Origin of the drama.
The first step towards the drama is the assumption of character, whether
real or fictitious. It is caused by the desire, inseparable from human
nature, to give expression to feelings and ideas. These man expresses
not only by sound and gesture, like other animals, and by speech
significant by its delivery as well as by its purport, but also by
imitation superadded to these. To imitate, says Aristotle, is
instinctive in man from his infancy, and no pleasure is more universal
than that which is given by imitation. Inasmuch as the aid of some sort
of dress or decoration is usually at hand, while the accompaniment of
dance or song, or other music, naturally suggests itself, especially on
joyous or solemn occasions, we find that this preliminary step is taken
among all peoples, however primitive or remote. But it does not follow,
as is often assumed, that they possess a drama in germ. Boys playing at
soldiers, or men walking in a pageant--a shoemaker's holiday in ribbons
and flowers, or a Shetland sword-dance--none of these is in itself a
drama. This is not reached till the imitation or representation extends
to action.
Dramatic action.
An action which is to present itself as such to human minds must enable
them to recognize in it a procedure from cause to effect. This of course
means, neither that the cause suggested must be the final cause, nor
that the result shown forth need pretend to be the ultimate result. We
look upon an action as ended when the purpose with which it began is
shown to have been gained or frustrated; and we trace the beginning of
an action back to the human will that set it on foot--though this will
may be in bondage to a higher or stronger will, or to fate, in any or
all of its purposes. Without an action in the sense stated--without a
plot, in a word--there can be no drama. But the very simplest action
will satisfy the dramatic test; a mystery representing the story of Cain
and Abel without a deviation from the simple biblical narrative, a farce
exhibiting the stalest trick played by designing sobriety upon oblivious
drunkenness, may each of them be a complete drama. But even to this
point, the imitation of action by action in however crude a form, not
all peoples have advanced.
Dramatic literature.
But after this second step has been taken, it only remains for the drama
to assume a form regulated by certain literary laws, in order that it
may become a branch of dramatic literature. Such a literature, needless
to say, only a limited number of nations has come to possess; and, while
some are to be found that have, or have had, a drama without a dramatic
literature, it is quite conceivable that a nation should continue in
possession of the former after having ceased to cultivate the latter. It
is self-evident that no drama which forms part of a dramatic literature
can ignore the use of speech; and however closely music, dancing and
decoration may associate themselves with particular forms or phases of
the drama, their aid cannot be more than adventitious. As a matter of
fact, the beginnings of dramatic composition are, in the history of such
literatures as are well known to us, preceded by the earlier stages in
the growth of the lyric and epic forms of poetry, or by one of these at
all events; and it is in the continuation of both that the drama in its
literary form takes its origin in those instances which lie open to our
study.
The dramatic and the histrionic arts.
While the aid of all other arts--even, strictly speaking, the aid of the
literary art--is merely an accident, the co-operation of the art of
acting is indispensable to that of the drama. The dramatic writer may
have reasons for preferring to leave the imagination of his reader to
supply the absence of this co-operation; but, though the term "literary
drama" is freely used of works kept away from the stage, it is in truth
either a misnomer or a self-condemnation. It is true that the actor only
temporarily interprets, and sometimes misinterprets, the dramatist,
while occasionally he reveals dramatic possibilities in a character or
situation which remained hidden from their literary inventor. But this
only shows that the courses of the dramatic and the histrionic arts do
not run parallel; it does not contradict the fact that their conjunction
is, on the one side as well as on the other, indispensable. No drama is
more than potentially such till it is acted.
Laws and rules of the drama.
To essay, whether in a brief summary or in more or less elaborate
detail, a statement of the main laws of the drama, has often been
regarded as a superfluous, not to say, futile effort. But the laws of
which it is proposed to give some indication here are not so much those
which any particular literature or period has chosen to set up and
follow, as those abstracted by criticism, in pursuit of its own free
comparative method, from the process that repeats itself in every drama
adequately meeting the demands upon it. Aristotle, whom we still justly
revere as the originator of the theory of the drama, and thus its great
[Greek: nomothetes], was, no doubt, in his practical knowledge of it,
confined to its Greek examples, yet his object was not to produce
another generation of great Attic tragedians, but rather to show how it
was by following the necessary laws of their art that the great masters,
true to themselves and to their artistic ends, had achieved what they
had achieved. Still more distinctly was such the aim of the greatest
modern critical writer on the drama, Lessing, whose chief design was to
combat false dramatic theories and to overthrow laws demonstrated by him
to be artificial inventions, unreal figments. He proved, what before him
had only been suspected, that Shakespeare, though in hopeless conflict
with certain rules dating from the _siecle de Louis XIV_, was not in
conflict with those laws of the drama which are of its very essence, and
that, accordingly, if Shakespeare and the rules in question could not be
harmonized, it was only so much the worse for the rules. To illustrate
from great works, and expound with their aid, the organic processes of
the art to which they belong, is not only among the highest, it is also
one of the most useful functions of literary and artistic criticism. Nor
is there, in one sense at least, any finality about it. Neither the
great authorities on dramatic theory nor the resolute and acute
apologists of more or less transitory phases of the drama--Corneille,
Dryden and many later successors--have exhausted the statement of the
means which the drama has proved, or may prove, capable of employing.
