Chapter XI: Introduction: Proposition (10)

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 life _presented in action_--so the word 'Drama' may be translated; on the other hand the _action_ itself, 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 we can 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 the _genus homo_: this is Interest of _Character_. There is again our interest in the experience these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate: technically, Interest of _Passion_.

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 be _developed_ out of the complexity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradual _Movement_.

{ Unity.
Action { 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, or _Character-Interpretation_, the more complex interest of _Character-Contrast_, and in the third place _Character-Development_. Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest, Passion, we shall review single elements of Passion, that is to say, _Incidents and Effects_; the mixture of various passions to express which the term _Passion-Tones_ will be used; and again _Passion-Movement_. But Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as separate from Human Interest. This is _Plot_; and it will lend itself to the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions of _Single Action_, _Complex Action_, and that development of Plot which constitutes dramatic _Movement_ in 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._]

+--Single Character-Interest, or
| _Character-Interpretation_.
+--Character +--Complex Character-Interest, or
| | _Character-Contrast_.
| +--_Character-Development._
|
| +--Single Passion-Interest, or
The Literary | | _Incident and Effect_.
Drama +--Passion +--Complex Passion-Interest, or
| | _Passion-Tone_.
| +--_Passion-Movement._
|
| +--_Single Action._
+--Plot (or Pure +--_Complex Action._
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 is _Interpretation_, 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 as sufficient 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 for _indirect_ evidence 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 and the 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 of _Character-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 by comparison 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 how _Character-Contrast_ is 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 in _The Merchant of Venice_ bringing 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 in _Richard III_ the 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 been accustomed 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 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 into _Character-Grouping_ when 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 in _Julius 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; the whole dramatic field is _coloured_ by 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 of _Macbeth_ is 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.

[compare =iv.= 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 morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry:

and then a mania:

[=v.= ii. 13.]

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.]

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.

[=i.= vii.]

On the eve of his great crime the suspense of the few hours that must intervene before the banquet can be despatched and Duncan can retire becomes intolerable to Macbeth, and he is for abandoning the treason. In the next stage it is the suspense of a single moment that impels him to stab the grooms. From this point suspense no longer comes by fits and starts, but is a settled disease: [=iii.= ii. 13, 36, &c.] his mind is as scorpions; it is tortured in restless ecstasy. Suspense has undermined his judgment and brought on him the gambler's fever--the haunting thought that just one more venture will make him safe; in spite of the opposition of his reason--[=iii.= ii. 45.] which his unwillingness to confide the murder of Banquo to his wife betrays--he is carried on to work the additional crime which unmasks the rest. And finally suspense intensifies to a panic, and he himself feels that his deeds--

[=iii.= iv. 140.]

must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

The third feature in Macbeth is the quickening of his sensitiveness to the supernatural side by side with the deadening of his conscience. Imagination becomes, as it were, a pictorial conscience for one to whom its more rational channels have been closed: the man who 'would jump the world to come' accepts implicitly every word that falls from a witch. Now this imagination is at first a restraining force in Macbeth: [=i.= iii. 134.] the thought whose image unfixes his hair leads him to abandon the treason. When later he has, under pressure, delivered himself again to the temptation, there are still signs that imagination is a force on the other side that has to be overcome:

[=i.= iv. 50.]

Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand.

Once passed the boundary of the accomplished deed he becomes an absolute victim to terrors of conscience in supernatural form. [=ii.= ii. 22-46.] In the very first moment they reach so near the boundary that separates subjective and objective that a real voice appears to be denouncing the issue of his crime:

_Macbeth._ Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more.'...
_Lady M._ Who was it that thus cried?

In the reaction from the murder of Banquo the supernatural appearance--which no eye sees but his own--[=iii.= iv.] appears more real to him than the real life around him. And from this point he _seeks_ the supernatural, [=iv.= i. 48.] forces it to disclose its terrors, and thrusts himself into an agonised vision of generations that are to witness the triumph of his foes.

XIII.

INTEREST OF PASSION.

[PASSION.]

