ABSTRACT
Mimicry and make-believe are well nigh universal human impulses and drama has therefore developed independently at various times and places in the world’s history. Among the Greeks it attained high distinction. Among the Romans it was less popular. Conditions in the Roman Empire were politically disturbed, and the populace preferred to shout and cheer at the chariot races and gladiatorial combats of the circus and amphitheatre rather than quietly watch a play. The theatre apparently did not attract the best literary talents in Italy. Plautus and Terence are not comparable to Virgil, Horace, or Livy in other forms of literature, and Seneca’s tragedies were closet dramas. The most popular theatrical entertainments were the performances of mimes1 in which coarse humor and indecency combined to secure at times the attention of the vulgar. The hordes of barbarians pouring into Rome did not help matters. Drama had apparently never developed among the Teutons, and witty dialogue was wasted on the speakers of an unfamiliar tongue. With the rise of Christianity the theatre ran into other difficulties. The Church objected to its associations with paganism, to the fact that in its lower forms it often ridiculed the new religion, and perhaps most of all to the immorality of both performances and performers. With the fall of the Empire, Roman drama disappeared, and for five hundred years only a faint dramatic tradition may have survived, passed on from the mimes to the medieval minstrel.