The multitude of technical terms and formulae which has gathered round
the practice of the most living and the most Protean of arts has at no
time seriously interfered with the operation of creative power. On the
other hand, no dramaturgic theory has (though the attempt has been often
enough made) ever succeeded in giving rise to a single dramatic work of
enduring value, unless the creative force was there to animate the form.
Choice of subject.
It is therefore the operation of this creative force which we are
chiefly interested in noting; and its task begins with the beginning of
the dramatist's labours. He must of course start with the choice of a
subject; yet it is obvious that the subject is merely the dead material
out of which is formed that living something, the action of a play; and
it is only in rare instances--far rarer than might at first sight
appear--that the subject is as it were self-moulded as a dramatic
action. The less experienced a playwright, the more readily will he, as
the phrase is, rush at his subject, more especially if it seems to him
to possess prima facie dramatic capabilities; and the consequence will
be that which usually attends upon a precipitate start. On the other
hand, while the quickness of a great dramatist's apprehension is apt to
suggest to him an infinite number of subjects, and insight and
experience may lead him half instinctively in the direction of suitable
themes, it will often be long before in his mind the subject converts
itself into the initial conception of the action of a play. To mould a
subject--be it a Greek legend, or a portion of a Tudor chronicle, or one
out of a hundred Italian tales, or a true story of modern life--into the
action or fable of a play, is the primary task of the dramatist, and
with this all-important process the creative part of his work really
begins. Although his conception may expand or modify itself as he
executes it, yet upon the conception the execution must largely depend.
The range of subjects open to a dramatist may be as wide as the world
itself, or it may be restricted by an endless variety of causes,
conventions and considerations; and it is quite true that even the
greatest dramatists have not always found time for contemplating each
subject that occurs to them till the ray is caught which proclaims it a
dramatic diamond. What they had time for, and what only the playwright
who entirely misunderstands his art ignores the necessity of finding
time for, is the transformation of the dead material of the subject into
the living action of a drama.
Unity of action.
What is it, then, that makes an action _dramatic_, and without which no
action, whatever may be its nature--serious or ludicrous, stately or
trivial, impetuous as a flame of fire, or light as a western breeze--can
be so described? The answer to this question can only suggest itself
from an attempt to ascertain the laws which determine the nature of all
actions corresponding to this description. The first of the laws in
question is in so far the most noteworthy among them that it has been
the most amply discussed and the most pertinaciously misunderstood. This
is the law which requires that a dramatic action should be _one_--that
it should possess _unity_. What in the subject of a drama is merely an
approximate or supposititious, must in its action be an actual unity;
and it is indeed this requirement which constitutes the most arduous
part of the task of transforming subject into action. There is of course
no actual unity in any group of events in human life which we may choose
to call by a single collective name--a war, a revolution, a conspiracy,
an intrigue, an imbroglio. The events of real life, the facts of
history, even the imitative incidents of narrative fiction, are like the
waves of a ceaseless flood; that which binds a group or body of them
into a single action is the bond of the dramatic idea; and this it is
incumbent upon the dramatist to supply. Within the limits of a dramatic
action all its parts should (as in real life or in history they so
persistently refuse to do) flow into its current like tributaries to a
single stream; or, to vary the figure, everything in a drama should form
a link in a single chain of cause and effect. This law is incumbent upon
every kind of drama--alike upon the tragedy which sets itself to solve
one of the problems of a life, and upon the farce which sums up the
follies of an afternoon.
