VI

We have spoken of the dramatic, and have desired to show that

its peculiar aesthetic experience arises out of the tension or

balance of emotion in the confrontation of opposing forces. If

this is a fruitful theory, it should throw light on the

distinction between the different forms of the drama, and on

the principal issues of that "Dispute over Tragedy" which is

always with us.

The possible results of a meeting of two forces are these.

Both forces, or one force, may be destroyed; or, short of

destruction, the two may melt into harmony, or one may give

way before the other. I think it may be said that these

alternatives represent the distinctions of Tragedy and Comedy.

When two aims are absolutely irreconcilable, and when the forces

tending to them are important,--that is, powerful,--there must

be somewhere destruction, and we have tragedy. When they are

reconcilable, if they are important, we have serious comedy;

when not important, or not envisaged as important, we have

light comedy. Thus Tragedy and Comedy are closely related,--

more closely than we are prone to think. In the words of the

late Professor Everett, in "Poetry, Comedy, and Duty:" "The

tragic is, like the comic, simply the incongruous. The great

Tragedy of Nature, which is called the Struggle for Existence,

results simply from a greater or less incongruousness between

any form of life and its surroundings....The comic is found

in an incongruous relation considered merely as to its FORM,

while the tragic is found in an incongruous relation taken as

to its reality." For this word incongruity I would substitute

collision or conflict. When there is no way out, we have

Tragedy; when there is a way out, we have Comedy. And when

things are taken superficially enough, there always is a way

out, for we can at least always agree to disagree. In any case,

the end of the conflict is a period, repose, unity. This seems

to be borne out by immediate introspection. The feelings with

which we come from a great tragedy or a great comedy are indeed

almost identical. The excitement, tension, sunk into repose,

are common to both; the satisfaction with a good ending is

strangely paralleled by our resignation to a bad one,--

significant of our real indifference to the fact, so long as

the Aesthetic Unity is reached.

In George Meredith's wonderful little essay on the Comic Spirit,

this view is rather remarkably confirmed. He has defined

Comedy as the contrast of the middle way, the way of common

sense, with our human vagaries, "Comme un point fixe fait

remarquer l'emportement des autres." Comedy, he says, teaches

the world to understand what ails it...."Comedy is the fountain

of sound sense," and again, "the use of the true comedy is to

awaken thoughtful laughter." "Men's future upon earth does

not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present

does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown,

affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic,

fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or

hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into

vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly,

plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their

professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws

binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they

offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or

moved with conceit, individually or in the bulk--the Spirit

overhead will look humorously malign and cast an oblique light

on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is

the Comic Spirit." The Comic Spirit is the just common sense,

the subconscious wisdom of the ages. There IS a golden mean,

the Comic Spirit shows it to us in the light of our flashing

laughter at the deviation therefrom. And because there is,

even the unreconciled--reconcilable--difference or conflict

is not serious. That is why true Comedy seems to find its

best field in a developed social life. The incongruities of

human nature hurt is they are pressed too deep, because they

are irreconcilable; they too quickly edge the tragic gulf.

But the incongruities of the conventional life do not hurt

when pressed. To change our metaphor, adjustment to the

middle way is here so easily credible and possible, that it

is the very hunting-ground for the Comic Spirit.

The reputed masterpiece of Moliere shows us Alceste and Celimene

in the end still at odds. But light-heartedness and sincerity

are not to common sense incompatible, and thus we are rightly

led up to the impasse by paths of laughter. Wherever the

middle way is divined, there is the possible entrance of the

Spirit of Comedy. It is certainly a detriment to the purely

Tragic effect of Pinero's greatest play, that the middle way,

the possibility of reconciliation, is shadowed forth in the

last word,--the cry of the stepdaughter of the Second Mrs.

Tanqueray, "If I had only been more merciful!" Dumas fils

would never have allowed that. He would have written his play

around that thought, and made it indeed a reconciling drama--

or he would have suppressed the cry. The end of Romeo and

Juliet--date I confess it?--has always hovered for me close

to that border which is not sublime. For the hapless lovers

missed all for want of a little common sense. There was naught

inevitable in their plight. I see the Comic Spirit leaning

across to stay the hand of the impetuous Romeo. Why not take

a moment's sober thought? she murmurs.

