It will be observed that, in contrasting the two poles of realism, we have not made any allusion to the absence or the presence of imagination; and this because the word is so liable to misconception. But if we are correct in distinguishing the realism of youth from the realism of senility, by saying that in the one case every circumstance is recognised as a necessity, every detail is viewed as eternally and universally true, while in the other all is more or less regarded as chance-work, which might or might not have been—what is this but saying, that in the one case facts appeal to the imagination, in the other merely to sense? It is the imagination that magnifies insular facts into continental truths, and immortalises momentary feelings by raising them into eternal laws. The Imagination is, par excellence, the faculty of generalisation—a fact which the psychologists commonly overlook. It indeed always regards the concrete, always regards the individual; and that is the great fact which the psychologists are accustomed to dwell upon, while at the same time they overlook the principal characteristic of imagination, which is this, that it never regards the individual merely as an individual, nor the concrete merely as a concrete; it regards the individual as representative of a species, and the concrete as a type of something more general. The imagination is to our other faculties what Cuvier or Owen is to other men. Give to Professor Owen a single bone—even the single bone of an extinct animal, and he will determine the size and position of every other bone, and the entire structure of the bird or beast. Give to the imagination a single fact, and it has the same marvellous significance, and myriads of other facts link on to it by the most inevitable obligation. And it is because in this temper the youthful mind seizes upon facts, that even when it clings to them far more tenaciously, and dwells upon them far more minutely than superannuated minds do, its realism has a worth and a hopefulness to which any other kind of realism can make no pretensions. The realism of dotage is gossip—merest gossip. The lace in a Dutch portrait—every thread and loop painted, what is it but old wives’ gossip? Compare this uninteresting imitation of point lace, velvets, and silks and satins, with the young Titian painting in the eye of one of his figures the reflection of a window. This is the realism of a boy, that is the realism of old women.
The drift of our argument will now be apparent. We have shown that the distinguishing feature of the modern drama is its tendency to Realism, and that it exhibits this tendency at present in common with the other imitative arts. We have also shown that the tendency to realism is characteristic of art in two periods of its history—namely, its rise and its decline; and we have endeavoured to explain the difference between the realism that characterises the rise of art, and the realism that marks its decadence. Then here arises the question of questions: To which period does the realism that signalises at present the imitative arts in general, and the dramatic art in particular, belong? Is it the realism of progress, or the realism of decay? It is the most difficult question of all; at least, it is the question to which it is most difficult in our present circumstances to give a very decided answer. Having stated the law and summed up the evidence, we should certainly be glad to shift to a jury the responsibility of pronouncing an absolute verdict as to the question of fact. The difficulty of pronouncing such a verdict is easily accounted for. In a period which is one of revival and not of imitation, it is most natural that we should find the two kinds of realism more or less blending together—the literalness of an exhausted epoch, and the faithfulness of a regenerated life. And amid all the pre-Raphaelitism of the stage and of the picture-galleries, it is nothing wonderful that we should find much to condemn, much of that literalness which is unworthy and imbecile. When, to quote an extreme instance—when Thurtell’s gig, with “some of the real water from the pond,” is exhibited on the boards of the Surrey Theatre, it is such another exhibition as we find in the degradation of the Roman drama—a degradation, by the way, which old Thomas Heywood describes as amongst the highest honours of the drama. There is so much naïveté in his description that we shall quote it:—
“Julius Cæsar himself, for his pleasure, became an actor, being in shape, state, voice, judgment, and all other occurrents, exterior and interior, excellent. Amongst many other parts acted by him in person, it is recorded of him that, with general applause in his own theatre, he played Hercules Furens; and, amongst many other arguments of his completeness, excellence, and extraordinary care in his action, it is thus reported of him: Being in the depth of a passion, one of his servants (as his part then fell out) presenting Lychas, who before had from Dejanira brought him the poisoned shirt, dipt in the blood of the centaur Nessus, he, in the middest of his torture and fury, finding this Lychas hid in a remote corner (appointed him to creep into of purpose), although he was, as our tragedians use, but seemingly to kill him by some false imagined wound, yet was Cæsar so carried away with the violence of his practised fury, and by the perfect shape of the madness of Hercules to which he had fashioned all his active spirits, that he slew him dead at his foot, and after swung him, terque quaterque (as the poet says) about his head. It was the manner of their emperors in those days, in their public tragedies, to choose out the fittest amongst such as for capital offences were condemned to die, and employ them in such parts as were to be killed in the tragedy, who of themselves would make suit rather to die with resolution, and by the hands of such princely actors, than otherwise to suffer a shameful and most detestable end.”
