to offer their morning salutation to the Sun, do not consider it enough
to kiss their hands after the Greek fashion; turning to the East, they
silently greet the God with movements that are designed to represent his
own course through the heavens; and with this substitute for our prayers
and sacrifices and choral celebrations they seek his favour at the
beginning of every day and at its close. The Ethiopians go further, and
dance even while they fight; the shaft an Ethiopian draws from that
arrow-crown that serves him in place of a quiver will never be discharged
before he has intimidated his enemy with the threatening gestures of the
war-dance.
Having dealt with India and Ethiopia, let us now consider the neighbouring
country of Egypt. If I am not mistaken, the Egyptian Proteus of ancient
legend is no other than a dancer, whose mimetic skill enables him to adapt
himself to every character: in the activity of his movements, he is liquid
as water, rapid as fire; he is the raging lion, the savage panther, the
trembling bough; he is what he will. The legend takes these data, and
gives them a supernatural turn,--for mimicry substituting metamorphosis.
Our modern pantomimes have the same gift, and Proteus himself sometimes
appears as the subject of their rapid transformations. And it may be
conjectured that in that versatile lady Empusa we have but another artist
of the same kind, mythologically treated.
Our attention is next claimed by the Roman dance of the Salii, a
priesthood drawn from the noblest families; the dance is performed in
honour of Mars, the most warlike of the Gods, and is of a particularly
solemn and sacred character. According to a Bithynian legend, which
agrees well with this Italian institution, Priapus, a war-like divinity
(probably one of the Titans, or of the Idaean Dactyls, whose profession
it was to teach the use of arms), was entrusted by Hera with the care of
her son Ares, who even in childhood was remarkable for his courage and
ferocity. Priapus would not put weapons into his hands till he had turned
him out a perfect dancer; and he was rewarded by Hera with a tenth part
of all Ares's spoils. As to the rites of Dionysus, you know, without my
telling you, that they consisted in dancing from beginning to end. Of the
three main types of dance, the cordax, the sicinnis, and the emmelia,
each was the invention and bore the name of one of the Satyrs, his
followers. Assisted by this art, and accompanied by these revellers, he
conquered Tyrrhenians, Indians, Lydians, dancing those warlike tribes
into submission.
Then beware, my enlightened friend, of the guilt of sacrilege. Will you
attack the holy mystic art in which so many Gods delight; by which their
worshippers do them honour; which affords so much pleasure, so much
useful instruction? To return once more to the poets: when I think of
your affection for Homer and Hesiod, I am amazed to find you disputing
the preeminence they assign to the dance. Homer, in enumerating all that
is sweetest and best, mentions sleep, love, song, and dance; but of these
dance alone is 'faultless.' He testifies, moreover, to the 'sweetness' of
song: now our art includes 'sweet song' as well as the 'faultless dance'
which you take upon you to censure. Again, in another passage we read:
To one the God hath given warlike deeds:
But to another dance and lovely song.
And lovely indeed is the song that accompanies the dance; it is the Gods'
best gift. Homer seems to divide all things under the two heads of war
and peace; and among the things of peace he singles out these two as the
best counterpart to the things of war. Hesiod, not speaking from hearsay,
but coming fresh from the sight of the Muses' morning dance, has this
high tribute to them in the beginning of his poem:
Their dainty feet round the dark waters dance,
about the altar of Zeus.--My dear sir, your onslaught upon the dance is
little short of blasphemy.
Socrates--that wisest of men, if we may accept the judgement of the
Pythian oracle--not only approved of dancing, but made a careful study of
it; and, in his zeal for grace and elegance, for harmonious movement and
carriage of the body, thought it no shame, reverend sage that he was, to
rank this among the most important branches of learning. And well might
he have an enthusiasm for dancing, who scrupled not to study the humblest
arts; who frequented the schools of the flute-girls, and could stoop to
learn wisdom from the mouth of an Aspasia. Yet in his days the art was in
its infancy, its beauties undeveloped. Had Socrates seen the artists who
have made modern Pantomime what it is, he would assuredly have given it
his exclusive attention, and assigned it the first place in the education
of youth.
I think you forget, when you advocate the claims of tragedy and comedy,
that each of them has its own peculiar form of dance; tragedy its
emmelia, comedy its cordax, supplemented occasionally by the sicinnis.
