Similarly, it may be convenient to make Literary Drama and Stage-Representation separate branches of enquiry: it is totally inadmissible and highly misleading to divorce the two in idea. The literary play must be throughout read relatively to its representation. In actual practice the separation of the two has produced the greatest obstacles in the way of sound appreciation. Amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare Character-Interest, which is largely independent of performance, has swallowed up all other interests; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into a given space, have been completely lost. Shakespeare is popularly regarded as supreme in the painting of human nature, but careless in the construction of Plot: and, worst of all, Plot itself, which it has been the mission of the English Drama to elevate into the position of the most intellectual of all elements in literary effect, has become degraded in conception to the level of a mere juggler's mystery. It must then be laid down distinctly at the outset of the present enquiry that the Drama is to be considered throughout relatively to its acting. Much of dramatic effect that is special to Stage-Representation will be here ignored: the whole mechanism of elocution, effects of light, colour and costume, the greater portion of what constitutes mise-en-scène. But in dealing with any play the fullest scope is assumed for ideal acting. The interpretation of a character must include what an actor can put into it; in dealing with effects regard must be had to surroundings which a reader might easily overlook, but which would be present to the eye of a spectator; and no conception of the movement of a drama will be adequate which has not appreciated the rapid sequence of incidents that crowds the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three hours of actual time. The relation of Drama to its acting will be exactly similar to that of music to its performance, the two being perfectly separable in their exposition, but never disunited in idea.
Fundamental division of Dramatic Criticism into Human Interest and Action.
Dramatic Art, then, as thus defined, is to be the field of our enquiry, and its method is to be the discovery and arrangement of topics. For a fundamental basis of such analysis we shall naturally look to the other arts. Now all the arts agree in being the union of two elements, abstract and concrete. Music takes sensuous sounds, and adds a purely abstract element by disposing these sounds in harmonies and melodies; architecture applies abstract design to a concrete medium of stone and wood; painting gives us objects of real life arranged in abstract groupings: in dancing we have moving figures confined in artistic bonds of rhythm; sculpture traces in still figures ideas of shape and attitude. So Drama has its two elements of Human Interest and Action: on the one hand life presented in action—so the word 'Drama' may be translated; on the other hand the action itself, that is, the concurrence of all that is presented in an abstract unity of design. The two fundamental divisions of dramatic interest, and consequently the two fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism, will thus be Human Interest and Action. But each of these has its different sides, the distinction of which is essential before we can arrive at an arrangement of topics that will be of practical value in the methodisation of criticism. Twofold division of Human Interest.The interest of the life presented is twofold. There is our interest in the separate personages who enter into it, as so many varieties of the genus homo: this is Interest of Character. There is again our interest in the experience these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate: technically, Interest of Passion.
Human Interest { Character. Passion.
Threefold division of Action.
It is the same with the other fundamental element of art, the working together of all the details so as to leave an impression of unity: while in practice the sense of this unity, say in a piece of music or a play, is one of the simplest of instincts, yet upon analysis it is seen to imply three separate mental impressions. The mind, it implies, must be conscious of a unity. It must also be conscious of a complexity of details without which the unity could not be perceptible. But the mere perception of unity and of complexity would give no art-pleasure unless the unity were seen to be developed out of the complexity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradual Movement.
| Action | { | Unity. |
| Complexity. | ||
| Development or Movement. |
Application of the threefold division of Action to the twofold division of Human Interest.
Now if we apply the threefold idea involved in Action to the twofold idea involved in Human Interest we shall get the natural divisions of dramatic analysis. One element of Human Interest was Character: looking at this in the threefold aspect which is given to it when it is connected with Action we shall have to notice the interest of single characters, or Character-Interpretation, the more complex interest of Character-Contrast, and in the third place Character-Development. Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest, Passion, we shall review single elements of Passion, that is to say, Incidents and Effects; the mixture of various passions to express which the term Passion-Tones will be used; and again Passion-Movement. But Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as separate from Human Interest. This is Plot; and it will lend itself to the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions of Single Action, Complex Action, and that development of Plot which constitutes dramatic Movement in the most important sense. At this point it is possible only to name these leading topics of Dramatic Criticism: to explain each, and to trace them further into their lesser ramifications will be the work of the remaining three chapters.
Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism.