COMMUNITY DRAMA, or CIVIC DRAMA. This is a term that has recently sprung into widespread use to embrace various kinds of performances, generally more or less dramatic in form, but sometimes merely pro cessional and picturesque, presented by large bodies of people (marching, singing, dancing, acting and so forth) in co-operation with writ ers, designers and others. The differences in kind are denoted by the use of the names: pageant, masque, festival; and, somewhat loosely, the rural play, the school play and the outdoor play. Mr. William Chauncey Langdon, the well-known pageant master, has cleared away much of the difficulty of classification by pointing out that the essential characteristics of these forms may be differentiated as fol lows: The pageant is historical; the masque is philosophical; the outdoor drama like the regular drama is individual; and all these are objective in their character. On the other hand, while the festival is ly-rical, it is subjective in character. The school play is educational and subjective. These forms are all treated separately under special headings.
The history of the community festival, all that may be written with reasonable certainty, covers the long stretches of the past, under many a ritual, back to the immemorial religious cults. There can be little doubt that all thea tres had their rude beginnings when human beings first began to dwell together in com munities, and to hunt, feast, play and worship in common. For a fuller account of the primi tive drama consult Grosse, E., 'Beginnings of Art,' and Frazer, J. G., 'The Golden Bough.' Mr. L. Havemeyer's 'The Drama of Savage Peoples) (Yale 1916) contains the new ma terial in accessible form. The first chapter of Prof. Brander Matthews' 'Development of the Drama) gives an excellent summary of the broad facts.
The archetype of the Greek theatre itself, the apex and crown of all primmval culture, may be seen in active existence at the present day in the islands of Melanesia. There, in the rustic dancing circle, we have a perfect example of the Greek orchestra, in embryo; and in the little robing hut of these simple islanders of the south seas we are in at the birth of the magnifi cent Skene of the theatre of Athens; the word skene originally .meaning a booth or tent, and
then a stage, projecting our English word scene. These two extreme cases of the Greek theatre and the Melanesian circle provide us with exemplars of sites as suitable to-day as ever for either the community drama or festival.
In medizval times, when first the Church and later the guilds and schools encouraged and assisted in the performances of the mystery and morality plays, all that existed by way of a theatre was distinctly communal. The pas sion plays, still performed in Oberammergau, Bavaria, and in Selsach, Switzerland, and else where, are survivals of the mysteries and mir acles of the old communities. In the spreading liturgy of the medimval Church we mark the beginnings of the long slow rise toward the compact drama of the most modern playwright. Following the ecclesiastical period of play-mak ing and play-going and entering upon the secu larperiod of folk drama, the culmination was reached in the works of members of the trade guilds, of whom the wise old cobbler Hans Sachs (1494-1576), and merry John Heywood (1497-1590), are the classic types. Thereafter came the development of the regular theatre and the narrowing down of the expression of the dramatic instinct of the folk to the usual calendar festivals, games, etc., described with droll particularity in such compilations as Chambers' Book of Days.' In the 19th cen tury, with the growth of machinery and the new industrialism, when men discussed the humani ties more than they practised humanity, men and women and children, too, well-nigh forgot even these simple festive joys of the open air. They, however, remained in literature and in tradition for a new and more democratic prac tice in this present century.