HUMAN Interest includes not only varieties of human nature, or Character, but also items of human experience, or Passion. Passion is the second great topic of Dramatic Criticism. It is concerned with the life that is lived through the scenes of the story, as distinguished from the personages who live it; not treating this with the abstract treatment that belongs to Plot, but reviewing it in the light of its human interest; it embraces conduct still alive with the motives which have actuated it--fate in the process of forging. The word 'passion' signifies primarily what is suffered of good or bad; secondarily the emotions generated by suffering, whether in the sufferer or in bystanders. Its use as a dramatic term thus suggests how in Drama an experience can be grasped by us through our emotional nature, through our sympathy, our antagonism, and all the varieties of emotional interest that lie between. To this Passion we have to apply the threefold division of unity, complexity, and movement.

[_Unity applied to Passion._]

When unity is applied to Passion we get a series of details bound together into a singleness of impression as an Incident, a Situation, or an Effect. The distinction of the three rests largely on their different degrees of fragmentariness. [_Incident._] _Incidents_ are groups of continuous details forming a complete interest in themselves as ministering to our sense of story. The suit of Shylock against Antonio in the course of which fate swings right round; the murder of Clarence with its long-drawn agony; Richard and Buckingham with the Lord Mayor and Citizens exhibiting a picture of political manipulation in the fifteenth century; the startling sight of a Lady Anne wooed beside the bier of her murdered husband's murdered father, by a murderer who rests his suit on the murders themselves; Banquo's Ghost appearing at the feast at which Banquo's presence had been so vehemently called for; Lear's faithful Gloucester so brutally blinded and so instantly avenged:--all these are complete stories presented in a single view, and suggest how Shakespeare's dramas are constructed out of materials which are themselves dramas in miniature. [_Situation._] In _Situation_, on the other hand, a series of details cohere into a single impression without losing the sense of incompleteness. The two central personages of _The Merchant of Venice_, around whom brightness and gloom have been revolving in such contrast, at last brought to face one another from the judgment-seat and the dock; Lorenzo and Jessica wrapped in moonlight and music, with the rest of the universe for the hour blotted out into a background for their love; Margaret like an apparition of the sleeping Nemesis of Lancaster flashed into the midst of the Yorkist courtiers while they are bickering through very wantonness of victory; Shylock pitted against Tubal, Jew against Jew, the nature not too narrow to mix affection with avarice, mocked from passion to passion by the nature only wide enough to take in greed; Richard waking on Bosworth morning, and miserably piecing together the wreck of his invincible will which a sleeping vision has shattered; Macbeth's moment of rapture in following the airy dagger, while the very night holds its breath, to break out again presently into voices of doom; the panic mist of universal suspicion amidst which Malcolm blasts his own character to feel after the fidelity of Macduff; Edgar from his ambush of outcast idiocy watching the sad marvel of his father's love restored to him:--all these brilliant Situations are fragments of dramatic continuity in which the fragmentariness is a part of the interest. Just as the sense of sculpture might seek to arrest and perpetuate a casual moment in the evolutions of a dance, so in Dramatic Situation the mind is conscious of isolating something from what precedes and what follows so as to extract out of it an additional impression; the morsel has its purpose in ministering to a complete process of digestion, but it gets a sensation of its own by momentary delay in contact with the palate.

[_Effect._]

Of a still more fragmentary nature is _Dramatic Effect_--Effect strictly so called, and as distinguished from the looser use of the term for dramatic impressions in general. Such Effect seems to attach itself to single momentary details, though in reality these details owe their impressiveness to their connection with others: the final detail has completed an electric circle and a shock is given. No element of the Drama is of so miscellaneous a character and so defies analysis: all that can be done here is to notice three special Dramatic Effects. [_Irony as an Effect._] _Dramatic Irony_ is a sudden appearance of double-dealing in surrounding events: a dramatic situation accidentally starts up and produces a shock by its bearing upon conflicting states of affairs, both known to the audience, but one of them hidden from some of the parties to the scene. This is the special contribution to dramatic effect of Greek tragedy. The ancient stage was tied down in its subject-matter to stories perfectly familiar to the audience as sacred legends, and so almost excluding the effect of surprise: in Irony it found some compensation. The ancient tragedies harp upon human blindness to the future, and delight to exhibit a hero speculating about, or struggling with, or perhaps in careless talk stumbling upon, the final issue of events which the audience know so well--Oedipus, for example, through great part of a play moving heaven and earth to pierce the mystery of the judgment that has come upon his city, while according to the familiar sacred story the offender can be none other than himself. Shakespeare has used to almost as great an extent as the Greek dramatists this effect of Irony. His most characteristic handling of it belongs to the lighter plays; yet in the group of dramas dealt with in this work it is prominent amongst his effects. It has been pointed out how _Macbeth_ and _Richard III_ are saturated with it. There are casual illustrations in _Julius Cæsar_, as when the dictator bids his intended murderer

[=ii.= ii. 123.]

