The older Lives by Samuel Clarke (1671) and John Barrow, junr. (1843), have been superseded by Julian Corbett’s two admirable volumes onDrake and the Tudor Navy(1898), the best source of information on the subject, which were preceded by the same author’sSir Francis Drakein the “English Men of Action” series (1890). See also E. J. Payne’s edition ofVoyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America: Thirteen original narratives from the collection of Hakluyt(new ed., 1893).
The older Lives by Samuel Clarke (1671) and John Barrow, junr. (1843), have been superseded by Julian Corbett’s two admirable volumes onDrake and the Tudor Navy(1898), the best source of information on the subject, which were preceded by the same author’sSir Francis Drakein the “English Men of Action” series (1890). See also E. J. Payne’s edition ofVoyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America: Thirteen original narratives from the collection of Hakluyt(new ed., 1893).
DRAKE, NATHAN(1766-1836), English essayist and physician, son of Nathan Drake, an artist, was born at York in 1766. He was apprenticed to a doctor in York in 1779, and in 1786 proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he took his degree as M.D. in 1789. In 1790 he set up as a general practitioner at Sudbury, Suffolk, where he found an intimate friend in Dr Mason Good (d. 1827). In 1792 he removed to Hadleigh, Suffolk, where he died in 1836. His works include several volumes of literary essays, and some papers contributed to medical periodicals; but his most important production wasShakespeare and his Times, including the Biography of the Poet, Criticisms on his Genius and Writings; a new Chronology of his Plays; a Disquisition on the Object of his Sonnets; and a History of the Manners, Customs and Amusements, Superstitions, Poetry and Elegant Literature of his Age(2 vols., 1817). The title sufficiently indicates the scope of this ample work, which has the merit, says G. G. Gervinus (Shakespeare Commentaries, Eng. trans., 1877) “of having brought together for the first time into a whole the tedious and scattered material of the editions and of the many other valuable labours of Tyrwhitt, Heath, Ritson, &c.”
DRAKENBORCH, ARNOLD(1684-1748), Dutch classical scholar, was born at Utrecht on the 1st of January 1684. Having studied philology under Graevius and Burmann the elder, and law under Cornelius Van Eck, in 1716 he succeeded Burmann in his professorship (conjointly with C. A. Duker), which he continued to hold till his death on the 16th of January 1748. Although he obtained the degree of doctor of laws, and was intended for the legal profession, he determined to devote himself to philological studies. His edition of Livy (1738-1746, and subsequent editions) is the work on which his fame chiefly rests. The preface gives a particular account of all the literary men who have at different periods commented on the works of Livy. The edition itself is based on that of Gronovius; but Drakenborch made many important alterations on the authority of manuscripts which it is probable Gronovius had never seen. He also publishedDissertatio de praefectis urbi(1704; reprinted at Frankfort in 1752 with a life of Drakenborch);Dissertatio de officio praefectorum praetorio(1707); and an edition of Silius Italicus (1717).
DRAKENSBERG(QuathlambaorKahlamba,i.e.“heaped up and jagged,” of the natives), a mountain chain of S.E. Africa, running parallel to the coast from Basutoland to the Limpopo river—a distance of some 600 m. The Drakensberg are the eastern part of the rampart which forms the edge of the inner tableland of South Africa. The sides of the mountains facing the sea are in general precipitous; on their inner face they slope more or less gently to the plateau. The culminating points of the range, and the highest lands in South Africa, are found in a sharp bend from S.E. to N.W. in about 29° S. 29° E., where “the Berg” (as the range is called locally) forms the frontier between Natal and Basutoland. Within 60 m. of one another are three mountains, Giant’s Castle, Champagne Castle or Cathkin Peak, and Mont aux Sources, 10,000 to 11,000 or more ft. above the sea. From Mont aux Sources the normal N.E. direction of the range is resumed. Conspicuous among the heights along the Orange Free State, Transvaal and Natal frontiers are Tintwa, Malani, Inkwelo and Amajuba or Majuba (q.v.), all between 7000 and 8000 ft. The Draken’s Berg—the particular hill from which the range is named—is 5682 ft. high and lies between Malani and Inkwelo heights. It was so named by thevoortrekkersabout 1840. North of Majuba the range enters the Transvaal. Here the elevation is generally lower than in the south, but the Mauch Berg is about 8500 ft. high. At its northernmost point the range joins the Zoutpansberg. In their southern part the Drakensberg form the parting between the rivers draining west to the Atlantic and those flowing south and east to the Indian Ocean. At Mont aux Sources rise the chief headwaters of the Orange, Tugela and other rivers. In the north, however, several streams rising in the interior plateau,e.g.the Komati, the Crocodile and the Olifants, pierce the Drakensberg and reach the Indian Ocean. The range has numerous passes, many available for wheeled traffic. Van Reenen’s Pass, between Tintwa and Malani, is crossed by a railway which connects the Orange Free State and Natal: Laing’s Nek, the main pass leading from Natal to the Transvaal, which lies under the shadow of Majuba, is pierced by a railway tunnel. The railway from Delagoa Bay to Pretoria crosses the Drakensberg by a very steep gradient. Several subsidiary ranges branch off from the main chain of the Berg. This is especially the case in Natal, where one range is known as the Little Drakensberg. (See furtherBasutoland;NatalAndTransvaal.)
DRAMA(literally “action,” from Gr.δρᾶν, act or do), the term applied to those productions of Art which imitate or, to use a more modern term, “represent” action by introducing the personages taking part in them as real, and as employed in the action itself. There are numerous varieties of the drama, differing more or less widely from one another, both as to the objects imitated and as to the means used in the process. But they all agree in themethodormannerwhich is essential to the drama and to dramatic art, namely,imitation in the way of action. The function of all Art being to give pleasure by representation (seeFine Arts), it is clear that what is distinctive of any one branch or form must be the manner in which this function is performed by it. In the epos, for instance, the method or manner is narrative, and even when Odysseus tells of his action, he is not acting.
1. Theory of the Drama, and Dramatic Art
The first step towards the drama is the assumption of character, whether real or fictitious. It is caused by the desire, inseparable from human nature, to give expression to feelings and ideas. These man expresses not only by sound andOrigin of the drama.gesture, like other animals, and by speech significant by its delivery as well as by its purport, but also by imitation superadded to these. To imitate, says Aristotle, is instinctive in man from his infancy, and no pleasure is more universal than that which is given by imitation. Inasmuch as the aid of some sort of dress or decoration is usually at hand, while the accompaniment of dance or song, or other music, naturally suggests itself, especially on joyous or solemn occasions, we find that this preliminary step is taken among all peoples, however primitive or remote. But it does not follow, as is often assumed, that they possess a drama in germ. Boys playing at soldiers, or men walking in a pageant—a shoemaker’s holiday in ribbons and flowers, or a Shetland sword-dance—none of these is in itself a drama. This is not reached till the imitation or representation extends to action.
