I. The Nature of the Dramatic Instinct
THE dramatic instinct finds expression in the impulse to make playful use of the imagination. It is based on certain fundamental instincts of childhood—imitation, construction, and motor activity. Its expression has been called by Gesell “a vital spark of life dropped into the lap of formalism and routine.”
This impulse is found among the earliest and lowest races. In the individual it is felt from early childhood throughout life. If neglected, it may fade away in maturity until it is hardly noticed; but, if properly developed, it is one of the greatest sources of human joy and strength.
Imagination is said to be of two kinds—passive and active. Passive imagination is that which dominates all other mental factors, making them subordinate. Active imagination is that of which the individual himself takes charge. An illustration of passive imagination is daydreaming. Play and dramatics are examples of active imagination. Both have their place in a man’s life. Passive imagination enables the individual to transfigure commonplace circumstances or surroundings in the glamour of beauty and to forecast ideal situations yet to be. It thus fills the present with sunshine and the future with hope. Active imagination begins where passive imagination leaves off, and comes forth to play and work with actual materials or circumstances in an imaginative fashion, and sets about making the fanciful future actual.
With young persons under fourteen active imagination is uppermost. Says Stevenson: “We grown people can tell ourselves a story, give and take strokes until the bucklers ring, ride far and fast, marry, fall and die, all the while sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly what a child cannot do, or does not do, at least, when he can find anything else. He works all with lay figures and such properties. When his story comes to the fighting, he must rise, get something by way of a sword and have a set-to with a piece of furniture, until he is out of breath. When he comes to ride with the king’s pardon, he must bestride a chair, which he will so hurry and belabor and on which he will so furiously demean himself that the messenger will arrive, if not bloody with spurring, at least fiery red with haste.”
W. W. Newell, in Games and Songs of American Children, says: “Observe a little girl who has attended her mother for an airing in some city park. The older person, quietly seated beside the footpath, is half absorbed in reverie; takes little notice of passers-by, or of neighboring sights or sounds, further than to cast an occasional glance, which may inform her of the child’s security. The other, left to her own devices, wanders contented within the limited scope, incessantly prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining rock, now flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the other. Listen to her monologue, flowing as incessantly and musically as the bubbling of a spring; if you can catch enough to follow her thought, you will find a perpetual romance unfolding itself in her mind. Imaginary persons accompany her footsteps; the properties of a childish theatre exist in her fancy; she sustains a conversation in three or four characters.”
The expression of the dramatic instinct may be observed on every hand, not only among children, but grown-ups as well. It animates the group conversing on the street corner, arousing the observer to imagine what the topic of conversation may be. It also enlivens the drawing-room, thus helping to make the social function a success. His observation of it may well have stirred the poet to say, “The world’s a stage, and we are players all.” And as our parts on the world stage change with the changing years, so the expression of this instinct is different in each of the three periods of childhood.
Its Expression in Early Childhood
During very early childhood little folks express the dramatic instinct entirely by imitation. They imitate people, birds, animals, noises; they try to enter into every experience which is within their reach by gesture, speech, or repeated action. As Joseph Lee tells us, “The mind first learns things by getting inside them, by being what it studies.” The child’s imagination is not capable of creating new situations, it simply enables him to reproduce the actions of other people in familiar ones. He mirrors the world as he understands it. These expressions are entirely individualistic and usually unconscious.
This endeavor to mirror and imitate the life about him is a most important means by which the child educates himself. Evidently, the more varied the life which he sees, the more variety will enter into his play, and the broader will be the child’s intelligence.