Be near me, that I may remember you;

or in _Lear_, when Edmund, intriguing guiltily with Goneril, in a chance expression of tenderness unconsciously paints the final issue of that intrigue:

[=iv.= ii. 25.]

Yours in the ranks of death!

A comic variety of Irony occurs in the Trial Scene of _The Merchant of Venice_, [=iv.= i. 282.] when Bassanio and Gratiano in their distracted grief are willing to sacrifice their new wives if this could save their friend--little thinking these wives are so near to record the vow. The doubleness of Irony is one which attaches to a situation as a whole: [=iii.= ii. 60-73.] the effect however is especially keen when a scene is so impregnated with it that the very language is true in a double sense.

_Catesby._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,
When men are unprepared and look not for it.

_Hastings._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out
With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: _and so 'twill do
With some men else, who think themselves as safe
As thou and I._

[_Nemesis as an Effect._]

_Nemesis_, though usually extending to the general movement of a drama, and so considered below, may sometimes be only an effect of detail--a sign connecting very closely retribution with sin or reaction with triumph. [=v.= iii. 45.] Such a Nemesis may be seen where Cassius in the act of falling on his sword recognises the weapon as the same with which he stabbed Cæsar. [_Dramatic Foreshadowing._] Another special variety of effect is _Dramatic Foreshadowing_--mysterious details pointing to an explanation in the sequel, a realisation in action of the saying that coming events cast their shadows before them. [=i.= i. 1.] The unaccountable 'sadness' of Antonio at the opening of _The Merchant of Venice_ is a typical illustration. [=iii.= i. 68.] Others will readily suggest themselves--[=i.= i. 39.] the Prince's shuddering aversion to the Tower in _Richard III_, [=v.= i. 77-90.] the letter G that of Edward's heirs the murderer should be, the crows substituted for Cassius's eagles on the morning of the final battle. A more elaborate example is seen in _Julius Cæsar_, [=i.= ii. 18.] where the soothsayer's vague warning 'Beware the Ides of March'--a solitary voice that could yet arrest the hero through the shouting of the crowd--is later on found, not to have become dissipated, but to have gathered definiteness as the moment comes nearer:

[=iii.= i. 1.]

_Cæsar._ The Ides of March are come.
_Soothsayer._ Ay, Cæsar; but not gone.

These three leading Effects may be sufficient to illustrate a branch of dramatic analysis in which the variety is endless.

[_Complexity applied to Passion._]

We are next to consider the application of complexity to Passion, and the contrasts of passion that so arise. Here care is necessary to avoid confusion with a complexity of passion that hardly comes within the sphere of dramatic criticism. [=iii.= i.] In the scene in which Shylock is being teased by Tubal it is easy to note the conflict between the passions of greed and paternal affection: such analysis is outside dramatic criticism and belongs to psychology. In its dramatic sense Passion applies to experience, not decomposed into its emotional elements, but grasped as a whole by our emotional nature: there is still room for complexity of such passion in the appeal made _to different sides of our emotional nature, the serious and the gay_. [_Passion-Tone._] In dealing with this element of dramatic effect a convenient technical term is _Tone_. The deep insight of metaphorical word-coining has given universal sanction to the expression of emotional differences by analogies of music: our emotional nature is exalted with mirth and depressed with sorrow, we speak of a chord of sympathy, a strain of triumph, a note of despair; we are in a serious mood, or pitch our appeal in a higher key. These expressions are clearly musical, and there is probably a half association of music in many others, such as a theme of sorrow, acute anguish and profound despair, response of gratitude, or even the working of our feelings. Most exactly to the purpose is a phrase of frequent occurrence, the 'gamut of the passions,' which brings out with emphasis how our emotional nature in its capacity for different kinds of impressions suggests a _scale_ of passion-contrasts, [_Scale of Passion-Tones._] not to be sharply defined but shading off into one another like the tones of a musical scale--Tragic, Heroic, Serious, Elevated, Light, Comic, Farcical. It is with such complexity of tones that Dramatic Passion is concerned.

