a dramatic composition called a Mystery, usually founded on passages of Scripture, was introduced and became a popular exhibition on saints' days. Subjects from the Bible, rudely treated in the form of a dialogue between the holy personages, were represented on a stage erected in the church or church yard, the priests and acolytes being the actors. These performances were carried to an abuse, and they became so blasphemous a scandal that they were suppressed. The next form of drama was the Morality, bearing a relation to the mystery similar to that between the new and old comedy of the Greeks. The morality was aimed at abstract vice, its action was a fable, its characters typical.-In the 15th and 16th centuries Histories began to be written-long, rambling pieces of action without form or object, but introducing rudely the design of that romantic drama destined to so wondrous a perfection under the minds of Shakespeare and his colleagues. As the classic drama was derived from the dithyramb, a pure poetic germ, subsequently developed into action, the romantic drama was derived from the pageant, mask, or mummery, a pantomimic germ, subsequently developed into poetry. In the first the action is subservient to the passion; in the second the passion is subservient to the action. Thus we find Shakespeare borrows his plots from Boccaccio, and makes his passions fit under these forms, where his characters rather encumber than assist the intrigue. In the Elizabethan age the romantic drama sprang at once into existence; and as in the single life of Æschylus the classical or Greek drama passed from infancy to maturity, so Shakespeare and his colleagues raised the romantic or Gothic drama from rudeness to the highest perfection it has ever achieved. In the romantic drama the unities of time, place, and action are not observed. The poet is allowed unbridled license; prose and poetry may be mingled without rule or reason, beyond the aptitude of each to the moment and the character. In the Greek mind the sense of form was very acute; we see it in their architecture, sculpture, and poetry; we have it in their social and political institutions. The Greek taste demanded grace of outline, proportion of parts to the whole, and was so extremely sensitive to this element in art, that we find it in all things Greek which remain to us. The Gothic mind is eminently defective in this sense. The only ideas of form we have are derived from study of the ancient models, and are not inherent in us. Reckless of form, therefore, Shakespeare depicted characters and developed passions, flung them into groups, hurried them through the action, over the possible and the impossible, and landed them on a catastrophe not prepared by design, but which suited his convenience. His works present a glorious intellectual anarchy in which he has had no follower, for the reason that no mind of less power than his own could contend with the confusion he so marvellously controls. The romantic dramatists greatly excelled their clas

sic rivals in the rich coloring of their characters; they drew men more like imperfect human beings and less like inspired statuary; and if less noble in contour, they were more truly flesh and blood. The Shakespearean characters are constructed piecemeal out of the small imperfections and humors that make up human nature; the Greek heroes are made of one piece, one passion. The English dramatists of this age gave originality at least to the form of the romantic drama, and, whatever its faults, it was new. The French and Italian poets clung to the Greek models; Corneille and Racine were but faint and poor imitators of Euripides; Alfieri affected the same ancient simplicity. As students of the Greek, their individual merit is great; but having had no share in the progress of the drama, they have no prominent place in its history. The Italians and Spaniards at this period contrived a species of performance, part pantomime, part farce, part comedy of intrigue. It was derived from those Italian narrators of whom Boccaccio is the best type, and represented dramatically those short and pithy tales in which Margaret of Navarre was wont to take such delight. Lope de Vega was the first to inaugurate this comedy of intrigue; it was quickly imitated and greatly improved by the French, who by admitting more Italian elements gave it variety and scope. Hardy, Rotrou, and Corneille, Scarron and Quinault, prepared the public taste for Molière, who truly founded and made the second or middle age of comedy, as Shakespeare and his colleagues made the first or old. Comedy at this time mainly occupied the stage. In England the four great masters, Wycherly, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, brought forth the prose drama. If inferior to Molière, they were less tainted with that leaning toward Greek classicality which has always retarded the true progress of the drama in France. The most original of Molière's works is the Bourgeois gentilhomme, because in its form and treatment he has exhibited more freedom from scholastic trammel. In the beginning of the 18th century the sentimental drama, a mixture of comedy and tragedy, a weak solution, obtained great popularity, but cannot be considered a forward movement in the art. In Germany this drama obtained great popularity under Kotzebue, and at the same time a wild, mythic, philosophical dramatic form of poem was created by Goethe and Schiller. These poets have rather embellished dramatic literature than added to the development or progress of the drama as an art. Lessing, who preceded them, may be said to have founded the German drama, but he attempted no reform.-The next and last great step which the drama has made, and one that has become prominent in the present age, is the invention of opera, or a drama in which music takes the place of poetry, and the dramatic action is subservient to a new musical development. It is a mistake to presume that an opera is a musical drama. The musical form of an opera and its dramatic treatment are essentially different from

