Have more than thou showest,Speak less than thou knowest,Lend less than thou owest, &c.,is an expansion of the maxim, Trust nobody. And however irrelevant he becomes, he can in a moment get back to this root idea. They tell him his song is nothing:Fool.Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave menothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?Lear.Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.Fool[to Kent]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.i.i. 92.'Nothing will come of nothing' had been the words Lear had used to Cordelia; now he is bidden to see how they have become the exact description of his own fortune. No wonder Lear exclaims, 'A bitter fool!'Fool.Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?Lear.No, lad; teach me.Fool.That lord that counsell'd theeTo give away thy land,Come place him here by me,Do thou for him stand:The sweet and bitter foolWill presently appear;The one in motley here.The other found out there.Lear.Dost thou call me fool, boy?Fool.All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.Again and again he turns to other topics and comes suddenly back to the main thought.i.iv. 195.Fool.Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.Lear.An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.Fool.I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings.i.iv. 207.It is Goneril who enters, and who proceeds to state her case in the tone of injury, detailing how the order of her household state has been outraged, but ignoring the source from which she has received the power to keep up state at all: what she has omitted the Fool supplies in parable, as if continuing her sentence—For, you trow, nuncle,The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,That it's had it head bit off by it young,and then instantly involves himself in a cloud of irrelevance,So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.i.v.In the scene which follows, the Fool is performing a variation on the same theme: the sudden removal from one sisterto the other is no real escape from the original foolish situation.i.v. 8.Fool.If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes?Lear.Ay, boy.Fool.Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.To say that Lear is in no danger of suffering from brains in his heels is another way of saying that his flight is folly. He goes on to insist that the other daughter will treat her father 'kindly,' that 'she's as like this as a crab's like an apple.' His laying down that the reason why the nose is in the middle of the face is to keep the eyes on either side of the nose, and that the reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is 'a pretty reason—because they are not eight,' suggests (if it be not pressing it too far) that we must not look for depth where there is only shallowness—the mistake Lear has made in trusting to the gratitude of his daughters. And the general thought of Lear's original folly he brings out, true to the fool's office, from the most unlikely beginnings.i.v. 26.Fool.Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?Lear.No.'Nor I neither,' answers the Fool, with a clown's impudence; 'but,' he adds, 'I can tell why a snail has a house.'Lear.Why?Fool.Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters.ii.iv. 1-128.All through the scene in front of the stocks the Fool is harping on the folly of expecting gratitude from such as Goneril and Regan. It is fathers who bear bags that see their children kind; the wise man lets go his hold on a great wheel running down hill, but lets himself be drawn after by the great wheel that goes up the hill; he himself, the Fool hints, is a fool for staying with Lear; to cry out at Goneril and Regan's behaviour is as unreasonable as for the cook to be impatient with the eels for wriggling; to have trusted the twodaughters with power at all was like the folly of the man that, 'in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.'The one idea, then, stationary amidst all the Fool's gyrations of folly is the idea of Lear's original sin of passion, from the consequences of which he can never escape;but in an emotional form as adapted to the agitation of the Centrepiece.only the idea is put, not rationally, but translated into an emotional form which makes it fit to mingle with the agitation of the central scenes. The emotional form consists partly in the irrelevance amid which the idea is brought out, producing continual shocks of surprise. But more than this an emotional form is given to the utterances of the Fool by his very position with reference to Lear.iii.i. 16;iii.ii. 10, 25, 68;iii.iv. 80, 150.There is a pathos that mingles with his humour, where the Fool, a tender and delicate youth, is found the only attendant who clings to Lear amid the rigour of the storm, labouring with visibly decreasing vigour to out-jest his master's heart-struck injuries, and to keep up holiday abandon amidst surrounding realities.i.iv. 107;iii.ii. 68, 72, &c.Throughout he is Lear's best friend, and epithets of endearment are continually passing between them: he has been Cordelia's friend (as Touchstone was the friend of Rosalind),i.iv. 79.and pined for Cordelia after her banishment. Nevertheless he is the only one who can deliver hard thrusts at Lear, and bring home to him, under protection of his double relation to wisdom and folly, Lear's original error and sin. So faithful and so severe, the Fool becomes an outward conscience to his master: he keeps before Lear the unnatural act from which the whole tragedy springs, but he converts the thought of it into the emotion of self-reproach.Summary.Our total result then is this. The intricate drama ofKing Learhas a general movement which centres the passion of the play in a single Climax. Throughout a Centrepiece of a few scenes, against a background of storm and tempest is thrown up a tempest of human passion—a madness trio, or mutual play of three sorts of madness, the real madness of passion in Lear, the feigned madness of idiocy in Edgar, andthe professional madness of the court fool. When the elements of this madness trio are analysed, the first is found to gather up into itself the passion of the three tragedies which form the main plot; the second is a similar climax to the passion of the three tragedies which make up the underplot; the third is an expression, in the form of passion, of the original problem out of which the whole action has sprung. Thus intricacy of plot has been found not inconsistent with simplicity of movement, and from the various parts of the drama the complex trains of passion have been brought to a focus in the centre.PART SECOND.SURVEY OFDRAMATIC CRITICISMAS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.XI.Topics of Dramatic Criticism.Purpose: to survey Dramatic Criticism as an inductive science.IN the Introduction to this book I pleaded that a regular inductive science of literary criticism was a possibility. In the preceding ten chapters I have endeavoured to exhibit such a regular method at work on the dramatic analysis of leading points in Shakespeare's plays. The design of the whole work will not be complete without an attempt to present our results in complete form, in fact to map out a Science of Dramatic Art. I hope this may not seem too pretentious an undertaking in the case of a science yet in its infancy; while it may be useful at all events to the young student to have suggested to him a methodical treatment with which he may exercise himself on the literature he studies. Moreover the reproach against literary criticism is, not that there has not been plenty of inductive work done in this department, but that the assertion of its inductive character has been lacking; and I believe a critic does good service by throwing his results into a formal shape, however imperfectly he may be able to accomplish his task. It will be understood that the survey of Dramatic Science is here attempted only in the merest outline: it is a glimpse, not a view, of a new science that is proposed. Not even a survey would be possible within the limits of a few short chapters except by confining the matter introduced to that previously laid before the reader in a different form. The leading features of Dramatic Art have already been explained in the application of them to particular plays: they are now included in a single view,so arranged that their mutual connection may be seen to be building up this singleness of view. Such a survey, like a microscopic lens of low power, must sacrifice detail to secure a wider field. Its compensating gain will consist in what it can contribute to the orderly product of methodised enquiry which is the essence of science, and the interest in which becomes associated with the interest of curiosity when the method has been applied in a region not usually acknowledging its reign.Definition of Dramatic Criticism:The starting-point in the exposition of any science is naturally its definition. But this first step is sufficient to divide inductive criticism from the treatment of literature mostly in vogue. I have already protested against the criticism which starts with the assumption of some 'object' or 'fundamental purpose' in the Drama from which to deduce binding canons. Such an all-embracing definition, if it is possible at all, will come as the final, not the first, step of investigation.as to its field and its method.Inductive criticism, on the contrary, will seek its point of departure from outside. On the one hand it will consider the relation of the matter which it proposes to treat to other matter which is the subject of scientific enquiry; on the other hand it will fix the nature of the treatment it proposes to apply by a reference to scientific method in general. That is to say, its definition will be based upon differentiation of matter and development in method.Stages of development in inductive method.To begin with the latter. There are three well-marked stages in the development of sciences. The first consists in the mere observation of the subject-matter. The second is distinguished by arrangement of observations, by analysis and classification. The third stage reaches systematisation—the wider arrangement which satisfies our sense of explanation, that