An action which is to present itself as such to human minds must enable them to recognize in it a procedure from cause to effect. This of course means, neither that the cause suggested must be the final cause, nor that the resultDramatic action.shown forth need pretend to be the ultimate result. We look upon an action as ended when the purpose with which it began is shown to have been gained or frustrated; and we trace the beginning of an action back to the human will that set it on foot—though this will may be in bondage to a higher or stronger will, or to fate, in any or all of its purposes. Without an action in the sense stated—without a plot, in a word—there can be no drama. But the very simplest action will satisfy the dramatic test; a mystery representing the story of Cain and Abel without a deviation from the simple biblical narrative, a farce exhibiting the stalest trick played by designing sobriety upon oblivious drunkenness, may each of them be a complete drama. But even to this point, the imitation of action by action in however crude a form, not all peoples have advanced.
But after this second step has been taken, it only remains for the drama to assume a form regulated by certain literary laws, in order that it may become a branch of dramatic literature. Such a literature, needless to say, only aDramatic literature.limited number of nations has come to possess; and, while some are to be found that have, or have had, a drama without a dramatic literature, it is quite conceivable that a nation should continue in possession of the former after having ceased to cultivate the latter. It is self-evident that no drama which forms part of a dramatic literature can ignore the use of speech; and however closely music, dancing and decoration may associate themselves with particular forms or phases of the drama, their aid cannot be more than adventitious. As a matter of fact, the beginnings of dramatic composition are, in the history of such literatures as are well known to us, preceded by the earlier stages in the growth of the lyric and epic forms of poetry, or by one of these at all events; and it is in the continuation of both that the drama in its literary form takes its origin in those instances which lie open to our study.
While the aid of all other arts—even, strictly speaking, the aid of the literary art—is merely an accident, the co-operation of the art of acting is indispensable to that of the drama. The dramatic writer may have reasons for preferring toThe dramatic and the histrionic arts.leave the imagination of his reader to supply the absence of this co-operation; but, though the term “literary drama” is freely used of works kept away from the stage, it is in truth either a misnomer or a self-condemnation. It is true that the actor only temporarily interprets, and sometimes misinterprets, the dramatist, while occasionally he reveals dramatic possibilities in a character or situation which remained hidden from their literary inventor. But this only shows that the courses of the dramatic and the histrionic arts do not run parallel; it does not contradict the fact that their conjunction is, on the one side as well as on the other, indispensable. No drama is more than potentially such till it is acted.
To essay, whether in a brief summary or in more or less elaborate detail, a statement of the main laws of the drama, has often been regarded as a superfluous, not to say, futile effort. But the laws of which it is proposed to giveLaws and rules of the drama.some indication here are not so much those which any particular literature or period has chosen to set up and follow, as those abstracted by criticism, in pursuit of its own free comparative method, from the process that repeats itself in every drama adequately meeting the demands upon it. Aristotle, whom we still justly revere as the originator of the theory of the drama, and thus its greatνομοθέτης, was, no doubt, in his practical knowledge of it, confined to its Greek examples, yet his object was not to produce another generation of great Attic tragedians, but rather to show how it was by following the necessary laws of their art that the great masters, true to themselves and to their artistic ends, had achieved what they had achieved. Still more distinctly was such the aim of the greatest modern critical writer on the drama, Lessing, whose chief design was to combat false dramatic theories and to overthrow laws demonstrated by him to be artificial inventions, unreal figments. He proved, what before him had only been suspected, that Shakespeare, though in hopeless conflict with certain rules dating from thesiècle de Louis XIV, was not in conflict with those laws of the drama which are of its very essence, and that, accordingly, if Shakespeare and the rules in question could not be harmonized, it was only so much the worse for the rules. To illustrate from great works, and expound with their aid, the organic processes of the art to which they belong, is not only among the highest, it is also one of the most useful functions of literary and artistic criticism. Nor is there, in one sense at least, any finality about it. Neither the great authorities on dramatic theory nor the resolute and acute apologists of more or less transitory phases of the drama—Corneille, Dryden and many later successors—have exhausted the statement of the means which the drama has proved, or may prove, capable of employing. The multitude of technical terms and formulae which has gathered round the practice of the most living and the most Protean of arts has at no time seriously interfered with the operation of creative power. On the other hand, no dramaturgic theory has (though the attempt has been often enough made) ever succeeded in giving rise to a single dramatic work of enduring value, unless the creative force was there to animate the form.
It is therefore the operation of this creative force which we are chiefly interested in noting; and its task begins with the beginning of the dramatist’s labours. He must of course start with the choice of a subject; yet it isChoice of subject.obvious that the subject is merely the dead material out of which is formed that living something, the action of a play; and it is only in rare instances—far rarer than might at first sight appear—that the subject is as it were self-moulded as a dramatic action. The less experienced a playwright, the more readily will he, as the phrase is, rush at his subject, more especially if it seems to him to possess prima facie dramatic capabilities; and the consequence will be that which usually attends upon a precipitate start. On the other hand, while the quickness of a great dramatist’s apprehension is apt to suggestto him an infinite number of subjects, and insight and experience may lead him half instinctively in the direction of suitable themes, it will often be long before in his mind the subject converts itself into the initial conception of the action of a play. To mould a subject—be it a Greek legend, or a portion of a Tudor chronicle, or one out of a hundred Italian tales, or a true story of modern life—into the action or fable of a play, is the primary task of the dramatist, and with this all-important process the creative part of his work really begins. Although his conception may expand or modify itself as he executes it, yet upon the conception the execution must largely depend. The range of subjects open to a dramatist may be as wide as the world itself, or it may be restricted by an endless variety of causes, conventions and considerations; and it is quite true that even the greatest dramatists have not always found time for contemplating each subject that occurs to them till the ray is caught which proclaims it a dramatic diamond. What they had time for, and what only the playwright who entirely misunderstands his art ignores the necessity of finding time for, is the transformation of the dead material of the subject into the living action of a drama.
What is it, then, that makes an actiondramatic, and without which no action, whatever may be its nature—serious or ludicrous, stately or trivial, impetuous as a flame of fire, or light as a western breeze—can be so described? The answerUnity of action.to this question can only suggest itself from an attempt to ascertain the laws which determine the nature of all actions corresponding to this description. The first of the laws in question is in so far the most noteworthy among them that it has been the most amply discussed and the most pertinaciously misunderstood. This is the law which requires that a dramatic action should beone—that it should possessunity. What in the subject of a drama is merely an approximate or supposititious, must in its action be an actual unity; and it is indeed this requirement which constitutes the most arduous part of the task of transforming subject into action. There is of course no actual unity in any group of events in human life which we may choose to call by a single collective name—a war, a revolution, a conspiracy, an intrigue, an imbroglio. The events of real life, the facts of history, even the imitative incidents of narrative fiction, are like the waves of a ceaseless flood; that which binds a group or body of them into a single action is the bond of the dramatic idea; and this it is incumbent upon the dramatist to supply. Within the limits of a dramatic action all its parts should (as in real life or in history they so persistently refuse to do) flow into its current like tributaries to a single stream; or, to vary the figure, everything in a drama should form a link in a single chain of cause and effect. This law is incumbent upon every kind of drama—alike upon the tragedy which sets itself to solve one of the problems of a life, and upon the farce which sums up the follies of an afternoon.
