GIFT OF 
 JANE KoMTHER 
 
EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 Greek Tragedy 
 
EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 WITH OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT NORWOOD 
 
 METHUEN & GO. LTD. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.G. 
 
 LONDON 
 
First Published in ig2Z 
 
FN 
 
 NOTE 
 
 TWO of these essays were originally 
 lectures. " Euripides and Shaw " was 
 delivered in 1911, ''The Present Re- 
 naissance of English Drama" in 1913. I 
 have to thank the Literary and Debating 
 Society of Newport (Mon.) and the Editor 
 of the Welsh Outlook • respectively for per- 
 mission to reprint them. Both have been 
 revised, and the second has been brought 
 up to date. 
 
 For the Index I am indebted to the kind- 
 ness of my friend, Mr. Cyril Brett. 
 
 GILBERT NORWOOD 
 
 Preston 
 
 470560 
 
PAGE 
 1 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Euripides and Shaw: A Comparison 
 
 The Present Renaissance of English Drama 49 
 
 The Nature and Methods of Drama . 109 
 
 Index 
 
 . 211 
 
EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 A COMPARISON 
 
 OUR subject can best be understood 
 if viewed, in the first instance, his- 
 torically. Both Euripides and Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw have been voices of an 
 age of reaction, of an age which stood in 
 marked and recognized contrast to the era 
 which had immediately preceded it. Let 
 us begin then with the briefest historical 
 survey and endeavour to compare these two 
 reactions. 
 
 It is usually hard or impossible for any 
 man to describe, perhaps even to under- 
 stand, the history and spirit of his own 
 generation. But the present epoch is ex- 
 ceptional; it can be understood even by 
 those who live in it if they keep before 
 their eyes a strong contrast, precisely the 
 contrast which it is my present business to 
 indicate. There is a real gulf between us and 
 the middle of the nineteenth century. In Eng- 
 
2 EUBIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 land, at any rate, the march of affairs broke 
 into a kind of hand-gallop, ending with a 
 leap over a chasm which can hardly be 
 defined, into a morass from which we have 
 not yet found our way. This jerk in our 
 progress, this turning-point (to use a more 
 decorous metaphor), is to be found in the 
 Education Act of 1870, a piece of legislation 
 which has already given results of gigantic 
 importance, generating and letting loose 
 energies, the history of which has hardly 
 more than begun. But their activity has 
 already shaken society. On many momen- 
 tous subjects it is impossible for us to think 
 or act as we thought and acted fifty years 
 ago. The present age is severed from what 
 is called the Victorian era with a complete- 
 ness which is truly amazing when we con- 
 sider the fewness of the years ; but not 
 more amazing than the extent to which 
 analogous conditions enable us to enter 
 into the spirit of an epoch so far sundered 
 from us in time as the age of Euripides. 
 We can understand Pericles better than we 
 understand Palmerston. 
 
 It will be enough for our purpose if we 
 confine ourselves to pointing out the differ- 
 ence in spirit between the present time and 
 
A COMPARISON 8 
 
 the Victorian age. Consider the legislation 
 of two generations ago, the tone and the 
 implied assumptions of statesmen, of orators, 
 of political and social theorists ; the for- 
 mulae, sometimes not expressed but often 
 definitely proclaimed, which ruled the differ- 
 ent classes of society in their inward life 
 and their outward contacts. Above all, 
 consider the literature of those days — ^the 
 writers who were not only great but also 
 popular, and who therefore voiced the opinions 
 and emotions of their less articulate fellows 
 — Dickens, Macaulay, Wordsworth, Tenny- 
 son. Add to these that invaluable chronicle 
 of manners and customs, the back numbers 
 of Punch. Are we not already far enough 
 removed from them to observe, in spite of 
 their manifold differences, a unity of spirit, 
 a definite tone ? Above all we are conscious 
 of a robust faith in everything Englisli 
 and of the nineteenth century, a certainty 
 that all the men of the past have been but 
 so many coral insects building up that 
 perfect structure which has at last emerged 
 above the waters of humiliation and experi- 
 ment into the sunshine of the Great Exhibi- 
 tion. England is the heir of all the ages 
 and the centre of space. From London 
 
4 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 there is a slight fall to the provinces, and 
 then again to Scotland and Wales, with a 
 deep but isolated depression to mark Ireland. 
 The level falls rapidly as we come to " for- 
 eigners," among whom the French have a 
 bad pre-eminence. Farther down the slope 
 are Germans, Americans, and then the rest 
 of Europe. Thus at length we reach the 
 dim collections of humanity known as 
 " natives," whose territory provides the 
 Englishman with a species of drill-hall in 
 which to exercise his celebrated bull-dog 
 virtues and enjoy to the full the luxury of 
 patronizing people who can never annoy 
 him by rivalry. 
 
 Even the greatest of the popular writers 
 were not untainted by this childishness. 
 The more free an author was from it, the 
 harder was it for him to gain a high reputa- 
 tion in his own day ; Carlyle is an example, 
 and Shelley above all. In the work of 
 those who really struck the imagination of 
 their contemporaries, in writers like Macaulay 
 and Tennyson, there is a tone of gentlemanly 
 arrogance, of urbane self-satisfaction, which 
 impels one to echo Sydney Smith's wistful 
 remark : "I wish I were as sure of anything 
 as Tom Macaulay is of everything." 
 
A COMPARISON 5 
 
 Since those days we have passed through 
 a profound reaction. The nation which 
 seemed to believe that Queen Victoria was 
 immortal has seen her fade into a name to 
 which there clings already the faintest strange 
 tinge of unfamiliarity. With that great 
 figure has departed all the crude but not 
 ignoble certainty, all the superficial worship 
 of progress. The heir of all the ages has 
 cut the entail. Where most we were self- 
 confident, we question most. We who spoke 
 with such confidence about far Cathay have 
 begun to realize how little we know of our 
 own country. The people that saw a great 
 light now sits in darkness, half-lit by gleams 
 of which it knows not whether they are the 
 radiance of a new dawn or the marsh-fires 
 of diseased yearning and perverted energy. 
 
 It would be an almost warrantable con- 
 ciseness to remark at this point that, as 
 for the reaction in which Euripides was a 
 leading figure, it has been already described ; 
 that the contrast between the period of his 
 greatest activity — or, to put it more accur- 
 ately, of his extant dramas — and the earlier 
 part of the fifth century B.C. is roughly the 
 same as the contrast in England. The 
 magnificent exploits of Athens in the struggle 
 
6 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 against Persia, the political power and the 
 undying glory which she had won by her 
 victories over the barbarian invaders, had 
 indeed given an enormous impulse to Athen- 
 ian patriotism and so to the national art 
 in its varied forms of the drama, painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture, an impulse re- 
 minding us of the flood of pride and energy 
 which filled the English nation during and 
 after its contest with Napoleon. But by 
 the time at which the Peloponnesian War 
 broke out (the year 431 B.C.), which is also, 
 roughly, the time of Euripides' earliest 
 surviving work, this impulse had already 
 passed away. Athens had begun to descend 
 from the pinnacle of political and artistic 
 achievement. She was, indeed, destined 
 still to be important in politics, and her 
 literature, both in poetry and in prose, 
 maintained itself at a splendid height, but 
 for the time decadence seemed to have set its 
 mark everywhere else. The Delian League 
 had become an empire and then a tyranny ; 
 philosophy was for a while, to all appear- 
 ance, undermined by the shallow accom- 
 plishments of the Sophists ; democracy was 
 becoming ochlocracy. The spectacle of the 
 rapid fading of so much glory had tainteli 
 
A COMPARISON 7 
 
 men with that cynicism of which Euripides 
 often speaks. Like Shaw, he was compelled ^ 
 by the m^gency of his environment and by 
 the law of his own nature to express the 
 prevalent sense of moral and intellectual 
 bankruptcy, but at the same moment to 
 seek for, and to follow, the road towards a 
 new, more humble, hope. 
 
 Let so much suffice as an outline of tlie 
 historical conditions which have brought 
 these two great dramatists into a kinship 
 of ideas and method. It is now time that 
 we should study this similarity in a more 
 detailed manner. The comparison between 
 Euripides and Mr. Shaw has often been made 
 and is, indeed, quaintly suggested to us by 
 the delightful passage in Major Barbara 
 where Shaw himself alludes to Euripides, 
 and almost brings him upon his stage in the 
 person of the professor of Greek. There 
 are four main features which are to be found 
 in both dramatists, characteristics of funda- 
 mental importance in the workmanship and 
 intellectual outlook of both. 
 
 First should be placed a spirit of challenge 
 to all accepted beliefs. The dramatist sees 
 around him a whole world of assumptions, a 
 whole gallery of revered portraits of human 
 
greatness. Jtie is tne very voice oi an age 
 of questions, and by the law of his nature 
 he insists on revising all notions however 
 fundamental, all conventions however uni- 
 versal, all religious systems however august. 
 This by no means implies that he thinks 
 the whole world mistaken. He may, per- 
 haps, endorse the verdict of ages when he 
 has completed his examination — ^but not 
 before. He feels that the world spurns all 
 truth while it is fresh and stimulating, 
 embracing it only when, by the force of 
 obsolescence, it is already becoming error. 
 Once in every generation at least, a nation 
 must take stock of its creed and its conduct. 
 The whole history of human sorrow and waste 
 is nothing but the admission that such re- 
 visions have been often and terribly overdue. 
 It is the deep glory of these two writers 
 that their self-examination, their sturdy sin- 
 gularity, their almost fierce determination to 
 sound and test everything, is as complete 
 as it can be in a human creature. This 
 merciless sincerity can endure the last trial 
 of all : they are both capable of ridiculing 
 their own reasoned position as if it were the 
 most superficial pose. Take this passage 
 from The Doctor's Dilemma. It occurs in 
 
the scene where Louis Dubedat, artistically 
 a genius but morally a complete scoundrel, 
 is confronted by a sort of committee of 
 doctors, who are trying to bring his baseness 
 home to him : 
 
 Louis : You're on the wrong tack 
 altogether. I'm not a criminal. All your 
 moralizings have no value for me. I don't 
 believe in morality. I'm a disciple of 
 Bernard Shaw. 
 
 Sir Patrick : Bernard Shaw ? I never 
 heard of him. He's a Methodist preacher, 
 I suppose ? 
 
 Louis (scandalized) : No, no. He's tlie 
 most advanced man now living : he isn't 
 anything. 
 
 What could be more clear than that Mr. 
 Shaw, under the flippancy of this, is quite 
 aware how his own position about morality 
 — a position he has elsewhere succinctly 
 defined in the words " morality may go to 
 its father the Devil " — may become a mere 
 pose and a justification for any clever black- 
 guard ? He is always turning on his own 
 would-be followers. The whole of that 
 slight amusing piece called How He Lied to 
 her Husband is an example — a demonstra- 
 tion of what cheap folly even such a pro- 
 foundly touching and indeed terrible situa- 
 
10 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 tion as that of Candida may become when 
 transplanted to an atmosphere of second- 
 hand characters and shoddy thinking. 
 
 Turn for a moment to Euripides, and we 
 find a surprisingly similar case in the 
 Bacchce, his last and perhaps his greatest 
 drama. Throughout his life Euripides has 
 been attacking the traditional beliefs about 
 the orthodox Olympian gods with every i 
 resource of his splendid moral earnestness, , 
 his intellectual penetration, and his technical ! 
 skill. And yet, at the end of his life, what 
 does he say ? 
 
 I do not rationalize about the gods. Those I 
 
 V" . ancestral traditions, coeval with time, which i 
 
 are our possession, no reason can over- | 
 
 \ throw, not even if subtle brains have dis- i 
 
 covered what they call wisdom. I 
 
 This passage, which I have translated | 
 
 clumsily but as fairly as I can, has often ! 
 been regarded as the poet's recantation of 
 
 the convictions and the teaching of a life- ? 
 
 time. I, for one, cannot think so. It is il 
 
 unsafe to affirm anything more definite than ' 
 
 this, that the poet is setting himself against | 
 dilettantism in matters where dilettantism 
 
 is fatal. A restless spirit of inquiry into the i 
 
 credentials of traditional ideas, on whatever i 
 
A COMPARISON 11 
 
 subject, had long been general in the more 
 cultivated communities of Greece. Nothing, 
 however venerable, could escape a close and 
 often hostile scrutiny. In this movement 
 Euripides had taken a leading part, and he 
 was just as ready in his latest years — ^this 
 the Bacchce, as a whole, abundantly proves 
 — to fight for the same cause as he had been 
 when young. But he was at odds with 
 those who made a potent medicine their 
 daily beverage — ^those young wits of whom 
 Aristophanes says that " the give-me-a- 
 definition look is coming out on you for all the 
 world like a rash." Euripides had found 
 that it w^as as important to restrain, even to 
 disown, disciples who made his principles 
 an excuse for their own folly and mis- 
 behaviour, as to insist on the principles 
 themselves. , 
 
 But this is only a special case, striking 
 though it may be as the final proof of 
 spiritual clearness and candour ; both these 
 writers know practically no limits to their 
 range of scrutiny. Think of the number of 
 typical heroes whom Mr. Shaw turns inside 
 out — ^the different kinds of men and women 
 who have been, and are, revered as pillars 
 of society and stalwart witnesses to the 
 
12 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 greatness of humanity. Sergius Saranoff, 
 the splendid warrior who turns defeat into 
 victory by a heroic cavalry-charge, and 
 comes home to the plaudits of his friends 
 and the rapturous homage of his future bride 
 — ^how he wilts in the cold dry air of Shavian 
 criticism ! His cavalry-charge is an insane 
 act of suicide which succeeds by miracle 
 because the enemy run short of ammunition ; 
 his love affair is an elaborate pose of courtly 
 adoration on both sides ; his melodramatic 
 affectations are punctured at every turn by 
 the irony of circumstances or by the contrast 
 of the real humdrum value of the Swiss 
 officer whom he despises. 
 
 Candida — an even finer play than Arms 
 and the Man — contains a similar example of 
 this method. There the character to be 
 vivisected like Sergius is Morell the clergy- 
 man. The searchlight is turned pitilessly 
 upon his weakness and self-indulgence, but 
 — ^this is a point of vast importance — ^he is 
 not the ordinary clergyman of theatrical 
 satire. He is neither the inept fool of The 
 Private Secretary nor the farcical sham- 
 ecclesiastic of The Importance of Being 
 Earnest. He is a good Christian, hard- 
 working and sympathetic, a fine speaker. 
 
A COMPARISON 13 
 
 an intelligent thorough man, a man even 
 with some sense of humour. We see through 
 him in the end, but it is asuredly not be- 
 cause we find his goodness to be a fraud, 
 his sympathy a piece of professional tech- 
 nique. Morell is no hypocrite grinding his 
 teeth in the last act ; he will preach just 
 as well and sincerely to-morrow — nay, 
 with greater sincerity and effect. He is 
 found out simply because Mr. Shaw is keen- 
 sighted enough to disregard conventional 
 reverence for the popular clergyman and 
 to see and show us the human being under- 
 neath, Morell is as good as most people, 
 but he is not so much better as we thought 
 and as he thought. He has mistaken bustle 
 for life, applause for conversion ; we all do 
 this. The dramatist has turned aside from 
 such easy quarry as the forger, the child- 
 stealer, the betrayer of political secrets, 
 and all the rest of popular villains ; he has 
 studied ordinary people. 
 
 If his work at any point impinges upon 
 melodrama, it is only that he may the more 
 startlingly convince us of the truth by its 
 contrast with theatrical absurdity. Shaw 
 begins where melodrama leaves off. Most 
 of us have, in the presence of a child, told 
 
14 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 some laughable anecdote which ends abruptly 
 with a repartee, whereupon the child has 
 asked, " And what did the other man 
 say ? " Shaw is for ever telling us what 
 the other man says and does; often it 
 is the best part of the story. General 
 Burgoyne, in The DeviVs Disciple, is de- 
 scribing to his colleague the plight of his 
 forces when face to face with the American 
 insurgents : — 
 
 Do you at all realize, sir, that we have 
 nothing standing between us and destruction 
 but our own bluff and the sheepishness of 
 these colonists ? They are men of the same 
 English stock as ourselves : six to one of 
 us, six to one, sir ; and nearly half our 
 troops are Hessians, Brunswickers, German 
 dragoons, and Indians with scalping-knives. 
 These are the countrymen on whose devotion 
 you rely ! Suppose the colonists find a 
 leader ! Suppose the news from Springtown 
 should turn out to mean that they have 
 already found a leader ! ^Vhat shall we do 
 then, eh ? 
 
 Now comes the crushing answer of the 
 footlights : — 
 
 Our duty, sir, I presume. 
 
 Loud cheers and a Union Jack in the 
 
A COMPARISON 15 
 
 background, with quick curtain ? No . 
 Burgoyne is allowed to reply : — 
 
 Quite so, quite so. Thank you, Major 
 Swindon, thank you. Now you've settled 
 the question, sir — ^thrown a flood of light on 
 the situation. What a comfort to me to 
 feel that I have at my side so devoted and 
 able an officer to support me in this emer- 
 gency ! I think, sir, it will probably relieve 
 both our feelings if we proceed to hang 
 this dissenter without further delay, especi- 
 ally as I am debarred by my principles 
 from the customary military vent for my 
 feelings. 
 
 Or take a simpler example from The Man 
 of Destiny, Napoleon is addressing a woman 
 who has robbed one of his officers of some 
 papers : — 
 
 Napoleon : I am waiting for the de- 
 spatches. I shall take them, if neces- 
 sary, with as little ceremony as the hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 The Lady : General, do you threaten 
 women ? 
 
 Napoleon : Yes. 
 
 Is this merely a theatrical trick, the know- 
 ledge when, and when not, to drop the 
 ^curtain ? Assuredly not. One of Mr. Shaw's 
 constant aims is to free his hearers from the 
 
16 EURIPIDES AND SHAW ' 
 
 dominion of mere phrases. The power of 
 these catchwords consists in this, that they 
 impress the surface of the mind with a sense 
 of dignity, above all of finality. Therefore 
 the surest way to break the spell is to refuse 
 to regard them as final, to consider them 
 open to question ; and, in the drama, to 
 allow an opportunity of reply. At the same 
 time as he clears away this verbal lumber, 
 Mr. Shaw throws off allegiance to the con- 
 ventional hero, the pillar of society, the 
 demigod of the stage. His plays are full 
 of these discredited pundits : Sir Ralph 
 Bloomfield Bonnington, the great physician ; 
 Mrs. Dudgeon, the godly mater-familias ; 
 Napoleon, the Man of Destiny : Broadbent, 
 the liberal-minded Englishman ; Sir Howard 
 Hallam, the upright judge ; Morell once 
 more, and Major Saranoff. 
 I Euripides will be found to supply a list 
 /equally long and significant. First let us 
 look at Achilles in the Iphigenia at Aulis, sl 
 character not unlike Sergius Saranoff. This I 
 dazzling Homeric hero, the most glorious | 
 figure in Greek story, finds himself here in i 
 an awkward and ludicrous situation. The , 
 Greek host has assembled at Aulis, about to 
 cross the sea to Troy under the leadership 
 
A COMPARISON 17 
 
 of Agamemnon. But contrary winds have 
 been sent by the goddess Artemis; the 
 leaders are in despair, the army on the verge 
 of mutiny. At this point the prophet Cal- 
 chas informs Agamemnon that the wrath of 
 Artemis can be averted only if Agamemnon 
 will sacrifice Iphigenia, his own daughter, 
 on the altar of the goddess. After much 
 wretched hesitation the King consents and 
 summons her from her home in Argos. The 
 hideous purpose of her coming is concealed ; 
 Agamemnon sends a message that he wishes 
 to marry her to Achilles, the son of the 
 goddess Thetis. But he tells Achilles noth- 
 ing of this plot. In due time the maiden 
 arrives, but her father learns with horror 
 that her mother, his wife, has shared her 
 journey. Not only is his heart breaking at 
 the coming slaughter ; he knows that he 
 will have to face his wife's desperate op- 
 position. For the moment he contrives to 
 withdraw, but in his absence Clytsemnestra 
 and her daughter learn from an old slave the 
 true meaning of the summons. They decide 
 to appeal to Achilles, and when he comes 
 upon the scene Clytsemnestra makes a des- 
 perate yet dignified appeal. What is his 
 reply ? He is represented by all tradition 
 
18 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 as the son of a goddess, by far the bravest 
 and strongest of the Greek warriors ; in 
 Homer the very sound of his battle-cry is 
 enough to make the Trojans flee. How 
 does he act now ? Does he bestow three or 
 four lines of hurried consolation on the 
 distressed ladies and then, brandishing his 
 sword, bound away to hew Agamemnon and 
 his followers into a more reasonable frame 
 of mind, after which, no doubt, he returns 
 to marry Iphigenia in sober earnest ? No. 
 He makes a speech which it is worth while to 
 quote at length, for its length is important. 
 And we must remember that all the while a 
 royal lady is hanging vipon his words in un- 
 speakable anguish. Thus then Achilles : — 
 
 Magnanimously my heart is lifted on 
 high ; it knows how to be vexed at evil and 
 to rejoice, not immoderately, in lofty station. 
 Such men as I are led by deliberate reason 
 to live their lives correctly with the help 
 of discretion. Now there are occasions when 
 it is pleasant not to be too wise, and other 
 occasions when it is good to have useful 
 wits. I was reared in the abode of Chiron, 
 a most righteous man, and so learned sim- 
 plicity of character. And as for the sons of 
 Atreus, if they show themselves good leaders, 
 I will obey them ; if not, I won't. Both 
 here and at Troy I shall show my freedom 
 
 1 
 
A COMPARISON 19 
 
 of spirit, while so far as in nie lies I do 
 deeds of knightly daring. And as for thee, 
 who hast been shamefully entreated by thy 
 dearest, in so far as a young man may, so 
 far will I enfold thee in my pity, and never 
 shall thy daughter be slain by her father, 
 when she hath been called mine ; for I will 
 not give my person to thy husband to weave 
 his plots withal. For it is my name, even 
 if it did not draw the sword, that will 
 jslaughter this thy child. The cause, to be 
 Ipure, is thy husband ; but myself will be 
 no longer guiltless, if through me and 
 marriage with me she must perish — she the 
 damsel that hath suffered shamefully and 
 intolerably, and hath in wondrous unworthy 
 wise been dishonoured. I am the basest 
 Greek alive ; I, even I, am naught, and 
 Menelaus is a true man ; I am not the son 
 of Peleus but of a fiend ; if my name in thy 
 husband's cause shall slaughter her ! By 
 Nereus I swear, Nereus reared amid the 
 billows of the sea, the sire of Thetis my 
 mother, that King Agamemnon shall not 
 touch thy daughter, not even with his finger, 
 not even touch her garment. Or Sipylus, 
 on the frontiers of Heathenesse, the place 
 from which these generals trace their de- 
 scent, shall be a city, while Phthia, my own 
 home, shall be forgotten on the earth. 
 Calchas, the soothsayer, shall rue his sacri- 
 ficial barley-meal and his holy water. Nay, 
 what soothsayer is a man? Few truths he 
 speaks, and many lies — and all by chance ; 
 then, when chance fails him, he is lost. Not 
 
20 EURIPIDES AND SHAW , 
 
 because I wish for this marriage do I speak j 
 
 thus ; thousands of girls pursue me for my ; 
 
 hand. No ; King Agamemnon has insulted i 
 
 me. He ought to have asked my permission | 
 
 that my name should be used to ensnare his ] 
 
 child ; it was the thought that I should be i 
 
 the bridegroom that tempted Clytsemnestra • 
 
 most. I would have granted this use of my ! 
 
 name to the Greeks, if here lay the hitch in ; 
 
 their voyage to Troy ; I would not have j 
 
 refused to aid the common weal of my | 
 
 companions in arms. But now I am a j 
 
 cipher in the eyes of our generals — to treat \ 
 
 me honourably or no is a light matter, j 
 
 Soon shall this sword make question, this j 
 
 sword which even before I come to Troy \ 
 I will stain with slaughterous drops of gore, 
 
 whether any man shall tear thy daughter ' 
 
 from me. Keep quiet. I have appeared to i 
 
 thee a mighty god. I am not one. But I i 
 will be one. 
 
 " Was there ever such a fool ? " you say. 
 What a gloriously inept oration ! Rodo- 
 montade and conceit, not even selfishness — 
 it is nothing more. One is not surprised 
 to hear that when Achilles appeals to the 
 Greeks (probably in a similar harangue) 
 they throw stones at him, and he comes 
 rushing back to Clytsemnestra to report 
 progress, or rather the lack of it. He again 
 talks of fighting, but at this point Iphi- 
 
A COMPARISON 21 
 
 genia, whose delicate nerves must have been 
 hideously tried by all this beating of tom- 
 toms, interferes and proclaims her readiness 
 to die for the hopes of Greece. Achilles, 
 after an awkward attempt at expressing his 
 admiration, declares that he will none the 
 less fight to save her. At the end of the 
 play we learn that so far from doing this 
 the loquacious champion has actually taken 
 part in the ceremony of sacrifice : " the son 
 of Peleus, with the basket and the holy 
 water, ran round the altar of the goddess." 
 Both Achilles and Sergius Saranoff are 
 made ridiculous, not necessarily by any 
 fault of character, but by their attempt at 
 critical moments, not to say what they feel, 
 but to say what they think they ought to 
 feel. Each has an impossible pose to keep 
 up. Sergius, a thoroughly commonplace 
 vulgar person, thinks he must talk like the 
 mediaeval knight and lover, merely because 
 he is a military officer and has recently been 
 in danger of his life. Achilles is a super- 
 ficial spoiled young fellow, who has been 
 taught that his mother is a goddess and 
 who tries to live up to this impossible 
 standard. He is too good a soldier not to 
 know that any five (at most) of the Greeks 
 
22 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 are a match for him ; but he has to make 
 himself think that he can rout the whole 
 host single-handed. Both these sawdust 
 heroes deceive the audience for a long time, 
 simply because of tradition. All the greater 
 is the shock when the hero is found out ; 
 and it is not only the hero, but the cult of 
 X such people, which quivers under the blow. 
 And that is precisely the aim both of 
 Euripides and of Mr. Shaw. 
 
 Let me point to another parallel. These 
 dramatists both handle the subject of re- 
 venge — ^the alleged unwritten law that those 
 who are wronged but are prevented by the 
 accident of law from seeking redress at the 
 hands of the State, may, with perfect right, 
 redress themselves. Captain Brasshound's 
 Conversion is Shaw's study of this theory. 
 Brassbound's mother has been neglected 
 and cheated by her brother-in-law, an Eng- 
 lish judge. But nothing has been done 
 against which the law can be reasonably 
 invoked. The judge is respected as a model 
 of respectability and uprightness ; his nephew 
 can do nothing save by stratagem and the 
 help of luck. But luck does favour him. 
 It so happens that Brassbound has the 
 opportunity of taking Sir Howard into the 
 
A COMPARISON 23 
 
 North African desert and there handing 
 him over as a slave to an Arab chief. He 
 proclaims his intention of doing so, hurling 
 bitter reproaches and taunts at the judge, 
 who thinks he has a right to rob his rela- 
 tives and then to put on a robe of ermine and 
 sentence his fellow-creatures to vindictive 
 penalties under the name of legal punishment. 
 But Sir Howard's sister-in-law, Lady- 
 Cecily, is with the party. She talks to 
 Brassbound as only a woman can who is a 
 miracle of common sense and tact. Brass- 
 bound is made to see that his mission of 
 vengeance is prompted far less by love for 
 his mother than by hatred for his uncle, 
 and that even if it were not, as his mother 
 is dead, he can do nothing to help her now ; 
 moreover, that his whole life has been 
 uselessly hardened and withered by brooding 
 over his wrongs. But his quiver contains 
 one more shaft : "It will teach other 
 scoundrels to respect widows and orphans. 
 Do you forget that there is such a thing as 
 justice ? " To which Lady Cecily replies : 
 " Oh, if you are going to dress yourself up 
 in ermine and call yourself Justice, I give 
 you up. You are just your uncle over 
 again ; only he gets £5000 a year for it. 
 
24 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 and you do it for nothing." The whole 
 drama leads to this conclusion, that revenge 
 is a waste of energy and time, and worse. 
 Bloodshed and oppression may be more 
 intelligible if performed by way of reprisal ; 
 they are none the less offences against the 
 true economy of society. 
 
 Such seems to be the moral of Euripides' 
 Electra also, which deals with the most 
 famous vendetta in Greek story. Agamem- 
 non, after sacking Troy, returned to his 
 home at Mycenae in triumph, only to be 
 murdered by his wife, Clytsemnestra, and her 
 lover, ^gistlius. At the time of his death 
 the King had two children — a daughter, 
 Electra, and a son, Orestes, who was still 
 a child. Electra, fearing for the heir to 
 the throne, at once sent her brother across 
 the border, herself remaining at home. 
 Clytsemnestra and ^Egisthus became joint 
 rulers of the country. At length, when 
 Orestes had grown to manhood, he was 
 ordered by the Delphic oracle to go home 
 and slay his mother and i3^gisthus in requital 
 for his father's murder. This he did, but 
 avenging fiends, the Furies, pursued him 
 for his matricide, until he was freed from 
 them by Apollo. 
 
A COMPARISON 25 
 
 Such is the story in outhne — a magnificent 
 subject for a playwright. But clearly the 
 dramatist's point of view will make a world 
 of difference. A poet penetrated by belief 
 in the orthodox Olympian religion will lay 
 tremendous stress on the fact that Orestes 
 was impelled to his frightful deed by the 
 direct and inevitable decree of Pleaven ; he 
 will not admit the kinship between the 
 victim and the slayer to be anything more 
 than an important detail. This is the 
 method which ^schylus has followed. Eurip- 
 ides' outlook is very different, even the 
 opposite. In effect he says : " The kinship 
 between the avenger and his victim is — 
 must be — ^the cardinal point. If the oracle 
 commanded Orestes to do this thing, so 
 much the worse for the oracle." And so 
 he insists on studying the grim old tale from 
 the human standpoint, depicting, as does 
 Shaw, the effects of a vendetta cherished 
 for many years. Orestes, having lived 
 abroad, has something (but not very much) 
 of the many-sidedness which marks a well- 
 developed man. But Electra all these years 
 has lived on the thought of her murdered 
 father and on the passionate thirst for more 
 blood, even that of her mother. If Agamem- 
 
26 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 non has been murdered, that is no reason, 
 the poet thinks, why his daughter should 
 commit a slow moral suicide. She and her 
 brother ruin their lives, as well as destroy 
 their mother and ^Egisthus, by their servility 
 to a barren creed. 
 
 There is more than this. Both Shaw and 
 Euripides have felt that, even granting the 
 justice and wisdom of revenge, its pursuers 
 can hold to their purpose only by keeping 
 their eyes closed to some of the facts. It may 
 be exaggeration to exclaim tout corajprendre 
 c^est tout pardonner, but every villain has some 
 redeeming feature ; nay, many " villains " 
 are not villains at all. Quite legitimately, 
 both writers have made their black sheep as 
 white as possible. For Sir Howard Hallam 
 there are real excuses enough to show us 
 that he is at least as good as the average 
 man. Brassbound himself at length de- 
 clares : " My uncle is no worse a man than 
 myself — better, most likely, for he has a 
 better head and a higher place. Well, I 
 took him for a villain out of a story-book." 
 
 What of Euripides ? He remembers that 
 the murder of Agamemnon happened many 
 years before. Why should not the mur- 
 derers have become better instead of worse ? 
 
A COMPARISON 27 
 
 And is not an act of revenge, like that of 
 Orestes, carried out (as it had to be) by- 
 craft, necessarily repulsive ? So it comes 
 about that our sympathies are with uEgisthus 
 and Clytsemnestra, not with their foes, 
 ^gisthus is accosted by Orestes while on 
 his farm celebrating a rustic sacrifice. He 
 genially invites the strangers to join in the 
 festival, and is struck dead from behind 
 while engaged in an act of religion. Clytaem- 
 nestra is lured to her daughter's house by 
 the most dastardly excuse which can be 
 imagined. A message is sent to her that 
 Electra has given birth to a child. It is 
 Electra's own invention, which she thus 
 expounds : 
 
 Announce that I have been delivered of a 
 male child, ten days ago, and that the time 
 of my purification is thus at hand. She will 
 come when she hears that I have been 
 through the pains of childbirth ; aye, and 
 she will weep over the low estate of my 
 babe. Then when once she has come, of 
 course, it is her death. 
 
 Could any speech, any situation, show 
 more vividly the master-hand ? In a few 
 chill words it portrays the hideous poisoning 
 of all natural love, sympathy, decency. 
 
28 EURIPIDES AND SHAW *| 
 
 which we noted a moment ago ; it reminds 
 us further that it is precisely because 
 Electra has not had children that she can 
 thus, in the course of years, be narrowed 
 and blighted into a fiend ; and it makes sure, 
 not only that Clytaemnestra will come, but 
 that she will come with just those emotions 
 stirring her which make a woman most 
 sincere and loving — at the moment when she 
 is to be put to death, and that too by the 
 help of one who should have been reminded, 
 if not by her heart, yet by her own lie, how 
 near and precious the victim should seem 
 to her own children. The act of blood is 
 performed, and the two awake to a tardy 
 repentance, even then not reflecting that 
 perhaps years ago their mother had her 
 tardy repentance too. 
 