curiosity as to causes which is the instinct specially developed by scientific enquiry. Astronomy remained for long ages in the first stage, while it was occupied with the observation of the heavenly bodies and the naming of theconstellations. It would pass into the second stage with division of labour and the study of solar, lunar, planetary, and cometary phenomena separately. But by such discoveries as that of the laws of motion, or of gravitation, the great mass of astronomical knowledge was bound together in a system which at the same time satisfied the sense of causation, and astronomy was fully developed as an inductive science. Or to take a more modern instance: comparative philology has attained completeness in our own day. Philology was in its first stage at the Renaissance, when 'learning' meant the mere accumulation of detailed knowledge connected with the Classical languages; Grimm's Law may illustrate the second stage, a classification comprehensive but purely empiric; the principle of phonetic decay with its allied recuperative processes has struck a unity through the laws of philology which stamps it as a full-grown science.Dramatic Criticism in the intermediateApplying this to our present subject, I do not pretend that Literary Criticism has reached the third of these three stages: but materials are ready for giving it a secure place in the second stage. In time, no doubt, literary science must be able to explain the modus operandi of literary production, and show how different classes of writing come to produce their different effects. But at present such explanation belongs mostly to the region of speculation; and before the science of criticism is ripe for this final stage much work has to be done in the way of methodising observation as to literary matter and form.Dramatic Criticism, then, is still in the stage of provisional arrangement.or 'topical' stage.Its exact position is expressed by the technical term 'topical.' Where accumulation of observations is great enough to necessitate methodical arrangement, yet progress is insufficient to suggest final bases of arrangement which will crystallise the whole into a system, science takes refuge in 'topics.' These have been aptly described as intellectual pigeon-holes—convenient headings under which materials may be digested, with strict adherence to method, yet only asa provisional arrangement until further progress shall bring more stable organisation. This topical treatment may seem an unambitious stage in scientific advance, the goal and reward of which is insight into wide laws and far-reaching systematisations. Still it is a stage directly in the line of sound method: and the judicious choice of main and subordinate topics is systematisation in embryo. The present enquiry looks no further than this stage in its analysis of Dramatic Art. It endeavours to find convenient headings under which to set forth its observations of Shakespeare's plays. It also seeks an arrangement of these topics that will at once cover the field of the subject, and also carry on the face of it such an economy of mutual connection as may make the topics, what they ought to be, a natural bridge between the general idea which the mind forms of Drama and the realisation of this idea in the details of actual dramatic works.Continuous differentiation of scientific subject-matter.But the definition of our subject involves further that we should measure out the exact field within which this method is to be applied. Science, like every other product of the human mind, marks its progress by continuous differentiation: the perpetual subdivision of the field of enquiry, the rise of separate and ever minuter departments as time goes on. Originally all knowledge was one and undivided. The name of Socrates is connected with a great revolution which separated moral science from physics, the study of man from the study of nature. With Aristotle and inductive method the process became rapid: and under his guidance ethics, as the science of conduct, became distinct from mental science; and still further, political science, treating man in his relations with the state, was distinguished from the more general science of conduct. When thought awoke at the Renaissance after the sleep of the Dark Ages, political science threw off as a distinct branch political economy; and by our own day particular branches of economy, finance, for example, have practically become independent sciences. This characteristicof science in general, the perpetual tendency to separate more confined from more general lines of investigation, will apply in an especial degree to literature,Dramatic Criticism branches off on the one side from the wider Literary Criticism.which covers so wide an area of the mind and is the meeting-ground of so many separate interests. Thus Shakespeare is a poet, and his works afford a field for considering poetry in general, both as a mode of thought and a mode of expression. Again, no writer could go so deeply into human nature as Shakespeare has done without betraying his philosophy and moral system. Once more, Shakespeare must afford a specimen of literary tendencies in general, and that particular modification of them we call Elizabethan; besides that the language which is the vehicle of this literature has an interest of its own over and above that of the thought which it conveys. All this and more belongs properly to 'Shakespeare-Criticism': but from Literary Criticism as a whole a branch is being gradually differentiated, Dramatic Criticism, and its province is to deal with the question, how much of the total effect of Shakespeare's works arises from the fact of his ideas being conveyed to us in the form of dramas, and not of lyric or epic poems, of essays or moral and philosophical treatises. It is with this branch alone that the present enquiry is concerned.On the other side from the allied art of Stage-Representation.But more than this goes to the definition of Dramatic Criticism. Drama is not, like Epic, merely a branch of literature: it is a compound art. The literary works which in ordinary speech we call dramas, are in strictness only potential dramas waiting for their realisation on the stage. And this stage-representation is not a mere accessory of literature, but is an independent art, having a field where literature has no place, in dumb show, in pantomime, in mimicry, and in the lost art of Greek 'dancing.'The question arises then, what is to be the relation of Dramatic Criticism to the companion art of Stage-Representation? Aristotle, the father of Dramatic Criticism, made Stage-Representationone of the departments of the science; but we shall be only following the law of differentiation if we separate the two. This is especially appropriate in the case of the Shakespearean Drama. The Puritan Revolution, which has played such a part in its history, was in effect an attack rather on the Theatre than on the Drama itself. No doubt when the movement became violent the two were not discriminated, and the Drama was made a 'vanity' as well as the Stage. Still the one interest was never so thoroughly dropped by the nation and was more readily taken up again than the other; so that from the point of view of the Stage our continuity with the Elizabethan age has been severed, from the point of view of the literary Drama it has not. The Shakespearean Drama has made a field for itself as a branch of literature quite apart from the Stage; and, however we may regret the severance and look forward to a completer appreciation of Shakespeare, yet it can hardly be doubted that at the present moment as earnest and comprehensive an interest in our great dramatist is to be found in the study as in the theatre.Dramatic Criticism, then, is to be separated, on the one side, from the wider Literary Criticism which must include a review of language, ethics, philosophy, and general art; and, on the other hand, from the companion art of Stage-Representation. But here caution is required; for all these are so closely and so organically connected with the Drama that there cannot but exist a mutual reaction.Topics common to Drama and art in general.Thus we have already had to treat of topics which belong to the Drama only as a part of literature and art in general. In the first chapter we had occasion to notice how even the raw material out of which the Shakespearean Drama is constructed itself forms another species in literature. When we proceeded to watch the process of working up this Story into dramatic form we were led on to what was common ground between Drama and the other arts. In such process we saw illustratedthe 'hedging,' or double process which leaves monstrosity to produce its full impression and yet provides by special means against any natural reaction; the reduction of improbabilities, by which difficulties in the subject-matter are evaded or met; the utilisation of mechanical details to assist more important effects; the multiplication and interweaving of different interests by which each is made to assist the rest. Such points of Mechanical Construction, together with the general principles of balance and symmetry, are not special to any one branch of art: in all alike the artist will contrive not wholly to conceal his processes, but by occasional glimpses will add to higher effects the satisfaction of our sense of neat workmanship.Drama and its Representation separate in exposition, not in idea.Similarly, it may be convenient to make Literary Drama and Stage-Representation separate branches of enquiry: it is totally inadmissible and highly misleading to divorce the two in idea. The literary play must be throughout readrelativelyto its representation. In actual practice the separation of the two has produced the greatest obstacles in the way of sound appreciation. Amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare Character-Interest, which is largely independent of performance, has swallowed up all other interests; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into a given space, have been completely lost. Shakespeare is popularly regarded as supreme in the painting of human nature, but careless in the construction of Plot: and, worst of all, Plot itself, which it has been the mission of the