Such is not, however, the case with certain more or less arbitrary rules
which have at different times been set up for this or that kind of
drama. The supposed necessity that an action should consist of _one
event_ is an erroneous interpretation of the law that it should be, as
an action, _one_. For an event is but an element in an action, though it
may be an element of decisive moment. The assassination of Caesar is not
the action of a _Caesar_ tragedy; the loss of his treasure is not the
action of _The Miser_. Again, unity of action, while excluding those
unconnected episodes which Aristotle so severely condemns, does not
prohibit the introduction of one or even more subsidiary actions as
contributing to the progress of the main action. The sole indispensable
law is that these should always be treated as what they are--subsidiary
only; and herein lies the difficulty, which Shakespeare so successfully
overcame, of fusing a combination of subjects taken from various sources
into the idea of a single action; herein also lies the danger in the use
of that favourite device of the Spanish and other modern
dramas--"by-plots" or "under-plots." On the other hand, the modern
French drama has largely employed another device--quite legitimate in
itself--for increasing the interest of an action without destroying its
unity. This may be called the dramatic use of backgrounds, the
depiction of surroundings on which the action or its chief characters
seem sympathetically to reflect themselves, backbiting "good villagers"
or academicians who inspire one another--with tedium. But a really
double or multiple action, logically carried out as such, is
inconceivable in a single drama, though many a play is palpably only two
plays knotted into one. It was therefore not all pedantry which
protested against the multiplicity of action which had itself formed
part of the revolt against the too narrow interpretation of unity
adopted by the French classical drama. Thirdly, unity of action need not
imply unity of hero--for hero (or heroine) is merely a conventional term
signifying the principal personage of the action. It is only when the
change in the degree of interest excited by different characters in a
play results from a change in the conception of the action itself, that
the consequent _duality_ (or multiplicity) of heroes recalls a faulty
uncertainty in the conception of the action they carry on. Such an
objection, while it may hold in the case of Schiller's _Don Carlos_,
would therefore be erroneously urged against Shakespeare's _Julius
Caesar_. Lastly, as to the theory which made the so-called unities of
_time_ and _place_ constitute, together with that of _action_, the Three
Unities indispensable to the (tragic) drama, the following note must
suffice. Aristotle's supposed exaction of all the Three Unities, having
been expanded by Chapelain and approved by Richelieu, was stereotyped by
Corneille, though he had (as one might say) got on very well without
them, and was finally set forth in Horatian verse by Boileau. Thus it
came to be overlooked that there is nothing in Aristotle's statement to
show that in his judgment unity of time and place are, like unity of
action, absolute dramatic laws. Their object is by representing an
action as visibly continuous to render its unity more distinctly or
easily perceptible. But the imagination is capable of constructing for
itself the bridges required for preserving to an action, conceived of as
such, its character of continuousness. In another sense these rules were
convenient usages conducing to a concise and clear treatment of a
limited kind of themes; for they were a Greek invention, and the
repeated resort to the same group of myths made it expedient for a Greek
poet to seek the subject of a single tragedy in a part only of one of
the myths at his disposal. The observance of unity of place, moreover,
was suggested to the Greeks by certain outward conditions of their
stage--as assuredly as it was adopted by the French in accordance with
the construction and usages of theirs, and as the neglect of it by the
Elizabethans was in their case encouraged by the established form of the
English scene. The palpable artificiality of these laws needs no
demonstration, so long as the true meaning of the term "action" be kept
in view. Of the action of _Othello_ part takes place at Venice and part
at Cyprus, and yet the whole is one in itself; while the limits of time
over which an action--Hamlet's progress to resolve, for
instance--extends cannot be restricted by a revolution of the earth
round the sun or of the moon round the earth.
Completeness of action.
In a drama which presents its action as _one_, this action must be
_complete in itself_. This Aristotelian law, like the other,
distinguishes the dramatic action from its subject. The former may be
said to have a real artistic, while the latter has only an imaginary
real, completeness. The historian, for instance, is aware that the
complete exposition of a body of events and transactions at which he
aims can never be more than partially accomplished, since he may present
only what he knows, and all human knowledge is imperfect. But Art is
limited by no such uncertainty. The dramatist, in treating an action as
_one_, comprehends the whole of it in the form of his work, since, to
him who has _conceived_ it, all its parts, from cause to effect, are
equally clear. It is his fault if in the action of his drama anything is
left unaccounted for--not _motive_; though a dramatic _motif_ might not
always prove to be a sufficient explanation in real life. Accordingly,
every drama should represent in organic sequence the several stages of
which a complete action consists, and which are essential to it. This
law of completeness, therefore, lies at the foundation of all systems of
dramatic "construction."
Systems of construction based on this law of completeness.
Every action, if conceived of as complete, has its causes, growth,
height, consequences and close. There is no binding law to prescribe the
relative length or proportion at which these several stages in the
action should be treated in a drama; or to regulate the treatment of
such subsidiary actions as may be introduced in aid of the main plot, or
of such more or less directly connected "episodes" as may at the same
time advance and relieve its progress. But experience has necessarily
from time to time established certain rules of practice, and from the
adoption of particular systems of division for particular species of the
drama--such as that into five acts for a regular tragedy or comedy,
which Roman example has caused to be so largely followed--has naturally
resulted a certain uniformity of relation between the conduct of an
action and the outward sections of a play. Essentially, however, there
is no difference between the laws regulating the construction of a
Sophoclean or Shakespearian tragedy, a comedy of Moliere or Congreve,
and a well-built modern farce, because all exhibit an action complete in
itself.
Prologues and epilogues outside the action.
Parts of the action. Introduction or exposition.
The "introduction" or "exposition" forms an integral part of the action,
and is therefore to be distinguished from the "prologue" in the more
ordinary sense of the term, which like the "epilogue" (and the Greek
[Greek: parabasis]) stands outside the action, and is a mere address to
the public from author, presenter or actor occasioned by the play.
