Antiquities of the French Stage--Influence of Aristotle and the Imitation
of the Ancients--Investigation of the Three Unities--What is Unity of
Action?--Unity of Time--Was it observed by the Greeks?--Unity of Place as
connected with it.
We now proceed to the Dramatic Literature of France. We have no intention
of dwelling at length on the first beginnings of Tragedy in this country,
and therefore leave to French critics the task of depreciating the
antiquities of their own literature, which, with the mere view of adding
to the glory of the later age of Richelieu and Louis XIV., they so
zealously enter upon. Their language, it is true, was at this time first
cultivated, from an indescribable waste of tastelessness and barbarity,
while the harmonious diction of the Italian and Spanish poetry, which had
long before spontaneously developed itself in the most beautiful
luxuriance, was rapidly degenerating. Hence we are not to be astonished if
the French lay such great stress on negative excellences, and so carefully
endeavour to avoid everything like impropriety, and that from dread of
relapse into rudeness this has ever since been the general object of their
critical labours. When La Harpe says of the tragedies of Corneille, that
"their tone rises above flatness, only to fall into the opposite extreme
of affectation," judging from the proofs which he adduces, we see no
reason to differ from him. The publication recently of Legouvé's _Death
of Henry the Fourth_, has led to the reprinting of a contemporary piece
on the same subject, which is not only written in a ludicrous style, but
in the general plan and distribution of the subject, with its prologue
spoken by Satan, and its chorus of pages, with its endless monologues and
want of progress and action, betrays the infancy of the dramatic art; not
a naïve infancy, full of hope and promise, but one disfigured by the most
pedantic bombast and absurdity. For a character of the earlier tragical
attempts of the French in the last half of the sixteenth and the first
thirty or forty years of the seventeenth century, we refer to Fontenelle,
La Harpe, and the _Mélanges Littéraires_ of Suard and André. We shall
confine ourselves to the characteristics of three of their most celebrated
tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, who, it would seem, have
given an immutable shape to their tragic stage. Our chief object, however,
is an examination of the _system of tragic art_ practically followed
by these poets, and by them, in part, but by the French critics
universally, considered as alone entitled to any authority, and every
deviation from it viewed as an offence against good taste. If only the
system be in itself the right one, we shall be compelled to allow that its
execution is masterly, perhaps not to be surpassed. But the great question
here is: how far the French tragedy is in spirit and inward essence
related to the Greek, and whether it deserves to be considered as an
improvement upon it?
Of the earlier attempts it is only necessary for us to observe, that the
endeavour to imitate the ancients showed itself from the very earliest
period in France. Moreover, they considered it the surest method of
succeeding in this endeavour to observe the outward regularity of form, of
which their notion was derived from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca,
rather than from any intimate acquaintance with the Greek models
themselves. In the first tragedies that were represented, the _Cleopatra_,
and _Dido_ of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced; Jean de la
Peruse translated the _Medea_ of Seneca; and Garnier's pieces are all
taken from the Greek tragedies or from Seneca, but in the execution they
bear a much closer resemblance to the latter. The writers of that day,
moreover, modelled themselves diligently on the _Sophonisbe_ of Trissino,
in good confidence of its classic form. Whoever is acquainted with the
procedure of true genius, how it is impelled by an almost unconscious and
immediate contemplation of great and important truths, and in no wise by
convictions obtained mediately, and by circuitous deductions, will be on
that ground alone extremely suspicious of all activity in art which
originates in an abstract theory. But Corneille did not, like an
antiquary, execute his dramas as so many learned school exercises, on the
model of the ancients. Seneca, it is true, led him astray, but he knew and
loved the Spanish theatre, and it had a great influence on his mind. The
first of his pieces, with which, according to general admission, the
classical aera of French tragedy commences, and which is certainly one of
his best, the _Cid_, is well known to have been borrowed from the Spanish.
It violates in a great degree the unity of place, if not also that of
time, and it is animated throughout by the spirit of chivalrous love and
honour. But the opinion of his contemporaries, that a tragedy must be
framed in strict accordance with the rules of Aristotle, was so
universally predominant, that it bore down all opposition. Almost at the
close of his dramatic career, Corneille began to entertain scruples of
conscience, and in a separate treatise endeavoured to prove that, although
in the composition of his pieces he had never even thought of Aristotle,
they were yet all accurately written according to his rules. This was no
easy task, and he was obliged to have recourse to all manner of forced
explanations. If he had been able to establish his case satisfactorily, it
would but lead to the inference that the rules of Aristotle must be very
loose and indeterminate, if works so dissimilar in spirit and form, as the
tragedies of the Greeks and those of Corneille are yet equally true to
them.
It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was, without
doubt, the one who was best acquainted with the ancients; and not merely
did he study them as a scholar, he felt them also as a poet. He found,
however, the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he
did not, for the sake of approaching these models, undertake to deviate
from it. He contented himself, therefore, with appropriating the separate
beauties of the Greek poets; but, whether from deference to the taste of
his age, or from inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing
gallantry so alien to the spirit of Greek tragedy, and, for the most part,
made it the foundation of the complication of his plots.
Such, nearly, was the state of the French theatre before the appearance of
Voltaire. His knowledge of the Greeks was very limited, although he now
and then spoke of them with enthusiasm, in order, on other occasions, to
rank them below the more modern masters of his own nation, including
himself still, he always felt himself bound to preach up the grand
severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential to Tragedy. He censured
the deviations of his predecessors therefrom as mistakes, and insisted on
purifying and at the same time enlarging the stage, as, in his opinion,
from the constraint of court manners, it had been almost straitened to the
dimensions of an antechamber. He at first spoke of Shakspeare's bursts of
genius, and borrowed many things from this poet, at that time altogether
unknown to his countrymen; he insisted, too, on greater depth in the
delineation of passion--on a stronger theatrical effect; he called for a
scene more majestically ornamented; and, lastly, he frequently endeavoured
to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether
foreign to poetry. His labours hare unquestionably been of utility to the
French stage, although in language and versification (which in the
classification of dramatic excellences ought only to hold a secondary
place, though in France they alone almost decide the fate of a piece), he
is, by most critics, considered inferior to his predecessors, or at least
to Racine. It is now the fashion to attack this idol of a bygone
generation on every point, and with the most unrelenting and partial
hostility. His innovations on the stage are therefore cried down as so
many literary heresies, even by watchmen of the critical Zion, who seem to
think that the age of Louis XIV. has left nothing for all succeeding time,
to the end of the world, but a passive admiration of its perfections,
without a presumptuous thought of making improvements of its own. For
authority is avowed with so little disguise as the first principle of the
French critics, that this expression of literary heresy is quite current
with them.
In so far as we have to raise a doubt of the unconditional authority of
the rules followed by the old French tragic authors, of the pretended
affinity between the spirit of their works and the spirit of the Greek
tragedians, and of the indispensableness of many supposed proprieties, we
find an ally in Voltaire. But in many other points he has, without
examination, nay even unconsciously, adopted the maxims of his
predecessors, and followed their practice. He is alike implicated with
them in many opinions, which are perhaps founded more on national
peculiarities than on human nature and the essence of tragic poetry in
general. On this account we may include him in a common examination with
them; for we are here concerned not with the execution of particular
parts, but with the general principles of tragic art which reveal
themselves in the shape of the works.
The consideration of the dramatic regularity for which these critics
contend brings us back to the so-called Three Unities of Aristotle. We
shall therefore examine the doctrine delivered by the Greek philosopher on
this subject: how far the Greek tragedians knew or observed these rules;
whether the French poets have in reality overcome the difficulty of
observing them without the sacrifice of freedom and probability, or merely
dexterously avoided it; and finally, whether the merit of this observance
is actually so great and essential as it has been deemed, and does not
rather entail the sacrifice of still more essential beauties.
There is, however, another aspect of French Tragedy from which it cannot
appeal to the authority of the ancients: this is, the tying of poetry to a
number of merely conventional proprieties. On this subject the French are
far less clear than on that of the rules; for nations are not usually more
capable of knowing and appreciating themselves than individuals are. It
is, however, intimately connected with the spirit of French poetry in
general, nay, rather of their whole literature and the very language
itself. All this, in France, has been formed under the guardianship of
society, and, in its progressive development, has uniformly been guided
and determined by it--the guardianship of a society which zealously
imitated the tone of the capital, which again took its direction from the
reigning modes of a brilliant court. If, as there is indeed no difficulty
in proving, such be really the case, we may easily conceive why French
literature, of and since the age of Louis XIV., has been, and still is, so
well received in the upper ranks of society and the fashionable world
throughout Europe, whereas the body of the people, everywhere true to
their own customs and manners, have never shown anything like a cordial
liking for it. In this way, even in foreign countries, it again in some
measure finds the place of its birth.
The far-famed Three Unities, which have given rise to a whole Iliad of
critical wars, are the Unities of Action, Time, and Place.
The validity of the first is universally allowed, but the difficulty is to
agree about its true meaning; and, I may add, that it is no easy matter to
come to an understanding on the subject.
The Unities of Time and of Place are considered by some quite a
subordinate matter, while others lay the greatest stress upon them, and
affirm that out of the pale of them there is no safety for the dramatic
poet. In France this zeal is not confined merely to the learned world, but
seems to be shared by the whole nation in common. Every Frenchman who has
sucked in his Boileau with his mother's milk, considers himself a born
champion of the Dramatic Unities, much in the same way that the kings of
England since Henry VIII. are hereditary Defenders of the Faith.
It is amusing enough to see Aristotle driven perforce to lend his name to
these three Unities, whereas the only one of which he speaks with any
degree of fulness is the first, the Unity of Action. With respect to the
Unity of Time he merely throws out a vague hint; while of the Unity of
Place he says not a syllable.
I do not, therefore, find myself in a polemical relation to Aristotle, for
I by no means contest the Unity of Action properly understood: I only
claim a greater latitude with respect to place and time for many species
of the drama, nay, hold it essential to them. In order, however, that we
may view the matter in its true light, I must first say a few words on the
_Poetics_ of Aristotle, those few pages which have given rise to such
voluminous commentaries.
It is well established that this treatise is merely a fragment, for it
does not even touch upon many important matters. Several scholars have
even been of opinion, that it is not a fragment of the true original, but
of an abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one
point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is
very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by
conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly
complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in
turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot
approve their own to those who succeed them.
Very different is it with the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle. It is undoubtedly
genuine, perfect, and easily understood. But how does he there consider
the oratorical art? As a sister of Logic: for as this produces conviction
by its syllogism, so must Rhetoric in a kindred manner operate persuasion.
This is about the same as to consider architecture simply as the art of
building solidly and conveniently. This is, certainly, the first
requisite, but a great deal more is still necessary before we can consider
it as one of the fine arts. What we require of architecture is, that it
should combine these essential objects of an edifice with beauty of plan
and harmony of proportion, and give to the whole a correspondent
impression. Now when we see how Aristotle, without allowing for
imagination or feeling, has viewed oratory only on that side which is
accessible to the understanding, and is subservient to an external aim,
can it surprise us if that he has still less fathomed the mystery of
poetry, that art which is absolved from every other aim but its own
unconditional one of creating the beautiful by free invention and clothing
it in suitable language?--Already have I had the hardihood to maintain
this heresy, and hitherto I have seen no reason for retracting my opinion.
Lessing thought otherwise. But what if Lessing, with his acute analytical
criticism, split exactly on the same rock? This species of criticism is
completely victorious when it exposes the contradictions for the
understanding in works composed exclusively with the understanding; but it
could hardly rise to the idea of a work of art created by the true genius.
The philosophical theory of the fine arts collectively was, as a distinct
science, little cultivated among the ancients; of technical works on the
several arts individually, in which the means of execution were alone
considered, they had no lack. Were I to select a guide from among the
ancient philosophers, it should undoubtedly be Plato, who acquired the
idea of the beautiful not by dissection, which never can give it, but by
intuitive inspiration, and in whose works the germs of a genuine
Philosophy of Art, are every where scattered.
Let us now hear what Aristotle says on the Unity of Action.
"We affirm that Tragedy is the imitation of a perfect and entire action
which has a certain magnitude: for there may be a whole without any
magnitude whatever. Now a whole is what has a beginning, middle, and end.
A beginning is that which is not necessarily after some other thing, but
that which from its nature has something after it, or arising out of it.
An end, on the other hand, is that which from its nature is after
something else, either necessarily, or usually, but after which there is
nothing, A middle, what is itself after some other thing, and after which
also there is something. Hence poems which are properly composed must
neither begin nor end accidentally, but according to the principles above
laid down."
Strictly speaking, it is a contradiction in terms to say that a whole,
which has parts, can be without magnitude. But Aristotle goes on to state,
in explanation, that by "magnitude" as a requisition of beauty, he means,
a certain measure which is neither so small as to preclude us from
distinguishing its parts, nor so extensive as to prevent us from taking
the whole in at one view. This is, therefore, merely an external
definition of the beautiful, derived from experience, and founded on the
quality of our organs of sense and our powers of comprehension. However,
his application of it to the drama is remarkable. "It must have an
extension, but such as may easily be taken in by the memory. The
determination of the length according to the wants of the representation,
does not come within the province of Art. With respect to the essence of
the thing, the composition will be the more beautiful the more extensive
it is without prejudice to its comprehensibility." This assertion would be
highly favourable for the compositions of Shakspeare and of other romantic
poets, who have included in one picture a more extensive circle of life,
characters, and events, than is to be found in the simple Greek tragedy,
if only we could show that they have given it the necessary unity, and
such a magnitude as can be clearly taken in at a view, and this we have no
hesitation in affirming to be actually the case.
In another place Aristotle requires the same unity of action from the epic
as from the dramatic poet; he repeats the preceding definitions, and says
that the poet must not resemble the historian, who relates contemporary
events, although they have no bearing on one another. Here we have still a
more express demand of that connexion of cause and effect between the
represented events, which before, in his explanation of the parts of a
whole, was at most implied. He admits, however, that the epic poet may
take in a much greater number of events connected with one main action,
since the narrative form enables him to describe many things as going on
at the same time; on the other hand, the dramatic poet cannot represent
several simultaneous actions, but only so much as is going on upon the
stage, and the part which the persons who appear there take in one action.
