The reason that dramatic poetry must be regarded as the highest phase
of the art of poetry, and, indeed, of every kind of art, is due to
the fact that it is elaborated, both in form and substance, in a
whole--that is the most complete. For in contrast to every other sort
of sensuous _materia_, whether it be stone, wood, colour, or tone, that
of human speech is the only medium fully adequate to the presentation
of spiritual life; and further, among the particular types of the art
of articulate speech, dramatic poetry is the one, in which we find the
objective character of the Epos essentially united to the subjective
principle of the Lyric. In other words it presents directly before
our vision an essentially independent action as a definite fact,
which does not merely originate from the personal life of character
under the process of self-realization, but receives its determinate
form as the result of the substantive interaction in concrete life of
ideal intention, many individuals and collisions. This mediated form
of epic art by means of the intimate personal life of an individual
viewed in the very presence of his activity does not, however,
permit the drama to describe the external aspects of local condition
and environment, nor yet the action and event itself in the way that
they are so described in the epic. Consequently, in order that the
entire art-product may receive the full animation of life, we require
its complete scenic representation. And, finally, the action itself,
regarded in the full complexus of its ideal and external reality, is
adapted to two distinct types of composition of the most opposite
character, the predominant principles of which, regarded severally
as the tragic and comic type, create in their turn also a further
fundamental and specific point of view in our attitude to the dramatic
art.
Starting then from the vantage of these general observations we may
indicate the course of our inquiry as follows:
_Firsts_ we propose to consider the dramatic composition, both in its
general and more detailed features, in the contrast it presents to epic
and lyrical poetry.
_Secondly_, our attention will be directed to its scenic presentation
and the conditions of this necessity.
_Thirdly_, we shall pass under review the different types of dramatic
poetry as we find them realized in the concrete facts of past history.