Prologue and epilogue are mere external, though at times effective,
adjuncts, and have, properly speaking, as little to do with the
construction of a play as the bill which announces it or the musical
prelude which disposes the mind for its reception. A special kind of
preface or argument is the "dumb-show," which in some old plays briefly
rehearses in pantomime the action that is to follow. The introduction or
exposition belongs to the action itself; it is, as the Hindu critics
called it, the seed or circumstance from which the business arises.
Clearness being its primary requisite, many expedients have been at
various times adopted to secure this feature. Thus the Euripidean
prologue, though spoken by one of the characters of the play, took a
narrative form, more acceptable to the audience than to the critics, and
placed itself half without, half within, the action. The same purpose is
served by the separate "inductions" in many of the old English plays,
and by the preludes or prologues, or whatever name they may assume, in
numberless modern dramas of all kinds--from _Faust_ down to the
favourites of the Ambigu and the Adelphi. More facile is the orientation
supplied in French tragedy by the opening scenes between hero and
_confidant_, and in French comedy and its derivatives by those between
observant valet and knowing lady's-maid. But all such expedients may be
rendered unnecessary by the art of the dramatist, who is able outwardly
also to present the introduction of his action as an organic part of
that action itself; who seems to take the spectators _in medias res_,
while he is really building the foundations of his plot; who touches in
the opening of his action the chord which is to vibrate throughout its
course--"Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!"--"With the
Moor, sayest thou?"
Opening of movement.
Growth.
Height or climax.
The exposition, which may be short or long, but which should always
prepare and may even seem to necessitate the action, ends when the
movement of the action itself begins. This transition may occasionally
be marked with the utmost distinctness (as in the actual meeting between
the hero and the Ghost in _Hamlet_), while in other instances subsidiary
action or episode may judiciously intervene (as in _King Lear_, where
the subsidiary action of Gloster and his sons opportunely prevents too
abrupt a sequence of cause and effect). From this point the second stage
of the action--its "growth"--progresses to that third stage which is
called its "height" or "climax." All that has preceded the attainment of
this constitutes that half of the drama--usually its much larger
half--which Aristotle terms the [Greek: desis], or tying of the knot.
The varieties in the treatment of the growth or second stage of the
action are infinite; it is here that the greatest freedom is manifestly
permissible; that in the Indian drama the personages make long journeys
across the stage; and that, with the help of their under-plots, the
masters of the modern tragic and the comic drama--notably those
unequalled weavers of intrigues, the Spaniards--are able most fully to
exercise their inventive faculties. If the growth is too rapid, the
climax will fail of its effect; if it is too slow, the interest will be
exhausted before the greatest demand upon it has been made--a fault to
which comedy is specially liable; if it is involved or inverted, a vague
uncertainty will take the place of an eager or agreeable suspense, the
action will seem to halt, or a fall will begin prematurely. In the
contrivance of the "climax" itself lies one of the chief tests of the
dramatist's art; for while the transactions of real life often fail to
reach any climax at all, that of a dramatic action should present itself
as self-evident. In the middle of everything, says the Greek poet, lies
the strength; and this strongest or highest point it is the task of the
dramatist to make manifest. Much here depends upon the niceties of
constructive instinct; much (as in all parts of the action) upon a
thorough dramatic transformation of the subject. The historical drama at
this point presents peculiar difficulties, of which the example of
_Henry VIII._ may be cited as an illustration.
Fall.
Return.
Close or catastrophe.
From the climax, or height, the action proceeds through its "fall" to
its "close," which in a drama with an unhappy ending we still call its
"catastrophe," while to terminations in general we apply the term
_denouement_. This latter name would, however, more properly be applied
in the sense in which Aristotle employs its Greek equivalent [Greek:
lysis]--the untying of the knot--to the whole of the second part of the
action, from the climax downwards. In the management of the climax,
everything depends upon producing the effect; in the fall, everything
depends upon not marring it. This may be ensured by a rapid advance to
the close; but neither does every action admit of such treatment, nor is
it in accordance with the character of those which are of a more subtle
or complicated kind. With the latter, therefore, the "fall" is often a
revolution or "return," i.e. in Aristotle's phrase a change into the
reverse of what is expected from the circumstances of the action
([Greek: peripeteia])--as in _Coriolanus_, where the Roman story lends
itself so admirably to dramatic demands. In any case, the art of the
dramatist is in this part of his work called upon for the surest
exercise of its tact and skill. The effect of the climax was to
concentrate the interest; the fall must therefore, above all, avoid
dissipating it. The use of episodes is not even now excluded; but, even
where serving the purpose of relief, they must now be such as help to
keep alive the interest, previously raised to its highest pitch. This
may be effected by the raising of obstacles between the height of the
action and its expected consequences; in tragedy by the suggestion of a
seemingly possible recovery or escape from them (as in the wonderfully
powerful construction of the latter part of _Macbeth_); in comedy, or
wherever the interest of the action is less intense, by the gradual
removal of incidental difficulties. In all kinds of the drama
"discovery" will remain, as it was in the judgment of Aristotle, a most
effective expedient; but it should be a discovery prepared by that
method of treatment which in its consummate master, Sophocles, has been
termed his "irony." Nowhere should the close or catastrophe be other
than a consequence of the action itself. Sudden revulsions from the
conditions of the action--such as are supplied with the aid of the _deus
ex machina_, or the revising officer of the emperor of China, or the
nabob returned from India, or a virulent malaria--condemn themselves as
unsatisfactory makeshifts. However sudden, and even in manner of
accomplishment surprising, may be the catastrophe, it should, like every
other part of the action, be in organic connexion with the whole
preceding action. The sudden suicides which terminate so many tragedies,
and the unmerited paternal blessings which close an equal number of
comedies, should be something more than a "way out of it," or a signal
for the fall of the curtain. A catastrophe may conveniently, and even
(as in _Faust_) with powerful effect, be left to the imagination; but
to substitute for it a deliberate blank is to leave the action
incomplete, and the drama a fragment ending with a--possibly
interesting--confession of incompetence.
