The frequent association of the drama with religion in China will naturally recall to the minds of students of English literature the miracle-plays and mysteries of the Middle Ages in Europe. But the analogy is not a very close one. The English drama, regarded historically, may be said to be English through and through. The changes it underwent were almost, if not quite, independent of the history of the drama on the Continent. The evolution of the drama can be traced step by step from its origin to its culmination in the hands of the great Elizabethans. In China the origin of the drama is doubtful; it is not (in its present or any similar form) of great antiquity, and dramatic writing has never taken rank as a very high form of art. Some of the elements of drama may probably be traced in the stately gesture-dances, combined with music, of which we read in some of the oldest Chinese books. Dances which are probably very similar to those performed at the courts of the ruling dukes in Confucius's time may be witnessed at the present day in parts of Further India. In the old Indo-Chinese capital of Vientian on the Mekong (now the capital of French Laos) I witnessed, in 1902, a dance of this kind. By a stretch of the imagination it might have been styled a drama in dumb show, but with more dumb show than drama: a dance that aimed at expressing not so much the poetry of graceful movement as the poetry of successive states of more or less dignified repose. The Chinese drama of to-day is still a drama of posturing and gesture: the player is for ever aiming at "striking an attitude." This is all the more remarkable among a people who in ordinary life consider gesture undignified and indicative of a lack of self-control. It can, I think, be explained only as a survival from the days when the Chinese drama consisted mainly of dance and music. The literary developments of the drama--if indeed they may correctly be described as developments--date only from the time of the Yüan dynasty (1280-1367), and the popularity of the drama among the people seems to have been only of gradual growth since that date. It was apparently an importation from Central Asia, and came to China with the Mongol conquerors. For some time this novel form of art was confined to Peking and the other great centres of Mongol power, and to this day the influence of Peking is shown in the very frequent employment of the Peking dialect even in provinces where that form of speech is unintelligible to the mass of the people.