You began by asserting the superiority of tragedy, of comedy, and of the
periodic performances on flute and lyre, which you pronounce to be
respectable, because they are included in public competitions. Let us
take each of these and compare its merits with those of dancing. The
flute and the lyre, to be sure, we might leave out of the discussion, as
these have their part to play in the dance.
In forming our estimate of tragedy, let us first consider its externals--
the hideous, appalling spectacle that the actor presents. His high boots
raise him up out of all proportion; his head is hidden under an enormous
mask; his huge mouth gapes upon the audience as if he would swallow them;
to say nothing of the chest-pads and stomach-pads with which he contrives
to give himself an artificial corpulence, lest his deficiency in this
respect should emphasize his disproportionate height. And in the middle
of it all is the actor, shouting away, now high, now low,--_chanting_ his
iambics as often as not; could anything be more revolting than this sing-
song recitation of tragic woes? The actor is a mouthpiece: that is his
sole responsibility;--the poet has seen to the rest, ages since. From an
Andromache or a Hecuba, one can endure recitative: but when Heracles
himself comes upon the stage, and so far forgets himself, and the respect
due to the lion-skin and club that he carries, as to deliver a solo, no
reasonable person can deny that such a performance is in execrable taste.
Then again, your objection to dancing--that men act women's parts--is
equally applicable to tragedy and comedy, in which indeed there are more
women than men.
By comedy, the absurdity of the masks--of a Davus, for instance, or a
Tibius, or a cook--is actually claimed as one of its attractions. On the
other hand, I need not tell you how decent, how seemly, is the dancer's
attire; any one who is not blind can see that for himself. His very mask
is elegant, and well adapted to his part; there is no gaping here; the
lips are closed, for the dancer has plenty of other voices at his
service. In old days, dancer and singer were one: but the violent
exercise caused shortness of breath; the song suffered for it, and it was
found advisable to have the singing done independently.
As to the subjects treated, they are the same for both, Pantomime
differing from tragedy only in the infinite variety of its plots, and in
the superior ingenuity and learning displayed in them. Dancing may not be
included in our public competitions; but the reason is that the stewards
regard it as a matter too high and solemn to be subjected to criticism. I
forbear to add that in one Italian city--the greatest of the Chalcidian
name--a special lustre has been added to the public games by the
introduction of a dancing competition.
And now, before I proceed further, I wish to offer an explanation of
themany omissions I have made, which might otherwise be attributed to
ignorance. I am well aware that the subject has already been dealt with
by a number of writers, who have chiefly occupied themselves with a
description of the various forms of dance, and a catalogue of their
names, their characters, and their inventors; and this they regard as a
proof of erudition. Such work I leave to the ambition of dullards and
pedants, as foreign to my own purpose. I would have you observe, and bear
in mind, that I do not propose to make a complete history of the art of
dancing; nor is it my object to enumerate the names of dances, except so
far as I have already done, in handling a few of the principal types: on
the contrary, I am chiefly concerned with pointing out the profit and
pleasure to be derived from modern Pantomime, which did not begin to take
its present admirable form in ancient days, but only in the time of
Augustus, or thereabouts. In those earlier times we have but the
beginnings of the art; the tree is taking root; the flower and the fruit
have reached their perfection only in our own day, and it is with these
that I have to do. The tongs-dance, the crane-dance, and others I pass
over because they are alien to my subject; similarly, if I have said
nothing of the Phrygian dance,--that riotous convivial fling, which was
performed by energetic yokels to the piping of a flute-girl, and which
still prevails in country districts,--I have omitted it not from
ignorance, but because it has no connexion with the Pantomime of to-day.
I have the authority of Plato, in his _Laws_, for approving some
forms of dance and rejecting others; he there examines the dance from the
two points of view of pleasure and utility, banishes those forms that are
unseemly, and selects others for his recommendation.
