"It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour."
The origin of the term "humour," in Jonson's sense, has never been carefully studied. Jonson's editors speak of it as peculiar to the English language, and as first used in this sense about Jonson's period. It is not our purpose to go further into this question; but Salviati's definition is close enough to Jonson's to indicate that the origin of this term, as of all other critical terms and critical ideas throughout sixteenth-century Europe, must be looked for in the æsthetic literature of Italy.[176]
IV. The Dramatic Unities
In his definition of tragedy Aristotle says that the play must be complete or perfect, that is, it must have unity. By unity of plot he does not mean merely the unity given by a single hero, for, as he says, "infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles ought also to be a unity."[177] This is Aristotle's statement of the unity of action. But what is the origin of the two other unities,—the unities of time and place? There is in the Poetics but a single reference to the time-limit of the tragic action and none whatsoever to the so-called unity of place. Aristotle says that the action of tragedy and that of epic poetry differ in length, "for tragedy endeavors, so far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the epic action has no limits of time."[178] This passage is the incidental statement of an historical fact; it is merely a tentative deduction from the usual practice of Greek tragedy, and Aristotle never conceived of it as an inviolable law of the drama. Of the three unities which play so prominent a part in modern classical drama, the unity of action was the main, and, in fact, the only unity which Aristotle knew or insisted on. But from his incidental reference to the general time-limits of Greek tragedy, the Renaissance formulated the unity of time, and deduced from it also the unity of place, to which there is absolutely no reference either in Aristotle or in any other ancient writer whatever. It is to the Italians of the Renaissance, and not to the French critics of the seventeenth century, that the world owes the formulation of the three unities. The attention of scholars was first called to this fact about twenty years ago, by the brochure of a Swiss scholar, H. Breitinger, on the unities of Aristotle before Corneille's Cid; but the gradual development and formulation of the three unities have never been systematically worked out. We shall endeavor here to trace their history during the sixteenth century, and to explain the processes by which they developed.
The first reference in modern literature to the doctrine of the unity of time is to be found in Giraldi Cintio's Discorso sulle Comedie e sulle Tragedie. He says that comedy and tragedy agree, among other things, in the limitation of the action to one day or but little more;[179] and he has thus for the first time converted Aristotle's statement of an historical fact into a dramatic law. Moreover, he has changed Aristotle's phrase, that tragedy limits itself "to a single revolution of the sun," into the more definite expression of "a single day." He points out that Euripides, in the Heraclidæ, on account of the long distance between the places in the action, had been unable to limit the action to one day. Now, as Aristotle must have known many of the best Greek dramas which are now lost, it was probably in keeping with the practice of such dramas that their actions were not strictly confined within the limits of one day. Aristotle, therefore, intentionally allowed the drama a slightly longer space of time than a single day. The unity of time, accordingly, becomes a part of the theory of the drama between 1540 and 1545, but it was not until almost exactly a century later that it became an invariable rule of the dramatic literature of France and of the world.
In Robortelli (1548) we find Aristotle's phrase, "a single revolution of the sun," restricted to the artificial day of twelve hours; for as tragedy can contain only one single and continuous action, and as people are accustomed to sleep in the night, it follows that the tragic action cannot be continued beyond one artificial day. This holds good of comedy as well as tragedy, for the length of the fable in each is the same.[180] Segni (1549) differs from Robortelli, however, in regarding a single revolution of the sun as referring not to the artificial day of twelve hours, but to the natural day of twenty-four hours, because various matters treated in tragedy, and even in comedy, are such as are more likely to happen in the night (adulteries, murders, and the like); and if it be said that night is naturally the time for repose, Segni answers that unjust people act contrary to the laws of nature.[181] It was about this time, then, that there commenced the historic controversy as to what Aristotle meant by limiting tragedy to one day; and three-quarters of a century later, in 1623, Beni could cite thirteen different opinions of scholars on this question.
