Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 2003

[page 105]

Eli Rozik

The Ritual Origin of Theatre - A Scientific Theory or Theatrical Ideology?(1)

The theory of the ritual origin of theatre has become a cultural commonplace, even beyond the circles of theatre scholarship. First proposed in its alleged scientific form by the Cambridge School of Anthropology (CSA), it swiftly became a conventional "truth", equally accepted by layman and expert. Although thoroughly refuted later by such excellent scholars as Pickard Cambridge, the influence of the CSA could still be clearly felt in subsequent theories. While alternative arguments and methods have been suggested to replace the refuted ones, the main thesis - that theatre originated in ritual - remains firm. Eventually, this theory was also adopted by leading directors, such as Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Arian Mnouchkine, Richard Schechner and Eugenio Barba, who attempted to restore the ritual elements that assumedly had been lost, and that were considered by them to be vital for the rejuvenation of theatre.

In the light of these considerations, and if only for scientific reasons, this theory must be cast under methodological doubt and examined all over again. I intend to show here that the ritual theory of origin was worked out on the grounds of erroneous theories of both ritual and theatre, and reflects an ideological attitude rather than a scientific approach. Moreover, directors invented artificial ritual elements, based on superficial knowledge of real rituals, while the nature of their impact on audiences has never been studied.

In the development of twentieth-century theory of ritual origin of theatre, three major contributions can be discerned. In chronological order, these are: the CSA ritual theory, Kirby's [page 106] shamanist theory and Turner-Schechner's performance theory. I intend to put them under criticism only after presenting them as fully as possible in their own terms. The same approach will be applied to the theory of recreation of theatre in the Middle Ages by the Church.

If indeed, as we shall see, none of the interchanging arguments stand up to criticism, how can the continued persistence and vitality of the main thesis of ritual origin be explained? How can one account for the readiness to accept it as a true description of the origin of theatre? Why have such outstanding theatre directors, as mentioned above, adopted it? If it conforms more to being a theatrical or cultural ideology than a scientific theory, what is its appeal in the eyes of the theoretical experts, practitioners and laymen alike? I suggest here that this thesis has provided theatre with a numinous aura, which it does not always possess, and probably also satisfies the sense of loneliness and yearning for community belonging, typical of twentieth-century individuality.

My article is based exclusively on the history of Western Theatre. My knowledge of Asian Theatre - for which the Western theory of ritual origin has been quite influential - is insufficient to either support or reject my argument.

The development of ancient theatre

As mentioned above, three different approaches have been suggested for the development of ancient theatre from ritual. In order of appearance, they are: the CSA, shamanist and performance theories. In the following I present these approaches, followed by my own critical remarks.

[page 107] My criticism is based on the assumption that rituals and dramatic media(2) - including the medium of theatre - are phenomena in different spheres of human activity. In terms of speech act theory, ritual is a complex macro-"speech/medium act", whose main purpose (perlocutionary effect) is to influence a divine entity (to change a state of affairs) for the benefit of the performer or the community on behalf of which s/he operates.(3) In principle, a ritual may be performed by means of either a single medium, such as natural language (e.g., a prayer), or other media, including non-verbal ones (e.g., the sacrifice of an animal). The macro ritual speech/medium-act may feature several media in varying proportions and order. It can thus be conjectured that ancient rituals may well have included components formulated in the medium of theatre, as their building units, even if there is no extant evidence for this.

On a different level, the medium of theatre is a method of signification (categorization) and communication, which affords means for the representation and description of worlds, especially fictional ones. In this capacity the theatre medium may reflect any intention and be employed for any purpose, including purposes that contrast those of ritual. For example, whereas one of the secondary purposes of ritual is to reaffirm the beliefs that nourish the community, theatre can be employed for either reaffirming or refuting them. The latter function cannot even be imagined in the context of ritual.

