Unity of action is strictly enjoined by Hindu theory, though not
invariably observed in practice. Episodical or prolix interruptions are
forbidden; but, in order to facilitate the connexion, the story of the
play is sometimes carried on by narratives spoken by actors or
"interpreters," something after the fashion of the Chorus in _Henry V._,
or of Gower in _Pericles_. "Unity of time" is liberally, if rather
arbitrarily, understood by the later critical authorities as limiting
the duration of the action to a single year; but even this is exceeded
in more than one classical play.[4] The single acts are to confine the
events occurring in them to "one course of the sun," and usually do so.
"Unity of place" is unknown to the Hindu drama, by reason of the absence
of scenery; for the plays were performed in the open courts of palaces,
perhaps at times in large halls set apart for public entertainments, or
in the open air. Hence change of scene is usually indicated in the
texts; and we find[5] the characters making long journeys on the stage,
under the eyes of spectators not trained to demand "real" mileage.
Proprieties.
With the solemn character of the higher kind of dramatic performances
accord the rules and prohibitions defining what may be called the
_proprieties_ of the Indian drama. It has been already seen that all
plays must have a happy ending. Furthermore, not only should death never
be inflicted _coram populo_, but the various operations of biting,
scratching, kissing, eating, sleeping, the bath, and the marriage
ceremony should never take place on the stage. Yet such rules are made
to be occasionally broken. It is true that the mild humour of the
_vid[=u]shaka_ is restricted to his "gesticulating eating" instead of
perpetrating the obnoxious act.[6] The charming love-scene in the
_S[=a]kuntal[=a]_ (at least in the earlier recension of the play) breaks
off just as the hero is about to act the part of the bee to the honey of
the heroine's lips.[7] But later writers are less squeamish, or less
refined. In two dramas[8] the heroine is dragged on the stage by her
braid of hair; and this outrage is in both instances the motive of the
action. In a third,[9] sleeping and the marriage ceremony occur in the
course of the representation.
Construction.
Scenes and situations.
The dramatic construction of the Indian plays presents no very striking
peculiarities. They open with a benediction (_n[=a]nd[=i]_), spoken by
the manager (supposed to be a highly accomplished person), and followed
by "some account" of the author, and an introductory scene between the
manager and one of the actors, which is more or less skilfully connected
by the introduction of one of the characters with the opening of the
play itself. This is divided into acts (_ankas_) and scenes; of the
former a _n[=a]t[=a]ka_ should have not fewer than 5, or more than 10; 7
appears a common number; "the great _n[=a]t[=a]ka_" reaches 14. Thus the
length of the higher class of Indian plays is considerable--about that
of an Aeschylean trilogy; but not more than a single play was ever
performed on the same occasion. Comic plays are restricted to two acts
(here called _sandhis_). In theory the scheme of an Indian drama
corresponds very closely to the general outline of dramatic construction
given above; it is a characteristic merit that the business is rarely
concluded before the last act. The piece closes, as it began, with a
benediction or prayer. Within this framework room is found for
situations as ingeniously devised and highly wrought as those in any
modern Western play. What could be more pitiful than the scene in
_S[=a]kuntal[=a]_, where the true wife appears before her husband, whose
remembrance of her is fatally overclouded by a charm; what more terrific
than that in _M[=a]lat[=i] and M[=a]dhava_, where the lover rescues his
beloved from the horrors of the charnel field? Recognition--especially
between parents and children--frequently gives rise to scenes of a
pathos which Euripides has not surpassed.[10] The ingenious device of a
"play within the play" (so familiar to the English drama) is employed
with the utmost success by Babhav[=u]ti.[11] On the other hand,
miraculous metamorphosis[12] and, in a later play,[13] vulgar magic lend
their aid to the progress of the action. With scenes of strong
effectiveness contrast others of the most delicate poetic grace--such as
the indescribably lovely little episode of the two damsels of the god of
love helping one another to pluck the red and green bud from the mango
tree; or of gentle domestic pathos--such as that of the courtesan
listening to the prattle of her lover's child, one of the prettiest
scenes of a kind rarely kept free from affectation in the modern drama.
For the _denouement_ in the narrower sense of the term the Indian
dramatists largely resort to the expedient of the _deus ex machina_,
often in a sufficiently literal sense.[14]
Characters.
Every species of drama having its appropriate kind of hero or heroine,
theory here again amuses itself with an infinitude of subdivisions.
Among the heroines, of whom not less than three hundred and eighty-four
types are said to be distinguished, are to be noticed the courtesans,
whose social position to some extent resembles that of the Greek
_hetaerae_, and association with whom does not seem in practice, however
it may be in theory, to be regarded as a disgrace even to Brahmans.[15]
In general, the Indian drama indicates relations between the sexes
subject to peculiar restraints of usage, but freer than those which
Mahommedan example seems to have introduced into higher Indian society.