Of dancing then, in the strict sense of the word, I have said enough. To
enlarge further upon its history would be pedantic. And now I come to the
pantomime. What must be his qualifications? what his previous training?
what his studies? what his subsidiary accomplishments? You will find that
his is no easy profession, nor lightly to be undertaken; requiring as it
does the highest standard of culture in all its branches, and involving a
knowledge not of music only, but of rhythm and metre, and above all of
your beloved philosophy, both natural and moral, the subtleties of
dialectic alone being rejected as serving no useful purpose. Rhetoric,
too, in so far as that art is concerned with the exposition of human
character and human passions, claims a share of its attention. Nor can it
dispense with the painter's and the sculptor's arts; in its close
observance of the harmonious proportions that these teach, it is the
equal of an Apelles or a Phidias. But above all Mnemosyne, and her
daughter Polyhymnia, must be propitiated by an art that would remember
all things. Like Calchas in Homer, the pantomime must know all 'that is,
that was, that shall be'; nothing must escape his ever ready memory.
Faithfully to represent his subject, adequately to express his own
conceptions, to make plain all that might be obscure;--these are the
first essentials for the pantomime, to whom no higher compliment could be
paid than Thucydides's tribute to Pericles, who, he says, 'could not only
conceive a wise policy, but render it intelligible to his hearers'; the
intelligibility, in the present case, depending on clearness of
gesticulation.
For his materials, he must draw continually, as I have said, upon his
unfailing memory of ancient story; and memory must be backed by taste and
judgement. He must know the history of the world, from the time when it
first emerged from Chaos down to the days of Egyptian Cleopatra. These
limitations we will concede to the pantomime's wide field of knowledge;
but within them he must be familiar with every detail:--the mutilation of
Uranus, the origin of Aphrodite, the battle of Titans, the birth of Zeus,
Rhea's deception, her substitution of a stone for her child, the binding
of Cronus, the partition of the world between the three brothers. Again,
the revolt of the Giants, Prometheus's theft of fire, his creation of
mankind, and the punishment that followed; the might of Eros and of
Anteros, the wanderings of the island Delos, the travail of Leto, the
Python's destruction, the evil design of Tityus, the flight of eagles,
whereby the earth's centre was discovered. He must know of Deucalion, in
whose days the whole world suffered shipwreck, of that single chest
wherein were preserved the remnants of the human race, of the new
generation born of stones; of the rending of Iacchus, the guile of Hera,
the fiery death of Semele, the double birth of Dionysus; of Athene and
Hephaestus and Erichthonius, of the strife for the possession of Athens,
of Halirrhothius and that first trial on the Areopagus, and all the
legendary lore of Attica. Above all, the wanderings of Demeter, the
finding of Persephone, the hospitality of Celeus; Triptolemus's plough,
Icarius's vineyard, and the sad end of Erigone; the tale of Boreas and
Orithyia, of Theseus, and of Aegeus; of Medea in Greece, and of her
flight thereafter into Persia, and of Erechtheus's daughters and
Pandion's, and all that they did and suffered in Thrace. Acamas, and
Phyllis, and that first rape of Helen, and the expedition of Castor and
Pollux against Athens, and the fate of Hippolytus, and the return of the
Heraclids,--all these may fairly be included in the Athenian mythology,
from the vast bulk of which I select only these few examples.
Then in Megara we have Nisus, his daughter Scylla, and his purple lock;
the invasion of Minos, and his ingratitude towards his benefactress. Then
we come to Cithaeron, and the story of the Thebans, and of the race of
Labdacus; the settlement of Cadmus on the spot where the cow rested, the
dragon's teeth from which the Thebans sprang up, the transformation of
Cadmus into a serpent, the building of the walls of Thebes to the sound
of Amphion's lyre, the subsequent madness of the builder, the boast of
Niobe his wife, her silent grief; Pentheus, Actaeon, Oedipus, Heracles;
his labours and slaughter of his children.
Corinth, again, abounds in legends: of Glauce and of Creon; in earlier
days, of Bellerophon and Stheneboea, and of the strife between Posidon
and the Sun; and, later, of the frenzy of Athamas, of Nephele's children
and their flight through the air on the ram's back, and of the
deification of Ino and Melicertes. Next comes the story of Pelops's line,
of all that befell in Mycenae, and before Mycenae was; of Inachus and Io
and Argus her guardian; of Atreus and Thyestes and Aerope, of the golden
ram and the marriage of Pelopeia, the murder of Agamemnon and the
punishment of Clytemnestra; and before their days, the expedition of the
Seven against Thebes, the reception of the fugitives Tydeus and Polynices
by their father-in-law Adrastus; the oracle that foretold their fate, the
unburied slain, the death of Antigone, and that of Menoeceus.
Nor is any story more essential to the pantomime's purpose than that of
Hypsipyle and Archemorus in Nemea; and, in older days, the imprisonment
of Danae, the begetting of Perseus, his enterprise against the Gorgons;
and connected therewith is the Ethiopian narrative of Cassiopea, and
Cepheus, and Andromeda, all of whom the belief of later generations has
placed among the stars. To these must be added the ancient legend of
Aegyptus and Danaus, and of that guilty wedding-night.
Lacedaemon, too, supplies him with many similar subjects: Hyacinth, and
his rival lovers, Zephyr and Apollo, and the quoit that slew him, the
flower that sprang up from his blood, and the inscription of woe thereon;
the raising of Tyndareus from the dead, and the consequent wrath of
Zeusagainst Asclepius; again, the reception of Paris by Menelaus, and the
rape of Helen, the sequel to his award of the golden apple. For the
Spartan mythology must be held to include that of Troy, in all its
abundance and variety. Of all who fell at Troy, not one but supplies a
subject for the stage; and all--from the rape of Helen to the return of
the Greeks--must ever be borne in mind: the wanderings of Aeneas, the
love of Dido; and side by side with this the story of Orestes, and his
daring deeds in Scythia. And there are earlier episodes which will not be
out of place; they are all connected with the tale of Troy: such are the
seclusion of Achilles in Scyrus, the madness of Odysseus, the solitude of
Philoctetes, with the whole story of Odysseus's wanderings, of Circe and
Telegonus, of Aeolus, controller of the winds, down to the vengeance
wreaked upon the suitors of Penelope; and, earlier, Odysseus's plot
against Palamedes, the resentment of Nauplius, the frenzy of the one
Ajax, the destruction of the other on the rocks.
Elis, too, affords many subjects for the intending pantomime: Oenomaus,
Myrtilus, Cronus, Zeus, and that first Olympian contest. Arcadia, no less
rich in legendary lore, gives him the flight of Daphne, the
transformation of Callisto into a bear, the drunken riot of the Centaurs,
the birth of Pan, the love of Alpheus, and his submarine wanderings.
Extending our view, we find that Crete, too, may be laid under
contribution: Europa's bull, Pasiphae's, the Labyrinth, Ariadne, Phaedra,
Androgeos; Daedalus and Icarus; Glaucus, and the prophecy of Polyides;
and Talos, the island's brazen sentinel.
It is the same with Aetolia: there you will find Althaea, Meleager,
Atalanta, and the fatal brand; the strife of Achelous with Heracles, the
birth of the Sirens, the origin of the Echinades, those islands on which
Alcmaeon dwelt after his frenzy was past; and, following these, the story
of Nessus, and of Deianira's jealousy, which brought Heracles to the pyre
upon Oeta. Thrace, too, has much that is indispensable to the pantomime:
of the head of murdered Orpheus, that sang while it floated down the
stream upon his lyre; of Haemus and of Rhodope; and of the chastisement
of Lycurgus.
Thessalian story, richer still, tells of Pelias and Jason; of Alcestis;
and of the Argo with her talking keel and her crew of fifty youths; of
what befell them in Lemnos; of Aeetes, Medea's dream, the rending of
Absyrtus, the eventful flight from Colchis; and, in later days, of
Protesilaus and Laodamia.
Cross once more to Asia, and Samos awaits you, with the fall of
Polycrates, and his daughter's flight into Persia; and the ancient story
of Tantalus's folly, and of the feast that he gave the Gods; of butchered
Pelops, and his ivory shoulder.
In Italy, we have the Eridanus, Phaethon, and his poplar-sisters, who
wept tears of amber for his loss.
The pantomime must be familiar, too, with the story of the Hesperides,
and the dragon that guarded the golden fruit; with burdened Atlas, and
Geryon, and the driving of the oxen from Erythea; and every tale of
metamorphosis, of women turned into trees or birds or beasts, or (like
Caeneus and Tiresias) into men. From Phoenicia he must learn of Myrrha
and Adonis, who divides Assyria betwixt grief and joy; and in more modern
times of all that Antipater [Footnote: Not Antipater, but Antiochus, is
meant.] and Seleucus suffered for the love of Stratonice.
