Movement applied to Passion.
The idea of movement has next to be applied to Passion. Passion is experience as grasped by our emotional nature: this will be sensitive not only to isolated fragments of experience, but equally to the succession of incidents. The movement of events will produce a corresponding movement in our emotional nature as this is variously affected by them; and as the succession of incidents seems to take direction so the play of our sympathies will seem to take form. Again, events cannot succeed one another without suggesting causes at work and controlling forces: when such causes and forces are of a nature to work upon our sympathy another element of Passion will appear. Motive Form and Motive Force.Under Passion-Movement then are comprehended two things—Motive Form and Motive Force. The first of these is a thing in which two of the great elements of Drama, Passion, and Plot, overlap, and it will be best considered page 278.in connection with Plot which takes in dramatic form as a whole. Here we have to consider the Motive Forces of dramatic passion. The dramatist is, as it were, a God in his universe, and disposes the ultimate issues of human experience at his pleasure: what then are the principles which are found to have governed his ordering of events? to personages in a drama what are the great determinants of fate?
Poetic Justice a form of art-beauty.
The first of the great determinants of fate in the Drama is Poetic Justice. What exactly is the meaning of this term? It is often understood to mean the correction of justice, as if justice in poetry were more just than the justice of real life. But this is not supported by the facts of dramatic story. An English judge and jury would revolt against measuring out to Shylock the justice that is meted to him by the court of Venice, though the same persons beholding the scene in a theatre might feel their sense of Poetic Justice satisfied; unless, indeed, which might easily happen, the confusion of ideas suggested by this term operated to check their acquiescence in the issue of the play. A better notion of Poetic Justice is to understand it as the modification of justice by considerations of art. This holds good even where justice and retribution do determine the fate of individuals in the Drama; in these cases our dramatic satisfaction still rests, not on the high degree of justice exhibited, but on the artistic mode in which it works. A policeman catching a thief with his hand in a neighbour's pocket and bringing him to summary punishment affords an example of complete justice, yet its very success robs it of all poetic qualities; the same thief defeating all the natural machinery of the law, yet overtaken after all by a questionable ruse would be to the poetic sense far more interesting.
Nemesis as a dramatic motive.
Treating Poetic Justice, then, as the application of art to morals, its most important phase will be Nemesis, which we have already seen involves an artistic link between sin and retribution. The artistic connection may be of the most varied description. Varieties of Nemesis.There is a Nemesis of perfect equality, Shylock reaping measure for measure as he has sown. When Nemesis overtook the Roman conspirators it was partly its suddenness that made it impressive: compare iii. i. 118 and 165.within fifty lines of their appeal to all time they have fallen into an attitude of deprecation. For Richard, on the contrary, retribution was delayed to the last moment: to have escaped to the eleventh hour is shown to be no security.
Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they first begin their mountain piling,
But when another rock would crown their work.
Nemesis may be emphasised by repetition and multiplication; in the world in which Richard is plunged there appears to be no event which is not a nemesis. Or the point may be the unlooked-for source from which the nemesis comes; as when upon the murder of Cæsar a colossus of energy and resource starts up in the time-serving and frivolous Antony, ii. i. 165.whom the conspirators had spared for his insignificance. Or again, retribution may be made bitter to the sinner by his tracing in it his own act and deed: from Lear himself, and from no other source, Goneril and Regan have received the power they use to crush his spirit. Nay, the very prize for which the sinner has sinned turns out in some cases the nemesis fate has provided for him; as when Goneril and Regan use their ill-gotten power for the state intrigues which work their death. And most keenly pointed of all comes the nemesis that is combined with mockery: iii. i. 49.Macbeth, if he had not essayed the murder of Banquo as an extra precaution, might have enjoyed his stolen crown in safety; iv. iii. 219.his expedition against Macduff's castle slays all except the fate-appointed avenger; iv. ii. 46.Richard disposes of his enemies with flawless success until the last, Dorset, escapes to his rival.