The drama is part of the great effort of mankind for the representation of human character, passion, and event. Other sister arts—History, the Historical Romance, the Epic poem—also aim in some degree, by different methods, at the same object; and it is by considering their different principles, and necessary limitations, that the real rules of the drama will best be understood.
History, as all the world knows, embraces the widest range of human events. Confined to no time, restricted to no locality, it professes, in a comparatively short space, to portray the most extensive and important of human transactions. Centuries, even thousands of years, are sometimes, by its greatest masters, embraced within its mighty arms. The majestic series of Roman victories may occupy the genius of one writer: the fifteen centuries of its decline and fall be spanned by the powers of another. The vast annals of Mahommetan conquest, the long sway of the Papal dominion, present yet untrodden fields to future historical effort.[5] But it is this very greatness and magnitude of his subject which presents the chief difficulty with which the historian has to contend. With the exception of a very few instances, such lengthened annals are necessarily occupied by a vast variety of characters, actions, states, and events, having little or no connexion with each other, scarce any common object of union, and no thread by which the interest of the reader is to be kept up throughout. Hence it is that works of history are so generally complained of as dull: that, though they are more numerous than any other class of literary compositions, the numbers of those generally read is so extremely small. Enter any public library, you will see hundreds of historical works reposing in respectable dignity on the shelves. How many of them are generally studied, or have taken hold by common consent on the minds of men? Not ten. Romance numbers its readers by hundreds, Poetry by fifties, where History can with difficulty muster one. This amazing difference is not owing to any deficiency of ability turned to the subject, or interest in the materials of which it is formed. It can never be supposed that men will be indifferent to the annals of their own fame, or that the groundwork of all human invention—real event—can be wanting in the means of moving the heart. It is the extraordinary difficulty of this branch of composition, owing to its magnitude and complication, which is the sole cause of the difference.
The Historical Romance is founded on history, but it differs from it in the most essential particulars, and is relieved from the principal difficulties with which the annalist of actual occurrences has to contend. It selects a particular period out of past time, and introduces the characters and events most remarkable for their interest, or the deep impress they have left on the minds of men. This is an immense advantage; for it relieves the writer from the great difficulty with which the general historian has to contend, and which, in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, proves fatal to his success. Unity in the midst of confusion is given to his subject. Room is afforded for graphic painting, space for forcible delineations of character. It becomes possible to awaken interest by following out the steps of individual adventure. Though the name of historical romance is not to be found in antiquity, the thing itself was far from being unknown. Its most charming Histories are little other than Historical Romance; at least, they possess its charm, because they exhibit its unity. The Cyropædia of Xenophon, the Lives of Plutarch, many of the heart-stirring Legends of Livy, of the profound Sketches of the Emperors in Tacitus, are in truth historical romances under the name of histories or biography. The lives of eminent men owe their chief charm to the unity of the subject, and the possibility of strongly exciting the feelings, by strictly adhering to the delineation of individual achievement. So great is the weight of the load—crushing to the historian—which is thus taken from the biographer or writer of historical romance, that second-rate genius can effect triumphs in that department, to which the very highest mind alone is equal in general historical composition. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch with that of Tacitus; but, nevertheless, the Lives of the former will always prove more generally attractive than the annals of the latter. Boswell's mind was immeasurably inferior to that of Hume; but for one reader of his History of England, will be found ten of the Life of Johnson. Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon proves that he was not altogether qualified to take a place among the great English historians; but, to the end of the world, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth, will stand forth from his canvass more clearly than either from the rhetoric of Hume, or the eloquence of Robertson.