But what if a different construction of the scene, and a more skilful
theatric perspective, should enable the dramatic poet, duly and without
confusion, although in a more compressed space, to develope a fable not
inferior in extent to the epic poem? Where would be the objection, if the
only obstacle were the supposed impossibility?
This is nearly all that is to be found in the _Poetics_ of Aristotle
on Unity of Action. A short investigation will serve to show how very much
these anatomical ideas, which have been stamped as rules, are below the
essential requisites of poetry.
Unity of Action is required. What is action? Most critics pass over this
point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification,
action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist
in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all
that lies between the first determination and the execution of the deed.
This idea of action is applicable to many tragedies of the ancients (for
instance, Orestes' murder of his mother, Oedipus' determination to
discover and punish the murderer of Laius), but by no means to all; still
less does it apply to the greater part of modern tragedies, at least if
the action is to be sought in the principal characters. What comes to pass
through them, and proceeds with them, has frequently no more connexion
with a voluntary determination, than a ship's striking on a rock in a
storm. But further, in the term action, as understood by the ancients, we
must include the resolution to bear the consequences of the deed with
heroic magnanimity, and the execution of this determination will belong to
its completion. The pious resolve of Antigone to perform the last duties
to her unburied brother is soon executed and without difficulty; but
genuineness, on which alone rests its claim to be a fit subject for a
tragedy, is only subsequently proved when, without repentance, and without
any symptoms of weakness, she suffers death as its penalty. And to take an
example from quite a different sphere, is not Shakspeare's _Julius
Caesar_, as respects the action, constructed on the same principle?
Brutus is the hero of the piece; the completion of his great resolve does
not consist in the mere assassination of Caesar (an action ambiguous in
itself, and of which the motives might have been ambition and jealousy),
but in this, that he proves himself the pure champion of Roman liberty, by
the calm sacrifice of his amiable life.
Farther, there could be no complication of the plot without opposition,
and this arises mostly out of the contradictory motives and views of the
acting personages. If, therefore, we limit the notion of an action to the
determination and the deed, then we shall, in most cases, have two or
three actions in a single tragedy. Which now is the principal action?
Every person thinks his own the most important, for every man is his own
central point. Creon's determination to maintain his kingly authority, by
punishing the burial of Polynices with death, is equally fixed with
Antigone's determination, equally important, and, as we see at the end,
not less dangerous, as it draws after it the ruin of his whole house. It
may be perhaps urged that the merely negative determination is to be
considered simply as the complement of the affirmative. But what if each
determines on something not exactly opposite, but altogether different? In
the _Andromache_ of Bacine, Orestes wishes to move Hermione to return
his love; Hermione is resolved to compel Pyrrhus to marry her, or she will
be revenged on him; Pyrrhus wishes to be rid of Hermione, and to be united
to Andromache; Andromache is desirous of saving her son, and at the same
time remaining true to the memory of her husband. Yet nobody ever
questioned the unity of this piece, as the whole has a common connexion,
and ends with one common catastrophe. But which of the actions of the four
persons is the main action? In strength of passion, their endeavours are
pretty nearly equal--in all the whole happiness of life is at stake; the
action of Andromache has, however, the advantage in moral dignity, and
Racine was therefore perfectly right in naming the piece after her.
We see here a new condition in the notion of action, namely, the reference
to the idea of moral liberty, by which alone man is considered as the
original author of his own resolutions. For, considered within the
province of experience, the resolution, as the beginning of action, is not
a cause merely, but is also an effect of antecedent motives. It was in
this reference to a higher idea, that we previously found the _unity_
and _wholeness_ of Tragedy in the sense of the ancients; namely, its
absolute beginning is the assertion of Free-will, and the acknowledgment
of Necessity its absolute end. But we consider ourselves justified in
affirming that Aristotle was altogether a stranger to this view; he
nowhere speaks of the idea of Destiny as essential to Tragedy. In fact, we
must not expect from him a strict idea of action as a resolution and deed.
He says somewhere--"The extent of a tragedy is always sufficiently great,
if, by a series of probable or necessary consequences, a reverse from
adversity to prosperity, or from happiness to misery, is brought about."
It is evident, therefore, that he, like all the moderns, understood by
_action_ something merely that takes place. This action, according to
him, must have beginning, middle, and end, and consequently consist of a
plurality of connected events. But where are the limits of this plurality?