Probability of action.
The action of a drama, besides being one and complete in itself, ought
likewise to be _probable_. The probability or necessity (in the
Aristotelian sense of the terms) required of a drama is not that of
actual or historical experience--it is a conditional probability, or in
other words an internal consistency between the course of the action and
the conditions under which the dramatist has chosen to carry it on. As
to the former, he is fettered by no restrictions save those which he
imposes upon himself, whether or not in deference to the usages of
certain accepted species of dramatic composition. Ghosts seldom appear
in real life or in dramas of real life; but the introduction of
supernatural agency is neither enjoined nor prohibited by any general
dramatic law. The use of such expedients is as open to the dramatic as
to any other poet; the judiciousness of his use of them depends upon the
effect which, consistently with the general conduct of his action, they
will exercise upon the spectator, whom other circumstances may or may
not predispose to their acceptance. The Ghost in _Hamlet_ belongs to the
action of the play; the Ghost in the _Persae_ is not intrinsically less
probable, but seems a less immediate product of the surrounding
atmosphere. Dramatic probability has, however, a far deeper meaning than
this. The _Eumenides_ is probable, with all its mysterious commingling
of cults, and so is _Macbeth_, with all its barbarous witchcraft. The
proceedings of the feathered builders of Cloudcuckootown in the _Birds_
of Aristophanes are as true to dramatic probability as are the pranks of
Oberon's fairies in _Midsummer Night's Dream_. In other words, it is in
the harmony between the action and the characters, and in the
consistency of the characters with themselves, in the appropriateness of
both to the atmosphere in which they have their being, that this
dramatic probability lies. The dramatist has to represent characters
affected by the progress of an action in a particular way, and
contributing to it in a particular way, because, if consistent with
themselves, they _must_ be so affected, and _must_ so act.
Characterization.
Advance of the drama in this respect.
Upon the invention and conduct of his characters the dramatist must
therefore expend a great proportion--even a preponderance--of his
labour. His treatment of them will, in at least as high a degree as his
choice of subject, conception of action, and method of construction,
determine the effect which his work produces. And while there are
aspects of the dramatic art under which its earlier phases already
exhibit an unsurpassed degree of perfection, there is none under which
its advance is more notable than this. Many causes have contributed to
this result; the chief is to be sought in the multiplication of the
opportunities for mankind's study of man. The theories of the Indian
critics on the subject of dramatic character are little more than an
elaborate scaffolding. Aristotle's remarks on the subject are scanty;
nor indeed is the strength of the dramatic literature from whose
examples he abstracted his maxims to be sought in the fulness or variety
of its characterization. This relative deficiency was beyond doubt
largely caused by the outward conditions of the Greek theatre--the
remoteness of actor from spectator, and the consequent necessity for the
use of masks, and for the raising, and consequent conventionalizing, of
the tones of the voice. Later Greek and Roman comedy, unable or
unwilling to resist the force of habit, limited their range of
characters to an accepted gallery of types. Nor is it easy to ignore the
fact that the influence of these classical examples, combined with that
of national tendencies of mind and temperament, have all along inclined
the dramatists of the Romance nations to attach less importance to
characterization of a closer and more varied kind than to interest of
action and effectiveness of construction. The Italian and the Spanish
drama more especially, and the French during a great part of its
history, have in general shown a disposition to present their
characters, as it were, ready made--whether in the case of tragic heroes
and heroines, or in that of comic types, often moulded, as in the
_commedia dell' arte_ "and beyond," according to a long-lived system of
local or national selection. These types, expanded, heightened and
modified, are recognizable in some of the triumphs of comic
characterization achieved by the Germanic drama, and by its master,
Shakespeare, above all; but this fact must not obscure one of more
importance than itself. In the matter of comic as well as of serious
characterization--in the individualizing of characters and in evolving
them as it were out of the progress of the action--the modern drama has
not only advanced, but in a sense revolutionized, the dramatic art, as
inherited from its ancient masters.