 One might offer many other such examples 
 from Euripides of traditional heroes on 
 whom the light of common day is poured 
 with woeful results for the tinsel and 
 sham jewellery — Jason, for instance ; Jason 
 whom so many generations have admired 
 as the embodiment of chivalry, journeying 
 to a far country in quest of the Fleece, that 
 very symbol of romance, and from the 
 edge of the world bringing with him Medea, 
 
A COMPARISON 29 
 
 who left all for love. So have we all regarded 
 Jason. But Euripides, whose interest in 
 and sympathy for women surpassed that of 
 any leminist of antiquity, prefers to ask 
 himself what happened next. V\^at of 
 Jason as a married man, settled down to 
 " getting on," with no definite profession 
 and few assets beside the Golden Fleece ? 
 Could his wife prove a social success ? 
 Would she aid her husband's ambition by 
 showing herself a tactful hostess and a 
 grande dame in general ? " Absurd," you 
 say, " positively vulgar." Perhaps. And 
 there is very real tragedy hovering round 
 a haughty, noble, simple nature forced to 
 live in an alien atmosphere. If Euripides 
 chooses to interest himself in life as it is, 
 rather than in magnificent episodes of the 
 world's youth, you may call him Philistine 
 if you will, but you cannot argue with a 
 point of view. His treatment of this 
 situation in the Medea is, perhaps, his 
 greatest and most poignantly real work. 
 The barbarian princess appears in the quiet 
 aristocratic little courts of Greece like a 
 destroying flame. At lolchos, the home of 
 Jason, she murders the old King Pelias, his 
 enemy, by her savage cunning — the famous 
 
1 
 
 30 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 trick of the rejuvenating cauldron. Her 
 husband and she, with their children, are 
 forced to go into exile and find a home at \ 
 Corinth. There Jason, still with no re- 
 sources but his ancestry and his sword, 
 determines to mend his fortunes by — 
 marriage ! His view, apparently, is that 
 Medea is not exactly his wife — he is, indeed, 
 very hazy about this — and that she ought 
 not to object if, by a brilliant marriage, he 
 secures his own prospects (for he intends to 
 ally himself to the royal family) and inci- 
 dentally hers and those of their children. 
 Anyhow, Medea is only '' a native." Learn- 
 ing his purpose, she breaks forth into 
 passionate reproach and recital of all that 
 she has done for him. Without her magical 
 aid he would never have won the Fleece, 
 nay, he could not have escaped from Colchis 
 with his life. By thus assisting him she 
 has been forced to leave her home and 
 country, to entrust all her future to him. 
 Jason is but little ruffled by this terrible 
 appeal. He feels that the benefits she has 
 wrought are indeed great — " You have not 
 done badly," he remarks — but that the 
 return he has already made is a full quittance ; 
 as thus : — 
 
A COMPARISON 31 
 
 First of all, you live in Greece, instead of 
 a barbarous land. You now understand 
 justice and obedience to law, in place of 
 arbitrary violence. Then, all the Greeks 
 know of your wisdom and you have become 
 a celebrity, whereas, if you had still been 
 living at the end of the world, you would 
 never have been heard of. 
 
 So might an impresario address a wonder- 
 ful soprano whom he had " discovered " in 
 Queensland or Dakota. We have travelled 
 far indeed from the mediaeval knight and 
 his distressed damsel. The sequel, the 
 frightful overthrow of all Jason's happiness 
 and hopes, does not here concern us. 
 
 Let us now turn to our other topics. First 
 of these must come social questions. On the 
 Euripidean and Shavian treatment of this 
 subject alone a volume could be written, but 
 we shall here pass over it lightly. The two 
 great social questions which attract Mr. 
 Shaw beyond any other are the relations of 
 the sexes and economic inequality : he is a 
 feminist and a socialist. Euripides also is 
 deeply concerned about such problems, 
 but far more in the position of women 
 than in that of the.pxjor^ for the sufficient 
 reason that economic inequality seemed 
 to him, and indeed was, less dangerous 
 
32 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 than the legal and social inequality of the 
 sexes. 
 
 The reader does not need to be reminded of 
 the industry and the wit which Mr. Shaw 
 has expended upon the problems of poverty. 
 Two whole plays are devoted to them — 
 Major Barbara and Widowers^ Houses. 
 John BulVs Other Island and Mrs. Warren's 
 Profession deal with the same theme, though 
 there it is interwoven with other matters, 
 in the first with imperial politics and in the 
 second with the sex-question. Whatever 
 one thinks of Mr. Shaw's conclusions, no one 
 save a partisan journalist can deny the sin- 
 cerity and the public spirit of liis method 
 and aims. That which in Euripides corre- 
 sponds to this feature of Shaw's work 
 is his indignation, not so much against 
 j^ financial inequality as against political 
 j I inequality and bureaucracy. He loves to 
 I [inveigh against officials, whether they are 
 ' rulers and generals, or whether they are 
 mere Bumbles, and he is never weary of 
 praising the middle class. The poet seems 
 to have been a very moderate democrat. 
 5 He distrusts the rich and nobly-born, but 
 he also fears the masses. Probably he 
 would have liked to see a return to the 
 
A COMPARISON 83 
 
 Solonian regime, to give prima facie political 
 equality to all citizens, with the important 
 reservation that the archonship and the 
 board of generals should be filled from 
 certain classes only. Against the oligarchy 
 of the rich and the anarchy of the mob the 
 middle class, according to him, formed an 
 effective, and the only, safeguard. 
 
 More startling than this, to an Athenian 
 at any rate, was his championship of slaves. 
 The statement of Aristotle, a man almost as 
 broad-minded as profound, that a slave is 
 a living tool, expresses the popular opinion 
 and the legal view. Euripides is apparently 
 the only man of his day who showed any 
 sort of real sympathy for slaves ; his name- 
 less messengers, attendants, old men, and 
 the like, form a noble company of obscure 
 and faithful ones. 
 
 But by far the strongest claim of Eurip- 
 ides to renown as a social theorist is his 
 study of women —their character, their actual 
 position in society, and their possibilities. 
 It is a feature in the work of this dramatist 
 which, before any other attribute, has ar- 
 rested attention in his own day and in every 
 other age in which he has been intelligently 
 studied ; it accounts, probably, for several 
 
34 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 anecdotes about his life. There is hardly a 
 single extant tragedy of his which does not 
 contain some wonderfully penetrating and 
 illuminating study of female character. But 
 far more than this : several of his finest' 
 works are devoted primarily, almost ex- 
 clusively, to this theme— ^the Medea, the 
 Hippolytus, the Alcestis, and the Andro- 
 mache. In all these instances Euripides' 
 opinions and emotions are plain and ex- 
 pressed with admirable incisiveness ; and 
 in all he is observing, not the heroine of 
 legend, but the contemporary Athenian 
 woman. In all, too, he is striving to create 
 a more healthy public opinion. It has been 
 said that " of all ancient moralists, he is 
 alone, or alone with Plato, in showing an 
 adequate notion of that radical disease, an 
 imperfect ideal of woman, of which, more 
 than of anything else, ancient civilization 
 perished." Against this disease no man ex- 
 cept Plato struggled so bravely as Euripides, 
 and not even Plato with equal discernment. 
 
 It is not so much that he admires women, 
 still less that he regards them as superior 
 to men ; his subtle and true delineations \ 
 bring out as many favilts as virtues. He is 
 impressed by two things': first, the sorrows 
 
A COMPARISON 35 
 
 of women, whether they arise from the 
 indifference of individuals and of the State, 
 or whether they are the special pains and 
 hardships which no reform can lift from 
 their shoulders ; second, the danger to the 
 community which lies in allowing a great 
 mass of persons to pass their lives and spend 
 their energies within its borders without 
 attempting to understand them, without 
 forming some sort of working hypothesis, 
 good or bad, about their function as a part 
 of the community — without, in short, digest- 
 ing them. He thinks of women as a man 
 of human sympathies, and as a citizen of 
 political foresight. 
 
 In describing the sorrows of women, then, 
 Euripides shows a knowledge of the female 
 heart which excites the liveliest interest and 
 wonder. We are told that he was twice 
 married, and unhappily. Unhappy his 
 married life may have been according to the 
 gossips, but there is good evidence that the 
 poet talked to his wife, and more, that he 
 let her talk to him ; still more, that while 
 Ishe talked he listened. No man unaided 
 jcould have written that marvellous first 
 speech of Medea, a foreigner at Corinth, 
 seeing herself and her young children on the 
 

 36 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 point of being deserted by Jason. She is 
 addressing the company of Corinthian ladies 
 who have come to condole with her. 
 
 Now, as for me, this unlooked-for hap- \ 
 pening hath broken my heart. Friends, I i 
 am lost. The joy of life hath left me, and I 
 I fain would die. For, as ye know well, he, i 
 my husband, in whom were all my hopes, ,i 
 hath shown himself an utter villain. Of ^ 
 all creatures that have life and reason we i 
 women are the most unhappy. For, first, j 
 by payment of much wealth we must needs! 
 purchase a husband, a master of our persons. ,| 
 . . . And herein lies a fearful peril : will he j 
 be base or good ? For the wife is disgraced li 
 by divorce, yet to refuse marriage is im-l 
 possible. Then, when a woman has come ) 
 to live with a strange character and strange i 
 ways of life, she must needs have second-! 
 sight (for her past experience tells heri 
 nothing) if she is to know how to deal with] 
 her husband. If, then, we solve this riddle, ) 
 and the spouse who dwells with us proves i 
 not a brutal yoke-fellow, our life is to be', 
 envied ; otherwise, death were best. Whenij 
 a man is wearied of his home, he walks! 
 abroad and relieves his spirit of its distasted 
 in the society of some friend or companion ;:< 
 but we are forced to look to one person' 
 only. And they say of us that we pass i 
 within the house a life unthreatened by ■ 
 any peril, whereas they engage in the toil/ 
 of war. Fools ! I had rather fight three i 
 
 ■M 
 -1 
 
A COMPARISON 37 
 
 pitched battles than face the pains of child- 
 birth once. But no more. What is true 
 of me cannot be said of thee. Thou hast 
 this city and thy father's house, a happy 
 life, and the company of friends ; while I, 
 deserted and homeless, am outraged by my 
 husband, I that have been reft from a 
 foreign land and have no mother, no brother, 
 no kinsman, to whom, as to a haven, I may 
 flee from this calamity. This, then, will I 
 ask of thee, this only. If I discover some 
 means, some plot, whereby to win revenge 
 for these my wrongs from my husband, 
 from him that gave his daughter, and from 
 herself, be silent. In all things else a 
 woman is full of dread and dares not look 
 upon battles and the sword ; but if she is 
 wronged in her affections, there is no other 
 soul so bloodthirsty. 
 
 Nothing need, or can by me, be added to 
 the earlier part of this. It is only one 
 example among many that could be cited 
 of the poet's subtle sympathy and under- 
 standing of women — an understanding, no 
 doubt, helped by his love for children ; the 
 yearning of a parent over his child has never 
 been expressed more poignantly than by a 
 few verses in this very play of Medea. But 
 observe particularly the last few words in 
 which Medea hints to the Corinthian ladies 
 that she has a plan of vengeance. It is in 
 
38 EURIPIDES AND SHAW \ 
 
 this way that the great speech which I have \ 
 tried to render brings us to the second part j 
 of this subject, Euripides' feeUng that the j 
 contemporary attitude towards women was ) 
 a menace to society. He understood the i 
 frightful explosive force of a nature adult I; 
 in its passions, its will, its audacity. But in i 
 intellectual wealmess and unbalanced im- | 
 pulsiveness a child. At all costs, he felt, j 
 we must recast our social system ; we must j 
 open to women activities which can give j 
 their natures space to develop healthily. 1 1 
 suspect that he would have assented to the | 
 epigram which declares that " the last thing | 
 man will civilize is woman " ; but the j 
 longer Athens put off the attempt the greater i 
 was the danger. This belief, that the harem- I 
 system which prevailed at Athens was aj 
 real peril, appears repeatedly. In the An- 1 
 dromache he is principally concerned to I 
 show us the evil which may be wrought by] 
 an impulsive untrained woman, denied all j 
 interest in outside things but allowed de- 1 
 spotic power in her own house. The curse j 
 of the Athenian system was, according to I 
 him, that it stunted all a woman's good If 
 qualities, while it left her free to indulge ) 
 her cruel or thoughtless whims. To quote i 
 
 i 
 
A COMPARISON 39 
 
 the Medea once more, the female sex is 
 called " helpless for good, but of all mischief 
 plotters most cunning." As in that play he 
 has painted a woman of pride and courage 
 goaded by her wrongs into crime, so in the 
 Andromache he presents us with a weaker, 
 more febrile, girl led by her own unguided 
 impulses — still into crime. 
 
 Two remarks should here be offered. The 
 first is that Euripides' lesson applies, at the 
 utmost, only partly to us. On any view, 
 the condition of women is not now so 
 spiritually and intellectually debased as it 
 was in Athens during the fifth century B.C. 
 The second remark is still more germane 
 to our subject. Allowing for differences in 
 circumstances, it can be said that Mr. Shaw 
 takes up much the same position as Eurip- 
 ides. Those who have read that powerful 
 and terrible drama, Mrs, Warren's Pro- 
 fession, will remember that Mrs. Warren 
 devotes herself to the basest and most anti- 
 social of all trades just because she is forced 
 into it by the social and economic conditions 
 which make everything else but starvation 
 impossible. Man and Superman, magnifi- 
 cent as it is, need not detain us now. No 
 comparison with the work of Euripides is 
 
r 
 
 40 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 here possible, as the play is based on a con- 
 ception of woman which was a sheer im- 
 possibility to any Greek of classical days. 
 
 It is time that we turned to a very obvious 
 feature of both these writers — a feature 
 observed by the most casual reader, and 
 sometimes held to be Mr. Shaw's single 
 literary virtue. I mean the directness, wit, 
 and athletic brilliance of their style. From 
 >\ Euripides one may select a fine piece of 
 
 invective uttered by the captive Andro- 
 mache, the widow of Hector, when she has 
 been shamefully lured to her death by the 
 King of Sparta : — 
 
 Ye hated wretches, spurned of all mankind, 
 Tenants of Sparta, souls of crawling craft. 
 Plotters of villainy and lords of lies. 
 Whose souls are rotten, yea, a labyrinth 
 Of cheating, this your glory 'mid the Greeks 
 On sin is founded and by sin has thriven ! 
 What foulness know ye not ? Love ye not blood 
 And shameful gains ? Are ye not ever found 
 With lips confirming what your hearts deny ? 
 Curses upon you ! But, for me, my death 
 Hath lost its sting — thou'rt cheated. Then I died 
 When hapless Troy was taken, and my lord 
 Fell like a chieftain, he whose spear full oft 
 Chased thee from land to quake upon thy ship. 
 Now, lo ! thou'rt come in panoply of war 
 To fright a woman, and to slay me. Aye, 
 Slay on ! These lips shall never beg my life 
 From child of thine or fawn on such as thou ! 
 Mighty art thou in Sparta ? So was I 
 Erstwhile at Troy. And if I fall to-day. 
 Forbear thy vaunts. Soon may'st thou fall as low. 
 
A COMPARISON 41 
 
 Or take this passage from the Iphigenia at 
 Aulis, in which the young princess makes 
 her magnificent avowal that she is ready to 
 die that she may give the Greek fleet a fair 
 wind for Troy : — 
 
 Hellas, mightiest of nations, now on me bends all her 
 
 gaze ; '^^ 
 
 I can ope the broad ^^Igean, I can Ilion's towers raze ! 
 I can drown in blood of Trojans Helen's flight and Paris' 
 
 crime ; 
 I can school each lewd barbarian, through the years of 
 
 after-time, 
 Ne'er again to steer his pinnace to the happy shores of 
 
 Greece. 
 Dying, I shall save a nation, and my fame shall aye in- 
 crease, 
 Raising me in death to greatness, Hellas' saviour, blest 
 
 indeed. 
 Nay, 'twere ill my life to cherish, shunning thus for her 
 
 to bleed. 
 I was born the child of Hellas, not, O mother, only thine. 
 See, ten thousand armed heroes ! See their linked bucklers' 
 
 line ! 
 See ten thousand straining oarsmen, every heart with 
 
 courage high. 
 Ready in their country's quarrel to avenge her wrongs or 
 
 die I 
 Shall the life of one weak woman baffle all this fair 
 
 emprise ? 
 Nay, 'twere sin ! What guiltless answer to our falt'ring 
 
 lips could rise ? 
 Think once more ! Achilles yonder, would'st thou see him 
 
 strive — and fall — 
 Battling with the host of Argos single-handed at my call ? 
 Twere a gain one man should live, were e'en ten thousand 
 
 maids the price. 
 Yea, and Artemis demands my body to her sacrifice. 
 When the hand divine hath beckoned, shall a mortal shun 
 
 her fate ? 
 
42 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Never ! To the hopes of Hellas I my being consecrate. 
 
 Slay me ! Vanquish Troy ! I die not childless, since 
 through ages down 
 
 Lives, in place of home and children, this my never- 
 dimmed renown ! 
 
 From Mr. Shaw's work let us select this 
 fine piece of declamation from Ccesar and 
 Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, walking alone by 
 night across the Egyptian desert, comes 
 upon the Sphinx : — 
 
 Hail, Sphinx : salutation from Julius 
 Caesar ! I have wandered in many lands, 
 seeking the lost regions from which my 
 birth into this world exiled me, and the 
 company of creatures such as I myself. I 
 have found flocks and pastures, men and 
 cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to 
 me, no man kindred to me, none who can 
 do my day's deed, and think my night's 
 thought. In the little world yonder. Sphinx, 
 my place is as high as yours in this 
 great desert ; only I wander, and you sit 
 still ; I conquer, and you endure ; I work 
 and wonder, you watch and wait ; I look 
 up and am dazzled, look down and am 
 darkened, look round and am puzzled, 
 whilst your eyes never turn from looking 
 out — out of the world — ^to the lost region — 
 the home from which we have strayed. 
 Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of 
 men, are no strangers to one another : have 
 I not been conscious of you and of this 
 place since I was born ? Rome is a mad- 
 
A COMPARISON 43 
 
 man's dream : this is my reality. These 
 starry lamps of yours I have seen from afar 
 in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, 
 signalling great secrets to some eternal 
 sentinel below, whose post I never could 
 find. And here at last is their sentinel — 
 an image of the constant and immortal 
 part of my life, silent, full of thought, alone 
 in the silver desert. 
 
 Lastly, here is a trenchant passage from 
 Major Barbara, The self-made millionaire 
 is discussing with his aristocratic son the 
 profession which the latter should choose. 
 After several of his suggestions have been 
 declined, the father goes to the point : — 
 
 Undershaft : Well, come ! Is there any- 
 thing you know or care for ? 
 
 Stephen : I know the difference between 
 right and wrong. 
 
 Undershaft : You don't say so ! What ! 
 No capacity for business, no knowledge of 
 law, no sympathy with art, no pretension 
 to philosophy ; only a simple knowledge of 
 the secret that has puzzled all the philoso- 
 phers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all 
 the men of business, and ruined most of 
 the artists : the secret of right and wrong. 
 Why, man, you're a genius, a master of 
 masters, a god ! At twenty-four, too ! 
 
 Stephen : You are pleased to be facetious. 
 I pretend to nothing more than any honour- 
 
44 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 able English gentleman claims as his birth- 
 right. 
 
 Undershaft : Oh, that's everybody's 
 birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill, 
 the Salvation lassie ! She would think you 
 were laughing at her if you asked her to 
 stand up in the street and teach grammar or 
 geography or mathematics or even drawing- 
 room dancing ; but it never occurs to her 
 to doubt that she can teach morals and 
 religion. You are all alike, you respectable 
 people. You can't tell me the bursting 
 strain of a ten-inch fgun, which is a very 
 simple matter ; but you all think you can 
 tell me the bursting strain of a man under 
 temptation. You daren't handle high ex- 
 plosives ; but you're all ready to handle 
 honesty and truth and justice and the whole 
 duty of man, and kill one another at that 
 game. What a country ! What a world ! 
 
 Finally, there is a likeness between these 
 two men in the treatment they have received 
 from their contemporaries. That both have 
 attracted vast attention is a point which 
 needs no proof; but combined with this 
 we notice a strong reaction. Euripides 
 produced plays at Athens for about fifty 
 years ; only five times was he awarded the 
 first prize in the dramatic contest, and one 
 of these victories was obtained after his 
 death. The official leaders of public opinion 
 
A COMPARISON 45 
 
 scouted himj^ men /fc) their position could 
 not support a writer who habitually ridiculed 
 the claims of the Delphic oracle, who showed 
 scant respect even for Athena, the guardian- 
 goddess of the State, who hated officialism, 
 who discussed at large the rights and the 
 feelings of mere slaves, who appeared to 
 think that women had souls, perhaps even 
 a social value, who was for ever examining 
 and condemning the most revered traditions, 
 who was, in short, "queer." We have 
 learned from a recently-discovered manu- 
 script that he was indicted by the statesman 
 Cleon for impiety. The chief voice of this 
 hostility was the comic dramatist Aristoph- 
 anes, as great a genius as Euripides him- 
 self, whose magnificent comedy of The Frogs 
 is in the main an elaborate attack upon 
 Euripides' teaching, and who is never weary 
 of directing laughable and trenchant gibes 
 against the great apostle of rationalism. 
 
 Much the same is the position of Mr. Shaw. 
 No statesman brings him to trial for impiety, 
 perhaps because we do not agree as to what 
 piety is ; but the role of Aristophanes is 
 filled with painstaking emulation by the 
 Press. It must be allowed that the on- 
 slaughts of our journalists are not so brilliant 
 
46 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 or so searching as those of the Athenian 
 dramatist, but they do their best. Faihng 
 the genius of Aristophanes, they fall back 
 on his unfairness and his sneers. To judge 
 from The Frogs one would suppose Euripides, 
 not a great but misguided and misguiding 
 poet ; rather a mere scribbling, pernicious 
 fool. A weekly review of the highest 
 standing published an article on one of Mr. 
 Shaw's volumes in which the word " jester " 
 was employed a dozen times. It is a 
 significant word. The English publicist 
 knows well that the shortest way to rob a 
 man of influence is to call him amusing, 
 the rooted belief of the British public being 
 that if a man is funny he cannot be in earnest. 
 Accordingly Mr. Shaw is dubbed " the 
 licensed jester " — ^that is to say : " This is a 
 funny man ; therefore you may read and 
 enjoy him without feeling bound to pay any 
 respect to what he says." And the news- 
 papers have one vast advantage over Aris- 
 tophanes. Few men in Athens took him 
 seriously, while to-day most people are 
 positively hypnotized by whatever they see 
 in print if only it is repeated often enough. 
 And it is repeated, very often. The de- 
 liberate and unending misrepresentation of 
 
A COMPARISON 47 
 
 Mr. Shaw by hosts of journahsts who know 
 better is a public scandal. 
 
 Still, there is another side to the picture. 
 That Euripides should be hated by Cleon, 
 and Shaw despised by Broadbent, is natural 
 enough. They have both found a recom- 
 pense in the delighted respect of their 
 younger contemporaries. What especially 
 annoyed Aristophanes was the unbounded 
 influence which Euripides wielded over 
 educated young men. The future was with 
 him, and during the centuries which have 
 passed since his death few Greek writers 
 have enjoyed so continuous and discrimi- 
 nating a popularity. When the contest in 
 the world of the dead, the contest between 
 iEschylus and Euripides portrayed in The 
 Frogs, is about to begin, iEschylus complains 
 that he is at a disadvantage because he has 
 left his works on earth alive, while his rival's 
 plays have died with him. Never was a 
 prophecy more utterly refuted by time. 
 It is not unreasonable to prophesy similar 
 permanence for the dramas of Mr. Shaw. 
 No work will die which is so instinct with 
 wit, with breadth of mind and lively in- 
 terest, with such a passionate zeal for the 
 common health. Already, as did his 
 
48 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Athenian counterpart, he is coming into his 
 kingdom ; no name stands higher with 
 educated people of the new generation than 
 his. And this assures his popularity and his 
 influence for future time ; as years go by 
 he will be more respectfully studied and 
 more highly valued. He can repeat, as 
 Euripides might have done, the words 
 uttered by one of Schiller's characters : 
 " The century is not ripe for my ideal. I 
 live a citizen of a future commonwealth." 
 
THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 ENGLISH DRAMA 
 
 BETWEEN the year 1779, in which 
 Sheridan's Critic was produced, and 
 the year 1889, when A DolVs House 
 was first performed in England, hes the 
 Dark Age of our dramatic Hterature. During 
 those hundred and ten years the theatres 
 themselves had flourished, and first-rate 
 actors had not been rare ; but the art of 
 dramatic composition lay in torpor. While 
 the novel attained glory in the hands of 
 Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, the most 
 rioted writers for the stage were Joanna 
 Baillie, Thomas Robertson, Dion Boucicault, 
 and Westland Marston. Of all the theatrical 
 matter produced in that period by writers 
 no longer living, there are perhaps only 
 :wo works which the playgoing public has 
 lot completely forgotten — Robertson's Caste 
 and David Garrick, The censorship estab- 
 ished by Walpole in 1737 had warned men 
 )f genius off the stage. Fielding is a cele- 
 
50 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 brated instance ; what the novel gained, 
 play writing lost. But where original genius 
 was forbidden to tread, Robertson and his 
 congeners rushed in. The result was horrible. 
 One might harrow up the reader's soul with 
 extracts from the works which for four 
 generations degraded the theatre of Van- 
 brugh and Sheridan into the abyss where 
 the disciples of Ibsen found it. 
 
 But he shall be spared such an anthology. 
 Only let him imagine the most difficult form 
 of literary art, where architectonic power 
 is essential, where so much depends upon 
 the collision of genuine personalities, upon 
 sound ethics and skill in language. Imagine 
 the law thus laid down for the writer who is 
 to practise such an art. '' You shall not 
 discuss religion, though you may occasion- 
 ally employ its more orthodox forms as part 
 of your upholstery. Politics are to be 
 eschewed, unless you wish to remind your 
 hearers of the glory of Britain — we shall not 
 object to a few honest tars or even to a comic 
 soldier, provided he is of non-commissioned 
 rank. Satire of course is permitted, except 
 that you must satirize only people who have 
 been satirized already — a lawyer, provided 
 he is only an attorney ; a politician, so long 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 51 
 
 as he is not a Minister ; a farmer, but mind 
 you demonstrate the goodness of his heart. 
 What ? You complain that we are shackHng 
 your inventive genius ? Nothing of the 
 kind 1 You can portray society. Show us 
 the great heart of the EngHsh People — of 
 course without hurting anyone's feelings, 
 for you will remember that you are a gentle- 
 man. Literature should uplift. Therefore 
 yovi will teach us that love is always un- 
 selfish, that men in high positions have 
 characters to correspond, that dramatic 
 heroes are unswervingly muscular, tall, 
 brave, and generous. Marriages are always 
 happy ; children are always obedient, except 
 in farces, and then, fortunately, they have 
 idiotic fathers, whom you can't expect 
 them to take seriously ; there are only two 
 sorts of women — (a) ladies, who invariably 
 behave as ladies ; and (b) females, who can 
 be relied upon for a little comic relief." 
 
 Finally, conceive this difficult art prac- 
 tised, under such poisonous restrictions, by 
 men of third-rate or fourth-rate talent. 
 One pretentious writer after another came 
 forward, not with a " slice of life," as the 
 saying now is, not even with a self-consistent 
 romantic fantasy, but with an exercise in 
 
52 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 the theatrical manner. That is the real 
 vice of the stage — ^to copy the latest " suc- 
 cessful " play instead of looking at men and 
 women. This is what is meant by staginess 
 — not merely the striking of attitudes : 
 Shakespeare is full of them ; not simply 
 long speeches : Mr. Shaw revels in them, 
 and Mr. Barker's Trebell is a leading article 
 on two legs. No ; it is the unmistakable 
 imitation of an imitation. Those who ob- 
 jected to stage plays as immoral would 
 have stood on much firmer ground had they 
 accused them of a paralysing dullness. 
 
 Precisely one hundred years after Sheri- 
 dan's success with The Critic, Copenhagen 
 witnessed the production of A DolVs House, 
 Ten years later, after triumphs in Scandinavia 
 and Germany, the play was given in London 
 by Mr. Charles Charrington and Miss Janet 
 Achurch. " It was this production that 
 really made Ibsen known to the English- 
 speaking peoples," says Mr. William Archer. 
 By this play and by his other " realist " 
 works, such as An Enemy of the People, 
 Rosmersholm, The Wild Duck, Ibsen, single- 
 handed, saved English drama at the moment. 
 I say " at the moment," for even had there 
 been no Ibsen, one cannot believe that the 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 53 
 
 English nation would have battened till 
 doomsday upon works like Caste or The 
 Hobbyhorse. But to Ibsen, alone of in- 
 dividual men, belongs the credit of the 
 fact that we now possess real dramatists. 
 What are his special virtues, the lineaments 
 of his genius ? 
 
 As a dramatic poet, Ibsen stands beyond 
 question in the front rank. Setting himself 
 to produce a certain form of art, he has 
 reached an achievement as near perfection 
 as that of Sophocles or Shakespeare ; Hedda 
 Gabler, in its genre, is as great as (Edipus 
 Rex or Macbeth in theirs. We are, of course, 
 to note that the genre is different. Neglect 
 of this simple fact vitiated all the judgments 
 which English critics offered upon the new 
 writer in the last years of the nineteenth 
 century. What they meant was that Ibsen 
 is not like Robertson, to say nothing of 
 Shakespeare. In the same way French 
 critics who worshipped Aristotle's canons of 
 tragic art declared that Shakespeare was a 
 drunken savage. One remembers the even 
 more idiomatic criticism in Punch : " There's 
 a stranger ! 'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im ! " 
 Every insulting adjective that the printer 
 could be induced to put into type was hurled 
 
54 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 at the stranger when Ghosts was performed 
 in 1891. People were simply blaming him 
 for not possessing qualities which would 
 have prevented them from ever hearing 
 about him, for not following a fashion which 
 it was his chief aim to eradicate. The genre 
 of Hedda Gabler is different from that of any 
 other school. Whether it is as sublime and 
 edifying a type as that of the Elizabethan 
 and of the Greek tragedians is quite a dif- 
 ferent matter. It is, in any case, a magni- 
 ficent creation, capable of values which can 
 be attained in no other way. In brief, the 
 aim of Sophocles was to make man accom- 
 modate his intellect to his spiritual environ- 
 ment ; the aim of Shakespeare to entertain 
 by chastening the emotions ; the aim of 
 Ibsen to instruct by a new appeal to ethical 
 facts. 
 
 This brings us to the first salient charac- 
 teristic of the Norwegian — his courage. He 
 never runs away from facts in life, nor from 
 the situations which he himself portrays. 
 The customary procedure being to get over 
 a difficulty by pretending that it does not 
 exist, Ibsen not only proves that it does 
 exist, but also — a vital point — that it is 
 only by ignoring it that we give it full power 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 55 
 
 over us. Nor does he shrink from the con- 
 sequences of his own imagination. There 
 is nothing which the third-rate dramatist 
 loves better than the attempt to make the 
 best, so to speak, of both worlds — ^to win 
 approbation from the stalls by a daring 
 scene, and then run away from it, to snatch 
 the cheers of the gallery. So, in The 
 Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Sir Arthur Pinero 
 depicts a spirited, hard-driven woman who, 
 at a crisis, is offered a Bible. She flings it 
 into the fire. '' Here ! " says the culture- 
 hunter, " is courage of one's convictions. 
 Here is an advanced playwright ! And how 
 advanced of me to be here ! Pinero and I 
 are making history." But Mrs. Ebbsmith 
 utters a scream. It cannot be ! She rushes 
 to the stove and drags forth the volume, 
 brandishing it aloft amid the ecstasies of 
 the gods. Here is "something for every- 
 one," in truth ! Ibsen, of course, like every 
 other dramatist worth his salt, never dreams 
 of thus running with the hare and hunting 
 with the hounds. Compromise may be the 
 life of politics, but it is the death of art. 
 Ibsen's own uncompromising honesty has 
 led to queer results, not the least odd being 
 the history of A DolVs House, In that 
 
56 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 celebrated conversation between Nora and 
 Torvald Helmer with which the play ends, 
 it is of course essential that the wife should 
 stick to her guns, quietly but with complete 
 assurance. \Vlien the play reached Germany, 
 theatrical managers actually provided it 
 with a " happy ending," in which Nora did 
 not leave her husband after all, and the 
 famous slam of the door, the neatest and most 
 legitimate coup de theatre in the history of 
 the stage, was left out ! At that time his 
 works had no protection in Germany, and 
 the master himself was driven to devise, for 
 the moment, another finale in which Nora, 
 for her children's sake, remained at home. 
 He explained that he " preferred to commit 
 the outrage himself." His revenge was signal 
 and almost laughably appropriate. The very 
 next work he wrote was Ghosts, in which the 
 wife did not leave her husband. The results 
 of that wifely compliance were so horrible 
 that for many years Ghosts lay under the 
 veto of the English censor. 
 