Is not the concatenation of causes and effects, backwards and forwards,
without end? and may we then, with equal propriety, begin and break off
wherever we please? In this province, can there be either beginning or
end, corresponding to Aristotle's very accurate definition of these
notions? Completeness would therefore be altogether impossible. If,
however, for the unity of a plurality of events nothing more is requisite
than casual connexion, then this rule is indefinite in the extreme, and
the unity admits of being narrowed or enlarged at pleasure. For every
series of incidents or actions, which are occasioned by each other,
however much it be prolonged, may always be comprehended under a single
point of view, and denoted by a single name. When Calderon in a single
drama describes the conversion of Peru to Christianity, from its very
beginning (that is, from the discovery of the country) down to its
completion, and when nothing actually occurs in the piece which had not
some influence on that event, does he not give us as much Unity in the
above sense as the simplest Greek tragedy, which, however, the champions
of Aristotle's rules will by no means allow?
Corneille was well aware of the difficulty of a proper definition of
unity, as applicable to an inevitable plurality of subordinate actions;
and in this way did he endeavour to get rid of it. "I assume," says he,
"that in Comedy, Unity of Action consists in Unity of the Intrigue; that
is, of the obstacles raised to the designs of the principal persons; and
in Tragedy, in the unity of the danger, whether the hero sinks under, or
extricates himself from it. By this, however, I do not mean to assert that
several dangers in Tragedy, and several intrigues or obstacles in Comedy,
may not be allowable, provided only that the personage falls necessarily
from one into the other; for then the escape from the first danger does
not make the action complete, for it draws a second after it, as also the
clearing up of one intrigue does not place the acting persons at their
ease, because it involves them in another."
In the first place the difference here assumed between tragic and comic
Unity is altogether unessential. For the manner of putting the play
together is not influenced by the circumstance, that the incidents in
Tragedy are more serious, as affecting person and life; the embarrassment
of the characters in Comedy when they cannot accomplish their design and
intrigues, may equally be termed a danger. Corneille, like most others,
refers all to the idea of connexion between cause and effect. No doubt
when the principal persons, either by marriage or death, are set at rest,
the drama comes to a close; but if nothing more is necessary to its Unity
than the uninterrupted progress of an opposition, which serves to keep up
the dramatic movement, simplicity will then come but poorly off: for,
without violating this rule of Unity, we may go on to an almost endless
accumulation of events, as in the _Thousand and One Nights_, where
the thread of the story is never once broken.
De la Motte, a French author, who wrote against the Unities in general,
would substitute for Unity of action, the _Unity of interest_. If the
term be not confined to the interest in the destinies of some single
personage, but is taken to mean in general the direction which the mind
takes at the sight of an event, this explanation, so understood, seems
most satisfactory and very near the truth.
But we should derive but little advantage from groping about empirically
with the commentators on Aristotle. The idea of _One_ and _Whole_ is in no
way whatever derived from experience, but arises out of the primary and
spontaneous activity of the human mind. To account for the manner in which
we in general arrive at this idea, and come to think of one and a whole,
would require nothing short of a system of metaphysics.
The external sense perceives in objects only an indefinite plurality of
distinguishable parts; the judgment, by which we comprehend these into an
entire and perfect unity, is in all cases founded on a reference to a
higher sphere of ideas. Thus, for example, the mechanical unity of a watch
consists in its aim of measuring time; this aim, however, exists only for
the understanding, and is neither visible to the eye, nor palpable to the
touch: the organic unity of a plant or an animal consists in the idea of
life; but the inward intuition of life, which, in itself uncorporeal,
nevertheless manifests itself through the medium of the corporeal world,
is brought by us to the observation of the individual living object,
otherwise we could not obtain it from that object.
The separate parts of a work of art, and (to return to the question before
us,) the separate parts, consequently, of a tragedy, must not be taken in
by the eye and ear alone, but also comprehended by the understanding.
Collectively, however, they are all subservient to one common aim, namely,
to produce a joint impression on the mind. Here, therefore, as in the
above examples, the Unity lies in a higher sphere, in the feeling or in
the reference to ideas. This is all one; for the feeling, so far as it is
not merely sensual and passive, is our sense, our organ for the Infinite,
which forms itself into ideas for us.
Far, therefore, from rejecting the law of a perfect Unity in Tragedy as
unnecessary, I require a deeper, more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity
than that with which most critics are satisfied. This Unity I find in the
tragical compositions of Shakspeare, in as great perfection as in those of
Aeschylus and Sophocles; while, on the contrary, I do not find it in many
of those tragedies which nevertheless are lauded as correct by the critics
of the dissecting school.
Logical coherence, the causal connexion, I hold to be equally essential to
Tragedy and every serious drama, because all the mental powers act and
react upon each other, and if the Understanding be compelled to take a
leap, Imagination and Feeling do not follow the composition with equal
alacrity. But unfortunately the champions of what is called regularity
have applied this rule with a degree of petty subtlety, which can have no
other effect than that of cramping the poet, and rendering true excellence
impossible.
