It is said in answer to this obvious objection to the Romantic drama, founded on its fate in all the countries where it has been established, that it shares in this respect only in the common destiny of mankind in creating works of imagination; that the period of great and original conception is the first only—that Homer was succeeded by Virgil, Æschylus by Euripides, Dante by Tasso, Shakspeare by Pope, and that the age of genius in all countries is followed by that of criticism.[6] There can be no doubt that this observation is in many respects well founded; but it affords no solution of the causes of the present degraded condition of our national drama, nor does it explain the course it has taken in this country. We have made a progress, but it has not been from originality to taste, but from genius to folly. The age of Æschylus has not with us been succeeded by that of Sophocles and Euripides, but by that of melodrama and spectacle. We have not advanced from the wildness of conception to the graces of criticism, but from the rudeness of some barbaric imagination, to the cravings of corrupted fancy. The age of Garrick has been with us succeeded, not by that of Roscius, but by that of Cerito; the melodrama of the Crusaders, the dancing of Carlotta Grisi, have banished tragedy from the boards trod by Kemble and Siddons. The modern dramas which have been published, and in part appeared on the stage, have in no respect been distinguished by more legitimate taste, or a stricter adherence to rule, than those of Ford and Massinger, of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Jonson and Shakspeare. They have discarded, indeed, the indecency which forms so serious a blot on our older dramatists, but, in other respects, they have faithfully followed out their principles. The drama still, as in earlier days, professes to exhibit in a few hours a representation of the principal events of a lifetime. Time and place are set at nought, as they were by the bard of Avon, and not unfrequently the last act opens at the distance of years, or hundreds of miles from the first. We need only mention two of the ablest and most popular of our modern dramas—The Lady of Lyons, by Bulwer, and the best of Sheridan Knowles' theatrical pieces, for a confirmation of these observations. But no one will pretend that the dramatic works of these writers, excellent in many respects as they are, can be set off against the master-pieces of the Greek or French drama which succeeded the days of Æschylus and Corneille.
Again it is said, and very commonly too, as an explanation of the extraordinary failure of dramatic genius since the days of Queen Elizabeth in this country, that originality and greatness can be reached only once in the lifetime of a nation; that we have had our Shakspeare as Greece had its Homer, and that we should be content; and that it is the necessary effect of superlative excellence in the outset, to extinguish rivalry and induce mediocrity in the end. The observation is plausible, and it has been so frequently made, that it has passed with many into a sort of axiom. But when tried by the only test of truth in human affairs—that of experience—it entirely fails. Past history affords no countenance to the idea, that early greatness extinguishes subsequent emulation, or that superlative genius in one department is fatal to subsequent perfection in it. On the contrary, it creates it. It is by the collision of one great mind with another, that the greatest achievements of the human mind have been effected—often the chain continues from one age and nation to another; but it is never snapped asunder.
These considerations are fitted to cast a serious doubt on the question, how far the true principles of the drama are those which have been embraced by the English school, and may lead us to consider whether the acknowledged inferiority of our tragic writers, since the time of Shakspeare, is not in reality to be ascribed to his transcendent genius having led them astray from the true principles of the art. It will be considered in the sequel, to what cause his acknowledged success has been owing, and whether his finest dramas, those which chiefly retain their popularity, are not in reality constructed on the Grecian model. But, in the mean time, let it be considered what in reality the drama can do, and what limits are imposed upon it, not by the arbitrary rules of critics, but by the lasting nature of things.
The drama is restricted by the well known limits of human patience to a representation of three hours. Experience has every where proved that the greatest genius, both in the poet and performer, cannot keep alive interest, or avert weariness, beyond that period. The spectators sit still in their places the whole time. Whatever changes of scene, or external objects to look at are introduced, the audience itself is motionless. It is to persons thus situated, and within this time, that theatrical representations are addressed. They expect, and with reason, to be amused and interested in comedy, moved and melted in tragedy. It is for this they go to the theatre, for this they pay their money. Writers and actors are equally aware that this is the case. Then what course do the Greek and the Romantic school respectively follow to attain this object?
Both in some respects follow the same course, or rather both make use, for the main part, of the same materials. It is universally acknowledged, that it is essential to the success of the drama, in all its branches, that the plot be interesting, the characters forcible, the ideas natural, the attention constantly kept up. In tragedy, by far its noblest department, it is indispensable, in addition, that the feelings should be vehemently excited in the spectators, and the human heart laid bare, by the most violent passions, in the characters on the stage. Aristotle expressly says, that it is the delineation of passions which is the object of tragedy. In order to achieve this object, all are agreed, that some permanent characters must be selected, generally from those known to history, to whom striking and tragic events have occurred; and it is in the delineation of the passions which those events excite, and the interest they awaken in the breast of the spectators, that the art of the writer consists. So far both parties are agreed; but they differ widely in the methods which they respectively take to attain this object.