English Drama to elevate into the position of the most intellectual of all elements in literary effect, has become degraded in conception to the level of a mere juggler's mystery. It must then be laid down distinctly at the outset of the present enquiry that the Drama is to be considered throughout relatively to its acting. Much of dramatic effect that is special to Stage-Representation will be here ignored:the whole mechanism of elocution, effects of light, colour and costume, the greater portion of what constitutesmise-en-scène. But in dealing with any play the fullest scope is assumed for ideal acting. The interpretation of a character must include what an actor can put into it; in dealing with effects regard must be had to surroundings which a reader might easily overlook, but which would be present to the eye of a spectator; and no conception of the movement of a drama will be adequate which has not appreciated the rapid sequence of incidents that crowds the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three hours of actual time. The relation of Drama to its acting will be exactly similar to that of music to its performance, the two being perfectly separable in their exposition, but never disunited in idea.Fundamental division of Dramatic Criticism into Human Interest and Action.Dramatic Art, then, as thus defined, is to be the field of our enquiry, and its method is to be the discovery and arrangement of topics. For a fundamental basis of such analysis we shall naturally look to the other arts. Now all the arts agree in being the union of two elements, abstract and concrete. Music takes sensuous sounds, and adds a purely abstract element by disposing these sounds in harmonies and melodies; architecture applies abstract design to a concrete medium of stone and wood; painting gives us objects of real life arranged in abstract groupings: in dancing we have moving figures confined in artistic bonds of rhythm; sculpture traces in still figures ideas of shape and attitude. So Drama has its two elements of Human Interest and Action: on the one hand lifepresented in action—so the word 'Drama' may be translated; on the other hand theactionitself, that is, the concurrence of all that is presented in an abstract unity of design. The two fundamental divisions of dramatic interest, and consequently the two fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism, will thus be Human Interest and Action. But each of these has its different sides, the distinction of which is essential before wecan arrive at an arrangement of topics that will be of practical value in the methodisation of criticism.Twofold division of Human Interest.The interest of the life presented is twofold. There is our interest in the separate personages who enter into it, as so many varieties of thegenus homo: this is Interest ofCharacter. There is again our interest in the experience these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate: technically, Interest ofPassion.Human Interest{Character.Passion.Threefold division of Action.It is the same with the other fundamental element of art, the working together of all the details so as to leave an impression of unity: while in practice the sense of this unity, say in a piece of music or a play, is one of the simplest of instincts, yet upon analysis it is seen to imply three separate mental impressions. The mind, it implies, must be conscious of a unity. It must also be conscious of a complexity of details without which the unity could not be perceptible. But the mere perception of unity and of complexity would give no art-pleasure unless the unity were seen to bedevelopedout of the complexity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradualMovement.Action{Unity.Complexity.Development or Movement.Application of the threefold division of Action to the twofold division of Human Interest.Now if we apply the threefold idea involved in Action to the twofold idea involved in Human Interest we shall get the natural divisions of dramatic analysis. One element of Human Interest was Character: looking at this in the threefold aspect which is given to it when it is connected with Action we shall have to notice the interest of single characters, orCharacter-Interpretation, the more complex interest ofCharacter-Contrast, and in the third placeCharacter-Development. Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest, Passion, we shall review single elements ofPassion, that is to say,Incidents and Effects; the mixture of various passions to express which the termPassion-Toneswill be used; and againPassion-Movement. But Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as separate from Human Interest. This isPlot; and it will lend itself to the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions ofSingle Action,Complex Action, and that development of Plot which constitutes dramaticMovementin the most important sense. At this point it is possible only to name these leading topics of Dramatic Criticism: to explain each, and to trace them further into their lesser ramifications will be the work of the remaining three chapters.Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism.The Literary DramaCharacter{Single Character-Interest, orCharacter-Interpretation.Complex Character-Interest, orCharacter-Contrast.Character-Development.Passion{Single Passion-Interest, orIncident and Effect.Complex Passion-Interest, orPassion-Tone.Passion-Movement.Plot (or Pure Action){Single Action.Complex Action.Plot-Movement.XII.Interest of Character.Unity applied to Character: Character Interpretation.OF the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for consideration: and we are to view it under the three aspects of unity, complexity, and movement. The application of the idea unity to the idea character suggests at once our interest in single personages. This interest becomes more defined when we take into account the medium through which the personages are presented to us: characters in Drama are not brought out by abstract discussion or description, but are presented to us concretely, self-pourtrayed by their own actions without the assistance of comments from the author.Accordingly, the leading interest of character isInterpretation, the mental process of turning from the concrete to the abstract: from the most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a unity of conception which we call a character.Interpretation of the nature of an hypothesis.Interpretation when scientifically handled must be, we have seen, of the nature of an hypothesis, the value of which depends upon the degree in which it explains whatever details have any bearing upon the character. Such an hypothesis may be a simple idea: and we have seen at length how the whole portraiture of Richard precipitates into the notion of Ideal Villainy, ideal on the subjective side in an artist who follows crime for its own sake, and on the objective side in a success that works by fascination. But the student must beware of the temptation to grasp at epigrammatic labels assufficient solutions of character; in the great majority of cases Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising various and even conflicting elements.Canons of Interpretation.Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles governing careful Interpretation.It must be Exhaustive.One of these principles is that it must take into consideration all that is presented of a personage. It is unscientific on the face of it to say (as is repeatedly said) that Shakespeare is 'inconsistent' in ascribing deep musical sympathies to so thin a character as Lorenzo. Such allegation of inconsistency means that the process of Interpretation is unfinished; it can be paralleled only by the astronomer who should complain of eclipses as 'inconsistent' with his view of the moon's movements. In the particular case we found no difficulty in harmonising the apparent conflict: the details of Lorenzo's portraiture fit in well with the not uncommon type of nature that is so deeply touched by art sensibilities as to have a languid interest in life outside art.It must take in indirect evidence;Again: Interpretation must look forindirectevidence of character, such as the impression a personage seems to have made on other personages in the story, or the effect of action outside the field of view. It is impatient induction to pronounce Bassanio unworthy of Portia merely from comparison of the parts played by the two in the drama itself. It happens from the nature of the story that the incidents actually represented in the drama are such as always display Bassanio in an exceptional and dependent position; but we have an opportunity of getting to the other side of our hero's character by observing the attitude held to him by others in the play, an attitude founded not on the incidents of the drama alone, but upon the sum total of his life and behaviour in the Venetian world. This gives a very different impression; and when we take into consideration the force with which his personality sways all who approach him, from the strong Antonio andthe intellectual Lorenzo to giddy Gratiano and the rough common sense of Launcelot, then the character comes out in its proper scale.and the degree to which the character is displayed.As a third principle, it is perhaps too obvious to be worth formulating that Interpretation must allow for the degree to which the character is displayed by the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral of Cæsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public demeanour.Interpretation reacting on the details.It is a less obvious principle that the very details which are to be unified into a conception of character may have a different complexion given to them when they are looked at in the light of the whole. It has been noticed how Richard seems to manifest in some scenes a slovenliness of intrigue that might be a stumbling-block to the general impression of his character. But when in our view of him as a whole we see what a large part is played by the invincibility that is stamped on his very demeanour, it becomes clear how this slovenliness can be interpreted by the analyst, and represented by the actor, not as a defect of power, but as a trick of bearing which