re that was erected
(1576) in England.

Popular historical subjects were chosen for the plays, though the names
of the characters were transformed. Fancy plays, operas, ballets, which
in the latter women appeared, became also very popular.

Within sight of the closing years of the last century (the nineteenth),
Japanese actors were more or less under a ban when the same was happily
removed.

Siam was content with the Indian style of dramatic and Pantomimic
entertainments. Theatrical performances were also slightly known--though
no regular type of drama is known--amongst the South Sea Islanders, the
Peruvians, the Aztecs, the Zulus, and the Fijis, the two last named
having a similar version of our popular Pantomime subject, "Jack and the
Beanstalk."

The Egyptians possessed no regular type of drama, yet in both the Books
of Job and Ruth the dramatic element is strongly marked. At the rustic
festivals of the native gods, as in Greece and Italy, there was,
however, the dramatic elements of the union of song, dance, and
Pantomime, and we are told that the priests not only studied music, but
also taught the art to others. Again in the rites of the dead the
Mysteries of the sepulture over the transmigration of souls, the
dramatic element entered largely into these mystic rites and
celebrations. Amongst the Pagan Greeks, as I have previously stated, and
the Romans, we learn of similar celebrations, carried out with great
pomp and ceremony, such as the apotheosis of the soul departing from its
earthly to its heavenly abode.

CHAPTER IV.

"Dancing," _i.e._ Pantomime--Grecian Dancing and Pantomimic
Scenes--Aristotle--Homer--Dances common to both Greeks and Romans.

In tracing the History of Pantomime it becomes a matter of considerable
difficulty, and, as Baron, in his _Lettres sur la Danse_, observes that
when the word Dancing occurs in an old author, that it should always be
translated by "gesticulation," "declamation," or "Pantomime." When we
read that an actress "danced" her part well in the tragedy of Medea,
that a carver cut up food dancing, that Heligobalus and Caligula
"danced" a discourse for an audience of state, we are to understand that
they--actress, carver, and emperor--declaimed, gesticulated, made
themselves understood in a language without words. Acting is also
oftentimes confounded with dancing, and it is, therefore, manifestly
impossible to distinguish now one from the other.

"The Greeks," m