Such is not, however, the case with certain more or less arbitrary rules which have at different times been set up for this or that kind of drama. The supposed necessity that an action should consist ofone eventis an erroneous interpretation of the law that it should be, as an action,one. For an event is but an element in an action, though it may be an element of decisive moment. The assassination of Caesar is not the action of aCaesartragedy; the loss of his treasure is not the action ofThe Miser. Again, unity of action, while excluding those unconnected episodes which Aristotle so severely condemns, does not prohibit the introduction of one or even more subsidiary actions as contributing to the progress of the main action. The sole indispensable law is that these should always be treated as what they are—subsidiary only; and herein lies the difficulty, which Shakespeare so successfully overcame, of fusing a combination of subjects taken from various sources into the idea of a single action; herein also lies the danger in the use of that favourite device of the Spanish and other modern dramas—“by-plots” or “under-plots.” On the other hand, the modern French drama has largely employed another device—quite legitimate in itself—for increasing the interest of an action without destroying its unity. This may be called the dramatic use of backgrounds, the depiction of surroundings on which the action or its chief characters seem sympathetically to reflect themselves, backbiting “good villagers” or academicians who inspire one another—with tedium. But a really double or multiple action, logically carried out as such, is inconceivable in a single drama, though many a play is palpably only two plays knotted into one. It was therefore not all pedantry which protested against the multiplicity of action which had itself formed part of the revolt against the too narrow interpretation of unity adopted by the French classical drama. Thirdly, unity of action need not imply unity of hero—for hero (or heroine) is merely a conventional term signifying the principal personage of the action. It is only when the change in the degree of interest excited by different characters in a play results from a change in the conception of the action itself, that the consequentduality(or multiplicity) of heroes recalls a faulty uncertainty in the conception of the action they carry on. Such an objection, while it may hold in the case of Schiller’sDon Carlos, would therefore be erroneously urged against Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar. Lastly, as to the theory which made the so-called unities oftimeandplaceconstitute, together with that ofaction, the Three Unities indispensable to the (tragic) drama, the following note must suffice. Aristotle’s supposed exaction of all the Three Unities, having been expanded by Chapelain and approved by Richelieu, was stereotyped by Corneille, though he had (as one might say) got on very well without them, and was finally set forth in Horatian verse by Boileau. Thus it came to be overlooked that there is nothing in Aristotle’s statement to show that in his judgment unity of time and place are, like unity of action, absolute dramatic laws. Their object is by representing an action as visibly continuous to render its unity more distinctly or easily perceptible. But the imagination is capable of constructing for itself the bridges required for preserving to an action, conceived of as such, its character of continuousness. In another sense these rules were convenient usages conducing to a concise and clear treatment of a limited kind of themes; for they were a Greek invention, and the repeated resort to the same group of myths made it expedient for a Greek poet to seek the subject of a single tragedy in a part only of one of the myths at his disposal. The observance of unity of place, moreover, was suggested to the Greeks by certain outward conditions of their stage—as assuredly as it was adopted by the French in accordance with the construction and usages of theirs, and as the neglect of it by the Elizabethans was in their case encouraged by the established form of the English scene. The palpable artificiality of these laws needs no demonstration, so long as the true meaning of the term “action” be kept in view. Of the action ofOthellopart takes place at Venice and part at Cyprus, and yet the whole is one in itself; while the limits of time over which an action—Hamlet’s progress to resolve, for instance—extends cannot be restricted by a revolution of the earth round the sun or of the moon round the earth.
In a drama which presents its action asone, this action must becomplete in itself. This Aristotelian law, like the other, distinguishes the dramatic action from its subject. The former may be said to have a real artistic, while theCompleteness of action.latter has only an imaginary real, completeness. The historian, for instance, is aware that the complete exposition of a body of events and transactions at which he aims can never be more than partially accomplished, since he may present only what he knows, and all human knowledge is imperfect. But Art is limited by no such uncertainty. The dramatist, in treating an action asone, comprehends the whole of it in the form of his work, since, to him who hasconceivedit, all its parts, from cause to effect, are equally clear. It is his fault if in the action of his drama anything is left unaccounted for—notmotivé; though a dramaticmotifmight not always prove to be a sufficient explanation in real life. Accordingly, every drama should represent in organic sequence the several stages of which a complete action consists, and which are essential to it. This law of completeness, therefore, lies at the foundation of all systems of dramatic “construction.”
Every action, if conceived of as complete, has its causes, growth, height, consequences and close. There is no binding law to prescribe the relative length or proportion at which these several stages in the action should beSystems of construction based on this law of completeness.treated in a drama; or to regulate the treatment of such subsidiary actions as may be introduced in aid of the main plot, or of such more or less directly connected “episodes” as may at the same time advance and relieve its progress. But experience has necessarily from time to time established certain rules of practice, and from the adoption of particular systems of division for particular species of the drama—such as that into five acts for a regular tragedy or comedy, which Roman example has caused to be so largely followed—has naturally resulted a certain uniformity of relation between the conduct of an action and the outward sections of a play. Essentially, however, there is no difference between the laws regulating the construction of a Sophoclean or Shakespearian tragedy, a comedy of Molière or Congreve, and a well-built modern farce, because all exhibit an action complete in itself.
The “introduction” or “exposition” forms an integral part of the action, and is therefore to be distinguished from the “prologue” in the more ordinary sense of the term, which like the “epilogue” (and the Greekπαράβασις)Prologues and epilogues outside the action.stands outside the action, and is a mere address to the public from author, presenter or actor occasioned by the play. Prologue and epilogue are mere external, though at times effective, adjuncts, and have, properly speaking, as little to do with the construction of a play as the bill which announces it or the musical prelude which disposes the mind for its reception. A special kind of preface or argument is the “dumb-show,” which in some old plays briefly rehearses in pantomime the action that is to follow. The introduction orParts of the action. Introduction or exposition.exposition belongs to the action itself; it is, as the Hindu critics called it, the seed or circumstance from which the business arises. Clearness being its primary requisite, many expedients have been at various times adopted to secure this feature. Thus the Euripidean prologue, though spoken by one of the characters of the play, took a narrative form, more acceptable to the audience than to the critics, and placed itself half without, half within, the action. The same purpose is served by the separate “inductions” in many of the old English plays, and by the preludes or prologues, or whatever name they may assume, in numberless modern dramas of all kinds—fromFaustdown to the favourites of the Ambigu and the Adelphi. More facile is the orientation supplied in French tragedy by the opening scenes between hero andconfidant, and in French comedy and its derivatives by those between observant valet and knowing lady’s-maid. But all such expedients may be rendered unnecessary by the art of the dramatist, who is able outwardly also to present the introduction of his action as an organic part of that action itself; who seems to take the spectatorsin medias res, while he is really building the foundations of his plot; who touches in the opening of his action the chord which is to vibrate throughout its course—“Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!”—“With the Moor, sayest thou?”
