The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, by
Samuel James Arnold

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Title: The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor
Vol I, No. 2, February 1810

Author: Samuel James Arnold

Editor: Stephen Cullen Carpenter

Release Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #26628]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's Note:

Typographical errors are listed at the end of the text.

The printed book contained the six Numbers of Volume I with their
appended plays. The Index originally appeared at the beginning of
the volume; it has been included at the end of the journal text of
Number 1 (Project Gutenberg EBook #22488), before the play.
Pages 109-188 refer to the present Number.]

THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

Vol. I. FEBRUARY 1810. No. 2.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER II.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA IN GREECE--ORIGIN OF
TRAGEDY--THESPIS--AESCHYLUS, "THE FATHER OF THE TRAGIC ART"--HIS
ASTONISHING TALENTS--HIS DEATH.

It has been already remarked that at a very early period, considerably
more than three thousand years ago, the Chinese and other nations in the
east understood the rudiments of the dramatic art. In their crude,
anomalous representations they introduced conjurers, slight of hand men
and rope dancers, with dogs, birds, monkies, snakes and even mice which
were trained to dance, and in their dancing to perform evolutions
descriptive of mathematical and astronomical figures. To this day the
vestiges of those heterogeneous amusements are discernible all over
Indostan: but that which will be regarded by many with surprise, is that
in all countries pagan or christian the drama in its origin, with the
dancings and spectacles attending it have been intermixed with divine
worship. The Bramins danced before their god Vishnou, and still hold it
as an article of faith that Vishnou had himself, "in the olden time"
danced on the head of a