 I allude merely in passing to the splendid 
 reality of his character-drawing and the 
 pungency of his situations, so terrifying in 
 their earnestness and sincerity, so purifying 
 and regenerating in proportion to their 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 57 
 
 ruthlessness. Another side of his genius is 
 the architectonic skill by which he rivals the 
 Athenian masters. He knows hardly any- 
 thing of underplots ; there is not a scene 
 or a character, hardly a word, which is not 
 a stone in a simple edifice — always necessary, 
 always adequate for the advancement of 
 the one purpose. As to his subject-matter, 
 he is (so far as England at any rate is con- 
 cerned) the father of the so-called " drama 
 of ideas," but he himself belongs to that 
 school only in the most general sense. Ibsen 
 has no social theory or political propaganda 
 or religious or ethical dogma, of any very 
 specialized sort, to advance. No specific 
 abuses or temporary " causes " claim him 
 as their opponent or champion. He is too 
 fundamental for that ; what he writes is 
 written sub specie ceternitatis , He wishes us 
 to revise our attitude towards life, to change 
 our notion of values. By him we are taught, 
 as by all great teachers, not so much what 
 to think as how to think, not action but the 
 reasoned basis of action. An ingenuous 
 tyro, who should study these dramas in order 
 to cleanse his way, would be perplexed to 
 find that in An Enemy of the People truth- 
 speaking at all costs is Stockmann's duty. 
 
58 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 whereas in The Wild Buck it wrecks a home 
 and kills an innocent, affectionate child ; 
 that in Hedda Gabler a wife shoots herself 
 in order (as it appears) to avoid the im- 
 portunities of a lover, while in Gliosis a 
 woman who has been saved from infidelity 
 traces all the misfortunes of her family to 
 her own lack of initiative. But the secret 
 is that, for Ibsen and his followers, the 
 spring of action is not conventional morals, 
 but a far-seeing economy of happiness ; it 
 has been admirably expressed by Mr. Shaw : 
 "The real slavery of to-day is slavery to 
 ideals of goodness." Dogmatic morality is 
 an idol, prompting mere waste of character 
 and energy. The only criterion of goodness 
 in an act is its effect on happiness. If 
 morality demands that one should sacrifice 
 one's happiness and usefulness, so much the 
 worse for morality. Many of the furious 
 cavalry-charges, which have flung themselves 
 upon his lines, are in one sense justified. 
 Those who say he is immoral are right, 
 but it does not follow that they are right in 
 objecting to his immorality. Morals are the 
 codified expression of the current behaviour 
 of the day. A man who breaks the code 
 may be wicked ; he may equally well be the 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 59 
 
 apostle of a new morality, whose first duty is 
 to challenge the old. The whole mistake of 
 the early attacks upon Ibsen was that people 
 took him for a law-breaker of the first type, 
 whereas he belongs to the second. Such 
 teaching as his must of course be dangerous, 
 like all exploring expeditions ; a path is to 
 be made through a jungle infested by savage 
 beasts. And there will be camp-followers 
 to disgrace the march, because they have 
 joined, not for exploration, but for plunder. 
 Such, in brief, are the doctrine and 
 methods of Ibsen. What are their effects 
 in England ? The native playwrights of 
 our time form a highly variegated band, 
 but it may be divided with fair accuracy 
 into four divisions. One may here be dis- 
 missed summarily though respectfully — the 
 school represented by the late Stephen 
 Phillips and by Mr. Gordon Bottomley. 
 Though much of their work is magnificent, 
 a discussion of " the present renaissance " 
 must pass them by, since they have devoted 
 themselves to the " poetical " drama and 
 are manifestly in the technical tradition of 
 Browning and Tennyson, with little or no 
 specific relation to the spirit of our own time. 
 The second category, by far the most popular 
 
60 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 and influential, practises an artificial and 
 theatrical criticism of contemporary manners. 
 
 A Of this school the most notable members 
 
 to-day are Sir Arthur Finer o and Mr. Henry 
 
 \ Arthur Jones. The third category contains 
 
 '^^only Mr. John Masefield. To the fourth 
 
 belong Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. Galsworthy, 
 
 ^ Mr. Shaw, and, of deceased writers, George 
 
 Calderon and St. John Hankin. Let us 
 
 discuss these last three divisions in turn. 
 
 The first finds its "Morning Star" in 
 Oscar Wilde, who, if cleverness could suffice 
 for drama, would have been the greatest 
 master since Congreve of the Comedy of 
 Manners. The Importance of Being Earnest 
 is perhaps the best farce in existence, ex- 
 emplifying to admiration Wilde's magnifi- 
 cence of epigram, elegance of language, 
 deadness of soul. Wliat could be better 
 than the prospective mother-in-law's dismay 
 at finding that the suitor is a foundling, a 
 man whose career began by being dis- 
 covered in a handbag ? " You can hardly 
 imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would 
 dream of allowing our only daughter — a girl 
 brought up with the utmost care- — to marry 
 into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with 
 a parcel ? " The same brilliance is lavishly 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 61 
 
 spread over his serious plays. Perhaps the 
 finest epigram in the world occurs in Lady 
 Windermere's Fan : " What is a cynic ? " 
 — " A man who knows the price of every- 
 thing and the value of nothing." But is 
 this drama ? It does not help the action, 
 it throws little light on the character of 
 the man who utters it; Lord Darlington 
 is only a name, though one of the chief 
 personages in the play. That particular 
 scene is a celebrated blaze of epigrams. 
 " Wicked women bother one, good women 
 bore one. That is the only difference 
 between them." " Scandal is gossip made 
 tedious by morality." " In this world there 
 are only two tragedies. One is not getting 
 what one wants. The other is getting it." 
 But an orgy of confectionery is not a solid 
 meal, nor are these decadent blossoms 
 capable of making a play. Wilde's char- 
 acters are feeble utterly — either comic, 
 pouring forth brassy wit in season and out 
 of season ; or serious, mere gramophones 
 emitting platitudes on love, honour, or 
 social service. The old theatrical situations 
 which satisfied Robertson and Westland 
 Marston, the strained improbable crises 
 unreally handled, furbished up by a peerless 
 
62 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 gift of wit in order to impress the uncritical 
 with a sense of ultra-modernity — such is 
 his work. We see him now as essentially 
 commonplace, a verdict which would have 
 sent him into a swoon. 
 
 Wilde is the earliest and most brilliant 
 member of what we may call the Neo- 
 British School. Succeeding writers do, to 
 be sure, exhibit special qualities, but the 
 seal of Wilde is upon them all. They are, 
 in short, the heirs of Robertson, who have 
 latterly obtained a spurious appearance of 
 freshness by a pretence of following Ibsen 
 or by a half-hearted attempt to follow him. 
 In the Robertsonian era the formula ran 
 thus. Take a simple love-story — a girl 
 with beauty and a heart of gold, a man 
 in a cavalry uniform ; this will charm the 
 audience into accepting any improbability 
 of detail. Next we insert dramatic effect. 
 This is done by attaching to one of the lovers 
 an incongruous parent. (In Caste there are 
 two, the lady's drunken father and the 
 hero's Plantagenet mother ; hence the long- 
 continued vogue of the whole.) The in- 
 congruous parent causes fun and trouble. 
 As a foil or antidote to hirn, introduce a 
 humble friend, who by dropping his (or her) 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 63 
 
 aitches will evince the goodness of his (or 
 her) heart. Punctuation consists in making 
 your •' immaculate swell " sit on his silk hat. 
 An " effective curtain " to each act is 
 secured by the mechanical intrusion of 
 something to make the audience jump. 
 Let the tipsy friend reel in and offer the 
 Duchess his mug of beer. Or the postman 
 (that most hard-worked of all theatrical 
 characters) will ring the bell ; and the 
 curtain goes down to " We are ordered to 
 India ! " or " Thank Heaven, my child is 
 found ! " 
 
 Most members of the Neo-British School 
 are aware that this kind of writing will not 
 do without some kind of disguise or revision. 
 For one thing, mere repetition has made 
 it stale beyond endurance. For another, 
 most of them have far too much intellect 
 and sense of artistic decency to be content 
 with the well-nigh incredible badness of the 
 typical mid-nineteenth-century play. And, 
 thirdly, there is Ibsen to count with ; people 
 may hate or despise or misunderstand 
 Ibsen as much as they please, but after 
 seeing a work of his they are no longer quite 
 so satisfied with their own favourite play or 
 type of play. Accordingly, the Neo-British 
 
64 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 School is pseudo-Ibsenist or (if that sounds 
 too offensive) quasi-Ibsenist ; for one should 
 distinguish between those who have merely- 
 picked up Ibsenian tricks and those who 
 are really seeking to learn from him some- 
 thing new about life and art. Our one 
 reason for placing these latter in our second 
 category and not in our fourth is precisely 
 this, that Ibsen's influence upon them has 
 been too intermittent or slight for them to 
 break with dramatic Victorianism. 
 
 Accordingly the method of this school 
 is to write a play thoroughly conventional 
 at heart, and to tag it out with details or 
 flourishes which look like Ibsenism. The 
 audience finds nothing to cause hostility or 
 misgiving, and yet it has a delicious sense 
 of being in the movement, of facing the 
 music. Take the old Robert sonian formula, 
 but instead of a hero in the Heavy Dragoons 
 give us a hero in shirt-sleeves ; instead of 
 militiamen, talk of aviation ; and don't 
 make all your foreigners either fools or 
 scoundrels. You will then win the respect 
 due to antiquity together with the admi- 
 ration deserved by originality. Thus Mr. 
 Rudolf Besier's play, Don, made a notable 
 stir. There is the framework of a gentle 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 65 
 
 scholarly ecclesiastic and his wife, both 
 devoted to their brilliant son ; the " cho- 
 leric " old general and his wife, with a 
 sweet wise daughter. The brilliant son 
 and the sweet wise daughter are, one learns 
 with small astonishment, engaged to be 
 married. But now let us show we have a 
 sense of the Zeitgeist. Instead of a comic 
 Irishman or the sale of military plans to 
 a foreign foe, let us depict a domestic 
 problem. The son therefore runs away with 
 a married woman. Your pseudo-advanced 
 writer invariably reveals his calibre by this 
 assumption that the " problem-play " must 
 treat of marital infidelity : there is only 
 one sin — ^the Decalogue has become a mono- 
 logue. But it must be owned that Mr. 
 Besier has achieved novelty, since the 
 brilliant son aforesaid has eloped for quite 
 " innocent " reasons. The lady has a posi- 
 tive bogey-man for a husband, whose ex- 
 traordinary bristliness is killing her. The 
 hero, a most unworldly person, feels that 
 she must be taken away for a little rest 
 and petting ; he brings her to his own home, 
 and hands her over to his mother. The 
 husband pursues, and there follows an 
 elaborate contest between the gentle 
 
66 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 ecclesiastic (who positively reeks of Christ- 
 church) and the fanatical Nonconformist 
 ranter. Such is pseudo-Ibsenism, as shown 
 by a favourable specimen, for Mr. Besier 
 is almost the best writer of the whole school ; 
 his dialogue and situations, in Don at any 
 rate, do not smell of the footlights. 
 
 A good deal of this praise must be given 
 also to Mr. Alfred Sutro, who in an amiable, 
 light-hearted, not too vigorous way has 
 given us credible and sincerely - written 
 scenes. But one cannot help feeling that 
 his work is actually composed in a theatre ; 
 there is too much of Wilde's artificial gloss. 
 It is somewhat quaint that Mr. Sutro's 
 best piece should be actually named The 
 Man in the Stalls. Mr. Somerset Maugham's 
 work has on the whole about the same value 
 as Mr. Sutro's, but he varies far more in 
 excellence. At one time he was terribly 
 unreal, the Robertson of an England which 
 supposed that when good Britons died they 
 went to Monte Carlo. At that period he 
 was perhaps the most repellently stagey of 
 the whole Neo-British School ; it is almost 
 incredible that Jack Straw was produced 
 as recently as 1908 ; the play is obsolete 
 beyond words, except that the foreign 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 67 
 
 ambassador speaks excellent English — a 
 daring stroke which reveals Mr. Maugham 
 upon his watch-tower, reporting the time of 
 day. Since then he has become equal to 
 Mr. Sutro ; The Land of Promise, despite 
 the rather violent severance of its first act 
 from the others, is good, forceful drama. 
 Mr. Arnold Bennett, in The Honeymoon^ 
 Milestones, and The Title, has shown some 
 charm, originality, and " sense of the 
 theatre," but on the whole he has mildly 
 and unexcitingly followed the Neo-British 
 manner. 
 
 There remain three members of this 
 category whose dramatic reputation with 
 the majority of playgoers stands far higher. 
 Sir J. M. Barrie has charmed us all so 
 poignantly with his marvellous Peter Pan — 
 which is by this time not so much a play as 
 an institution, like Alice in Wonderland — 
 that one finds difficulty in considering him as 
 a dramatist. But most of his work consists 
 of traditional ideas aerated by a novel 
 mise-en-scene (as in The Admirable Crichton) 
 — ^the ethical and emotional standards of a 
 novelette draped in raiment of delightful 
 hue and texture. Mr. Henry Arthur Jones 
 has far more dramatic force and sincerity ; 
 
68 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 he is, indeed, rightly regarded as the finest 
 playwright of this school. As Mr. Jones 
 vigorously repudiates Ibsen, for instance in 
 the preface to his Divine Gift, and as he 
 undoubtedly possesses technical skill of a 
 high order combined with a genuine interest 
 in ethical truth, one hesitates to attribute 
 his progress in stage-mastery and pungency 
 to Ibsen's influence. But he is none the 
 less Neo-British. His ideas are striking 
 and presented by excellent situations ; but 
 the treatment of them, despite admirable 
 apergus by the way, peters out into con- 
 ventional moralizing and futility. In The 
 Philistines, The Liars, Michael and his Lost 
 Angel, we feel that we are witnessing a play, 
 not a picture of life. 
 
 Thus do we finally reach the portentous 
 Sir Arthur Pinero. Of all contemporary 
 English dramatists whom one can take 
 seriously he is the most popular, the most 
 prolific, and the most meretricious ; one 
 cannot imagine the action in his plays as 
 happening in any but artificial light. His 
 earliest published work. The Magistrate 
 (revived as The Boy), is perhaps the best. 
 Granted the old conventions of impossible 
 misunderstandings, amazing and endless 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 69 
 
 coincidences, this farce is distinctly good ; 
 " Gone — and without a cry — ^brave fellow ! " 
 is an inspiration. But when one considers 
 that the plot hinges on the imposture of a 
 mother who for her own sake knocks off 
 several years from her son's age, with the 
 result that a stripling of more or less 
 marriageable age is presented as a boy 
 young enough to be kissed and petted by 
 various ladies, who one and all accept the 
 fraud without murmur — when one considers 
 this, one cannot award Sir Arthur any very 
 impressive laurels. The Magistrate is, how- 
 ever, his cleverest play ; of the others we 
 cannot attempt to give a catalogue. But 
 although Sir Arthur, in a letter prefaced to 
 Mr. W. L. Courtney's Idea of Tragedy, men- 
 tions with very scant respect the greatest 
 playwright since Shakespeare, his work is 
 the most instructive example that could 
 be chosen of Ibsen's influence on the Neo- 
 British School. Noticing the vogue which 
 the incomprehensible Norwegian was gain- 
 ing, even in London, Sir Arthur Pinero 
 seems to have exclaimed, " Britons never 
 shall be slaves ! " and produced The Second 
 Mrs. Tanqueray and The Notorious Mrs, 
 Ebbsmith. The latter person has been dis- 
 
70 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 cussed earlier. As for her colleague, Mrs. 
 Tanqueray, the author has sat down to 
 devise a " strong scene " in the most ad- 
 vanced style — ^the conversation between 
 the stepmother and the man who is her 
 stepdaughter's accepted suitor, and whose 
 mistress the stepmother herself has been. 
 All the rest of the piece is scaffolding, and 
 the climax itself, failing of real cogency 
 and pathos, becomes merely sordid and 
 vexatious. The truth is that Pinero is 
 amazingly trivial. Preserving Mr. Panmure 
 deals with a governess who is kissed against 
 her will, and the whole action consists of 
 complications caused by the fact that she 
 will not reveal the identity of her admirer 
 (her employer) while her employer's wife 
 insists on trying to discover which of 
 their guests is guilty. And to this theme 
 the dramatist devotes, not one act, but 
 four ! 
 
 Mr. Masefield's position is utterly different. 
 In downright genius he is one of the greatest 
 Englishmen now engaged upon literature. 
 In Pompey the Great we have simply a good 
 theatrical history-play. But The Tragedy 
 of Nan is a drama of extraordinary merit. 
 It is so sound in characterization, so realistic 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 71 
 
 in scene and thought, that one might boldly 
 label its author a semi-Ibsenist, did he not 
 exhibit a poetical charm, a splendour of 
 dark tinting, above all, a richness of atmos- 
 phere, which sunder him utterly from every 
 other dramatist of our day. Unfortunately 
 he does, in fact, stand alone at present in 
 this enthralling type of work wherein in- 
 tellect is not clouded, but illuminated, by 
 emotional sympathy and poetical imagina- 
 tion ; for Mr. Barker, who gave distinct 
 signs of it in Ann Leete, has passed over to 
 a post-Ibsenist manner. 
 
 Thus at last we come to the authors 
 whom I have put* into a third section — Mr. 
 Shaw, Mr. Barker, Mr. Galsworthy, St. John 
 Hankin, and George Calderon. Each of these 
 has special merits and faults, but there 
 can be no doubt that they form a distinct 
 body as compared with such writers as 
 Finer o or Masefield. They are the English 
 Ibsenists, the realist school. But before 
 we discuss them separately, let us be clear 
 as to what we mean by realism. 
 
 There are at least two sorts of reality. On 
 the one hand are the facts of life and nature 
 as we meet them every day ; on the other are 
 facts, not as we see them, but as they are. 
 
72 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 There are (that is) two final ways of looking 
 at phenomena : isolated, as an animal sees 
 them ; grouped, as the Divine Mind sees 
 them, an organized whole. Between these 
 extremes lies the view of that divine animal, 
 Man. By the law of his intellect he groups 
 things so that he may understand them, 
 though he for ever groups them imperfectly. 
 The more scientific a man's brain, the more 
 he will systematize his knowledge of physical 
 facts ; he will understand more deeply and 
 more widely, in some measure ' thinking God's 
 thoughts after Him.' That is what is meant 
 by Science. The more poetical a man's 
 spirit, the more he will systematize his 
 sympathy with emotional fact ; the passions 
 and conduct of an individual will be viewed 
 more and more as the symbol and expression 
 of the Divine Spirit, expressing itself through 
 all humanity. That is the soul of Art. It 
 follows, then, that the artist never renders 
 things as they appear to the incurious gaze. 
 It cannot be said of him always that " he 
 touched nothing that he did not adorn," 
 but it is always true that he touches nothing 
 that he does not alter. Set Watts to paint 
 the portrait of an actress or an alderman, 
 ask Keats to describe a nightingale's song. 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 73 
 
 Rodin to carve some trifle for the garden 
 of the Tuileries. From each you receive 
 more than you asked for — not the ware 
 of a tradesman, but the touch of an unseen 
 hand, the utterance of a voice hitherto 
 unheard. 
 
 Therefore, if reahsm be a form of art, it is 
 not the mere portrayal of isolated facts. If 
 it were, how would a picture be better than 
 a photograph, a lyric more moving than 
 a newspaper report ? The simple truth is, 
 that while transcendental literature works 
 at two removes from the lowest plane of 
 reality, realistic literature is still one remove 
 therefrom. The diviner art works more 
 inevitably in general truths ; the essences 
 of emotion are its very drink ; it speaks as if 
 the daily isolated things were half -forgotten 
 upon the dark earth. The other form of art 
 works in generalities too, that it may more 
 illuminatingiy expound the common experi- 
 ences which confront it. One artist ascends 
 the mountain that he may dwell nearer 
 heaven ; the other, that he may more clearly 
 discern his path across the earth — but he 
 does not stand upon the plain so long as the 
 artistic impulse is upon him. The maker 
 even of a realistic play uses the so-called 
 
74 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 facts of life merely as raw material. Mr. 
 Galsworthy, as surely as M. Maeterlinck, 
 must select, alter, and combine, so that his 
 work may be an organized artistic whole. 
 His drama will not be a mere reflex of actual 
 events, in which endless interruptions and 
 irrelevancies obscure the lesson which he 
 seeks to inculcate. 
 
 It will now be clear what is meant when 
 the name " realist " is given to Shaw, Barker, 
 Galsworthy, and others. There are three 
 great processes of composition which we 
 may distinguish in the work of any dramatist. 
 The distinction is logical only, for the play- 
 wright carries on all three acts of creation 
 simultaneously. These three are to be 
 found in a realist writer quite as certainly as 
 in any other ; there is no omission of features 
 vital to art. The great and only difference 
 between the transcendentalist and the 
 realist lies in the relative importance at- 
 tached by them to each of the processes. 
 First, there is a series of scenes from life, 
 events, and conversations which may 
 actually have happened. Secondly, this 
 subject-matter is kneaded and shaped and 
 carved ; irrelevant things are left out ; the 
 significant events are made to grow out 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 75 
 
 of one another in a significant manner; 
 people are set in circumstances which throw 
 just the right illumination upon their 
 characters. Thirdly, the artist, as a master 
 of language, adds the charm of directness 
 I and wit to his dialogue. This last is by no 
 means superficial polish only. No writer 
 but the merely clever persifleur, like Wilde, 
 garnishes a bald situation with blazing but 
 imported epigrams. For the supremely 
 great author every word is a part of the 
 plot. Let me take a few instances almost at 
 random. On the first page of Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy's most dramatic novel, we are told 
 that the clergyman jestingly nicknamed an 
 old peasant " Sir John." This tiny joke, 
 like the breath of wind which dispatches an 
 avalanche upon its career, is the starting- 
 point of all that history of love and blood- 
 shed which is called Tess of the d' Urbervilles. 
 Shakespeare gives an amazingly skilful 
 instance in that scene of The Merchant of 
 Venice where Shylock entraps Antonio : his 
 life must be in the bond, but how insert it 
 without arousing fatal suspicions ? The 
 usurer, to defend his usury, quotes the 
 story of Jacob and Laban's flocks. This 
 puts the notion of Hebrews and flesh and 
 
76 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 usury into Antonio's head. Mark his own 
 words : — 
 
 When did friendship take 
 A hyeed for barren metal of his friend ? 
 
 Thus, when the terms are mentioned, the 
 shock of surprise, which would have wrecked 
 the whole plot, is not felt. An equally vital 
 instance occurs in The Wild Duck, where 
 Gregers Werle directly causes the death of 
 little Hedwig by his choice of a metaphor. 
 
 All these three processes or features, which 
 one may briefly call photography, construc- 
 tion, and wit, are to be found as I said, in 
 the English Ibsenists. It only needs to be 
 added that there is perhaps an exaggeration 
 of photography in most of their work. But, 
 whatever their faults, they (with minor 
 writers of their type) form the only school of 
 British playwrights which practises dramatic 
 art as distinguished from merely theatrical 
 adroitness. 
 
 St. John Hankin produced seven plays : 
 The Two Mr. Wetherbys, The Return of the 
 Prodigal, The Charity that began at Home, 
 The Cassilis Engagement, The Last of the de 
 Mullins, and two one-act pieces. The Burglar 
 who failed and The Constant Lover. I take 
 this writer first because, though his work is 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 77 
 
 chronologically more recent than that of the 
 others, it is artistically earlier. Hankin is, 
 indeed, an interesting study in transition. 
 The Two Mr, Wetherhys has strong affinities 
 with the Neo-British School. The exposure 
 of the husband, through the discovery of a 
 music-hall programme in his pocket, is only 
 a symptom of this ; and the feebleness and 
 the staginess of all the characters, except 
 the extraordinary Dick, is a weakness in 
 execution, not in conception. But the 
 theatrical triviality of the theme, above all 
 the frantically absurd " happy ending " by 
 which the devil-may-care husband belies 
 his whole character and the trend of the 
 whole play so that the curtain may descend 
 as of old upon couples instead of units — 
 these ghastlinesses mark the pre-Ibsenist 
 born too late. The other works show a 
 quite different tone. Even the first of them 
 — The Return of the Prodigal — is so much 
 more mature and certain in its handling that 
 I cannot repel the suspicion that The Two 
 Mr, Wetherhys is a youthful production 
 brushed up for the stage a good many years 
 after it was written. But The Prodigal 
 evinces real observation and artistic sin- 
 cerity. It is the story of a wastrel who 
 
78 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 really is a wastrel ; he is not a " victim of 
 circumstances " or "a rough diamond," or 
 a good trusting fellow betrayed and badgered 
 by his villainous rival through three acts, 
 only to save the heroine from a burning mill 
 in the fourth. No ; he is by birth inefficient 
 — a gentleman, good-natured, and discreet, 
 but material prosperity flees from his most 
 crafty stalking. There are such people, and 
 Hankin gives us a first-rate study of one of 
 them, a study both amusing and pathetic, 
 unmarred by a cowardly " happy ending." 
 In The Charity that began at Home a lady 
 decides to "do good " by inviting to her 
 country-house people whom no one else will 
 entertain. She thus gathers round her an 
 extraordinary group of nuisances — an ogre 
 of a governess who insists on poor Lady 
 Denison learning der die das at the busiest 
 hours of the day ; a terribly common 
 commercial traveller ; a shady ex-lieutenant 
 of " the Munsters " ; a positively paralysing 
 bore of an Anglo-Indian colonel of the 
 " Poona-Horse-my-boy " type, and so forth. 
 The discovery by these wretches of the 
 reason Lady Denison had for inviting them 
 makes an effective scene, but the play as a 
 whole falls flat, because Hankin never made 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 79 
 
 up his mind whether he intended comedy or 
 mere farce. The Cassilis Engagement pro- 
 duces the same effect of amiabihty and 
 weakness, though here the author is very 
 successful in his country-house atmosphere. 
 But the whole rests on a psychological im- 
 possibility. For a youth of the type repre- 
 sented by Geoffrey Cassilis to become en- 
 gaged to a girl like Ethel Borridge is as near 
 a miracle as a respectable Ibsenist can get. 
 The dialogue, here as elsewhere, is admirable 
 — Si kind of compromise between the wit of 
 Wilde and the wit of Shaw. We still feel 
 the spirit of transition, another symptom 
 of which is the exaggerated commonness of 
 Ethel and her mother. It shows what 
 Hankin thought of his audience : " They are 
 so stupid and vulgar themselves that they 
 won't see I mean these women as vulgar 
 unless I make them positively gutter-bred." 
 His best work is undoubtedly The Last of 
 the de Mullins — ^the story of a girl who de- 
 liberately breaks loose from the benumbing 
 life in a home ruled by faded memories of 
 land-owning and lineage, in order to find 
 life and interest. Cool and practical, but 
 not impatient of her emotions, rather in- 
 spired by them, she is a curiously charming 
 
80 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 figure. The whole work has a tender richness 
 and appeal. Both this and (still more) The 
 Prodigal are Ibsenist, but at two removes, 
 for they were clearly written under the 
 influence of Shaw. 
 
 Mr. John Galsworthy shows the strongest 
 contrast to Hankin. He seeks neither grace 
 nor sublimity ; his sole aim is reform. 
 Moved to indignation by some social in- 
 justice he takes us by the scruff of the neck 
 and forces us to stare at the horror. His 
 hard, driving, doctrinaire manner is often 
 terribly inartistic ; but at least it makes for 
 an athletic simplicity, a clear-cut structure. 
 Yet he seems to forget a vital truth. One 
 aim of the drama should be to entertain. I 
 do not mean to amuse ; I employ the word 
 " entertain " because I cannot think of a 
 better term for the effect of art : an austere 
 but solid satisfaction, a quiet possession of 
 one's soul, a refreshment of the emotions, 
 which is the ministration of genuine tragedy 
 as of genuine comedy. Mr. Galsworthy often 
 seems too busy pommelling some special 
 form of white-waistcoated iniquity to trouble 
 about eternal truths. His less known and 
 less effective plays are in this respect more 
 successful. The Eldest Son conveys a certain 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 81 
 
 grace of background — that atmosphere of a 
 country-house which Mr. Galsworthy has so 
 admirably given in his novels. The Pigeon 
 is half-way between emotional drama, as in 
 The Eldest Son, and the nagging admonitions 
 of Justice, It contains good social satire 
 and well-drawn types, especially an admir- 
 able Frenchman with at least one noble 
 speech which clearly marks the writer's 
 kinship with Shaw and Hankin. Ferrand 
 is indeed the prodigal Eustace of Hankin, 
 with less calculation but more alertness and 
 profundity. The speech is Galsworthy's own 
 expression — no other dramatist of our time 
 could have penned it : — 
 
 Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been 
 in three institutions. They are palaces. 
 One may eat upon the floor — ^though it is 
 true — for kings — they eat too much of skilly 
 there. One little thing they lack — ^Ihose 
 palaces. It is understanding of the 'uman 
 heart. In them tame birds pluck wild birds 
 naked . . . Oh ! Monsieur, I am loafer, 
 waster — what you like — for all that poverty 
 is my only crime. If I were rich, should I 
 not be veree original, 'ighly respected, with 
 soul above commerce, travelling to see the 
 world ? And that young girl, would she 
 not be " that charming ladee," " veree chic, 
 you know ! " And the old Tims — ^good old- 
 6 
 
82 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 fashioned gentleman — drinking his hquor 
 well. Eh ! bien — ^what are we now ? Dark 
 beasts, despised by all. 
 
 The Silver Box (1906) is the earliest of the 
 plays. A dissipated young man of fair 
 position, and a dissipated young man of 
 no position, both commit the same offence. 
 Each steals something to spite some one 
 whom he dislikes — the undergraduate a 
 woman's reticule, the ex-groom a silver box. 
 For the undergraduate everything is made 
 easy by his father the M.P., by a discreet 
 solicitor, and by the smooth negligences of 
 the law. No one stands up for the ex- 
 groom, and he goes to prison loudly protesting 
 against the advantage given to his brother- 
 offender by money and influence. Con- 
 struction is given by the ex-groom's wife, 
 who is a charwoman employed by the 
 undergraduate's mother, and by the fact 
 that the stolen box is the property of the 
 undergraduate's father. The woman is ac- 
 cused of stealing the box. After denying 
 the theft she goes home to find her husband 
 in possession of the plunder. ^Vhile she is 
 reproaching him, they are surprised by a 
 detective sent by the M.P. The third act 
 is concerned entirely with the scene in a 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 83 
 
 police court, where the sinister contrast be- 
 tween rich immunity and helpless poverty 
 is demonstrated with pungency. On the 
 artistic side the play is very good. All the 
 characters are alive, and work together 
 admirably to produce dramatic effect. There 
 is nothing exaggerated or strained ; the 
 collision in the last act is acute but quite 
 naturally induced. The propagandist side 
 of the drama does not fully concern us. It 
 is, however, important to notice that Mr. 
 Galsworthy entirely agrees with the com- 
 ment of the unhappy Jones : " Call this 
 justice ? What about 'im ? 'E got drunk ! 
 'E took the purse — 'E took the purse, but 
 it's Hs money got Hm off ! Justice ! " With 
 this he agrees, and his whole aim is to im- 
 press us with the contention that men are 
 not equal before the law. It is not his 
 1 contention, but his method of handling it, 
 with which we are concerned, and to which 
 we shall return. 
 
 Justice is more simple in outline — a plain 
 I heart-rending story of a weak young man 
 iwho, to save the woman he loves from a 
 [brutal husband, determines to leave the 
 I country with her, and for this purpose 
 I swindles his employers. The fraud is dis- 
 
84 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 covered before he escapes ; the result is prison 
 for three years and the utter ruin of his 
 life and of the woman's. The whole second 
 act is filled by an elaborate law-court scene, 
 where Mr. Galsworthy's doctrinaire manner 
 reaches its apotheosis in an extraordinarily 
 long speech by the counsel for the defence, 
 in which (here is the vital point) the view 
 taken by the playwright himself is given with 
 complete exactness as well as eloquence. 
 On the stage it must take pretty nearly ten 
 minutes to deliver — a portentous length. 
 But Mr. Galsworthy intends to give the 
 public, not what it wants or thinks it wants, 
 but what it ought to want. The speech is 
 not excused by beauty or surprising strokes, 
 like numberless orations in Shakespeare. 
 It has nothing but a direct and simple 
 vigour. "In those four minutes the boy 
 before you has slipped through a door, 
 hardly opened, into that great cage which 
 never again quite lets a man go — ^the cage 
 of the Law." 
 
 The third and fourth acts depict photo- 
 graphically the prison life of this youth, and 
 the maimed creature w^ho at length comes 
 forth with a ticket-of -leave. He cannot 
 keep employment, he has to forge references, 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 85 
 
 he does not report himself to the poHce; 
 they come for him again, and he escapes only 
 by instant suicide. In artistry Justice is 
 the extreme case of photographic work, and 
 must take low rank. As a piece of pro- 
 pagandism it is most effective. 
 
