CHAPTER XVII

POPULAR SPORTS, EXHIBITIONS, AND DRAMA

Limits of the study, Introduction.--Literature and drama in ethology.--Public amusements of the uncivilized; reversion to archaic, "natural" ways.--Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented.--Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.--Origin of the Athenian drama.--Drama and worship; customs derived from the mysteries.--The word "God."--Kinship yields to religion as social tie.--Religion and drama; syncretism.--Beginnings of the theater at Rome.-- Gladiatorial exhibitions.--Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.-- The folk drama.--The popular taste; realism; conventionality; satire.--Popular exhibitions.--Ancient popular festivals.--The _mimus_.--Modern analogies.--Biologs and ethologs.--Dickens as a biolog.--Early Jewish plays.--The Roman _mimus_.--_The Suffering Christ_; _Pseudo-querolus_.--The _mimus_ and Christianity.--Popular phantasms.--Effects of vicious amusements.--Gladiatorial games.--Compromise between the church and popular customs.--The _cantica_.--Passion for the games.-- German sports.--The _mimus_ from the third to the eighth century.--The drama in the Orient.--Marionettes.--The drama in India.--Punch in the West.--Resistance of the church to the drama.--Hrotsvitha.--The jongleurs; processions.--Adam de la Halle.--The flagellants.--Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions.--Protest against misuse of churches.--Toleration of jests by the ecclesiastics.--Fictitious literature.-- Romances of roguery.--Picaresque novels.--Books of beggars.-- At the beginning of the sixteenth century.--The theater at Venice.--Dancing; public sports.--Women in the theater and on the stage.--The _commedia del arte_.--Jest books; Italian comedy at Paris.--_Commedia del arte_ in Italy.--Summary and review.--Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will.--Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress.

+Limits.+ The cases of public amusement and entertainment which shall here be mentioned are such as were within the limits of usage and accepted propriety at the time. They are not cases of vice or of disputed propriety at the time. Drunkenness, gambling, bull baiting, cockfighting, and prize fighting are amusements which have entered into the mores of groups and subgroups, as bullfighting still does in Spain, but they were limited to classes or groups, or they were important on account of the excess, or they were disapproved by great numbers or by the ecclesiastical authorities. They would, therefore, lie outside the mores, to which the cases to be noticed belonged. The theater in England in Charles II's time testified to a depraved taste and a low standard of morals, but it was temporary and indeed limited in time. In different groups also the moral standards are unequal at the same time, and the mores are on different levels. There is a wider limit now for romances and dramas in France than in English-speaking countries. The cases which now interest us are those of long and wide currency, which the mores have firmly established according to current standards, even though moralists may have inveighed against them sometimes, as the same class now sometimes denounces all dancing.

The cases here to be noticed are further illustrations of the fact that the mores can make anything right, and can protect anything from condemnation, in addition to those in the last two chapters.

+614. Literature and drama in ethology.+ Poetry, drama, and literary fiction are useful to ethology in one or the other of two ways: (1) they reveal facts of the mores; (2) they show the longings and ideals of the group,--in short, what the people like and wish for. The second division includes mythology, fairy tales, and extravaganzas. The taste for them, if it exists, is a feature of the mores, but in fact such a taste is hardly ever popular. It is a product of culture. Myths, legends, proverbs, fables, riddles, etc., are popular products.

+615. Public amusements of the uncivilized. Reversion to archaic, "natural" ways.+ We find in savage life, almost universally unless the group has been crushed by conquest or misfortune, festivals, games, dances, and orgies, which are often celebrated with masks and dramatic action. The motives are fidelity to the traditions of ancestors, entertainment, sex excitement, war enthusiasm, and occult influence in aid of the food quest. The dramatic representation of sex attraction and of the ways of animals is often intensely graphic, and it gives great pleasure to the spectators. An occult effect, to bring about what is desired in war or the chase by enacting it in a dance or play, involves demonism, the existing form of religion. Therefore religion, dramatic dances, music, songs, emotional suggestion, and sex stimulation are intertwined from low barbarism or savagery. Experience of the perils and pains of sexual excess and overpopulation force the development of folkways of restraint, which are customary and conventional regulations of primary natural impulses. At the recurring points of time at which the festivals are held there is often a reversion from the moral status created by the later mores to the ancient "natural" ways, because the later ways are a reflection on the ancestors who were "uncultivated." Their ghosts will be displeased at the new ways and will inflict ill fortune on the group. The festival is not a time at which to emphasize the novelty, but to set it aside and revert to old ways. How far back shall the reversion go? What is "natural"? As no one ever has known from what depths of beastliness, rendered more acute by some intelligence, man came, no one has ever known what "nature" would be. Men reverted actually to some ancient custom of their ancestors beyond which they knew nothing, and which therefore to them seemed primitive and original. The festivals were always outside of the routine of regular life. We, for a holiday frolic, relax, for ourselves and our children, the discipline of ordinary life; for instance, on the Fourth of July. In the theater we make allowances for what we would not tolerate in the street or parlor. That a thing is in jest is, and always has been, an excuse for what is a little beyond the limit otherwise observed. It was a favorite Arab jest to fasten the train of a woman's dress, while she was sitting, to the waist of it, so that when she arose her dress would be disordered.[1987] She must learn to guard herself.

