Scott's fondness for the drama and his acquaintance with actors—His ideas about plot structure—His own dramatic experiments—His opinion of the theaters of his day—His knowledge of English dramatic literature—Familiarity with Elizabethan plays shown in his novels—His Essay on the Drama—Ancient drama—French drama—Dramatic unities—German drama—Elizabethan drama—Shakspere—Ben Jonson—Dryden and other Restoration dramatists—Morality of theater-going—Character of Scott's interest in the drama.
Like most of his characteristics, Scott's taste for the theater was exhibited in his childhood. We find him reverting, in a review written in 1826,[108] to his rapturous emotions on the occasion of seeing his first play; and in the private theatricals which he and his brothers and sister performed in the family dining-room he was always the manager. In 1810 he was active in helping to bring out in Edinburgh the Family Legend of his friend Joanna Baillie.[109] One of the actors on that occasion was Daniel Terry,[110] who became an intimate friend of Scott's. For Terry Scott wrote The Doom of Devorgoil, but the piece was not found suitable for presentation. Several of the novels were more successfully dramatized by the same friend, so that we find the "Author" humorously complaining in the "Introductory Epistle" to The Fortunes of Nigel, "I believe my muse would be Terryfied into treading the stage even if I should write a sermon." Among Scott's friends were several other actors, particularly Mrs. Siddons and her brother John Kemble, and the comedian Charles Mathews. In Scott's review of Kelly's Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble we find recorded many of the discriminations he was fond of making in regard to the talents of particular actors.
In his childhood Scott felt well qualified to take the part of Richard III., for he considered that his limp "would do well enough to represent the hump."[111] After a similar fashion we find him commenting on the improbabilities of the tragedy of Douglas: "But the spectator should, and indeed must, make considerable allowances if he expects to receive pleasure from the drama. He must get his mind, according to Tony Lumpkin's phrase, into 'a concatenation accordingly,'[112] since he cannot reasonably expect that scenes of deep and complicated interest shall be placed before him, in close succession, without some force being put upon ordinary probability; and the question is not, how far you have sacrificed your judgment in order to accommodate the fiction, but rather, what is the degree of delight you have received in return."[113]
Scott disclaimed any special knowledge of stage-craft. "I know as little about the division of a drama as the spinster about the division of a battle, to use Iago's simile,"[114] he once wrote to a friend. Yet as a critic he had of course some general ideas about the making of plays, without having worked out any subtle theories on the subject. In criticising a play by Allan Cunningham, who had asked for his judgment on it, he remarked first that the plot was ill-combined. "If the mind can be kept upon one unbroken course of interest, the effect even in perusal is more gratifying. I have always considered this as the great secret in dramatic poetry, and conceive it one of the most difficult exercises of the invention possible, to conduct a story through five acts, developing it gradually in every scene, so as to keep up the attention, yet never till the very conclusion permitting the nature of the catastrophe to become visible,—and all the while to accompany this by the necessary delineation of character and beauty of language."[115] And again he said to the same person, "I hope you will make another dramatic attempt; and in that case I would strongly recommend that you should previously make a model or skeleton of your incidents, dividing them regularly into scenes and acts, so as to insure the dependence of one circumstance upon another, and the simplicity and union of your whole story."[116] Here we find Scott giving advice which by his own admission he was not himself able to follow in the composition of fiction. "I never could lay down a plan, or having laid it down I never could adhere to it," he wrote in his journal[117]. And the "Author" in the introductory epistle to Nigel remarks, "It may pass for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot form a plot."
The few experiments that he made he did not seem to regard seriously at any time, though he was rather favorably impressed on rereading the Doom of Devorgoil after it had lain unused for several years.[118] Of Halidon Hill he said, "It is designed to illustrate military antiquities and the manners of chivalry. The drama (if it can be called one) is in no particular either designed or calculated for the stage."[119] He seems to have been "often urged" to write plays, if one may trust Captain Clutterbuck's authority, and the effectiveness of the many poetical mottoes improvised by the Author of Waverley for the chapters of his novels, and subscribed "Old Play,"[120] was naturally used as an argument.[121] Scott's own judgment in the matter was expressed thus: "Nothing so easy when you are full of an author, as to write a few lines in his taste and style; the difficulty is to keep it up. Besides, the greatest success would be but a spiritless imitation, or, at best, what the Italians call a centone [sic] from Shakspeare."[122] When Elliston became manager of Drury Lane in 1819 he applied to Scott for plays, but without effect.[123] Scott seems never to have felt any concern over the fact that the dramatized versions of his novels were often very poor, but Hazlitt wished that he would "not leave it to others to mar what he has sketched so admirably as a ground-work," for he saw no good reason why the author of Waverley could not write "a first-rate tragedy as well, as so many first-rate novels."[124]
Scott felt that to write for the stage in his day was a thankless and almost degrading occupation. "Avowedly I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse.'" he said in a letter to Terry.[125] Again in a letter to Southey: "I do not think the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them.... On the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine honest friend Punch and his audience";[126] and to a would-be tragedian he said: "In the present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,—I mean the want of money."[127] This degraded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard to the written drama of his day, when he could say of Byron, "There is one who, to judge from the dramatic sketch he has given us in Manfred, must be considered as a match for Aeschylus, even in his sublimest moods of horror";[128] or when he could place Joanna Baillie in the same class with Shakspere[129].
