several poetic forms. The epic, the ballad, the chanson de geste, the
forms of Provence and of Tuscany, all found their perfection by serving
particular societies. The forms of Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, served a
society different, and in some respects more civilized, than any of
these; and in the society of Ovid the drama as a form of art was
comparatively insignificant. Nevertheless, the drama is perhaps the most
permanent, is capable of greater variation and of expressing more varied
types of society, than any other. It varied considerably in England
alone; but when one day it was discovered lifeless, subsequent forms
which had enjoyed a transitory life were dead too. I am not prepared to
undertake the historical survey; but I should say that the poetic
drama’s autopsy was performed as much by Charles Lamb as by anyone else.
For a form is not wholly dead until it is known to be; and Lamb, by
exhuming the remains of dramatic life at its fullest, brought a
consciousness of the immense gap between present and past. It was
impossible to believe, after that, in a dramatic “tradition.” The
relation of Byron’s _English Bards_ and the poems of Crabbe to the work
of Pope was a continuous tradition; but the relation of _The Cenci_ to
the great English drama is almost that of a reconstruction to an
original. By losing tradition, we lose our hold on the present; but so
far as there was any dramatic tradition in Shelley’s day there was
nothing worth the keeping. There is all the difference between
preservation and restoration.
The Elizabethan Age in England was able to absorb a great quantity of
new thoughts and new images, almost dispensing with tradition, because
it had this great form of its own which imposed itself on everything
that came to it. Consequently, the blank verse of their plays
accomplished a subtlety and consciousness, even an intellectual power,
that no blank verse since has developed or even repeated; elsewhere this
age is crude, pedantic, or loutish in comparison with its contemporary
France or Italy. The nineteenth century had a good many fresh
impressions; but it had no form in which to confine them. Two men,
Wordsworth and Browning, hammered out forms for themselves—personal
forms, _The Excursion_, _Sordello_, _The Ring and the Book_, _Dramatic
Monologues_; but no man can invent a form, create a taste for it, and
perfect it too. Tennyson, who might unquestionably have been a
consummate master of minor forms, took to turning out large patterns on
a machine. As for Keats and Shelley, they were too young to be judged,
and they were trying one form after another.
These poets were certainly obliged to consume vast energy in this
pursuit of form, which could never lead to a wholly satisfying result.
There has only been one Dante; and, after all, Dante had the benefit of
years of practice in forms employed and altered by numbers of
contemporaries and predecessors; he did not waste the years of youth in
metric invention; and when he came to the _Commedia_ he knew how to
pillage right and left. To have, given into one’s hands, a crude form,
capable of indefinite refinement, and to be the person to see the
possibilities—Shakespeare was very fortunate. And it is perhaps the
craving for some such _donnée_ which draws us on toward the present
mirage of poetic drama.
But it is now very questionable whether there are more than two or three
in the present generation who are _capable_, the least little bit, of
benefiting by such advantages were they given. At most two or three
actually devote themselves to this pursuit of form for which they have
little or no public recognition. To create a form is not merely to
invent a shape, a rhyme or rhythm. It is also the realization of the
whole appropriate content of this rhyme or rhythm. The sonnet of
Shakespeare is not merely such and such a pattern, but a precise way of
thinking and feeling. The _framework_ which was provided for the
Elizabethan dramatist was not merely blank verse and the five-act play
and the Elizabethan playhouse; it was not merely the plot—for the poets
incorporated, remodelled, adapted or invented, as occasion suggested. It
was also the half-formed ὑλή, the “temper of the age” (an unsatisfactory
phrase), a preparedness, a habit on the part of the public, to respond
to particular stimuli. There is a book to be written on the commonplaces
of any great dramatic period, the handling of Fate or Death, the
recurrence of mood, tone, situation. We should see then just how
_little_ each poet had to do; only so much as would make a play his,
only what was really essential to make it different from anyone else’s.