+616. Chaldean and Mexican myths of reproduction dramatically represented.+ In the mythical period of Chaldea the worship of the Great Mother Ishtar (the patroness of sex attraction, but a goddess whose love was a calamity to all her husbands,[1988] perhaps a mythical representation of the perils and pains of sex) was a setting loose of sex passion from the later societal ("moral") regulations, in favor of the original passionate impulse of sex and reproduction. The festival was, therefore, a period of license. The seat of the licentious rites, and of sacral prostitution, was Uruk, the city of the dead (i.e. of ancestors), where men liked to be buried (in order to join their ancestors).[1989] The Tammuz (Adonis) worship was connected with the worship of Ishtar, the relation between the god and the goddess being different in different myths. The Tammuz worship was a dramatic enactment of the death and resurrection of the god (connected with the decay and renewal of the world of vegetation), with corresponding lamentations and rejoicings of the worshipers.[1990] In Mexico we find a parallel pantomime of the nature process at a religious harvest festival, the pantomime being used for occult magic, in order to get good crops in the next season. Obscene figures and rites were used. There is a maize goddess who is the "Mother of the Gods." The union of the sun god with the earth gives fertility, so that the food supply is at stake in these rites and notions.[1991] This most absorbing interest of mankind drove men's minds along the same lines of world philosophy. The "Mother of the Gods," by her sex activity, brought about growth on earth and became goddess of lewdness and filth, just as the German Corn-mother became a harlot. So the goddess by whose activity the earth bears flowers was honored at a festival at which boys and girls nine or ten years old became senselessly drunk and perpetrated sex vice. This was at a _religious_ festival.[1992] Here then we find reversion to more primitive sex mores, and dramatic representation of a myth, conjoined in religion, on the very threshold of the higher civilization. The reversion to primitive sex mores to satisfy notions of duty to religion and ancestors comes to us as an incomprehensible violation of "primary instincts," which we have inferred from ideas that we can trace back beyond any known origin, which we suppose to be universally accepted, and which seem to us axiomatic as to social welfare. The only way to understand the case is to take the standpoint of the mores of that time. The mores contained the answer to the questions: How far back shall we go? What shall be the degree of license at the festival? At the limit fixed by custom the mores extend their sanction over the function and make it "right." Another source of barbaric festivals may be noticed. Men won victories over the elements and over beasts before they won victories over each other. This is true of remote antiquity and of primitive society. It is also true of the Middle Ages. The destruction of great beasts, demons, and other monsters led to dramatic and religious festivals. Magnin[1993] thinks that he could make a cycle of beasts, of which Reineke Fuchs would be the last link, anterior to the cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne.

+617. Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.+ Therefore: What shall be the limit of toleration in theatrical and other exhibitions with respect to dress, language, gesture, etc., in order to define propriety, is altogether a matter of the mores. It is not conceivable that the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes could be presented on any public stage in Christendom. The whole play is beyond the toleration of modern mores. We meet with jugglers in Homer,[1994] also mountebanks and tumblers.[1995] The _kubisteteres_ spun around on the perpendicular axis of the body, and are compared to the wheel of the potter. Then they pitched down head-foremost, like plungers or tumblers turning somersaults. Some archæologs have thought that the play of these persons had some analogy with that of the cubic stones which were so prominent in the cult of the Phrygian Cybele. If that analogy is accepted, then the pyramidal dance must be regarded as originally hieratic and consecrated to Cybele. That dance was at first aristocratic, but speedily became popular and descended to the mountebanks.[1996]

