When it did appear, it never took the perfect form of
the drama at Athens. It certainly borrowed as little from Greece as it
did from China or Japan, and the Persians and Arabians do not appear to
have produced any dramatic masterpieces. The greatest of dramatists in
the Sanscrit language is undoubtedly Kalidasa, whose date is placed, by
different scholars, anywhere from the first to the fifth century of our
era. His masterpiece, and indeed the masterpiece of the Indian drama, is
the "Sakoontala," which has all the graces as well as most of the faults
of Oriental poetry. There can be no doubt that to most Europeans the
charm of it lies in the exquisite description of natural scenery and of
that atmosphere of piety and religious calm--almost mediaeval in its
austere beauty and serenity--which invests the hermit life of India. The
abode of the ascetics is depicted with a pathetic grace that we only
find paralleled in the "Admetus" of Euripides. But at the same time the
construction of the drama is more like such a play as Milton's "Comus,"
than the closely-knit, symmetrical, and inevitable progress of such a
work of consummate skill as the "King Oedipus" of Sophocles.
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