modify very profoundly the character of the Athenian people. Their credulity was rather of the imagination; that of the Middle Ages was of the heart. What a difference between the airy grace and sensuous allegory of the pagan mythology, where belief was merely a matter of assent, involving no practical change of conduct, and offering no promises, or very faint. ones, of a future existence, with that deep, all-pervading, and solemn religion which offered to the oppressed serf of the Middle Ages his only consolation in this life, together with his mighty hope and onlooking to the next! The very superstitions, too, of the time, the huge mass of striking and yet fantastic imagery which composed a world of legend, exhibit an example of the fact that in depriving the human mind of some of its senses (as takes place in those of the body) we only add intensity and power to those we leave behind. The religious dramas of the Middle Ages were nothing but an embodiment of Christianity as it appeared to the simple imagination of those rude times. They were often little else but the narration of some biblical or legendary miracle, rudely dramatised, and often in the language of Scripture. They are supposed to have originated in the recitals of pilgrims, returning from their long wanderings in distant and unknown lands with an abundant stock of wonders, perilous adventures and hair-breadth 'scapes, gorgeous descriptions of the magnificence of the East, enthralling tales of persecution and wild idolatries. With these the "palmer graye" would collect a crowd about him, and keep his simple hearers listening with unwearied wonder hour after hour; just as the professed tale-teller of the East enchants his grave and bearded audience in the coffee-houses of Damascus, or the ragged improvvisatore of Naples enchains his circle of boatmen and lazzaroni. That such tales should have by degrees taken a dramatic form is not surprising; still less so that the Church should have very soon perceived the efficacy of such representations, not only as instruments of instruction for the people, but also as a means for extending the authority of the priesthood, and increasing the revenues of the ecclesiastical institutions. The people were unable to read, and their ideas respecting the Scriptural history were exceedingly imperfect; and the priests of the Middle Ages were far too well acquainted with the human heart not to know the truth of the Horatian precept "Segnius irritant animum demissa per aures, The Church therefore encouraged, as far as possible, the strong taste early developed for the religious dramas, viewing them as at once a powerful medium of religious instruction, and as an inexhaustible source of profit and influence; and we find them used as a very important mechanism for raising the immense sums destined to the support of the crusades. At first they were of a purely religious character; the subjects were always either events of the biblical history itself, or else extracts from the legends of the saints. The representation of these dramas was very early taken, by the profound policy of the hierarchy, out of the hands of the laity; and the performance was carried on in the church itself, the actors being priests, and the splendour of the spectacle augmented by the use of the rich vestments and ornaments of the clergy. Here we may clearly see the singular resemblance existing between the Greek tragedy and the religious plays of the Middle Ages. Both were performed in a sacred spot; the subjects of both were drawn from what was considered, at the respective periods, to be most holy and venerable; both were placed before the spectator with the greatest magnificence attainable; and the spirit of mingled patriotism and religion, which it was the object of the Greek theatre to excite, was certainly little inferior in intensity to the credulous and simple awe with which the rude audiences of Catholic times must have witnessed the great mysteries of their religion represented before the altar of a cathedral. In fact, we cannot but remark that the very name of this species of spectacle is strongly corroborative of the truth of our parallel; they were called "mysteries" and "miracles." Even the division of the stage recalls something of the rigour and complexity of the Greek scene: it was divided into three platforms; the upper being reserved for the appearance of God, angels, and glorified spirits; the next below it, to the human personages of the drama; and the lowest, devoted to the devils, being a representation of the yawning mouth of hell-the "alta ostia Ditis"-a black and gloomy cavern, vomiting flames and sulphureous smoke, through which incessantly ascended the howling of the damned, and by which the evil spirits made their exits and their entrances, rising to tempt and torture humanity, or plunging back with the bodies of their victims. In all these peculiarities it is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between the drama of the Middle Ages and that of classical antiquity. Nor can we fail to remark the innumerable traces left by the religious dramas upon the art of this period. The much-agitated question of the meaning of the singular title given by Dante to his great work could hardly have been raised had the critics remembered that the commedia of the "gran padre Alighier" is nothing else but a mystery in a narrative form; and that the three divisions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise correspond exactly with the three stages of the religious dramas. The subjects of these dramas were generally taken from the most striking and pathetic passages of the Bible history; the Creation, the Deluge, the Fall of Man, the Sacrifice of Abraham, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion; no subject appears to have been too solemn or too vast for the attempt of this bold but barbarous art. They never