+618. Origin of Athenian drama.+ The theater originated in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve. Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious doctrines, in order to get the powerful effects in suggestion which dramatic action exerts. Many myths presented acts such as later mores could not tolerate. Allowance had to be made for the representations, as we now make allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism, even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and ignorant. They were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation, except some ritual acts. There was no solemnity in the surroundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid."[1997] The Athenian drama, in the fifth century B.C., went through an amazing development and reached high perfection. The art of the theater was especially cultivated. As to the effect of the dramas on the character of the spectators, it is to be noticed that they were presented only once in the year, at the greater festival of Dionysus in the spring, and that then a large number of plays were represented. The spectators, at Athens, were a very mixed assemblage and included the populace, "who remained populace in spite of any beautiful verses which they might chance to hear." They cared only to be amused, "just like modern audiences."[1998]

+619. Dramatic taste and usage in worship. Customs derived from the mysteries.+ About the time of Christ, by syncretism all the religions took on a dramatic form in their ritual, with liturgies and responses, on account of the attractiveness of that form for worshipers. The Christian year was built up as a drama of the life of Christ. The ceremony of the mass was produced by an application of modes of worship which, so far as we can learn, were devised and used in the mysteries. "There is unmistakable evidence that a marriage ceremony of a religious nature existed, and that this ceremony stood in close relation to a part of the ritual of the mysteries. In fact, the marriage was, as it were, a reproduction by the bride and bridegroom of a scene from the divine life, i.e. from the mystic drama. The formula, 'I escaped evil: I found better,' was repeated by the celebrant who was initiated in the Phrygian mysteries; and the same formula was pronounced as part of the Athenian marriage ceremony. Another formula, 'I have drunk from the _kymbalon_,' was pronounced by the initiated; and drinking from the same cup has been proved to have formed part of a ceremony performed in the temple by the betrothed pair." "It is an extremely important fact that the human marriage ceremony was thus celebrated by forms taken from the mysteries; and the conclusion must be that the human pair repeat the action in the way in which the god and goddess first performed and consecrated it, and that, in fact, they play the parts of the god and goddess in the sacred drama. This single example is, as we may be sure, typical of a whole series of actions."[1999]

+620. The word "god."+ "That man when he dies becomes a god was considered already in the fourth century B.C. to be part of the teaching conveyed in the mysteries."[2000] This meant no more than the earlier notion that when a man died he became a ghost. The word "god" was used in senses very strange to our ears,[2001] and to quote an expression of any writer of the beginning of the Christian era in which he uses the word "god," and to give to that word our sense of it, is to be led into great error. The age was one which put all its religion in dramatic form and acted it out. It was an age with a gift for manufacturing rites and liturgies.

+621. Kin yields to religion as social tie.+ This was due to a great ethnological change which was then coming to its culmination. The kin tie, which had been the primitive mode of association and coherence of groups, began to break down in the sixth century B.C. in Greece. It was superseded by the social tie of a common religious faith and ritual. The Pythagorean and Orphic sects developed this tie. They had a revelation of the other world, a system of mystic and cathartic rites, which cleared men of ritual uncleanness, purified them, and "saved" them. The cathartic rites were a means of warding off evil spirits and did the work of the old shamans.[2002] The sectarian brotherhood of the initiated, the "church," the faith, the contrast of ordinary life with the ecstatic emotions of the mysteries, the consequent antagonism of the "flesh" or the "world," and the "spirit," were easy deductions from the teaching and ritual of the sects.[2003] It was all concentrated in the godlikeness, divinity, or immortality of the human soul, with the mystic notions of union between the soul and God. "Mysticism, as doctrine and theory, grew up from the soil of a more ancient practice in worship." "The worship of Dionysus must have furnished the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."[2004] The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was demonism, superstitious anxiety about the world of demons, who floated around men and stretched their hands out of the surrounding darkness to seize them. It was from these that men wanted to be "saved." Atonement was to be made to the chthonic gods, for they were displeased at ritual uncleanness, and the chthonic cults had the other world in view.[2005] The uncleanness was ritual, and hence it came from anything far out of the regular order, either by abomination or holiness. The rabbis held that the handling of the Scriptures defiled the hands and called for ceremonial washing (Num. xix. 8, 10).[2006]

+622. Combination of religion and drama. Syncretism.+ The interest of all this for our present purpose is the combination of religious ideas with dramatic representation. Processions of all kinds easily turn into such representations. Rites and ceremonies are but a form of drama. Symbols and emblems have the same character. The old religions were subjected to criticism, which means that they had lost their authority. They did not verify when the attempt was made to use them for societal needs. Slaves, merchants, soldiers, etc., afloat in the world, associated from choice and contributed traditions from the whole known world. Then syncretism began, and a body of sectarian notions was formed. There was a new totemism, a breaking down of national religion, a spirit of propaganda, and a setting forth of the whole in all dramatic forms.[2007] In the sects women were admitted, a fact of double significance. It was an emancipation for the women and a peril for the sect. The doubt with which the mysteries are now regarded is due to the uncertainty as to the relations of the sexes in them. The word "orgy" originally meant worship, or rites, then secret rites, that is, mysteries. The sense in which the word has come down to us shows the notion about secret meetings which became commonly accepted.