measures his own sense of his irresistibility. Principles like these flow naturally from the fundamental idea of character and its unity. Their practical use however will be mainly that of tests for suggested interpretations: to the actual reading of character in Drama, as in real life, the safest guide is sympathetic insight.Complexity applied to Character.The second element underlying all dramatic effect was complexity; when complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast.Character-Foils.In its lowest degree this appears in the form ofCharacter-Foils: by the side of some prominent character is placed another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or perhaps moulded by the influence of its principal, just as by the side of a lofty mountain are often to be seen smaller hills of the same formation. Thus beside Portia is placed Nerissa, beside Bassanio Gratiano, beside Shylock Tubal; Richard's villainy stands out bycomparison with Buckingham, Hastings, Tyrrel, Catesby, any one of whom would have given blackness enough to an ordinary drama. It is quite possible that minute examination may find differences between such companion figures: but the general effect of the combination is that the lesser serves as foil to throw up the scale on which the other is framed. The more pronounced effects of Character-Contrast depend upon differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree.Character-Contrast.In this form it is clear howCharacter-Contrastis only an extension of Character-Interpretation: it implies that some single conception explains, that is, gives unity to, the actions of more than one person. A whole chapter has been devoted to bringing out such contrast in the case of Lord and Lady Macbeth: to accept these as types of the practical and inner life, cast in such an age and involved in such an undertaking, furnishes a conception sufficient to make clear and intelligible all that the two say and do in the scenes of the drama.Duplication.Character-Contrast is especially common amongst the minor effects in a Shakespearean drama. In the case of personages demanded by the necessities of the story rather than introduced for their own sake Shakespeare has a tendency to double the number of such personages for the sake of getting effects of contrast. We have two unsuccessful suitors inThe Merchant of Venicebringing out, the one the unconscious pride of royal birth, the other the pride of intense self-consciousness; two wicked daughters of Lear, Goneril with no shading in her harshness, Regan who is in reality a degree more calculating in her cruelty than her sister, but conceals it under a charm of manner, 'eyes that comfort and not burn.'iii.i.Of the two princes inRichard IIIthe one has a gravity beyond his years, while York overflows with not ungraceful pertness. Especially interesting are the two murderers in that play.i.iv, from 84.The first is a dull, 'strong-framed' man, without any better nature. The second has had culture, and beenaccustomed to reflect; his better nature has been vanquished by love of greed, and now asserts itself to prevent his sinning with equanimity.110.It is the second murderer whose conscience is set in activity by the word 'judgment'; and he discourses on conscience, deeply,124-157.yet not without humour, as he recognises the power of the expected reward over the oft-vanquished compunctions.167.He catches, as a thoughtful man, the irony of the duke's cry for wine when they are about to drown him in the butt of malmsey.165.Again, instead of hurrying to the deed while Clarence is waking he cannot resist the temptation to argue with him, and so, as a man open to argument,263.he feels the force of Clarence's unexpected suggestion:He that set you onTo do this deed will hate you for the deed.Thus he exhibits the weakness of all thinking men in a moment of action, the capacity to see two sides of a question; and, trying at the critical moment to alter his course,284.he ends by losing the reward of crime without escaping the guilt.Character-Grouping.Character-Contrast is carried forward intoCharacter-Groupingwhen the field is still further enlarged, and a single conception is found to give unity to more than two personages of a drama. A chapter has been devoted to showing how the same antithesis of outer and inner life which made the conception of Macbeth and his wife intelligible would serve, when adapted to the widely different world of Roman political life, to explain the characters of the leading conspirators inJulius Cæsar, of their victim and of his avenger: while, over and above the satisfaction of Interpretation, the Grouping of these four figures, so colossal and so impressive, round a single idea is an interest in itself.Dramatic Colouring.The effect is carried a stage further still when some single phase of human interest tends, in a greater or less degree, to give a common feature to all the personages of a play; thewhole dramatic field iscolouredby some idea, though of course the interpretative significance of such an idea is weakened in proportion to the area over which it is distributed. The five plays to which our attention is confined do not afford the best examples of Dramatic Colouring. It is a point, however, of common remark how the play ofMacbethis coloured by the superstition and violence of the Dark Ages. The world of this drama seems given over to powers of darkness who can read, if not mould, destiny; witchcraft appears as an instrument of crime and ghostly agency of punishment. We have rebellion without any suggestion of cause to ennoble it, terminated by executions without the pomp of justice; we have a long reign of terror in which massacre is a measure of daily administration and murder is a profession. With all this there is a total absence of relief in any picture of settled life: there is no rallying-point for order and purity. The very agent of retribution gets the impulse to his task in a reaction from a shock of bereavement that has come down upon him as a natural punishment for an act of indecisive folly.compareiv.iii. 26;iv.ii. 1-22.There are, then, three different effects that arise when complexity enters into Character-Interest. The complexity is one never separable from the unity which binds it together: in the first effect the diversity is stronger than the unity, and the whole manifests itself as Character-Contrast; in Character-Grouping the contrast of the separate figures is an equal element with the unity which binds them all into a group; in the third case the diversity is lost in the unity, and a uniformity of colouring is seized by the dramatic sense as an effect apart from the individual varieties without which such colouring would not be remarkable.Movement applied to Character: Character-Development.When to Character-Interpretation, the formation of a single conception out of a multitude of concrete details, the further idea of growth and progress is added, we get the third variety of Character-Interest—Character-Development.In the preceding chapters this has received only negative notice, its absence being a salient feature in the portraiture of Richard. For a positive illustration no better example could be desired than the character of Macbeth. Three features, we have seen, stand out clear in the general conception of Macbeth. There is his eminently practical nature, which is the key to the whole. And the absence in him of the inner life adds two special features: one is his helplessness under suspense, the other is the activity of his imagination with its susceptibility to supernatural terrors. Now, if we fix our attention on these three points they become three threads of development as we trace Macbeth through the stages of his career. His practical power developes as capacity for crime. Macbeth undertook his first crime only after a protracted and terrible struggle; the murder of the grooms was a crime of impulse; the murder of Banquo appears a thing of contrivance, in which Macbeth is a deliberate planner directing the agency of others,iii.ii. 40, &c.while his dark hints to his wife suggest the beginning of a relish for such deeds. This capacity for crime continues to grow, until slaughter becomes an end in itself:iv.iii. 4.Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry:and then a mania:v.ii. 13.Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate himDo call it valiant fury.We see a parallel development in Macbeth's impatience of suspense. Just after his first temptation he is able to brace himself to suspense for an indefinite period:i.iii. 143.
Have more than thou showest,Speak less than thou knowest,Lend less than thou owest, &c.,
Have more than thou showest,Speak less than thou knowest,Lend less than thou owest, &c.,
Have more than thou showest,Speak less than thou knowest,Lend less than thou owest, &c.,
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest, &c.,
is an expansion of the maxim, Trust nobody. And however irrelevant he becomes, he can in a moment get back to this root idea. They tell him his song is nothing:
Fool.Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave menothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?Lear.Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.Fool[to Kent]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.
Fool.Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave menothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?Lear.Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.Fool[to Kent]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.
Fool.Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave menothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?Lear.Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.Fool[to Kent]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.
Fool.Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave me
nothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
Lear.Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.
Fool[to Kent]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.
i.i. 92.
'Nothing will come of nothing' had been the words Lear had used to Cordelia; now he is bidden to see how they have become the exact description of his own fortune. No wonder Lear exclaims, 'A bitter fool!'
