THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN DRAMA.

Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 26, 16 January 1878, Page 3

THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN DRAMA.

The comedies .of Plautus, with those of Terence, who was about nine years old when Plautus died, and the tragedies of the Roman philosopher Seneca, wno died by command of Nero,. a. d. 65, represented the old Latin dramatic literature to mediaeval scholars who knew little of Greek; and thus Plautus and Terence for comedy, Seneca for tragedy, represented to most scholars thejold classical drama down even tb^hakespeare's time. Out of the study and imitation of these plays m i schools and universities the modern drama most distinctly rose. It /would so have arisen if there had never been any Miracle Plays. It did not m any way arise out of the Miracle Plays. Miracle Plays did not pass into Morality Plays, nor did Morality- Plays afterwards pass into true dramas. Miracle Plays are one thing ; Moralities are another thing ■■; each form of writing has its own distinct beginning, aim, and end. They are two different forms of literature, one arising out of the church services, the other an offshoot from the allegorical didactic poem. When the two forms of literature were both used; they were occasionally mixed, but there never was a time at which one changed into the other. Like the drama proper, they turn to account the instinct for imitation that has, m a sense, made actors of all children born into the world ? and thus they may claim cousinship with our drama that had its beginning m the sixteenth century ; they are its cousins, not its parents.—" Cassell's Library of English literature, for November."