The Epic Poem confines within still narrower limits the narration of human events. As it borrows the language and is clothed with the colours of poetry, so it is capable of rousing the feelings more powerfully than either biography or romance, and, when crowned with success, attains a fame, and takes a hold of the hearts of men, to which nothing in prose composition can be compared. Elevation of thought, fervour of language, powerful delineation of character, are its essential qualities. But all these would prove unavailing if the one thing needful, unity of subject, were awanting. It is that which is its essential quality, for that alone lets in all the others. All the great Epic Poems which have appeared in the world are not only devoted to one interest, but are generally restricted in point of space and time within limits not materially wider than those of the Greek drama. The Iliad not only relates exclusively the latter stages of the siege of Troy, but the whole period of its action is forty-eight days—of its absorbing interest, (the time from the storming of the Greek lines by Hector to his death by the heaven-defended Achilles,) thirty-six hours. The Paradise Lost adheres strictly to unity both of subject and time: the previous battles of the angels is the subject of narrative by the angel Raphael; but the time that elapses from the convocation of the devils in Pandemonium to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise is only three days. The Jerusalem Delivered has the one absorbing interest arising from the efforts of the Christians for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; and its time is limited to a few weeks. Virgil was so enamoured of his great predecessor that he endeavoured to imitate, in one poem, both his great works. The Æneid is an Iliad and Odyssey in one. But every one must feel that it is on the episode with Dido that the interest of the poem really rests; and that all the magic of his exquisite pencil can scarcely sustain the interest after the pious Æneas has taken his departure from the shores of Carthage. The Lusiad of Camoens, necessarily, from its subject, embraced wider limits; but the one interest of the poem is as single and sustained as that of the discovery of the new world by Columbus. If any of these writers had professed in rhyme to give a history of a wider or more protracted subject, the interest would have been so much diffused as to be lost. The confusion of ideas and incidents so painfully felt by all the readers of Orlando Furioso, and which the boundless fancy of Ariosto was unable to prevent, proves that epic poetry has its limits, and that they are narrower than either history or romance.
What epic poetry is to romance or biography, the Drama is to epic poetry. As the former selects from the romance of history its most interesting and momentous events, and makes them the subject of brilliant description, of impassioned rhetoric, so the latter chooses from the former its most heart-stirring episodes, and brings them in actual dialogue and representation before the mind of the spectator. Immense is the effect of this concentration—still more marvellous that of the personation with which it is attended. Imagination assumes the actual form of beings; conception is realised. The airy visions of the past are clothed in flesh and blood. The marvels of acting, scenery, and stage effect, come to add to the pathos of incident, to multiply tenfold the charms of poetry. It is impossible to conceive intellectual enjoyment carried beyond the point it attained, when the magic of Shakspeare's thought and language was enhanced by the power of Siddons or Kemble's acting, or is personified by the witchery of Helen Faucit's conceptions. But for the full effect of this combination, it is indispensable that the principles of dramatic composition be duly observed, and the stage kept within its due limits, more contracted in point of time and place than either romance or epic poetry. Within those bounds it is omnipotent, and produces an impression to which, while it lasts, none of the sister arts can pretend. Beyond them it never fails to break down, and not only ceases to interest, but often becomes to the last degree wearisome and exhausting. It is not difficult to see to what this general failure of the drama, when it outstrips its proper bounds, is owing. It arises from the impossibility of awakening interest without attending to unity of emotion; of keeping alive attention without continuity of incident; of making the story intelligible without simplicity of action.
Dramatic authors, actors, and actresses, how gifted soever in other respects, are the worst possible judges on this subject. They are so familiar with the story, from having composed the piece themselves, or made it the subject of frequent repetition or rehearsal, that they can form no conception of the difficulty which nine tenths of the audience, to whom the piece is entirely strange, experience in understanding the plot, or acquiring any interest in the incidents or development of the piece. It may safely be affirmed, that a vast majority of the spectators of the dramas now habitually represented, with the exception of a few of Shakspeare's, which have become as household words on the English stage, never understand any thing of the story till the end of the third act, and are only beginning to take an interest in the piece when the curtain falls. Dramatic authors and performers would do well to ponder on this observation; they may rely upon it that it furnishes the key to the present degraded state of the English drama.
It is not obtuseness on the part of the audience which occasions this. So complicated is the story, so lengthened the succession of events, in most of our modern theatrical pieces, that the most acute understanding, fortified by the most extensive practice, requiring alertness of intellect, will long be at fault in comprehending them. We have seen many a barrister famed for cross-examination unable to comprehend, till the piece was half over, the drift of Sheridan Knowles's dramas. Is it surprising, when this is the case, that the vast majority of the audience complain of weariness during the representation, and that the managers of theatres, sensible of this difficulty, are fain to eke out the proper interest of the drama by the meretricious aids of scenery, and dancing, and decorations?