Fool.Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?Lear.No, lad; teach me.Fool.That lord that counsell'd theeTo give away thy land,Come place him here by me,Do thou for him stand:The sweet and bitter foolWill presently appear;The one in motley here.The other found out there.Lear.Dost thou call me fool, boy?Fool.All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Fool.Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?Lear.No, lad; teach me.Fool.That lord that counsell'd theeTo give away thy land,Come place him here by me,Do thou for him stand:The sweet and bitter foolWill presently appear;The one in motley here.The other found out there.Lear.Dost thou call me fool, boy?Fool.All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Fool.Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?
Lear.No, lad; teach me.
Fool.That lord that counsell'd thee
To give away thy land,
Come place him here by me,
Do thou for him stand:
The sweet and bitter fool
Will presently appear;
The one in motley here.
The other found out there.
Lear.Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool.All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Again and again he turns to other topics and comes suddenly back to the main thought.
i.iv. 195.
Fool.Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.Lear.An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.Fool.I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings.
Fool.Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.Lear.An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.Fool.I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings.
Fool.Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.
Lear.An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.
Fool.I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings.
i.iv. 207.
It is Goneril who enters, and who proceeds to state her case in the tone of injury, detailing how the order of her household state has been outraged, but ignoring the source from which she has received the power to keep up state at all: what she has omitted the Fool supplies in parable, as if continuing her sentence—
For, you trow, nuncle,The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,That it's had it head bit off by it young,
For, you trow, nuncle,The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,That it's had it head bit off by it young,
For, you trow, nuncle,The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,That it's had it head bit off by it young,
For, you trow, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it's had it head bit off by it young,
and then instantly involves himself in a cloud of irrelevance,
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
i.v.
In the scene which follows, the Fool is performing a variation on the same theme: the sudden removal from one sisterto the other is no real escape from the original foolish situation.
i.v. 8.
Fool.If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes?Lear.Ay, boy.Fool.Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.
Fool.If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes?Lear.Ay, boy.Fool.Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.
Fool.If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes?Lear.Ay, boy.Fool.Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.
Fool.If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes?
Lear.Ay, boy.
Fool.Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.
To say that Lear is in no danger of suffering from brains in his heels is another way of saying that his flight is folly. He goes on to insist that the other daughter will treat her father 'kindly,' that 'she's as like this as a crab's like an apple.' His laying down that the reason why the nose is in the middle of the face is to keep the eyes on either side of the nose, and that the reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is 'a pretty reason—because they are not eight,' suggests (if it be not pressing it too far) that we must not look for depth where there is only shallowness—the mistake Lear has made in trusting to the gratitude of his daughters. And the general thought of Lear's original folly he brings out, true to the fool's office, from the most unlikely beginnings.
i.v. 26.
Fool.Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?Lear.No.
Fool.Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?Lear.No.
Fool.Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?Lear.No.
Fool.Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
Lear.No.
'Nor I neither,' answers the Fool, with a clown's impudence; 'but,' he adds, 'I can tell why a snail has a house.'
Lear.Why?Fool.Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters.
Lear.Why?Fool.Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters.
Lear.Why?Fool.Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters.
Lear.Why?
Fool.Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters.
ii.iv. 1-128.
All through the scene in front of the stocks the Fool is harping on the folly of expecting gratitude from such as Goneril and Regan. It is fathers who bear bags that see their children kind; the wise man lets go his hold on a great wheel running down hill, but lets himself be drawn after by the great wheel that goes up the hill; he himself, the Fool hints, is a fool for staying with Lear; to cry out at Goneril and Regan's behaviour is as unreasonable as for the cook to be impatient with the eels for wriggling; to have trusted the twodaughters with power at all was like the folly of the man that, 'in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.'
The one idea, then, stationary amidst all the Fool's gyrations of folly is the idea of Lear's original sin of passion, from the consequences of which he can never escape;but in an emotional form as adapted to the agitation of the Centrepiece.only the idea is put, not rationally, but translated into an emotional form which makes it fit to mingle with the agitation of the central scenes. The emotional form consists partly in the irrelevance amid which the idea is brought out, producing continual shocks of surprise. But more than this an emotional form is given to the utterances of the Fool by his very position with reference to Lear.iii.i. 16;iii.ii. 10, 25, 68;iii.iv. 80, 150.There is a pathos that mingles with his humour, where the Fool, a tender and delicate youth, is found the only attendant who clings to Lear amid the rigour of the storm, labouring with visibly decreasing vigour to out-jest his master's heart-struck injuries, and to keep up holiday abandon amidst surrounding realities.i.iv. 107;iii.ii. 68, 72, &c.Throughout he is Lear's best friend, and epithets of endearment are continually passing between them: he has been Cordelia's friend (as Touchstone was the friend of Rosalind),i.iv. 79.and pined for Cordelia after her banishment. Nevertheless he is the only one who can deliver hard thrusts at Lear, and bring home to him, under protection of his double relation to wisdom and folly, Lear's original error and sin. So faithful and so severe, the Fool becomes an outward conscience to his master: he keeps before Lear the unnatural act from which the whole tragedy springs, but he converts the thought of it into the emotion of self-reproach.
Summary.
Our total result then is this. The intricate drama ofKing Learhas a general movement which centres the passion of the play in a single Climax. Throughout a Centrepiece of a few scenes, against a background of storm and tempest is thrown up a tempest of human passion—a madness trio, or mutual play of three sorts of madness, the real madness of passion in Lear, the feigned madness of idiocy in Edgar, andthe professional madness of the court fool. When the elements of this madness trio are analysed, the first is found to gather up into itself the passion of the three tragedies which form the main plot; the second is a similar climax to the passion of the three tragedies which make up the underplot; the third is an expression, in the form of passion, of the original problem out of which the whole action has sprung. Thus intricacy of plot has been found not inconsistent with simplicity of movement, and from the various parts of the drama the complex trains of passion have been brought to a focus in the centre.
PART SECOND.SURVEY OFDRAMATIC CRITICISMAS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.
PART SECOND.
SURVEY OFDRAMATIC CRITICISMAS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.
Topics of Dramatic Criticism.
Purpose: to survey Dramatic Criticism as an inductive science.
IN the Introduction to this book I pleaded that a regular inductive science of literary criticism was a possibility. In the preceding ten chapters I have endeavoured to exhibit such a regular method at work on the dramatic analysis of leading points in Shakespeare's plays. The design of the whole work will not be complete without an attempt to present our results in complete form, in fact to map out a Science of Dramatic Art. I hope this may not seem too pretentious an undertaking in the case of a science yet in its infancy; while it may be useful at all events to the young student to have suggested to him a methodical treatment with which he may exercise himself on the literature he studies. Moreover the reproach against literary criticism is, not that there has not been plenty of inductive work done in this department, but that the assertion of its inductive character has been lacking; and I believe a critic does good service by throwing his results into a formal shape, however imperfectly he may be able to accomplish his task. It will be understood that the survey of Dramatic Science is here attempted only in the merest outline: it is a glimpse, not a view, of a new science that is proposed. Not even a survey would be possible within the limits of a few short chapters except by confining the matter introduced to that previously laid before the reader in a different form. The leading features of Dramatic Art have already been explained in the application of them to particular plays: they are now included in a single view,so arranged that their mutual connection may be seen to be building up this singleness of view. Such a survey, like a microscopic lens of low power, must sacrifice detail to secure a wider field. Its compensating gain will consist in what it can contribute to the orderly product of methodised enquiry which is the essence of science, and the interest in which becomes associated with the interest of curiosity when the method has been applied in a region not usually acknowledging its reign.