Trissino, in his Poetica (1563), paraphrases as follows the passage in Aristotle which refers to the unity of time: "They also differ in length, for tragedy terminates in one day, that is, one period of the sun, or but little more, while there is no time determined for epic poetry, as indeed was the custom with tragedy and comedy at their beginning, and is even to-day among ignorant poets."[182] Here for the first time, as a French critic remarks, the observance of the unity of time is made a distinction between the learned and the ignorant poet.[183] It is evident that Trissino conceives of the unity of time as an artistic principle which has helped to save dramatic poetry from the formlessness and chaotic condition of the mediæval drama. So that the unity of time became not only a dramatic law, but one the observation of which distinguished the dramatic artist from the mere ignorant compiler of popular plays.
There is in none of the writers we have mentioned so far any reference to the unity of place, for the simple reason that there is no allusion to such a requirement for the drama in Aristotle's Poetics. Maggi's discussion of the unity of time, in his commentary on the Poetics (1550), is of particular interest as preparing the way for the third unity. Maggi attempts to explain logically the reason for the unity of time.[184] Why should tragedy be limited as to time, and not epic poetry? According to him, this difference is to be explained by the fact that the drama is represented on the stage before our eyes, and if we should see the actions of a whole month performed in about the time it takes to perform the play, that is, two or three hours, the performance would be absolutely incredible. For example, says Maggi, if in a tragedy we should send a messenger to Egypt, and he would return in an hour, would not the spectator regard this as ridiculous? In the epic, on the contrary, we do not see the actions performed, and so do not feel the need of limiting them to any particular time. Now, it is to be noted here that this limitation of time is based on the idea of representation. The duration of the action of the drama itself must fairly coincide with the duration of its representation on the stage. This is the principle which led to the acceptance of the unity of place, and upon which it is based. Limit the time of the action to the time of representation, and it follows that the place of the action must be limited to the place of representation. Such a limitation is of course a piece of realism wholly out of keeping with the true dramatic illusion; but it was almost exclusively in the drama that classicism tended toward a minuter realism than could be justified by the Aristotelian canons. In Maggi the beginnings of the unity of place are evident, inasmuch as he finds that the requirements of the representation do not permit a messenger or any character in the drama to be sent very far from the place where the action is being performed. The closer action and representation coincide, the clearer becomes the necessity of a limitation in place as well as in time; and it was on this principle that Scaliger and Castelvetro, somewhat later, formulated the three unities.
There is, indeed, in Scaliger (1561) no direct statement of the unity of time; but the reference to it is nevertheless unmistakable. First of all, Scaliger requires that the events be so arranged and disposed that they approach nearest to actual truth (ut quam proxime accedant ad veritatem).[185] This is equivalent to saying that the duration of the action, its place, its mode of procedure, must correspond more or less exactly with the representation itself. The dramatic poet must aim, beyond all things, at reproducing the actual conditions of life. The verisimile, the vraisemblable, in the etymological sense of these words, must be the final criterion of dramatic composition. It is not sufficient that the spectator should be satisfied with the action as typical of similar actions in life. An absolutely perfect illusion must prevail; the spectator must be moved by the actions of the play exactly as if they were those of real life.
This notion of the verisimile, and of its effect of perfect illusion on the spectator's mind, prevailed throughout the period of classicism, and was vigorously defended by no less a critic than Voltaire himself. Accordingly, as Maggi first pointed out, if the playwright, in the few hours it takes to represent the whole play, requires one of his characters to perform an action that cannot be done in less than a month, this impression of actual truth and perfect illusion will not be left on the spectator's mind. "Therefore," says Scaliger, "those battles and assaults which take place about Thebes in the space of two hours do not please me; no sensible poet should make any one move from Delphi to Thebes, or from Thebes to Athens, in a moment's time. Agamemnon is buried by Æschylus after being killed, and Lichas is hurled into the sea by Hercules; but this cannot be represented without violence to truth. Accordingly, the poet should choose the briefest possible argument, and should enliven it by means of episodes and details.... Since the whole play is represented on the stage in six or eight hours, it is not in accordance with the exact appearance of truth (haud verisimile est) that within that brief space of time a tempest should arise and a shipwreck occur, out of sight of land."