DRAMA

the form and treatment of a drama based on the same fable. There is also in the form of the music, apart from the libretto, a plan and proportion to which the drama must be subservient.-Among the various minor forms of the modern drama are melodrama, farce, vaudeville, and pantomime. Melodrama owes its invention to the laws which restricted the performance of tragedies and comedies to certain privileged theatres. Booths were erected in which were performed serious pantomimes, or dramas with out words, accompanied throughout with expressive music. By degrees the actors ventured a few extempore phrases or jests. This license was gradually extended, until dialogue was regularly introduced, and the music was only used to accompany the movement of the actors. Melodrama is now understood to be a drama wherein the passion and development of character are subservient to the action and plot; whereas tragedy is a drama where the action and plot are subservient to the passion and development of character. Farce is a humorous piece of buffoonery, in which probability may be outraged both in the incidents and character, and stands in relation to comedy as melodrama does to tragedy. Vaudeville is an invention of the French stage. Schlegel states that "vaudeville is only a variation of comic opera;" bnt it is essentially a different thing, and was in no manner derived from it, nor has it ever been connected with it. It has its name from vau de Vire, which was originally a satirical song containing a keen, witty thought, and applicable to some popular person or event. It was a lyric epigram invented in that part of Normandy called Vire, and carried thence to Paris, where these musical satires became the vogue. Presently the writers of small comedies threw their keenest epigrams into verse, by which they gave them more point and drew to them more attention; these verses might be sung to any air that would happily suit them, and were called vaudevilles. The comic pieces through which they were scattered eventually received the name. When the work is but slightly speckled with these musical epigrams, it is distinguished as a comédie vaudeville, or a drame vaudeville. Pantomime is a drama without language, composed of gesture accompanied with music. It is probably the most ancient form of drama, and has changed less in its essential form than any other. The most perfect and most elegant kind of pantomime is the ballet, where graceful dances are interspersed amid the pantomimic action. No work of the mind possesses such charms for the author as the drama; the combination of poetry, music, oratory, sculpture, and painting, represents an army of muses which almost every literary aspirant desires to command; but few are found adequate to the task. The first difficulty consists in the selection of a subject fit for dramatic treatment. Many fables read well, that lose the appearance of life when deprived of the peculiar charms of narrative, and given in dialogue. In the dramatist's VOL. VI.-39

language, "they will not act." Having secured a fit theme, it should be examined to see if it be agreeable. Thus in tragic subjects horror should be distinguished from terror. Horror has in it something repulsive; it has the ingredients of disgust to distinguish it from terror, which possesses a charm most attractive, having the ingredient of pity mingled in its sentiment. Provided with an appropriate subject, the dramatist must proceed to select a good beginning. If in his first act he has to employ his characters in long explanations of that part of his story which precedes the rising of the curtain, then has he made a beginning in the middle, as it were, and his drama is taking place off the stage, instead of upon it; for the mind of the auditor is fixed upon a scene described, and the action of the play ceases to give place to narrative; if he can find no means of avoiding these explanations, then he must consider that his subject is not susceptible of a good dramatic form. Having begun well, the action must never pause, and it must be continuous, for in this continuity is the secret of interest; it betrays an object which, though kept out of sight, is palpably ahead. As the plot proceeds, it should embrace nothing but what is essential to its support; whatever may be the beauty of an episode, it is a distraction, and has always more charms for the author than the auditor. Shakespeare triumphed over this fault so often that he has done great damage to the English dramatist by his example. At a certain proportionate distance from the end of the work comes the climax or catastrophe, toward which achievement all the action conspires. This event generally occupies the latter half of the 4th act in a 5 act play. The 5th is used to bring the fable in all its parts to a simple and clear conclusion, leaving a sense of completeness in the mind, where nothing remains to be desired or told.-A further account of the dramatic literature of each nation will be found under the titles of the respective countries. See also ÆSCHYLUS, ALFIERI, CALDERON DE LA BARCA, CORNEILLE, GOETHE, GOLDONI, LESSING, LOPE DE VEGA, MOLIÈRE, RACINE, SCHILLER, and SHAKESPEARE.

DRAMMEN, a commercial town of Norway, situated on the southern coast, in the province of Aggershuus, 20 m. S. W. from Christiania; pop. in 1855, 9,916. It lies on both sides of the river Drammen, and is composed of 3 small villages, separated from each other by natural limits. The commerce of which Drammen is the centre gives it the third rank among the cities of Norway, but in respect to its timber trade it stands first. It manufactures tobacco, earthenware, sail cloth, rope, carriages, leather, &c.; and beside timber, which is exported chiefly to Great Britain, France, and Holland, has a commerce in iron ware and agricultural produce. About 40,000 tons of shipping are annually employed in its port. It suffered considerably in 1850 and 1857 from conflagrations.

DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM, an American chemist and physiologist, born near Liverpool,

England, May 5, 1811. He received his early education at the Wesleyan Methodist school at Woodhouse Grove, an institution for the sons of clergymen of that denomination, of which his father was one. Having here acquired the rudiments of knowledge, his maturer education was intrusted to private instructors; and while thus employed, he devoted much attention to chemistry and natural philosophy, a partiality for which he imbibed from his father, who made these pursuits a relaxation from his clerical duties. The higher mathematics were also a part of his early training, and his writings denote their successful cultivation. He subsequently went to the university of London, where he had the opportunity of prosecnting his chemical studies under the late Dr. Turner. Some of Dr. Draper's ancestors had been attracted to America before the revolution, and a greater part of his family connections followed at later periods, and in 1833 he came over to join them. He then continued his chemical and medical studies at the university of Pennsylvania, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1836, and with the rare distinction that his thesis was announced at commencement as having been selected for publication by the medical faculty. A few weeks after, he received the appointment of professor of chemistry, natural philosophy, and physiology in Hampden-Sidney college, Virginia, in which institution he remained until 1839. During his residence there his time was occupied in original chemical and physiological investigations, many of the latter appearing in the "American Journal of Medical Sciences." From Hampden-Sidney college Dr. Draper was called to the chair of chemistry and natural history in the academic department of the university of the city of New York, where, beside instruction in those branches, he has delivered lectures to the advanced undergraduates upon physiology. In 1841 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the university medical college, which forms the medical department of the city university, having cooperated with 5 others (Drs. Valentine Mott, Granville S. Pattison, John W. Revere, Gunning S. Bedford, and Martyn Paine, who were simultaneously elected professors) in establishing that very flourishing school of medicine; and in 1850 physiology was added to the chair of chemistry. These relations to the academic and medical departments of the university have been continued without interruption to the present time; and it is also worthy of remark, as illustrating his industry, that he has acted throughout as the medical faculty's secretary, and since 1850 as their presiding officer. As an instructor, Dr. Draper stands in the very first rank, and to his rich variety of attainments unites all the important elements of a public speaker. Although his researches have been mostly experimental, involving therefore great labor and cost, he has written voluminously and with high reputation. Beside contributions to various other scientific journals, he furnished to the "Edinburgh Philo

sophical Journal" between the years 1837 and 1857 about 40 treatises, principally on topics previously little understood. He is the author of many literary works, reviews, &c., but for the most part published anonymonsly; of a "Treatise on the Forces which produce the Organization of Plants" (4to., New York, 1844); of a popular "Text Book on Chemistry" (12mo., New York, 1846), and another on "Natural Philosphy" (8vo., New York, 1847), which consist of excerpts from his courses of lectures. His last and most elaborate work is a treatise on "Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; or the Conditions and Course of the Life of Man (8vo., New York, 1856, and a new edition, 1858). DRAPER, SIR WILLIAM, an English officer, born in Bristol in 1721, died in Bath, Jan. 8, 1787. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, entered the army, won distinction in the East Indies, obtained a colonelcy in 1760, acted as brigadier at the capture of Belle Isle in 1761, and led the land forces at the taking of Manila in 1763. The Spaniards ransomed the latter place by the promise of £1,000,000, which was never paid, and Sir William corre sponded long but unprofitably on the subject with his own and the Spanish governments. For his services, however, he was made knight of the bath. When the first of the "Junius" letters appeared in Jan. 1769, he came forward under his own name in defence of his friend the marquis of Granby. Junius replied with marvellous skill and sharpness; two more letters passed on each side, and Sir William then retired from a contest which had endangered his good name, damaged the cause of his friend, and heightened his opponent's reputation. Six months afterward, when he saw these letters republished, he appeared twice again in print to complain of their injustice, and was again worsted by his anonymous antagonist. During the same year he visited America, where he was married to Miss De Lancey of New York. In 1779 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Minorca, and on the surrender of that island brought 29 charges against the governor, Murray, for all but 2 of which he was obliged to offer an apology.

DRAUGHTS, a game played by 2 persons, on a checkered board like the chess-board, with 12 or 20 pieces on each side, which capture each other by angular movements governed by certain rules, until the game ends by one player losing all his pieces, or by both players getting their pieces into positions from which they cannot be taken. In America the game is commonly called checkers. In France it is known as le jeu de dames, in Italy as dama, in Germany as Damen; all which terms are commonly supposed to have their origin in some fancied adaptation of the game as a pastime for women. But as it has been played in Egypt for more than 4,000 years, and made its appearance in Europe only 3 or 4 centuries ago when there was much intercourse between southern Europe and Alexandria and other Egyptian ports, before the passage to India round the cape of Good