Requisites of character.
Yet, however the method and scope of characterization may vary under the
influence of different historical epochs and different tendencies or
tastes of races or nations, the laws of this branch of the dramatic art
remain based on the same essential requirements. What interests us in a
man or woman in real life, or in the impressions we form of historical
personages, is that which seems to us to give them individuality. A
dramatic character must therefore, whatever its part in the action, be
sufficiently marked by features of its own to interest the imagination;
with these features its subsequent conduct must be consistent, and to
them its participation in the action must correspond. In order to
achieve such a result, the dramatist must have, in the first instance,
distinctly conceived the character, however it may have been suggested
to him. His task is, not to paint a copy of some contemporary or
"historical" personage, but to conceive a particular kind of man, acting
under the operation of particular circumstances. This conception,
growing and modifying itself with the progress of the action, also
invented by the dramatist, will determine the totality of the character
which he creates. The likeness which the result bears to an actual or
historical personage may very probably, from secondary points of view,
affect the immediate stage success of the creation; upon its dramatic
result this likeness can have no influence whatever. In a wider sense
than that in which Shakespeare denied the charge that Falstaff was
Oldcastle, it should be possible to say of every dramatic character
which it is sought to identify with an actual personage, "This is not
the man." The mirror of the drama is not a photographic apparatus; and
not even the most conscientious combination of science and art can bring
back even a "phase" of the real Napoleon.
Distinctiveness.
Self-consistency.
Effectiveness.
Distinctiveness, as the primary requisite in dramatic characterization,
is to be demanded in the case of all personages introduced into a
dramatic action, but not in all cases in an equal degree. Schiller, in
adding to the _dramatis personae_ of his _Fiesco_ superscriptions of
their chief characteristics, labels Sacco as "an ordinary person," and
this, no doubt, suffices for Sacco. But with the great masters of
characterization a few touches, of which the true actor's art knows how
to avail itself, distinguish even their lesser characters from one
another; and every man is in his humour down to the "third citizen."
Elaboration is necessarily reserved for characters who are the more
important contributors to the action, and the fulness of elaboration for
its heroes. Many expedients may lend their aid to the higher degrees of
distinctiveness. Much is gained by a significant introduction of hero or
heroine--thus Antigone is dragged in by the watchman, Gloucester enters
alone upon the scene, Volpone is discovered in adoration of his golden
saint. Nothing marks character more clearly than the use of contrast--as
of Othello with Iago, of Ottavio with Max Piccolomini, of Joseph with
Charles Surface. Nor is direct antithesis the only effective kind of
contrast; Cassius is a foil to Brutus, and Leonora to her namesake the
Princess. But, besides impressing the imagination as a conception
distinct in itself, each character must maintain a consistency between
its conduct in the action and the features it has established as its
own. This consistency does not imply uniformity; for, as Aristotle
observes, there are characters which, to be represented with uniformity,
must be presented as uniformly un-uniform. Of such consistently complex
characters the great critic cites no instances, nor indeed are they of
frequent occurrence in Greek tragedy; in the modern drama Hamlet is
their unrivalled exemplar; and Weislingen in Goethe's _Gotz_, and
Alceste in the _Misanthrope_, may be mentioned as other illustrations in
dramas differing widely from one another. The list might be enlarged
almost indefinitely from the gallery of female characters, in view of
the greater pliability and more habitual dependence of the nature of
women. It should be added that those dramatic literatures which freely
admit of a mixture of the serious with the comic element thereby
enormously increase the opportunities of varied characterization. The
difficulty of the task at the same time enhances the effect resulting
from its satisfactory accomplishment; and, if the conception of a
character is found to meet a variety of tests resembling that which life
has at hand for every man, its naturalness, as we term it, becomes more
obvious to the imagination. "Naturalness" is only another word for what
Aristotle terms "propriety"; the artificial rules by which usage has at
times sought to define particular species of character are in their
origin only a convenience of the theatre, though they have largely
helped to conventionalize dramatic characterization. Lastly, a character
should be directly effective with regard to the dramatic action in which
it takes part--that is to say, the influence it exerts upon the progress
of the action should correspond to its distinctive features; the conduct
of the play should seem to spring from the nature of its characters. In
other words, no characterization can be effective which is not what may
be called economical, i.e. which does not strictly limit itself to
suiting the purposes of the action. Even the minor characters should not
idly intervene; while the chief characters should predominate over, or
determine, the course of the action, its entire conception should
harmonize with their distinctive features. It is only a Prometheus whom
the gods bind fast to a rock, only a Juliet who will venture into a
living death for her Romeo. Thus, in a sense, chance is excluded from
dramatic action, or rather, like every other element in it, bends to the
dramatic idea.