 On these two plays the present dramatic 
 reputation of Mr. Galsworthy chiefly rests, 
 for his recent Skin Game recalls The Eldest 
 Son without equalling it ; the atmosphere 
 is admirably conveyed, but the dramatic 
 tone is that of diluted melodrama. He is 
 far too much of a pamphleteer and too little 
 of a poet. Mr. Galsworthy's social sense, his 
 burning zeal for righteousness in the State, 
 command respect and emulation. And 
 every citizen has a right — it is his duty — 
 where he thinks institutions cruel and 
 wasteful, to protest with all his strength. 
 And he may make his novel, even his 
 tragedy, a vehicle for such protests. But 
 it is vital beyond words that he should 
 beware how he makes his appeal. Never 
 must he deliver a definite attack upon a 
 definite abuse. If he does, his success may 
 be tremendous at the moment, but it is 
 dearly bought. He will always be re- 
 membered as a partisan ; and his next pro- 
 
86 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 nouncement will be viewed, by all except 
 those convinced by his first, with a potential 
 hostility fatal to the appreciation of art. 
 They will be alert, but with the wrong kind 
 of alertness ; the really eternal things he 
 has to say have been terribly discounted 
 beforehand. No ; our prophet of the stage 
 must alter, not the catchwords of the hour, 
 not the policy of this year, but the human 
 heart, the attitude of mind from which these 
 policies spring and over which such catch- 
 words exercise their dominion. He must so 
 speak and teach that the foolish opinion 
 becomes, not merely discredited, but im- 
 possible. 
 
 We turn now to Mr. Granville Barker, j 
 who has deserved better of the English ! 
 theatre than any man living. As actor, \ 
 as manager, as producer, as playwright, he I 
 stands in the foremost rank ; he is also one I 
 of the chief agitators for a National Theatre, j 
 His plays are The Marrying of Ann Leete, \ 
 The Voysey Inheritance, Waste, The Madras ^ 
 House, and Prunella, the last being written i 
 in conjunction with Mr. Laurence Housman. I 
 Prunella is not drama at all, but a sort of 
 fairy fantasy ; it is with the others, the i 
 realistic dramas, that we are now concerned. I 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 87 
 
 Ann Leete is a picture of upper-class life 
 in the eighteenth century. A young girl, 
 daughter of a soulless politician, is to be 
 married in order to further his party 
 schemes. She learns to see through him 
 and her suitor. Before her eyes, moreover, 
 is her elder sister, who has been sacrificed 
 in the same way and is now to be divorced 
 because her father has deserted her husband's 
 party. Suddenly Ann throws the whole 
 sordid system over and asks the gardener 
 to marry her ; she will rather have the first 
 man she sees, provided he is honest and 
 healthy. The play concludes with the only 
 j beautiful scene in Mr. Barker's dramas, the 
 home-coming of the strange couple to their 
 poor little cottage. 
 
 Many have thought that Ann Leete is a 
 different type of play from the rest, de- 
 ceived by the simple charm of the close and 
 by the eighteenth-century garnishing of 
 post-chaises, duels, Brighton, and the like. 
 Really it is much the same ; the burden of 
 the whole is ; " Away with shams ! We 
 don't even know what we want. Let us 
 find out, and do it." Still, there is in this 
 first of Mr. Barker's works a touch of archaic 
 beauty, in virtue of which Ann Leete claims 
 
88 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 affinity with Prunella as well as with 
 Waste, 
 
 The Voysey Inheritance depicts a legacy of 
 dishonour. A young solicitor, admitted into 
 partnership by his father, discovers some- 
 thing wrong in the administration of certain 
 trusts. On investigation he finds that his 
 father has for many years been guilty of 
 shady manipulations. Instructed to invest 
 money at a low and safe percentage, he has 
 speculated in high, dangerous percentages, 
 paying the correct dividends out of his gains. 
 This was done in the first instance to get 
 the firm out of difficulties. When the 
 dangers were past, the buccaneering instinct 
 prompted him to begin again ; it has not only 
 created his income but added zest to the 
 grey decorum of a solicitor's career. The 
 father, after detailing all this in a curiously 
 clever gospel of immorality, duly dies, and 
 Edward Voysey is at the head of affairs, 
 which are now in a bad state. His first idea 
 is to proclaim everything and take the 
 consequences. But he cannot bear to ruin 
 the small investors, and determines to save 
 some of them first. This he can only do 
 by continuing his father's tactics ; he works 
 on, expecting exposure day by day. Soon 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 89 
 
 an old friend of the father, who has no 
 confidence in the son, announces that he 
 wishes to withdraw his own large invest- 
 ments from the firm. This precipitates 
 matters. He is told the facts, but is bought 
 off (for the sake of the poor clients) by a 
 promise of repayment. The end is a picture 
 of young Voysey settling down to a life 
 of toil in order to repair his father's 
 ravages. 
 
 Waste is another simply-conceived story — 
 that of a young statesman, Henry Trebell, a 
 genius who has the originality to conceive 
 great schemes of reform, the talent necessary 
 to organize them, and the tenacity required 
 for achievement. His ruin, and the wreck 
 of all his glorious plans, springs from a 
 moment's madness in which he becomes 
 entangled with a married woman, a pas- 
 sionately egotistical but otherwise entirely 
 null person. The result of this liaison is 
 depicted with unflinching candour. Mrs. 
 O'Connell, unknown to Trebell, undergoes 
 an illegal operation, which kills her. All 
 this becomes known, and his colleagues 
 find it necessary to throw Trebell over. 
 The tragic fact, that a pretty shell of a 
 woman can ruin real work and genuine hopes. 
 
90 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 is here depicted with splendid skill and 
 verisimilitude. 
 
 The Madras House is less strong, but more 
 complicated and varied. There is no real 
 plot, or rather the formal plot is strangely- 
 sundered from the genuine interest of the 
 play ; it recounts merely the sale of a great 
 costume business to a commercial but ro- 
 mantic American. On this peg is hung 
 a magnificent fabric of discussion, mainly 
 about the social position of women. Female 
 assistants in large shops, the living-in system, 
 the life of the normal married woman in 
 England, the effect on men's work of the 
 presence and co-operation of women — ^these 
 topics are handled with brilliant originality 
 and fluent eloquence. The study is made 
 dramatic by the contrast between Henry 
 Huxtable and his partner Constantine Mad- 
 ras. Huxtable is positively steeped in home 
 affections and Victorian stolidities ; one 
 feels that he could not be happy in Heaven 
 without antimacassars and a marble clock. 
 Madras is elaborately contrasted with him 
 at every point. Not only has he so revolted 
 against English home life that he has de- 
 serted his wife and son many years ago ; 
 Mr. Barker, in order to provide the external 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 91 
 
 point of view, has actually converted him 
 to Mohammedanism, and conferred upon 
 him a house and harem in an Arabian village. 
 This person's comments on the Englishman's 
 attitude towards women are both novel and 
 deadly, provoking a healthy reaction or 
 commanding revolution. The upshot is that 
 women are a disturbing and destructive 
 factor in the ordinary business of the world ; 
 confined to the house in the Eastern fashion, 
 they would perform their function of bright- 
 ening life and soothing the wearied soul. 
 We thus arrive, by another road, at the 
 same conclusion as that to be derived from 
 Waste, 
 
 In describing the plots of these plays, I 
 have omitted what appears to many their 
 strongest feature. It is a significant com- 
 ment on Mr. Barker's art that I could so 
 omit them. In all the four he has devoted 
 remarkable skill to depicting a number of 
 people, usually members of one family, 
 whom he distinguishes from one another by 
 the subtlety of his character-drawing. The 
 instance of the Voysey family is celebrated. 
 They swarm over the stage — ^the swindling 
 father ; the placidly deaf mother ; the 
 rather priggish son, Edward (the hero) ; the 
 
92 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 eldest son Trenchard, a clever and callous 
 barrister ; other sons, Booth Voysey the 
 absurd domestic bully, and Hugh the artist ; 
 then daughters, a daughter's fiance, a son's 
 fiancee and sons' wives. There was a pre- 
 monition of this tour de force in the Leete 
 family, which in the third act holds a kind 
 of review of these household troops. In 
 Waste the politicians and their equally 
 political wives and sisters interweave them- 
 selves in an ingenious but confusing pattern. 
 Mr. Barker has received great praise — 
 deserved praise — for this virtuosity, and 
 seems to recognize in it his special metier. 
 At any rate he reaches the climax in the 
 first act of The Madras House, where he 
 hurls at one's head no less than six daughters 
 of the Huxtable line, all alike as lead pencils 
 after some weeks' use (as he says himself), 
 differing only in length, sharpening, and 
 wear. This first act is a mist of daughters, 
 who circle round their goaded parent like 
 matadors round a Spanish bull. 
 
 All this, of course, is so much photography, 
 like a great deal of Mr. Wells' work. Both 
 Mr. Wells and Mr. Barker have been much 
 lauded for it, and with little discrimination. 
 Such descriptions are only the raw material 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 93 
 
 of a novel or a play. If a man makes it an 
 integral part of his completed work, he is 
 not necessarily to be praised for doing so, any 
 more than a cook is to be eulogized because 
 she has chosen the proper ingredients ; the 
 proof of the pudding is not entirely in her 
 good intentions. If anyone will compare 
 the photograph work of Love and Mr, Lewis- 
 ham with that of The Return of the Native 
 he will appreciate this distinction. 
 
 Now, Mr. Barker's observation produces 
 admirable work — let that be heartily granted. 
 The question is, how does he employ these 
 photographs ? His intention, of course, is 
 to give atmosphere, in which we can sym- 
 pathize with the actors and understand the 
 bearings of the drama. And it generally is 
 thus useful. In Ann Leete the family tree 
 bears little dramatic fruit ; it seems to have 
 been shown merely to interest the audience 
 in the elaborate entanglement of aunts and 
 sons-in-law — it would not be missed from 
 the genuine action. The Voysey Inheritance 
 marks a definite advance. Old Voysey shows 
 up far better at home ensconced in this 
 jungle of relatives. Still more to the purpose 
 is the fact that we can see the kind of people 
 young Edward has to deal with, in his 
 
94 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 attempt to put things right at all costs to 
 his family. Even so, however, great masses 
 of the dialogue are only first-rate padding, 
 especially the delightful Major, whose per- 
 sonality is that of a strenuous blue-bottle. 
 The statesmen and political ladies of Waste 
 show a further improvement. Carefully 
 studied for their own sakes, they are more 
 germane to the action than the Voyseys. 
 It is essential that Trebell should be under- 
 stood in contrast with the more ordinary 
 types of legislator ; and Mr. Barker does 
 give us a valuable background, the governing- 
 class atmosphere, with extraordinary skill. 
 Finally, in The Madras House this aspect is 
 more dramatic again. If we are to study 
 domesticity, it is essential to give an elabo- 
 rately clear picture of one man's home life. 
 
 This dramatist's writings exhibit a second 
 characteristic of even greater moment — ^the 
 set discussion. I do not, of course, mean 
 only the working out of a situation by talk. 
 Every dramatist above the mask-and-re- 
 volver level practises that. I refer to the 
 habit of set debate, discussion almost as 
 elaborate and self-conscious as in a debating 
 club. It is herein that Mr. Barker is most 
 advanced — ^I will not commit myself to 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 95 
 
 saying towards what he has advanced ; but 
 he has certainly gone beyond Ibsen. In this 
 regard Ann Leete does show an authentic 
 difference from the later plays ; there is no 
 debate at all. But The Voysey Inheritance 
 has a good deal of it. The Madras House has 
 more, and it is not vital to the plot. Waste is 
 a positive portent from the present point of 
 view. Trebell is talking all the time, and he 
 talks like a Blue-book drastically revised by a 
 wary archangel. Around him is a whole galaxy 
 of lesser talkers, all mouthpieces for various 
 opinions. The only fine creation is Amy 
 O'Connell, but she is magnificently drawn. 
 P^The most distinguished member of this 
 school is Mr. Bernard Shaw ; among the 
 writers whom we are discussing he is not 
 only the most brilliant, he is the most like 
 Ibsen. In his evidence before the Com- 
 mission on the Censorship he remarked that 
 his special work was the composition of 
 immoral plays. This boast is the clue to 
 his art as it is to that of his Norwegian pre- 
 decessor. Realizing the waste that comes 
 from a blind adoration of the status quo^ he 
 insists on revising current conventions ; if 
 anything has been unquestioned for more 
 than a dozen years it is in his eyes open to 
 
96 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 the worst suspicion. Mr. Shaw's method is 
 to take a romantic situation, dear to the 
 unreal stage of pre-Ibsen days, and to 
 develop that situation in his own way — a 
 way novel, and therefore literally shocking, 
 to the unwary spectator, but (as its author 
 claims) thoroughly true to life. Thus The 
 DeviVs Disciple contains the melodramatic 
 conception of a wastrel who takes a good 
 man's place at the gallows, and so saves him 
 for his wife and his work. Now, beyond all 
 question, the seasoned playgoer expects two 
 things. One is a mass of heroics about self- 
 sacrifice. Anyone could write them : " I've 
 been the devil's disciple throughout my 
 life ; but, by Heaven, in my death I'll serve 
 something or Some One higher than that ! " 
 But the Shavian leopard cannot change its 
 spots ; Dick Dudgeon merely explains that 
 when the soldiers came for the minister and 
 arrested himself by mistake, though one 
 word would have taken the noose from his 
 own neck and put it round another man's, 
 he found he simply could not utter it. The 
 other feature that was inevitable a few years 
 ago is a sudden love for the minister's wife 
 springing up in Dudgeon's heart at the 
 critical hour : *' Yes, I love her ! And how 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 97 
 
 could my love show itself more nobly than 
 by saving her husband at the cost of my own 
 worthless life ? And she shall — ^never — 
 know ! " Nothing of the kind. He has 
 little interest in the lady, but he cannot save 
 himself at the expense of an absent man — 
 that is all. At this point should be related 
 a most exasperating but laughable proof of 
 the strength of tradition. When The DeviVs 
 Disciple was first produced, its author was 
 out of England. The part of Dick Dudgeon 
 was acted by no less an artist than Sir 
 Johnston Forbes-Robertson. Now, in spite 
 of the obvious trend of the action, the spirit 
 of the play, the very words of the dialogue, the 
 actor was so steeped in theatrical tradition 
 that, in the midst of his colloquy with the 
 minister's wife, he surreptitiously lifted a curl 
 of her hair and kissed it. Could anything show 
 more plainly through what a mass of dead con- 
 vention the new drama has to dig its way ? 
 
 Of this anti-romantic method Ccesar and 
 Cleopatra, in spite of its gorgeous setting 
 and august personages, is in all essentials 
 another example. The mightiest Julius is 
 here little more than the Shavian spirit 
 wearing a breastplate and similar trappings ; 
 I hasten to add that he is delightful beyond 
 
98 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 words — one of the most virile, fresh, gripping 
 personahties in Hterature. He passes through 
 the play, the incarnation of inspired com- 
 mon-sense, pricking mercilessly the bubbles 
 of vanity, sham ideals, and hypocrisy, spar- 
 ing neither others nor himself. An oppor- 
 tunist in detail, he has a genuine ideal, 
 peace and sane government for the Roman 
 world. 
 
 Mr. Shaw's most recent plays are Heart- 
 break House and Back to Methuselah, The 
 former claims to present in the manner of 
 {e.g.) Tchekof the chaotic state of con- 
 temporary English society and ideas ; its 
 technique is clever, but no less chaotic than 
 its theme. Back to Methuselah consists of 
 a preface and five short plays depicting 
 and discussing the necessity to extend in- 
 definitely the length of human life. In this 
 work Mr. Shaw passes practically outside 
 the purview of dramatic criticism. On the 
 one hand, these i\ve "parts" are (strictly 
 speaking) not plays at all, but static pre- 
 sentations of phases in the history of Man's 
 relation to the conditions of his life. But, 
 on the other hand, Mr. Shaw has not tried 
 to write drama at all, in the ordinary sense. 
 His prefaces have always been important; 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 99 
 
 but here the preface is the main part of the 
 book, while the plays are merely long 
 appendices. He puts forward a history of 
 biological theory and develops therefrom a 
 sketch of what he regards as the sound 
 scientific religion of the future. Man must 
 evolve the power to live for an indefinitely 
 long period, because only so can he fulfil the 
 purpose of the Life-Force. All this is set 
 forth with an erudition, a philosophic vigour 
 and breadth of comprehension, which awake 
 the liveliest admiration and gratitude. Be- 
 side this preface the plays themselves are 
 like the performances wherewith school- 
 children are encouraged to realize the great- 
 ness of Alfred or Cromwell. 
 
 For several reasons we must not attempt 
 a complete survey of Mr. Shaw's work. Let 
 us merely note certain dominant facts. One 
 point that he presses ruthlessly upon us is 
 the importance of instinct. We saw how 
 Richard Dudgeon's " heroism " was analysed 
 as neither cynicism nor divinity, but blind 
 impulse. So too in Blanco Posnet the 
 abandoned scoundrel acts like a courageous 
 gentleman, and curses himself afterwards for 
 doing so ; instinct forces him to risk his life 
 by surrendering his horse to the lone woman 
 
1 
 
 100 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 1| 
 
 and her sick child. Major Barbara has an | 
 instinct for saving men from themselves '-! 
 which survives even the collapse of what 
 she thought most fundamental in her life. 
 In Androcles and the Lion we observe 
 the same power of impulse ; none of the 
 martyrs, different in type as they are, acts 
 from deliberate valour or calculation or even 
 clearly understood religious belief. Lavinia 
 can give no reason for her sacrifice of life ; 
 Ferrovius flings away his crown of glory 
 because war is in his veins; and the 
 wretched Spintho, who seeks martyrdom 
 that his rascally life may be followed by 
 eternal joy, flings away his scheme at the 
 last moment — ^through instinct again. 
 
 It is on these lines that Mr. Shaw studies 
 love between the sexes, a subject to which, 
 more than any other, he has devoted his 
 rare psychological insight and sincerity of 
 expression. Man and Superman contains 
 the fullest account of his theory. In the 
 first place, love has nothing to do with 
 intellect, compatibility, wisdom, public 
 spirit, perception of beauty or of noble 
 character ; it is simply Nature (instinct 
 again, the instinct of the Universe) which 
 throws two people into one another's 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA ^ ^ i :' > Igi 
 arms. And secondly, it is the woman who 
 woos, the man who is won ; the woman 
 who pursues, the man who — runs away, 
 to be blunt. In this view it must be owned 
 that Shaw has support from two great 
 authors who certainly never heard of Ibsen ; 
 namely Shakespeare and Dickens. The 
 Gloria and Valentine of You never can Tell 
 are trembling combatants in this duel of 
 sex; more hardy fighters are Charteris 
 and Julia in The Philanderers; Widowers^ 
 Houses presents the same type, but of com- 
 moner grain, in Harry Trench and Blanche 
 Sartorius ; similar, in a more delicate and 
 repressed manner, are Major Barbara and 
 Cusins ; the same conflict, more poignant 
 perhaps than ever, thrills through John 
 BulVs Other Island, Getting Married is no 
 duel of this kind ; it is a general engagement, 
 horse, foot, and guns, between four men 
 and four women. But Man and Superman 
 is the most elaborate presentation, and with 
 finely dramatic audacity it includes an 
 actual flight of the man, breaking records 
 indeed in his motor-car, but nevertheless 
 overtaken on his way to a Mohammedan 
 country where, as he says, men are pro- 
 tected from women. 
 
W THE PHESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 This great play leads us on to the next 
 topic — Mr. Shaw's ability and usefulness as 
 a constructive thinker. For the third act, 
 the famous dream sometimes separately 
 played under the title Don Juan in Hell, is 
 at once the most highly-wrought instance of 
 the dramatic discussion above referred to, 
 and an apparently complete pronouncement 
 of the writer's positive philosophy. As 
 argumentative eloquence it is one of the 
 glories of English literature ; as a gospel 
 it is a lugubrious failure. The high mission 
 of Man is to carry on the will of the Universe ; 
 Heaven is a state in which his efforts to 
 understand that will are to be unclouded by 
 the preoccupations of the flesh. But what 
 the will of the world is we are not told, and 
 the goal of Man is — ^to go on striving towards 
 a goal, the latter goal being apparently 
 unknown. This is but a vague boon in place 
 of an orthodox Heaven, just as Mr. Shaw's 
 much adored Life-Force is an unsatisfactory 
 substitute for a personal Deity. There is 
 in this, however, little to disturb us, unless 
 we are to demand perfection from our 
 leaders. Shaw is not a builder, but a de- 
 stroyer. To create a new world is noble and 
 necessary ; it is equally necessary and little less 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 103 
 
 noble to clear the ground of whatever false 
 creeds and sham civilizations encumber it. 
 
 More than any other, Mr. Shaw is a 
 master of the dramatic epigram. In sheer 
 brilliance, amazing as he is, Congreve and 
 Wilde perhaps surpass him ; but there is an 
 immense distinction to be made. Congreve 
 and Wilde seem to have written plays for 
 the sake of working off epigrams. Shaw uses 
 his wit to point the play. Wilde's epigrams 
 are fireworks ; Shaw's are beacons. A-Miat 
 could be better than this from Candida ? 
 
 MoRELL : Eugene, my boy : you are 
 making a fool of yourself. There's a piece 
 of wholesome plain speaking for you. 
 
 Maechbanks : Oh, do you think I don't 
 know all that ? Do you think that the 
 things people make fools of themselves about 
 are any less real and true than the things 
 they behave sensibly about ? 
 
 This is more than clever. It is an 
 astounding illumination to almost every one 
 who hears it for the first time, both amusing 
 him and teaching him wisdom. Still more, 
 it reveals the secret of Eugene's terrible 
 power — ^^that of a naked soul whose weapon 
 is an indifference to the ready grin of the 
 crowd at the man who does not hide his 
 feelings. Through this power he reveals the 
 
104 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 real woman behind Miss Garnett's brassy 
 respectability, the inmost soul of the super- 
 ficially benevolent Candida, the unsuspected 
 weakness of Morell the clergyman. So with 
 Larry Doyle's comparison of an Englishman 
 to a caterpillar in the first act of John BulVs 
 Other Island : the caterpillar makes himself 
 look like a leaf so that the birds may over- 
 look him, while he devours the real leaves ; 
 so does the Englishman pretend to be a fool 
 that clever people may not meddle with him 
 while he eats up all the real fools. This 
 makes us laugh at the time, and it is the 
 quintessence of all the rest of the play. 
 Broadbent wins a seat in Parliament and a 
 wife by his apparently whole-hearted idiocy. 
 
 Let us finally point to one more dramatist, 
 the lamented George Calderon, whose Fountain 
 is a play of extraordinary merit. Prefixed to 
 it is a little jewel of a preface in which Mr, 
 Calderon repudiates the charge (or eulogium) 
 of Shavianism ; he claims to have expressed 
 " a truth which never entered the Shavian 
 head." This truth is hinted at in the motto 
 (taken from Longfellow, of all pre-Ibsenists 
 under the sun !) : " That which the fountain 
 sends forth returns again to the fountain." 
 
 The play deals with slum-work. A 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 105 
 
 spirited girl goes to live among the poor and 
 thriftless. She does all she can to cheer and 
 help them, even instituting a pawnshop of 
 a most unbusinesslike kind. Then, finding 
 (naturally enough) that she has too little 
 money, she asks her solicitors to improve 
 her investments. They refuse. She changes 
 her solicitors, gets more money for her 
 work, but is daunted to hear almost at 
 the same time that the rents of her flock 
 have been raised. And so the thing goes 
 on, the exactions of the slum-landlord keep- 
 ing pace with her endeavours to aid the 
 poor. Her rage against the oppressor grows 
 almost hourly, till she finds by accident that 
 the landlord is herself, and the increase of 
 funds for social work has been obtained by 
 rackrenting the objects of her charity. The 
 whole thing is written with strength and 
 ingenious simplicity. The dialogue is charm- 
 ingly crisp and witty, the atmosphere rich 
 and convincing. Of all modern English plays 
 it is the only one not by Mr. Shaw which is 
 comparable to Mr. Shaw's best work. 
 
 If I am to sum up my view of the English 
 Ibsenists, it is this. Hankin is a blend of 
 the old stagey school represented by Pinero, 
 of Ibsenism as expounded in England by 
 
106 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 
 
 Shaw, and of the superficial society-comedy 
 cultivated by Wilde. Mr. Galsworthy is a 
 propagandist who uses his " sense of the 
 theatre " and his perception of psychology 
 too often as an engine of controversy. Mr. 
 Barker is almost as much of a pamphleteer, 
 but also more of an artist. A little insistent 
 and shrill, he has carried the Ibsen manner 
 into new and dubious developments. Mr. 
 Shaw is a great artist, a superb wit, and a 
 preacher of doctrines too often unsatisfying 
 even when they are satisfactory. Calderon 
 is a Shavian with no Shavian shibboleths. 
 Of the school as a whole it may be said that 
 they are good workmen, overrated as apostles 
 and decried as charlatans. Hankin, Barker, 
 and Galsworthy are good dramatists in the 
 sense in which the man who made this 
 writing-table was a good workman ; but 
 he was not a Hepplewhite or a Sheraton, 
 neither are they Ibsens. There are two 
 reasons for the unduly high praise given to 
 these playwrights by many excellent critics. 
 Firstly, they deserve great attention, if not 
 applause, for the opinions which they hold 
 and expound. But this has nothing in the 
 world to do with their merits as playwrights. 
 (It is neglect of this obvious distinction, by 
 
ENGLISH DRAMA 107 
 
 the bye, which has caused Mr. Shaw to 
 lavish amazing eulogies upon that third-rate 
 writer, Brieux.) Secondly, they do their 
 work sincerely and well, and English play- 
 goers compare them, not with Ibsen, but 
 with their English predecessors and con- 
 temporaries. When Robinson Crusoe, after 
 many years spent in conversation with a 
 sohtary parrot, found a companion in Man 
 Friday, he did not at once complain of his 
 primitive costume or his taste in the arts. 
 Nor does the cultivated playgoer pick holes 
 in The Voysey Inheritance or The Return 
 of the Prodigal after the lucubrations of 
 Robertson, Marston, and their kin. Neverthe- 
 less our present leaders are mostly but good 
 second-rate writers if viewed by really high 
 standards. Mr. Shaw is undoubtedly above 
 this level, but it is legitimate to conjecture 
 that his best achievement lies behind him. 
 
 A splendid feature of this renaissance is 
 the rise of repertory theatres in Birmingham, 
 Glasgow, Dublin, and elsewhere. These are 
 a welcome sign that the provinces are be- 
 ginning to escape from the real blight 
 of provincialism —that humble waiting on 
 London for the scraps of inferior bread 
 which she chooses to fling. Even now, for the 
 
108 RENAISSANCE OF ENGLISH DRAMA 
 
 majority of our people the discussion set up 
 in this essay is an academic discussion only ; 
 the Renaissance of English Drama passes 
 us by, unless we have a taste for reading 
 plays or are able to visit London. Many 
 an English city, renowned to the ends of the 
 earth for its commerce and material enter- 
 prise, is content to see in its theatre from 
 year's end to year's end nothing better than 
 loose French farces produced at second-hand, 
 or miserably empty and derivative English 
 pieces sent on " the road " as " London 
 successes." But of late, as we said, there are 
 signs, not only of renewed life in the drama 
 itself, but in the popular feeling about that 
 form of art. The high cost of travel and 
 other difficulties are compelling provincial 
 towns to forgo the work sent down from 
 London, and willy-nilly to foster local 
 amateur enterprise. To exchange the ordi- 
 nary revue, presented by jaded third-rate 
 professionals, for Twelfth Night or The Silver 
 Box, presented by enthusiastic amateurs, 
 is an immense reform. We may yet see 
 dramatic art once more a function of the 
 national culture. 
 
THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 OF DRAMA 
 
 DESPITE the vast accumulation of 
 written and oral criticism which has 
 been devoted to particular plays, to 
 acting and stage management, to the types 
 of drama, and to drama itself as distin- 
 guished from other forms of art, there is 
 room, and even demand, for a plain and 
 comparatively brief statement setting forth 
 the principles on which all sound dramatic 
 work is constructed. Anyone who attempts 
 such a statement must be fearlessly dogmatic : 
 detailed reservations and periodical expres- 
 sions of self-distrust, though manifestly re- 
 quired in an elaborate disquisition, would 
 impair the usefulness of a mere introduction 
 to the subject. This dogmatic method can 
 mislead no one ; the alleged facts are derived 
 from induction, and the reader from moment 
 to moment may test them by reference to 
 any play which he thinks fit to select. 
 
 Considerations of space have made it neces- 
 
 109 
 
I 
 
 110 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 sary to omit all save quite necessary allusions 
 to well-known theories. 
 
 " Drama " is a Greek word meaning 
 " action," " thing done," and it might there- 
 fore be supposed that a play is merely the 
 reproduction, by imitation, of some act or 
 series of acts. Not so ; the name points 
 to the artistic medium, not the thing pre- 
 sented and as presented. All that it implies 
 is that the artist uses, not pigments or 
 musical notes, but speaking and moving 
 human beings, as his raw material. An 
 imitation by real people of such an event 
 as Caesar's landing in Britain, or the sealing 
 of Magna Charta, is by no means necessarily 
 dramatic, however exciting the spectacle, 
 however important the event portrayed. 
 It may be theatrical — ^that is, it may, by 
 exaggerated gestures, tones, and language, 
 amid a skilful setting, convey an impres- 
 sion of momentousness ; but theatricality 
 and drama are not the same thing. A true 
 definition can be gathered only from the 
 achievement of those whom the world in 
 general has agreed to look upon as good 
 dramatists. 
 
 What, then, is that feature, or what are 
 those features, which all plays exhibit ? 
 
OF DRAMA 111 
 
 One element, and no other, is invariably 
 present : a difficulty appropriately solved. 
 Drama is the presentation by living persons 
 of a complication in life and of the unravel- / 
 ling as effected by their interplay. It is N 
 not merely mimic action, but mimic action 
 governed by a " plot." At the close of the 
 first stage — in a modern play the first Act 
 — some quite definite question, with all its 
 difficulties realized, must be placed before us 
 and awaken our urgent interest. It may 
 refer to the broadest hopes or fears of 
 humanity — \^Tiither will Faust's titanic am- 
 bition lead him ? How will Hamlet face 
 the duty laid upon him by his father's 
 spirit ? Or it may be narrow, even trivial, 
 though attractive — Wliich man will the 
 heroine marry ? Will the dispatches reach 
 Grant in safety ? After reading or wit- 
 nessing the first Act we should be able to 
 express in one sentence, yet completely, 
 the question of the play. Some difficulty, 
 puzzle, problem, or mystery is as essential 
 to a drama as sap to a tree. Without it, no 
 magnificence in the characterization of Hamlet 
 or Faust, no charm or wit of the heroine, 
 no historical colour or life-like portrayal of 
 American generals, can make the work into 
 
112 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 a drama. The interlude of Mak in the 
 Miracle-Play is as truly dramatic, though 
 it deals but with the detection of a sheep- 
 stealer, as is Agamemnon or Macbeth, For 
 whatever mimic performance has plot is 
 drama, and whatever lacks plot is not 
 drama, no matter how admirable its mount- 
 ing, its dialogue, its psychology. Just as 
 Robinson Crusoe,^ for all its interest and 
 power, is no novel, since it has no plot, but 
 is to be called a tale, so Henry the Sixth 
 is no series of plays, but a chronicle. 
 
 The instance of Robinson Crusoe may help 
 us to greater precision of thought. Is it 
 true that there is no question or puzzle in 
 the book's early stages ? Do we not wonder 
 how the hero will escape from his island- 
 prison, and even more what kind of existence 
 he will evolve for himself in his years of 
 solitude ? Is not this, then, a plot ? And 
 do we not meet with a solution ? True ; 
 
 1 The first draft of this essay was written before I read 
 Mr. William Archer's Playmaking, and I am interested to 
 observe that he remarks (p. 25) : " If we want to see will 
 struggling against obstacles, the classic to turn to is not 
 Hamlet, not Lear, but Robinson Crusoe ; yet no one, except 
 a pantomime librettist, ever saw a drama in Defoe's narra- 
 tive." If the reader chances not to know Mr. Archer's 
 book, I take this opportunity of recommending it enthusi- 
 astically for its learning, skill, lucidity, and artistic common 
 sense. 
 
OF DRAMA 113 
 
 we may ask ourselves these questions — we 
 are certain to do so if we are really inter- 
 ested. But here is the vital point : the 
 question does not form the substance of the 
 action ; it is only the natural outcome 
 thereof in our own minds. The substance 
 of the action is a series of interesting events : 
 his shipwreck, his despoiling of the stranded 
 vessel, his discovery of a footprint or a 
 dying goat, his illness, and the like. It is 
 not the fact that the earlier part of the 
 story is unified and organized by its for- 
 mulating in action some difficulty which we 
 necessarily look to see surmounted, some 
 problem the unguessed answer to which we 
 confidently await. Contrast with this the 
 early scenes of some pla}^ Whereas Defoe 
 gives us a mere succession of events, having 
 no vital connexion, joined together only by 
 the fact that they all concern the same man, 
 in a drama the successive happenings are ^ 
 woven together into an organism. Each \ 
 scene is interesting and clear in itself, but 
 it also gains and bestows value through its 
 I juxtaposition with others. Omit Crusoe's 
 I parcelling of his gunpowder, and we do no 
 I harm to any other episode. But omit 
 ! Macbeth's first meeting with the " weird 
 
114 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 sisters," or even the scene of the " bloody 
 sergeant," and we lose something not only 
 excellent in itself, but of plain importance 
 to our appreciation of the murder-scenes and 
 the final combat, indeed of the whole play. 
 