The customs which had grown out of religious interest had reached the desire for entertainment and pleasure. They satisfied it and stimulated it, and the religious element might be forgotten.

+623. Beginnings of the theater at Rome.+ The Floralia were instituted at Rome in 240 B.C. They were celebrated by courtesans with processions, lascivious pantomimes, etc. They are said to have come from Greece.[2008] In the same year Livius Andronicus presented at Rome the first play translated from the Greek. In 154 the first permanent theater was established there against great opposition. In 146 the first theater outside the circus, with seats, was provided.[2009] All mimic actions were foreign to the austere mores of the early Romans, but in the second century B.C. the mores changed through the growth of wealth and contact with other nations. Young Romans learned from actors to sing and dance, acts which their ancestors thought unworthy of free persons. The earliest plays were called _saturae_, because they were mixed dialogues, music, and dances. The sense of the word was closely that of "farce" in the Middle Ages,[2010] i.e. an episode or intermezzo of a comic character interjected into a drama. The _saturae_ contained an Etruscan element, but atellans were entirely Etruscan. They were comic and grotesque, and got their name from Atella (i.e. Aversa or Santo Arpino) in Campania. They could be played by persons who did not on that account lose their places in their tribes or their right to serve in the legion. No personalities at all were allowed on the Roman stage. Cynicism and obscenity characterized the Oscan style.[2011] In 55 B.C. the younger Cato was present at the Floralia. The populace hesitated to call, in his presence, for the stripping of the _mimae_. He left in order not to hinder the celebration from taking its usual course.[2012] Valerius Maximus[2013] says that the pantomime was brought to Rome from Etruria, the Etruscans having brought it from their old home in Lydia. We see from the epigrams in the first book of Martial that at the Roman theater in the first century of the Christian era incidents of the Roman mythology were made into dramas and represented in pantomime.

+624. Gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The gladiatorial exhibitions are supposed to have been of Etruscan origin in the form of funeral games. Games to rejoice the ghosts, sacrifices of prisoners, a chance given to a prisoner to fight for his life, are steps of a development of which we find many examples. The Romans showed the pitilessness and inhumanity of their mores in the development they gave to the gladiatorial exhibitions. "Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the Second Punic War. It was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness."[2014] Some murmurs of dissent arose from the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era,--Plutarch, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,[2015]--but at that time the popular sentiment had not faltered at all in its love and zeal for the gladiatorial shows and beast contests on account of any doubt whether the exhibitions were "right." Tertullian, at the end of the second century, wrote a tract, _Ad Nationes_, in which he criticised the theater, and also another, _De Spectaculis_, against the public entertainments. Although the latter is chiefly controversial against heathen and heathenism, it contains direct and noble arguments against the games of the arena on account of their inhumanity. He says that the games were at first connected with funerals, and that the theater was a temple of Venus, under cover of which the games won a footing. That would mean, then, that they were at first under a convention of time, place, occasion, and religion. Correctly understood, therefore, what happened at Rome was that the convention was broken over and the exceptional rite was made the everyday usage, the religious sentiment being disregarded and the sensual entertainment alone being valued. When we have reached this point we can understand the original place of the games within the intellectual horizon of the nation, and also the deep demoralization which they caused in later times. They were consonant with early Roman mores which were warlike. Cicero thought them an excellent school to teach contempt for pain and death. He cited gladiators as examples of bodily exercise, courage, and discipline. He seems to have known that some disapproved of the exhibitions, and he was disposed to agree with them if the gladiators were others than criminals condemned to death.[2016] A usage which is consonant with the tastes, mores, and world philosophy of a people need work no corruption on them, for it is under taboos and conventions; but if all the restraints are taken away it enters into their life for just what it is in its character,--sensual, cruel, bloody, obscene, etc. What had been savage and bloodthirsty when the Romans were warriors became base and cowardly when they never risked their own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take rôles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, in order to entertain the Roman crowd. Such rôles were Prometheus, Dædalus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Attys; Pasiphae and the bull, and Leda and the swan were also enacted. In Martial's _Epigrams_,