The Moral Value of This Instinct
The moral values are even greater than the educational. The dramatic instinct is, in the main, a wholesome outlet to a child’s energies. “Good imagination,” says Kirtley, “is good hygiene.” The child ceases to be an obstreperous nuisance who has some imaginative task to perform. Through taking his part, perhaps a minor one, in dramatic play, he learns to cooperate unselfishly with others. Acting itself develops a sense of humor which tends toward a sympathetic philosophy of life.
Dramatic play tends to make the sympathetic attitude continuous. The adult whom you love because she is so sympathetic is sympathetic because she has imagination, because she can put herself imaginatively in your place. The only child or the child brought up by a private tutor lacks sympathy because he has had so few opportunities to put himself in the place of anybody else.
But the great moral value of the dramatic instinct is that it gives a child the opportunity to understand moral issues by having imitative experiences of them.
“In life,” says Mrs. Herts, “youth could hardly discern the miser, spendthrift, liar, hypocrite, egoist, prodigal, swindler, gambler, patriot, martyr, and all the rest. Each quality is disguised and mixed with others. But the drama presents a large repertory of such simplified, elemental human qualities, admirably adjusted to the educative or apprenticeship stage of life. The primitive traits, of which human nature is made up, can be observed and studied as a mechanic studies a machine, part by part, before it is put together.”
In her play with her doll, the little girl learns self-control. Because to her the doll is as real as her baby brother or sister, she can be made to feel that she, as its mother, must be a good example and not lose her temper. Working together with others, in later childhood, while dramatizing a story or playing a dramatic game, further assists the child to gain control of self with all its conflicting impulses.
By making work pleasurable, the habit of industry may be rooted early in the child’s life through the use of the dramatic impulse. In Education by Plays and Games, G. E. Johnson tells of a father who succeeded in getting his boys to pick up all the stones in a field and pile them in one spot, by placing a large stone in the center and suggesting it as a mark for the boys to pitch stones at.
Mrs. Herts illustrates the character-making power which comes from performing a noble part in a drama by the following experience:
“We counted the months of careful, patient training well spent when it served to bring the soul of our boy of an East Side tenement into points of contact with the soul and spirit of the chivalrous young prince, and from these points of contact to stimulate him into action. What has the playing of the character of Edward done for this boy besides affording him some months of genuine happiness? It has recovered and strengthened his own will power through the stimulus of Edward’s will; the boy had lost and so found himself in the joy and sorrow of the young English prince. The proper direction and control of his dramatic impulse had brought him into such intimate association with young Edward, Prince of Wales, that the thrill of Edward’s valor will forever afterward be unconsciously a part of himself, for something struggling in his starved soul has demanded and received expression. In the last act of the drama, when the young prince, in the rags of Tom Canty, the pauper, makes sturdy claim to his righteous throne, it was good to see this youth of the streets raise his hand with natural dignity, and, when Lord Seymour, with selfish motive, would oppose him, cry out, ‘Hold, Lord Seymour, and stand not in the way when God brings right!’”
It is believed the occasional performance of even an unworthy character has a certain purgative moral effect. Referring to the influence of playing the unpleasant part of Minna in “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Mrs. Herts says: “A number of nice girls who had played Minna formerly had fallen into the error of wearing plumed picture-hats and transparent waists to business. One does not like to tell a nice girl that she cannot secure the respect of good business men while unsuitably dressed for her work. The social worker who, with the best intention, intrudes personal advice because those he desires to help chance to reside on lower East Broadway instead of upper Fifth Avenue merely displays poor taste and is inapt to alter a mistaken point of view in a matter so vital to all young girls as clothes. The use of dramatic instinct to stir the girl’s imagination to the realization that the quiet garments of Mrs. Errol clothe the body of a woman whose qualities of mind and soul the girl desires to emulate, while Minna’s gaudy apparel clothes the body of a woman whom the girl has grown to understand but not to admire, proved with us to be a very legitimate use of the primitive impulse to truly educational ends.”
“In taking a part in which there is evil,” adds Frederica Beard, “it is quite possible that a young actor will see the outcome of a bad deed, as it is not possible for him to see it immediately in life. He may discern the workings of conscience in the character he represents, or he may have to bear the consequences of wrongdoing. If neither of these things is depicted in the play, then the character is not one to be played by young people.”
“The development of expression through the right service of the dramatic instinct ... will serve to stimulate discrimination, a quick eye and hand and heart with added taste for the beautiful, while development in responsiveness to the best and noblest people and things of all the ages will create taste and discrimination in the choice of individual surroundings, deeds, actions, and ambitions” (Mrs. Herts).