peoples unacquainted with our habits--but among ourselves, and in
ourselves, that we must seek the conditions and necessities of
dramatic poetry. Differing in this respect from other arts, in
addition to the absolute rules imposed upon it, as on all others,
by the unchangeable nature of man, dramatic art has relative
rules which flow from the changeful state of society. In
imitating the antique style, modern statuaries labor under no
other constraint but the difficulty of equaling its perfection;
and the most fervent and powerful adorer of antiquity would not
venture to reproduce, even upon the most submissive stage, all
that he admires in a tragedy of Sophocles.
{125}
It is easy to discern the cause of this. When contemplating a
statue or a picture, the spectator receives at first, from the
sculptor or the painter, the first impression which occurs to
him; but it rests with himself to continue the work. He stops and
looks; his natural disposition, his recollections and thoughts,
group themselves around the leading idea which is presented to
his view, and gradually develop within him the ever-increasing
emotion which will soon hold entire dominion over him. The artist
has done nothing but awaken in the spectator the faculty of
conceiving and feeling; it takes hold of the movement which has
been communicated to it, follows it up in its own direction,
accelerates it by its own strength, and thus creates for itself
the pleasure which it enjoys. Before a picture of a martyrdom,
one person is moved by the expression of fervent piety, another
by the manifestation of resigned grief; some are filled with
indignation at the cruelty of the executioners. A tinge of
courageous satisfaction which is evident in the look of the
victim, reminds the patriot of the joys of devotion to a sacred
cause; and the soul of the philosopher is elevated by the
contemplation of man sacrificing himself for truth. The diversity
of these impressions is of little consequence; they are all
equally natural and equally free; each spectator chooses, as it
were, the feeling which suits him best, and when it has once
entered into his soul, no external fact can disturb its
supremacy, no movement can interrupt the course of that to which
every man yields himself according to his inclination.
{126}
In the prolonged course of dramatic action, on the contrary, all
becomes changed at every step, and each moment produces a new
impression. The painter is satisfied with establishing one first
and unvarying connection between his picture and the spectator.
The dramatic poet must incessantly renew this relation, and
maintain it through all the vicissitudes of the most various
positions. All the acts in which human existence is manifested,
all the forms which it assumes, and all the feelings which may
modify it during the continuance of an always complicated
event--these are the numerous and changeful objects which he
presents to the public view; and he is never allowed to separate
himself from his spectators, or to leave them for an instant
alone and at liberty; he must be incessantly acting upon them,
and must at every step excite in their souls emotions analogous
to the ever-changing position in which he has placed them. How
can he succeed in this, unless he carefully adapts himself to
their dispositions and inclinations; unless he supplies the
actual requirements of their mind; unless he addresses himself
constantly to ideas which are familiar to them, and speaks to
them in the language which they are accustomed to hear? Passion
will not appear to us so touching if it be displayed in a manner
contrary to our habits; and sympathy will not be awakened with
the same vivacity in regard to interests of which we have ceased
to be personally conscious. The necessity for appeasing the gods
by a human sacrifice does not, in our mind, give that force to
the speeches of Menelaus which it would have imparted to them
among the Greeks, who were attached to their faith: the stern
chastity of Hippolytus does not interest us in his fate: and
virtue itself, in order to obtain from us that affectionate
reverence which it has a right to expect, needs to connect itself
with duties which our habits have taught us to respect and
cherish.
{127}
Subject, therefore, at once to the conditions of the arts of
imitation and to those of the purely poetical arts; bound, like
epic poetry in its narratives, to set human life in motion; and
called upon, like painting and sculpture, to present in its
person and under its individual features--the dramatic poet is
obliged to include, within the probabilities of one action, all
the means which he requires to make it understood. His characters
can only tell us what they would say if they were actually there,
really occupied with the fact which they represent. The epic
poet, as it were, does the honors, to his readers, of the edifice
into which he introduces them; he accompanies them with his own
speeches, assists them by his explanations, and, by the
description of manners, times, and places, prepares them for the
scene which he is about to disclose to their view, and opens to
them in every sense the world into which he is desirous to
transport them, and himself also. The dramatic personage comes
forward alone, concerned with himself only; he places himself,
without preliminary explanation, in communication with the
spectator; and without calling or guiding them, he must make his
audience follow him. Thus separated from one another, how can
they succeed in coming into connection, unless a profound and
general analogy already exists between them? Evidently those
heroes, who do nothing for the public but speak and feel in their
presence, will be understood and received by them only so far as
they coincide with them in their mode of conceiving, feeling, and
speaking; and dramatic effect can result only from their aptitude
to unite in the same impressions.
