What is the place of dialogue in mimes?

 The place of dialogue in mimes 

 

Answer

With the development of the philosophical dialogue, the impact of the quasi theatrical art form called memos was quite significant. Memos or mime was one of the earliest modes of performance extant till fourth century A.D. Based on dance , early examples of this art are found in the " deikeliktai " or the masked men of Sparta , the " autokabdali " or the improvisers of Central Greece and the " phlyakes " of the Italian region . Early mime was performed in the market places, at banquets and weddings. It was a combination of storytelling, dance, mimicry, song and dialogue performed by acrobats and jugglers.

A well known name among the mime writers in the fifth century B.C. was that of Sophron of Syracuse who composed pieces meant " for men " and " for women " in Dorian rhythmic prose close to the popular speech of the times full of common proverbs . Some of the titles of Sophron's mimes, such as The Woman Quacks, The Old Fishermen and The Women Visitors to Isthmia indicate that unlike tragedies and comedies this genre dealt with life at the lower rungs of society and was entirely comic in nature. The tradition of Sophron was kept alive by his son but not one title of any of his mimes has survived. In the third century B.C. the influence exercised by the poetic dialogue of tragedy and comedy made the writers of mime use verse. Herodas, whose origin and place of operation are not known, produced literary mimes with dialogue in a metre of the iambic variety. Sticking to the old themes of the genre, his pieces like The Bawd, The Pimp, The School Master, The Women Worshippers, The Jealous Mistress and the Dream provide a wide variety of events that were covered by this highly popular and entertaining art form.

 It is important to note that unlike tragedy which was performed only twice a year for specific religious festival, the mimetic shows were enacted all around year. The dialogues of the mimes, therefore, exercised a far more pervasive influence on the shape that this genre took whether in theatre or even philosophical writings. Mime writers also remained in close interaction with poets of high standing because these genres like the epic and the bucolic poems often contained dialogues. Highly literary mimes such as those of Theocritus were also an acceptable genre and were sometimes sung or enacted. The popularity of mimes increased with the decline of serious and high quality drama and as vulgarity and obscenity invaded the performances. They were given new names such as paging and hypothesis and their performers were called magodoi and mimologoi . By this time any kind of serious and thoughtful interchange through dialogues had become impossible.

The Oxrhynchos Papyri contain a farcical mime in which a girl, Charition, escapes from the clutches of a South Indian king and his followers who speak what the western scholars thought to be “pseudo - Indian " but has now been claimed to be the ancient dialect called " Tulu " , a precursor of the Kannada language . Mime had immense popularity in the Roman world as well, but because of its increasing vulgarity it came into conflict with the Christian Church and inspire of persecution by the religious establishments it survived into the middle Ages as art of performing jongleurs. In all mime, because there was no concentration on action, but more so on creating odd characters and situations, dialogue became the focal point of interest. Although it was often sung dialogue, especially in the genre called the pantomime, the spirit of argumentation was well conveyed. It was the juxtaposition of opposing points of view that made the dialogue extremely interesting to the audience and a valid channel of criticism.