We must not suppose that the order of sequences in a tragedy resembles a
slender thread, of which we are every moment in anxious dread lest it
should snap. This simile is by no means applicable, for it is admitted
that a plurality of subordinate actions and interests is inevitable; but
rather let us suppose it a mighty stream, which in its impetuous course
overcomes many obstructions, and loses itself at last in the repose of the
ocean. It springs perhaps from different sources, and certainly receives
into itself other rivers, which hasten towards it from opposite regions.
Why should not the poet be allowed to carry on several, and, for a while,
independent streams of human passions and endeavours, down to the moment
of their raging junction, if only he can place the spectator on an
eminence from whence he may overlook the whole of their course? And if
this great and swollen body of waters again divide into several branches,
and pour itself into the sea by several mouths, is it not still one and
the same stream?
So much for the Unity of Action. With respect to the Unity of Time, we
find in Aristotle no more than the following passage: "Moreover, the Epos
is distinguished from Tragedy by its length: for the latter seeks as far
as possible to circumscribe itself within one revolution of the sun, or to
exceed it but little; the Epos is unlimited in point of time, and in that
respect differs from Tragedy. At first, however, the case was in this
respect alike in tragedies and epic poems."
We may in the first place observe that Aristotle is not giving a precept
here, but only making historical mention of a peculiarity which he
observed in the Grecian examples before him. But what if the Greek
tragedians had particular reasons for circumscribing themselves within
this extent of time, which with the constitution of our theatres no longer
exist? We shall immediately see that this was really the case.
Corneille with great reason finds the rule extremely inconvenient; he
therefore prefers the more lenient interpretation, and says, "he would not
scruple to extend the duration of the action even to thirty hours."
Others, however, most rigorously insist on the principle that the action
should not occupy a longer period than that of its representation, that is
to say, from two to three hours.--The dramatic poet must, according to
them, be punctual to his hour. In the main, the latter plead a sounder
cause than the more lenient critics. For the only ground of the rule is
the observation of a probability which they suppose to be necessary for
illusion, namely, that the actual time and that of the representation
should be the same. If once a discrepancy be allowed, such as the
difference between two hours and thirty, we may upon the same principle go
much farther. This idea of illusion has occasioned great errors in the
theory of art. By this term there has often been understood the
unwittingly erroneous belief that the represented action is reality. In
that case the terrors of Tragedy would be a true torture to us, they would
be like an Alpine load on the fancy. No, the theatrical as well as every
other poetical illusion, is a waking dream, to which we voluntarily
surrender ourselves. To produce it, the poet and actors must powerfully
agitate the mind, and the probabilities of calculation do not in the least
contribute towards it. This demand of literal deception, pushed to the
extreme, would make all poetic form impossible; for we know well that the
mythological and historical persons did not speak our language, that
impassioned grief does not express itself in verse, &c. What an unpoetical
spectator were he who, instead of following the incidents with his
sympathy, should, like a gaoler, with watch or hour-glass in hand, count
out to the heroes of the tragedy, the minutes which they still have to
live and act! Is our soul then a piece of clock-work, that tells the hours
and minutes with infallible accuracy? Has it not rather very different
measures of time for agreeable occupation and for wearisomeness? In the
one case, under an easy and varied activity, the hours fly apace; in the
other, while we feel all our mental powers clogged and impeded, they are
stretched out to an immeasurable length. Thus it is during the present,
but in memory quite the reverse: the interval of dull and empty uniformity
vanishes in a moment; while that which marks an abundance of varied
impressions grows and widens in the same proportion. Our body is subjected
to external astronomical time, because the organical operations are
regulated by it; but our mind has its own ideal time, which is no other
but the consciousness of the progressive development of our beings. In
this measure of time the intervals of an indifferent inactivity pass for
nothing, and two important moments, though they lie years apart, link
themselves immediately to each other. Thus, when we have been intensely
engaged with any matter before we fell asleep, we often resume the very
same train of thought the instant we awake and the intervening dreams
vanish into their unsubstantial obscurity. It is the same with dramatic
exhibition: our imagination overleaps with ease the times which are
presupposed and intimated, but which are omitted because nothing important
takes place in them; it dwells solely on the decisive moments placed
before it, by the compression of which the poet gives wings to the lazy
course of days and hours.