The exposition, which may be short or long, but which should always prepare and may even seem to necessitate the action, ends when the movement of the action itself begins. ThisOpening of movement.transition may occasionally be marked with the utmost distinctness (as in the actual meeting between the hero and the Ghost inHamlet), while in other instances subsidiary action or episode may judiciously intervene (as inKing Lear, where the subsidiary action of Gloster and his sons opportunely prevents too abrupt a sequence of cause and effect).Growth.From this point the second stage of the action—its “growth”—progresses to that third stage which is called its “height” or “climax.” All that has preceded the attainment of this constitutes that half of the drama—usually its much larger half—which Aristotle terms theδεσις, or tying of the knot. The varieties in the treatment of the growth or second stage of the action are infinite; it is here that the greatest freedom is manifestly permissible; that in the Indian drama the personages make long journeys across the stage; and that, with the help of their under-plots, the masters of the modern tragic and the comic drama—notably those unequalled weavers of intrigues, the Spaniards—are able most fully to exercise their inventive faculties. If the growth is too rapid, the climax will fail of its effect; if it is too slow, the interest will be exhausted before the greatest demand upon it has been made—a fault to which comedy is specially liable; if it is involved or inverted, a vague uncertainty will take the place of an eager or agreeable suspense, the action will seem to halt, or a fall will begin prematurely. In the contrivance of the “climax” itself lies oneHeight or climax.of the chief tests of the dramatist’s art; for while the transactions of real life often fail to reach any climax at all, that of a dramatic action should present itself as self-evident. In the middle of everything, says the Greek poet, lies the strength; and this strongest or highest point it is the task of the dramatist to make manifest. Much here depends upon the niceties of constructive instinct; much (as in all parts of the action) upon a thorough dramatic transformation of the subject. The historical drama at this point presents peculiar difficulties, of which the example ofHenry VIII.may be cited as an illustration.
From the climax, or height, the action proceeds through its “fall” to its “close,” which in a drama with an unhappy ending we still call its “catastrophe,” while to terminations in general we apply the termdénouement. ThisFall.latter name would, however, more properly be applied in the sense in which Aristotle employs its Greek equivalentλύσις—the untying of the knot—to the whole of the second part of the action, from the climax downwards. In the management of the climax, everything depends upon producing the effect; in the fall, everything depends upon not marring it. This may be ensured by a rapid advance to the close; but neither does every action admit of such treatment, nor is it in accordance with the character of those which are of a more subtle or complicated kind. With the latter, therefore, the “fall” is often a revolution or “return,”i.e.in Aristotle’s phrase a change intoReturn.the reverse of what is expected from the circumstances of the action (περιπέτεια)—as inCoriolanus, where the Roman story lends itself so admirably to dramatic demands. In any case, the art of the dramatist is in this part of his work called upon for the surest exercise of its tact and skill. The effect of the climax was to concentrate the interest; the fall must therefore, above all, avoid dissipating it. The use of episodes is not even now excluded; but, even where serving the purpose of relief, they must now be such as help to keep alive the interest, previously raised to its highest pitch. This may be effected by the raising of obstacles between the height of the action and its expected consequences; in tragedy by the suggestion of a seemingly possible recovery or escape from them (as in the wonderfully powerful construction of the latter part ofMacbeth); in comedy, or wherever the interest of the action is less intense, by the gradual removal of incidental difficulties. In all kinds of the drama “discovery” will remain, as it was in the judgment of Aristotle, a most effective expedient; but it should be a discovery prepared by that method of treatment which in its consummate master, Sophocles, has been termed his “irony.” Nowhere should the close or catastrophe be other than a consequence of the action itself. SuddenClose or catastrophe.revulsions from the conditions of the action—such as are supplied with the aid of thedeus ex machina, or the revising officer of the emperor of China, or the nabob returned from India, or a virulent malaria—condemn themselves as unsatisfactory makeshifts. However sudden, and even in manner of accomplishment surprising, may be the catastrophe, it should, like every other part of the action, be in organic connexion with the whole preceding action. The sudden suicides which terminate so many tragedies, and the unmerited paternal blessings which close an equal number of comedies, should be something more than a “way out of it,” or a signal for the fall of the curtain. A catastrophe may conveniently, and even (as inFaust) with powerful effect, be left to the imagination; but to substitute for it a deliberate blank is to leave the action incomplete, and the drama a fragment ending with a—possibly interesting—confession of incompetence.
The action of a drama, besides being one and complete in itself, ought likewise to beprobable. The probability or necessity (in the Aristotelian sense of the terms) required of a drama is not that of actual or historical experience—it is aProbability of action.conditional probability, or in other words an internal consistency between the course of the action and the conditions under which the dramatist has chosen to carry it on. As to the former, he is fettered by no restrictions save those which he imposes upon himself, whether or not in deference to the usages of certain accepted species of dramatic composition. Ghosts seldom appear in real life or in dramas of real life; but the introduction of supernatural agency is neither enjoined nor prohibited by any general dramatic law. The use of such expedients is as open to the dramatic as to any other poet; the judiciousness of his use of them depends upon the effect which, consistently with the general conduct of his action, they will exercise upon the spectator, whom other circumstances may or may not predispose to their acceptance. The Ghost inHamletbelongs to the action of the play; the Ghost in thePersaeis not intrinsically less probable, but seems a less immediate product of the surrounding atmosphere. Dramatic probability has, however, a far deeper meaning than this. TheEumenidesis probable, with all its mysterious commingling of cults, and so isMacbeth, with all its barbarous witchcraft. The proceedings of the feathered builders of Cloudcuckootown in theBirdsof Aristophanes are as true to dramatic probability as are the pranks of Oberon’s fairies inMidsummer Night’s Dream. In other words, it is in the harmony between the action and the characters, and in the consistency of the characters with themselves, in the appropriateness of both to the atmosphere in which they have their being, that this dramatic probability lies. The dramatist has to represent characters affected by the progress of an action in a particular way, and contributing to it in a particular way, because, if consistent with themselves, theymustbe so affected, andmustso act.
Upon the invention and conduct of his characters the dramatist must therefore expend a great proportion—even a preponderance—of his labour. His treatment of them will, in at least as highCharacterization.a degree as his choice of subject, conception of action, and method of construction, determine the effect which his work produces. And while there are aspects of the dramatic art under which its earlier phases already exhibit an unsurpassed degree of perfection, there is none under which its advance is more notable than this. Many causes haveAdvance of the drama in this respect.contributed to this result; the chief is to be sought in the multiplication of the opportunities for mankind’s study of man. The theories of the Indian critics on the subject of dramatic character are little more than an elaborate scaffolding. Aristotle’s remarks on the subject are scanty; nor indeed is the strength of the dramatic literature from whose examples he abstracted his maxims to be sought in the fulness or variety of its characterization. This relative deficiency was beyond doubt largely caused by the outward conditions of the Greek theatre—the remoteness of actor from spectator, and the consequent necessity for the use of masks, and for the raising, and consequent conventionalizing, of the tones of the voice. Later Greek and Roman comedy, unable or unwilling to resist the force of habit, limited their range of characters to an accepted gallery of types. Nor is it easy to ignore the fact that the influence of these classical examples, combined with that of national tendencies of mind and temperament, have all along inclined the dramatists of the Romance nations to attach less importance to characterization of a closer and more varied kind than to interest of action and effectiveness of construction. The Italian and the Spanish drama more especially, and the French during a great part of its history, have in general shown a disposition to present their characters, as it were, ready made—whether in the case of tragic heroes and heroines, or in that of comic types, often moulded, as in thecommedia dell’ arte“and beyond,” according to a long-lived system of local or national selection. These types, expanded, heightened and modified, are recognizable in some of the triumphs of comic characterization achieved by the Germanic drama, and by its master, Shakespeare, above all; but this fact must not obscure one of more importance than itself. In the matter of comic as well as of serious characterization—in the individualizing of characters and in evolving them as it were out of the progress of the action—the modern drama has not only advanced, but in a sense revolutionized, the dramatic art, as inherited from its ancient masters.