When there is this economy of effort it is possible to have several,
even many, good poets at once. The great ages did not perhaps _produce_
much more talent than ours; but less talent was wasted.
Now in a formless age there is very little hope for the minor poet to do
anything worth doing; and when I say minor I mean very good poets
indeed: such as filled the Greek anthology and the Elizabethan
song-books; even a Herrick; but not merely second-rate poets, for Denham
and Waller have quite another importance, occupying points in the
development of a major form. When everything is set out for the minor
poet to do, he may quite frequently come upon some _trouvaille_, even in
the drama: Peele and Brome are examples. Under the present conditions,
the minor poet has too much to do. And this leads to another reason for
the incompetence of our time in poetic drama.
Permanent literature is always a presentation: either a presentation of
thought, or a presentation of feeling by a statement of events in human
action or objects in the external world. In earlier literature—to avoid
the word “classic”—we find both kinds, and sometimes, as in some of the
dialogues of Plato, exquisite combinations of both. Aristotle presents
thought, stripped to the essential structure, and he is a great
_writer_. The _Agamemnon_ or _Macbeth_ is equally a statement, but of
events. They are as much works of the “intellect” as the writings of
Aristotle. There are more recent works of art which have the same
quality of intellect in common with those of Æschylus and Shakespeare
and Aristotle: _Education Sentimentale_ is one of them. Compare it with
such a book as _Vanity Fair_ and you will see that the labour of the
intellect consisted largely in a purification, in keeping out a great
deal that Thackeray allowed to remain in; in refraining from reflection,
in putting into the statement enough to make reflection unnecessary. The
case of Plato is still more illuminating. Take the _Theœtetus_. In a few
opening words Plato gives a scene, a personality, a feeling, which
colour the subsequent discourse but do not interfere with it: the
particular setting, and the abstruse theory of knowledge afterwards
developed, co-operate without confusion. Could any contemporary author
exhibit such control?
In the nineteenth century another mentality manifested itself It is
evident in a very able and brilliant poem, Goethe’s _Faust_. Marlowe’s
Mephistopheles is a simpler creature than Goethe’s. But at least Marlowe
has, in a few words, concentrated him into a statement. He is there, and
(incidentally) he renders Milton’s Satan superfluous. Goethe’s demon
inevitably sends us back to Goethe. He embodies a philosophy. A creation
of art should not do that: he should _replace_ the philosophy. Goethe
has not, that is to say, sacrificed or consecrated his thought to make
the drama; the drama is still a means. And this type of mixed art has
been repeated by men incomparably smaller than Goethe. We have had one
other remarkable work of this type: _Peer Gynt_. And we have had the
plays of M. Maeterlinck and M. Claudel.[5]
Footnote 5:
I should except _The Dynasts_. This gigantic panorama is hardly to be
called a success, but it is essentially an attempt to present a
vision, and “sacrifices” the philosophy to the vision, as all great
dramas do. Mr. Hardy has apprehended his matter as a poet and an
artist.
In the work of Maeterlinck and Claudel on the one hand, and those of M.
Bergson on the other, we have the mixture of the genres in which our age
delights. Every work of imagination must have a philosophy; and every
philosophy must be a work of art—how often have we heard that M. Bergson
is an artist! It is a boast of his disciples. It is what the word “art”
means to them that is the disputable point. Certain works of philosophy
can be called works of art: much of Aristotle and Plato, Spinoza, parts
of Hume, Mr. Bradley’s _Principles of Logic_, Mr. Russell’s essay on
“Denoting”: clear and beautifully formed thought. But this is not what
the admirers of Bergson, Claudel, or Maeterlinck (the philosophy of the
latter is a little out of date) mean. They mean precisely what is not
clear, but what is an emotional stimulus. And as a mixture of thought
and of vision provides more stimulus, by suggesting both, both clear
thinking and clear statement of particular objects must disappear.