{128}
The impressions of man communicated to man--this is, in fact, the
sole source of dramatic effects. Man alone is the subject of the
drama; man alone is its theatre. His soul is the stage upon which
the events of this world come to play their part; it is not by
their own virtue, but merely by their relations to the moral
being whose destiny occupies our attention, that events take part
in the action; every dramatic character abandons them as soon as
they aspire to exercise a direct influence over us, instead of
acting by the intermediary of a visible person, and by means of
the emotion which we receive, in our turn, from the emotion which
they have excited in him. Why is the narrative of Theramenes
epic, and not dramatic? Because he addresses himself to the
spectator, and not to Theseus. Theseus, being already aware of
his son's death, is no longer capable of experiencing the
impressions occasioned by the narrative; and if, while still in
uncertainty, he were only to arrive at a knowledge of his
misfortune through the anguish of such a recital, the poetical
ornaments with which it is, perhaps, overloaded would not prevent
it from being dramatic, for the impressions which it produces
would be to us those of a person interested in the result: we
should be conscious of them in the heart of Theseus.
In the heart of man alone can the dramatic fact take place; the
event which is its occasion does not constitute it. The death of
the lover is rendered dramatic by the grief of his mistress--the
danger of the son by the terror of his mother; and however
horrible may be the idea of the murder of a child, Andromache
inspires us with greater solicitude than Astyanax. An earthquake
and the physical convulsions which accompany it will furnish only
a spectacle for contemplation, or the subject of an epic
narrative; but the rain is dramatic upon the bald head of old
Lear, and especially in the heart of his companions, racked by
the pity which they feel for him.
{129}
The apparition of a spectre would have no effect upon the
audience unless some one on the stage were alarmed by it; and to
produce the dramatic effect of Lady Macbeth's somnambulism,
Shakspeare has taken care that it should be witnessed by a
physician and a waiting-woman, whom he has employed to transmit
to us the terrible impressions which it produces upon themselves.
Thus man alone occupies the stage; his existence is displayed
upon it, animated and aggrandized by the events which are
connected with it, and which owe their theatrical character to
this connection alone. In comedy, events, being of less magnitude
than the passion which they excite in man, derive a laughable
importance from this passion; in tragedy, being more powerful
than the means which man has at his disposal, they move us by the
exhibition of his grandeur and his weakness. The comic poet
invents them freely, for his art consists in originating, in man
himself and his absurdities, those events by which man is
agitated. This invention is rarely a merit in the tragic poet,
for his work is to discern and exhibit man and his soul in the
midst of the events to which he is subjected. If it be generally
requisite that the subject of tragedy should be taken from the
history of the great and powerful, it is because the strong
impressions which it aims at producing upon us can only be
communicated to us by strong characters, incapable of succumbing
beneath the blows of an ordinary destiny. It is in the
development of high fortune and its terrible vicissitudes that
the whole man appears, with all the wealth and energy of his
nature. Thus the spectacle of the world, concentrated in an
individual, is revealed to us upon the stage; thus, by the medium
of the soul which receives their impress, events reach us through
sympathy, the source of dramatic illusion.
{130}
If material illusion were the aim of the arts, the wax-figures of
Curtius would surpass all the statues of antiquity, and a
panorama would be the ultimate effort of painting. If their
object were to impose upon the reason, and to impart to the
imagination a shock sufficiently powerful to pervert the judgment
to such a degree that a theatrical representation could be taken
for the accomplishment of a real and actual fact, a very few
scenes would suffice to work up the spectators to such a pitch of
excitement that its effect would soon be to interrupt the
performance by the violence of their emotions. If even it were
desired that, in presence of objects imitated by art of any kind,
the soul, affected at least by the reality of the impressions
which it receives from them, should really experience those
feelings of which the image is produced in it by a fictitious
representation, the labor of genius would have succeeded only in
multiplying, in this world, the pains of life and the exhibition
of human miseries. These feelings, however, occupy and pervade
us, and on their existence depends the effect which the poet aims
to produce upon us. We must believe in them in order to yield to
them; and we could not believe in them unless we assigned to them
a cause worthy to awaken them. When our tears flow before
Raphael's picture of Christ bearing his cross, before we can
allow them to flow, we must believe that we bestow them upon that
sorrowful compassion which we should feel at really beholding
such dreadful sufferings.