shrank from introducing upon the stage the most sublime personages; the Deity himself, the Saviour, the patriarchs, all figure in these singular dramas. They seem not to have felt that species of awe which would now prevent an author from presenting, in a visible form, such impersonations-an attempt which not even the genius of Goethe could succeed in rendering successful. At such early periods, when the critical faculty had not yet dried up in man the springs of wonder and belief, there could have been neither real nor imaginary disrespect in this freedom. They followed as closely as they could the march, and even the language, of the Scriptural narration, and would probably have felt it as derogatory to the dignity of their subject to omit any detail of the Bible history, as we should find it dangerous, or even reprehensible, to follow those details with too great a fidelity. These compositions were for the most part written, as might be expected, in the popular metre of the various countries which produced them; for it must not be forgotten that such representations were the favourite amusement of mankind in all the countries of Europe during a very long period. Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain-in short, there is not any country. which does not possess a large collection of these singular productions. They were sometimes of inordinate length, and in many cases lasted even several days: there is one in existence, on the subject of the Creation, which occupied in the performance a period as long as the event which it represented, and consequently the spectators of this mystery gratified their wonder during a period of six successive days. We may inquire how the authors of these productions could have succeeded in introducing anything ludicrous and comic into dramas whose principal action was so solemn and supernatural. Ludicrous scenes, however, they were obliged to have; for the people were in far too rude a state to be able to sit listening for so long a time to purely religious and moral declamation. To attain this end they hit upon the happy expedient of making the Devil the never-failing comic character in those cases where the nature of the subject precluded the possibility of introducing a mere human buffoon. The devil was the butt and clown of the performance, and, being generally represented in a light at once terrific and contemptible, this circumstance has probably originated the very curious part played in the popular legends by the Father of Evil. The malignant spirits, in all systems of mythology and popular belief, with the single exception of Christianity, are presented in colours darkly and tremendously sublime, and certainly their agency is never represented as accompanied by circumstances in any way mean or ridiculous. Christianity, however, the vital principle of which is the victory of truth over the powers of evil, has originated the popular character of a malicious and ugly fiend, whose machinations are defeated by a very 6 moderate degree of ingenuity and address. How far the obscurer superstitions of paganism which still remained in the popular imagination may have conduced to this curious anomaly, it is not at present our object to inquire: it is not improbable that it arose in some measure from an ancient belief, propagated by many of the Christian fathers, that the deities of the various pagan mythologies were in reality evil spirits allowed for a time to mislead and delude the human race; and also the first propagators of Christianity, finding the notions of polytheism so deeply and ineradicably implanted in the mind of man, contented themselves with representing as malignant the nature of those beings whose existence they could not disprove, and were probably themselves very little inclined to deny. The devil, therefore, of popular belief-not the haughty and beautiful creation of Milton, but the hideous demon, the "lubber fiend," of Ariosto, with his horns and hoofs and tail-was the comic character of the mysteries; to which, wherever possible, they added other buffoons of a like ludicrous colour, generally selected among the wicked human personages of the drama. Thus, in the miracle-play of the Massacre of the Innocents,' the satellites of Herod-his knights, as they are called with a laughable anachronism, and who are represented as swearing by " Mahound," or Mahomet-are exposed to the alternate laughter and detestation of the audience. Nor did these old authors neglect those broad and general subjects of satire presented by human weaknesses, and which are found in the writings of all periods. The quarrels of matrimony, and the miseries undergone by henpecked husbands, as they are subjects of all ages, and " come home to the business and bosoms of men," have excited the laughter of mankind in every epoch: undoubtedly there were scolding wives before the flood, but it is curious to see a virago forming one of the "dramatis persona" in a miracle-play on the subject of the Deluge. In the very singular drama to which we have just alluded, "Noe's Wif" is a character of a purely comic nature, and is represented, in a scene by no means devoid of coarse drollery, as refusing to enter the ark unless she is allowed to bring with her "her gossips every one,' whom she swears (by St. John!) that she loves with great affection. In a German mystery, which we believe has been printed, Cain and Abel are introduced as examined by the Almighty, in the presence of Adam, as to their proficiency in the Lord's Prayer." Abel is prompted by our Saviour, and gets through his task pretty respectably; but Cain, who is secretly instigated by the devil standing behind him to say the prayer backwards, is very properly and condignly flogged, having previously received divers cuffs from his father for refusing to take his hat off! We see, therefore, that the humour of these pieces, however natural and |