Yet, however the method and scope of characterization may vary under the influence of different historical epochs and different tendencies or tastes of races or nations, the laws of this branch of the dramatic art remain based onRequisites of character.the same essential requirements. What interests us in a man or woman in real life, or in the impressions we form of historical personages, is that which seems to us to give them individuality. A dramatic character must therefore, whatever its part in the action, be sufficiently marked by features of its own to interest the imagination; with these features its subsequent conduct must be consistent, and to them its participation in the action must correspond. In order to achieve such a result, the dramatist must have, in the first instance, distinctly conceived the character, however it may have been suggested to him. His task is, not to paint a copy of some contemporary or “historical” personage, but to conceive a particular kind of man, acting under the operation of particular circumstances. This conception, growing and modifying itself with the progress of the action, also invented by the dramatist, will determine the totality of the character which he creates. The likeness which the result bears to an actual or historical personage may very probably, from secondary points of view, affect the immediate stage success of the creation; upon its dramatic result this likeness can have no influence whatever. In a wider sense than that in which Shakespeare denied the charge that Falstaff was Oldcastle, it should be possible to say of every dramatic character which it is sought to identify with an actual personage, “This is not the man.” The mirror of the drama is not a photographic apparatus; and not even the most conscientious combination of science and art can bring back even a “phase” of the real Napoleon.
Distinctiveness, as the primary requisite in dramatic characterization, is to be demanded in the case of all personages introduced into a dramatic action, but not in all cases in an equal degree. Schiller, in adding to theDistinctiveness.dramatis personaeof hisFiescosuperscriptions of their chief characteristics, labels Sacco as “an ordinary person,” and this, no doubt, suffices for Sacco. But with the great masters of characterization a few touches, of which the true actor’s art knows how to avail itself, distinguish even their lesser characters from one another; and every man is in his humour down to the “third citizen.” Elaboration is necessarily reserved for characters who are the more important contributors to the action, and the fulness of elaboration for its heroes. Many expedients may lend their aid to the higher degrees of distinctiveness. Much is gained by a significant introduction of hero or heroine—thus Antigone is dragged in by the watchman, Gloucester enters alone upon the scene, Volpone is discovered in adoration of his golden saint. Nothing marks character more clearly than the use of contrast—as of Othello with Iago, of Ottavio with Max Piccolomini, of Joseph with Charles Surface. Nor is direct antithesis the only effective kind of contrast; Cassius is a foil to Brutus, and Leonora to her namesake the Princess. But, besides impressing the imagination as a conception distinct in itself, each characterSelf-consistency.must maintain a consistency between its conduct in the action and the features it has established as its own. This consistency does not imply uniformity; for, as Aristotle observes, there are characters which, to be represented with uniformity, must be presented as uniformly un-uniform. Of such consistently complex characters the great critic cites no instances, nor indeed are they of frequent occurrence in Greek tragedy; in the modern drama Hamlet is their unrivalledexemplar; and Weislingen in Goethe’sGötz, and Alceste in theMisanthrope, may be mentioned as other illustrations in dramas differing widely from one another. The list might be enlarged almost indefinitely from the gallery of female characters, in view of the greater pliability and more habitual dependence of the nature of women. It should be added that those dramatic literatures which freely admit of a mixture of the serious with the comic element thereby enormously increase the opportunities of varied characterization. The difficulty of the task at the same time enhances the effect resulting from its satisfactory accomplishment; and, if the conception of a character is found to meet a variety of tests resembling that which life has at hand for every man, its naturalness, as we term it, becomes more obvious to the imagination. “Naturalness” is only another word for what Aristotle terms “propriety”; the artificial rules by which usage has at times sought to define particular species of character are in their origin only a convenience of the theatre, though they have largely helped to conventionalize dramatic characterization. Lastly, a character should be directly effective with regardEffectiveness.to the dramatic action in which it takes part—that is to say, the influence it exerts upon the progress of the action should correspond to its distinctive features; the conduct of the play should seem to spring from the nature of its characters. In other words, no characterization can be effective which is not what may be called economical,i.e.which does not strictly limit itself to suiting the purposes of the action. Even the minor characters should not idly intervene; while the chief characters should predominate over, or determine, the course of the action, its entire conception should harmonize with their distinctive features. It is only a Prometheus whom the gods bind fast to a rock, only a Juliet who will venture into a living death for her Romeo. Thus, in a sense, chance is excluded from dramatic action, or rather, like every other element in it, bends to the dramatic idea.
In view of this predominance of character over action, we may appropriately use such expressions as a tragedy of love or jealousy or ambition, or a comedy of character. For such collocations merely indicate that plays so described have proved (or were intended to prove) specially impressive by the conception or execution of their chief character or characters.
The term “manners” (as employed in a narrower sense than the Aristotelianἤθη) applies to that which colours both action and characters, but does not determine the essence of either. As exhibiting human agents under certain conditionsManners.of time and place, and of the various relations of life, the action of a drama, together with the characters engaged in it, and the incidents and circumstances belonging to it, must more or less adapt itself to the external conditions assumed. From the assumption of some such conditions not even those dramatic species which indulge in the most sovereign licence, such as Old Attic comedy, or burlesque in general, can wholly emancipate themselves; and even supernatural or fantastic characters and actions must suit themselves to some sort of antecedents. But it depends altogether on the measure in which the nature of an action and the development of its characters are effected by considerations of time and place, or of temporary social systems and the transitory distinctions incidental to them, whether the imitation of a particular kind of manners becomes a significantTheir relative significance.element in a particular play. The Hindu caste-system is an antecedent of every Hindu drama, and the peculiar organization of Chinese society of nearly every Chinese play with which we are acquainted. Greek tragedy itself, though treating subjects derived from no historic age, had established a standard of manners from which in its decline it did not depart with impunity. Again, the imitation of manners of a particular age or country may or may not be of moment in a play. In some dramas, and in some species of drama, time and place are so purely imaginary and so much a matter of indifference that the adoption of a purely conventional standard of manners, or at least the exclusion of any definitely fixed standard, is here desirable. The ducal reign of Theseus at Athens (if its period be ascertainable) does not dateA MidsummerNight’s Dream; nor do the coasts of Bohemia inThe Winter’s Talelocalize the manners of the customers of Autolycus. Where, on the other hand, as more especially in the historic drama, or in that kind of comedy which directs its shafts against the ridiculous vices of a particular age or country, significance attaches to the degree in which the manners represented resemble what is more or less known, the dramatist will do well to be careful in his colouring. How admirably is the French court specialized inHenry V.; how completely are we transplanted among the burghers of Brussels in the opening scenes ofEgmont; what a portraiture of a clique we have in thePrécieuses ridiculesof Molière; what a reproduction of a class in the pot-house politicians of Holberg! And how minutely have modern dramatists found it necessary to study the more fascinating aspects ofla vie parisienne, in order to convey to the curious at home and abroad a conviction of the verisimilitude of their pictures! Yet, even in such instances, the dramatist will only use what suits his dramatic purpose; he will select, not transfer in mass, historic features, and discriminate in his use of modern instances. The details of historic fidelity, and the lesser shades distinguishing the varieties of social usage, will be introduced by him at his choice, or left to be supplied by the actor. Where the reproduction of manners becomes the primary purpose of a play, its effect can only be of an inferior kind; and a drama purely of manners is a contradiction in terms.