The undigested “idea” or philosophy, the idea-emotion, is to be found
also in poetic dramas which are conscientious attempts to adapt a true
structure, Athenian or Elizabethan, to contemporary feeling. It appears
sometimes as the attempt to supply the defect of structure by an
internal structure. “But most important of all is the structure of the
incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and
of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action,
not a quality.”[6]
Footnote 6:
_Poetics_, vi. 9. Butcher’s translation.
We have on the one hand the “poetic” drama, imitation Greek, imitation
Elizabethan, or modern-philosophical, on the other the comedy of
“ideas,” from Shaw to Galsworthy, down to the ordinary social comedy.
The most ramshackle Guitry farce has some paltry idea or comment upon
life put into the mouth of one of the characters at the end. It is said
that the stage can be used for a variety of purposes, that in only one
of them perhaps is it united with literary art. A mute theatre is a
possibility (I do not mean the cinema); the ballet is an actuality
(though under-nourished); opera is an institution; but where you have
“imitations of life” on the stage, with speech, the only standard that
we can allow is the standard of the work of art, aiming at the same
intensity at which poetry and the other forms of art aim. From that
point of view the Shavian drama is a hybrid as the Maeterlinckian drama
is, and we need express no surprise at their belonging to the same
epoch. Both philosophies are popularizations: the moment an idea has
been transferred from its pure state in order that it may become
comprehensible to the inferior intelligence it has lost contact with
art. It can remain pure only by being stated simply in the form of
general truth, or by being transmuted, as the attitude of Flaubert
toward the small bourgeois is transformed in _Education Sentimentale_.
It has there become so identified with the reality that you can no
longer say what the idea is.
The essential is not, of course, that drama should be written in verse,
or that we should be able to extenuate our appreciation of broad farce
by occasionally attending a performance of a play of Euripides where
Professor Murray’s translation is sold at the door. The essential is to
get upon the stage this precise statement of life which is at the same
time a point of view, a world—a world which the author’s mind has
subjected to a complete process of simplification. I do not find that
any drama which “embodies a philosophy” of the author’s (like _Faust_)
or which illustrates any social theory (like Shaw’s) can possibly fulfil
the requirements—though a place might be left for Shaw if not for
Goethe. And the world of Ibsen and the world of Tchehov are not enough
simplified, universal.
Finally, we must take into account the instability of any art—the drama,
music, dancing—which depends upon representation by performers. The
intervention of performers introduces a complication of economic
conditions which is in itself likely to be injurious. A struggle, more
or less unconscious, between the creator and the interpreter is almost
inevitable. The interest of a performer is almost certain to be centred
in himself: a very slight acquaintance with actors and musicians will
testify. The performer is interested not in form but in opportunities
for virtuosity or in the communication of his “personality”; the
formlessness, the lack of intellectual clarity and distinction in modern
music, the great physical stamina and physical training which it often
requires, are perhaps signs of the triumph of the performer. The
consummation of the triumph of the actor over the play is perhaps the
productions of the Guitry.
The conflict is one which certainly cannot be terminated by the utter
rout of the actor profession. For one thing, the stage appeals to too
many demands besides the demand for art for that to be possible; and
also we need, unfortunately, something more than refined automatons.
Occasionally attempts have been made to “get around” the actor, to
envelop him in masks, to set up a few “conventions” for him to stumble
over, or even to develop little breeds of actors for some special Art
drama. This meddling with nature seldom succeeds; nature usually
overcomes these obstacles. Possibly the majority of attempts to confect
a poetic drama have begun at the wrong end; they have aimed at the small
public which wants “poetry.” (“Novices,” says Aristotle, “in the art
attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can
construct the plot.”) The Elizabethan drama was aimed at a public which
wanted _entertainment_ of a crude sort, but would _stand_ a good deal of
poetry; our problem should be to take a form of entertainment, and
subject it to the process which would leave it a form of art. Perhaps
the music-hall comedian is the best material. I am aware that this is a
dangerous suggestion to make. For every person who is likely to consider
it seriously there are a dozen toymakers who would leap to tickle
æsthetic society into one more quiver and giggle of art debauch. Very
few treat art seriously. There are those who treat it solemnly, and will
continue to write poetic pastiches of Euripides and Shakespeare; and
there are others who treat it as a joke.
