use of arms, made it impossible
that attention should be bestowed upon so polite and sedentary a form of
amusement as the drama.

It is generally held that the church made the first movement toward the
abolition of the drama by placing its ban on the plays handed down from
the Greeks and the Romans, partly because of their inculcation of
reverence for heathen deities and partly because of the shameless
indecencies which had invaded them. But this could have been only one of
many causes which operated in keeping the play out of Europe for so many
centuries. When it was revived, as we have seen, in the form of the
liturgical drama and afterward of the sacred representation, it bore
little or no resemblance to the splendid art product bequeathed to the
world by the Greeks.

The sudden and glorious return of the dramatic subjects of the Greeks to
the stage of medieval Europe marks the beginning of the modern era. When
the Italians turned to the stories of ancient fable for material for
their secular drama they were without doubt quite unconscious of the
importance of the step they were taking. It is only the reflective eye
of retrospective study that can discern all the significant elements
happily combined in this event by the overmastering laws of human
progress.

To enter into a detailed examination of the matter would demand of us a
review of the whole movement known as the Renaissance. This, however, is
not essential to an appreciation of the precise nature of the step from
the sacred representation to the lyric drama and its importance in
laying the foundations of opera. This momentous step was taken late in
the fifteenth century with the performance of Angelo Poliziano's "Favola
di Orfeo" at the Court of Mantua to celebrate the return of the Cardinal
Gonzaga. The Italian authorities are by no means agreed as to the
importance of this production. Rossi says:[10]

"The circle of plot in the religious drama, at first restricted to
the life of Christ, had been gradually broadened. Some writers,
wishing to adapt attractive themes to the aristocratic gatherings of
the princely courts, availed themselves of the very form of the
sacred drama of the people in the treatment of subjects entirely
profane. Thus did Poliziano, whose 'Orfeo,' as the evident
reproduction of that form in a mythological subject is an isolated
type in the history of the Italian drama."

[Footnote 10: "Storia della Letteratura