[_Mixture of Tones:_]

Now the mere _Mixture of Tones_ is an effect in itself. For the present I am not referring to the combination of one tone with another in the same incident (which will be treated as a distinct variety): I apply it more widely to the inclusion of different tones in the field of the same play. Such mixture is best illustrated by music, which gives us an adagio and an allegro, a fantastic scherzo and a pompous march, within the same symphony or sonata, though in separate movements. In _The Merchant of Venice_, as often in plays of Shakespeare, every tone in the scale is represented. [=iv.= i.] When Antonio is enduring through the long suspense, and triumphant malignity is gaining point after point against helpless friendship, we have travelled far into the Tragic; [=iv.= i. 184.] the woman-nature of Portia calling Venetian justice from judicial murder to the divine prerogative of mercy throws in a touch of the Heroic; a great part of what centres around Shylock, [=ii.= v; =iii.= i, &c.] when he is crushing the brightness out of Jessica or defying the Christian world, is pitched in the Serious strain; [=ii.= i, vii; =ii.= ix.] the incidents of the unsuccessful suitors, the warm exuberance of Oriental courtesy and the less grateful loftiness of Spanish family pride, might be a model for the Elevated drama of the English Restoration; [=i.= i, &c.] the infinite nothings of Gratiano, prince of diners-out, [=i.= ii.] the more piquant small talk of Portia and Nerissa when they criticise the man-world from the secrecy of a maiden-bower--these throw a tone of Lightness over their sections of the drama; [=ii.= ii, iii; =iii.= v, &c.] Launcelot is an incarnation of the conventional Comic serving-man, [=ii.= ii, from 34.] and his Comedy becomes broad Farce where he teases the sand-blind Gobbo and draws him on to bless his astonishing beard. [_a distinction of the modern Drama._] How distinct an effect is this mere Mixture of Tones within the same play may be seen in the fact that the Classical Drama found it impossible. The exclusive and uncompromising spirit of antiquity carried caste into art itself, and their Tragedy and Comedy were kept rigidly separate, and indeed were connected with different rituals. The spirit of modern life is marked by its comprehensiveness and reconciliation of opposites; and nothing is more important in dramatic history than the way in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries created a new departure in art, by seizing upon the rude jumble of sport and earnest which the mob loved, and converting it into a source of stirring passion-effects. For a new faculty of mental grasp is generated by this harmony of tones in the English Drama. If the artist introduces every tone into the story he thereby gets hold of every tone in the spectators' emotional nature; the world of the play is presented from every point of view as it works upon the various passions, and the difference this makes is the difference between simply looking down upon a surface and viewing a solid from all round:--the mixture of tones, so to speak, makes passion of three dimensions. Moreover it brings the world of fiction nearer to the world of nature, which has never yet evolved an experience in which brightness was dissevered from gloom: half the pleasure of the world is wrung out of others' pain; the two jostle in the street, house together under every roof, share every stage of life, and refuse to be sundered even in the mysteries of death.

Quite a distinct class of effects is produced when the contrasting tones are not only included in the same drama but are further brought into immediate contact and made to react upon each other. [_Tone-Play._] _Tone-Play_ is made by simple variety and alternation of light and serious passions. It has been pointed out in a previous chapter what a striking example of this is _The Merchant of Venice_, in which scene by scene two stories of youthful love and of deadly feud alternate with one another as they progress to their climaxes, [=iii.= ii. 221.] until from the rapture of Portia united to Bassanio we drop to the full realisation of Antonio in the grasp of Shylock; and again the cruel anxiety of the trial [=iv.= i. 408.] and its breathless shock of deliverance are balanced by the mad fun of the ring trick [=v.= i.] and the joy of the moonlight scene which Jessica feels is too deep for merriment. [_Tone-Relief._] A slight variation of this is _Tone-Relief_: in an action which is cast in a uniform tone the continuity is broken by a brief spell of a contrary passion, the contrast at once relieving and intensifying the prevailing tone. One of the best examples (notwithstanding its coarseness) is the introduction in _Macbeth_ of the jolly Porter, [=ii.= iii. 1.] who keeps the impatient nobles outside in the storm till his jest is comfortably finished, making each furious knock fit in to his elaborate conceit of Hell-gate. This tone of broad farce, with nothing else like it in the whole play, comes as a single ray of common daylight to separate the agony of the dark night's murder from the agony of the struggle for concealment. [_Tone-Clash._] The mixture of tones goes a stage further when opposing tones of passion _clash_ in the same incident and are _fused_ together. These terms are, I think, scarcely metaphorical: as a physiological fact we see our physical susceptibility to pleasurable and painful emotions drawn into conflict with one another in the phenomena of hysteria; and their mental analogues must be capable of much closer union. As examples of these effects resting upon an appeal to opposite sides of our emotional nature at the same time may be instanced the flash of comic irony, [=iv.= i. 288, &c.] already referred to more than once, that starts up in the most pathetic moment of Antonio's trial by his friend's allusion to his newly wedded wife. Of the same double nature are the strokes of pathetic humour in this play; [=iii.= iii. 32.] as where Antonio describes himself so worn with grief that he will hardly spare a pound of flesh to his bloody creditor; or again his pun,

