A word, before we speak of the lectures of M. Saint-Marc Girardin, on a topic which stands at the threshold of dramatic criticism. What is the nature of that imitation of life at which the drama aims, and of that illusion which it creates?
Before the time of Dr Johnson, the learned world were accustomed to insist upon the observance of the unities, on the ground that they were necessary to uphold the illusion of the theatre. The doctor, in his preface to Shakspeare, demolished this argument, by showing that the illusion they were declared so necessary to support, does not, in fact, exist. No man really believes that the stage before him is Rome, or that he is a contemporary of the Caesars. To insist, therefore, upon the unities of time and place, is to sacrifice to a grave make-belief the nobler ends of the drama—the development of character and passion. "The objection," says Dr Johnson, "arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes that, when the play opens, the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium."
If the delusion of the theatre, we will add, should, at certain moments, reach such a point that we may be said to believe ourselves transported to the place represented on the stage, this, not being a continuous delusion, cannot be disturbed by the mere changing of the scene; it will not the less take place at the promontory of Actium, because we had felt it, five minutes before, in the city of Alexandria.
Since the appearance of the celebrated preface to Shakspeare, it has been the habit of critics to speak, not of a delusion, but of an imitation, which is felt to be an imitation, and which pleases us in great part by this perceived resemblance to an original. "It will be asked," continues Dr Johnson, "how the drama moves, if it is not credited? It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited wherever it moves, as a just picture of a real original—as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed."[1] * * * The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more. Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.
[1] Cours de Littérature Dramatique; ou de l'Usage des Passions dans le Drame. Par M. SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN, Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, &c. &c.
This appears to us a very indifferent account of the matter. In the far greater number of instances, we can never have formed any conception of an original of which the actor and the scene are supposed to present us a picture. Who that witnesses the play of Venice Preserved, has formed any other image of Jaffier or Pierre than what the actors are presenting to him, or may already, on some previous occasion, have presented to him? Even when the characters are strictly historical, the imagination is little better provided. The spectator does not refer to any faint conception in his own mind of a Brutus, or a Mark Antony, and then derive his pleasure from watching how closely the mimic representation imitates the original. Very often the scene must present something entirely new to the imagination, and yet the pleasure is not diminished on this account. A simple man, who has never seen the interior of a palace, never looked on royalty, never beheld even a veritable courtier, feels no embarrassment when he is suddenly called to witness the pomps and miseries of "imperial tragedy."
The imitation of the drama is not that of any specific original; it is a mimic scene, having human nature for its type. It has a life of its own, constructed from the materials which the records and observations of real life have supplied. In order to move us, it needs no reference to any recognised original. It is there in virtue of the vesture of humanity in which it is clothed, and makes its appeal at once and directly.
It is usual to speak of all the fine arts as imitative arts. The term is not always applicable, and, when most applicable, requires explanation. What does the poetry of sentiment imitate? What does a song imitate? How can the term be applied to all that class of poetry where the writer pours out his own reflections and feelings? The poetry of Wordsworth or of Burns can no more be said to be imitative, than the conversation of the same men, when, in their hours of intimate intercourse, the one may have given expression to his philanthropy, and the other to his friendship. But where the term is most applicable, it requires to be used guardedly. Even in painting and sculpture, the artist does not imitate the object in its totality—does not strive to make an approximation to a fac-simile—but he selects certain qualities of the object for his imitation. The painter confines himself to colour and outline; the sculptor abstracts the form, and give it us in the marble.
Accordingly, when we stand before a statue, we do not think of a man, and then of the statue as the imitation of this original; but the statue is itself clothed with some of the qualities of the human being, which give to the cold marble that half-life which we feel the moment we look upon it. In the same manner, when the dramatist puts his characters on the stage, they are not imitations of any definite originals, but they are invested with certain accidents and attributes of humanity, which give them at once the interest we feel in them, and set them living and moving in their own mimic world.
And this mimic world is capable of creating an illusion—not such as Dr Johnson combated—but of a kind he does not appear to have taken into account. The doctor is triumphant when he denies the existence of that theatrical delusion presupposed as a ground for the unities. We do not, as soon as the curtain rises, believe ourselves transported to Rome, nor do we take the actor upon his word, and believe him to be Caesar the moment he proclaims his imperial dignity. The illusion of the theatre springs directly from the passion with which we are infected, not from the outward pomp and circumstance of the stage. These, even on the most ignorant of spectators, produce barely the sentiment of wonder and surprise, never a belief in their reality. The real illusion of the drama begins, so to speak, not at the beginning, but at the end; it is the last result, the result of the last vivid word which sprung from the lips of the actor; and it diffuses a momentary reality over all that stage apparatus, animate and inanimate, which was there only as a preparation for that vivid word of the poet.