[page 108] The Cambridge School of Anthropology

In its anthropologic scientific guise or, to be more accurate, in what was then thought to be a scientific method, the claim that tragedy and comedy developed from Dionysiac ritual was suggested at the beginning of the twentieth century, by a group of English scholars who published their major works around 1912-14, and are known by the collective name of the Cambridge School of Anthropology (CSA).(4) The main scholars of this school were Jane Harrison, Gilbert Murray and Francis McDonald Cornford. Inter alia, their aim was to promote the thesis that Ancient Greek drama originated in ritual, Dionysiac ritual in particular, during the sixth century BC. They supported this thesis by archeological and literary evidence from ancient Greece and surrounding cultures, whether contemporaneous or not. Despite substantial differences, they shared a basic approach and main theses, which made them a unitary and distinct school.

They also shared a serious methodological problem: their object of research was never defined unambiguously. It has never been clear as to whether they were attempting to determine the origin of definite dramatic genres - tragedy and comedy - or the origins of the theatre medium itself. They definitely appear to have preferred dealing with the first question, but elements of the second one were quite often mixed in their deliberations. Unfortunately, this distinction has remained somewhat unclear even in more recent studies, not to mention books of theatre history. The widespread implicit assumption is that these are two aspects of the same issue; in other words, that the creation of both major dramatic genres and the medium of theatre are two aspects of the same process. Nonetheless, in my opinion, the discussion of [page 109] these should be separated, because genres are defined and distinguished among themselves by the structures of their fictional worlds and moods (e.g., serious/sublime or comic moods), while the medium of theatre is shared by all dramatic genres. For example, in the process of its creation, tragedy could have adopted the already existing medium of theatre employed in popular comedy.(5)

The crux of the CSA's argument is the assumed existence of a pre-Dionysiac ritual that worshiped the Spring Daimon (eniautos daemon). The presupposition of this ur-ritual probably explains the existence of a set of different faiths featuring the very same pattern of death and resurrection of a god - such as Osiris, Tamuz, Adonis, Orpheus and Persephone - that corresponds to the yearly cycle of the seasons. In this sense, the Dionysiac ritual is a specific offspring of the Spring Daimon ur-ritual; i.e., of a divinity that represents the cycle of death and resurrection of nature.

According to this approach, the dithyramb was created within Dionysiac ritual from a ritual dance (sacer ludus) that represented the aition (mythical narrative) of the divine spirit/god Dionysus.(6) Dithyramb is a kind of serious and sublime choral storytelling poem, devoted to narratives of gods and/or heroes. The CSA scholars accepted Aristotle's dictum regarding the development of tragedy from dithyrambic poetry.(7) However, in contrast to Aristotle, who was relatively close to this process and did not mention any connection between dithyramb and [page 110] Dionysiac ritual, they argued in favor of continuity - mediated by dithyramb - between Dionysiac ritual and tragedy. They also claimed that this ritual source left its traces in the structure of the fictional worlds of both dithyramb and tragedy.

Murray suggested an apparently sophisticated method to detect these traces in a pattern of recurrent narrative elements, appearing in a certain order, which were supposed to reflect the pattern of death and resurrection characteristic of the rituals generated by the ur-ritual of the Spring Daimon, including the Dionysiac ritual. This pattern was assumed to include the following events, in this order: (1) agon - the struggle between the Spring Daimon and its enemy (winter); (2) pathos - the ritual death of the divinity; (3) messenger - the report of the death or display of the corpse; (4) threnos or lamentation - the expression of grief; (5-6) anagnorisis - the recognition of the dead god and epiphany or theophany - his resurrection and apotheosis.(8)

Already in 1927, Pickard Cambridge - the leading scholar of ancient Greek culture - in his book Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, demolished one by one the various arguments of the CSA. He demonstrated that there is no evidence of the presupposed ritual of the Spring Daimon or of any similar one in all ancient Greece.(9) Harrison herself implicitly acknowledged this fact by supporting her own claim with Egyptian sources concerning the ritual of Osiris, who in her view was the prototype of the gods who die and resurrect.(10) In general, the assumed existence of an ur-ritual can be accepted, but only on condition that it explains something with regard to either ritual or tragedy. However, while this assumption can explain the existence of a set of rituals revealing the same pattern of death and resurrection, and their distribution within a [page 111] relatively delimited area, there is nothing in it to explain the creation of the tragic dramatic genre.

