Contrary Motion,
In Contrary Motion the separate actions as they move on interfere with one another, that is, each acts as complicating force to the other, turning it out of its course; in reality they are helping one another's advance, seeing that complication is a step in dramatic progress. The Merchant of Venice furnishes an example. The Caskets Story progresses without check to its climax; in starting it complicates the Jew action—for before Bassanio can get to Belmont he borrows of Antonio the loan which is to entangle him in the meshes of the Jew's revenge; then the Caskets Story as a result of its climax resolves this complication in the Story of the Jew—for the union of Portia with Bassanio provides the deliverer for Bassanio's friend. But in thus resolving the Story of the Jew the Caskets Story, in the new phase of it that has commenced with the exchange of betrothal rings, itself suffers complication—the circumstances of the trial offering the suggestion to Portia to make the demand for Bassanio's ring. Thus of the two actions moving on side by side the one interferes with and diverts the other from its course, and again in restoring it gets itself diverted. This mutual interference makes up Contrary Motion.
Convergent Motion.
A third mode of Compound movement is Convergent Motion, by which actions, or systems of actions, at first separate, become drawn together as they move on, and assist one another's progress. Once more the play of Lear furnishes a typical example. This play, it will be recollected, includes two distinct systems of actions tracing the story of two separate families. Moreover the main story after its opening incident presents, so far as movement is concerned, three different sides, according as its incidents centre around Lear, Goneril, or Regan. The first link between these diverse actions is Gloucester, the central personage of the whole plot. i. i. 35, 191.Gloucester has been the King's chamberlain and his close friend, ii. i. 93.the King having been godfather to his son. Accordingly, in the highly unstable political condition of a kingdom divided equally between two unprincipled sisters, Gloucester represents a third party, the party of Lear: he holds the balance of power, and the effort to secure him draws the separate interests together. i. v. 1.Thus as soon as Lear and Goneril have quarrelled Lear sends Kent to Gloucester, and our actions begin to approach one another. ii. i. 9.Before this messenger can arrive we hear of 'hints and ear-kissing arguments' as to rupture between the dukes, and we see Regan and her husband making a hasty journey—'out of season threading dark-eyed night'—ii. i. 121.in order to be the first at Gloucester's castle; ii. iv. 192.when Goneril in self-defence follows, all the separate elements of the main plot have found a meeting-point. But this castle of Gloucester in which they meet is the seat of the underplot, and the two systems become united in the closest manner by this central linking. ii. i. 88-131, esp. 112.Regan arrives in time to use her authority in furthering the intrigue against Edgar as a means of recommending herself to the deceived Gloucester; the other intrigue of the underplot, iii. v, &c.that against Gloucester himself, is promoted by the same means when Edmund has betrayed to Regan his father's protection of Lear; while the meeting of both sisters with Edmund lays the foundation of the mutual intriguing which forms the further interest of the entanglement between underplot and main story. All the separate lines of action have thus moved to a common centre, and their concentration in a common focus gives opportunity for the climax of passion which forms the centrepiece of the play. Then the Enveloping Action comes in as a further binding force, and it has been pointed out above how throughout the fourth and fifth Acts all the separate actions, whatever their immediate purpose, have an ultimate reference to Dover as the landing-place of the invading army: in military phrase Dover is the common objective on which all the separate trains of interest are concentrating. In this way have the actions of this intricate plot, so numerous and so separate at first, been found to converge to a common centre and then move together to a common dénouement.
Turning-points.