The male characters are frequently drawn with skill, and sometimes with
genuine force. Prince Samsthanaka[16] is a type of selfishness born in
the purple worthy to rank beside figures of the modern drama, of which
this has at times naturally been a favourite class of character;
elsewhere,[17] the intrigues of ministers are not more fully exposed
than their characters and principles of action are judiciously
discriminated. Among the lesser personages common in the Indian drama,
two are worth noticing, as corresponding, though by no means precisely,
to familiar types of other dramatic literatures. These are the
_vit[=a]_, the accomplished but dependent companion (both of men and
women), and the _vid[=u]shaka_, the humble associate (not servant) of
the prince, and the buffoon of the action.[18] Strangely enough, he is
always a Brahman, or the pupil of a Brahman--perhaps a survival from a
purely popular phase of the drama. His humour is to be ever intent on
the pleasures of a quiet life, and on that of eating in particular; his
jokes are generally devoid of both harm and point.
Diction.
Scenery and costume.
Thus, clothing itself in a diction always ornate and tropical, in which
(as Ruckert has happily expressed it) the prose is the warp and the
verse the weft, where (as Goethe says) words become allusions, allusions
similes, and similes metaphors, the Indian drama essentially depended
upon its literary qualities, and upon the familiar sanctity of its
favourite themes for such effects as it was able to produce. Of scenic
apparatus it knew but little. The plays were usually performed in the
hall of a palace; the simple devices by which exits and entrances were
facilitated it is unnecessary to describe, and on the contrivances
employed for securing such "properties" as were required (above all, the
cars of the gods and of their emissaries),[19] it is useless to
speculate. Propriety of costume, on the other hand, seems always to have
been observed, agreeably both to the peculiarities of the Indian drama
and to the habits of the Indian people.
Actors.
The ministers of an art practised under such conditions could not but be
regarded with respect, and spared the contempt or worse, which, except
among one other great civilized people, the Greeks, has everywhere, at
one period or another, been the actor's lot. Companies of actors seem to
have been common in India at an early date, and the inductions show the
players to have been regarded as respectable members of society. In
later, if not in earlier, times individual actors enjoyed a widespread
reputation--"all the world" is acquainted with the talents of
Kalaha-Kandala.[20] The managers or directors, as already stated, were
usually gifted and highly-cultured Brahmans. Female parts were in
general, though not invariably, represented by females. One would like
to know whether such was the case in a piece[21] where--after the
fashion of more than one Western play--a crafty minister passes off his
daughter as a boy, on which assumption she is all but married to a
person of her own sex.
Summary.
The Indian drama would, if only for purposes of comparison, be
invaluable to the student of this branch of literature. But from the
point of view of purely literary excellence it holds its own against all
except the very foremost dramas of the world. It is, indeed, a mere
phrase to call K[=a]lid[=a]sa the Indian Shakespeare--a title which,
moreover, if intended as anything more than a synonym for poetic
pre-eminence, might fairly be disputed in favour of Babhav[=u]ti; while
it would be absolutely misleading to place a dramatic literature, which,
like the Indian, is the mere quintessence of the culture of a caste, by
the side of one which represents the fullest development of the artistic
consciousness of such a people as the Hellenes. The Indian drama cannot
be described as national in the broadest and highest sense of the word;
it is, in short, the drama of a literary class, though as such it
exhibits many of the noblest and most refined, as well as of the most
characteristic, features of Hindu religion and civilization. The ethics
of the Indian drama are of a lofty character, but they are those of a
scholastic system of religious philosophy, self-conscious of its
completeness. To the power of Fate is occasionally ascribed a supremacy,
to which gods as well as mortals must bow;[22] but, if man's present
life is merely a phase in the cycle of his destinies, the highest of
moral efforts at the same time points to the summit of possibilities,
and self-sacrifice is the supreme condition both of individual
perfection and of the progress of the world. Such conceptions as these
seem at once to enfold and to overshadow the moral life of the Indian
drama. The affections and passions forming part of self it delineates
with a fidelity to nature which no art can afford to neglect; on the
other hand, the freedom of the picture is restricted by conditions which
to us are unfamiliar and at times seem intolerable, but which it was
impossible for the Indian poet's imagination to ignore. The sheer
self-absorption of ambition or love appears inconceivable by the minds
of any of these poets; and their social philosophy is always based on
the system of caste. On the other hand, they are masters of many of the
truest forms of pathos, above all of that which blends with resignation.
In humour of a delicate kind they are by no means deficient; to its
lower forms they are generally strangers, even in productions of a
professedly comic intention. Of wit, Indian dramatic literature--though
a play on words is as the breath of its nostrils--furnishes hardly any
examples intelligible to Western minds.
Poetry of the Indian drama.
The distinctive excellence of the Indian drama is to be sought in the
poetic robe which envelops it as flowers overspread the bosom of the
earth in the season of spring. In its nobler productions, at least, it
is never untrue to its half religious, half rural origin; it weaves the
wreaths of idyllic fancies in an unbroken chain, adding to its favourite
and familiar blossoms ever fresh beauties from an inexhaustible garden.
Nor is it unequal to depicting the grander aspects of nature in her
mighty forests and on the shores of the ocean. A close familiarity with
its native literature can here alone follow its diction through a
ceaseless flow of phrase and figure, listen with understanding to the
hum of the bee as it hangs over the lotus, and contemplate with
S[=a]kuntal[=a]'s pious sympathy the creeper as it winds round the mango
tree. But the poetic beauty of the Indian drama reveals itself in the
mysterious charm of its outline, if not in its full glow, even to the
untrained; nor should the study of it--for which the materials seem
continually on the increase--be left aside by any lover of literature.