Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/413

DRAMA 393 themselves, in numberless modern dramas of all kinds from Faust clown to the favourites of the Ambigu and the Adelphi. Another such expedient is that of the inductive dumb-shows, which sought to secure rapidity together with impressiveness of exposition by the process of pantomimic summary. Such, again, are" the opening scenes in French tragedy between hero and confidant, and those in French comedy and its derivatives between observant valet and knowing lady s-maid. But it is clear how all such expedients may be rendered unnecessary by the art of the dramatist, who is able outwardly also to present the intro duction of his action as what it is an organic part of that action itself ; who seems to take the spectators in rnedias res while he is really building the foundations of his plot ; who can dramatically account for an Iliad of woes without going back to Leda s egg ; who touches in the opening of his action the chord which is to vibrate throughout its course " Down with the Capulets ! down with the Montagues ! " " With the Moor, sayest thou 1 " The introduction ends with the opening of the movement o f t ne ac tion, a passage which it may prove highly effective to mark with the utmost distinctness (as in Hamlet, where it is clearly to be sought in the actual meeting between the hero and the ghost), but which in other instances is advan tageously marked by the insertion of subsidiary action or episode (as in King Lear, where the opening of the move ment of the main action would follow too sharply upon its exposition, were not the beginning of the subsidiary action of Gloster and his sons opportunely introduced between them). From this point the second stage of the action its groivth progresses to that third stage which is called its height or climax. All that has preceded the reaching of this constitutes that half of the drama usually its much larger half which Aristotle terms the Sri9, or tying of the knot. The varieties in the treatment of the growth or second stage of the action are infinite, and it is here that the masters of the tragic and the comic drama notably those unequalled weavers of intrigues, the Spaniards are able most fully to exercise their inventive faculties. If the growth is too rapid, the climax will fail of its effect and it is, therefore, at this stage that subsidiary actions and episodes are most largely used ; if it is too slow, the interest will be exhausted before the greatest demand upon it has been made a fault to which comedy is specially liable ; if it is involved or inverted, a vague uncertainty will take the place of an eager or agreeable suspense, the action will seem to halt, or a fall will begin prematurely. In the contrivance of the climax itself lies one of the chief tests of the dramatist s art ; for while in the transactions of real life their climax is often only a matter of assumption, in the action of a drama its climax should present itself as self-evident. In the middle of everything, says the Greek poet, lies the strength ; and this strongest or highest point it is the task of the dramatist to make manifest. Much here depends u.pon the niceties of constructive instinct; much (as in all parts of the action) upon a thorough dramatic transformation of the subject. The historical drama here presents peculiar difficulties, and perhaps the example of Henry VIII., as compared with Shakespeare s other historical plays, may be held to furnish an instructive example of defective (because hasty) workmanship. From the climax, or height, the action proceeds through its fall to its close, which in a drama with an unhappy ending we still call its catastrophe, while to terminations in general we apply the term denouement. This latter name would, however, more properly be used in the sense in which Aristotle employs its Greek equivalent At o-ts the untying of the knot of the whole of the second part of the action, from the climax downwards. If, in the manage ment of the climax, everything depended upon making the effect, in the fall everything depends upon not marring it. This may be ensured by a rapid progress to the close; but neither does every action admit of such treatment, nor is it in accordance with the character of those actions which are of a complicated kind. With the latter, therefore, the fall Return, is often a return i.e., in Aristotle s phrase, a change into the reverse of what is expected from the circumstances of the action (TrepiTrema), as in Coriolanus, where the Roman story lends itself so admirably to dramatic demands. In any case the art of the dramatist is in this part of his work called upon for the surest exercise of its tact aad skill. The efi ect of the climax has been to concentrate the interest; the fall must therefore, above all, avoid dissipating it. The use of episodes is not even now excluded ; but they must be of a more directly significant kind than is necessary in the earlier stages of the drama ; even where serving the purpose of relief they must help to keep alive the interest previously raised to its highest pitch. This may be effected by a return or revolution ; or again, by the raising of obstacles between the height of the action and its expected consequences, by the suggestion in tragedy of a seemingly possible recovery or escape from them (as in the wonderfully powerful construc tion of the latter part of Macbeth], by the gradual removal in comedy, or wherever the interest of the action is less intense, of such difficulties as the growth and climax have occasioned. In all kinds of the drama discovery will remain, as it was in the judgment of Aristotle, a most effective expedient ; but it should be a discovery which has been foreshadowed by that method of treatment which in its consummate master, Sophocles, has been termed his irony. Nowhere should the close or catastrophe be other than a Close 01 consequence of the action itself. Sudden revulsions from catastro the conditions of the action such as the deus ex machina, or the revising officer of the emperor of China, or the nabob returned from India bring about condemn them selves as unsatisfactory makeshifts. However sudden, and even, in manner of accomplishment, surprising, may be the catastrophe, it should not be unprepared, but like every other part of the action should preserve its organic connec tion with the whole. The sudden suicides which terminate so many tragedies, and the paternal blessings which close an equal number of comedies, should be something more than a signal for the fall of the curtain. The action of a drama, besides being one and complete Probabi in itself, ought likewise to be probable. The probability of r.ctio: required of a drama is not that of actual or historical experience it is a conditional probability, or in other words the consistency of the course of the action with the conditions under which, and with the characters by which, the dramatist has chosen to carry it on. As to the former, he is fettered by no restrictions save those which he imposes upon himself, whether or not in deference to the usages of certain accepted species of dramatic composition. Ghosts appear neither in real life nor in dramas of real life ; but the introduction of supernatural agency is neither enjoined nor prohibited by any general dramatic law. The use of such expedients is as open to the dramatic as to any other poet ; the judiciousness of his use of them depends upon the effect which, consistently with the general conduct of his action, they will exercise upon the spectator, whom other circumstances may or may not predispose to their accept ance. The ghost in Hamlet belongs to the action of the play ; the ghost in the Persve is not intrinsically less pro bable, but the apparition seems to spring, so to speak, less naturally out of the atmosphere around it. Dramatic probability has, however, a far deeper meaning than this. The Eumenides is probable with all its primitive mysterious- ness, and Macbeth with all its barbarous witchcraft. The proceedings of the feathered builders of Cloudcuckootown

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