[=iv.= i. 280.]

For if the Jew do cut but deep enough
I'll pay it presently with all my heart!

Shakespeare is very true to nature in thus borrowing the language of word-play to express suffering so exquisite as to leave sober language far behind. [_Tone-Storm._] Finally Tone-Clash rises into _Tone-Storm_ in such rare climaxes as the centrepiece of _Lear_, [=iii.= i-vi.] where against a tempest of nature as a fitting background we have the conflict of three madnesses, passion, idiocy, and folly, bidding against one another, and inflaming each other's wildness into an inextricable whirl of frenzy.

[_Movement applied to Passion._]

The idea of movement has next to be applied to Passion. Passion is experience as grasped by our emotional nature: this will be sensitive not only to isolated fragments of experience, but equally to the succession of incidents. The movement of events will produce a corresponding movement in our emotional nature as this is variously affected by them; and as the succession of incidents seems to take direction so the play of our sympathies will seem to take form. Again, events cannot succeed one another without suggesting causes at work and controlling forces: when such causes and forces are of a nature to work upon our sympathy another element of Passion will appear. [_Motive Form and Motive Force._] Under Passion-Movement then are comprehended two things--_Motive Form_ and _Motive Force_. [page 278.] The first of these is a thing in which two of the great elements of Drama, Passion, and Plot, overlap, and it will be best considered in connection with Plot which takes in dramatic form as a whole. Here we have to consider the Motive Forces of dramatic passion. The dramatist is, as it were, a God in his universe, and disposes the ultimate issues of human experience at his pleasure: what then are the principles which are found to have governed his ordering of events? to personages in a drama what are the great determinants of fate?

[_Poetic Justice a form of art-beauty._]

The first of the great determinants of fate in the Drama is _Poetic Justice_. What exactly is the meaning of this term? It is often understood to mean the correction of justice, as if justice in poetry were more just than the justice of real life. But this is not supported by the facts of dramatic story. An English judge and jury would revolt against measuring out to Shylock the justice that is meted to him by the court of Venice, though the same persons beholding the scene in a theatre might feel their sense of Poetic Justice satisfied; unless, indeed, which might easily happen, the confusion of ideas suggested by this term operated to check their acquiescence in the issue of the play. A better notion of Poetic Justice is to understand it as the modification of justice by considerations of art. This holds good even where justice and retribution do determine the fate of individuals in the Drama; in these cases our dramatic satisfaction still rests, not on the high degree of justice exhibited, but on the artistic mode in which it works. A policeman catching a thief with his hand in a neighbour's pocket and bringing him to summary punishment affords an example of complete justice, yet its very success robs it of all poetic qualities; the same thief defeating all the natural machinery of the law, yet overtaken after all by a questionable ruse would be to the poetic sense far more interesting.

[_Nemesis as a dramatic motive._]

Treating Poetic Justice, then, as the application of art to morals, its most important phase will be _Nemesis_, which we have already seen involves an artistic link between sin and retribution. The artistic connection may be of the most varied description. [_Varieties of Nemesis._] There is a Nemesis of perfect equality, Shylock reaping measure for measure as he has sown. [compare =iii.= i. 118 and 165.] When Nemesis overtook the Roman conspirators it was partly its suddenness that made it impressive: within fifty lines of their appeal to all time they have fallen into an attitude of deprecation. For Richard, on the contrary, retribution was delayed to the last moment: to have escaped to the eleventh hour is shown to be no security.

Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they first begin their mountain piling,
But when another rock would crown their work.