{131}
If, in the emotions with which we are inspired by the sight of
Tancred dying on the stage, we did not think we could recognize
the emotions which we should feel for Tancred dying in reality,
we should be displeased with ourselves for indulging in a pity
which was not rendered legitimate by its application to sorrows
that at least were possible. And yet we deceive ourselves; that
which we then discern in our breasts is not that power which is
awakened at the aspect of the suffering of our fellows--a power
full of bitterness if reduced to inactivity, but full of activity
if it be allowed liberty and hope to render assistance. It is not
this power, but its shadow--the image of our features repeated
with striking accuracy, but without life, in a mirror. Moved at
the aspect of what we should be capable of experiencing, we give
up our imagination to it without having any demands to make upon
our will. No one is tormented with an irrepressible desire to
shout out to Tancred, Orosmane, or Othello, that they are
laboring under a mistake; no one suffers through not being able
to rush to the assistance of Gloster against the execrable Duke
of Cornwall. The unendurable painfulness of the position of the
spectators of such a scene is removed by the idea that it is
utterly unreal; an idea which is presented to our minds, and
which we retain without clearly perceiving its presence, because
we are absorbed by the contemplation of the more vivid
impressions which crowd upon our brain. If this idea were clearly
present to our thoughts, it would dissipate the whole
_cortège_ of illusions which surround us, and we should
summon it to our assistance to deaden their effect, if they
should change into a subject for real grief. Bat so long as the
spectator takes delight in forgetting it, art should studiously
avoid every thing that might remind him that the spectacle which
he contemplates is not real. Hence arises the necessity of
bringing all the parts of the performance into harmonious unison,
and of not diffusing unequally the force of the illusion, which
loses strength as soon, as it allows itself to be perceived.
{132}
This is what would happen if, at the moment when he is indulging
in feelings which are familiar to him, the spectator were
disconcerted by the presentation of forms of manners entirely
foreign to his experience. Hence also arises the necessity of
giving a certain amount of attention to the accessories not in
order to increase the illusion, but in order not to interfere
with it. The actor alone is expected to produce that moral
illusion which is aimed at by the drama. Where could we find
means equal to those which he possesses for so doing? What
imitation could stand beside his? What object in nature could be
so well represented as man, when it is man himself who represents
it? Let not dramatic art, therefore, seek assistance from other
imitations which are far inferior to that which man can offer it;
all that the machinist and the decorator have to do with the
moral illusion is to remove every thing that might injure its
effect. Perhaps even art would have reason to dread too great
efforts on their part to do it service; who can tell whether a
too brilliant magic of painting, employed to enhance the effect
of the decorations, would not weaken the dramatic effect by
diverting the attention to the enchantments of another art?
These accesssory imitations are dangerous auxiliaries, whether,
by their perfection, they usurp the effect to which they ought
merely to contribute, or whether they destroy it by their
inefficiency. In England, as we have seen, the early stage was
entirely unacquainted with the art of decoration, a recent homage
paid to probability, which becomes really useful to the dramatic
illusion when, without pretending to increase it, it simply
prevents it from having to surmount obstacles of too uncouth a
nature, and enables the mind of the spectator to picture to
itself with greater distinctness the position into which it is
required to transport itself.
{133}
Imaginations more susceptible than they were delicate, and more
easily affected than undeceived, had no need of that management
which is now demanded by a restless reason, incessantly occupied
in exercising surveillance over even our pleasures. Those
spectators, who exacted so little with regard to the decoration
of the theatre, exacted a great deal in reference to the material
movement of the scene; though indulgent to the insufficiency and
rudeness of theatrical imitations, they were fond of variety, and
scarcely perceived the improprieties which resulted therefrom.
Just as a man might, without diminishing their emotion, represent
to them the sensitive Ophelia or the delicate Desdemona, they
could see stationed at one end of the stage the cannon which was
to kill the Duke of Bedford at the opposite end, and this great
event did not strike them less forcibly on account of the poverty
of the arrangement; indeed, they could receive with all the force
of dramatic illusion the touching impression of the death of the
two Talbots on a field of battle, which was animated, by the
movements of four soldiers!
When the illusion becomes at once more difficult and more
necessary to imaginations less quickly seduced, and to minds less
easily amused, it is the study of art to remove every object that
might prove injurious to it; and, as the representation of
material objects becomes more perfect, it interferes less in the
action of the drama, which is almost exclusively reserved for
man, who alone can impart to it the appearance of reality. It was
to man that, notwithstanding the habits of his time, Shakspeare
felt that he must look for the production of this great effect.
The movement of the stage, which, before his time, had
constituted the chief interest of dramatic works, became in his
plays a simple accessory which the taste of his age did not allow
him to omit, and which, perhaps, his own taste did not require
him to sacrifice, but which he reduced to its true value.
{134}
It matters little, therefore, that, in his dramas, the moral
illusion may still be sometimes disturbed by the imperfect
representation of objects which theatrical imitation could not
compass; Shakspeare did not the less discern the true source of
this illusion, and did not seek the means of producing it
elsewhere.
