The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor,
Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810

Author: Various

Editor: S. C. Carpenter

Release Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #27138]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

Vol. I. JUNE, 1810. No. 6.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMAN DRAMA.

In proportion as the Romans yielded to the habit of imitating the
Greeks, they advanced into refinement, and receded from their
characteristic roughness and ferocity. Their pace, however, was very
slow, for imagining rudeness and brutality to be synonimous with
independence, they indulged and prided themselves in an adherence to
their original coarseness and despised the manners of the Grecians, as
the latter did those of the Persians, for their extreme refinement and
effeminacy. Of the drama there is not to be found a trace on the records
of Rome till more than three hundred and fifty years after the building
of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude
compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung,
accompanied with indecent action and lascivous gestures. But the
raillery they used was so personal and calumnious that riots constantly
ensued from the resentment of the injured parties, in consequence of
which the senate passed a law, in the three hundred and second year of
the city, condemning to death any person who should injure the
reputation of his neighbour.

It was a full century after that law when, on occasion of great public
calamity, they, in order to appease the divine wrath instituted feasts
in honour of the gods, and those feasts for the first time exhibited a
sort of irregular theatrical performances, composed wholly of imitation.
The actors in those may in all probability be placed on a level with
those cal