No complete system of dramatic species can be abstracted from any one dramatic literature. They are often the result of particular antecedents, and their growth is often affected by peculiar conditions. Different nations orSpecies of the drama.ages use the same names and may preserve some of the same rules for species which in other respects their usage may have materially modified from that of their neighbours or predecessors. The very question of the use of measured or pedestrian speech as fit for different kinds of drama, and therefore distinctive of them, cannot be profitably discussed except in reference to particular literatures. In the Chinese drama the most solemn themes are treated in the same form—an admixture of verse and prose—which not so very long since was characteristic of that airiest of Western dramatic species, the Frenchvaudeville. Who would undertake to define, except in the applications which have been given to the words in successive generations, such terms as “tragi-comedy,” or indeed as “drama” (drame) itself? Yet this uncertainty does not imply that all is confusion in the terminology as to the species of the drama. In so far as they are distinguishable according to the effects which their actions, or those which the preponderating parts of their actions, produce, these species may primarily be ranged in accordance with the broad difference established by Aristotle between tragedy and comedy. “Tragic” and “comic” effects differ in regard to the emotions of the mind which they excite; and a drama is tragic or comic according as such effectsTragic and comic.are produced by it. The strong or serious emotions are alone capable of exercising upon us that influence which, employing a bold but marvellously happy figure, Aristotle termedpurification, and which a Greek comedian, after a more matter-of-fact fashion, thus expressed:
“For whensoe’er a man observes his fellowBear wrongs more grievous than himself has known,More easily he bears his own misfortunes.”
“For whensoe’er a man observes his fellow
Bear wrongs more grievous than himself has known,
More easily he bears his own misfortunes.”
That is to say, the petty troubles of self which disturb without elevating the mind are driven out by the sympathetic participation in greater griefs, which raises while it excites the mind employed upon contemplating them. It is to these emotions—which are and can be no others than pity and terror—that actions which we call tragic appeal.Naïfas we may think Aristotle in desiderating for such actions a complicated rather than a simple plot, he obviously means that in form as well as in design they should reveal their relative importance. Those actions which we term comic address themselves to the sense of the ridiculous, and their themes are those vices and moral infirmities the representation of which is capable of touching the springs of laughter. Where, accordingly, a drama confines itself to effects of theformer class, it may be called a pure “tragedy”; when to those of the latter, a pure “comedy.” In dramas where the effects are mixed the nature of the main action and of the main characters (as determined by their distinctive features) alone enables us to classify such plays as serious or humorous dramas—or as “tragic” or “comic,” if we choose to preserve the terms. But the classification admits of a variety of transitions, from “pure” tragedy to “mixed,” from “mixed tragedy” to “mixed comedy,” and thence to “pure comedy,” with the more freely licensed “farce” and “burlesque,” the time-honoured inversion of the relations of dramatic method and purpose. This system of distinction has no concern with the mere question of the termination of the play, according to which Philostratus and other authorities have sought to distinguish tragic from comic dramas. The serious drama which ends happily (the GermanSchauspiel) is not a species co-ordinate with tragedy and comedy, but at the most a subordinate variety of the former. Other distinctions may be almost infinitely multiplied, according to the point of view adopted for the classification.
The historical sketch of the drama attempted in the following pages will best serve to indicate the successive growth of national dramatic species, many of which, by asserting their influence in other countries and ages than those which gave birth to them, have acquired a more than national vitality.
The art of acting, whose history forms an organic though a distinct part of that of the drama, necessarily possesses a theory and a technical system of its own. But into these it is impossible here to enter. One claim, however, shouldThe art of acting.be vindicated for the art of acting, viz. that, though it is a dependent art, and most signally so in its highest forms, yet its true exercise implies (however much the term may have been abused) a creative process. The conception of a character is determined by antecedents not of the actor’s own making; and the term originality can be applied to it only in a relative sense. Study and reflection enable him, with the aid of experience and of the intuition which genius bestows, but which experience may in a high degree supply, to interpret, to combine, and to supplement given materials. But in the transformation of the conception into the represented character the actor’s functions are really creative; for here hebecomesthe character by means which belong to his art alone. The distinctiveness which he gives to the character by making the principal features recognized by him in it its groundwork—the consistency which he maintains in it between groundwork and details—the appropriateness which he preserves in it to the course of the action and the part borne in it by the character—all these are of his own making, thoughIts means.suggested by the conception derived by him from his materials. As to the means at his disposal, they are essentially of two kinds only; but not all forms of the drama have admitted of the use of both, or of both in the same completeness. All acting includes the use of gesture, or, as it has beenGesture.more comprehensively termed, of bodily eloquence. From various points of view its laws regulate the actor’s bearing, walk and movements of face and limbs. They teach what is aesthetically permitted and what is aesthetically pleasing. They deduce from observation what is appropriate to the expression of particular affections of the mind and of their combinations, of emotions and passions, of physical and mental conditions—joy and grief, health and sickness, waking, sleeping and dreaming, madness, collapse and death—of particular ages of life and temperaments, as well as of the distinctive characteristics ofSpeech.race, nationality or class. While under certain conditions—as in the masked drama—the use of bodily movement as one of the means of expression has at times been partially restricted, there have been, or are, forms of the drama which have altogether excluded the use of speech (such as pantomime), or have restricted the manner of its employment (such as opera). In the spoken drama the laws of rhetoric regulate the actor’s use of speech, but under conditions of a special nature. Like the orator, he has to follow the laws of pronunciation, modulation, accent and rhythm (the last in certain kinds of prose as well as in such forms of verse as he may be called upon to reproduce). But he has also to give his attention to the special laws of dramatic delivery, which vary in soliloquy and dialogue, and in such narrative or lyrical passages as may occur in his part.
The totality of the effect produced by the actor will in some degree depend upon other aids, among which those of a purely external kind are unlikely to be lost sight of. But the significance of costume (q.v.) in the actor, like that ofCostume.decoration and scenery (seeTheatre) in an action, is a wholly relative one, and is to a large measure determined by the claims which custom enables the theatre to make, or forbids its making, upon the imagination of the spectators. The actor’s real achievement lies in the transformation which the artist himself effects; nor is there any art more sovereign in the use it can make of its means, or so happy in the directness of the results it can accomplish by them.
2. Indian Drama
The origin of the Indian drama may unhesitatingly be described as purely native. The Mahommedans, when they overran India, brought no drama with them; the Persians, the Arabs and the Egyptians were without a national theatre. It would be absurd to suppose the Indian drama to have owed anything to the Chinese or its offshoots. On the other hand, there is no real evidence for assuming any influence of Greek examples upon the Indian drama at any stage of its progress. Finally, it had passed into its decline before the dramatic literature of modern Europe had sprung into being.
The Hindu writers ascribe the invention of dramatic entertainments to an inspired sage Bharata, or to the communications made to him by the god Brahma himself concerning an art gathered from the Vedas. As the wordBharataOrigin.signifies an actor, we have clearly here a mere personification of the invention of the drama. Three kinds of entertainments, of which thenātya(defined as a dance combined with gesticulation and speech) comes nearest to the drama, were said to have been exhibited before the gods by the spirits and nymphs of Indra’s heaven, and to these the god Śiva added two new styles of dancing.