Scott probably did much reading in the drama in his early life. We know that by 1804 he had "long since" annotated his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher sufficiently so that he wished to offer it to Gifford, who, Scott erroneously understood, was about to edit their dramas.[130] The edition of Dryden, published in 1808, shows familiarity with Elizabethan as well as Restoration dramatists. He seems to have had first-hand knowledge of such men as Ford, Webster, Marston, Brome, Shirley, Chapman, and Dekker, whom he mentions as being "little known to the general readers of the present day, even by name."[131] But 1808 was the very year in which appeared Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets and Coleridge's first course of lectures on Shakspere. The old dramatists were beginning to come to their own, through the sympathetic appreciation of the Romantic critics. Scott never refers, however, to the work of Lamb, Coleridge, or Hazlitt[132] in this field and we conclude that his researches in dramatic literature were the recreation of a man who realized that his business lay in another direction. But in preparing the Dryden, he doubtless read more widely in Restoration drama than he would otherwise have done. Throughout his life he continued to read plays at intervals, as we know from occasional references in the Journal; but after the Dryden appeared we can point to no time in his career when such reading was his especial occupation. His familiarity with Elizabethan drama he showed even more emphatically than by serious critical writings on the subject, in his fragments from mythical "Old Plays,"[133] in his frequent references to single plays, and in the substance of some of the novels, particularly The Fortunes of Nigel and Woodstock, which make use of settings, situations, and characterizations suggested by the drama.[134] Mr. Lang says of The Fortunes of Nigel, "The scenes in Alsatia are a distinct gain to literature, a pearl rescued from the unread mass of Shadwell."[135]
His serious critical writings on the subject comprise little else than his Essay on the Drama, which appeared in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1819, and the discussions given in connection with Dryden's plays.[136] Although the Essay was written ten years later than the Dryden, we have no reason to think that Scott changed his views or added greatly to his knowledge in the interval, and using these two sources we may discuss his account of the drama in general without regard to the particular date at which his opinions were expressed.
His exposition in the Essay on the Drama rested on the basis furnished by a historical study of the stage. He did not, of course, pretend to have formed his own conclusions on all points, and we find him quoting from various authorities, sometimes naming them and sometimes only indicating, perhaps, that he was "abridging from the best antiquaries." This, however, was chiefly in connection with the ancient drama. As I have already remarked, we do not find him referring to recent studies on the English drama. And though Scott had forgotten all his Greek we observe that he is bold enough to disagree with "the ingenious Schlegel" in regard to the comparative value of the Greek New Comedy. In his treatment of the ancient drama the main point for note is the success with which he gives a broad and connected view of the subject. His account of the drama in France needs correction in certain respects,[137] but it seems to indicate some first-hand knowledge and very definite opinions. He quotes Molière frequently throughout his writings, and always speaks of him with admiration; but with no other French dramatist does he seem to have been familiar to such a degree. Judging French tragic poets too much from the Shaksperian point of view, he was not prepared to do them justice.[138] On the dramatic unities, of which he remarked, "Aristotle says so little and his commentators and followers talk so much," Scott wrote, here and elsewhere, with decision and vivacity. The unities of time and place he calls "fopperies," though time and place, he admits, are not to be lightly changed.[139] He connects the whole discussion with the study of theatrical conditions, and never bows down to authority as such. He says, "Surely it is of less consequence merely to ascertain what was the practice of the ancients, than to consider how far such practice is founded upon truth, good taste, and general effect"; and again, "Aristotle would probably have formulated different rules if he had written in our time." And though he adopted and applied to the drama the Horatian dictum that the end of poetry is to instruct and delight, it was not because Horace and a long line of critics had said it, but because he thought it was true. Doubtless his phrase would have been different if he had not taken what was lying nearest, but his habit was never carefully to avoid the common phrase. His general opinion of French drama was decidedly unfavorable, and he thought it was doubtful whether their plays would ever be any nearer to nature. "That nation," he observes calmly, "is so unfortunate as to have no poetical language."
His remarks on German drama are general in character, though we know that in his early days he was much interested in translating contemporary German plays. His version of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen was the most important of these translations. A letter of Scott's contains the following reference to this play:[140] "The publication of Goetz was a great era ... in German literature, and served completely to free them from the French follies of unities and decencies of the scene, and gave an impulse to their dramas which was unique of its kind. Since that, they have been often stark mad but never, I think, stupid. They either divert you by taking the most brilliant leaps through the hoop, or else by tumbling into the custard, as the newspapers averred the Champion did at the Lord Mayor's dinner."