Giraldi gives it as a universal rule of the drama that nothing should be represented on the stage which could not with propriety be done in one's own house.[132]
Scaliger's treatment of the dramatic forms is particularly interesting because of its great influence on the neo-classical drama. He defines tragedy as an imitation of an illustrious event, ending unhappily, written in a grave and weighty style, and in verse.[133] Here he has discarded, or at least disregarded, the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, in favor of the traditional conception which had come down through the Middle Ages. Real tragedy, according to Scaliger, is entirely serious; and although there are a few happy endings in ancient tragedy, the unhappy ending is most proper to the spirit of tragedy itself. Mortes aut exilia—these are the fit accompaniments of the tragic catastrophe.[134] The action begins tranquilly, but ends horribly; the characters are kings and princes, from cities, castles, and camps; the language is grave, polished, and entirely opposed to colloquial speech; the aspect of things is troubled, with terrors, menaces, exiles, and deaths on every hand. Taking as his model Seneca, whom he rates above all the Greeks in majesty,[135] he gives as the typical themes of tragedy "the mandates of kings, slaughters, despairs, executions, exiles, loss of parents, parricides, incests, conflagrations, battles, loss of sight, tears, shrieks, lamentations, burials, epitaphs, and funeral songs."[136] Tragedy is further distinguished from comedy on the ground that the latter derives its argument and its chief characters from history, inventing merely the minor characters; while comedy invents its arguments and all its characters, and gives them names of their own. Scaliger distinguishes men, for the purposes of dramatic poetry, according to character and rank;[137] but it would seem that he regarded rank alone as the distinguishing mark between tragedy and comedy. Thus tragedy is made to differ from comedy in three things: in the rank of the characters, in the quality of the actions, and in their different endings; and as a result of these differences, in style also.
The definition of tragedy given by Minturno, in his treatise De Poeta (1559), is merely a paraphrase of Aristotle's. He conceives of tragedy as describing casus heroum cuius sibi quisque fortunæ fuerit faber, and it thus acts as a warning to men against pride of rank, insolence, avarice, lust, and similar passions.[138] It is grave and illustrious because its characters are illustrious; and no variety of persons or events should be introduced that are not in keeping with the calamitous ending. The language throughout must be grave and severe; and Minturno has expressed his censure in such matters by the phrase, poema amatorio mollique sermone effœminat,[139] a censure which would doubtless apply to a large portion of classic French tragedy.
In Castelvetro (1570) we find a far more complete theory of the drama than had been attempted by any of his predecessors. His work is by no means a model of what a commentary on Aristotle's Poetics should be. In the next century, Dacier, whose subservience to Aristotle was even greater than that of any of the Italians, accuses Castelvetro of lacking every quality necessary to a good interpreter of Aristotle. "He knew nothing," says Dacier, "of the theatre, or of character, or of the passions; he understood neither the reasons nor the method of Aristotle; and he sought rather to contradict Aristotle than to explain him."[140] The fact is that Castelvetro, despite considerable veneration for Aristotle's authority, often shows remarkable independence of thought; and so far from resting content, in his commentary, with the mere explanation of the details of the Poetics, he has attempted to deduce from it a more or less complete theory of poetic art. Accordingly, though diverging from many of the details, and still more from the spirit of the Poetics, he has, as it were, built up a dramatic system of his own, founded upon certain modifications and misconceptions of the Aristotelian canons. The fundamental idea of this system is quite modern; and it is especially interesting because it indicates that by this time the drama had become more than a mere academic exercise, and was actually regarded as intended primarily for representation on the stage. Castelvetro examines the physical conditions of stage representation, and on this bases the requirements of dramatic literature. The fact that the drama is intended for the stage, that it is to be acted, is at the bottom of his theory of tragedy, and it was to this notion, as will be seen later, that we are to attribute the origin of the unities of time and place.
But Castelvetro's method brings with it its own reductio ad absurdum. For after all, stage representation, while essential to the production of dramatic literature, can never circumscribe the poetic power or establish its conditions. The conditions of stage representation change, and must change, with the varying conditions of dramatic literature and the inventive faculty of poets, for truly great art makes, or at least fixes, its own conditions. Besides, it is with what is permanent and universal that the artist—the dramatic artist as well as the rest—is concerned; and it is the poetic, and not the dramaturgic, element that is permanent and universal. "The power of tragedy, we may be sure," says Aristotle, "is felt even apart from representation and actors;"[141] and again: "The plot [of a tragedy] ought to be so constructed that even without the aid of the eye any one who is told the incidents will thrill with horror and pity at the turn of events."[142]
But what, according to Castelvetro, are the conditions of stage representation? The theatre is a public place, in which a play is presented before a motley crowd,—la moltitudine rozza,—upon a circumscribed platform or stage, within a limited space of time. To this idea the whole of Castelvetro's dramatic system is conformed. In the first place, since the audience may be great in number, the theatre must be large, and yet the audience must be able to hear the play; accordingly, verse is added, not merely as a delightful accompaniment, but also in order that the actors may raise their voices without inconvenience and without loss of dignity.[143] In the second place, the audience is not a select gathering of choice spirits, but a motley crowd of people, drawn to the theatre for the purpose of pleasure or recreation; accordingly, abstruse themes, and in fact all technical discussions, must be eschewed by the playwright, who is thus limited, as we should say to-day, to the elemental passions and interests of man.[144] In the third place, the actors are required to move about on a raised and narrow platform; and this is the reason why deaths or deeds of violence, and many other things which cannot be acted on such a platform with convenience and dignity, should not be represented in the drama.[145] Furthermore, as will be seen later, it is on this conception of the circumscribed platform and the physical necessities of the audience and the actors, that Castelvetro bases his theory of the unities of time and place.