The origin of the Indian drama was thus unmistakably religious. Dramatic elements first showed themselves in certain of the hymns of theRig Veda, which took the form of dialogues between divine personages, and in one of which is to be found the germ of Kālidāsa’s famousVikrama and Urvāsī. These hymns were combined with the dances in the festivals of the gods, which soon assumed a more or less conventional form. Thus, from the union of dance and song, to which were afterwards added narrative recitation, and first sung, then spoken, dialogue, was gradually evolved the acted drama. Such scenes and stories from the mythology of Vishnu are still occasionally enacted by pantomime or spoken dialogue in India (jātrasof the Bengalis;rāsasof the Western Provinces); and the most ancient Indian play was said to have treated an episode from the history of that deity—the choice of him as a consort by Laxmi—a favourite kind of subject in the Indian drama. The tradition connecting its earliest themes with the native mythology of Vishnu agrees with that ascribing the origin of a particular kind of dramatic performance—thesangīta—to Krishna and the shepherdesses. The author’s later poem, theGītagovinda, has been conjectured to be suggestive of the earliest species of Hindu dramas. But, while the epic poetry of the Hindus gradually approached the dramatic in the way of dialogue, their drama developed itself independently out of the union of the lyric and the epic forms. Their dramatic poetry arose later than their epos, whose great works, theMahābhārataand theRamayana, had themselves been long preceded by the hymnody of theVedas—just as the Greek drama followed upon the Homeric poems and these had been preceded by the early hymns.
There seems, indeed, no reason for dating the beginnings of the regular Indian drama farther back than the 5th centurya.d., though it is probable that the earliest extant Sanskrit play, the delightful, and in some respects incomparable,Mrichchhakatīkā(The Toy Cart), was considerably earlier in date than the works of Kālidāsa. Indeed, of his predecessors in dramatic composition very little is known, and even the contemporaries who competed with him as dramatists are mere names. Thus, by the time the Indian drama produced almost the earliest specimens with which we are acquainted, it had already reached its zenith; and it was therefore looked upon as having sprung into being as a perfect art. We know it only in its glory, in its decline, and in its decay.
The history of Indian dramatic literature may be roughly divided into the following periods.
I.To the 11th Centurya.d.—This period virtually belongs to the pre-Mahommedan age of Indian history; but already to that second division of it in which Buddhism had become a powerful factor in the social as well as in the moralFirst period (classical).and intellectual life of the land. It is the classical period of the Hindu drama, and includes the works of its two indisputably greatest masters. The earliest extant Sanskrit play is the patheticMrichchhakatīkā(The Toy Cart), which has been dated back as far as the close of the 2nd centurya.d.It is attributed (as is not uncommon with Indian plays) to a royal author, named Sūdraka; but it was more probably written by his court poet, whose name has been concluded to have been Dandin. It may be described as a comedy of middle-class life, treating of the courtship and marriage of a ruined Brahman and a wealthy and large-hearted courtesan.
Kālidāsa, the brightest of the “nine gems” of genius in whom the Indian drama gloried, lived at the court of Ujjain, though whether in the earlier half of the 6th centurya.d., or in the 3rd century, or at a yet earlier date, remains an unsettled question. He is the author ofSākuntalā—the work which, in the translation by Sir William Jones (1789), first revealed to the Western world of letters the existence of an Indian drama, since reproduced in innumerable versions in many tongues. This heroic comedy, in seven acts, takes its plot from the first book of theMahābhārata. It is a dramatic love-idyll of surpassing beauty, and one of the masterpieces of the poetic literature of the world. Another drama by Kālidāsa,Vikrama and Urvāsī(The Hero and the Nymph), though unequal as a whole toSākuntalā, contains one act of incomparable loveliness; and its enduring effect upon Indian dramatic literature is shown by the imitations of it in later plays. (It was translated into English in 1827 by H. H. Wilson.) To Kālidāsa has likewise been attributed a third play,Mālavika and Agnimitra; but it is possible that this conventional comedy, though held to be of ancient date, was composed by a different poet of the same name.
To Harsadeva, king of northern India, are ascribed three extant plays, which were more probably composed by some poet in his pay. One of these,Nagananda(Joy of the Serpents), which begins as an erotic play, but passes into a most impressive exemplification of the supreme virtue of self-sacrifice, is notable as the only Buddhist drama which has been preserved, though others are known to have existed and to have been represented.
The palm of pre-eminence is disputed with Kālidāsa by the great dramatic poet Babhavūti (called Crikańťha, or he in whose throat is fortune), who flourished in the earlier part of the 8th century. While he is considered more artificial in language than his rival, and in general more bound by rules, he can hardly be deemed his inferior in dramatic genius. Of his three extant plays,Mahāvāra-CharitraandUttara-Rāma-Charitraare heroic dramas concerned with the adventures of Rāma (the seventh incarnation of Vishnu); the third, the powerful melodrama, in ten acts, ofMālatī and Mādhava, has love for its theme, and has been called (perhaps with more aptitude than usually belongs to such comparisons) theRomeo and Julietof the Hindus. It is considered by their critical authorities the best example of theprakarańa, or drama of domestic life. Babhavūti’s plays, as is indicated by the fact that no jester appears in them, are devoid of the element of humour.
The plays of Rājasekhara, who lived about the end of the 9th century, deal, like those of Harsadeva, with harem and court life. One of them,Karpura Manjuri(Camphor Cluster), is stated to be the only example of thesaltakaor minor heroic comedy, written entirely in Prakrit.
In this period may probably also be included Viśākhadatta’s interesting drama of political intrigue,Mudrā-Rakshasa(The Signet of the Minister), in which Chandragupta (Sandracottus) appears as the founder of a dynasty. In subject, therefore, this production, which is one of the few known Indian historical dramas, goes back to the period following on the invasion of India by Alexander the Great; but the date of composition is probably at least as late asa.d.1000. The plot of the play turns on the gaining-over of the prime minister of theancien régime.
Among the remaining chief works of this period is theVeni-Samhara(Binding of the Braid) by Nārāyana Bhatta. Though described as a play in which both pathos and horror are exaggerated—its subject is an outrage resembling that which Dunstan is said to have inflicted on Elgiva—it is stated to have been always a favourite, as written in exact accordance with dramatic rules. Perhaps theCandakanśikaby Ksemīśvara should also be included, which deals with the working of a curse pronounced by an aged priest upon a king who had innocently offended him.
II.The Period of Decline.—This may be reckoned from about the 11th to about the 14th century of the Christian era, the beginning roughly coinciding with that of a continuous series of Mahommedan invasions of India.Hanūman-Naťaka,Second period (decline).or “the great Nataka” (for this irregular play, the work of several hands, surpasses all other Indian dramas in length, extending over no fewer than fourteen acts), dates from the 10th or 11th century. Its story is taken from the Rāma-cycle, and a prominent character in it is the mythical monkey-chief King Hanūman, to whom, indeed, tradition ascribed the original authorship of the play. Kŕishńamicra’s “theosophic mystery,” as it has been called,—though it rather resembles some of the moralities,—Prabodha-Chandrodaya(The Rise of the Moon of Insight,i.e.the victory of true doctrine over error), is ascribed by one authority to the middle of the 11th century, by another to about the end of the 12th. The famousRatnavali(The Necklace), a court-comedy of love and intrigue, with a half-Terentian plot, seems also to date from the earlier half of the period.