Pickard Cambridge also demonstrated that the traces of the set of narrative components, in their stipulated order, as suggested by Murray, can not be found either in any known form of ritual, including Dionysiac ritual,(11) or in any known dithyramb or tragedy. Even in Euripides' The Bacchae, the only extant tragedy that dramatizes a central episode of Dionysus' life, the pattern of death and resurrection does not materialize. Pickard Cambridge claims that the application of this model involves an intolerable degree of flexibility in the definition of terms, as illustrated by Murray himself. In principle, the assumption of a mythical pattern shared by ritual, dithyramb and tragedy is obviously absurd, especially because of the reduction of all fictional actions to a single pattern that stresses the narrative elements of death and resurrection. It also contrasts the diversity of fictional characters and actions in both dithyramb and tragedy. Indeed, in many a known tragedy principal characters die, but their death is final, as human death is, and there is no tragic hero who eventually resurrects.

In contrast to the CSA, Pickard Cambridge also argued that the link between dithyramb and Dionysiac ritual was severed in the early stages of the former's development. In fact, there is no known dithyramb, either complete or fragment, that narrates the aition of the god. Apart from a short deferential passage in honor of Dionysus, no known dithyramb tells its aition or any other narrative connected to his life and death. In contrast, there is ample evidence that dithyrambic poems dealt with narratives of various heroes and gods, typical of the Homeric tradition. If this was the case, the tradition that linked dithyramb with Dionysiac ritual was [page 112] severed prior to the advent of tragedy.(12)

Cornford too, in The Origin of Attic Comedy,(13) suggested a theory of ritual origin for Aristophanic comedy, from Dionysiac ritual. In principle, he accepts the Aristotelian account, according to which Attic comedy developed from popular forms of comedy that existed prior to their institutionalization in Athens,(14) which in turn developed from phallic songs.(15) In particular, Cornford mentions the previous existence of Megarean farce, mentioned contemptuously by Aristophanes himself.(16) Cornford's innovation resides in his attempt to link Aristophanic comedy to Dionysiac ritual, as it was understood by the CSA, by mediation of the phallic songs and pre-Aristophanic popular comedy.

Like Murray, Cornford suggested a set of narrative elements, appearing in a strict order, shared by Dionysiac ritual, popular comedy and Attic comedy. This set includes the following components: (1) prologos - the exposition scene; (2) parodos - the chorus' entrance; (3) agon - the struggle between the gods; (4) parabasis; (5) sacrifice - the display of the vanquished and dead god, who symbolizes the Summer; (6) feast - the dismemberment and eating of the god; (7) marriage and comos.(17) In Cornford's view, only the parabasis does not belong in the supposed shared pattern, because of its non-dramatic nature. It is assumed, therefore, to be an innovation of Attic comedy itself. If other formal components, such as prologos, parodos and comos, are [page 113] discounted, the allegedly essential components of the Dionysiac pattern are: agon, which represents the struggle between two principles - or seasons - identified by Cornford as the hero and the villain of the dramatic action(18); the sacrifice, which represents the slaying of the benevolent god by the malevolent god; the sacred feast, which represents the dismemberment (and/or cooking) and eating of the god (i.e., omophagy); and resurrection, followed by a ceremony of marriage, which represents the return of the god and the union of the powers of fertility that ensure the renewal of nature and the welfare of the community.(19)