In distinguishing the different genres, Castelvetro openly differs with Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes men according as they are better than we are, or worse, or the same as we are; and from this difference the various species of poetry, tragic, comic, and epic, are derived. Castelvetro thinks this mode of distinction not only untrue, but even inconsistent with what Aristotle says later of tragedy. Goodness and badness are to be taken account of, according to Castelvetro, not to distinguish one form of poetry from another, but merely in the special case of tragedy, in so far as a moderate virtue, as Aristotle says, is best able to produce terror and pity. Poetry, as indeed Aristotle himself acknowledges, is not an imitation of character, or of goodness and badness, but of men acting; and the different kinds of poetry are distinguished, not by the goodness and badness, or the character, of the persons selected for imitation, but by their rank or condition alone. The great and all-pervading difference between royal and private persons is what distinguishes tragedy and epic poetry on the one hand from comedy and similar forms of poetry on the other. It is rank, then, and not intellect, character, action,—for these vary in men according to their condition,—that differentiates one poetic form from another; and the distinguishing mark of rank on the stage, and in literature generally, is the bearing of the characters, royal persons acting with propriety, and meaner persons with impropriety.[146] Castelvetro has here escaped one pitfall, only to fall into another; for while goodness and badness cannot, from any æsthetic standpoint, be made to distinguish the characters of tragedy from those of comedy,—leaving out of consideration here the question whether this was or was not the actual opinion of Aristotle,—it is no less improper to make mere outward rank or condition the distinguishing feature. Whether it be regarded as an interpretation of Aristotle or as a poetic theory by itself, Castelvetro's contention is, in either case, equally untenable.
II. The Function of Tragedy
No passage in Aristotle's Poetics has been subjected to more discussion, and certainly no passage has been more misunderstood, than that in which, at the close of his definition of tragedy, he states its peculiar function to be that of effecting through pity and fear the proper purgation (κάθαρσις) of these emotions. The more probable of the explanations of this passage are, as Twining says,[147] reducible to two. The first of these gives to Aristotle's katharsis an ethical meaning, attributing the effect of the tragedy to its moral lesson and example. This interpretation was a literary tradition of centuries, and may be found in such diverse writers as Corneille and Lessing, Racine and Dryden, Dacier and Rapin. According to the second interpretation, the purgation of the emotions produced by tragedy is an emotional relief gained by the excitement of these emotions. Plato had insisted that the drama excites passions, such as pity and fear, which debase men's spirits; Aristotle in this passage answers that by the very exaltation of these emotions they are given a pleasurable outlet, and beyond this there is effected a purification of the emotions so relieved. That is, the emotions are clarified and purified by being passed through the medium of art, and by being, as Professor Butcher points out, ennobled by objects worthy of an ideal emotion.[148] This explanation gives no direct moral purpose or influence to the katharsis, for tragedy acts on the feelings and not on the will. While the ethical conception, of course, predominates in Italian criticism, as it does throughout Europe up to the very end of the eighteenth century, a number of Renaissance critics, among them Minturno and Speroni, even if they failed to elaborate the further æsthetic meaning of Aristotle's definition, at least perceived that Aristotle ascribed to tragedy an emotional and not an ethical purpose. It is unnecessary to give a detailed statement of the opinions of the various Italian critics on this point; but it is essential that the interpretations of the more important writers should be alluded to, since otherwise the Renaissance conception of the function of the drama could not be understood.
Giraldi Cintio points out that the aim of comedy and of tragedy is identical, viz. to conduce to virtue; but they reach this result in different ways; for comedy attains its end by means of pleasure and comic jests, while tragedy, whether it ends happily or unhappily, purges the mind of vice through the medium of misery and terror, and thus attains its moral end.[149] Elsewhere,[150] he affirms that the tragic poet condemns vicious actions, and by combining them with the terrible and the miserable makes us fear and hate them. In other words, men who are bad are placed in such pitiable and terrible positions that we fear to imitate their vices; and it is not a purgation of pity and fear, as Aristotle says, but an eradication of all vice and vicious desire that is effected by the tragic katharsis. Trissino, in the fifth section of his Poetica (1563), cites Aristotle's definition of tragedy; but makes no attempt to elucidate the doctrine of katharsis. His conception of the function of the drama is much the same as Giraldi's. It is the office of the tragic poet, through the medium of imitation, to praise and admire the good, while that of the comic poet is to mock and vituperate the bad; for tragedy, as Aristotle says, deals with the better sort of actions, and comedy with the worse.[151]