Nemesis may be emphasised by repetition and multiplication; in the world in which Richard is plunged there appears to be no event which is not a nemesis. Or the point may be the unlooked-for source from which the nemesis comes; as when upon the murder of Cæsar a colossus of energy and resource starts up in the time-serving and frivolous Antony, [=ii.= i. 165.] whom the conspirators had spared for his insignificance. Or again, retribution may be made bitter to the sinner by his tracing in it his own act and deed: from Lear himself, and from no other source, Goneril and Regan have received the power they use to crush his spirit. Nay, the very prize for which the sinner has sinned turns out in some cases the nemesis fate has provided for him; as when Goneril and Regan use their ill-gotten power for the state intrigues which work their death. And most keenly pointed of all comes the nemesis that is combined with mockery: [=iii.= i. 49.] Macbeth, if he had not essayed the murder of Banquo as an _extra_ precaution, might have enjoyed his stolen crown in safety; [=iv.= iii. 219.] his expedition against Macduff's castle slays all _except_ the fate-appointed avenger; [=iv.= ii. 46.] Richard disposes of his enemies with flawless success until _the last_, Dorset, escapes to his rival.

Such is Nemesis, and such are some of the modes in which the connection between sin and retribution may be made artistically impressive. Poetic Justice, however, is a wider term than Nemesis. The latter implies some offence, as an occasion for the operation of judicial machinery. [_Poetic Justice other than Nemesis._] But, apart from sin, fate may be out of accord with character, and the correction of this ill distribution will satisfy the dramatic sense. But here again the practice of dramatic providence appears regulated, not with a view to abstract justice, but to justice modified by dramatic sympathy: Poetic Justice extends to the exhibition of fate moving in the interests of those with whom we sympathise and to the confusion of those with whom we are in antagonism. [=iv.= i. 346-363.] Viewed as a piece of equity the sentence on Shylock--a plaintiff who has lost his suit by an accident of statute-law--seems highly questionable. On the other hand, this sentence brings a fortune to a girl who has won our sympathies in spite of her faults; it makes provision for those for whom there is a dramatic necessity of providing; above all it is in accord with our secret liking that good fortune should go with the bright and happy, and sever itself from the mean and sordid. Whether this last is justice, I will not discuss: it is enough that it is one of the instincts of the imagination, and in creative literature justice must pay tribute to art.

[_Pathos as a dramatic motive._]

But however widely the term be stretched, justice is only one of the determinants of fate in the Drama: confusion on this point has led to many errors of criticism. The case of Cordelia is in point. Because she is involved in the ruin of Lear it is felt by some commentators that a consideration of justice must be sought to explain her death: they find it perhaps in her original resistance to her father; or the ingenious suggestion has been made that Cordelia, in her measures to save her father, invades England, and this breach of patriotism needs atonement. But this is surely twisting the story to an explanation, not extracting an explanation from the details of the story. It would be a violation of all dramatic proportion, needing the strongest evidence from the details of the play, if Cordelia's 'most small fault' betrayed her to dramatic execution. [=iv.= iv. 27.] And as to the sin against patriotism, the whole notion of it is foreign to the play itself, [=ii.= ii. 170-177[4]; =iii.= i, v.] in which the truest patriots, such as Kent and Gloucester, are secretly confederate with Cordelia and look upon her as the hope of their unhappy country; [=iv.= ii. 2-10 (compare 55, 95); =v.= i. 21-27.] while even Albany himself, however necessary he finds it to repel the invader, yet distinctly feels that justice is on the other side. The fact is that in Cordelia's case, as in countless other cases, motives determine fate which have in them no relation to justice; fiction being in this matter in harmony with real life, where in only a minority of instances can we recognise any element of justice or injustice as entering into the fates of individuals. When in real life a little child dies, what consideration of justice is there that bears on such an experience? Nevertheless there is an irresistible sense of beauty in the idea of the fleeting child-life arrested while yet in its completeness, before the rude hand of time has begun to trace lines of passion or hardness; the parent indeed may not feel this in the case of his own child, but in art, where there is no mist of individual feeling to blind, the sense of beauty comes out stronger than the sense of loss. It is the mission of the Drama thus to interpret the beauty of fate: it seeks, as Aristotle puts it, to purify our emotions by healthy exercise. The Drama does with human experience what Painting does with external nature. There are landscapes whose beauty is obvious to all; but it is one of the privileges of the artist to reveal the charm that lies in the most ordinary scenery, until the ideal can be recognised everywhere, and nature itself becomes art. Similarly there are striking points in life, such as the vindication of justice, which all can catch: but it is for the dramatist, as the artist in life, to arrange the experience he depicts so as to bring out the hidden beauties of fate, until the trained eye sees a meaning in all that happens;--until indeed the word 'suffering' itself has only to be translated into its Greek equivalent, and _pathos_ is recognised as a form of beauty. Accumulation of Pathos then must be added to Poetic Justice as a determinant of fate in the Drama. And our sensitiveness to this form of beauty is nowhere more signally satisfied than when we see Cordelia dead in the arms of Lear: fate having mysteriously seconded her self-devotion, and nothing, not even her life, being left out to make her sacrifice complete.

