A History of Pantomime | Page 8

every event as
happening in their country, and it is not surprising that they claim for
themselves the inception of Tragedy and Comedy, which they
undoubtedly were the originators of in Greece, but the religious
festivals of Dionysus, Osiris, and Bacchus, to which we are supposed to
owe the inception of Tragedy and Comedy, were known long before
the Greeks knew them. (Dionysus was the patron and protector of
theatres.) "The purport of the song was that Bacchus imparted his secret
of the cultivation of vines to a petty prince in Attica, named Icarius,
who happened one day to espy a goat brouzing upon his plantations,
immediately seized, and offered it up as a sacrifice to his divine
benefactor; the peasants assembled round their master, assisted in the
ceremony, and expressed their joy and gratitude in music, songs,
dances, and Pantomime on the occasion; the sacrifice grew into a
festival, and the festival into an annual solemnity, attended most
probably every year with additional circumstances, when the
countrymen flocked together in crowds, and sang in rustic strains the
praises of their favourite deity."
Amongst the reported followers of these Bacchanalian festivals were

those fabulous race of grotesque sylvan beings, previously referred to,
known as the Satyrs. They were of a sturdy frame, in features they had
broad snub noses, and appeared in rough skins of animals with large
pointed ears, heavy knots on their foreheads, and a small tail. The elder
Satyrs were known as Sileni. The younger were more pleasing and not
so grotesque or repulsive in appearance as the elder Satyrs. To the
Satyrs can be traced the variegated dress of the modern Harlequin, as in
ancient Greek history mention is made of the performers enacting
Satyrs being sometimes habited in a tiger's skin of various colours,
which encircled the performer's body tightly, and who carried a
wooden sword, wore a white hat, and a brown mask. According to
Servius (as we have seen) Pan had also a bright spotted dress "in
likeness of the stars."
From these rustic festivals originated the Satyr, or Satirical Drama, as
did its Italian prototype, the Fabulae Atellanae or, Laudi Osci. These
rural sacrifices became, in process of time, a solemn fast, and assumed
all the pomp and splendour of a religious ceremony; poets were
employed by the magistrate to compose hymns, or songs, for the
occasion; such was the rudeness and simplicity of the age that their
bards contended for a prize, which, as Horace intimates, was scarce
worth contending for, being no more than a goat or skin of wine, which
was given to the happy poet who acquitted himself best in the task
assigned him.
From such small beginnings Tragedy and Comedy took their rise; and
like (as the best writers on these subjects tell us) every other production
of human art, extremely contemptible; that wide and deep stream,
which flows with such strength and rapidity through cultivated Greece,
took its rise from a small and inconsiderable fountain, which hides
itself in the recesses of antiquity, and is almost buried in oblivion; the
name alone remains to give us some light into its original nature, and to
inform us, that Tragedy and Comedy, like every other species of poetry,
owe their birth to Religion.
Appropriately does Horace observe:--
"Nor was the flute at first with silver bound, Nor rivalled emulous the

trumpet's sound; Few were its notes, its forms were simply plain, Yet
not unuseful was its feeble strain, To aid the chorus, and their songs to
raise, Filling the little theatre with ease, To which a thin and pious
audience came Of frugal manners, and unsullied fame."

CHAPTER III.
The origin of the Indian Drama--Aryan Mythology--Clown and
Columbine--Origin of the Chinese Drama--Inception of the Japanese
Drama--The Siamese Drama--Dramatic performances of the South Sea
Islanders, Peruvians, Aztecs, Zulus, and Fijis--The Egyptian Drama.
Of the Indian Drama we learn that the union of music, song, dance, and
Pantomime took place centuries ago B.C., at the festivals of the native
gods, to which was afterwards added dialogue, and long before the
advent, out of which it grew, of the native drama itself.
The progenitors of the Indo-European race, the Aryans--in Sanscrit
meaning Agriculturists--who crossed the Indus from Amoo, where they
dwelt near the Oxus, some two thousand years before Christ, were the
original ancestors and people of India.
The Aryan race (Hindus and Persians only speak of themselves as
Aryans) laid the foundation of the Grecian and Roman Mythology, the
dark and more sombre legends of the Scandinavian and the Teuton; and
all derived from the various names grouped round the Sun god, which
in the lighter themes the Aryans associated with the rising and the
setting of the sun, in all its heavenly glory, and with the sombre legends
the coming