Definition of Dramatic Criticism:
The starting-point in the exposition of any science is naturally its definition. But this first step is sufficient to divide inductive criticism from the treatment of literature mostly in vogue. I have already protested against the criticism which starts with the assumption of some 'object' or 'fundamental purpose' in the Drama from which to deduce binding canons. Such an all-embracing definition, if it is possible at all, will come as the final, not the first, step of investigation.as to its field and its method.Inductive criticism, on the contrary, will seek its point of departure from outside. On the one hand it will consider the relation of the matter which it proposes to treat to other matter which is the subject of scientific enquiry; on the other hand it will fix the nature of the treatment it proposes to apply by a reference to scientific method in general. That is to say, its definition will be based upon differentiation of matter and development in method.
Stages of development in inductive method.
To begin with the latter. There are three well-marked stages in the development of sciences. The first consists in the mere observation of the subject-matter. The second is distinguished by arrangement of observations, by analysis and classification. The third stage reaches systematisation—the wider arrangement which satisfies our sense of explanation, that curiosity as to causes which is the instinct specially developed by scientific enquiry. Astronomy remained for long ages in the first stage, while it was occupied with the observation of the heavenly bodies and the naming of theconstellations. It would pass into the second stage with division of labour and the study of solar, lunar, planetary, and cometary phenomena separately. But by such discoveries as that of the laws of motion, or of gravitation, the great mass of astronomical knowledge was bound together in a system which at the same time satisfied the sense of causation, and astronomy was fully developed as an inductive science. Or to take a more modern instance: comparative philology has attained completeness in our own day. Philology was in its first stage at the Renaissance, when 'learning' meant the mere accumulation of detailed knowledge connected with the Classical languages; Grimm's Law may illustrate the second stage, a classification comprehensive but purely empiric; the principle of phonetic decay with its allied recuperative processes has struck a unity through the laws of philology which stamps it as a full-grown science.Dramatic Criticism in the intermediateApplying this to our present subject, I do not pretend that Literary Criticism has reached the third of these three stages: but materials are ready for giving it a secure place in the second stage. In time, no doubt, literary science must be able to explain the modus operandi of literary production, and show how different classes of writing come to produce their different effects. But at present such explanation belongs mostly to the region of speculation; and before the science of criticism is ripe for this final stage much work has to be done in the way of methodising observation as to literary matter and form.
Dramatic Criticism, then, is still in the stage of provisional arrangement.or 'topical' stage.Its exact position is expressed by the technical term 'topical.' Where accumulation of observations is great enough to necessitate methodical arrangement, yet progress is insufficient to suggest final bases of arrangement which will crystallise the whole into a system, science takes refuge in 'topics.' These have been aptly described as intellectual pigeon-holes—convenient headings under which materials may be digested, with strict adherence to method, yet only asa provisional arrangement until further progress shall bring more stable organisation. This topical treatment may seem an unambitious stage in scientific advance, the goal and reward of which is insight into wide laws and far-reaching systematisations. Still it is a stage directly in the line of sound method: and the judicious choice of main and subordinate topics is systematisation in embryo. The present enquiry looks no further than this stage in its analysis of Dramatic Art. It endeavours to find convenient headings under which to set forth its observations of Shakespeare's plays. It also seeks an arrangement of these topics that will at once cover the field of the subject, and also carry on the face of it such an economy of mutual connection as may make the topics, what they ought to be, a natural bridge between the general idea which the mind forms of Drama and the realisation of this idea in the details of actual dramatic works.
Continuous differentiation of scientific subject-matter.
But the definition of our subject involves further that we should measure out the exact field within which this method is to be applied. Science, like every other product of the human mind, marks its progress by continuous differentiation: the perpetual subdivision of the field of enquiry, the rise of separate and ever minuter departments as time goes on. Originally all knowledge was one and undivided. The name of Socrates is connected with a great revolution which separated moral science from physics, the study of man from the study of nature. With Aristotle and inductive method the process became rapid: and under his guidance ethics, as the science of conduct, became distinct from mental science; and still further, political science, treating man in his relations with the state, was distinguished from the more general science of conduct. When thought awoke at the Renaissance after the sleep of the Dark Ages, political science threw off as a distinct branch political economy; and by our own day particular branches of economy, finance, for example, have practically become independent sciences. This characteristicof science in general, the perpetual tendency to separate more confined from more general lines of investigation, will apply in an especial degree to literature,Dramatic Criticism branches off on the one side from the wider Literary Criticism.which covers so wide an area of the mind and is the meeting-ground of so many separate interests. Thus Shakespeare is a poet, and his works afford a field for considering poetry in general, both as a mode of thought and a mode of expression. Again, no writer could go so deeply into human nature as Shakespeare has done without betraying his philosophy and moral system. Once more, Shakespeare must afford a specimen of literary tendencies in general, and that particular modification of them we call Elizabethan; besides that the language which is the vehicle of this literature has an interest of its own over and above that of the thought which it conveys. All this and more belongs properly to 'Shakespeare-Criticism': but from Literary Criticism as a whole a branch is being gradually differentiated, Dramatic Criticism, and its province is to deal with the question, how much of the total effect of Shakespeare's works arises from the fact of his ideas being conveyed to us in the form of dramas, and not of lyric or epic poems, of essays or moral and philosophical treatises. It is with this branch alone that the present enquiry is concerned.
On the other side from the allied art of Stage-Representation.
But more than this goes to the definition of Dramatic Criticism. Drama is not, like Epic, merely a branch of literature: it is a compound art. The literary works which in ordinary speech we call dramas, are in strictness only potential dramas waiting for their realisation on the stage. And this stage-representation is not a mere accessory of literature, but is an independent art, having a field where literature has no place, in dumb show, in pantomime, in mimicry, and in the lost art of Greek 'dancing.'
The question arises then, what is to be the relation of Dramatic Criticism to the companion art of Stage-Representation? Aristotle, the father of Dramatic Criticism, made Stage-Representationone of the departments of the science; but we shall be only following the law of differentiation if we separate the two. This is especially appropriate in the case of the Shakespearean Drama. The Puritan Revolution, which has played such a part in its history, was in effect an attack rather on the Theatre than on the Drama itself. No doubt when the movement became violent the two were not discriminated, and the Drama was made a 'vanity' as well as the Stage. Still the one interest was never so thoroughly dropped by the nation and was more readily taken up again than the other; so that from the point of view of the Stage our continuity with the Elizabethan age has been severed, from the point of view of the literary Drama it has not. The Shakespearean Drama has made a field for itself as a branch of literature quite apart from the Stage; and, however we may regret the severance and look forward to a completer appreciation of Shakespeare, yet it can hardly be doubted that at the present moment as earnest and comprehensive an interest in our great dramatist is to be found in the study as in the theatre.
Dramatic Criticism, then, is to be separated, on the one side, from the wider Literary Criticism which must include a review of language, ethics, philosophy, and general art; and, on the other hand, from the companion art of Stage-Representation. But here caution is required; for all these are so closely and so organically connected with the Drama that there cannot but exist a mutual reaction.Topics common to Drama and art in general.Thus we have already had to treat of topics which belong to the Drama only as a part of literature and art in general. In the first chapter we had occasion to notice how even the raw material out of which the Shakespearean Drama is constructed itself forms another species in literature. When we proceeded to watch the process of working up this Story into dramatic form we were led on to what was common ground between Drama and the other arts. In such process we saw illustratedthe 'hedging,' or double process which leaves monstrosity to produce its full impression and yet provides by special means against any natural reaction; the reduction of improbabilities, by which difficulties in the subject-matter are evaded or met; the utilisation of mechanical details to assist more important effects; the multiplication and interweaving of different interests by which each is made to assist the rest. Such points of Mechanical Construction, together with the general principles of balance and symmetry, are not special to any one branch of art: in all alike the artist will contrive not wholly to conceal his processes, but by occasional glimpses will add to higher effects the satisfaction of our sense of neat workmanship.