The Egyptian mythology is another matter: it cannot be omitted, but on
account of its mysterious character it calls for a more symbolical
exposition;--the legend of Epaphus, for instance, and that of Osiris, and
the conversion of the Gods into animals; and, in particular, their love
adventures, including those of Zeus himself, with his various
transformations.
Hades still remains to be added, with all its tragic tale of guilt and
the punishment of guilt, and the loyal friendship that brought Theseus
thither with Pirithous. In a word, all that Homer and Hesiod and our best
poets, especially the tragedians, have sung,--all must be known to the
pantomime. From the vast, nay infinite, mass of mythology, I have made
this trifling selection of the more prominent legends; leaving the rest
for poets to celebrate, for pantomimes to exhibit, and for your
imagination to supply from the hints already given; and all this the
artist must have stored up in his memory, ready to be produced when
occasion demands.
Since it is his profession to imitate, and to show forth his subject by
means of gesticulation, he, like the orators, must acquire lucidity;
every scene must be intelligible without the aid of an interpreter; to
borrow the expression of the Pythian oracle,
Dumb though he be, and speechless, he is heard
by the spectator. According to the story, this was precisely the
experience of the Cynic Demetrius. He had inveighed against Pantomime in
just your own terms. The pantomime, he said, was a mere appendage to
flute and pipe and beating feet; he added nothing to the action; his
gesticulations were aimless nonsense; there was no meaning in them;
people were hoodwinked by the silken robes and handsome mask, by the
fluting and piping and the fine voices, which served to set off what in
itself was nothing. The leading pantomime of the day--this was in Nero's
reign--was apparently a man of no mean intelligence; unsurpassed, in
fact, in wideness of range and in grace of execution. Nothing, I think,
could be more reasonable than the request he made of Demetrius, which
was, to reserve his decision till he had witnessed his performance, which
he undertook to go through without the assistance of flute or song. He
was as good as his word. The time-beaters, the flutes, even the chorus,
were ordered to preserve a strict silence; and the pantomime, left to his
own resources, represented the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, the tell-tale
Sun, the craft of Hephaestus, his capture of the two lovers in the net,
the surrounding Gods, each in his turn, the blushes of Aphrodite, the
embarrassment of Ares, his entreaties,--in fact the whole story.
Demetrius was ravished at the spectacle; nor could there be higher praise
than that with which he rewarded the performer. 'Man,' he shrieked at the
top of his voice, 'this is not seeing, but hearing and seeing, both:'tis
as if your hands were tongues!'
And before we leave Nero's times, I must tell you of the high tribute
paid to the art by a foreigner of the royal family of Pontus, who was
visiting the Emperor on business, and had been among the spectators of
this same pantomime. So convincing were the artist's gestures, as to
render the subject intelligible even to one who (being half a Greek)
could not follow the vocal accompaniment. When he was about to return to
his country, Nero, in taking leave of him, bade him choose what present
he would have, assuring him that his request should not be refused. 'Give
me,' said the Pontian, 'your great pantomime; no gift could delight me
more.' 'And of what use can he be to you in Pontus?' asked the Emperor.
'I have foreign neighbours, who do not speak our language; and it is not
easy to procure interpreters. Your pantomime could discharge that office
perfectly, as often as required, by means of his gesticulations.' So
profoundly had he been impressed with the extraordinary clearness of
pantomimic representation.
The pantomime is above all things an actor: that is his first aim, in the
pursuit of which (as I have observed) he resembles the orator, and
especially the composer of 'declamations,' whose success, as the
pantomime knows, depends like his own upon verisimilitude, upon the
adaptation of language to character: prince or tyrannicide, pauper or
farmer, each must be shown with the peculiarities that belong to him. I
must give you the comment of another foreigner on this subject. Seeing
five masks laid ready--that being the number of parts in the piece--and
only one pantomime, he asked who were going to play the other parts. He
was informed that the whole piece would be performed by a single actor.
'Your humble servant, sir,' cries our foreigner to the artist; 'I observe
that you have but one body: it had escaped me, that you possessed several
souls.'
The term 'pantomime,' which was introduced by the Italian Greeks, is an
apt one, and scarcely exaggerates the artist's versatility. 'Oh boy,'
cries the poet, in a beautiful passage,