In the course of his glorious _Song of the Open Road_, Walt Whitman said,
"I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes; we convince by
our presence"; and it has always seemed to me that this remark is
peculiarly applicable to dramatists and dramas. The primary purpose of a
play is to give a gathered multitude a larger sense of life by evoking its
emotions to a consciousness of terror and pity, laughter and love. Its
purpose is not primarily to rouse the intellect to thought or call the will
to action. In so far as the drama uplifts and edifies the audience, it does
so, not by precept or by syllogism, but by emotional suggestion. It teaches
not by what it says, but rather by what it deeply and mysteriously is. It
convinces not by its arguments, but by its presence.
It follows that those who think about the drama in relation to society at
large, and consider as a matter of serious importance the effect of the
theatre on the ticket-buying public, should devote profound consideration
to that subtle quality of plays which I may call their _tone_. Since the
drama convinces less by its arguments than by its presence, less by its
intellectual substance than by its emotional suggestion, we have a right to
demand that it shall be not only moral but also sweet and healthful and
inspiriting.
After witnessing the admirable performance of Mrs. Fiske and the members of
her skilfully selected company in Henrik Ibsen's dreary and depressing
_Rosmersholm_, I went home and sought solace from a reperusal of an old
play, by the buoyant and healthy Thomas Heywood, which is sweetly named
_The Fair Maid of the West_. _Rosmersholm_ is of all the social plays of
Ibsen the least interesting to witness on the stage, because the spectator
is left entirely in the dark concerning the character and the motives of
Rebecca West until her confession at the close of the third act, and can
therefore understand the play only on a second seeing. But except for this
important structural defect the drama is a masterpiece of art; and it is
surely unnecessary to dwell upon its many merits. On the other hand, _The
Fair Maid of the West_ is very far from being masterly in art. In structure
it is loose and careless; in characterisation it is inconsistent and
frequently untrue; in style it is uneven and without distinction. Ibsen, in
sheer mastery of dramaturgic means, stands fourth in rank among the world's
great dramatists. Heywood was merely an actor with a gift for telling
stories, who flung together upward of two hundred and twenty plays during
the course of his casual career. And yet _The Fair Maid of the West_ seemed
to me that evening, and seems to me evermore in retrospect, a nobler work
than _Rosmersholm_; for the Norwegian drama gives a doleful exhibition of
unnecessary misery, while the Elizabethan play is fresh and wholesome, and
fragrant with the breath of joy.
Of two plays equally true in content and in treatment, equally accomplished
in structure, in characterisation, and in style, that one is finally the
better which evokes from the audience the healthiest and hopefullest
emotional response. This is the reason why _Oedipus King_ is a better play
than _Ghosts_. The two pieces are not dissimilar in subject and are
strikingly alike in art. Each is a terrible presentment of a revolting
theme; each, like an avalanche, crashes to foredoomed catastrophe. But the
Greek tragedy is nobler in tone, because it leaves us a lofty reverence for
the gods, whereas its modern counterpart disgusts us with the inexorable
laws of life,--which are only the old gods divested of imagined
personality.
Slowly but surely we are growing very tired of dramatists who look upon
life with a wry face instead of with a brave and bracing countenance. In
due time, when (with the help of Mr. Barrie and other healthy-hearted
playmates) we have become again like little children, we shall realise that
plays like _As You Like It_ are better than all the _Magdas_ and the _Hedda
Gablers_ of the contemporary stage. We shall realise that the way to heal
old sores is to let them alone, rather than to rip them open, in the
interest (as we vainly fancy) of medical science. We shall remember that
the way to help the public is to set before it images of faith and hope and
love, rather than images of doubt, despair, and infidelity.
The queer thing about the morbid-minded specialists in fabricated woe is
that they believe themselves to be telling the whole truth of human life
instead of telling only the worser half of it. They expunge from their
records of humanity the very emotions that make life worth the living, and
then announce momentously, "Behold reality at last; for this is Life." It
is as if, in the midnoon of a god-given day of golden spring, they should
hug a black umbrella down about their heads and cry aloud, "Behold, there
is no sun!" Shakespeare did that only once,--in _Measure for Measure_. In
the deepest of his tragedies, he voiced a grandeur even in obliquity, and
hymned the greatness and the glory of the life of man.
Suppose that what looks white in a landscape painting be actually bluish
gray. Perhaps it would be best to tell us so; but failing that, it would
certainly be better to tell us that it is white than to tell us that it is
black. If our dramatists must idealise at all in representing life, let
them idealise upon the positive rather than upon the negative side. It is
nobler to tell us that life is better than it actually is than to tell us
that it is worse. It is nobler to remind us of the joy of living than to
remind us of the weariness. "For to miss the joy is to miss all," as
Stevenson remarked; and if the drama is to be of benefit to the public, it
should, by its very presence, convey conviction of the truth thus nobly
phrased by Matthew Arnold:
Yet the will is free:
Strong is the Soul, and wise, and beautiful:
The seeds of godlike power are in us still:
Gods are we, Bards, Saints, Heroes, if we will.--
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?