 What has been said so far relates to the 
 question-part of the drama ; but analogous 
 remarks might be made about the answer- 
 part, the denouement or " untying of the 
 knot." The answer or solution must be 
 evolved by the interaction of the characters 
 — ^the later scenes must be observed to 
 come out of the earlier ; to come out, not 
 necessarily to grow out, for we are talking 
 at present of drama in the widest sense. 
 ^In a good play the solution will arise organi- 
 / cally out of the question itself ; in coarse 
 drama it may merely leap out surprisingly. 
 The answer may depend wholly on some 
 hitherto unguessed revelation that the hero- 
 ine is the villain's daughter. That would 
 be poor drama ; but bad drama is still 
 drama. In a first-rate play the whole solu- 
 tion is inherent in the terms of the problem, 
 though no spectator has the subtlety and 
 wisdom fully to foresee it. But more will 
 be said later on this important topic. 
 
 Other features of a playwright's work are 
 
OF DRAMA 115 
 
 momentous, but there is none which stands 
 on the same plane as structure, or plot.^ 
 All drama by its nature must have that ; 
 the others can be dispensed with, and often 
 are dispensed with, in certain types of play. 
 It therefore becomes necessary at this point to 
 distinguish the various forms of dramatic art. 
 There are four chief types. The dramatist 
 has always, as we saw, to deal with some 
 tangle in human life, but his treatment will 
 vary according to his philosophy of life and 
 according to his temperament. The first 
 factor will determine whether he shall por- 
 tray life as serious or as absurd, there being 
 of course arguments on both sides. The 
 second factor determines whether his treat- 
 
 1 This statement conflicts strongly with the marked 
 trend of modern criticism in England. Professor Bradley's 
 justly famous Shakespearean Tragedy deals far more with 
 the psychology of Hamlet or Macbeth than with the struc- 
 ture of their plays. The same tendency is the main feature 
 of Professor C. E. Vaughan's Types of Tragic Drama ; 
 and Mr. St. John Ervine, in an Observer of 1920, has 
 asked, "What is the plot of Hamlet?" with the impli- 
 ; cation that the reply makes no matter. To deal with 
 this wide topic adequately is impossible here. It can 
 only be said (i) that the dictum offered above, like the 
 ;' whole essay, is based on consideration of drama ancient 
 [ as well as modern ; (ii) that plot is in Shakespeare, though 
 1 highly important, yet less important on the whole than in 
 ■Sophocles. Nevertheless, if one does detect the peripeteia 
 ;of Hamlet — the death of Polonius — one finds even more 
 I interest in that masterpiece than before. 
 
116 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 ment shall be profound or superficial. If 
 a play presents the solemn view of life with 
 depth, so that the action is clearly felt to 
 typify the concerns of all humanity, the play 
 is a tragedy. Its superficial counterpart is 
 melodrama : there may be found in a 
 melodrama as much sorrow, sin, and death 
 as any tragic play contains, but our imagina- 
 tion (for whatever reason) is not led onwards 
 and upwards from individual to universal 
 concerns. So with the treatment which 
 envisages the absurd. Comedy is drama 
 that studies universal interests and depicts 
 their meaning or influence, quite as certainly 
 as does the tragic method, but it enlightens 
 us through our sense of laughter, not of 
 tears or horror. Its superficial counterpart 
 is farce — ^the employment of the ludicrous 
 to engage our attention in what does not 
 touch our own heart or interests. 
 
 These four types one might perhaps expect 
 on general grounds to approximate to one 
 another. This does at times occur.^ A 
 tragedy may interest us more in the special 
 instance than in the universal aspect raised 
 
 1 So Mr. C. E. Montague in his delightful Dramatic 
 Values (p. 27) mentions " the tang of grotesque tragedy 
 which there is in many of the best farces and which helps 
 to make George Dandin one of the best in the world." 
 
OF DRAMA 117 
 
 by it ; and in this way tragedy would merge 
 into melodrama. There are, for example, 
 a number of fairly good reasons for regarding 
 even Othello as no less a melodrama than a 
 tragedy. So with comedy and farce. The 
 best " comic " scene in the whole range of 
 letters — ^the passage in Henry the Fourth 
 where Falstaff describes the Gadshill ad- 
 venture — ^is as much farce as comedy. Still 
 further, it is possible for tragedy and comedy 
 themselves to merge into one another. The 
 question here has, of course, nothing to do 
 with tragi-comedy, which is nothing more 
 than a play consisting of tragic scenes and 
 comic scenes alternating. That is a " mech- 
 anical mixture " : what concerns us here is 
 the possibility of a " chemical compound." 
 Can a drama be both tragedy and comedy ? 
 Is it possible to treat a theme both seriously 
 and laughably ? On general grounds one 
 would suppose the enterprise highly difficult 
 but possible. Horace Walpole said that 
 " Life is a comedy to those who think, a 
 tragedy to those who feel " ; therefore, 
 given a playwright with a great brain and 
 a great heart aiding, not thwarting, one 
 another, such a drama is possible. To find 
 a whole play composed in this godlike mood 
 
118 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 would be difficult, but scenes or whole acts 
 written in that vein are well-known. King 
 Lear owes its special and stupendous potency 
 more perhaps to this than to any other single 
 cause ; and many a great passage in Eurip- 
 ides — parts of Orestes^ for example — belongs 
 to this category. The four great dramatic 
 types, then, can and do at times approxi- 
 mate. But, as a fact, the centrifugal ten- 
 dency has been far more strongly marked. 
 Tragedy has grown more solemn and awful, 
 melodrama more superficially wild, comedy 
 more laughable, farce more vulgar, than 
 in strict theory they need have become. 
 Throughout large areas of dramatic history 
 the conventions are secure that tragedy 
 must culminate in the death of the chief 
 personage, that comedy must not arouse 
 thought, that melodrama should contain an 
 unredeemed villain, that farce must exhibit 
 horseplay with food, clothing, or furniture. 
 It has often been observed that good 
 melodrama and good farce are rare ; indeed 
 " superior " people make a point of pre- 
 tending that melodrama is actually funny 
 because so " bad " — ^that is, because it 
 bears no recognizable relation to life. This 
 is to attribute to the whole class vices be- 
 
OF DRAMA 119 
 
 longing only to feeble and stupid instances 
 thereof ; and it is easy to do so, because 
 good melodrama is rare. But it exists — 
 witness the Helena of Euripides, Kyd's 
 Spanish Tragedy, perhaps even Othello, The 
 reason for this rarity is that Man is a gen- 
 eralizing animal, so that both melodrama 
 and farce, if well conceived and executed, 
 might seem bound to become tragedy and 
 comedy by leading the spectator from the 
 special experiences before him to the facts 
 of his own life and of humanity. This is 
 not actually so ; it is possible to compose 
 both sorrowful and laughable drama, of 
 admirable quality, which concerns only the 
 people portrayed and not the whole race. 
 Both types are saved by introducing features 
 which necessarily and obviously pin down 
 the interest to individuals. Farce is in- 
 variably distinguished from comedy by this 
 feature, that the persons act, think, and 
 speak lopsidedly — ^they ignore what could 
 not be ignored in reality, and fasten upon 
 some special, only minor, point, in the 
 various situations, for example the muffins 
 in The Importance of Being Earnest, Melo- 
 drama is invariably distinguished from 
 tragedy by two qualities, theatricality and 
 
120 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 violence. There is no melodrama which 
 does not depend in considerable degree upon 
 stage tradition : every drama of this class 
 is a more or less imposing structure built 
 from the debris of tragic work. As for the 
 other feature, all emotions are conveyed by 
 crude and exaggerated physical action, on 
 the most elaborate scale allowed by coarse 
 sentimentalism and the resources of the 
 theatre. Hatred may no doubt be evinced 
 in tragedy by murder, but in melodrama 
 the bloodshed must be wildly spectacular 
 and complicated. In both types the same 
 reason holds for these excesses ; it is neces- 
 sary to depart far enough from probability 
 to prevent the spectator's identifying him- 
 self with the persons presented, yet not far 
 enough to reach the unthinkable, for there 
 interest would perish. Good melodrama and 
 good farce, then, are rare because both must 
 be unnatural yet interesting. 
 
 So necessary is it for us to follow only the 
 main lines of this immense subject, that 
 certain highly important considerations 
 which will occur to the reader must be left 
 on one side. There is, for instance, the 
 curious fact that great comedy is rarer than 
 great tragedy. Aristophanes is a mighty 
 
OF DRAMA 121 
 
 scenic genius, but his work often passes over 
 from comedy to farce. Shakespeare has 
 given us magnificent comic scenes, but no 
 whole comedy which can be ranked with 
 his greatest half-dozen tragedies. Moliere is 
 first-rate, and Marivaux full of delight ; but 
 it would be a mistake to put them on a level 
 with Sophocles, however distinctly they 
 surpass the tragic playwrights of their own 
 country. Another attractive topic is the 
 minor forms of drama : burlesque, which is 
 farce pivoted upon parody ; opera, which 
 blends music with any one of the four main 
 types already discussed ; modern panto- 
 mimes and revues, which tend more and 
 more to dispense with plot and so inevitably 
 to lose dramatic quality and revert to chaos. 
 It is, however, desirable to offer some 
 remarks on a kind of drama frequent in our 
 own time. There are many excellent works 
 which may be thought to fall under none 
 of our four categories. It may be said that 
 they are not laughable, and therefore neither 
 comedy nor farce ; that they appeal strongly 
 to the instincts, fears, or interests of all 
 men, and are therefore not melodramatic ; 
 that they do not culminate in the death 
 of the chief character, and so are not tragic 
 
122 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 — moreover, they lack the pomp and awe 
 which we associate with tragedy. Wliat 
 then are they ? It is usual to term them 
 simply " plays " or — implying some indefin- 
 itely tense quality — " dramas " ; and critics 
 more or less vaguely suggest or assert that 
 they constitute a new type of dramatic 
 work. We are here, as often in criticism, 
 within sight of a dispute about mere nomen- 
 clature, but it is worth while to seek greater 
 precision. Such works as those just men- 
 tioned are tragedies. They conform to the 
 definition of tragedy given earlier, and our 
 unreadiness to allow them that name is due 
 to the natural, but in this regard excessive, 
 influence upon our judgment of the greatest 
 tragic achievements. It seems at first sight 
 absurd to place Mrs, Warren's Profession, 
 excellent as it is, in the same class with 
 (Edipus Coloneus, Faust, and Hamlet, But 
 this is not a question of classes of merit ; 
 it is a question of classes of method. Any 
 drama, indeed, must fall more or less 
 definitely into one of our four classes, the 
 only variations being blends thereof. A 
 word should be added concerning the theory 
 that the hero's death is a necessary in- 
 gredient of tragedy. A very large propor- 
 
OF DRAMA 123 
 
 tion of the noblest tragedies do, of course, 
 exhibit this feature, for reasons which are 
 too obvious to need mention. But the 
 function of tragedy can always be carried 
 out competently, and has sometimes been 
 carried out sublimely, by a plot which dis- 
 penses with this device ; (Edipus Tyrannus 
 and Medea are examples. 
 
 So much, then, for the nature of drama. 
 What is its aim ? Is there any one purpose 
 which we can attribute to every drama, 
 every playwright, every school of dramatic 
 writing, despite the great divergences which 
 are to be remarked between school and 
 school, dramatist and dramatist, even be- 
 tween different works of the same author ? 
 Is there nevertheless any one object in which 
 they all agree, just as there was one character- 
 istic of form, namely, the question-and- 
 answer plot, in which we found them all to 
 agree ? The divergences are great. Greek 
 tragedy and comedy were parts of religious 
 ritual ; Roman comedy is a light comment 
 on contemporary manners ; Roman tragedy 
 (so far as we know it) was translation of 
 Greek, or, if original, machine-made rhet- 
 oric ; mediaeval plays are a crude attempt 
 to impress upon the unlearned the robust 
 
124 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 reality of Scriptural stories or the validity 
 of ethical dogma ; modern dramas, when 
 serious, deal with difficulties of conduct or 
 social anomalies ; when frivolous, they play 
 superficially or deleteriously with the com- 
 mon emotions. Differences as great are 
 apparent between dramatist and dramatist. 
 The chief aim of Shakespeare is to edify 
 through a study of emotion ; of Sophocles, 
 to reconcile Man with his environment 
 through the appreciation of human instincts ; 
 of Ibsen, to fortify through a new appeal 
 to ethical fact. Can we point to any 
 common purpose or purposes ? There is 
 but one — ^to entertain, by the portrayal of 
 life. This kind of entertainment — ^that is, 
 the refreshment and invigoration of the 
 intellect and emotions by depicting a human 
 crisis and its solution — is common to CEdipus 
 Tyrannus, to Othello, to Tartujfe, to The 
 Importance of Being Earnest, and to the 
 most dull, derivative, or vulgar piece ever 
 concocted in Rome or mid-nineteenth-cen- 
 tury England. It is said that the object 
 of all art is to give pleasure by imitation. 
 This dictum, though by no means completely 
 untrue, is misleading ; for no one with a 
 sense of accuracy would give the name of 
 
OF DRAMA 125 
 
 " art " to a reproduction of creaking cart- 
 wheels or even of the nightingale's song, 
 since art must always pass beyond simple 
 mimicry, through reticence, frugality, and 
 the blending touch of a human creator 
 bringing forth what is not the familiar 
 reproduced but the familiar transfigured. 
 The aim of all art, then, is to give pleasure, 
 not by mere imitation, but by reinforced 
 reminiscence, and the aim of dramatic art 
 is to give pleasure by the reinforced reminis- 
 cence of the critical in human life. True, 
 the playwright often has a further purpose, 
 some special thesis about conduct or emo- 
 tion, as had De Musset in On ne badine pas 
 avec V amour, or some quite definite social 
 doctrine for which he seeks converts, like 
 Mr. Galsworthy in Justice, and above all, 
 M. Brieux in Les Avaries or Les Trois Filles 
 de M. Dupont. He may, that is, be a pure 
 artist, presenting life as he sees it, with no 
 plainly implied comment at all, or he may 
 be a thoroughly didactic propagandist using 
 dramatic method merely as a platform, or 
 he may be anything between these extremes. 
 The distance between Sophocles and M. 
 Brieux provides room for many grades, not 
 only of literary excellence, but of didacti- 
 
126 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 cism also. And however openly propagand- 
 ist a playwright may be, we shall always 
 find that he provides " entertainment "^ — ^the 
 bracing and refreshment of mind and heart — 
 in however attenuated a degree : there are 
 always, at the least, piquant contrasts and 
 a vivacity of dialogue which no mere pam- 
 phlet ever provides. But though such " enter- 
 tainment " is always present, it is in some 
 modern work painfully meagre ; and herein 
 lies some foundation for that watchword of 
 the " Philistine " which so annoys lovers 
 of the drama — " I go to the theatre to be 
 amused." No doubt a series of guffaws 
 extended over three hours is an experience 
 not only unnecessary, but intolerable, to 
 any civilized being not jaded by perverse 
 and monotonous toil ; and drama, like the 
 other arts, aims at illuminating people whose 
 minds are alert, whose taste is critical, not 
 to provide opportunities for emotional dram- 
 drinking. Nevertheless, the " Philistine " 
 has his glance turned in the right direction ; 
 he is justified in his suspicion of performances 
 which promise pleasure and betray him with 
 sermons or social programmes. 
 
 The rest of this essay will deal with the 
 methods of drama — ^the system of com- 
 
OF DRAMA 127 
 
 position, the specific devices, whereby a 
 playwright seeks to effect the purpose we 
 have described ; namely, to refresh and 
 brace his hearer's intellect and emotions by 
 portrayal of some puzzle in life and of its 
 solution. His task must be carried out 
 through his personages — that is, mainly 
 by their characters, their actions, and their 
 words : what they do. He may also employ 
 external happenings : what is done to them. 
 It will be convenient to examine this latter 
 element first. 
 
 By " external happenings " are here 
 meant things of which the characters must 
 take account, but which arise without their 
 volition, events of which we cannot say 
 that they would naturally happen in the 
 situation supposed, but only that they might 
 happen at some time or other — a lightning- 
 flash whereby the villain is removed, a 
 violent shock which by restoring speech or 
 memory makes of some negligible person 
 an important w^itness, and so forth ; most 
 commonly of all, the use of coincidence to 
 bring about meetings or discoveries. 
 
 Accidents, and structurally important 
 accidents, are to be found in the greatest 
 plays. Prospero's enemies are wrecked 
 
128 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 upon the one island, of all islands, where he 
 himself was cast away.^ CEdipus meets and 
 slays the one man, of all men, who is his 
 father. In A DolVs House Mrs. Linden 
 and Krogstad meet by the merest chance, 
 and on their meeting the celebrated final 
 scene structm^ally depends. In lesser work, 
 especially in melodrama and farce, such 
 "external events" abound; many farces, 
 indeed, almost consist of sudden con- 
 frontations, ludicrous but irrational. Acci- 
 dent should be sparingly employed in serious 
 drama, because the author must present a 
 recognizable picture of life, which depends, 
 or is thought to depend (here the same 
 thing), far more upon character than upon 
 accident. It is accident that Romeo should 
 fail to receive the Friar's letter and should 
 enter the Capulets' vault before Juliet 
 awakes ; it is his character which causes 
 him to destroy himself before her trance 
 is broken. And when such accidents are 
 employed, important distinctions must be 
 
 ^ The tempest itself is due to Prospero's art, but the 
 fact that his enemies come within the focus of his power 
 is the result of chance : — 
 
 By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune — 
 Now my dear lady — hath mine enemies 
 Brought to this shore. 
 
OF DRAMA 129 
 
 observed. It is bad dramatic art to set in 
 the midst of the play a pure accident on 
 which the subsequent action absokitely de- 
 pends. For the spectator reahzes that had 
 the accident not occurred the story would 
 have collapsed. It is no help to reply that 
 vital accidents do appear in real life ; art 
 cannot be chaotic, and pure accident, to the 
 human eye, is the incursion of chaos. 
 
 But we must note the wording : " to set 
 in the midst of the play a pure accident 
 on which the subsequent action absolutely 
 depends." Two fundamental facts must 
 be indicated here. First, there is by no 
 means the same objection to such accident if 
 it happens before the outset of the drama, 
 or even at its opening. What starts the 
 action may be illogical, casual, improbable, 
 anything short of flat impossibility. One 
 has to begin somewhere, and we do not 
 object to an accident so long as the action 
 itself, once opened, is logical and natural. 
 One might as well censure Raphael's School 
 of Athens on the ground that not all the 
 philosophers there depicted could have 
 come together, not being contemporaries. 
 " Supposing they had been," the painter 
 could reply, " that is how the assembly 
 
130 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 would have looked." Aristotle therefore 
 rightly says that the irrational elements 
 should be outside the play proper. It is 
 this consideration which justifies two of the 
 instances quoted above, those from The 
 Tempest and (Edipus Tyr annus. The 
 second point rests on the words " absolutely 
 depends." It makes all the difference in 
 the world whether the accident is one of 
 action or of time only. In the first case the 
 event itself is casual — that is, the chances are 
 indefinite thousands to one against the 
 event itself happening at all ; and yet, if it 
 did not, the subsequent action would vanish. 
 An examination of Euripides' Alcestis will 
 show that the denouement depends, not upon 
 Alcestis' devotion, or Admetus' anguish, 
 or the valour of Heracles, but solely upon 
 the fact that the demigod happens to 
 become intoxicated ; and unless we admit in 
 Alcestis the notion so regular in comedy, 
 that Heracles drinks too deeply whenever 
 he has the opportunity, we must condemn 
 Euripides' method in this drama. In most 
 plays it is not the fact itself which is casual, 
 but the time. The fact, or something like 
 it, will certainly happen sooner or later : 
 the only accident is that it should happen 
 
OF DRAMA 131 
 
 just then. On such accidents it is not true 
 that the subsequent action "absolutely 
 depends." Did not the event fall precisely 
 when it does, we should not lose the later 
 development, only quickness and precision 
 of development ; the drama in its outlines 
 would be unchanged. This second con- 
 sideration justifies the third example given 
 above, from A DolVs House. It is on the 
 one hand true that, had not Mrs. Linden 
 and Krogstad met by pure chance in 
 Helmer's drawing-room, Krogstad would 
 not have spared Nora and her husband, 
 therefore we should not have gained the 
 great final scene as it stands. But the vital 
 point is that that scene must necessarily 
 arrive at some time, given Helmer's char- 
 acter and Nora's; all that the accidental 
 meeting gives us is the neatness with which 
 the last scene happens so early. 
 
 The other instrument, or set of instru- 
 ments, with which a dramatist performs his 
 task was, we saw, what the persons them- 
 selves do. This, in the widest interpreta- 
 tion, means their characters, their actions, 
 and their words. Psychology, action, and 
 dialogue are the three great strands of 
 dramatic composition. Every play must 
 
132 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 exhibit them all, though their relative 
 importance may vary : characterization 
 must be effected by conduct and dialogue, 
 action must reveal character and be clothed 
 with conversation, dialogue must refer to 
 character and the visible action of the piece. 
 Of these the most fundamental and most 
 difficult is characterization. The question 
 of the drama — the desis ("tying") as 
 Aristotle calls it, the tangle, problem, or 
 perplexity — should arise from the psychology 
 of the persons involved, as well as from the 
 situation in which they find themselves ; 
 this is equally, or even more, true of the 
 denouement. The specific pleasure afforded 
 by dramatic art is to watch character creat- 
 ing destiny. It is true that a special situa- 
 tion is also needed, since a definite crisis 
 must be raised by a definite cause. Among 
 existing plays there are many gradations 
 based on the relative importance of character 
 and situation. In Monsieur Piegois, by 
 M. Alfred Capus, the situation is merely 
 that Piegois notices a lady who is travelling 
 in the same railway compartment as him- 
 self. Works of heavier calibre begin more 
 remarkably, since mighty crises are normally 
 introduced by highly unusual events ; both 
 
OF DRAMA 133 
 
 psychology and situation are wonderful in 
 such works as Agamemnon and Julius Ccesar, 
 Numberless feeble but violent productions, 
 especially melodramas, show slight charac- 
 terization and a tremendous or elaborate 
 situation, such as Andreiev's Sabine Women 
 and the pseudo - Shakespearean Titus 
 Andronicus, 
 
 The means by which a dramatist may 
 project a character are six : the things done 
 by the person, the things said by him, the 
 attitude of people who have been in close 
 touch with him, things said of him by others, 
 facts already known to the spectator, and 
 material details. The last three may be 
 used as subsidiary, but no one save an inferior 
 workman relies on them ; none the less, so 
 arduous is it to create character effectively 
 by the first three means, that many writers 
 have depended perforce upon the cheaper 
 and coarser devices. 
 
 Material details, such as the furnishing of 
 a man's room or significant equipment of 
 his person, are not really successful, save 
 by convention. To fill an apartment with 
 musical instruments and busts of Grieg or 
 Mozart proclaims the occupant a musician 
 — perhaps — but that is to tell us his hobby 
 
134 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 or trade, not his character. Dress a man in 
 large checks and give him diamonds to 
 wear ; that proves his vulgarity — perhaps — 
 but vulgarity is a matter of tone ; it is 
 colour, not structure ; and character is 
 the structure of the soul, while culture is 
 its colour. Moreover, externals are as 
 untrustworthy as obvious. The gaudily 
 attired man may not be viilgar ; he may 
 hate these trappings and wear them to 
 please his wife. 
 
 Another of these cheap devices was " facts 
 already known to the spectator " — that is, 
 the author evades his task by introducing 
 some real person whose character is already 
 known from history or legend. Let the 
 curtain rise upon a short stout figure frown- 
 ing into vacancy, wearing a cocked hat, and 
 holding one hand thrust into his bosom, and 
 the thing is done. He is Napoleon the 
 Great, and every one in the theatre knows, 
 not perhaps (or probably) his character, 
 but those conventional characteristics which 
 alone such a writer intends to exploit. 
 The actor has but to snap his fingers 
 and, without turning his head, exclaim : 
 " Bernadotte, come here ! " and the 
 " character " is " created." It is to this 
 
OF DRAMA 135 
 
 simple method that the success of Mr. 
 John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln is 
 mainly due. 
 
 Analogous to this is the fourth expedient, 
 " things said of him by others " — by far the\^ 
 greatest favourite of all. Just as second- \ 
 rate dramatists open with elaborate un- 
 natural explanations of the plot uttered by 
 servants laying a dinner-table, so is character 
 conveyed by a symposium of minor persons 
 who have nothing better to do than diagnose 
 their friend's or their master's private blend 
 of irritability and a generous heart. When 
 the person so described appears, he is not 
 further characterized by more artistic means 
 if the author is really second-rate ; the fluid 
 phantasma runs easily into the mould thus 
 prepared. There is no strong objection to 
 such preparation if the person described 
 makes it good by vigorous psychology 
 authentically displayed. Euripides' Medea 
 has the familiar explanatory domestics, but 
 the heroine herself is vibrantly alive, most 
 cogently real. The bad method may be 
 watched almost any day, and Shakespeare 
 himself supplies a capital example in 
 Julius Ccesar. The dictator is a mere 
 simulacrum to which an external glow of 
 
136 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 life is imparted only by the comments of 
 others, 
 
 Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world 
 Like a Colossus, 
 
 and the rest. 
 
 Between this method and the third, " the 
 attitude of persons who have been in close 
 touch with him," there may seem little 
 difference or none. What is exactly meant, 
 however, is not their verbal attitude towards 
 him only, but their outlook on things, their 
 own minor psychology, shown by their 
 reaction to his influence. If w^e compare 
 Julius Ccesar with Ibsen's Master Builder, 
 we see at once how much more powerfully 
 and intimately the Norwegian has created 
 his main character by means of Solness' 
 wife and employees, than the Englishman 
 has succeeded in projecting a real figure 
 even by the eloquence of Cassius or of An- 
 tony. Shakespeare does, however, at other 
 times wield this instrument superbly ; witness 
 the perfectly dramatic and illuminating 
 manner in which Enobarbus reacts to Cleo- 
 patra, Cassio and Emilia to lago. Indeed, 
 though this device is a favourite of Ibsen's, 
 who uses it again and again with miraculous 
 power (as in The Wild Duck and Hedda 
 
OF DRAMA 137 
 
 Gabler), the example from Othello is perhaps 
 the strongest and most arresting proof of its 
 possibihties. lago himself is a puzzle : his 
 character of unredeemed evil is a psycho- 
 logical problem that has baffled the greatest. 
 What we realize of him is learnt from the 
 attitude of others ; we cannot look him in the 
 face, but must scan his lineaments, as did 
 Perseus those of the Gorgon, in a mirror. 
 
 There remain the first two means of 
 characterization — the things done, the words 
 said, by the person himself. These two are 
 different but inseparable ; together they 
 constitute the most difficult, most interesting, 
 most valuable, and (next to plot itself) most 
 necessary task of the dramatist. In the 
 first place, it is clear that the playwright 
 must imagine his character definitely and 
 then present him performing appropriate 
 deeds, uttering appropriate words. So far, 
 the work is not specially difficult. Most 
 people can imagine a brave, patriotic, military 
 officer who should (owing to " machina- 
 tions ") fall under a cloud and be publicly 
 degraded. They can also cause him at the 
 critical moment to strike an attitude and 
 cry : " You may take away my sword, but 
 you cannot take away my Victoria Cross ! " 
 
138 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 If this is all that one needs, why is One of 
 the Best less admirable than Henry the Fifth ? 
 We need much more. So far we have only 
 cut out a figure in the fiat, and this is 
 not creation at all. The genuine dramatic 
 master makes characters in three dimensions ; 
 we can walk all round them, envisage them 
 from unobvious angles, feel that we know 
 them, not merely see them. They stand on 
 their own feet, detached from the back- 
 ground which happens to be placed behind 
 them at the moment, ready to walk into 
 other environments, encountering fresh com- 
 panions and new enterprises. That is the 
 one test of a great character study ; we 
 instinctively imagine them in surroundings 
 not depicted by the author — " Micawber 
 would have done so-and-so ! " " What 
 would Sir Willoughby Patterne have said ? " 
 A celebrated example relates to the best- 
 drawn figure in all literature : The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor was written because of 
 Elizabeth's curiosity to see Falstaff in love. 
 But how is this done ? By what devices 
 does an author make his people " come 
 alive " ? Here, of course, we approach a 
 region where there seems to be no footing — 
 the attempt to explain how genius brings 
 
OF DRAMA 139 
 
 itself to bear. It is, nevertheless, worth 
 while to make the attempt, though an 
 adequate account is naturally out of the 
 question. Sometimes a character grows on 
 the author's hands without his conscious 
 volition. He imagines a person of minor 
 calibre, restricted importance ; then it hap- 
 pens that the man or woman so imagined 
 appeals to the writer's own temperament — 
 " grows on him " — and becomes too great 
 for his environment. So it was, we know, 
 that Samuel Pickwick developed ; so, in 
 all likelihood, Shylock grew from a sordid 
 scoundrel to the colossal representative of a 
 whole nation, an immemorial history clothed 
 in a single yellow gaberdine. But normally, 
 no doubt, such vivid creations are evolved 
 with full consciousness. How ? The dra- 
 matist ponders his proposed character not 
 at first in the environment which is to be 
 his upon the stage. He lives in his company, 
 sits down to meat with him, walks in his 
 society through street, market, and meadow ; 
 watches his love-making and quarrels, reads 
 the same book over his shoulder ; discusses 
 with him religion, war, politics, commerce ; 
 shares his jests and reads the meditation 
 of his heart. All this is at first only the 
 
140 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 terrific travail and joy of creation, but little 
 by little the strain of conscious toil becomes 
 the delighted watching of a creature which 
 hourly takes to itself as by miracle a seem- 
 ingly independent life, though never, as in 
 our earlier instances, too great for its sur- 
 roundings. Hans Andersen, when he wrote 
 the fantasy of the man who lost his shadow, 
 was composing an allegory of all great 
 fiction. Then, when the imagined man or 
 woman is complete, then, and not till then, 
 is the name Falstaff or Portia given, and the 
 Eastcheap tavern roars with vital gusto 
 shed abroad by a being more human than 
 any man in the theatre, the terraces of 
 Belmont are flooded with the sunny radiance 
 of one who sums up in her sweet presence 
 the charm and strength of many women. 
 Of the hundred conversations which Shake- 
 speare held with Cleopatra, of all those 
 valiant affrays wherein he charged stirrup 
 by stirrup with Talbot or Hotspur, of those 
 many conferences in camp and court with 
 Roman triumvirs, Plantagenet kings, and 
 Tudor nobles, but little has escaped on to 
 paper. The poet knew Falstaff in his slender 
 youth. Lady Macbeth as a girl at her sampler 
 and her prayers, Mark Antony in doublet 
 

 OF DRAMA 141 
 
 and trunk-hose taking boat for Hampton 
 Court, Prospero as a neighbour gossiping 
 of crops and herds by a Stratford fireside, 
 Rosahnd nursing her babies or seeking her 
 lost husband upon some nameless battlefield. 
 It is because the life which these superb men 
 and women passed in his peerless imagination 
 was vaster far than the few events which 
 unroll themselves before our eyes in the 
 Arden Forest, on the banks of old Nile, 
 or along the corridors of Dunsinane, that 
 when we meet them in these surroundings 
 we salute them as more real than ourselves. 
 All this might be put crudely by a mere 
 reminder that such persons make other 
 remarks, and do other things, than are in 
 strictness called for by their situation ; 
 there is a largior cether about their talk and 
 conduct. One main reason for the impres- 
 sion of triviality left by many plays is that 
 the persons keep closely and unsuggestively 
 to the matter in hand. Whenever Harpagon 
 appears we know that he will talk about 
 money. But, on the other side, we shall 
 not make a character vivid by the mere 
 bestowal of irrelevant conversation ; it will 
 not do to hang upon his part sundry tags 
 of extraneous chat " to give atmosphere." 
 
142 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 His author must conceive him from the 
 centre outwards. The actual written evi- 
 dence of such complete imagination as we 
 have tried to expound will of course vary 
 from character to character. Among Shake- 
 speare's greatest figures Macbeth perhaps 
 shows this evidence least. Needless to say, 
 he is none the less magnificent for that ; 
 but his darkly terrific speeches are based 
 on a comparatively narrow expressed reminis- 
 cence of the thousand daily concerns and 
 activities shared by average men. Hamlet 
 certainly shows such evidence most, going 
 beyond the network of microscopic allusion 
 which we have most in mind to definite, 
 sometimes elaborate, disquisition, as in his 
 memories of Yorick and (still more) in his 
 interview with the strolling players. 
 
 The mention of Hamlet tempts us into 
 a digression. One of our most brilliant and 
 esteemed dramatic critics, Mr. A. B. Walkley, 
 in an essay ^ entitled " Professor Bradley's 
 Hamlet,'^ has set forth a view diametrically 
 opposite to that suggested in the two pre- 
 ceding paragraphs. We may well draw 
 encouragement to embrace our own theory 
 from the extraordinary vagaries into which 
 
 ^ Drama and Life, pp. 148-55. 
 