[_The Supernatural as a dramatic motive._]

There remains a third great determinant of fate in the Drama--the Supernatural. I have in a former chapter pointed out how in relation to this topic the modern Drama stands in a different position from that of ancient Tragedy. In the Drama of antiquity the leading motive forces were supernatural, either the secret force of Destiny, or the interposition of supernatural beings who directly interfered with human events. We are separated from this view of life by a revolution of thought which has substituted Providence for Destiny as the controller of the universe, and absorbed the supernatural within the domain of Law. [_The Supernatural rationalised in modern Drama._] Yet elements that had once entered so deeply into the Drama would not be easily lost to the machinery of Passion-Movement; supernatural agency has a degree of recognition in modern thought, and even Destiny may still be utilised if it can be stripped of antagonism to the idea of a benevolent Providence. To begin with the latter: the problem for a modern dramatist is to reconcile Destiny with Law. The characteristics which made the ancient conception of fate dramatically impressive--its irresistibility, its unintelligibility, and its suggestion of personal hostility--he may still insinuate into the working of events: only the destiny must be rationalised, that is, the course of events must at the same time be explicable by natural causes.

[_As an objective force in Irony._]

First: Shakespeare gives us Destiny acting objectively, as an external force, in the form of _Irony_, already discussed in connection with the standard illustration of it in _Macbeth_. In the movement of this play Destiny appears in the most pronounced form of mockery: every difficulty and check being in the issue converted into an instrument for furthering the course of events. Yet this mockery is wholly without any suggestion of malignity in the governing power of the universe; its effect being rather to measure the irresistibility of righteous retribution. This Irony makes just the difference between the ordinary operations of Law or Providence and the suggestion of Destiny: yet each step in the action is sufficiently explained by rational considerations. [=i.= iv. 37.] What more natural than that Duncan should proclaim his son heir-apparent to check any hopes that too successful service might excite? [=i.= iv. 48.] Yet what more natural than that this loss of Macbeth's remote chance of the crown should be the occasion of his resolve no longer to be content with chances? [=ii.= iii. 141.] What more natural than that the sons of the murdered king should take flight upon the revelation of a treason useless to its perpetrator as long as they were living? Yet what again more natural than that the momentary reaction consequent upon this flight should, [=ii.= iv. 21-41.] in the general fog of suspicion and terror, give opportunity to the object of universal dread himself to take the reins of government? The Irony is throughout no more than a garb worn by rational history.

[_As a subjective force in Infatuation._]

Or, again, Destiny may be exhibited as a subjective force in _Infatuation_, or _Judicial Blindness_: 'whom the gods would destroy they first blind.' This was a conception specially impressive to ancient ethics; the lesson it gathered from almost every great fall was that of a spiritual darkening which hid from the sinner his own danger, obvious to every other eye, till he had been tempted beyond the possibility of retreat.

Falling in frenzied guilt, he knows it not;
So thick the blinding cloud
That o'er him floats; and Rumour widely spread
With many a sigh repeats the dreary doom,
A mist that o'er the house
In gathering darkness broods.

Such Infatuation is very far from being inconsistent with the idea of Law; indeed, it appears repeatedly in the strong figures of Scriptural speech, by which the ripening of sin to its own destruction--a merciful law of a righteously-ordered universe--is suggested as the direct act of Him who is the founder of the universe and its laws. By such figures God is represented as hardening Pharaoh's heart; or, again, an almost technical description of Infatuation is put by the fervour of prophecy into the mouth of God:

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and
shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

[=v.= viii. 13.]