Tragedy ensues when there is no way out. It is not that ruin

or death for those in whom these forces are embodied is of the

essence of the situation; only that in the complete destruction

of a force or purpose when it has been embodied in a strong

desperate character, the death of that character is usually

involved. There is no solution but to cut the knot. The

tragic has been defined as "that quality of experience whereby,

in and through some serious collision, followed by fatal

catastrophe or inner ruin, something valuable in personality

becomes manifest, either as sublime or admirable in the hero,

or as triumph of an idea." But "Lear," "Macbeth," "Hamlet,"

"Oedipus King," "Othello," exist to contravene this view. No,

the tragic (in its first sense, in the sense derived from the

dramatic form from which it is named) is in the collision

itself; it is the profound and, to our vision, the irreconcilable

antagonism of different elements in life. And in life we

accept it because we must; we transcend it because, as moral

beings, we may. The sublime in actual tragic experience is the

reaction of the unconquerable Soul. In tragic literature

another appears. We are helped in transcending the essential

contradictions of life presented to us, because the conditions

of literature in "preparing" an event create for us the illusion

of volition, the acceptance of fate. And in the tragic drama,

to all these elements of the complex experience, there is added

the exaltation of the aesthetic "arrest," the tension of

confrontations.

The question of the "highest" or "most tragic" form of tragedy

seems to have been settled by general agreement. It has been

held that the tragic of the justified opposing force is the

more full of meaning and importance, for the reason that more

interesting and complex feelings are called into play on each

side than in the case of the unjustified opposing force. But

the definition of the tragic drama we have won seems further

to illuminate our undoubted preference for this type. We

demand aesthetically all that will make the confrontation,

the dramatic tension, more clearly felt; and we cannot realize

fully a side which should be unjustified. In such a play as

Maeterlinck's "Aglavaine and Selysette" there is no movement,

and even the conflict is subterranean; yet, as all the

characters are in their way noble, and in their way justified,

we find it among the most poignant of his plays. Nay, more,

in any situation the more nearly the conflict is shown to be

absolutely inevitable, arising out of the very nature of life

as we know it,--completely justified, or at least FELT as

inevitable on both sides,--the more are we shaken by the

distinctive tragic emotion. The conflict of duties to one's

self and to the world is the sharpest of tragedies. Luther,

as Freytag well shows, is a really tragic figure from the

moment when we conceive of the inner connection of his

intolerance with all that is good and great in his nature.

As the expression of such a conflict of impulses good in

themselves, "Magda" is a great tragedy than the "Joy of

Living;" "Ghosts" than "Hedda Gabler;" the story of "Francesca

Da Rimini" (I do not mean D'Annunzio's play) than "La Citta

Morta."

What, then, shall be said of the so-called tragic "Guilt," in

which the hero rushes on impiously to his doom? It is clear

that this question is closely related to the much-debated

"Greatness" of the tragic hero. If there is guilt, there must

be also greatness, to impress that side of the canvas on our

vision. It is, indeed, almost a quantitative problem.

Strength, energy, depth of passion, breadth of vision, power

and place, ravish our attention and our unconscious imitation.

What is lacking in extensity of associative reproduction must

be added in intensity. And, in fact, we find that it is the

giants who bear the tragic "Schuld." Hamlet is not guilty;

rather "one like ourselves," in Aristotle's phrase, and

therefore he need not be great. I agree with Volkelt's view

that even the traditional tremendous will of the tragic hero

may be dispensed with. No doubt it is most often strength

of will which brings out the original conflict. But that

conflict once given, as it is given, for example, in "Hamlet,"

the main point is to increase the weight of each side, which

can indeed be done by other elements of greatness. On the

other hand, I disagree with Volkelt's reason for thus

exempting will, which is, that the contrast feeling of "how

great a fall was there" may be given by other qualities in

the hero than that of will. As I have urged, it is not the

catastrophe which is of the tragic essence, and therefore

not for the sake of the catastrophe that we should marshal

our elements. The climax of tragedy and of our feeling is

in the deadlock of forces, and whatever is not absolutely

essential thereto may be done without.