Drama and its Representation separate in exposition, not in idea.
Similarly, it may be convenient to make Literary Drama and Stage-Representation separate branches of enquiry: it is totally inadmissible and highly misleading to divorce the two in idea. The literary play must be throughout readrelativelyto its representation. In actual practice the separation of the two has produced the greatest obstacles in the way of sound appreciation. Amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare Character-Interest, which is largely independent of performance, has swallowed up all other interests; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into a given space, have been completely lost. Shakespeare is popularly regarded as supreme in the painting of human nature, but careless in the construction of Plot: and, worst of all, Plot itself, which it has been the mission of the English Drama to elevate into the position of the most intellectual of all elements in literary effect, has become degraded in conception to the level of a mere juggler's mystery. It must then be laid down distinctly at the outset of the present enquiry that the Drama is to be considered throughout relatively to its acting. Much of dramatic effect that is special to Stage-Representation will be here ignored:the whole mechanism of elocution, effects of light, colour and costume, the greater portion of what constitutesmise-en-scène. But in dealing with any play the fullest scope is assumed for ideal acting. The interpretation of a character must include what an actor can put into it; in dealing with effects regard must be had to surroundings which a reader might easily overlook, but which would be present to the eye of a spectator; and no conception of the movement of a drama will be adequate which has not appreciated the rapid sequence of incidents that crowds the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three hours of actual time. The relation of Drama to its acting will be exactly similar to that of music to its performance, the two being perfectly separable in their exposition, but never disunited in idea.
Fundamental division of Dramatic Criticism into Human Interest and Action.
Dramatic Art, then, as thus defined, is to be the field of our enquiry, and its method is to be the discovery and arrangement of topics. For a fundamental basis of such analysis we shall naturally look to the other arts. Now all the arts agree in being the union of two elements, abstract and concrete. Music takes sensuous sounds, and adds a purely abstract element by disposing these sounds in harmonies and melodies; architecture applies abstract design to a concrete medium of stone and wood; painting gives us objects of real life arranged in abstract groupings: in dancing we have moving figures confined in artistic bonds of rhythm; sculpture traces in still figures ideas of shape and attitude. So Drama has its two elements of Human Interest and Action: on the one hand lifepresented in action—so the word 'Drama' may be translated; on the other hand theactionitself, that is, the concurrence of all that is presented in an abstract unity of design. The two fundamental divisions of dramatic interest, and consequently the two fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism, will thus be Human Interest and Action. But each of these has its different sides, the distinction of which is essential before wecan arrive at an arrangement of topics that will be of practical value in the methodisation of criticism.Twofold division of Human Interest.The interest of the life presented is twofold. There is our interest in the separate personages who enter into it, as so many varieties of thegenus homo: this is Interest ofCharacter. There is again our interest in the experience these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate: technically, Interest ofPassion.
Human Interest{Character.Passion.
Threefold division of Action.
It is the same with the other fundamental element of art, the working together of all the details so as to leave an impression of unity: while in practice the sense of this unity, say in a piece of music or a play, is one of the simplest of instincts, yet upon analysis it is seen to imply three separate mental impressions. The mind, it implies, must be conscious of a unity. It must also be conscious of a complexity of details without which the unity could not be perceptible. But the mere perception of unity and of complexity would give no art-pleasure unless the unity were seen to bedevelopedout of the complexity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradualMovement.
Application of the threefold division of Action to the twofold division of Human Interest.
Now if we apply the threefold idea involved in Action to the twofold idea involved in Human Interest we shall get the natural divisions of dramatic analysis. One element of Human Interest was Character: looking at this in the threefold aspect which is given to it when it is connected with Action we shall have to notice the interest of single characters, orCharacter-Interpretation, the more complex interest ofCharacter-Contrast, and in the third placeCharacter-Development. Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest, Passion, we shall review single elements ofPassion, that is to say,Incidents and Effects; the mixture of various passions to express which the termPassion-Toneswill be used; and againPassion-Movement. But Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as separate from Human Interest. This isPlot; and it will lend itself to the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions ofSingle Action,Complex Action, and that development of Plot which constitutes dramaticMovementin the most important sense. At this point it is possible only to name these leading topics of Dramatic Criticism: to explain each, and to trace them further into their lesser ramifications will be the work of the remaining three chapters.
Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism.
Interest of Character.
Unity applied to Character: Character Interpretation.
OF the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for consideration: and we are to view it under the three aspects of unity, complexity, and movement. The application of the idea unity to the idea character suggests at once our interest in single personages. This interest becomes more defined when we take into account the medium through which the personages are presented to us: characters in Drama are not brought out by abstract discussion or description, but are presented to us concretely, self-pourtrayed by their own actions without the assistance of comments from the author.
Accordingly, the leading interest of character isInterpretation, the mental process of turning from the concrete to the abstract: from the most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a unity of conception which we call a character.Interpretation of the nature of an hypothesis.Interpretation when scientifically handled must be, we have seen, of the nature of an hypothesis, the value of which depends upon the degree in which it explains whatever details have any bearing upon the character. Such an hypothesis may be a simple idea: and we have seen at length how the whole portraiture of Richard precipitates into the notion of Ideal Villainy, ideal on the subjective side in an artist who follows crime for its own sake, and on the objective side in a success that works by fascination. But the student must beware of the temptation to grasp at epigrammatic labels assufficient solutions of character; in the great majority of cases Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising various and even conflicting elements.
Canons of Interpretation.
Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles governing careful Interpretation.It must be Exhaustive.One of these principles is that it must take into consideration all that is presented of a personage. It is unscientific on the face of it to say (as is repeatedly said) that Shakespeare is 'inconsistent' in ascribing deep musical sympathies to so thin a character as Lorenzo. Such allegation of inconsistency means that the process of Interpretation is unfinished; it can be paralleled only by the astronomer who should complain of eclipses as 'inconsistent' with his view of the moon's movements. In the particular case we found no difficulty in harmonising the apparent conflict: the details of Lorenzo's portraiture fit in well with the not uncommon type of nature that is so deeply touched by art sensibilities as to have a languid interest in life outside art.It must take in indirect evidence;Again: Interpretation must look forindirectevidence of character, such as the impression a personage seems to have made on other personages in the story, or the effect of action outside the field of view. It is impatient induction to pronounce Bassanio unworthy of Portia merely from comparison of the parts played by the two in the drama itself. It happens from the nature of the story that the incidents actually represented in the drama are such as always display Bassanio in an exceptional and dependent position; but we have an opportunity of getting to the other side of our hero's character by observing the attitude held to him by others in the play, an attitude founded not on the incidents of the drama alone, but upon the sum total of his life and behaviour in the Venetian world. This gives a very different impression; and when we take into consideration the force with which his personality sways all who approach him, from the strong Antonio andthe intellectual Lorenzo to giddy Gratiano and the rough common sense of Launcelot, then the character comes out in its proper scale.and the degree to which the character is displayed.As a third principle, it is perhaps too obvious to be worth formulating that Interpretation must allow for the degree to which the character is displayed by the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral of Cæsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public demeanour.Interpretation reacting on the details.It is a less obvious principle that the very details which are to be unified into a conception of character may have a different complexion given to them when they are looked at in the light of the whole. It has been noticed how Richard seems to manifest in some scenes a slovenliness of intrigue that might be a stumbling-block to the general impression of his character. But when in our view of him as a whole we see what a large part is played by the invincibility that is stamped on his very demeanour, it becomes clear how this slovenliness can be interpreted by the analyst, and represented by the actor, not as a defect of power, but as a trick of bearing which measures his own sense of his irresistibility. Principles like these flow naturally from the fundamental idea of character and its unity. Their practical use however will be mainly that of tests for suggested interpretations: to the actual reading of character in Drama, as in real life, the safest guide is sympathetic insight.