In view of this predominance of character over action, we may
appropriately use such expressions as a tragedy of love or jealousy or
ambition, or a comedy of character. For such collocations merely
indicate that plays so described have proved (or were intended to prove)
specially impressive by the conception or execution of their chief
character or characters.
Manners.
Their relative significance.
The term "manners" (as employed in a narrower sense than the
Aristotelian [Greek: ethe]) applies to that which colours both action and
characters, but does not determine the essence of either. As exhibiting
human agents under certain conditions of time and place, and of the
various relations of life, the action of a drama, together with the
characters engaged in it, and the incidents and circumstances belonging
to it, must more or less adapt itself to the external conditions
assumed. From the assumption of some such conditions not even those
dramatic species which indulge in the most sovereign licence, such as
Old Attic comedy, or burlesque in general, can wholly emancipate
themselves; and even supernatural or fantastic characters and actions
must suit themselves to some sort of antecedents. But it depends
altogether on the measure in which the nature of an action and the
development of its characters are effected by considerations of time and
place, or of temporary social systems and the transitory distinctions
incidental to them, whether the imitation of a particular kind of
manners becomes a significant element in a particular play. The Hindu
caste-system is an antecedent of every Hindu drama, and the peculiar
organization of Chinese society of nearly every Chinese play with which
we are acquainted. Greek tragedy itself, though treating subjects
derived from no historic age, had established a standard of manners from
which in its decline it did not depart with impunity. Again, the
imitation of manners of a particular age or country may or may not be of
moment in a play. In some dramas, and in some species of drama, time and
place are so purely imaginary and so much a matter of indifference that
the adoption of a purely conventional standard of manners, or at least
the exclusion of any definitely fixed standard, is here desirable. The
ducal reign of Theseus at Athens (if its period be ascertainable) does
not date _A Midsummer_ _Night's Dream_; nor do the coasts of Bohemia in
_The Winter's Tale_ localize the manners of the customers of Autolycus.
Where, on the other hand, as more especially in the historic drama, or
in that kind of comedy which directs its shafts against the ridiculous
vices of a particular age or country, significance attaches to the
degree in which the manners represented resemble what is more or less
known, the dramatist will do well to be careful in his colouring. How
admirably is the French court specialized in _Henry V._; how completely
are we transplanted among the burghers of Brussels in the opening scenes
of _Egmont_; what a portraiture of a clique we have in the _Precieuses
ridicules_ of Moliere; what a reproduction of a class in the pot-house
politicians of Holberg! And how minutely have modern dramatists found it
necessary to study the more fascinating aspects of _la vie parisienne_,
in order to convey to the curious at home and abroad a conviction of the
verisimilitude of their pictures! Yet, even in such instances, the
dramatist will only use what suits his dramatic purpose; he will select,
not transfer in mass, historic features, and discriminate in his use of
modern instances. The details of historic fidelity, and the lesser
shades distinguishing the varieties of social usage, will be introduced
by him at his choice, or left to be supplied by the actor. Where the
reproduction of manners becomes the primary purpose of a play, its
effect can only be of an inferior kind; and a drama purely of manners is
a contradiction in terms.
Species of the drama.
Tragic and comic.
No complete system of dramatic species can be abstracted from any one
dramatic literature. They are often the result of particular
antecedents, and their growth is often affected by peculiar conditions.
Different nations or ages use the same names and may preserve some of
the same rules for species which in other respects their usage may have
materially modified from that of their neighbours or predecessors. The
very question of the use of measured or pedestrian speech as fit for
different kinds of drama, and therefore distinctive of them, cannot be
profitably discussed except in reference to particular literatures. In
the Chinese drama the most solemn themes are treated in the same
form--an admixture of verse and prose--which not so very long since was
characteristic of that airiest of Western dramatic species, the French
_vaudeville_. Who would undertake to define, except in the applications
which have been given to the words in successive generations, such terms
as "tragi-comedy," or indeed as "drama" (_drame_) itself? Yet this
uncertainty does not imply that all is confusion in the terminology as
to the species of the drama. In so far as they are distinguishable
according to the effects which their actions, or those which the
preponderating parts of their actions, produce, these species may
primarily be ranged in accordance with the broad difference established
by Aristotle between tragedy and comedy. "Tragic" and "comic" effects
differ in regard to the emotions of the mind which they excite; and a
drama is tragic or comic according as such effects are produced by it.
The strong or serious emotions are alone capable of exercising upon us
that influence which, employing a bold but marvellously happy figure,
Aristotle termed _purification_, and which a Greek comedian, after a
more matter-of-fact fashion, thus expressed:
"For whensoe'er a man observes his fellow
Bear wrongs more grievous than himself has known,
More easily he bears his own misfortunes."