And this, which honest old Heywood is willing to commend because done by an emperor, is in fact, parvis componere magna, the exact parallel to the incident already mentioned—the rat-killing in the pantomime of Whittington and his Cat. It is parallel also, in a certain degree, to one of Mr Phelps’s early extravagances, who, in his determination to adhere to the text of Shakespeare, actually ended Macbeth by the exhibition of the traitor’s head—“Reenter Macduff, with Macbeth’s head on a pole.” One is inclined to believe that had he not been himself the Macbeth of the evening, he would have made arrangements to exhibit the veritable head of the actor who performed the part.
But while it is impossible to deny the existence of such a baneful realism, is this all? and does there not predominate at the same time a far more healthy tendency? Are not Mr Charles Kean’s revivals of King John and Macbeth—are not Mr Phelps’s revivals, notwithstanding his early vagary—of this kind? Is not, for example, the historic fidelity with which Macbeth is represented in the Princess’s Theatre, something entirely different in kind from that species of realism which in the soliloquy,
“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle towards my hand?”
actually exhibited a dagger hanging in the air? There can be very little doubt of it; and it may be said generally that the realism displayed is most frequently of the earnest and healthy sort. If any misgiving should arise with regard to this in the case of the drama, one has a right to refer to the realism manifested at the very same time in the kindred art of painting, and if not entirely to interpret the one by the other, still to regard the analogy as of great importance. There are many of us who cannot admire pre-Raphaelitism, with all its extravagance and presumption, but at all events we do not regard its faults as the results of mental paralysis. They are the faults of youth, not of age—of the pleasant springtime which the pre-Raphaelites love to paint, when the leaves come forth in all their delicacy, almost diaphonous against the light, so that we trace the tender veins and fibres in all their minute windings—not of the yellowing autumn, when again all nature comes before us with excessive minuteness of detail, but the detail of faded leaves and the curious reticulation of their skeletons.
Right or wrong, it is at least more pleasant to look thus hopefully on the future of the drama than to fold one’s hands, shrug one’s shoulders, and give up all as lost. The drama! they say—fiddlesticks! the drama has all gone to the opera. Very well: and why should not the drama go to the opera? the music will do it no harm—on the contrary, a great deal of good. It is quite true that the opera, or, to speak more generally, the musical tendencies of the present time, act to the hurt of the existing theatres; but pity the man who ventures to dream that the fortunes of the British drama are to be identified with the fortunes of the present theatres, as at present conducted. On the contrary, it would probably be no great misfortune to the British drama, if, with one or two exceptions, they were all burnt to the ground; and however adverse to the drama the present musical taste may appear to be, it is not so really, but full of promise, if the dramatists would only see and use the opportunity. What is the use of running down illustration, dioramas, and concerts? Would it not be better for the dramatists to write up to them? The British drama has at the present moment two special haunts—the theatre and the concert-hall. It is needless for the dramatic authors to complain that their pieces are damned. Who cares for their pieces? All they have to say has no relation to our present habitudes and thoughts. If they will write for the theatres, let them write something worthy of illustration, and be as realistic in their writing as Mr Kean is in his acting, and in his stage appointments. And let them invade the concert-halls, where a new drama is springing up for the amusement of those who cannot away with the theatre.
Their position in the theatre at present is not good, is not creditable to them as a body, although we are far from looking on it with despair, and are far from saying that Othello’s occupation is gone. It may be worth our while to recognise clearly the position which the drama has always occupied in this country.