The Romantic dramatist, overstepping the bounds of time and place, professes in three hours to portray the principal events of years—it may be of a whole lifetime. He selects the prominent events of his hero's or heroine's career, the salient angles, as it were, of human existence, and brings them forward in different scenes of his brief representation. Years often intervene between the commencement of his piece and its termination; the spectator is transported hundreds, it may be thousands of miles by a mere mechanical sleight of hand in the scene-shifter, or between the acts. The drama constructed on these principles does not represent a short period, into which the crisis, as it were, of a whole lifetime is concentrated, but it gives sketches of the whole life itself, from the commencement of its eventful period to its termination. The poet chooses the most exciting scenes out of the three volumes of the historical novel, and brings these scenes on the stage in a few hours. As the drama, constructed on this principle, professes to portray the changes of real life, so it admits, it is thought, of that intermixture of the serious and the comic, which the actual world exhibits; and willingly transports the spectator from the most highly wrought scenes of passion, the deepest accents of woe, to the burlesque of extravagant characters, or the picture of vulgar life. This is deemed admissible, because it is natural; and certainly no one can have gone from the drawing-room, or the library, to the stage-coach or the steam-boat, without seeing that it exhibits at least a true picture of the varied phantasmagoria which existence presents.
The Greek dramatists, and their successors in modern Europe, proceed upon an entirely different principle. Having made their selection of the characters and the events on which their piece is to be constructed, they pitch upon that period in their progress in which matters were brought to a crisis, and, for good or for evil, their destiny was accomplished. Having done this, they portray the minutest incidents of that brief period with the utmost care, and exert all their strength on the graphic painting on which every artist knows the awakening of interest is almost entirely dependent. The previous history of the principal personages is described in dialogue at the commencement of the piece, so as to make the spectators aware both of the great lives of the characters which are brought before them, and of the antecedent events which had brought matters to their present crisis. Having carried them to this point, the crisis itself is portrayed at full length, and with all the power and pathos of which the artist is capable. The poet does not pretend to narrate the campaign from its commencement to its termination: he begins his piece with the commencement of the last battle, and exerts all his strength on painting the decisive charge. He does not give the voyage from its commencement to its termination, with its long periods of monotonous weariness; he confines himself to the brief and terrible scene of the ship-wreck. As the crisis and catastrophe of life is thus alone represented, and every thing depends on the interest excited by its development, so nothing is admitted which can disturb the unity of the emotion, or interrupt the flow of the sympathy which it is the great object of the piece from first to last to awaken.
If it were possible to create the same interest, or delineate character and passion as completely, by brief and consequently imperfect sketches of a whole lifetime, as it is by a minute and glowing representation of its most eventful period, much might be advanced with justice in favour of the Romantic school of the drama. Our objection is, that this is impossible; and that the failure of the English theatre, since the time of Shakspeare, is entirely to be ascribed to this impossibility. And the impossibility is owing to the length of time which it requires, by narrative or representation, to kindle that warm and glowing image, or awaken those ardent feelings in the mind of another, upon which the emotion of taste and the success of all the Fine Arts depend.
In the arts which address themselves to the eye, and through it to the heart, it is possible to produce a very strong impression almost instantaneously. A beautiful woman has only to be seen to be admired; a charming landscape bursts upon the sight with immediate and almost magical force. The impression produced by the finest objects in Europe,—the sun setting on the Jungfrawhorn, the interior of St Peter's, the fall of Schaffhausen, the view on the Acropolis of Athens, Constantinople from the Seraglio point, the Bay of Naples, for example,—is such, that though seen only for a few minutes, it may almost be said seconds, an impression is made, a picture is painted, on the mind's retina, which can never be effaced. Painting, as it imitates external nature, so it shares in the rapidity and, in the hands of great masters, durability of its impressions. Sculpture and architecture have the same advantage. Yet even in these arts, the productions of which require only to be seen to be admired, it is well known that the impression, strong as it is at first, is, with all persons of a cultivated mind, greatly increased by repeated inspections. The common observation, that a fine painting or statue grows upon you the oftener you see it, and that "Time but the impression deeper wears," sufficiently proves that it is not at once, even in those arts which speak at once to the eye, that the soul of the artist is transferred to that of the spectator.
But the case is entirely different with those arts—such as history, romance, epic poetry, or the drama—which do not at once produce a visible object to the mind, but give descriptions or dialogues by which the reader or spectator is required to form a mental object or awaken a mental interest of his own creation, though from the materials furnished, and under the guidance of the genius of the artist. It is not instantaneously that this can be done: on the contrary, it is by very slow degrees and many successive efforts that the inward picture is created in the mind, the absorbing interest awakened in the heart, which gives the pleasure or rouses the sympathy which is the object of the writer to communicate. A very little reflection will be sufficient to show that this observation is well founded, in all the arts of narrative or description. And nothing, we apprehend, can be clearer than that the Romantic Drama has failed because it professes, within limits and by means which render the attempt hopeless, to excite this interest.