OF DRAMA 143 
 
 Mr. Walkley is plunged by fidelity to his 
 own. For example, he asserts that such 
 comments as " Doubtless in happier days he 
 [Hamlet] was a close and constant observer 
 of men and manners " show Professor Brad- 
 ley " unconsciously wandering into specula- 
 tions about Hamlet as a real person, existing 
 off the stage, and independently of Shake- 
 speare's play." And whither is the critic 
 led by his hostility to this method ? To 
 nothing less than this : that Shakespeare 
 did not care whether his characters were 
 credible or not, that he is just as pleased 
 to fling a heap of odds and ends on to the 
 stage with the remark, " These are Hamlet," 
 as to create a credible being ! It may 
 appear impossible that any man who has 
 read the poet for ten minutes should offer 
 such statements, but here are Mr. Walkley's 
 words : " Shakespeare himself had these char- 
 acteristics, and sought expression for them 
 on the stage without a perpetual solicitude 
 for consistency or intelligibility in his mouth- 
 piece. A father is addressing his son starting 
 on a journey. Shakespeare sees the ' good 
 things ' appropriate to that situation in 
 general, and at once puts them in the mouth 
 of Polonius, though it suits him afterwards 
 
144 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 to make Polonius a ' tedious old fool.' « . . 
 The theme of the moment was ' A Father's 
 Advice to his Son ' or ' The Art of Acting ' 
 or ' Meditations on Suicide,' and all the 
 dramatic resources of that theme were duly 
 * exploited ' on the spot." In a passage like 
 this we may watch the art of dramatic 
 criticism committing suicide. 
 
 Returning now to the main theme of 
 which characterization is one department, — 
 " that which the persons do themselves," — 
 we have to treat of their work in carrying 
 out the plot. The reader may object that 
 characters are only created and revealed 
 precisely by such motion and execution. 
 Certainly ; but for clearness' sake it is 
 necessary to sunder in discussion things 
 actually combined, just as the anatomist 
 studies a single organ which does not, how- 
 ever, function by itself. We proceed then 
 to action, the things done and said by our 
 characters. By their influence upon one 
 another, their mutual reactions, they give 
 body to the plot. Plot is the " soul of the 
 play," as Aristotle put it, action is its flesh, 
 the characters are its organs. Dramatic 
 manner consists in the confrontation of 
 people whose purposes, interests, powers. 
 
OF DRAMA 145 
 
 have a clear relationship of cause and effect, 
 of tendency and obstacle, of aim and op- 
 posing aim. It is this condition of intense 
 contrast between persons standing in one 
 another's presence which is most usually 
 J implied by the word " dramatic." ^ In the 
 two highest types of drama, tragedy and 
 comedy, this confrontation is of a special 
 and most momentous kind — ^the collision 
 of personalities which are the vehicle of 
 opposing ideas, whereas in the other types 
 the collision is between people who stand 
 for nothing more than their own concerns. 
 The author of tragedy or of comedy, owing 
 allegiance both to the abstract governing 
 idea and to the particular human being who 
 is its vehicle, must be true to both. But 
 how ? If the person is to express the idea 
 adequately, what room is there for the 
 individual marks needed to make him 
 " real " ? If, on the other side, he is to be 
 
 1 Mr. William Archer, in his chapter "Dramatic and 
 Undramatic " {Play making, pp. 23-41), repudiates the 
 doctrine that drama is the presentment of struggle, and 
 suggests (p. 29) that " the essence of drama is crisis." 
 These statements, as general statements, are excellent. 
 It will be seen that the present writer insists on " collision " 
 only in the highest types of drama, and later in this essay 
 the importance of crisis is developed at length. But a 
 general condition of contrast between the persons is always 
 an ingredient in dramatic method. 
 
146 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 a convincingly human creature, will not the 
 universality of the idea evaporate ? Here 
 is the deepest problem of great drama ; 
 and it is perhaps the most splendid artistic 
 triumph of the human spirit that it has 
 achieved a number of amazingly good 
 solutions, ^schylus is the supreme in- 
 stance of a mind filled with the profoundest 
 abstract truths yet expressing them within 
 the limits of particular time, place, and 
 personality ; his theological concept of 
 imperfect godhead rising to omniscience, 
 omnipotence, universal benevolence, is 
 magnificently conveyed through Orestes, 
 Prometheus, and others without spoiling 
 the individual clearness of the persons. His 
 people are, to be sure, drawn with simple, 
 sweeping lines ; there is none of that fine 
 brush work which a modern master of any- 
 thing like ^schylus' calibre would give, 
 and which Euripides — even Sophocles, in 
 some degree — ^has given. But he has en- 
 dowed them with as much personal colour 
 as was possible without blurring the eternal 
 facts whose messengers and offspring they 
 are. He has held the scales marvellously 
 level, for his profound sense of God and his 
 vivid sense of Man were equally powerful. 
 
OF DRAMA 147 
 
 Without that balance we might have found 
 in his pages a jejune presentation of abstrac- 
 tions hke the featureless Virtues and Vices of 
 a morality-play. Something like this, indeed, 
 happened when Shelley imitated his Prome- 
 theus : the English poet gives us no characters, 
 only qualities endowed with vocal chords. 
 
 No other dramatist has kept universal and 
 particular so evenly matched. Ibsen, per- 
 haps, comes nearest to ^schylus in this 
 respect. Hedda Gabler is artistically the 
 modern Prometheus. Yet even she is more 
 " interesting," as we call it — ^that is, we are 
 more concerned with her individual sur- 
 roundings than with those of Prometheus. 
 Goethe's Faust, again, gives often more 
 weight to the ideal than to the particular. 
 The earlier scenes are gloriously ^schylean, 
 but as the drama progresses the universal 
 more and more clearly overrides the specific 
 and individual, until at the close we hear the 
 "chorus mysticus" singing pure Platonism : — 
 
 Alles Vergangliche 
 1st nur ein Gleichniss ; 
 Das Unzulangliche 
 Hier wird's Ereigniss ; 
 Das Unbeschreibliche 
 Hier ist es gethan ; 
 Das Ewig-weibliche 
 Zieht uns hinan. 
 
148 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 This is magnificent, but it is not drama. 
 It is too deep, too ultimate ; and a play- 
 wright's business is not to expound the 
 ultimate directly (even supposing he can)," 
 but to translate it into terms of credibly 
 particular men, women, and human action. 
 All other modern dramatists, except Shake- 
 speare in his greatest work, will be found 
 stressing either the super -human (or in- 
 deed infra-human) idea or the particular 
 example in hand. The latter method has 
 in modern times been far more common and 
 successful. In this region Euripides alone 
 of Greek dramatists can be compared with 
 Shakespeare and Ibsen ; no figure drawn 
 by ^schylus, Sophocles, or Aristophanes, 
 can rival in vividness his Phsedra, his Medea, 
 his Orestes. 
 
 The struggle between the idea conveyed 
 and the character - vehicle has not only 
 tended to depress one or the other : it has 
 influenced character-drawing itself, especi- 
 ally in comedy. Hence arises the drama 
 of types instead of strongly individualized 
 persons, the most notable kind being the 
 comedy of manners. Moliere is its greatest 
 exponent ; his lovers, rogues, simpletons, 
 are little more than the greatest common 
 
OF DRAMA 149 
 
 measure of all the members of each class. 
 Such a method strikes one on a ^priori 
 grounds as unpromising, and in fact Moliere's 
 vast charm and power are found far less in 
 psychology than in dialogue. Ben Jonson 
 belongs to the same school ; his reputation 
 (such as it is, for he is but magni nominis 
 umbra) depends not on characterization but 
 on a brisk jumble of action. His Bartholo- 
 mew Fair provides perhaps the best speci- 
 men in dramatic literature of that famous 
 desideratum, the " slice of life." But the 
 " humours " which he so industriously 
 exhibits give little entertainment ; when 
 they are unsupported by other attractions 
 the result is dreariness unspeakable : Every 
 Man out of his Humour is possibly the 
 most unreadable work ever penned. Con- 
 greve, like Moliere, is saved from such 
 an abyss by brilliant dialogue. Tragedy, 
 as we said, has suffered less than comedy 
 from this attempt to achieve universality by 
 cutting away peculiarities — a sure way to 
 produce what is less, not more, human than 
 our next-door neighbour. But it may be ob- 
 served even at the highest levels ; Sophocles 
 shows at times, especially in Antigone, a 
 hardness of surface which is due to this cause. 
 
150 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 Our personages, then, whether they convey 
 such fundamental ideas as a new conception 
 of Providence or whether they are merely 
 endeavouring to anticipate one another in 
 the search for stolen bonds, meet before 
 our eyes in personal impact. Between the 
 main characters or groups of characters 
 there is collision, not necessarily hostile 
 collision, but a confrontation of unlike aims, 
 opinions, or instincts. Between Macbeth 
 and his wife, between Alceste and Celimene 
 in Le Misanthrope, between Tanner and Ann 
 Whitefield in Man and Superman, between 
 Blunt schli and Raina in Arms and the Man, 
 there is no hostility, but such an impact 
 of dissimilar temperaments that by the 
 resulting heat the plot is moulded. It is, 
 of course, even more obvious that consciously 
 hostile collision provides the very core of 
 countless plays : it is enough to quote, for 
 conscious hostility on both sides, Prometheus 
 Vinctus, Antigone, Coriolanus, The Merchant 
 of Venice ; and, for consciousness on one 
 side only, the Choephoroe, Medea, Othello. 
 While the chief persons thus come into 
 marked collision, there is frequently between 
 two minor characters some kind of clash, 
 however minute. It varies from the fatal 
 
OF DRAMA 151 
 
 duel of Tybalt and Mercutio, through the 
 contrast between Kent and the Fool during 
 their attendance upon Lear, to the jars 
 between Sebastian and Gonzalo in The 
 Tempest, or the distinctions in rascality ex- 
 hibited by Pistol and Nym. Even lords-in- 
 waiting and nameless bystanders are divided 
 by plain variations of sympathy or opinion. 
 It will be remembered that our present 
 topic is action, not plot ; we are not yet 
 concerned with the development of the 
 question-and-answer construction, but only 
 with the commerce between the persons 
 from moment to moment. Under this head 
 one topic remains — intensity. The action 
 must be neat and crisp ; things should 
 happen with what may be described as a 
 click. The mere entry of some one with a 
 seeming-casual remark may in the circum- 
 stances have the effect of an explosion. 
 At the end of the Third Act of Hervieu's 
 La Course du Flambeau occurs this minute 
 
 " scene " 
 
 Mme. Fontenais {revenant de sa chambre) : 
 Eh bien ? . . . Ou en es-tu, entre ta mere 
 et ta fille ? Suis-je du voyage ? 
 
 Sabine {repondant d^un signe de tete plutot 
 que de la voix) : Oui. 
 
152 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 In another place this would be nothing. 
 Set where it is, it is intensely dramatic. 
 Not only does it doom the mother to death ; 
 it is the core of the plot and voices the moral 
 of the whole piece. Few plays equal La 
 Course du Flambeau in this special quality, 
 but all playwrights more or less clearly 
 realize the need. So strongly, in fact, do 
 writers of our time feel the importance of - 
 crisp action that they have evolved what is 
 called the " curtain" — ^that is, the device of 
 closing an act or scene at the highest possible 
 point of tension. An excellent example has 
 just been given from Hervieu ; but many 
 others may be found with ease. So in 
 Mrs, Gorringe^s Necklace, by Mr. H. H. 
 Davies, the First Act ends just after we have 
 discovered that David Cairn is the thief 
 and exactly at the moment when his fiancee 
 innocently induces him to agree, with a 
 breaking heart, that everything shall be 
 " like the old times." But a morbid passion 
 for the " strong curtain " has led some 
 writers of farce and melodrama to strange 
 lengths. They bring it about not artisti- 
 cally but mechanically, as a rule by the 
 sudden reappearance of some interesting 
 person whom the audience has half-forgotten 
 
OF DRAMA 153 
 
 and who is now unexpectedly and irration- 
 ally thrust forward into a scene already 
 tense. Are you a Mason? contains a crude 
 instance of this. Much less objectionable, 
 but similar, is the laughable moment in 
 M. Rostand's Chantecler when at the end of 
 the long and tumultuous reception held by 
 the Guinea-Hen, the curtain descends just 
 as the usher announces " The Tortoise ! " 
 Like this, but entirely, indeed splendidly, jus- 
 tified is the craftsmanship whereby Augier, 
 in his La Pierre de Touche, after mention- 
 ing a character several times, but never 
 presenting him, at length causes him to be 
 announced, and ends the whole play with 
 the words " Faites entrer." It is a masterly 
 stroke, because though this lieutenant's 
 future influence upon the hero's fortunes 
 is important and necessary to complete the 
 plot, we need nothing more than this crisp 
 reminder of the form which that influence 
 is certain to take. 
 
 One delightful and frequent method of 
 securing the " click " is to employ " business " 
 with material objects or exciting features 
 of real life. This method, again, is often 
 childishly dragged into the lower dramatic 
 types, as in the racecourse scenes and 
 
154 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 criminal trials of melodrama. But there 
 are a thousand examples of its admirable 
 employment — the meeting of employers 
 and strikers in Mr. Galsworthy's Strife, the 
 mannequin scene in The Madras House of 
 Mr. Barker, the rehearsal in Meilhac-Halevy's 
 Froufrou ; and the brilliant use of material 
 objects may be observed in countless plays, 
 from the purple carpets in the Agamemnon 
 and the bow of Philoctetes to Portia's 
 caskets, Desdemona's handkerchief, and the 
 floating crutch of the drowned Eyolf . 
 
 Two portions of " that which the persons 
 do themselves " have now been indicated — 
 characterization and action. The third, dia- 
 logue or speech, remains. In few respects 
 do dramatic authors differ more widely. 
 Sometimes it is not genuine dialogue at all, 
 but a succession of tirades ; others employ 
 nothing but short sentences, ostensibly the 
 exact replica of everyday talk ; and various 
 stages between these extremes are to be 
 noted. Nor is length the only standard 
 of difference. Poetic form or poetic diction 
 or both are employed by some ; others 
 write prose ; a third class write neither — 
 for M. Jourdain was absurdly wrong — but 
 keep to the formless speech of ordinary 
 
OF DRAMA 155 
 
 folk ; a fourth kind, finally, compose a 
 queer stilted jargon which can best be 
 described as sanctified journalese. Each 
 length-difference can of course be combined 
 with any of the style-differences. Thus, to 
 take but a few examples, we find in Sophocles 
 poetic form, poetic diction, and long speeches; 
 poetic form, poetic diction, and short 
 speeches in Rostand ; prosaic form, poetic 
 diction, and short speeches in Maeterlinck ; 
 prosaic form, prosaic diction, and long 
 speeches in Shaw. 
 
 Ignoring details, we find that the great 
 difference lies in the choice between poetical 
 and prose form. The tendency to poetry has 
 been caused in great degree by the influence 
 of other literature ; in Greece, for example, 
 by the prestige of epic and by the lyrics 
 which formed an integral part of Greek 
 drama. Another cause is the desire to 
 distinguish emphatically the language of an 
 art-form from that of every day. The use 
 of prose, and of short sentences, is due to the 
 search for verisimilitude, but this has been 
 modified by the influence just mentioned in 
 connexion with poetry — ^the desire for artistic 
 diction ; the finest result in our time of these 
 two tendencies is the work of J. M. Synge. 
 
156 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 Each form has its pecuhar danger. In 
 poetic drama it is irrelevance, the play- 
 wright being constantly tempted to develop 
 a theme altogether beyond what its dra- 
 matic value demands, for the sake of its 
 own poetical possibilities.^ Undoubtedly 
 a beautiful long speech may be thoroughly 
 dramatic : every lovely phrase or pungent 
 stroke of rhetoric may serve the plot or aid 
 characterization. Antony's funeral oration 
 is a superb proof of this. Prospero's nar- 
 rative to Miranda at the opening of The 
 Tempest and (far more) the soliloquies of 
 Macbeth are all dramatic timber as well as 
 poetry excellent or sublime in itself. But 
 the Queen Mab speech of Mercutio and the 
 equally exquisite description of the bees' 
 conmionwealth in Henry the Fifth are on 
 an altogether different plane ; they are 
 intruded into the action, which they only 
 delay and serve not at all. Mercutio's 
 speech, it may be objected, illustrates his 
 character. But it is illustrated enough 
 
 * Mr. C. E. Montague {Dramatic Values, p. 227) roundly 
 says of the Recits de Theramene : " They are magnificent, 
 but not drama." As a matter of fact the original " nar- 
 rative of Theramenes," in Racine's Phedre (V. vi.), is 
 perfectly dramatic (and exactly in the tradition of the 
 Messengers' Speeches in Greek tragedy). 
 
OF DRAMA 157 
 
 otherwise ; the purpose is answered at least 
 equally well by such things as : " 'Tis not so 
 deep as a well, nor so wide as a church- 
 door ; but 'tis enough . . . ask for me to- 
 morrow, and you shall find me a grave man." 
 It is, indeed, plain that Romeo and Juliet 
 as a whole provides a gloriously beautiful 
 specimen of transition-form ; it is lyric 
 passing into drama, much as Peele's Old 
 Wives^ Tale is narrative passing into drama. 
 No one doubts that such disquisitions are 
 brought in only to gratify the sense of 
 literary beauty, and with no thought of the 
 plot/ It is of no avail to point out that 
 poets who compose for theatres with a 
 platform, so to call it — ^the Greek theatre, 
 if the actors played in the orchestra, and the 
 Elizabethan theatre with its " apron " — 
 naturally find themselves writing elaborate 
 recitations which the performer declaims 
 to his audience like an orator on the tribune. 
 This (even if true) does nothing more than 
 account for the poet's own standard of length 
 in speeches : it has no bearing on their 
 
 1 There is no recantation here of what was said con- 
 cerning Mr. A. B. Walkley's remarks on Hamlet. We only- 
 remark that such passages do not help the drama as drama ; 
 Mr. Walkley beheves without misgiving that they may 
 stultify it. 
 
158 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 relevance. All we can say is that the 
 conditions render the temptation to irrele- 
 vance greater for Euripides and Shakespeare 
 than for Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Hervieu. 
 Rhetoric, moralizing, preaching may be 
 perfectly dramatic, however long. We ob- 
 jected just now on technical grounds to 
 Mercutio's Queen Mab '' effort." But take 
 another passage from the same play. Friar 
 Laurence muses upon his simples : — 
 
 The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night. 
 Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
 
 and so forth for thirty lines in all. It is 
 a memorable speech, but apparently quite 
 static. Then what, we ask, has this quiet 
 musing to do with the fortunes of the young 
 lovers ? Is it any more to the purpose than 
 the fantasia of Mercutio ? It is, in fact, 
 vastly more dramatic. First, it plainly 
 conveys an allegory of Romeo's waywardness 
 and of the wasteful enmity between Mon- 
 tagues and Capulets. Secondly, it is in 
 tune with the situation. The Friar is alone, 
 at complete leisure, an aged man taking the 
 morning air outside his cell. Moralizing 
 for its own sake is here far more natural 
 than that a young gallant, amid companions 
 agog for a frolic, should detain them with 
 
OF DRAMA 159 
 
 highly-wrought Jioriture, however exquisite, 
 on the topic of dreams, while they postpone 
 their business to listen attentively in a semi- 
 circle, as no party of young men ever did 
 since the world began. 
 
 The main danger of prose-dialogue is more 
 insidious. We saw that prose is employed 
 in order to give verisimilitude, but that 
 the artist's instinct recoils from complete 
 likeness ; art makes a picture, not a photo- 
 graph. Thus the prose-dramatist is threat- 
 ened on the one side by commonness, on 
 the other by unreality. He must somehow 
 portray, at times, the banal or stupid without 
 losing all dignity and vivacity ; but if he 
 writes so that every one exclaims " How 
 unnatural ! " he has failed. The whole 
 topic of " truth to life " cannot well be 
 treated here, though it plainly affects 
 dialogue no less than character, action, and 
 plot. Still it may be said that it is in- 
 finitely better to imitate real talk exactly 
 than to recoil from it into the jargon which 
 now reads so incredibly in the English 
 drama of seventy years ago. In the second 
 act of Mr. Shaw's Major Barbara occur 
 passages which render with complete real- 
 ism the conversation and conduct of the 
 
160 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 slums ; in Pygmalion he brought upon the 
 stage a word hitherto supposed securely 
 unprintable. Objection has been taken to 
 such fidelity. But compare it with the other 
 extreme, quoted ^ by Mr. Walkley from a 
 play highly popular in its time (1841), 
 Boucicault's London Assurance : 
 
 I love to watch the first tear that glistens 
 in the opening eye of morning, the silent 
 song that flowers breathe, the thrilling 
 choir of the woodland minstrels, to which 
 the modest brook trickles applause; these, 
 swelling out the sweetest chord of sweet 
 creation's matins, seem to pour some soft and 
 merry tale into the daylight's ear, as if the 
 waking world had dreamed a happy thing, 
 and now smiled o'er the telling of it. 
 
 The rule for prose-dialogue is plain. It 
 must be like enough to actual speech for 
 us to imagine ourselves joining in it to- 
 morrow morning, but more forceful, neater, 
 richer, and — ^unless characterization demands 
 this — ^unencumbered by the half-articulated 
 scraps of phrase which spread fungus-like 
 over the conversation of most people. This 
 rule, like so many others, is of small use 
 without experience, and a commencing play- 
 wright who has been alarmed by Boucicault 
 
 ^ Drama and Life, pp. 14 et seq. 
 
OF DRAMA 161 
 
 and his peers will produce by reaction 
 dialogue which is bald and stringy. Seek- 
 ing a remedy for this, he will take to 
 crude cleverness : people who are not witty 
 ex hypothesi will nevertheless talk wittily ; 
 others will unconsciously reveal their failings 
 by a neat maladroitness for which we sigh 
 vainly in the real world ; others will inter- 
 rupt one another and create a joke by 
 accidental collaboration. Such devices in 
 moderation are well enough, but they do not 
 by themselves constitute excellent dialogue. 
 Wit is, indeed, the regular stopping-place of 
 good second-rate dramatists ; only the master 
 goes beyond it. The manner of Oscar Wilde 
 is here most instructive. His dialogue falls 
 into two sharply sundered divisions : the 
 serious, when it is pretentious, hysterical, or 
 dull ; and the witty, when it is mostly 
 irrelevant, though blazing with unmatchable 
 epigrams. It is never what it should be, 
 thoroughly good normal conversation. A 
 lady suddenly remarks, " Define women for 
 me." Pat comes the response : ^^ Sphinxes 
 without secrets." Such things are very 
 delightful, but they should be published in 
 the form of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes 
 et Reflexions Morales ; they do not justify 
 
162 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 the substructure of Adams drawing-rooms, 
 French windows, secret cheque-books, and 
 the Hke. In this sphere the unchallenged 
 master is Ibsen. His conversations are 
 always vibrant, whatever the topic, but 
 never florid and never bald — ^unless, as we 
 said, the character-study definitely requires 
 such qualities. Every word is interesting, 
 but he is never merely witty ; as some are 
 too happy to need amusement, so is he too 
 brilliant to need wit. His conversations 
 glow continuously instead of flashing and 
 crackling at intervals. All this is apart 
 from their greatest virtue, that of assisting 
 the plot with an effortless mastery which is 
 perhaps Ibsen's most splendid merit. 
 
 The three divisions of our subject have 
 now been in some measure described : the 
 nature, the aim, and the methods of drama. 
 But it is imperative that we should examine 
 more closely the nature of plot, the Formal 
 Cause (as Aristotle might have said) of the 
 action — ^the shape which makes it what it is. 
 How must action be modelled or kneaded if 
 it is to be dramatic ? The main rule, we 
 saw, was that it should first definitely pose 
 a question, some riddle to be solved, or 
 some tangle to be unravelled, and that it 
 
OF DRAMA 163 
 
 should as definitely offer the reply, the 
 solution, the unravelling — what in French 
 is called the denouement, or " untying." We 
 must now go further. The next considera- 
 tion is economy — to draw from every datum 
 in the situation, every character, every 
 scene, every speech, the utmost assistance 
 for the purpose of the whole, and to employ 
 the minimum number of factors. This is 
 by no means the same thing as simplicity. 
 An admirably economical play will often 
 be found complex in its delicate adjustment 
 and reaction of parts, e.g. CEdipus Tyrannus 
 and Hedda Gabler ; whereas many plays 
 of rudimentary structure contain a lavish 
 apparatus of minor persons or scenic 
 changes, e.g, Peter Pan, Chantecler, and 
 Peer Gynt. Let us now indicate some im- 
 portant results of the instinct for economy. 
 
 First, the solution should be given entirely 
 in terms of the original question. We said 
 above that it must " come out " of the 
 question, in order to include even the 
 worst dramas, where the main characters 
 settle their difficulty, or (more often) find 
 it settled for them, by the aid of novel 
 factors violently intruded at, or later than, 
 the middle of the play. Instead of working 
 
164 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 out a problem based (let us say) on their 
 poverty, by using their own abilities, their 
 own surroundings, and the experience or 
 opportunities which their poverty itself can 
 and must supply, they observe near the 
 close of the last act but one a quaint white- 
 headed figure approach their house, scanning 
 the numbers. In a few minutes they learn 
 that it is their Uncle Peter from New South 
 Wales, whose existence has been hitherto 
 concealed both from them and from the 
 audience ; he has amassed a gigantic fortune 
 from sheep-farming, he has not married, 
 and has come home to die. Despite the 
 concern with which they listen to his hack- 
 ing cough, they cannot but see that their 
 financial troubles are nearing the end. Such 
 a solution " comes out " of the situation 
 as originally set ; the people, the local 
 conditions, and the rest, are mostly un- 
 changed. But there is no necessary tie 
 between end and beginning ; the structure 
 is wi'ctchedly bad. Uncle Peter is in fact 
 the ancient deus ex machina, heavily secular- 
 ized for the delectation of an age which has 
 rejected religious myth but still cherishes 
 myths of finance. The " god from the 
 machine " is a thoroughly bad device, simply 
 
OF DRAMA 165 
 
 because he cuts the knot instead of untying 
 it. The knot is there to be untied ; it is 
 skill in doing so which is a leading proof of 
 good craftsmanship, and which affords the 
 spectator his strongest thrill of interest. 
 Analogous powers or events elsewhere in 
 the drama are not necessarily bad. Thus 
 the whole action of Hamlet is launched by 
 a supernatural visitation. The Prince could 
 not learn the facts in any other way; and, 
 granted a public which effectually believes in 
 ghosts, such an opening is perfectly sound. 
 It is far otherwise when the action of A 
 Winter^ s Tale is turned upside down by the 
 intrusion of an unusually clear and complete 
 response from the Delphic Oracle. But 
 the magical elements in The Tempest and 
 A Midsummer Nighfs Dream are quite un- 
 objectionable ; superhuman powers are con- 
 stantly and from the first postulated for 
 Prosper o and Oberon. Objection lies against 
 the sudden introduction of miraculous short- 
 cuts into purely human situations. What 
 should we say if Puck strayed into The 
 Merchant of Venice and converted " The 
 Duke, Magnificoes, and train " to Judaism ? 
 In brief, the ideal plot provides an answer 
 which in its entirety is latent in the problem. 
 
166 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 The persons, acting upon one another by 
 their psychology, by discoveries about one 
 another's aims or opinions made through 
 sudden confrontation, by the persuasions 
 and enhghtenments of dialogue, manipulate 
 the difficulty which enmeshes them all in 
 their several degrees, until it exhibits a 
 new design made from its original elements. 
 Sympathy is born, resignation, comfort, 
 understanding. " Latent in the problem," 
 we said. The materials for a solution should 
 all be present, but it is plainly wrong to 
 leave things so obvious that any spectator 
 can prophesy the end. The entertainment 
 provided by good drama is a curious blend 
 of the sense of probability and the sense 
 of surprise. Probability must never harden 
 into inevitability, nor surprise into disbelief. 
 The action swings over upon itself, the end 
 keeps tryst with the beginning — " The wheel 
 is come full circle, I am here." This close 
 interweaving of fabric is a leading difference 
 between drama and other literary forms. 
 
 A second feature of economy is to be 
 observed in the management of character. 
 First, each person's psychology must sub- 
 serve the plot. Those qualities in Lear 
 which the First Act reveals — his love for 
 
OF DRAIVIA 167 
 
 his daughters, his imperiousness, whimsical- 
 ity, and childish temper, form not only a 
 marvellous study in themselves, but a power 
 influencing the action at every turn. Mac- 
 beth's valour is shown by the sergeant's 
 story ; his superstition by the disturbance 
 awakened in him by the witches' greeting ; 
 his ambition by the deep effect on his mind 
 which their promise exercises. None of 
 these qualities would have availed without 
 the others to bring about his crimes ; Dun- 
 can's murder, the usurpation, Banquo's 
 death, the butchery in Fife, all are caused 
 by this trinity, valour, superstition, ambi- \^ 
 tion. That Othello is unused to polite 
 Venetian society seems at first a thing of 
 no moment ; we may even ask ourselves 
 why Shakespeare has gone out of his way 
 to substitute a negro for the apparently 
 obvious Italian condottiero. But here lies 
 what one is tempted to call the most mas- 
 terly device that even Shakespeare ever 
 conceived. This ignorance of Othello's 
 proves to be the one means whereby lago's 
 devilish cunning can persuade him that 
 Desdemona is unfaithful. Had Judge Brack 
 shown himself in the least degree less self- 
 complacent in his dealings with Hedda 
 
168 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 Gabler, probably she would not have killed 
 herself after all ; his sleek security is the 
 finishing touch. Euripides' Hippolytus on 
 his first appearance delivers an exquisitely 
 beautiful address to his patroness-deity 
 Artemis. So lovely is it that we perhaps 
 do not observe the evidence it affords of an 
 excessive relish for subtle emotion : the 
 evidence has to be underlined by his brief 
 colloquy with the aged serving-man. But it 
 is this relish which later betrays Hippolytus 
 into a refined gloating over Phaedra's distress 
 and persuades the over-tried woman to 
 destroy him. A second economy in the 
 management of character is to lay upon 
 each person more than one function. The 
 chief figures are naturally so employed; 
 but the able playwright will be found pro- 
 viding a double duty for minor characters 
 too : they support and are supported like 
 the stones of an arch. This admirable 
 contrivance aids in a high degree the desired 
 tautness, the sense of grip. Bassanio serves 
 to bring Shylock and Antonio into collision 
 by his necessities ; then through his marriage 
 with Portia he occasions Antonio's rescue. 
 In Henry the Fourth Prince Hal forms the 
 link between Falstaff' s group and the public 
 
OF DRAMA 169 
 
 issues treated by the play. Louka in Mr. 
 Shaw's Arms and the Man performs the 
 quite separate functions of a foil to Raina 
 in Saranoff's eyes, and of a means to bring 
 Raina and Bluntschli together. If we turn 
 to ancient drama we find that this method 
 lies at the very root of Terence's magnificent 
 dramaturgy : he loves to pose a double 
 question and solve the two parts by their 
 very interdependence. Euripides' Hecuba 
 contains a most curious example : an aged 
 slave, who is sent to fetch water for 
 Polyxena's burial-rites, discovers Polydorus' 
 corpse while so busied, and thus actually 
 makes the only bond between the two 
 portions of the tragedy. A far more skilful 
 instance is lo in the Prometheus of ^Eschylus. 
 She draws from the hero some of his most 
 interesting speeches ; she exemplifies in her 
 own person once more the cruelty of Zeus, 
 whom Prometheus is defying ; and she 
 points forward to his rescuer Heracles, her 
 own descendant. It is naturally not often 
 that the absence of such double functioning 
 is noticed as a distinct flaw ; but in the 
 Francillon of Dumas fils it is plainly a 
 serious weakness that the heroine's supposed 
 lover proves to be a man who has no other 
 
170 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 real concern with the plot ; he ought to 
 have been one of the family-friends to whom 
 we are introduced at the outset. It need 
 scarcely be said that many minor characters 
 perform one duty only without aesthetic 
 offence, and have important relations with 
 not more than one person — ^the physicians 
 and clowns, the lords and citizens, Audrey, 
 Tubal, Charmian, and a hundred more, the 
 " feeders," confidants, and purveyors of in- 
 formation. Even in far simpler casts than 
 Shakespeare's they are to be found — ^the 
 watchman in Antigone and the numerous 
 heralds from iEschylus' Supplices downwards. 
 Euripides' tendency is to take over such ! 
 characters and mortise them into the plot : i 
 a comparison of Pylades in the Choej^horoe \ 
 of iEschylus with Pylades in the Euripidean | 
 Orestes is most instructive. ;j 
 
 The third great use of economy is in j 
 dialogue. Here as elsewhere an important i 
 distinction holds between romantic and t 
 classic drama. In the ideal classic play ij 
 there would not be a single word which (] 
 gave no help to the development of the [i 
 plot ; in the ideal romantic play, dialogue 
 would be often expanded, not perhaps for 
 the sake merely of a " purple patch " (the 
 
OF DRAMA 171 
 
 question which we discussed above), but 
 to impress upon us more vividly the mo- 
 mentary situation {e.g. the poverty of 
 Romeo's Mantuan apothecary), and so less 
 directly than in the classical type to further 
 the action. So much is true in theory, but 
 there is no ideal instance of either form. 
 Sophocles, on the whole the most " classical " 
 of all playwrights, does develop speeches, 
 if not conversations, for the sake of " roman- 
 tic " momentary vividness, as CEdipus shows 
 in the Coloneus and Teucer in Ajax, since 
 (to be pedantic) the defence of (Edipus and 
 the praises of Ajax could have been put 
 effectively in fewer words. On the other 
 side, many passages in which Shakespeare 
 might seem to delay the plot for the sake 
 of " getting in " a structurally useless speech 
 will be found to perform a genuinely dramatic 
 function. Juliet's Nurse insists on relating 
 a brisk anecdote of her late husband. What 
 connexion can it claim with the plot ? 
 This : the remarkable fact needs explana- 
 tion, that the Nurse makes no difficulty 
 whatever in aiding her extremely young 
 mistress to carry on a love affair and contract 
 a marriage without the knowledge of her 
 parents. To understand this we must see 
 
172 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 her as what she is, a nerveless invertebrate 
 mass of hypertrophied sentiment. Nothing 
 could show this better than the talk assigned 
 to her, whereas a third-rate poet would have 
 left her uncharacterized, settling all scruples 
 about responsibility with the words " Here's 
 gold for thee ! " The two methods in dia- 
 logue do, then, often merge into one another ; 
 but the difference in tendency is unmis- 
 takable. Ibsen is in this department even 
 more " classical," in his realist dramas, than 
 Sophocles. If we take a sentence at random 
 from An Enemy of the People, our finger 
 lights upon Stockmann's question to the 
 Burgomaster : " Can you suggest any other 
 plan ? " These words extract from the 
 Burgomaster an expression of opinion about 
 Stockmann's report on the town water- 
 supply, and so directly bring Stockmann 
 into collision with the community. So it is 
 everywhere in this dramatist's most signifi- 
 cant work. Herein lies one reason for the 
 quality of his influence. His dialogue is 
 close-grained and absorbing, hardly ever airy, 
 degage. Even at its sprightliest it conveys 
 a sense of creeping moment ousness. Hence 
 Ibsen is not " popular " : he is too solid, 
 too concentrated for a genuine vogue with 
 
OF DRAMA 173 
 
 the multitude. But his thoughts are so 
 profound and permanently applicable, his 
 I technical skill so stupendous, that his influ- 
 ence steadily filters down through dramatists, 
 social theorists, students of literary art, 
 experts in the theatre, to the innumerable 
 average people who would not think of 
 actually going to witness an Ibsen perform- 
 ance. Thus he has in England collaborated 
 unseen not only with Mr. Shaw, Mr. Barker, 
 and others of the new school, but also with 
 playwrights who ostentatiously ignore him, 
 such as Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. H. A. Jones. 
 
