DRAMA, a Greek term meaning action, and applied to that form of literature which is suited for performance, or action, before an audience. A drama tells a story by means of speeches and dialogue, and these are to be spoken by actors impersonating the characters and performing the actions of the story. Speech, gesture, facial expression, makes, pantomine, stage abusmess,p music, dancing, scenic paint ing are some of the theatrical accompaniments by means of which the dialogue has been made to imitate scenes from life. (See THEATRE).. Since mimicry is as old as the race, it is evi dent that there have been from times of primi tive culture dramatic elements in games, sports, dances, religious ceremonies and other mimetic performances; but it is only late in the develop ment of civilization that the drama takes an important place in literature. Nor can the use of dialogue, as in the Book of Job or in medi aval estriis, be taken as constituting a dramatic literature. The dramatic tendencies in life and literature have resulted in the various nations in definite literary forms, given regular theatrical presentation; and it is the history of these that this article discusses.
Although in modern times dramas have fre quently been written in prose, the drama in classical times was regarded as one of the three divisions of poetry, and so differentiated from epic, the narration of events, and lyric, the ex pression of emotion, and the same distinction is still applied in a general way to literature. An other distinction due to the Greek is the division of drama into two Species, tragedy and comedy; the former dealing with the more serious themes of life and especially with suffering and death, the latter with life's follies and absurdi ties, fun and sentiment. This distinction was not made in Indian, Chinese or mediaeval drama, and the two species have varied in different 3 y countries and centuries; and they have always existed dramas which stand out i the strict limits f either class; as sat ri in Greek, moralit in the Middle Ages, trag• comedy and pastor l in the Renaissance, draw in modern French, and melodrama at present denoting a mixed and uncritical form. Nevertheless the
two species survive and remain fairly compre hensive, the commonly accepted distinction be tween the twq depending on the presence of a happy or an unhappy ending.
The drama of India has been the object of much interest to Western scholars since the translation by Sir William Jones in 1789 of one of the masterpieces of Kali dasa, the greatest of Sanskrit dramatists. The drama of China, of much tater development, offers, like that of India, many points of differ ence from European drama. The earliest ex amples of the drama, however, are found in Greek, and with these we may begin a survey of the historical development and the general characteristics of the literary drama of rn Rome, the Middle Ages and Modern Europe.
Greek drama had its origin in e dithyrambic songs chanted by the choruses who impersonated the satyr followers of Dionysius in the festivals in honor of the god. Spoken verses and dialogue were after a time intro duced in the midst of the choral odes, and from this beginning both tragedy and comedy even tually developed. To Thespis (650 a.c) is cred ited the addition to the chorus of an actor to fill in with speech and mimicry the intervals of singing and dancing. He was the founder of Attic tragedy, which continued to develop rapidly during the next century. The connection of the drama with the worship of Dionysus was maintained; and tragedies were performed at prize dramatic contests instituted in honor of the god, supported by the state, and witnessed by vast concourses of citizens. No plays sur vive from before the time of )Eschylus (b. 525 a.c.) ; and to him and to his immediate success ors, Sophocles and Euripides in the 5th century, Attic tragedy owes its highest development and its long-continued eminence and influence in the dramatic literature of the world.