What is constantly complained of by all classes at the theatre is, that it is so tiresome; that the back is broken by sitting without a support; that they cannot comprehend the story; that they do not understand what it is all about; and that the performance is infinitely too long. This last observation is, undoubtedly, frequently well founded: no where is the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, that a half is often greater than the whole, more frequently exemplified than in dramatic representations. But still the fact of the complaint being so universally made, and equally by all classes, is very remarkable, and pregnant with instruction, as to the limits of the drama and the causes of the decline of its popularity so painfully conspicuous in the British empire. No one complains of his back being broken for want of support at a trial for murder; on the contrary, all classes, and especially the lowest, will sit at such heart-stirring scenes, without feeling fatigue, for ten, twelve, sometimes eighteen hours consecutively. Nor can it be affirmed that this is because the interest is real; that the life of a human being is at stake. Every day's experience proves that fiction, when properly managed, is more interesting than reality. The vast multitude of novels which yearly issue from the press, the eagerness with which they are sought after by all classes, the extraordinary extent of their circulation, sufficiently prove this. No one complains that the best romances of Sir Walter Scott or Bulwer are too long; on the contrary, they are generally felt to be too short; and those who are loudest in their declamations against the intolerable fatigue of the theatre, will sit for days together with their feet at the fire, devouring even an indifferent novel.
The general complaint now made in Great Britain against the tedium of theatrical representations was unknown in other ages and countries. The passion of the Greeks for their national theatre is well known, and the matchless perfection of their great dramatists proves to what a degree it is capable of rousing the human mind. The French, prior to the Revolution, were passionately fond of the drama, which was then entirely founded on the Greek model. The decline complained of in the Parisian theatre has been contemporary with the introduction of the Romantic school. In Italy, it is, with the opera, the chief, almost the sole public amusement. There is not a city with forty thousand inhabitants in the classic peninsula that has not a theatre and opera, superior to any thing to be met with in the British islands out of London. The theatre is in high favour in Germany and Russia. Complaints, indeed, are frequently made, that the drama is declining on the Continent, and the present state of the lesser Parisian theatres certainly affords no indication that, in departing from the old land-marks and bringing romance on the stage, they have either preserved its purity or extended its influence. But the decline of the theatre is far greater and more remarkable in England than in any of the continental states. It has, indeed, gone so far as to induce a serious apprehension among many well-informed persons, that it will cease to exist, and the country of Shakspeare and Garrick, of Kemble and Siddons, be left altogether without a theatre at which the legitimate drama is represented. Such a result in a country overflowing, in its great cities and metropolis at least, with riches, and with a population passionately desirous of every species of enjoyment, is very remarkable, and deserving of the most serious consideration. It may well make us pause in our career, and consider whether the course we have been pursuing has, or has not, been likely to lead to perfection and success in this noble and important branch of composition.
We have stated what are the limits of the drama, and what part is assigned to it in the general effort of the human mind to portray events, or paint the human heart. Macaulay has explained, in the passage already quoted, what the Romantic drama proposes to do, and the reason why, in his estimation, it is more likely to attain its end than the more closely fettered theatre of the Greeks. The whole question comes to be, which of the two systems is best adapted to attain the undoubted end of all dramatic composition, the painting of the human heart? If he is right in the views he has so well expressed, it is very singular how it has happened, that in a country which, for the last three centuries, has constantly adhered to these ideas, and worked out the Romantic drama with extraordinary zeal and vigour, dramatic representations should have been constantly declining, so as at length to be threatened with total extinction. This becomes the more remarkable, when it is recollected, that in other countries, inferior in wealth, genius, and energy to Great Britain, but where the old system had been adhered to, it continued to flourish in undiminished vigour, and that decay in them has uniformly been coexistent with the entry on the stage of Romantic representation. Racine, Corneille, Voltaire in France, and Metastasio and Alfieri in Italy, Schiller and Goethe in Germany, have nobly upheld the legitimate drama in their respective countries. Still more extraordinary is it, if these views be the correct ones, that while, by the marvels of one heaven-born genius, the Romantic drama was in the days of Queen Elizabeth raised to the very highest perfection in this country, it has since continually languished, and cannot from his day number one name destined for immortality among its votaries.