That is to say, the petty troubles of self which disturb without
elevating the mind are driven out by the sympathetic participation in
greater griefs, which raises while it excites the mind employed upon
contemplating them. It is to these emotions--which are and can be no
others than pity and terror--that actions which we call tragic appeal.
_Naif_ as we may think Aristotle in desiderating for such actions a
complicated rather than a simple plot, he obviously means that in form
as well as in design they should reveal their relative importance. Those
actions which we term comic address themselves to the sense of the
ridiculous, and their themes are those vices and moral infirmities the
representation of which is capable of touching the springs of laughter.
Where, accordingly, a drama confines itself to effects of the former
class, it may be called a pure "tragedy"; when to those of the latter, a
pure "comedy." In dramas where the effects are mixed the nature of the
main action and of the main characters (as determined by their
distinctive features) alone enables us to classify such plays as serious
or humorous dramas--or as "tragic" or "comic," if we choose to preserve
the terms. But the classification admits of a variety of transitions,
from "pure" tragedy to "mixed," from "mixed tragedy" to "mixed comedy,"
and thence to "pure comedy," with the more freely licensed "farce" and
"burlesque," the time-honoured inversion of the relations of dramatic
method and purpose. This system of distinction has no concern with the
mere question of the termination of the play, according to which
Philostratus and other authorities have sought to distinguish tragic
from comic dramas. The serious drama which ends happily (the German
_Schauspiel_) is not a species co-ordinate with tragedy and comedy, but
at the most a subordinate variety of the former. Other distinctions may
be almost infinitely multiplied, according to the point of view adopted
for the classification.
The historical sketch of the drama attempted in the following pages will
best serve to indicate the successive growth of national dramatic
species, many of which, by asserting their influence in other countries
and ages than those which gave birth to them, have acquired a more than
national vitality.
The art of acting.
Its means.
Gesture.
Speech.
The art of acting, whose history forms an organic though a distinct part
of that of the drama, necessarily possesses a theory and a technical
system of its own. But into these it is impossible here to enter. One
claim, however, should be vindicated for the art of acting, viz. that,
though it is a dependent art, and most signally so in its highest forms,
yet its true exercise implies (however much the term may have been
abused) a creative process. The conception of a character is determined
by antecedents not of the actor's own making; and the term originality
can be applied to it only in a relative sense. Study and reflection
enable him, with the aid of experience and of the intuition which genius
bestows, but which experience may in a high degree supply, to interpret,
to combine, and to supplement given materials. But in the transformation
of the conception into the represented character the actor's functions
are really creative; for here he _becomes_ the character by means which
belong to his art alone. The distinctiveness which he gives to the
character by making the principal features recognized by him in it its
groundwork--the consistency which he maintains in it between groundwork
and details--the appropriateness which he preserves in it to the course
of the action and the part borne in it by the character--all these are
of his own making, though suggested by the conception derived by him
from his materials. As to the means at his disposal, they are
essentially of two kinds only; but not all forms of the drama have
admitted of the use of both, or of both in the same completeness. All
acting includes the use of gesture, or, as it has been more
comprehensively termed, of bodily eloquence. From various points of view
its laws regulate the actor's bearing, walk and movements of face and
limbs. They teach what is aesthetically permitted and what is
aesthetically pleasing. They deduce from observation what is appropriate
to the expression of particular affections of the mind and of their
combinations, of emotions and passions, of physical and mental
conditions--joy and grief, health and sickness, waking, sleeping and
dreaming, madness, collapse and death--of particular ages of life and
temperaments, as well as of the distinctive characteristics of race,
nationality or class. While under certain conditions--as in the masked
drama--the use of bodily movement as one of the means of expression has
at times been partially restricted, there have been, or are, forms of
the drama which have altogether excluded the use of speech (such as
pantomime), or have restricted the manner of its employment (such as
opera). In the spoken drama the laws of rhetoric regulate the actor's
use of speech, but under conditions of a special nature. Like the
orator, he has to follow the laws of pronunciation, modulation, accent
and rhythm (the last in certain kinds of prose as well as in such forms
of verse as he may be called upon to reproduce). But he has also to
give his attention to the special laws of dramatic delivery, which vary
in soliloquy and dialogue, and in such narrative or lyrical passages as
may occur in his part.
Costume.
The totality of the effect produced by the actor will in some degree
depend upon other aids, among which those of a purely external kind are
unlikely to be lost sight of. But the significance of costume (q.v.) in
the actor, like that of decoration and scenery (see THEATRE) in an
action, is a wholly relative one, and is to a large measure determined
by the claims which custom enables the theatre to make, or forbids its
making, upon the imagination of the spectators. The actor's real
achievement lies in the transformation which the artist himself effects;
nor is there any art more sovereign in the use it can make of its means,
or so happy in the directness of the results it can accomplish by them.