But, it will be objected, the ancient tragedians at least observed the
Unity of Time. This expression is by no means precise; it should at least
be the identity of the imaginary with the material time. But even then it
does not apply to the ancients: what they observe is nothing but the
_seeming_ continuity of time. It is of importance to attend to this
distinction--the seeming; for they unquestionably allow much more to take
place during the choral songs than could really happen within their actual
duration. Thus the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus comprises the whole interval,
from the destruction of Troy to his arrival in Mycenae, which, it is
plain, must have consisted of a very considerable number of days; in
the _Trachiniae_ of Sophocles, during the course of the play, the voyage
from Thessaly to Euboea is thrice performed; and again, in the _Supplices_
of Euripides, during a single choral one, the _entire_ march of an army
from Athens to Thebes is supposed to take place, a battle to be fought,
and the General to return victorious. So far were the Greeks from this
sort of minute and painful calculations! They had, however, a particular
reason for observing the seeming continuity of time in the constant
presence of the Chorus. When the Chorus leaves the stage, the continuous
progress is interrupted; of this we have a striking instance in the
_Eumenides_ of Aeschylus, where the whole interval is omitted which was
necessary to allow Orestes to proceed from Delphi to Athens. Moreover,
between the three pieces of a trilogy, which were acted consecutively, and
were intended to constitute a whole, there were saps of time as
considerable as those between the three acts of many a Spanish drama.
The moderns have, in the division of their plays into acts, which,
properly speaking, were unknown to Greek Tragedy, a convenient means of
extending the period of representation without any ill effect. For the
poet may fairly reckon so far on the spectator's imagination as to presume
that during the entire suspension of the representation, he will readily
conceive a much longer interval to have elapsed than that which is
measured by the rhythmical time of the music between the acts; otherwise
to make it appear the more natural to him, it might be as well to invite
him to come and see the next act to-morrow. The division into acts had its
origin with the New Comedy, in consequence of the exclusion of the chorus.
Horace prescribes the condition of a regular play, that it should have
neither more nor less than five acts. The rule is so unessential, that
Wieland thought Horace was here laughing at the young Pisos in urging a
precept like this with such solemnity of tone as if it were really of
importance. If in the ancient Tragedy we may mark it as the conclusion of
an act wherever the stage remains empty, and the chorus is left alone to
proceed with its dance and ode, we shall often have fewer than five acts,
but often also more than five. As an observation that in a representation,
between two or three hours long, such a number of rests are necessary for
the attention, it may be allowed to pass. But, considered in any other
light, I should like to hear a reason for it, grounded on the nature of
Dramatic Poetry, why a drama must have so many and only so many divisions.
But the world is governed by prescription and tradition: a smaller number
of acts has been tolerated; to transgress the consecrated number of five
[Footnote: Three unities, five acts: why not seven persons? These rules
seem to proceed according to odd numbers.] is still considered a dangerous
and atrocious profanation.
As a general rule, the division into acts seems to me erroneous, when, as
is so often the case in modern plays, nothing takes place in the intervals
between them, and when the persons at the beginning of the new act are
exhibited in exactly the same situation as at the close of the foregoing
one. And yet this stand-still has given much less offence than the
assumption of a considerable interval, or of incidents omitted in the
representation, because the former is merely a negative error.
The romantic poets take the liberty even of changing the scene during the
course of an act. As the stage is always previously left empty, these also
are such interruptions of the continuity, as would warrant them in the
assumption of as many intervals. If we stumble at this, but admit the
propriety of a division into acts, we have only to consider these changes
of scene in the light of a greater number of short acts. But then, it will
perhaps be objected, this is but justifying one error by another, the
violation of the Unity of Time by the violation of the Unity of Place: we
shall, therefore, proceed to examine more at length how far the last-
mentioned rule is indispensable.
In vain, as we have already said, shall we look to Aristotle for any
opinion on this subject. It is asserted that the rule was observed by the
ancients. Not always, only generally. Of seven plays by Aeschylus, and the
same number by Sophocles, there are two, the _Eumenides_ and the _Ajax_,
in which the scene is changed. That they generally retain the same scene
follows naturally from the constant presence of the chorus, which must be
got rid of by some suitable device before there can be a change of place.
And then, again, it must not be forgotten, that their scene represented a
much wider extent than in most cases ours does; not a mere room, but the
open space before several buildings: and the disclosing the interior of a
house by means of the encyclema, may be considered in the same light as
the drawing a back curtain on our stage.
The objection to the change of scene is founded on the same erroneous idea
of illusion which we have already discussed. To transfer the action to
another place would, it is urged, dispel the illusion. But now if we are
in reality to consider the imaginary for the actual place, then must stage
decoration and scenery be altogether different from what it now is.
[Footnote: It is calculated merely for a single point of view: seen from
every other point, the broken lines betray the imperfection of the
imitation. Even as to the architectural import, so little attention do the
audience in general pay to these niceties, that they are not even shocked
when the actors enter and disappear through a wall without a door, between
the side scenes.] Johnson, a critic who, in general, is an advocate for
the strict rules, very justly observes, that if our imagination once goes
the length of transporting us eighteen hundred years back to Alexandria,
in order to figure to ourselves the story of Antony and Cleopatra as
actually taking place before us, the next step, of transporting ourselves
from Alexandria to Rome, is easier. The capability of our mind to fly in
thought, with the rapidity of lightning, through the immensity of time and
space, is well known and acknowledged in common life; and shall poetry,
whose very purpose it is to add all manner of wings to our mind, and which
has at command all the magic of genuine illusion, that is, of a lively and
enrapturing fiction, be alone compelled to renounce this universal
prerogative?