He was equally well acquainted with its nature also; he felt that
an illusion of this kind, akin to no error of the senses or the
reason, but the simple result of a disposition of the soul, which
forgets all extraneous things in order to contemplate itself,
could only be sustained by the perpetual consent of the spectator
to the seduction which the poet is desirous to exercise over him,
and that this seductive influence must therefore be maintained
unintermittingly. Whatever might be the power of a dramatic
representation, it could not, from the outset, obtain a
sufficient hold upon us to deliver us over in a defenseless state
to all the feelings which will take possession of us in
proportion as we advance in the position in which it has placed
us. The imagination must lend itself gradually to this new
position, and the soul must accustom itself to it, and accept the
sway of the impressions which must arise from it, just as, when
we experience an unexpected piece of good or bad fortune, we
require some time to bring our feelings to a level with our fate.
But if, after having obtained our consent to this position, and
after having moved us by the impressions which accompany it, the
poet imprudently attempts to make us pass into a new position,
attended by new impressions, the work must be begun over again,
and will require all the more effort, because it will be
necessary to efface the traces of a work already accomplished.
{135}
Then the imagination becomes chilled and disturbed; the spectator
refuses to lend himself to a movement from which he is diverted
after having been desired to yield himself unresistingly to its
influence. The illusion vanishes, and with it the interest also;
for dramatic interest, in common with dramatic illusion, can only
be attached to impressions which are continued and renewed in one
and the same direction.
Unity of impression, that prime secret of dramatic art, was the
soul of Shakspeare's great conceptions, and the instinctive
object of his assiduous labor, just as it is the end of all the
rules invented by all systems. The exclusive partisans of the
classic system believed that it was impossible to attain unity of
impression, except by means of what are called the three unities.
Shakspeare attained it by other means. If the legitimacy of these
means were recognized, it would greatly diminish the importance
hitherto attributed to certain forms and rules, which are
evidently invested with an abusive authority, if art, in order to
accomplish its designs, does not need the restrictions which they
impose upon it, and which often deprive it of a portion of its
wealth.
The mobility of our imagination, the variety of our interests,
and the inconstancy of our inclinations, have given to times, and
even to places, a power which should not be lost sight of by the
poet who is desirous to make use of the affections of man in
order to excite the sympathy of his fellows. If he presents his
hero to them at intervals too widely distant in the duration of
his existence, they will inquire, "What has become of the man
whom we knew six months ago?" just as naturally as, when meeting
a friend six months after the occurrence of an event which has
plunged him into grief, we begin by inquiring discreetly into the
state of that grief which we once saw so painfully manifested,
for fear lest we should enter into communication with his soul
before we know what feeling we shall have to participate.
{136}
If compelled to give an account of the changes which have
occurred during the course of six months or a year, to spectators
who, only a short time previously, saw him disappear from the
stage, would not the tragic hero present a strange incongruity
with himself? would not the thread of his identity be broken?
and, far from feeling the same interest in him, should we not
have some difficulty in avowing him to be the same person?
From this condition of human nature has been derived the true
motive of the unities of time and place, which have often been
most preposterously founded upon a pretended necessity of
satisfying the reason by accommodating the duration of the real
action to that of the theatrical representation; as if the reason
could consent to believe that, during the interval of a few
minutes between the acts, the persons of the drama had passed
from evening to morning without having slept, or from morning to
evening without having eaten; and as if it were more easy to take
three hours for a day than for a week, or even for a month!
Nevertheless, it can not be denied that the mind feels a certain
repugnance to behold intervals of time and place disappear before
it, without its being able to account for their departure, or
receiving any modification from it. The more these intervals are
prolonged, the more does this discontent increase, for the mind
feels that many things are thus concealed from its knowledge of
which it is its province to dispose, and it would not like to be
told too often, as Crispin says to Géronte, "_C'est votre
lethargie_."
{137}
But these difficulties are not insurmountable by the skill of
art; if the mind becomes easily alarmed at that which, without
its consent, disturbs the settled habits of its character, it is
easy to make it forget them. Place it in view of the object
toward which you have succeeded in directing its desires, and, in
its forward spring to reach it, it will no longer care to measure
the space which you compel it to traverse. When reading an
interesting work, our strongly-excited attention transports us
without difficulty from one time to another; our thought
concentrates itself upon the event at which we expect to arrive,
and sees nothing in the interval which separates us from it; and
as it enables us to reach it, without having, as it were, changed
our place, we are scarcely conscious that we have been obliged to
change the time. When Claudius and Laertes have agreed together
upon the duel in which Hamlet is to be slain, between that moment
and the consummation of their plans we care little to know
whether two hours or a week have elapsed.