The distinction of movement from the other elements of Plot leads also to the question of Turning-points, an idea equally connected with movement and with design. In the movement of every play a Turning-point is implied: movement could not have dramatic interest unless there were a change in the direction of events, and such change implies a point at which the change becomes apparent. Changes of a kind may be frequent through the progress of a play, but one notable point will stand out at which the ultimate issues present themselves as decided, the line of motion changing from complication to resolution, the line of passion from strain to reaction. The Catastrophe: or Focus of Movement.Such a point is technically a Catastrophe: a word whose etymological meaning suggests a turning round so as to come down. The Centre of Plot.In Shakespeare's dramatic practice we find a not less important Turning-point in relation to the design of the plot. This is always at the exact centre—the middle of the middle Act—and serves as a balancing-point about which the plot may be seen to be symmetrical: it is a Centre of Plot as the Catastrophe is a Focus of Movement. The Catastrophe of The Merchant of Venice is clearly Portia's judgment in the Trial Scene, by which in a moment the whole entanglement is resolved. iv. i. 305.In an earlier chapter it has been pointed out how the union of Portia and Bassanio—iii. ii.at the exact centre of the play—is the real determinant of the whole plot, uniting the complicating and resolving forces, and constituting a scene in which all the four stories find a meeting-point. In Richard III, iv. ii. 45.while the Catastrophe comes in the hero's late recognition of his own nemesis, yet there has been, before this and in the exact centre, a turn in the Enveloping Action, iii. iii. 15.which includes all the rest, shown by the recognition that Margaret's curses have now begun to be fulfilled. The exact centre of Macbeth, as pointed out above, iii. iv. 20.marks the hero's passage from rise to fall, that is from unbroken success to unbroken failure: the corresponding Catastrophe in this play is double, iii. iv. 49; v. viii. 13.a first appearance of Nemesis in Banquo's ghost, its final stroke in the revelation of Macduff's secret of birth. iii. i. 122.Julius Cæsar presents the interesting feature of the Catastrophe and Central Turning-point exactly coinciding, in the triumphant appeal of the conspirators to future history. Lear, according to the scheme of analysis suggested in this work, has its Catastrophe at the close of the initial scene, by which time the problem in experience has been set up in action, and the tragedies arising out of it thenceforward work on without break to its solution. iii. iv. 45.A Centre of Plot is found for this play where, in the middle Scene of the middle Act, the third of the three forms of madness is brought into contact with the other two and makes the climax of passion complete. This regular union by Shakespeare of a marked catastrophe, appealing to every spectator, with a subtle dividing-point, interesting to the intellectual sense of analysis, illustrates the combination of force with symmetry, which is the genius of the Shakespearean Drama: it throughout presents a body of warm human interest governed by a mind of intricate design.
Conclusion.
The plan laid down for this work has now been followed to its completion. The object I have had in view throughout has been the recognition of inductive treatment in literary study. For this purpose it was first necessary to distinguish the inductive method from other modes of treatment founded on arbitrary canons of taste and comparisons of merit, so natural in view of the popularity of the subject-matter, and to which the history of Literary Criticism has given an unfortunate impetus. This having been done in the Introduction, the body of the work has been occupied in applying the inductive treatment to some of the masterpieces of Shakespeare. The practical effect of such exposition has been, it may be hoped, to intensify the reader's appreciation of the poet, and also to suggest that the detailed and methodical analysis which in literary study is usually reserved for points of language is no less applicable to a writer's subject-matter and art. But to entitle Dramatic Criticism to a place in the circle of the inductive sciences it has further appeared necessary to lay down a scheme for the study as a whole, that should be scientific both in the relation of its parts to one another, and in the attainment of a completeness proportioned to the area to which the enquiry was limited and the degree of development to which literary method has at present attained. The proper method for the nascent science was fixed as the enumeration and arrangement of topics; and by analogy with the other arts a simple scheme for Dramatic Criticism was found, in which all the results of the analysis performed in the first part of the book could be readily distributed under one or other of the main topics—Character, Passion, and Plot. Incidentally the discussion of Shakespeare has again and again reminded us of just that greatness in the modern Drama which judicial criticism with its inflexibility of standard so persistently missed. Everywhere early criticism recognised our poet's grasp of human nature, yet its almost universal verdict of him was that he was both irregular in his art as a whole, and in particular careless in the construction of his plots. We have seen, on the contrary, that Shakespeare has elevated the whole conception of Plot, from that of a mere unity of action obtained by reduction of the amount of matter presented, to that of a harmony of design binding together concurrent actions from which no degree of complexity was excluded. And, finally, instead of his being a despiser of law, we have had suggested to us how Shakespeare and his brother artists of the Renaissance form a point of departure in legitimate Drama, so important as amply to justify the instinct of history which named that age the Second Birth of literature.