The remaining plays of which it has been possible to conjecture the dates range in the time of their composition from the end of the 11th to the 14th century. Of this period, as compared with the first, the general characteristics seem to be an undue preponderance of narrative and description, and an affected and over-elaborated style. As a striking instance of this class is mentioned a play on the adventures of Rāma, theAnargha-Rāghava, which in spite, or by reason, of the commonplace character of its sentiments, the extravagance of its diction, and the obscurity of its mythology, is stated to enjoy a higher reputation with the pundits of the present age than the masterpieces of Kālidāsa and Babhavūti. To the close of this period, the 14th century, has likewise (but without any pretension to certainty) been ascribed the only Tamil drama of which we possess an English version.Arichandra(The Martyr of Truth) exemplifies—with a strange likeness in the contrivance of its plot to theBook of JobandFaust—by the trials of a heroically enduring king the force of the maxim “Better die than lie.”
III.Period of Decay.—Isolated plays remain from centuries later than the 14th; but these, which chiefly turn on the legends of Kŕishńa (the last incarnation of Vishnu), may be regarded as a mere aftergrowth, and exhibit the IndianThird period (decay).drama in its decay. Indeed, the latest of them,Chitra-Yajna, which was composed about the beginning of the 19th century, and still serves as a model for Bengali dramatic performances, is imperfect in its dialogue, which (after the fashion of Italian improvised comedy) it is left to the actors to supplement. Besides these there are farces or farcical entertainments, more or less indelicate, of uncertain dates.
The number of plays which have descended to us from so vast an expanse of time is still comparatively small. But though, in 1827, Wilson doubted whether all the plays to be found, andthose mentioned by Hindu writers on the drama, amounted to many more than sixty, M. Schuyler’s bibliography (1906) enumerates over five hundred Sanskrit plays. To these have to be added the plays in Tamil, stated to be about a hundred in number, and to have been composed by poets who enjoyed the patronage of the Pandian kings of Madura, and some in other vernaculars.
There certainly is among the Hindus no dearth of dramatic theory. The sage Bharata, the reputed inventor of dramatic entertainments, was likewise revered as the father of dramatic criticism—a combination of functions toCritical literature.which the latter days of the English theatre might perhaps furnish an occasional parallel. The commentators (possibly under the influence of inspiration rather than as a strict matter of memory) constantly cite hissūtras, or aphorisms. (Fromsūtra, thread, was named thesūtra-dhāra, thread-holder, carpenter, a term applied to the architect and general manager of sacrificial solemnities, then to the director of theatrical performances.) By the 11th century, when the drama was already approaching its decline, dramatic criticism had reached an advanced point; and theDasa-Rupaka(of which the text belongs to that age) distinctly defines the ten several kinds of dramatic composition. Other critical works followed at later dates, exhibiting a rage for subdivision unsurpassed by the efforts of Western theorists, ancient or modern; the misfortune is that there should not be examples remaining (if they ever existed) to illustrate all the branches of so elaborate a dramatic system.
“What,” inquires the manager of an actor in the induction to one of the most famous of Indian plays, “are those qualities which the virtuous, the wise, the venerable, the learned and the Brahmans require in a drama?” “ProfoundExclusiveness of the Indian drama.exposition of the various passions,” is the reply, “pleasing interchange of mutual affection, loftiness of character, delicate expression of desire, a surprising story and elegant language.” “Then,” says the manager (for the Indian dramatists, though not, like Ben Jonson, wont to “rail” the public “into approbation,” are unaffected bymauvaise honte), “I recollect one.” And he proceeds to state that “Babhavūti has given us a drama composed by him, replete with all qualities, to which indeed this sentence is applicable: ‘How little do they know who speak of us with censure! This entertainment is not for them. Possibly some one exists, or will exist, of similar tastes with myself; for time is boundless, and the world is wide!’” This disregard of popularity, springing from a consciousness of lofty aims, accounts for much that is characteristic of the higher class of Indian plays. It explains both their relative paucity and their extraordinary length, renders intelligible the chief peculiarity in their diction, and furnishes the key to their most striking ethical as well as literary qualities. Connected in their origin with religious worship, they were only performed on solemn occasions, chiefly of a public nature, and more especially at seasons sacred to some divinity. Thus, though they might in some instances be reproduced, they were always written with a view to one particular solemn representation. Again, the greater part of every one of the plays of Northern India is written in Sanskrit, which ceased to be a popular language by 300b.c., but continued the classical and learned, and at the same time the sacred and court form of speech of the Brahmans. Sanskrit is spoken by the heroes and principal personages of the plays, while the female and inferior characters use varieties, more or less refined, of the Prakrit languages (as a rule not more than three, that which is employed in the songs of the women being the poetic dialect of the most common Prakrit language, the Saurasēnī). Hence, part at least of each play cannot have been understood by the large majority of the audience, except in so far as their general acquaintance with the legends or stories treated enabled them to follow the course of the action. Every audience thus contained aninneraudience, which could alone feel the full effect of the drama. It is, then, easy to see why the Hindu critics should make demands upon the art, into which only highly-trained and refined intellects were capable of entering, or called upon to enter. The general public could not be expected to appreciate the sentiments expressed in a drama, and thus (according to the process prescribed by Hindu theory) to receive instruction by means of amusement. These sentiments are termedrāsas(tastes or flavours), and said to spring from thebhāvas(conditions of mind and body). A variety of subdivisions is added; but thesańta rāsais logically enough excluded from dramatic composition, inasmuch as it implies absolute quiescence.
The Hindu critics know of no distinction directly corresponding to that between tragedy and comedy, still less of any determined by the nature of the close of a play. For, in accordance with the child-like element of their character, theSpecies of dramas.Hindus dislike an unhappy ending to any story, and a positive rule accordingly prohibits a fatal conclusion in their dramas. The general term for all dramatic compositions isrūpaka(fromrūpa, form), those of an inferior class being distinguished asuparūpakas. Of the various subdivisions of therūpaka, in a more limited sense, thenātāka, or play proper, represents the most perfect kind. Its subject should always be celebrated and important—it is virtually either heroism or love, and most frequently the latter—and the hero should be a demigod or divinity (such asRāmain Babhavūti’s heroic plays) or a king (such as the hero ofSākuntalā). But although the earlier dramatists took their plots from the sacred writings or Purānās, they held themselves at liberty to vary the incidents—a licence from which the later poets abstained. Thus, in accordance, perhaps, with the respective developments in the religious life of the two peoples, the Hindu drama in this respect reversed the progressive practice of the Greek. Theprakarańasagree in all essentials with thenātākasexcept that they are less elevated; their stories are mere fictions, taken from actual life in a respectable class of society.1Among the species of theuparūpakamay be mentioned thetroťaka, in which the personages are partly human, partly divine, and of which a famous example remains.2Of thebhańa, a monologue in one act, one literary example is extant—a curious picture of manners in which the speaker describes the different persons he meets at a spring festival in the streets of Kolahalapur.3The satire of the farcicalprahasanasis usually directed against the hypocrisy of ascetics and Brahmans, and the sensuality of the wealthy and powerful. These trifles represent the lower extreme of the dramatic scale, to which, of course, the principles that follow only partially apply.