To see to what the Romantic style leads, we have only to look at the dramatic pieces founded on the favourite works of fiction which have recently appeared in England and France. Dramas in both countries have been formed on the stories of the most popular novels of Scott, Bulwer, Victor Hugo, Janin, and Eugene Sue. What success have they had? What sort of things are they? We pass over the horrors, the indecency, adulterous incest, and murders of the modern French drama, founded on the romances of three popular and imaginative novelists, and come to the dramas founded on our own great romance writers, against whom no such charges can be brought, and the original plots of which have been constructed with the utmost talent by the greatest master of prose fiction the world ever saw. What has been the fate of the dramas of Ivanhoe, The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, or Sir Walter's other popular novels? With the exception of the lowest class of Scotch audiences, who roar on the representations of Dandie Dinmont, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, or the like, it may safely be affirmed that they have every where proved entire failures. The talent of a popular actress may for a time keep some of them up, as Miss Cushman has recently done with Meg Merrilies both in the London and provincial theatres; but left to themselves, they have every where sunk to the ground. The reason is evident. The story is so complicated, and leaps so from one thing to another, from a desire to skim over the whole novel, that except to those who have the original by heart, it is absolutely unintelligible.
It is said that the sketch of a whole lifetime, or of many years, is essential to the true development of character, which it is the great end of the drama to exhibit, because it is by the varied events of so long a period that we are made acquainted with it in real life. Here again we join issue with our opponents, and do most confidently maintain that the Greek drama, which professes to paint the heart by the paroxysms of passion it undergoes in the crisis of its fate, is much more likely to do it faithfully and effectually than the Romantic, which portrays the events of a whole lifetime. When it is said the object of the drama is to paint the human heart, a distinction must be made. The heart may become known by ordinary life or moments of crisis, by custom or passion. The novelist, who portrays a whole life, may delineate it in the first way; but the dramatic poet, who is limited to a representation of three hours, must of necessity embrace the latter. But if the delineation of the heart by its expressions or sufferings in moments of passion, when it is laid bare by the vehemence of emotions, be the end in view, it must at once be evident that it is much more likely to be attained by vividly and minutely painting a single decisive crisis, with the acts and feelings to which it gives rise, than by presenting comparatively hurried and imperfect sketches of previous events, when the current of life ran comparatively smoothly. Every one knows how much the character of the French church and nobility rose during the sufferings of the Revolution; with truth was the instrument of their execution called the "holy guillotine," from the virtues previously unheard of which it brought to light. Could any dramatic sketch of their previous lives paint the inmost heart of these victims so well as one faithful portrait of their conduct in the supreme hour? Could the mingled greatness and meanness of Napoleon's character be so well portrayed, by a sketch of his life and impressive scenes from Lodi to St Helena, as by a graphic delineation of his conduct in the decisive crisis at Waterloo?
It sounds well, no doubt, to say, as Macaulay does, that the Romantic drama exhibits all the plans of a man's life, from the ardour of generous youth to the coolness of experienced age. This may be done in history or romance; but it is impossible within the limits of a single representation. It is quite enough if, in so short a space, the stage can represent one momentous crisis with adequate power, and really paint the heart as laid bare by its occurrence. He who knows how difficult it is to do that in a single instance, will feel that the effect can only be weakened by repeated draughts upon the sympathy of the audience, from the effect of different events in the same piece. The attempt to do so scarcely ever fails to weaken the effect of the whole piece, by distracting the interest and confusing the idea of the spectators. If it succeeds, the result, like the repeated demands which Matthews made on our risible faculties, in general is to produce an effect directly the reverse of what was intended. The comedian, by trying too often to make us laugh, made us in the end more ready to cry; the tragedian, by trying too often to make us cry, succeeds generally only in making us laugh.
But what, then, it is said, is to be made of Shakspeare, and how is his transcendent and universally acknowledged greatness, while setting the unities at defiance, to be reconciled with those principles? We accept the challenge; we take the case of the Earl of Avon, with his deathless fame, and maintain that his dramatic excellence not only affords no impeachment of what has now been advanced, but furnishes its most decisive confirmation.
When it is commonly said that Shakspeare sets the unities at defiance, and assumed that his success has been owing to his disregarding them, the fact is not correctly stated, and the inference is not logically drawn. It is a mistake to say that the unities are always disregarded by the great English tragedian. In many of his most popular pieces, they are maintained nearly as strictly as they were by Sophocles; and we are aware of not one of his dramas which is still represented with undiminished effect on the stage, in which the principle of the unities may not distinctly be recognised, and the long-continued success is not to be traced to their observation.
The Greeks, as every scholar knows, took great latitude with time in their representations. The interval between one act and another, often even the time occupied by the chaunting of the chorus, frequently was made to cover a very considerable period, during which battles were fought, a duel or a conspiracy broke forth, an execution took place, and the most momentous events of the piece off the stage occurred. In place, it is true, they were strictly limited; the scene never changed, and all the incidents were introduced by bringing successive persons upon it. In this respect, it may be admitted, they carried their strictness too far. Probably it arose from the pieces being represented, for the most part, in the open air, under circumstances when the illusion produced by a change of scene, such as we witness at our theatres, was difficult, if not impossible, from the audience being, for the most part, above the actors, and the stage having no top. But to whatever cause it may have been owing, we hold the adherence to unity of place an unnecessary and prejudicial strictness in the Greek theatre. But a very slight deviation from it alone seems admissible; and the unity of action or emotion seems to be the very essence of this species of composition.
The true principle appears to be, that the place should not change to a greater extent than the spectators can conceive the actors to have gone over without inconvenience within the time embraced in the representation. This time often extended with the Greeks to a half of, or even a whole day, and there seems nothing adverse to principle in such extension. Changes of scene, therefore, from one room in a palace to another; from one part of a town to another; or even from town to a chateau, garden, forest, or other place in its near vicinity, appear to be perfectly admissible, without any violation of true dramatic principle. The popular opera of the "Black Domino," to which the charming singing and acting of Madame Thillon have recently given such celebrity at the Haymarket, may be considered in this respect as a model of the unities taken in a reasonable sense. The time which elapses in the piece is a single night; the subject is the adventures which befel the heroine during that period; the scene changes, but only to the places in the same town to which she went during its continuance. There seems nothing inconsistent with the production of unity of interest in such a latitude. And with this inconsiderable expansion of the old Greek unities, it will be found that Shakspeare's greatest plays, and those which experience has found to be best adapted for the stage, have been constructed on the true principles.
Take for example, Romeo and Juliet, and As you Like it; perhaps the tragedy and comedy of his composition which have most completely kept their hold of the stage. The unities are nearly as closely observed in both as in any drama of Sophocles. With the exception of a slight alteration of place and scene, every thing is concentrated. The interest and emotion, which is the great point, is maintained one and indivisible. With the exception of Romeo's banishment to Mantua, and the scene with the druggist there, which, after all, is but an episode, and took the hero only two hours' drive from Verona, the place is confined to different scenes in that town. The festive hall where the lovers first meet—the exquisite meeting on the balcony—Father Ambrose's cell—the room where Juliet coaxes the nurse—the garden where she parts from Romeo, when
"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top—"
the terrible scene where Juliet contemplates wakening in the tomb amidst her ancestors' bones—the mausoleum itself, where the catastrophe occurs, are all in the same town. The time supposed to elapse does not exceed twenty-four hours; not more than in the Electra or Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. The interest, dependent entirely on the ardent love of Juliet, is as much undivided as in the Antigone of Sophocles. And yet we are told Shakspeare succeeded by disregarding the unities.