 Returning to the main thread of this 
 essay, we remind ourselves that two essential 
 features of plot have now been discussed : 
 the existence of an answered question, and 
 the observance of economy. We now ap- 
 proach the third vital characteristic, the 
 most important and attractive topic in the 
 whole study of dramatic technique. 
 
 That topic has been partly anticipated 
 by the statement that the solution should 
 grow out of the problem. But there we 
 were considering the nature of a good solu- 
 tion. We are now to discuss the principles 
 of growth, the manner in which the relation- 
 ship between answer and problem is made 
 
174 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 out ; in short, how a plot is " worked." 
 The first rule here is that laid down by- 
 Aristotle : that a drama must have a 
 beginning, a middle, and an end. This 
 looks absurdly obvious ; but when the 
 philosopher explains that by " beginning " 
 is meant something naturally followed by 
 something else, but not necessarily preceded 
 by anything, that by " middle " is meant 
 something which implies precedent and pos- 
 terior events, and that an " end " is some- 
 thing naturally preceded, but not necessarily- 
 followed, by something else, we find at once 
 in these dry phrases a useful standard of 
 common sense in structure, and an explana- 
 tion of the vague irritation caused in us by- 
 many so-called plays. Shaw's Getting Mar- 
 ried has no middle and no end. Schnitzler's 
 Anatol and Barrie's Mary Rose have no 
 beginning, middle, or end ; they start, go 
 on, and leave off. Much has been already- 
 said of the first and last stages ; we are now 
 concerned mostly with " the middle." 
 
 Between the problem and the solution 
 there must intervene a phase of the action 
 which provides the material for the solution. 
 From the whole of our preceding discussion, 
 which showed colhsion, intensity, crispness, 
 
OF DRAMA 175 
 
 as qualities of drama, we should expect that 
 our second stage, the portion which reveals 
 the way to denouement, would provide the 
 required illumination not tamely or obviously, 
 but through some kind of shock. Moreover, 
 it is precisely here that the tautness and 
 excitement reach their height ; here is found 
 the play's culmination. This phase of the 
 action is named " crisis," " catastrophe," 
 or (by Aristotle) " peripeteia." All these 
 
 \ words mean more or less definitely the same 
 thing. " Crisis " means literally " the act 
 of judging," and in Greek medical science 
 was applied to the point at which a disease 
 
 I took a turn for better or worse — " the critical 
 moment." "Catastrophe" means "over- 
 throw." " Peripeteia " is " falling over," 
 "reversal," "recoil." All these etymolo- 
 gies indicate a fact which may be gathered 
 inductively from innumerable plays ; namely, 
 that the peripeteia is not any and every 
 increase of tension. The sudden return of 
 Romeo and his slaying of Tybalt is not a 
 peripeteia, nor is Macbeth's assassination 
 of Duncan, nor Henry the Fifth's harangue 
 on St. Crispin's Day, nor the scene where 
 Faust watches the infernal hound "growing 
 like an elephant " behind the stove in his 
 
176 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 study, nor Alceste's declamation of Si le 
 roi m' avail donne in Le Misanthrope, nor the 
 realization by Ramsden, in Man and Supper- 
 man, that Tanner is his fellow-guardian, 
 nor the first interview between Sabine and 
 Stangy in La Course du Flambeau, All 
 these, and hundreds more, are masterly, 
 some of them sublime ; their vigour, truth, 
 and tenseness are beyond praise. But none 
 of them is a peripeteia. The peripeteia 
 is not only a culmination of some scene or 
 situation : it is the culmination of the whole 
 drama, providing (as we said) information or 
 enlightenment necessary to the denouement, 
 and must show something more than vigour, 
 truth, and intensity, though all these are 
 demanded. That further quality is indi- 
 cated by its names : there must be a " recoil," 
 a sudden blow which alters the relations 
 between person and person, between the 
 various aspects of the situation. Let it 
 be said at once that (although we may find 
 bad catastrophes as easily as bad psychology 
 or bad dialogue — "Uncle Peter," in fact) 
 nothing here contradicts what has been said 
 earlier about the use of accident or about 
 organic connexion. The suddenness required 
 is nothing more than an immense accelera- 
 
OF DRAMA 177 
 
 tion of normal development. The persons 
 of the play have long been manipulating 
 their difficulty until, like the glasses of a 
 kaleidoscope, it falls over into a new pattern. 
 Peripeteia is a readjustment, a complete 
 change in the situation. As a general rule 
 tragedy exhibits a peripeteia with three 
 qualities : it is sudden, it is startling, it is 
 illuminating. As a general rule, again, the 
 peripeteia of comedy is simpler : one or 
 two of these three qualities may be absent. 
 Furthermore, some tragedies, like uEschylus' 
 Prometheus, contain peripeteias analogous 
 to those of comedy, and some comedies, 
 such as Aristophanes' Frogs, at this point 
 resemble tragedy. Perhaps the most ex- 
 hilarating pursuit provided by literary criti- 
 cism, and certainly the most indispensable 
 part of dramatic criticism, is to examine 
 each play that one reads or witnesses, 
 asking, " Where precisely does the peri- 
 peteia occur ? " and then to proceed with 
 study of the whole structure. For it will 
 occasionally be found that we have not 
 after all clearly conceived " the question of 
 the play," whether because we are misled 
 by our own illogical interest in some minor 
 point, or because the story is based upon 
 
% 
 
 178 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 real events familiar to us, and has yet been 
 so remodelled that the leading interest of 
 the drama differs somehow from the leading 
 interest of the actual events. 
 
 In Sophocles' CEdipus Tyrannus the three 
 great stages, Complication, Peripeteia, Solu- 
 tion, are unmistakable. The Complication 
 is the necessity to find and expel from Thebes 
 the man who slew Laius, since the pestilence 
 will not cease before this is done. CEdipus, 
 as king, takes measures to find the unknown 
 murderer, until towards the end his ruthless 
 questioning of the Herdsman reveals that the 
 offender is himself, and that therefore he is 
 not only the slayer looked for, but guilty 
 of parricide and incest. That is the Catas- 
 trophe. Finally the Denouement exhibits 
 the Solution : the suicide of his mother 
 Jocasta and his own self -blinding — acts 
 which in some sort expiate his involuntary 
 offences — and his determination to depart 
 into exile. Macbeth is full of exciting and 
 wonderful scenes, but the peripeteia is 
 clearly the disillusionment of Macbeth when 
 his magical defences fail. Here the " recoil " 
 is double, or rather continued — Birnam Wood 
 comes to Dunsinane, and later he is con- 
 fronted by an adversary not " born of 
 
OF DRAMA 179 
 
 But the suddenness is there ; 
 the catastrophe begins in a flash, marked 
 (if we need a mark) by the King's sudden 
 outcry, " Liar and slave ! " The difference 
 is simply that the catastrophe itself lasts 
 longer in Macbeth than in (Edipus. The 
 reversal is equally plain in Shaw's Major 
 Barbara : it is where Barbara Undershaft 
 finds that the authorities of the Salvation 
 Army are content to accept contributions 
 from a distiller whose trade is one of the 
 most powerful influences which they have 
 to combat. This realization brings her world 
 crashing about her ears ; she at first feels 
 that there is nothing left to live for. But 
 this is only the peripeteia ; as usual it is 
 to provide a solution. Not only does this 
 overthrow or recoil give the logical victory 
 to her father's opposing point of view : 
 far more than that, as soon as she grows 
 calm she discovers that her real life-work, 
 which she had supposed inextricable from 
 her allegiance to the Salvation Army — ^the 
 work, that is, of organizing social sanity 
 and happiness — is not in fact dependent 
 upon that allegiance, but can survive it ; 
 she goes on to perform the same task amid 
 new surroundings. In A DolVs House the 
 
180 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 catastrophe occurs with the brief sentence 
 of Torvald Hehner : "I don't want any 
 melodramatic airs." All the rest of that 
 famous scene is the denouement, the working 
 out of the solution which springs from the 
 illumination brought to Nora by her hus- 
 band's words. A beautiful catastrophe is 
 found in Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. 
 The play culminates in the brief passage 
 where Mrs. Erlynne steps from behind the 
 curtain, quietly claims the fan, and dis- 
 appears. This leads to a brilliant denoue- 
 ment wherein Lord Windermere and his 
 wife have each relinquished their divergent 
 views about Mrs. Erlynne and accepted 
 one another's, and that because of the same 
 fact.^ Still more unmistakably, if possible, 
 the peripeteia of Mrs. Dane's Defence occurs 
 where the heroine confesses her identity 
 with Felicia Hindemarsh ; the whole play 
 was written for the sake of its peripeteia. 
 So probably was the Venice Preserved of 
 Thomas Otway, a tragedy amazingly over- 
 rated ; the only compensation for the fal- 
 setto blank verse, the emotional hysteria, 
 
 ^ How much credit Wilde himself deserves for this first- 
 rate piece of construction is doubtful. See Mr. C. E. 
 Montague, Dramatic Values, pp. i8o at seq. 
 
 I 
 
OF DRAMA 181 
 
 and the babyish poUtics, is the discovery by 
 Jaffier of Renault's design upon Belvidera, 
 which discovery impels him finally to reveal 
 the revolutionary plot and so produces a 
 somewhat striking denouement based upon 
 Jaffier's agonized vacillation between love 
 for Belvidera and love for Pierre. 
 
 Julius Ccesar is of the deepest interest 
 in this connexion, as in so many others. 
 Apparently, most readers assume that the 
 catastrophe is the assassination of the dic- 
 tator ; but there are several objections to 
 this view. First, does not the war between 
 Brutus and Cassius, Antony and Octavius, 
 become a curiously long and otiose adden- 
 dum ? Secondly (if we may begin to quote 
 our own rules), where is the surprise which 
 we noted as one of the three qualities shown 
 by the tragic peripeteia ? The murder of 
 Julius has been clearly foreshadowed through- 
 out the earlier scenes, and corresponds thus 
 to the murder of Duncan. Moreover — 
 though it must be confessed that this is an 
 argument of doubtful relevance — ^this assas- 
 sination was fatally familiar to Elizabethan 
 audiences, as familiar as the result of 
 Waterloo to a modern English audience. 
 Fourthly, if this event is the culmination of 
 
182 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 the tragedy, why has the poet characterized 
 Caesar so feebly ? This weakness has often 
 been remarked ; it seems strange that what 
 might appear the finest moment in hterature, 
 the moment when the greatest of writers 
 portrayed the greatest man of action, should 
 be half-spoiled. Why has Shakespeare made 
 Caesar a far less engrossing figure than 
 Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Shylock, and 
 Falstaff ? All these difficulties are solved 
 if we merely content ourselves with looking 
 at what the dramatist has done instead of 
 what we assume he ought to have intended. 
 If we look for a turn of events sudden, 
 startling, and illuminating, we find it at 
 once, not in the assassination, but in the 
 thrilling emergence of Mark Antony as a 
 formidable opponent of the repubhcans. 
 The " question of the play " is not " What 
 is to become of Caesar ? " but " What is to 
 become of the republican rising ? " An- 
 tony's Funeral Speech is the peripeteia, 
 and the war which fills the later scenes is 
 no addendum, but a magnificent and thor- 
 oughly appropriate denouement. 
 
 It was remarked above that in comedy 
 peripeteia tends to be less remarkable, or 
 less distinguished as possessing all the three 
 
OF DRAMA 183 
 
 qualities we mentioned, than it is in tragedy. 
 If we turn to Aristophanes, perhaps the 
 world's greatest comic genius, this impression 
 will be deepened. In the Plutus, the peri- 
 peteia or recoil is the recovery of sight by 
 the blind god of wealth, which is followed 
 by an effective solution or denouement. 
 But the catastrophe is not sudden ; it is 
 foretold and elaborately prepared. Never- 
 theless it is startling and illuminating. 
 Here, and in most of this playwright's work 
 the peripeteia arrives much earlier than 
 elsewhere, and in most it is of the com- 
 paratively mild type. His peripeteia usually 
 occurs at the consummation of the topsy- 
 turvy idea with which the play opens — what 
 Heine called the Weltvernichtungsidee. In 
 The Acharnians the tension rises steadily 
 until the preposterous private peace between 
 a single Athenian citizen and the Spartan 
 confederacy is completed and confirmed by 
 the overthrow of Lamachus, the bombastic 
 champion of militarism. This victory is 
 the peripeteia, fairly sudden, quite startling, 
 but not markedly illuminating : the illu- 
 mination has been given progressively. 
 Nevertheless, the position has been radically 
 altered. Then follows a long denouementy 
 
184 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 with a farcical, not comic, presentation of 
 the blessings thus secured. The Peace is 
 closely similar ; so is The Birds and most 
 other comedies from the same pen. In 
 Moliere's Tartuffe the catastrophe occurs at 
 the moment when Orgon crawls from be- 
 neath the table in complete disillusionment 
 as to Tartuffe's character : — 
 
 Voild, je vous Tavoue, un abominable homme ! 
 Je n'en puis revenir, et tout ceci m'assomme. 
 
 This is surely a fine " recoil " or peripeteia, 
 but it is neither sudden nor startling, for 
 we have long known that Tartuffe is making 
 love to Elmire, and have watched the rather 
 elaborate preparation made by her for the 
 enlightenment of Orgon. And enlightened 
 he certainly is ; the " illumination " we 
 spoke of is provided in full measure. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is obvious that many 
 comedies have catastrophes no less complete 
 than those of the greatest tragedies. Even 
 Aristophanes has at least one good example. 
 In The Frogs, Dionysus, who has descended 
 into Hades with the purpose of fetching 
 Euripides back to life as the greatest tra- 
 gedian, suddenly announces that he will take 
 iEschylus instead ; this peripeteia is techni- 
 cally akin to those of tragedy. That exquis- 
 
OF DRAMA 185 
 
 ite artist, Terence, has created a beautiful 
 catastrophe in The Brothers : it is not any 
 revelation about the love affairs, but Demea's 
 change of front, caused by his own reflec- 
 tions on the rival theories of education and 
 social amenity held by his brother and him- 
 self. Similarly, in the Phormio, the bigamy 
 of Chremes is revealed to much purpose 
 by the resourceful sycophant. Sheridan's 
 School for Scandal provides by means of 
 the celebrated screen a perfect peripeteia. 
 Synge's Playboy of the Western World (though 
 its fame depends upon superb dialogue, 
 compared with which the plot is of small 
 interest) contains an excellent peripeteia in 
 the sudden appearance of the " murdered " 
 father. 
 
 It is, on the other side, equally obvious 
 that tragedies not infrequently exhibit catas- 
 trophes such as we have shown to be often 
 present in comedy. That of Othello is 
 gradual, conviction being pressed upon the 
 hero more and more effectually in several 
 scenes ; but it ends in a convulsion startling 
 and (as it seems to Othello) illuminating. 
 That of ^schylus' Persce — ^the appalling 
 announcement to the Persians of the utter 
 overthrow at Salamis — is not illuminating 
 
186 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 until reinforced by the admonitions and 
 prophecies uttered by the ghost of Darius. 
 
 In short, every drama has a peripeteia, 
 whether more elaborate or less. There is 
 always a reversal of the situation, a climax 
 of tension which alters fundamentally the 
 original posture of affairs. If any alleged 
 drama contains no such feature, it is not a 
 play at all. This dictum will cease to appear 
 wantonly pedantic when we reflect that 
 such works (for instance, Mr. Shaw's Getting 
 Married) are felt on all hands to be un- 
 satisfactory, and that we are only assigning 
 a precise reason for this dissatisfaction. 
 
 Before we leave this part of our theme, 
 sometliing must be said concerning the 
 preparation for the peripeteia. In the 
 greatest plays we saw that the illumination 
 provided comes suddenly. But however 
 startled we may be when it arrives, we shall 
 certainly be puzzled or antagonized unless 
 the way has been paved for it. The catas- 
 trophe must be " led up to," in such a way 
 that we accept it as reasonable without, 
 however, having foreseen it. This applies 
 to the most consummate tragedies. In 
 others, and more frequently in comedy, we 
 have observed preparations so elaborate and 
 
OF DRAMA 187 
 
 obvious that, illuminating as the climax is, 
 and sudden as it often is, it is in these 
 plays not startling. But the method of 
 preparation for a perfect peripeteia needs 
 examination. Frequently it takes the form 
 of a whole scene, inserted (so to put it) for 
 this purpose only. In The Merchant of 
 Venice occurs a brief interview between 
 Antonio, when in chains, and Shylock. 
 Short as it is, this passage is highly valuable 
 to the plot. First, it brings home to us the 
 realization of the Jew's purpose : it is the 
 complement to the earlier interview in which 
 the bargain was struck. Further, we obtain 
 artistic pleasure from the reversal of posi- 
 tions : he who before was the fawning in- 
 ferior stands forth as the arrogant master ; 
 he who lorded it with easy pride now begs 
 indulgence. But- — most important of all — 
 we are quietly prepared for the approaching 
 swing-round of sympathy. If we are to 
 feel during the trial scene as the poet wishes 
 us to feel, we must have rid ourselves of that 
 irritation against Antonio, that sympathy 
 with Shylock, which the early part of the 
 drama has naturally awakened. Shake- 
 speare has set this scene, at first sight so 
 trifling, just in this place for just this 
 
188 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 purpose ; he means to obliterate a great 
 deal of the emotion aroused by that un- 
 answerable outburst beginning 
 
 Signior Antonio, many a time and oft, 
 In the Rialto, you have rated me 
 About my monies, and my usances. 
 
 Another, and far finer, example is afforded 
 by Macbeth. The early scenes are wrought 
 with such astounding skill that although 
 Macbeth meditates the crime of murder 
 itself upon one who is his sovereign, his 
 guest, his benefactor, a virtuous man aged 
 ; and asleep, we yet hold our breath in fear 
 I lest he should not accomplish his design. 
 We are all on Macbeth's side, and look with 
 cold hostility upon the good m_en and true 
 who hold him in suspicion after the crime is 
 discovered. This is a miracle of craftsman- 
 ship, but its success makes it all the harder 
 to secure our hearty applause for the de- 
 struction of the usurper at the end. To 
 meet the need, Shakespeare gives us a brief 
 scene, most unwisely omitted in some modern 
 representations — ^the butchery of Macduff's 
 wife and splendid little son. This concen- 
 tration of pathos, horror, shame, and vil- 
 lainy brings mercilessly before us the mean- 
 ing to Scotland of Macbeth's dominion ; it 
 
OF DRAMA 189 
 
 is forced violently upon our gaze, and we 
 sicken. In a companion scene this is brought 
 to bear — the announcement to Macduff and 
 his friends. One notes in passing how the 
 two passages are stuck deep into our minds 
 by what can only be called the ferocious 
 quaintness of the language — " What, you 
 egg ! Young fry of treachery ! " and 
 
 What, all my pretty chickens and their dam 
 At one fell swoop ? — 
 
 words that even amid the gorgeous language 
 of the whole tragedy cannot be forgotten. 
 So it is that when Macduff, not Malcolm 
 (for we have not actually witnessed the 
 murder of Duncan, his father), at length 
 faces the tyrant, all our sympathy is 
 found to have deserted Macbeth for his 
 adversary. 
 
 Equal skill is put forth by ^schylus in 
 Agamemnon, or, more exactly, in the tri- 
 logy of which that drama is the first 
 part. Throughout most of Agamemnon the 
 playwright wishes us to see events from 
 Clytsemnestra's point of view, although she 
 treacherously murders her husband, on his 
 triumphant return from Troy, in order to 
 be free for ^Egisthus and to share Agamem- 
 non's throne with him. Therefore not only is 
 
190 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 her husband represented as cold, arrogant, 
 shallow ; the outrage he inflicted years ago 
 upon his wife by slaying their daughter 
 Iphigeneia is time and again mentioned, 
 above all in an unspeakably beautiful and 
 pathetic lyrical narrative. Again, although 
 the Queen has a lover, through all the 
 terrible scenes of her own plotting and 
 crime she stands alone, while Agamemnon's 
 unwilling concubine Cassandra is exhibited 
 by him with careless brutality to his wife 
 and to the whole city. Thus everything is 
 done to secure our sympathy for Clytsem- 
 nestra. But when this tragedy is over, we 
 are to pass at once to The Libation-Bearers^ 
 wherein Orestes avenges his royal father by 
 slaying the murderess, his own mother, and 
 retains our sympathy even while so acting. 
 If this sympathy is to be possible every 
 available device is clearly needed. Accord- 
 ingly we find Orestes impelled to his frightful 
 task, not only by desire to avenge his father 
 and seize the usurped sceptre, but by the 
 unmistakable fiat of the Most High and by 
 appalling threats in the event of disobedience. 
 But the special point we have now in mind 
 is this. Just as we are about to enter upon 
 The Libation-Bearers^ at the close of Agamem- 
 
OF DRAMA 191 
 
 non, we are prepared for the necessary 
 swing-round of sympathy by the entrance 
 of ^gisthus, Clytsemnestra's paramour, who 
 sums up in his own person all the evil of 
 which the Queen is guilty, everything which 
 can rouse our hostility against her. Had he 
 appeared in the earlier scenes, the atmos- 
 phere and tone which iEschylus there needed 
 would have been impossible. The poet 
 introduces him not too soon, and just in 
 time. 
 
 Each of these three great phases, com- 
 plication, catastrophe, and denouement, is 
 exposed to a peculiar and special danger. 
 It is enough here to remind the reader of 
 that which threatens the second phase. 
 We have already shown that those catas- 
 trophes are bad which are obtruded on us 
 with no warning at all — ^the deiis ex machina, 
 or " Uncle Peter " as we called him. 
 
 The commonest weakness of complication- 
 scenes (" First Acts ") is an over-developed 
 medley of incidents and minor characters, 
 which offer a number of false trails and 
 prevent us from seeing as early as we 
 should what the problem or question is. 
 Ancient drama, by its very nature as 
 " classical " work, contains no instance of 
 
192 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 this ; but for the analogous reason it is 
 fairly common in modern drama. Such a 
 bushy beginning is to be found in M. Henri 
 Lavedan's Viveurs. This is an admirably 
 vigorous picture of many people whose 
 interests clash or entwine themselves to- 
 gether, but all is detailed and minor ; only 
 late in the play do we fully realize that it 
 is Mme. Blandin's emotional experience and 
 development which provide the structure. 
 But it is significant that spectators of the 
 presentation found far less difficulty, since 
 the role of Mme. Blandin was played by one 
 of the most celebrated actresses in the world, 
 Mme. Rejane. A similar vagueness, but 
 sooner dispelled, marks the opening of Mr. 
 Granville Barker's The Madras House : Hux- 
 table's daughters are so numerous and so 
 talkative that, while one admires the dread- 
 ful verisimilitude of the household, one 
 wonders (as the phrase goes) " what it is all 
 about." This quality is often to be re- 
 marked in Russian drama, not excluding 
 Tchekof's celebrated Cherry Orchard. Or 
 we may go much further and assert that the 
 Russian playwrights tend to employ this 
 " bushiness " from beginning to end of a 
 play ; construction melts into atmosphere. 
 
OF DRAMA 193 
 
 foreground merges into background. This 
 applies to some English work influenced 
 by the Russian vogue ; for example, Mr. 
 Shaw's Heartbreak House, which formally 
 claims to be "a Fantasia in the Russian 
 manner on English themes," is certainly 
 justified of its pretensions. It does indeed 
 possess a plot which can be stated, but the 
 plot is well-nigh overgrown by a jungle of 
 little happenings, minor exits and entrances, 
 and unrelated controversies which exist only 
 to convey atmosphere. 
 
 Much more needs to be said about denoue- 
 ment ; and before we discuss its besetting 
 danger, let us point to a feature which is 
 fairly common in our time and which has 
 been mistakenly censured. This feature has 
 often been described by the remark : " The 
 curtain descends upon a note of interroga- 
 tion." It may seem clear that, if the con- 
 cluding phase should provide a " solution," 
 nothing could well be worse than to end with 
 a question, a difficulty unsettled. But here 
 is a misunderstanding. The " last act " 
 must solve the original complication, but 
 it may itself, without any breach whatso- 
 ever of artistic perfection, contain a question 
 or actually consist of one. The reader will 
 
194 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 recall a familiar joke. " Is it true that you 
 Americans always answer one question with 
 another ? " '' Do we ? " Take the finale 
 of A DolVs House, It matters nothing that 
 we end with a breach between husband and 
 wife which may or may not be closed and 
 the possibility of closing which is actually 
 mooted by them. That breach, however 
 important, is no flaw in the dramatic 
 structure ; nay, it is necessary to the 
 solution. The denouement demanded by the 
 earlier scenes is certainly not a new modus 
 Vivendi arranged by the illuminated Torvald 
 and Nora. Neither is yet competent to 
 suggest any really satisfying and sound 
 basis of married life ; indeed Nora's spiritual 
 immaturity is again and again pressed upon 
 us — it is this which involves her with 
 Krogstad, this which alone justifies the 
 tarantella dance and the macaroons. No ; 
 the poet has carefully and justly restricted 
 the denouement to this, that Nora's eyes 
 are completely opened to the conditions of 
 her married life, and that she insists on 
 understanding things better than she does 
 before continviing to live with her husband ; 
 the " question " is an integral and vital 
 part of the solution. Again, in the Rhesus 
 
OF DRAMA 195 
 
 attributed to Euripides, it is not clear, from 
 the play itself, whether the Trojans, when 
 they arm at the close, are going forth to 
 victory or disaster ; but that does not 
 imply any futility at all in the dramatic 
 form, since the question set by the tragedy 
 is only this : What will result from the 
 unexpected arrival of Rhesus to succour 
 Troy ? It has been objected against Mr. 
 Barker's play. The Voysey Inheritance, that 
 we cannot tell, when the curtain falls, 
 whether young Edward Voysey will be 
 exposed and ruined or not. This, again, 
 matters nothing to the plot, which is con- 
 cerned, not with his social repute or wealth, 
 but only with the question : How will he 
 face the strange responsibility fixed upon 
 him by his father ? He accepts it with all 
 its consequences ; what the danger actually 
 brings to him is not the point, and Mr. 
 Barker has shown admirable artistic bold- 
 I ness in leaving unanswered an irrelevant 
 i question— to answer it would have been to 
 blur the issue. 
 
 The danger which does beset the solution- 
 stage of the play is utterly different ; it is 
 an irrational simplicity, or rather simplifica- 
 tion, the adoption of improper short cuts 
 
i 
 196 THE NATURE AND METHODS ; 
 
 in order to end matters quickly, neatly, ' 
 completely. The reason for this seems to i 
 be that the playwright has misconceived the i 
 nature of a dramatic ending ; he inclines j 
 to confuse climax, catastrophe, peripeteia, j 
 with conclusion, denouement, solution. As ^ 
 we have seen, the catastrophe does not \ 
 properly solve the problem, but provides j 
 a method of, or means to, a solution ; j 
 thereafter follows, or should follow, a phase ' 
 equally needed, the working-out of the 
 solution. CEdipus Tyr annus affords an ex- 
 cellent example of this difference, but there 
 are naturally many such masterpieces. In 
 Man and Superman Mr. Shaw produces a 
 fine catastrophe in Ann's avowal of her love 
 to John Tanner ; but how he will meet this 
 crisis is a new question, and (in view of the \ 
 character and opinions which he has re- | 
 vealed) a question fraught with deep in- \ 
 t crest. In The Brothers, by Terence, the 
 climax (we saw) is Demea's decision to 
 change his manners. This forms anything 
 but a conclusion or solution : we look with 
 excited amusement to see how this resolve 
 will affect the two young men and the 
 elderly Micio whom Demea has at length 
 decided to beat at his own game. Juliust 
 
 I 
 
OF DRAMA 197 
 
 Ccesar contains a very long elaborate denoue- 
 ment which no one could conceivably confuse 
 with the peripeteia. In Moliere's Le Misan- 
 thrope the peripeteia is of course the scene 
 where the coquette Celimene is at length 
 " brought to book " by the production of her 
 hopelessly damaging letter in the presence 
 of her various suitors. But no reader or 
 spectator can tell whether this will or will 
 not throw her finally into the arms of 
 Alceste ; in fact the conclusion is probably 
 felt by most as a shock. 
 
 But instances need not be multiplied ; 
 any good play distinguishes climax and 
 conclusion. Only bad writers entirely con- 
 fuse them ; nevertheless, competent play- 
 wrights do at times incline towards such 
 confusion. But we must beware of bringing 
 under this head plays with a denouement 
 which is brief, or less interesting than the 
 climax or perhaps than any of the earlier 
 scenes, as in many light comedies, such as 
 Mr. Arnold Bennett's' T^^ Honeymoon, The 
 fault we have in view is the idea that after 
 the peripeteia there is nothing to do save to 
 " pick up the pieces " — the audience knows 
 and understands everything ; let us simply 
 square things up and ring down the curtain. 
 
198 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 So it comes to pass that the characters 
 forget their own natures, drop the purposes 
 which have sustained them hitherto, reveal 
 ludicrously casual forgetfulness or generosity, 
 in order to put everything " straight." Thus 
 at the close of Cymbeline, so as to get rid 
 of the war with Rome which might disturb 
 the spectators amid the joy caused by all 
 the personal reconciliations, the King glibly 
 utters this incredible announcement : — 
 
 And, Caius Lucius, 
 Although the victor, we submit to Caesar, 
 And to the Roman empire, promising 
 To pay our wonted tribute, from the which 
 We were dissuaded by our wicked queen : 
 Whom heavens, in justice, both on her and hers. 
 Have laid most heavy hand. 
 
