Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist / A Popular Illustration of the Principles of Scientific Criticism

by Richard G. Moulton

In the Main Plot a Daughter,	In the Underplot a Son,
Who has received nothing but Harm from her father,	Who has received nothing but Good from his father,
Who has had her position unjustly torn from her and given to her undeserving elder Sisters,	Who has, contrary to justice, been advanced to the position of an innocent elder Brother he had maligned,
Nevertheless sacrifices herself to save the Father who did the injury from the Sisters who profited by it.	Nevertheless is seeking the destruction of the Father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls by the hand of the Brother who was wronged by it.

The play of Lear is itself sufficient to suggest to the critic that in the analysis of Shakespeare's plots he may safely expect to find symmetry in proportion to their intricacy.

Movement applied to Plot: Motive Form.

Movement applied to Plot becomes Motive Form: without its being necessary to take the play to pieces Motive Form is the impression of design left by the succession of incidents in the order in which they actually stand. Simple Movement: the Line of Motion a straight line.The succession of incidents may suggest progress to a goal, as in the Caskets Story. This is preeminently Simple[6] Movement: the Line of Motion becomes a straight line. We get the next step by the variation that is made when a curved line is substituted for a straight line: in other words, when the succession of incidents reaches its goal, but only after a diversion. Complicated Movement: the Line of Motion a curve.This is what is known as Complication and Resolution. A train of events is obstructed and diverted from what appears its natural course, which gives the interest of Complication: after a time the obstruction is removed and the natural course is restored, which is the Resolution of the action: the Complication, like a musical discord, having existed only for the sake of being resolved. No clearer example could be desired than that of Antonio, whose career when we are introduced to it appears to be that of leading the money-market of Venice and extending patronage and protection all around; by the entanglement of the bond this career is checked and Antonio turned into a prisoner and bankrupt; then Portia cuts the knot and Antonio becomes all he has been before. iii. ii. 173.Or again, the affianced intercourse of Portia and Bassanio begins with an exchange of rings; iv. ii.by the cross circumstances connected with Antonio's trial one of them parts with this token, and the result is a comic interruption to the smoothness of lovers' life, v. i. 266.until by Portia's confession of the ruse the old footing is restored.

Action-Movement distinguished from Passion-Movement.

Such Complicated Movement belongs entirely to the Action side of dramatic effect. It rests upon design and the interworking of details; its interest lies in obstacles interposed to be removed, doing for the sake of undoing, entanglement for its own sake; in its total effect it ministers to a sense of intellectual satisfaction, like that belonging to a musical fugue, in which every opening suggested has been sufficiently followed up. We get a movement of quite a different kind when the sense of design is inseparable from effects of passion, and the movement is, as it were, traced in our emotional nature. In this case a growing strain is put upon our sympathy which is not unlike Complication. But no Resolution follows: the rise is made to end in fall, the progress leads to ruin; in place of the satisfaction that comes from restoring and unloosing is substituted a fresh appeal to our emotional nature, and from agitation we pass only to the calmer emotions of pity and awe. There is thus a Passion-Movement distinct from Action-Movement; and, analogous to the Complication and Resolution of the latter, Passion-Movement has its Strain and Reaction. The Line of Passion a Regular Arch,The Line of Passion has its various forms. A chapter has been devoted to illustrating one form of Passion-Movement, which may be called the Regular Arch—if we may found a technical term on the happy illustration of Gervinus. The example was taken from the play of Julius Cæsar, the emotional effect in which was shown to pass from calm interest to greater and greater degree of agitation, until after culminating in the centre it softens down and yields to the different calmness of pity and acquiescence. an Inclined PlaneThe movement of Richard III and many other dramas more resembles the form of an Inclined Plane, iv. ii. 46.the turn in the emotion occurring long past the centre of the play. or a Wave Line.Or again, there is the Wave Line of emotional distribution, made by repeated alternations of strain and relief. This is a form of Passion-Movement that nearly approaches Action-Movement, and readily goes with it in the same play; in The Merchant of Venice the union of the two stories gives such alternate Strain and Relief, and the Episode of the Rings comes as final Relief to the final Strain of the trial.

For 'Comedy,' 'Tragedy,' substitute, in the case of Shakespeare,

The distinction between Action-Movement and Passion-Movement is of special importance in Shakespeare-Criticism, inasmuch as it is the real basis of distinction between the two main classes of Shakespearean dramas. Every one feels that the terms Comedy and Tragedy are inadequate, and indeed absurd, when applied to Shakespeare. The distinction these terms express is one of Tone, and they were quite in place in the ancient Drama, in which the comic and tragic tones were kept rigidly distinct and were not allowed to mingle in the same play. Applied to a branch of Drama of which the leading characteristic is the complete Mixture of Tones the terms necessarily break down, and the so-called 'Comedies' of The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure contain some of the most tragic effects in Shakespeare. The true distinction between the two kinds of plays is one of Movement, not Tone. In The Merchant of Venice the leading interest is in the complication of Antonio's fortunes and its resolution by the device of Portia. In all such cases, however perplexing the entanglement of the complication may have become, the ultimate effect of the whole lies in the resolution of this complication; and this is an intellectual effect of satisfaction. In the plays called Tragedies there is no such return from distraction to recovery: our sympathy having been worked up to the emotion of agitation is relieved only by the emotion of pathos or despair. Thus in these two kinds of dramas the impression which to the spectator overpowers all other impressions, and gives individuality to the particular play, is this sense of intellectual or of emotional unity in the movement:—is, in other words, Action-Movement or Passion-Movement. 'Action-Drama,' 'Passion-Drama.'The two may be united, as remarked above in the case of The Merchant of Venice; but one or the other will be predominant and will give to the play its unity of impression. The distinction, then, which the terms Comedy and Tragedy fail to mark would be accurately brought out by substituting for them the terms Action-Drama and Passion-Drama.

Compound Movement.

With complexity of action comes complexity of movement. Compound Movement takes in the idea of the relative motion amongst the different actions into which a plot can be analysed. A play of Shakespeare presents a system of wheels within wheels, like a solar system in motion as a whole while the separate members of it have their own orbits to follow. Its three Modes of Motion: Similar Motion,The nature of Compound Movement can be most simply brought out by describing its three leading Modes of Motion. In Similar Motion the actions of a system are moving in the same form. The plot of Richard III, for example, is a general rise and fall of Nemesis made up of elements which are themselves rising and falling Nemeses. Such Similar Motion is only Parallelism looked at from the side of movement. A variation of it occurs when the form of one action is distributed amongst the rest: the main action of Julius Cæsar is a Nemesis Action, the two subactions are the separate interests of Cæsar and Antony, which put together amount to Nemesis.