Against the background of the claim that both dramatic genres developed from the very same ritual, the lack of agreement between Murray's and Cornford's patterns is surprising, to say the least. Among the non-shared elements the oddest one is Cornford's marriage (ieros gamos), which should have united the representatives of the two spiritual/divine entities in order to bring about nature's fertile renewal.(20) Cornford's claim is that "[Aristophanes] plays regularly end with a procession in which the Chorus marches out of the orchestra, conducting the chief character in triumph and singing a song technically known as the Exodos. The hero, moreover, is accompanied in this Kômos by a person who, perhaps because she is (except in one play) always mute, has attracted less notice than she deserves. This person is sometimes a nameless courtesan, sometime an allegorical figure."(21) Assumedly, this parade symbolizes the above-mentioned marriage. Cornford is aware that no Aristophanes' comedy features a marriage ceremony in the literal sense of the term, and that he uses "marriage" in a metaphorical sense. He assumes that Aristophanes' comedies preserved the marriage ceremony of two [page 114] youngsters, which according to tradition used to be performed within the Dionysiac ritual and symbolized the union of nature's powers. Ridgeway comments that the theory of a sacred marriage between the god of the Sky and the goddess of the Earth, which took place at Eleusis, is only based on authors who lived in the Christian era and who described accurately what happened in Eleusis in their own times. "The Philosophoumena itself, on which Harrison based her argument, was not written before the second century AD."(22) Pickard Cambridge notes that there is no evidence of a Dionysiac ritual - in any of its forms - in which a sacred marriage was performed in the context of a phallic parade.(23)

An additional significant difference between the models of Murray and Cornford resides in the narrative element of resurrection, which is a precondition of marriage, and which together complete the alleged mythical pattern of death, resurrection and sacred marriage. Murray admits that tragedy ends in the midst of the pattern, in the phase of sacrifice, without the element of resurrection and marriage, and that the "extreme change of feeling from grief to joy",(24) which characterizes the full pattern, is consummated by the satirical play - the fourth play of a typical tetralogy.(25) This is, however, a very weak argument, since to the best of our knowledge the satirical play features a fictional world, different from and independent of that of the trilogy.(26)

[page 115] Similarly to his criticism of Murray's model, Pickard Cambridge demolished one by one Cornford's arguments, which inter alia are supported by analyses of Aristophanes' comedies. However, with regard to these comedies too, the application of his model involves what Pickard Cambridge conceived as an unbearable flexibility in the definition and application of terms.

In principle, if indeed Dionysiac ritual, dithyramb, tragedy and comedy materialized the same narrative pattern and even the same myth, and presented the very same action either to a community of believers or an audience, this would not have posed any problem. If this were the case, the age-old ritual pattern would have been easily recognized in subsequent forms. The problem is that no known fictional world described in dithyramb, tragedy or comedy corresponds to the aition of Dionysus.(27)

The opinions of the CSA scholars with regard to the creation of the theatre medium are less homogeneous and more vague. In their quest for the origins of the main dramatic genres both Murray and Cornford looked for common traces in the structures of their fictional worlds. Such an approach could not have led to the discovery of the origin of the medium of theatre. Moreover, although they did not make any attempt to reveal the origins of the medium, and professedly dealt with the origins of tragedy and comedy, their argumentation was not altogether free from considerations of medium. These considerations, however, presupposed that the origins of genres and medium were only aspects of the same process, a fallacy that even their followers continued to commit.

[page 116] Even if by sheer coincidence the creation of a given genre had coincided with the creation of the medium, this would have not cancelled the distinction between these processes. Any new genre would at least have benefited from the prior existence of the medium. Parallel creation does not contradict the mutual independence of narrative and medium components. In principle, the same fictional world can be described by different media - such as fiction (by means of natural language) and theatre (by means of a dramatic medium); and the same medium is capable of describing different fictional worlds. The possible use of different media for the description of the same fictional world is clearly demonstrated by the transition from dithyramb (which is a storytelling genre) to tragedy (which is a dramatic genre). On the grounds of the same mythical narratives, the conversion of a member of the dithyrambic chorus into an actor was enough to change a storytelling poem into theatre. Moreover, from a historical viewpoint the parallel creation of genre and medium definitely did not happen. There is clear evidence, from the beginning of the sixth century BC,(28) to the fact that Attic comedy was preceded by popular forms of comedy,(29) and that these forms also preceded the advent of tragedy. Nonetheless, the CSA did not overlook questions regarding the origin of the theatre medium altogether. Harrison claims that the dramatic form of representation originated in a primitive form of imitation. She stresses the semantic link between the Greek words for ritual, "dromenon", and "drama", both from "dran", which is the Doric word for "to do".(30) Obviously, she uses "drama" in the restricted sense of theatre representation. Her intention was to point at the similarity between medium, which is a method of representation based on doings on stage, and ritual, which is a kind of doing that employs representation. In her view, dromenon is a doing [page 117] involving representation and imbued with religious meaning; e.g., savages returning victorious from war would commemorate their success by re-doing the acts that brought them victory, and before setting off to war, they would anticipate their victory by pre-doing them. It is thus that Jane Harrison conceives the advent of mimetic rites, since "all rites quâ rites are mimetic".(31)

For Harrison, since ritual is essentially mimetic, the transition from ritual to theatre is self-understood. In this sense we should conceive her approach as a theory of the creation of the theatre medium, despite the problems that this solution raises in itself; in particular the lack of consideration of the essential difference between ritual and theatre, as suggested above. From this difference we may infer that the medium of theatre can be employed in the framework of ritual, without the former developing from the latter. From the development of tragedy from dithyramb we may also infer that dramatic genres need not develop from previous theatre forms. It is more reasonable to assume, therefore, that the creation of mimetic rituals, if Harrison's scenario did happen at all, derives from an innate propensity of the human brain, which conditions all human activities. Furthermore, in stressing the origins of the dramatic fictional structure, she deviates from her search for the possible origins of the theatre medium.

In his search for the origins of Attic comedy, Cornford is not concerned with the question of origins of the theatre medium at all. He simply presupposes that this medium existed even before the creation of popular comedy (which preceded Attic comedy), claiming that comedy developed from theatre elements already existing in Dionysiac ritual, in particular the representation of a sacred marriage. As mentioned above, the existence of such a representation prior to the sixth century was refuted by Pickard Cambridge and Ridgeway. Nonetheless, [page 118] Cornford assumed that "[i]t is [...] difficult to see how drama can come out of what is not, even in germ, dramatic".(32) The logical problem is that this is a kind of regressive argument: if theatre could only develop from a previous theatre form, the problem of its original creation cannot be solved. In addition, it contrasts Murray's acceptance of Aristotle's dictum that tragedy developed from dithyramb, which despite its typical dialogical element is not of the nature of theatre at all. Consequently, it is possible that Cornford's expression "dramatic in germ" refers to these dialogical elements. Still, since storytelling naturally includes dialogical elements, theatre could have developed from a previous non-theatrical form.

In his "excursus" Murray does not address the question of creation of the theatre medium and, as mentioned above, he accepts Aristotle's claim that tragedy developed from dithyramb. Since popular comedy was created not later than the beginning of the sixth century BC, it follows that both Attic comedy and tragedy could have borrowed the theatre medium from this early theatrical form. It can be conjectured, therefore, that Thespis, who "lived" approximately half a century later, figured out the possibility of performing the serious mythical narratives typical of dithyramb in a medium that was already in existence, and that apparently had not been employed for this type of narrative before his time.

If we are to judge the CSA according to the criticism it has attracted, we cannot avoid the conclusion that dithyramb, tragedy and comedy could not have developed from Dionysiac ritual, because there is no evidence of continuity either on the level of genre or on the level of medium. Moreover, even if they had been right on the level of genre, this could not have had any bearing on our quest for the origins of the theatre medium.

Dr. Eli Rozik is professor of theatre studies. Twice head of the Department of Theatre Studies and until recently Dean of the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University. He specializes in theatre theory, particularly in non-verbal communication in performance analysis. He published many scientific articles in international leading journals, in Europe and the USA, and four books: Metaphor in Theatre and Poetry (1981 - Hebrew), The Language of the Theatre (1991), Elements of Play Analysis (1992 - Hebrew) and The Roots of Theatre (2000). Prof. Rozik was the editor of the international journal Assaph - Studies in the Theatre.