Voltaire wishes to derive the Unity of Place and Time from the Unity of
Action, but his reasoning is shallow in the extreme. "For the same
reason," says he, "the Unity of Place is essential, because no one action
can go on in several places at once." But still, as we have already seen,
several persons necessarily take part in the one principal action, since
it consists of a plurality of subordinate actions, and what should hinder
these from proceeding in different places at the same time? Is not the
same war frequently carried on simultaneously in Europe and India; and
must not the historian recount alike in his narrative the events which
take place on both these scenes?
"The Unity of Time," he adds, "is naturally connected with the two first.
If the poet represents a conspiracy, and extends the action to fourteen
days, he must account to me for all that takes place in these fourteen
days." Yes, for all that belongs to the matter in hand; all the rest,
being extraneous to it, he passes over in silence, as every good
storyteller would, and no person ever thinks of the omission. "If,
therefore, he places before me the events of fourteen days, this gives at
least fourteen different actions, however small they may be." No doubt, if
the poet were so unskilful as to wind off the fourteen days one after
another with visible precision; if day and night are just so often to come
and go and the characters to go to bed and get up again just so many
times. But the clever poet thrusts into the background all the intervals
which are connected with no perceptible progress in the action, and in his
picture annihilates all the pauses of absolute stand-still, and contrives,
though with a rapid touch, to convey an accurate idea of the period
supposed to have elapsed. But why is the privilege of adopting a much
wider space between the two extremes of the piece than the material time
of the representation important to the dramatist, and even indispensable
to him in many subjects? The example of a conspiracy given by Voltaire
comes in here very opportunely.
A conspiracy plotted and executed in two hours is, in the first place, an
incredible thing. Moreover, with reference to the characters of the
personages of the piece, such a plot is very different from one in which
the conceived purpose, however dangerous, is silently persevered in by all
the parties for a considerable time. Though the poet does not admit this
lapse of time into his exhibition immediately, in the midst of the
characters, as in a mirror, he gives us as it were a perspective view of
it. In this sort of perspective Shakspeare is the greatest master I know:
a single word frequently opens to view an almost interminable vista of
antecedent states of mind. Confined within the narrow limits of time, the
poet is in many subjects obliged to mutilate the action, by beginning
close to the last decisive stroke, or else he is under the necessity of
unsuitably hurrying on its progress: on either supposition he must reduce
within petty dimensions the grand picture of a strong purpose, which is no
momentary ebullition, but a firm resolve undauntedly maintained in the
midst of all external vicissitudes, till the time is ripe for its
execution. It is no longer what Shakspeare has so often painted, and what
he has described in the following lines:--
Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius, and the mortal instruments,
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
But why are the Greek and romantic poets so different in their practice
with respect to place and time? The spirit of our criticism will not allow
us to follow the practice of many critics, who so summarily pronounce the
latter to be barbarians. On the contrary, we conceive that they lived in
very cultivated times, and were themselves highly cultivated men. As to
the ancients, besides the structure of their stage, which, as we have
already said, led naturally to the seeming continuity of time and to the
absence of change of scene, their observance of this practice was also
favoured by the nature of the materials on which the Grecian dramatist had
to work. These materials were mythology, and, consequently, a fiction,
which, under the handling of preceding poets, had collected into
continuous and perspicuous masses, what in reality was detached and
scattered about in various ways. Moreover, the heroic age which they
painted was at once extremely simple in its manners, and marvellous in its
incidents; and hence everything of itself went straight to the mark of a
tragic resolution.
But the principal cause of the difference lies in the plastic spirit of
the antique, and the picturesque spirit of the romantic poetry. Sculpture
directs our attention exclusively to the group which it sets before us, it
divests it as far as possible from all external accompaniments, and where
they cannot be dispensed with, it indicates them as slightly as possible.
Painting, on the other hand, delights in exhibiting, along with the
principal figures, all the details of the surrounding locality and all
secondary circumstances, and to open a prospect into a boundless distance
in the background; and light and shade with perspective are its peculiar
charms. Hence the Dramatic, and especially the Tragic Art, of the
ancients, annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space
and time; while, by their changes, the romantic drama adorns its more
varied pictures. Or, to express myself in other terms, the principle of
the antique poetry is ideal; that of the romantic is mystical: the former
subjects space and time to the internal free-agency of the mind; the
latter honours these incomprehensible essences as supernatural powers, in
which there is somewhat of indwelling divinity.