The modern social drama--or the problem play, as it is popularly
called--did not come into existence till the fourth decade of the
nineteenth century; but in less than eighty years it has shown itself to be
the fittest expression in dramaturgic terms of the spirit of the present
age; and it is therefore being written, to the exclusion of almost every
other type, by nearly all the contemporary dramatists of international
importance. This type of drama, currently prevailing, is being continually
impugned by a certain set of critics, and by another set continually
defended. In especial, the morality of the modern social drama has been a
theme for bitter conflict; and critics have been so busy calling Ibsen a
corrupter of the mind or a great ethical teacher that they have not found
leisure to consider the more general and less contentious questions of what
the modern social drama really is, and of precisely on what ground its
morality should be determined. It may be profitable, therefore, to stand
aloof from such discussion for a moment, in order to inquire calmly what it
is all about.
I
Although the modern social drama is sometimes comic in its mood--_The Gay
Lord Quex_, for instance--its main development has been upon the serious
side; and it may be criticised most clearly as a modern type of tragedy. In
order, therefore, to understand its essential qualities, we must first
consider somewhat carefully the nature of tragedy in general. The theme of
all drama is, of course, a struggle of human wills; and the special theme
of tragic drama is a struggle necessarily foredoomed to failure because the
individual human will is pitted against opposing forces stronger than
itself. Tragedy presents the spectacle of a human being shattering himself
against insuperable obstacles. Thereby it awakens pity, because the hero
cannot win, and terror, because the forces arrayed against him cannot lose.
If we rapidly review the history of tragedy, we shall see that three types,
and only three, have thus far been devised; and these types are to be
distinguished according to the nature of the forces set in opposition to
the wills of the characters. In other words, the dramatic imagination of
all humanity has thus far been able to conceive only three types of
struggle which are necessarily foredoomed to failure,--only three different
varieties of forces so strong as to defeat inevitably any individual human
being who comes into conflict with them. The first of these types was
discovered by Aeschylus and perfected by Sophocles; the second was
discovered by Christopher Marlowe and perfected by Shakespeare; and the
third was discovered by Victor Hugo and perfected by Ibsen.
The first type, which is represented by Greek tragedy, displays the
individual in conflict with Fate, an inscrutable power dominating alike the
actions of men and of gods. It is the God of the gods,--the destiny of
which they are the instruments and ministers. Through irreverence, through
vainglory, through disobedience, through weakness, the tragic hero becomes
entangled in the meshes that Fate sets for the unwary; he struggles and
struggles to get free, but his efforts are necessarily of no avail. He has
transgressed the law of laws, and he is therefore doomed to inevitable
agony. Because of this superhuman aspect of the tragic struggle, the Greek
drama was religious in tone, and stimulated in the spectator the reverent
and lofty mood of awe.
The second type of tragedy, which is represented by the great Elizabethan
drama, displays the individual foredoomed to failure, no longer because of
the preponderant power of destiny, but because of certain defects inherent
in his own nature. The Fate of the Greeks has become humanised and made
subjective. Christopher Marlowe was the first of the world's dramatists
thus to set the God of all the gods within the soul itself of the man who
suffers and contends and dies. But he imagined only one phase of the new
and epoch-making tragic theme that he discovered. The one thing that he
accomplished was to depict the ruin of an heroic nature through an
insatiable ambition for supremacy, doomed by its own vastitude to defeat
itself,--supremacy of conquest and dominion with Tamburlaine, supremacy of
knowledge with Dr. Faustus, supremacy of wealth with Barabas, the Jew of
Malta. Shakespeare, with his wider mind, presented many other phases of
this new type of tragic theme. Macbeth is destroyed by vaulting ambition
that o'erleaps itself; Hamlet is ruined by irresoluteness and contemplative
procrastination. If Othello were not overtrustful, if Lear were not
decadent in senility, they would not be doomed to die in the conflict that
confronts them. They fall self-ruined, self-destroyed. This second type of
tragedy is less lofty and religious than the first; but it is more human,
and therefore, to the spectator, more poignant. We learn more about God by
watching the annihilation of an individual by Fate; but we learn more about
Man by watching the annihilation of an individual by himself. Greek tragedy
sends our souls through the invisible; but Elizabethan tragedy answers,
"Thou thyself art Heaven and Hell."
The third type of tragedy is represented by the modern social drama. In
this the individual is displayed in conflict with his environment; and the
drama deals with the mighty war between personal character and social
conditions. The Greek hero struggles with the superhuman; the Elizabethan
hero struggles with himself; the modern hero struggles with the world. Dr.
Stockmann, in Ibsen's _An Enemy of the People_, is perhaps the most
definitive example of the type, although the play in which he appears is
not, strictly speaking, a tragedy. He says that he is the strongest man on
earth because he stands most alone. On the one side are the legions of
society; on the other side a man. This is such stuff as modern plays are
made of.
Thus, whereas the Greeks religiously ascribed the source of all inevitable
doom to divine foreordination, and the Elizabethans poetically ascribed it
to the weaknesses the human soul is heir to, the moderns prefer to ascribe
it scientifically to the dissidence between the individual and his social
environment. With the Greeks the catastrophe of man was decreed by Fate;
with the Elizabethans it was decreed by his own soul; with us it is decreed
by Mrs. Grundy. Heaven and Hell were once enthroned high above Olympus;
then, as with Marlowe's Mephistophilis, they were seated deep in every
individual soul; now at last they have been located in the prim parlor of
the conventional dame next door. Obviously the modern type of tragedy is
inherently less religious than the Greek, since science has as yet induced
no dwelling-place for God. It is also inherently less poetic than the
Elizabethan, since sociological discussion demands the mood of prose.