Complexity applied to Character.
The second element underlying all dramatic effect was complexity; when complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast.Character-Foils.In its lowest degree this appears in the form ofCharacter-Foils: by the side of some prominent character is placed another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or perhaps moulded by the influence of its principal, just as by the side of a lofty mountain are often to be seen smaller hills of the same formation. Thus beside Portia is placed Nerissa, beside Bassanio Gratiano, beside Shylock Tubal; Richard's villainy stands out bycomparison with Buckingham, Hastings, Tyrrel, Catesby, any one of whom would have given blackness enough to an ordinary drama. It is quite possible that minute examination may find differences between such companion figures: but the general effect of the combination is that the lesser serves as foil to throw up the scale on which the other is framed. The more pronounced effects of Character-Contrast depend upon differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree.Character-Contrast.In this form it is clear howCharacter-Contrastis only an extension of Character-Interpretation: it implies that some single conception explains, that is, gives unity to, the actions of more than one person. A whole chapter has been devoted to bringing out such contrast in the case of Lord and Lady Macbeth: to accept these as types of the practical and inner life, cast in such an age and involved in such an undertaking, furnishes a conception sufficient to make clear and intelligible all that the two say and do in the scenes of the drama.Duplication.Character-Contrast is especially common amongst the minor effects in a Shakespearean drama. In the case of personages demanded by the necessities of the story rather than introduced for their own sake Shakespeare has a tendency to double the number of such personages for the sake of getting effects of contrast. We have two unsuccessful suitors inThe Merchant of Venicebringing out, the one the unconscious pride of royal birth, the other the pride of intense self-consciousness; two wicked daughters of Lear, Goneril with no shading in her harshness, Regan who is in reality a degree more calculating in her cruelty than her sister, but conceals it under a charm of manner, 'eyes that comfort and not burn.'iii.i.Of the two princes inRichard IIIthe one has a gravity beyond his years, while York overflows with not ungraceful pertness. Especially interesting are the two murderers in that play.i.iv, from 84.The first is a dull, 'strong-framed' man, without any better nature. The second has had culture, and beenaccustomed to reflect; his better nature has been vanquished by love of greed, and now asserts itself to prevent his sinning with equanimity.110.It is the second murderer whose conscience is set in activity by the word 'judgment'; and he discourses on conscience, deeply,124-157.yet not without humour, as he recognises the power of the expected reward over the oft-vanquished compunctions.167.He catches, as a thoughtful man, the irony of the duke's cry for wine when they are about to drown him in the butt of malmsey.165.Again, instead of hurrying to the deed while Clarence is waking he cannot resist the temptation to argue with him, and so, as a man open to argument,263.he feels the force of Clarence's unexpected suggestion:
He that set you onTo do this deed will hate you for the deed.
He that set you onTo do this deed will hate you for the deed.
He that set you onTo do this deed will hate you for the deed.
He that set you on
To do this deed will hate you for the deed.
Thus he exhibits the weakness of all thinking men in a moment of action, the capacity to see two sides of a question; and, trying at the critical moment to alter his course,284.he ends by losing the reward of crime without escaping the guilt.
Character-Grouping.
Character-Contrast is carried forward intoCharacter-Groupingwhen the field is still further enlarged, and a single conception is found to give unity to more than two personages of a drama. A chapter has been devoted to showing how the same antithesis of outer and inner life which made the conception of Macbeth and his wife intelligible would serve, when adapted to the widely different world of Roman political life, to explain the characters of the leading conspirators inJulius Cæsar, of their victim and of his avenger: while, over and above the satisfaction of Interpretation, the Grouping of these four figures, so colossal and so impressive, round a single idea is an interest in itself.Dramatic Colouring.The effect is carried a stage further still when some single phase of human interest tends, in a greater or less degree, to give a common feature to all the personages of a play; thewhole dramatic field iscolouredby some idea, though of course the interpretative significance of such an idea is weakened in proportion to the area over which it is distributed. The five plays to which our attention is confined do not afford the best examples of Dramatic Colouring. It is a point, however, of common remark how the play ofMacbethis coloured by the superstition and violence of the Dark Ages. The world of this drama seems given over to powers of darkness who can read, if not mould, destiny; witchcraft appears as an instrument of crime and ghostly agency of punishment. We have rebellion without any suggestion of cause to ennoble it, terminated by executions without the pomp of justice; we have a long reign of terror in which massacre is a measure of daily administration and murder is a profession. With all this there is a total absence of relief in any picture of settled life: there is no rallying-point for order and purity. The very agent of retribution gets the impulse to his task in a reaction from a shock of bereavement that has come down upon him as a natural punishment for an act of indecisive folly.
compareiv.iii. 26;iv.ii. 1-22.
There are, then, three different effects that arise when complexity enters into Character-Interest. The complexity is one never separable from the unity which binds it together: in the first effect the diversity is stronger than the unity, and the whole manifests itself as Character-Contrast; in Character-Grouping the contrast of the separate figures is an equal element with the unity which binds them all into a group; in the third case the diversity is lost in the unity, and a uniformity of colouring is seized by the dramatic sense as an effect apart from the individual varieties without which such colouring would not be remarkable.
Movement applied to Character: Character-Development.
When to Character-Interpretation, the formation of a single conception out of a multitude of concrete details, the further idea of growth and progress is added, we get the third variety of Character-Interest—Character-Development.In the preceding chapters this has received only negative notice, its absence being a salient feature in the portraiture of Richard. For a positive illustration no better example could be desired than the character of Macbeth. Three features, we have seen, stand out clear in the general conception of Macbeth. There is his eminently practical nature, which is the key to the whole. And the absence in him of the inner life adds two special features: one is his helplessness under suspense, the other is the activity of his imagination with its susceptibility to supernatural terrors. Now, if we fix our attention on these three points they become three threads of development as we trace Macbeth through the stages of his career. His practical power developes as capacity for crime. Macbeth undertook his first crime only after a protracted and terrible struggle; the murder of the grooms was a crime of impulse; the murder of Banquo appears a thing of contrivance, in which Macbeth is a deliberate planner directing the agency of others,iii.ii. 40, &c.while his dark hints to his wife suggest the beginning of a relish for such deeds. This capacity for crime continues to grow, until slaughter becomes an end in itself:
iv.iii. 4.
Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry:
Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry:
Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry:
Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry:
and then a mania:
v.ii. 13.
Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate himDo call it valiant fury.
Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate himDo call it valiant fury.
Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate himDo call it valiant fury.
Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him
Do call it valiant fury.
We see a parallel development in Macbeth's impatience of suspense. Just after his first temptation he is able to brace himself to suspense for an indefinite period:
i.iii. 143.