Euripides and Professor Murray
The recent appearance of Miss Sybil Thorndyke as Medea at the Holborn
Empire is an event which has a bearing upon three subjects of
considerable interest: the drama, the present standing of Greek
literature, and the importance of good contemporary translation. On the
occasion on which I was present the performance was certainly a success;
the audience was large, it was attentive, and its applause was long.
Whether the success was due to Euripides is uncertain; whether it was
due to Professor Murray is not proved; but that it was in considerable
measure due to Miss Thorndyke there is no doubt. To have held the centre
of the stage for two hours in a rôle which requires both extreme
violence and restraint, a rôle which requires simple force and subtle
variation; to have sustained so difficult a rôle almost without support;
this was a legitimate success. The audience, or what could be seen of it
from one of the cheaper seats, was serious and respectful and perhaps
inclined to self-approval at having attended the performance of a Greek
play; but Miss Thorndyke’s acting might have held almost any audience.
It employed all the conventions, the theatricalities, of the modern
stage; yet her personality triumphed over not only Professor Murray’s
verse but her own training.
The question remains whether the production was a “work of art.” The
rest of the cast appeared slightly ill at ease; the nurse was quite a
tolerable nurse of the crone type; Jason was negative; the messenger was
uncomfortable at having to make such a long speech; and the refined
Dalcroze chorus had mellifluous voices which rendered their lyrics
happily inaudible. All this contributed toward the high-brow effect
which is so depressing; and we imagine that the actors of Athens, who
had to speak clearly enough for 20,000 auditors to be able to criticize
the versification, would have been pelted with figs and olives had they
mumbled so unintelligibly as most of this troupe. But the Greek actor
spoke in his own language, and our actors were forced to speak in the
language of Professor Gilbert Murray. So that on the whole we may say
that the performance was an interesting one.
I do not believe, however, that such performances will do very much to
rehabilitate Greek literature or our own, unless they stimulate a desire
for better translations. The serious auditors, many of whom I observed
to be like myself provided with Professor Murray’s eighteenpenny
translation, were probably not aware that Miss Thorndyke, in order to
succeed as well as she did, was really engaged in a struggle against the
translator’s verse. She triumphed over it by attracting our attention to
her expression and tone and making us neglect her words; and this, of
course, was not the dramatic method of Greek acting at its best. The
English and Greek languages remained where they were. But few persons
realize that the Greek language and the Latin language, and,
_therefore_, we say, the English language, are within our lifetime
passing through a critical period. The Classics have, during the latter
part of the nineteenth century and up to the present moment, lost their
place as a pillar of the social and political system—such as the
Established Church still is. If they are to survive, to justify
themselves as literature, as an element in the European mind, as the
foundation for the literature we hope to create, they are very badly in
need of persons capable of expounding them. We need some one—not a
member of the Church of Rome, and perhaps preferably not a member of the
Church of England—to explain how vital a matter it is, if Aristotle may
be said to have been a moral pilot of Europe, whether we shall or shall
not drop that pilot. And we need a number of educated poets who shall at
least have opinions about Greek drama, and whether it is or is not of
any use to us. And it must be said that Professor Gilbert Murray is not
the man for this. Greek poetry will never have the slightest vitalizing
effect upon English poetry if it can only appear masquerading as a
vulgar debasement of the eminently personal idiom of Swinburne. These
are strong words to use against the most popular Hellenist of his time;
but we must witness of Professor Murray ere we die that these things are
not otherwise but thus.
This is really a point of capital importance. That the most conspicuous
Greek propagandist of the day should almost habitually use two words
where the Greek language requires one, and where the English language
will provide him with one; that he should render σκιάν by “_grey_
shadow”; and that he should stretch the Greek brevity to fit the loose
frame of William Morris, and blur the Greek lyric to the fluid haze of
Swinburne; these are not faults of infinitesimal insignificance. The
first great speech of Medea Mr. Murray begins with:
Women of Corinth, I am come to show
My face, lest ye despise me....
We find in the Greek, ἑξῆλθον δόμων. “Show my face,” therefore, is Mr.
Murray’s gift.
This thing undreamed of, sudden from on high,
Hath sapped my soul: I dazzle where I stand,
The cup of all life shattered in my hand....
Again, we find that the Greek is:
ἐμοὶ δ’ ἄελπτον πρᾶγμα προσπεσὸν τόδε
ψυχὴν διέφθαρκ᾽· οἴχομαι δὲ καὶ βίου
χάριν μεθεῖσα κατθανεῖν χρηῄζω, φίλαι.
So, here are two striking phrases which we owe to Mr. Murray; it is he
who has sapped our soul and shattered the cup of all life for Euripides.
And these are only random examples.
οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλη φρὴν μιαιφονωτέρα
becomes “no bloodier spirit between heaven and hell”! Surely we know
that Professor Murray is acquainted with “Sister Helen”? Professor
Murray has simply interposed between Euripides and ourselves a barrier
more impenetrable than the Greek language. We do not reproach him for
preferring, apparently, Euripides to Æschylus. But if he does, he should
at least appreciate Euripides. And it is inconceivable that anyone with
a genuine feeling for the sound of Greek verse should deliberately elect
the William Morris couplet, the Swinburne lyric, as a just equivalent.
As a poet, Mr. Murray is merely a very insignificant follower of the
pre-Raphaelite movement. As a Hellenist, he is very much of the present
day, and a very important figure in the day. This day began, in a sense,
with Tylor and a few German anthropologists; since then we have acquired
sociology and social psychology, we have watched the clinics of Ribot
and Janet, we have read books from Vienna and heard a discourse of
Bergson; a philosophy arose at Cambridge; social emancipation crawled
abroad; our historical knowledge has of course increased; and we have a
curious Freudian-social-mystical-rationalistic-higher-critical
interpretation of the Classics and what used to be called the
Scriptures. I do not deny the very great value of all work by scientists
in their own departments, the great interest also of this work in detail
and in its consequences. Few books are more fascinating than those of
Miss Harrison, Mr. Cornford, or Mr. Cooke, when they burrow in the
origins of Greek myths and rites; M. Durkheim, with his social
consciousness, and M. Levy-Bruhl, with his Bororo Indians who convince
themselves that they are parroquets, are delightful writers. A number of
sciences have sprung up in an almost tropical exuberance which
undoubtedly excites our admiration, and the garden, not unnaturally, has
come to resemble a jungle. Such men as Tylor, and Robertson Smith, and
Wilhelm Wundt, who early fertilized the soil, would hardly recognize the
resulting vegetation; and indeed poor Wundt’s _Völkerpsychologie_ was a
musty relic before it was translated.
All these events are useful and important in their phase, and they have
sensibly affected our attitude towards the Classics; and it is this
phase of classical study that Professor Murray—the friend and inspirer
of Miss Jane Harrison—represents. The Greek is no longer the
awe-inspiring Belvedere of Winckelmann, Goethe, and Schopenhauer, the
figure of which Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde offered us a slightly
debased re-edition. And we realize better how different—not how much
more Olympian—were the conditions of the Greek civilization from ours;
and at the same time Mr. Zimmern has shown us how the Greek dealt with
analogous problems. Incidentally we do not believe that a good English
prose style can be modelled upon Cicero, or Tacitus, or Thucydides. If
Pindar bores us, we admit it; we are not certain that Sappho was _very_
much greater than Catullus; we hold various opinions about Vergil; and
we think more highly of Petronius than our grandfathers did.