 This calm assumption, conceived by a British 
 king, that Heaven willed the subjection of 
 Britain to Rome so definitely as to make 
 patriotism a species of impiety — an assump- 
 tion which would be out of the question in 
 the body of any play, whether composed by 
 Shakespeare or by the completest dunce — 
 is a first-rate example of what we may term 
 the " huddled " ending. It would be difficult 
 to find elsewhere quite such perfect rubbish, 
 but the lapse in technique is common. 
 Euripides' Alcestis provides at the close 
 
OF DRAMA 199 
 
 not only no account of the manner in which 
 Heracles rescued the Queen from the Death- 
 fiend (an omission which may well have a 
 vital bearing on the whole plot), but no 
 conversation or real contact between Ad- 
 metus and his restored wife. In Monsieur 
 Piegois, by M. Alfred Capus, Piegois not 
 only relinquishes his career as director of 
 the casino, but gives the whole concern 
 over to the town, for no discoverable reason 
 save to create an amiable sensation in the 
 theatre. St. John Hankin, too, sinned 
 grievously in The Two Mr, Wetherbys. The 
 whole point of Richard Wetherby is his 
 humorous but adamantine resolve not to 
 come back to his wife. The plot is built 
 on this, but at the last moment, though 
 no new factor has appeared, he collapses, 
 simply for the sake of a good "curtain" — 
 to produce a neat tableau of two couples 
 instead of one couple plus two isolated 
 persons ; it is the cheapest theatricality, 
 and a most curious phenomenon in this 
 author, who expressed himself later very 
 strongly against the mechanical " happy 
 ending," and in such an admirable drama 
 as The Last of the de Mullins achieved a 
 capital solution. "Huddled" scenes are in- 
 
200 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 deed usually employed to secure a '' happy 
 ending," as in the numberless Elizabethan 
 plays where incongruous and unsuspecting 
 minor persons are hastily betrothed by an 
 unscrupulous dramatist. The Duke in 
 Twelfth Night at the last minute turns 
 unaccountably to Viola from Olivia ; at 
 the end of A Winter^s Tale, Camillo and 
 Paulina become affianced without having 
 shown any hint of such interest in one 
 another — simply because it is the end of 
 A Winter's Tale, not the beginning ; Isa- 
 bella's acceptance of the Duke in Measure 
 for Measure is still worse. These absurd 
 nuptials, and a hundred more, are poverty- 
 stricken devices to secure that crispness of 
 action which should depend on sanely- 
 developed psychology, not on a feverish 
 hustle less appropriate to a clear-headed 
 artist than to a traveller who wildly packs 
 a portmanteau just in time for his train. 
 Oscar Wilde's cynical attitude towards the 
 stage was never revealed more pungently 
 than when at the close of The Importance of 
 Being Earnest he bade Miss Prism and the 
 Canon fall into one another's arms without 
 the shadow of excuse or warning. The 
 conclusion of The Merchant of Venice is in 
 
OF DRAMA 201 
 
 this respect highly curious. The peripeteia 
 is, of course, the sudden ruUng that Shylock 
 must take no more and no less than exactly 
 one pound of flesh. The denouement (properly 
 so called) is not the whole of what follows, 
 namely part of the Fourth, and the whole of 
 the Fifth, Act; that portion of the drama 
 contains the genuine denouement and more. 
 For the problem of the play is ; What will 
 result from Shylock' s hatred against An- 
 tonio ? The denouement as usual gives the 
 answer by aid of the peripeteia : Shylock 
 is utterly baffled, while Antonio receives 
 both life and money to compensate his 
 losses at sea. Therefore the play might 
 have ended with the close of the Trial 
 Scene, and assuredly the Fifth Act, delightful 
 as it is and containing as it does some of the 
 most marvellous poetry that even Shake- 
 speare ever penned, strikes us all as a kind 
 of appendix ; we hardly feel that it is 
 needed. We should regard it still more 
 definitely as intrusive had not the playwright 
 mechanically inserted a few hooks in the 
 Fourth Act whereon to hang it, notably the 
 brief scene where the supposed advocate 
 and clerk coax Bassanio and Gratiano into 
 surrendering their rings. Further, we are 
 
202 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 prepared for the scene of Lorenzo and 
 Jessica by Antonio's insistence before the 
 court that Shylock be compelled to provide 
 for them. All this seems anything but a 
 huddled ending ; it shows on the contrary a 
 quite languid development. There is never- 
 theless a short huddled passage concernedwith 
 the main plot. Antonio is to be fully restored, 
 and so Portia suddenly thrusts at him certain 
 letters — how she came by them we are left to 
 guess — ^which report that all his supposedly 
 lost ships are " safely come to land." 
 
 A moment ago we used the phrase " main 
 plot." It might seem from our discussion 
 of plot that the term is self-contradictory. 
 But secondary or minor plots of course 
 abound. Are they legitimate ? This ques- 
 tion is not so troublesome as might appear. 
 An "under-plot" is always interesting and 
 complete in itself (else it would not be a 
 plot at all) but it may and should support 
 the main action. Just so an ^Eschylean 
 play can be read — now, unfortunately, must 
 as a rule be read — and appreciated in itself ; 
 but on studying the whole trilogy we per- 
 ceive that it forms part of a still greater 
 organism. The by-play of Trinculo and 
 Stephano is valuable as bringing out the 
 
OF DRAMA 203 
 
 nature of Caliban and so strengthening our 
 appreciation of Prospero. But if the two 
 plots are essentially separate and are only 
 tied together by some thin device, for ex- 
 ample, by the fact that the same character 
 happens, and merely happens, to take part 
 in both, then the minor plot is technically 
 improper. It may be magnificent in itself 
 — ^the Falstaff scenes of Henry IV,, Part I., 
 fall under this category — but it is a flaw 
 in the whole drama as a drama. We are, 
 in short, presented with two plays instead 
 of one. We may say, if we choose, that the 
 discussion deals purely with technical labels ; 
 but on the other side let us not deny that 
 no one can recollect the whole action of 
 Henry IV., Part I., of A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, of Cymbeline, without two entirely 
 distinct mental processes, exactly as the 
 reader of Dickens finds it an effort to remem- 
 ber that Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Ehjah Pogram 
 appear between the covers of the same 
 novel. 
 
 It may prove useful, before bringing this 
 essay to an end, to discuss a few among the 
 many misconceptions which have helped 
 to confuse popular opinion and even pro- 
 fessional criticism — misuse of words and 
 
204 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 incorrect doctrines. " Dramatic " is a term 
 often wrongly applied. People think of 
 drama, not as a certain form of art, but as 
 what they have been accustomed to see in 
 a theatre. Now, the majority of successful 
 plays in our time (to mention no other) 
 have been less strong in genuine dramatic 
 art than in theatricality — ^that is, a vivid 
 picture of bustle, violence, excitement, a 
 falsetto note of vague momentousness. Play 
 after play has been presented which is de- 
 rived, not from life or any direct thought 
 about life, but from imitation of the last 
 piece which has won applause. Hence that 
 artificial heightening and stressing, those 
 sudden entrances and exits, those French 
 windows, those " strong curtains," all the 
 va-et'Vient of alternate emotions with which 
 every one is so familiar, and which — here is 
 the deadly point — ^form the only scenic 
 pabulum available in the vast majority of 
 provincial towns. Then, what is merely 
 theatrical is dubbed " dramatic " ; any occa- 
 sion when one feels that " something is 
 going to happen " is given this adjective. 
 An important criminal case is called " drama- 
 tic " because the black cap lies on the judge's 
 table, or because a Cabinet Minister is a 
 
OF DRAMA 205 
 
 witness — that is, we experience the appetiz- 
 ing thrill which a pretentious stage-spectacle 
 affords. The judge's rebuke has even become 
 a jocular proverb : " This court is not a 
 theatre." As a fact, a murder case may be 
 utterly undramatic, and a trial which centres 
 round a sordid theft may be full of drama, 
 as Mr. Galsworthy has admirably demon- 
 strated. Another abused word is " tra- 
 gedy," incessantly applied by journalists to 
 any violent death, apparently because in 
 so many real tragedies the chief person loses 
 his life. It will naturally be so, since this 
 is the easiest way to communicate a sense 
 of solemnity and to strip the disguise from 
 people and situations. But even if a tragedy 
 always contained a death (which is not true) 
 it by no means follows that every death, 
 even violent death, is tragic. It must 
 involve not only a human life, but also the 
 victory, defeat, or rescue of some idea 
 important to human beings. But in news- 
 paper jargon, if a pauper dies just before 
 news of sudden wealth reaches him, or if a 
 child is killed by an overdose of medicine, 
 these events are called tragedies. Pitiful 
 they are, but not (as reported) tragic in the 
 least ; there is far more of tragedy in the 
 
206 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 death of a bird, if it means what Ibsen's 
 wild duck means. So debased is our use of 
 words that a few years ago a newspaper 
 remarked concerning certain deaths from 
 disease : " Some of these tragedies are 
 dramatic " ! A third misused term is " catas- 
 trophe." Critics have been known to apply 
 it loosely to the conclusion of a drama, thus 
 mischievously confusing climax or peripeteia 
 with denouement Far more frequent is the 
 implication of " disaster," mostly (it is true) 
 about real and non-dramatic events, such 
 as a fatal shipwreck, but sometimes of a 
 disastrous event in the course of a play, 
 which is not a real catastrophe in the least, 
 such as Caesar's murder, or the death of 
 Alcestis. 
 
 Few doctrines are more frequently ex- 
 pressed than this, that tragedy, or even 
 comedy, shows Man in conflict with Fate, 
 or Circumstance, as it is sometimes called. 
 One hears a good deal about " puppets of 
 Fate," and Mr. Thomas Hardy plainly 
 imagines himself to have derived from 
 iEschylus a point of view which, though it 
 leaves his works unimpaired as magnificent 
 works of art, does make them at times 
 grossly unfair pictures of the Divine Govern- 
 
OF DRAMA 207 
 
 ment ; namely, his idea that the dice are 
 always cogged in favour of sorrow, waste, 
 misunderstanding, that accident is invariably 
 unhappy accident. Such a doctrine can be 
 attributed to ^schylus only by a grave 
 mistake. And as regards the general pro- 
 position, it is possible to regard drama as 
 depicting Man's struggle against Fate only 
 if we dilute " Fate " until all definite mean- 
 ing vanishes. What a playwright ultimately 
 believes as a religious or metaphysical fact 
 is one thing ; what he actually adduces as 
 the initial point of his play is another. 
 And he always thus adduces a specific 
 situation clearly attributable to the circum- 
 scribed acts, hopes, and fears of people, 
 not to any arrangement of the Universe ; 
 even in the Prometheus we are concerned 
 with a purely personal Zeus. 
 
 It is a common theory that dramatists 
 should present us with "a slice of life." 
 Two errors are here combined: that drama 
 imitates life, and that the author cuts off 
 a portion from a real sequence of events and 
 stages it without more ado. The latter idea 
 need not detain us. It is plain that a 
 dramatist organizes his material, giving to 
 it structure and lucidity, emphasizing ten- 
 
208 THE NATURE AND METHODS 
 
 dencies only latent in actual affairs, and 
 omitting the irrelevant. But that he imi- 
 tates life may seem a more attractive theory. 
 His real task, however, is not to imitate 
 but to interpret, and the semblance of 
 actuality is but the beginning of the work. 
 Constable represented the Glebe Farm accu- 
 rately, no doubt, but his painting will never 
 be mistaken for a coloured photograph. 
 Similarly, the most realistic of playwrights 
 may vividly present a quarrel or a con- 
 spiracy, but he is transmuting in the very 
 moment at which we cry, " How natural ! " 
 —he gives text and comment in one breath, 
 which is the method of all art. 
 
 Finally, the most famous of all theories 
 concerning the drama may be dismissed in 
 few words. It was long claimed that tragedy 
 should follow the "classical" style and 
 conform to the Three Unities, of Action, Time, 
 and Place, because Aristotle in his Poetic 
 has so ordained. Not only is it possible 
 to reply that Aristotle's " rules " do not 
 bind human activity for ever, not only is it 
 obvious to point out that, in all his "rules," 
 he is manifestly doing no more than to 
 codify the practice of Greek playwrights in 
 his own and earlier times ; much more than 
 
OF DRAMA 209 
 
 all this, it is the bald truth — ^though it is 
 difficult to believe it, for this celebrated 
 " rule " has been repeated for centuries and 
 has cramped French tragedy in the hands 
 of great masters — it is the truth that Aristotle 
 never mentions the ''Three Unities." He 
 insists, naturally, on the importance of 
 unity in action, and makes one passing 
 remark that it is advisable to restrict the 
 events of a drama to one revolution of the 
 sun, but has not a word on the "Unity of 
 Place," which is signally violated in the 
 Eumenides of iEschylus, the Ajax of Soph- 
 ocles, and in several of Aristophanes' 
 comedies. The "Three Unities" are the 
 greatest imposture in the history of criticism. 
 
INDEX OF PLACES 
 
 IE. =^schylus, Ar. =Aristoplianes, B. =Barker, E. =Euripides, 
 G. = Galsworthy, H. =Hankin, I. =Ibsen, M. =Moli6re, 
 P. =Pmero, S. =Sophocles, Sh. =Shakespeare, W. =Wilde 
 
 vEgean Sea, 41 
 
 Argos, 17, 41 
 
 Athens, 5-6, 38-9, 44, 46 
 
 — and Persia, 5-6 
 
 Aulis, 16 
 
 Belmont, 140 
 Birmingham, Repertory 
 
 theatres in, 107 
 Birnam Wood, 178 
 Brighton, 87 
 Britain, 43, 50, igS 
 
 Cathay, 5 
 
 Ghristchurch, Oxford, 66 
 Colchis, 30 
 Copenhagen, 52 
 Corinth, 30, 35 
 
 Dakota, 31 
 Dublin, 107 
 Dunsinane, 141, 178 
 
 Eastcheap, 140 
 
 England, 1-2, 3, 5, 49, 57, 
 
 124 ; in the nineteenth 
 
 century, 3 
 Europe, 4 
 
 Fife, 167 
 
 Forest of Arden, 141 
 
 Gadshill, 117 
 
 Gaul, 43 
 
 Germany, Ibsen in, 52, 56 
 
 Glasgow, 107 
 
 Greece, 11, 41 
 
 Hades, in Ar. Frogs, 47, 184 
 Hampton Court, 141 
 
 lolchos, 29 
 Ireland, 4 
 
 London, 3, 52, 107-8 
 
 Monte Carlo, 66 
 Mycenae, 24 
 
 New South Wales, 164 
 Nile, 141 
 
 Persia, 5-6, 185-6 
 Phthia, 19 
 
 Queensland, 31 
 
 Rialto, The, 188 
 Rome, 124, 188 
 
 Salamis, 185 
 
 Scandinavia, I.'s plays in, 52 
 
 Scotland, 4, 188 
 
 Sipylus, 19 
 
 Spain, 43 
 
 Sparta, and King of Sparta, 40 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon, 141 
 
 Thebes, 178 
 Thessaly, 43 
 Troy, 16, i8, 20, 24, 40, 41-2, 
 
 189, 195 
 Tuileries, 73 
 
 Wales, 4 
 I Waterloo, 
 
 181 
 
212 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 
 
 Names of authors in small capitals, of works in italics 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, see Drink- 
 water 
 
 Acharnians, The, see Aristo- 
 phanes 
 
 Achilles, in E. /. at A., i6 £f., 
 41 ; speech of, trans., 18 ff. 
 
 Achurch, Miss Janet, 52 
 
 Admetus, 130, 199 
 
 Admirable Crichton, The, see 
 Barrie 
 
 ^gisthus, in M. A gam., 189- 
 91 ; in E. Electra, 24, 26 f. 
 
 ^scHYLUS, 25, 47, 146, 147, 
 148, 189 ff. 
 
 — and Hardy, 206 
 
 — in Ar. Frogs, 184 
 
 — Agamemnon, 133, 154, 
 
 189 ff. 
 
 — ChoephorcB, 150, 170 
 
 — Eumenides, 209 
 
 — Perscs, catastrophe of, 185 f . 
 
 — Prometheus Vinctus, 150, 
 
 207 ; economy in, 169 ; 
 peripeteia in, 177 
 
 — Supplices, 170 
 
 — The Libation - Bearers 
 
 {=:Choeph.), 190 ff. 
 Agamemnon, in M.Ag. , i8g i. ; 
 
 in E. Electra, 17 ff., 24 fE. 
 Agamemnon, see -^Eschylus 
 Ajax, see Sophocles 
 Alceste, in M, Le Misanthrope, 
 
 150, 176, 197 
 Alcestis, in E. Ale, 130, 199, 
 
 206 
 Alcestis, see Euripides 
 Alice in Wonderland, 67 
 Anatol, see Schnitzler 
 Andersen, Hans, 140 
 Andreiev, The Sabine Women, 
 
 133 
 
 Androcles and the Lion, see 
 Shaw 
 
 Andromache, in E. Andr., 40 
 Andromache, see Euripides 
 Antigone, see Sophocles 
 Antonio, in Sh. M. of V., 75-6, 
 
 168, 187-8, 201-2 
 Antony, Mark, in Sh. /. C, 
 
 136, 140 ; his funeral 
 
 speech, 156, 182 
 Antony and Cleopatra, see 
 
 Shakespeare 
 Apollo, in E. Electra, 24 
 Archer, Mr. William, 52 ; 
 
 his Play making, 112 n. ; 
 
 (pp. 23-41), 145 n. 
 Are You a Mason ? 152 
 Aristophanes, ii, 148 
 
 — and Euripides, 45 ff. 
 
 — and the " Three Unities," 
 
 209 
 
 — his comedy often passes 
 
 into farce, 120-1 
 
 — Acharyiians, 183 
 
 — Birds, 184 
 
 — Frogs, 46 ; peripeteia in, 
 
 177, 184 
 
 — Peace, 184 
 
 — Plutus, 183 
 Aristotle, 162 ; and the 
 
 " Three Unities," 208-g ; 
 on irrational elements in 
 drama, 130 ; on plot, 
 144 ; on slaves, 33 
 Aristotle's canons, 53 ; 
 desis, 132 ; peripeteia, 
 
 175 
 
 — rule of plot-construction, 174 
 
 Arms and the Man, see Shaw 
 
 Artemis, 17, 41, 168 
 
 As You Like It, see Shakes- 
 peare 
 
 Athena, in E., 45 
 
 Atreus, sons of, in E. /. at A., 
 18 
 
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 213 
 
 Audrey, in Sh, As You, 170 
 AuGiER, La Pierre de Touche, 
 
 153 
 
 Avari^s, Les, see Brieux 
 
 BacchcB, see Euripides 
 Back to Methuselah, see Shaw 
 Baillie, Joanna, 49 
 Banquo, 167 
 
 Barker, Mr. Granville, 52, 
 60, 74, 86 ff., 106, 173, 
 
 195 
 
 Prunella, 86 
 
 The Madras House, 86, 
 
 90 ff., 154, 192 
 The Marrying of A nn 
 
 Leete, 71, 87-8, 93 
 The Voysey Inheritance, 
 
 88-9, 93, 195-6 
 
 Waste, 89-90 
 
 Barrie, Sir J. M., 67 
 
 Mary Rose, 174 
 
 Peter Pan, 67, 163 
 
 The Admirable Crichton, 
 
 67 
 Bartholomew Fair, see Jonson 
 Bassanio, in Sh. M. of V., 168, 
 
 201 
 Belvidera, in Otway's V. Pres., 
 
 181 
 Bennett, Mr. Arnold, 67 ; 
 
 his " sense of the theatre," 
 
 67 
 
 Milestones, 67 
 
 The Honeymoon, 67 ; 
 
 peripeteia in, 197 
 
 The Title, 67 
 
 Bernadotte, 134 
 
 Besier, Mr. Rudolf, 64 ; 
 
 Don, 64 
 Birds, The, see Aristophanes 
 Blanco Posnet, see Shaw 
 Blandin, Mme., in Lavedan's 
 
 Viveurs, 192 
 Bloomfield Bonnington, Sir 
 
 Ralph, in Shaw, Dr.'s Dil., 
 
 16 
 Bluntschli, in Shaw, A. and 
 
 M., II, 150, 169 
 Borridge, Ethel, in H. Cass. 
 
 Eng., 79 
 Bottomley, Mr. Gordon, 59 
 Boucicault, Dion, 49, 160-1 
 
 Boy, The, see Pinero 
 Brack, Judge, in I. H. G., 167 
 Bracknell, Lord, in W. Import., 
 
 60 
 Bradley, Professor A. C, 
 
 142 ; his Shakespearean 
 
 Tragedy, 115 n. 
 Brassbound, Captain, in Shaw, 
 
 26 
 Brieux, M., 106, 125 
 Brothers, The, see Terence 
 Browning, 59 
 Burglar Who Failed, The, see 
 
 Hankin 
 Burgoyne, General, in Shaw, 
 
 Devil's D., 14-5 
 
 Caesar, in Sh. Cymb., 198 
 
 — in Sh. /. C, 206 
 
 CcBsar and Cleopatra, see 
 
 Shaw 
 Caesar, Julius, his landing in 
 
 Britain, no 
 in Shaw, C. and CI., 42, 
 
 97-8 
 Cairn, David, in Mrs. G.'s 
 
 Necklace, 152 
 Caius Lucius, in Sh. Cymb., 
 
 198 
 Calchas, in E. /. at A., 17, 19 
 Calderon, George, 60, 71, 
 
 104 ff. 
 Camillo, in Sh. A W.'s T., 
 
 200 
 Candida, see Shaw 
 Capulets and Montagues, in 
 
 Sh. R. and J., 158 
 Capus, M. Alfred, M. Piigois, 
 
 132, 199 
 Carlyle, 4 
 
 Cassandra, in M. A gam., 190 
 Cassilis Engagement, The, see 
 
 Hankin 
 
 — Geoffrey, in H. The C. 
 
 Eng., 79 
 Cassio, in Sh. 0th., 136 
 Cassius, in Sh. /. C, 136 
 Caste, see Robertson 
 Cecily, Lady, in Shaw, Capf. 
 
 B., 23 
 Celimene, in M. Le Misan., t.so, 
 
 197 
 Chantecler, see Rostand 
 
214 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Charity that began at Home, 
 
 The, see Hankin 
 Charmian, in Sh. A. and CI., 
 
 170 
 Charrington, Mr. Charles, 52 
 Charteris, in Shaw, Philand., 
 
 lOI 
 
 Cherry Orchard, see Tchekof 
 Chiron, mentioned in E. /. at 
 
 A., 18 
 Chremes, in Terence, Phormio, 
 
 185 
 Cleon, 45, 47 
 Cleopatra, in Sh. A. and C, 
 
 136, 140 
 Clytaemnestra, 17, 20, 189 ff. 
 CoNGREVE, 60, 103, 149 
 Constable, 208 
 
 Constant Lover, The, see Han- 
 kin 
 Coriolanus, see Shakespeare 
 Course du Flambeau, see 
 
 Hervieu 
 Courtney, Mr. W. L., 69 
 Critic, The, see Sheridan 
 Crusoe, Robinson, see Defoe 
 Cusins, in Shaw, Maj. B., loi 
 Cymbeline, see Shakespeare 
 
 Dane's Defence, Mrs., 187, see 
 
 Jones 
 Darius, 186 
 Darlington, Lord, in W. Ly. 
 
 W.'s Fan, 61 
 David Garrick, 49 
 Davies, Mr. H. H., Mrs. 
 
 Gorringe's Necklace, 152 
 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson 
 
 Crusoe, has no plot, 112 ff. 
 Demea, in Ter. Brothers, 185, 
 
 196 
 Denison, Lady, in H. Charity, 
 
 78 
 Desdemona, 154, 167 
 Devil's Disciple, The, see Shaw 
 Dickens, 3, 49, loi 
 Dionysus, 184 
 Divine Gift, The, see Jones 
 Doctor's Dilemma, The, see 
 
 Shaw 
 Doll's House, A, see Ibsen 
 Don, see Besier 
 Don Juan in Hell, see Shaw 
 
 Doyle, Larry, in Shaw, Jo. B., 
 
 104 
 Drama and Life, see Walkley 
 Dramatic Values, see Mon- 
 tague 
 Drinkwater, Mr. John, 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, 135 
 Dubedat, Louis, in Shaw, Dr.'s 
 
 Dil., 9 
 Dudgeon, Dick, in Shaw, 
 
 Devil's D., 96, 99 
 — Mrs., in Shaw, Devil's D., 
 
 16 
 Dumas ^/s, Francillon, 169 
 Duncan, in Sh. Macb., 167, 
 
 175, 181, 189 
 
 Eldest Son, The, see Gals- 
 worthy 
 
 Electra, in E. EL, 24 ff. 
 
 Electra, see Euripides 
 
 Elizabeth, 138 
 
 Elmire, in M. Tartuffe, 184 
 
 Emilia, in Sh. 0th., 136 
 
 Enemy of the People, An, see 
 Ibsen 
 
 Enobarbus, in Sh. A. and C, 
 136 
 
 Erlynne, Mrs., in W. Ly. W.'s 
 Fan, 180 
 
 Ervine, Mr. St. John, 115 n. 
 
 Eugene Marchbanks, in Shaw, 
 Cand., 103 
 
 Euripides, 1-48 ^fl55jw, 146 ff., 
 158, 170 
 
 — in Ar. Frogs, 184 
 
 — Alcestis, 34, 197 ; accident 
 
 in, 130 
 
 — Andromache, 34, 39, 40 
 
 • — BacchcB, lo-i (qd. in trans.) 
 
 — Electra, 2.^fi. 
 
 — Hecuba, economy in, 169 
 
 — Helena, 119 
 
 — Hippolytus, 34, 168, 190 
 
 — Iphigenia at Aulis, 16 ff., 
 
 41-2 
 
 — Medea, 29 ff., 31, 123, 135, 
 
 150 
 
 — Orestes, 118, 170 
 
 — Rhesus, 194 
 Eustace, in H. Prodigal, 81 
 Every Man out of his Humour, 
 
 see JoNSON 
 
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 215 
 
 Hamlet, in Sh. H., iii, 115 n. 
 
 142 ff., 182 
 Hamlet, see Shakespeare 
 Hankin, St. John, 60, 71 
 
 76 ff., 81, 105-6 
 • The Burglar who failed, 
 
 76 
 The Cassilis Engagement, 
 
 76, 79 
 The Charity that began 
 
 at Home, 76, 78-9 
 
 The Constant Lover, 76 
 
 The Last of the de 
 
 Mullins, 76, 79-80, 199 
 The Return of the Pro- 
 digal, 76 fi., 80 
 The Two Mr. Wetherhys, 
 
 76-7, 199 
 Hardy, Mr. Thomas, and M., 
 
 206 
 Tess of the D' Urbervilles, 
 
 75 
 The Return of the Native, 
 
 93 
 Harpagon, in M. L'Avare, 
 
 141-2 
 Hauptmann, 158 
 Heartbreak House, see Shaw 
 Hector, 40 
 
 Hecuba, see Euripides 
 Hedda Gabler, see Ibsen 
 Hedwig, in I. W. Duck, 76 
 Heine, 183 
 Helen, mentioned in E. /. at A., 
 
 41 
 
 Helena, see Euripides 
 
 Helmer, Nora, in I. Doll's H., 
 56, 131, 180, 194 
 
 — Torvald, in I. Doll's H., 
 56, 131, 180, 194 
 
 Henry the Fifth, in Sh. 
 Hy. v., 175 
 
 Henry the Fifth, see Shakes- 
 peare 
 
 Henry the Fourth, see Shakes- 
 peare 
 
 Henry the Sixth, see Shakes- 
 peare 
 
 Hepplewhite, 106 
 
 Heracles, in M. Prom. V., 
 169 ; in E. Ale, 130, 199 
 
 Heralds, in M. Supplice.^. 
 etc., 170 
 
 Falstaff, in Sh., 140, 182 ; 
 in Hy. IV., 117, 140, 168, 
 203 ; in Sh. M. Wives, 138 
 
 Faust, III, 175 
 
 Faust, see Goethe 
 
 Felicia Hindemarsh, in Jones, 
 Mrs. D.'s Def., 180 
 
 Ferrand, in G. Pigeon, 81 
 
 Ferrovius, in Shaw, Andr., 100 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 49 
 
 Fontenais, Mme., in Hervieu, 
 La C. du Fl., 151 
 
 Fool, in Sh. Lear, 151 
 
 Forbes-Robertson, Sir John- 
 ston, 97 
 
 Fountain, The, see Calderon 
 
 Francillon, see Dumas 
 
 Friar Laurence, in Sh. R. and 
 J., 128. 158 (qd.) 
 
 Friday, Man, in R. Crusoe, 
 107 
 
 Frogs, The, see Aristophanes 
 
 Froufrou, see Meilhac- 
 Hal^vy 
 
 Galsworthy, Mr. John, 60, 
 71, 74, 80 ff., 105, 205 
 
 Justice, 84-5, 125 
 
 Strife, 154 
 
 The Eldest Son, 81 
 
 The Pigeon, 81-2 (qd.) 
 
 The Silver Box, 82 ff . 
 
 The Skin Game, 85 
 
 Gamp, Mrs., 203 
 
 Garnett, Miss, in Shaw, Can- 
 dida, 103 
 
 Garrick, David, 49 
 
 George Dandin, see Moliere 
 
 Getting Married, see Shaw 
 
 Ghosts, see Ibsen 
 
 Gloria, in Shaw, You Never, loi 
 
 Goethe, Faust, 122, 147 (qd.) 
 
 Gorringe's Necklace, Mrs., see 
 Davies 
 
 Grant, General, iii 
 
 Gratiano, in Sh. M. of V., 201 
 
 Grieg, 133 
 
 Guinea - Hen, in Rostand, 
 Chantecler, 153 
 
 Hal, Prince, in Sh. Hy. IV., 168 
 
 Hallam, Sir Howard, in Shaw, 
 
 Capt. B.,^i6, 22 ff., 26 
 
216 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Herdsman, in S. (E. Tyr., 178 
 Hervieu, 158 ; La Course dit 
 
 Flambeau (qd.), 151 
 Hill, Jenny, in Shaw, Maj. B., 
 
 44 
 Hippolytus, see Euripides 
 Hobbyhorse, The, 53 ; see 
 
 Pinero 
 Honeymoon, The, see Bennett 
 Hotspur, in Sh. Hy. IV., 140 
 HousMAN, Mr, Laurence, 86 
 How He Lied to her Husband, 
 
 see Shaw 
 Huxtable family, in B. Madras 
 
 H., 90, 92, 192 
 
 lago, in Sh. 0th., 136-7, 167 
 Ibsen, 50, 53 ff., 62, 69, 95, 
 
 loi, 106-7, 136, 148, 158, 
 
 etc. etc. 
 
 — chief aim of, 54, 124 
 
 — dialogue in, 162 
 
 — his influence on English 
 
 playwrights, etc., 59, 64, 
 
 173 
 
 — A Doll's House, 49, 52, 55, 
 
 128, 131, 179, 194 
 
 — An Enemy of the People, 52, 
 
 57, 172-3 
 
 — Ghosts, 54, 56 fE, 
 
 — Hedda Gabler, 53-4, 58, 
 
 136-7, 147, 163, 167-8 
 
 — Little Eyolf, 154 
 
 — Peer Gynt, 163 
 
 — Rosmersholm, 52 
 
 • — • The Master Builder, 136 
 
 — The Wild Duck, 52, 58, 76, 
 
 136, 206 
 
 Idea of Tragedy, The, see 
 Courtney 
 
 Importance of Being Earnest, 
 The, see Wilde 
 
 lo, in IE. Prom. V., 169 
 
 Iphigenia at Aulis, see Euri- 
 pides 
 
 Isabella, in Sh. Meas. for M., 
 200 
 
 Jack Straw, see Maugham 
 Jacob, mentioned in Sh. M. of 
 
 v., -75 
 Jaffier, in Otway, Venice Pres., 
 181 
 
 Jason, in E. Medea, 28 £f., 36 
 Jessica, in Sh. M. of V., 202 
 Jocasta, in S. CE. Tyr., 178 
 John Bull's Other Island, see 
 
 Shaw 
 Jones, Mr. Henry Arthur, 
 
 60, 67-8, 173 
 Michael and his Lost 
 
 Angel, 68 
 Mrs. Dane's Defence, 
 
 180 
 
 The Divine Gift, 68 
 
 The Liars, 68 
 
 The Philistines, 68 
 
 Jones, in G. Silver Box, 83 
 JoNSON, Ben, 149 
 Jourdain, M., 154 
 Julia, in Shaw, Philand., loi 
 Juliet, in Sh. R. and J., 128 
 Juliet's nurse, in Sh. R. and J., 
 
 171 
 Julius Caesar, in Sh. /. C, 135, 
 
 181 
 Julius CcBsar, see Shakes- 
 peare 
 Justice, see Galsworthy 
 
 Keats, 72 
 
 Kent, in Sh. Lear, 151 
 
 King Lear, see Shakespeare 
 
 Krogstad, in I. D.'s Ho., 128, 
 
 131, 194 
 Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, a 
 good melodrama, 119 
 
 Laban, 75 
 
 Lady Windermere's Fan, see 
 
 Wilde 
 Laius, in S. (E. Tyr., 178 
 Lamachus, in Ar. Ach., 183 
 Land of Promise, The, see 
 
 Maugham 
 La Pierre de Touche, see 
 
 AUGIER 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 161 
 Last of the de Mullins, The, 
 
 see Hankin 
 Lavedan, M. Henri, Viveurs, 
 
 192 
 Lavinia, in Shaw, Andro., 100 
 Liars, The, see Jones 
 Libation - Bearers, The, see 
 
 iEsCHYLUS 
 
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 217 
 
 Linden, Mrs., in I. D.'s Ho., 
 
 128, 131 
 Little Eyolf, see Ibsen 
 London Assurance, see Bouci- 
 
 CAULT 
 
 Longfellow, 104 
 Lorenzo, in Sh. M. of V., 202 
 Louka, in Shaw , A . and M . , 169 
 Love and Mr. Lewisham, see 
 Wells 
 
 Macaulay, 3-4 
 
 Macbeth, in Sh. Macb., 113, 
 
 115 n., 142, 150, 167, 175, 
 
 178, 182, 188-9 
 
 — his soHloquies, 156 
 
 — Lady, in Sh. Macb., 140, 
 
 150 
 Macbeth, see Shakespeare 
 MacduiT, 188 f. 
 Madras, Constantine, in B. 
 
 M. House, 90 
 Madras House, The, see 
 
 Barker 
 Maeterlinck, M., 74 ; dia- 
 logue in, 155 
 Magistrate, The, see Pinero 
 Major Barbara, see Shaw 
 Mak, in the Secunda Pastorum 
 " Towneley " Miracle- 
 Play, 112 
 Malcolm, in Sh. Macb., 189 
 Man and Superman, see Shaw 
 Man in the Stalls, The, see 
 
 SUTRO 
 
 Man of Destiny, The, see Shaw 
 Marchbanks, Eugene, in Shaw, 
 
 Candida, 103 
 Marivaux, 121 
 Marrying of Ann Leete, The, 
 
 see Barker 
 Marston, Westland, 49, 61, 
 
 107 
 Mary Rose, see Barrie 
 Masefield, Mr. John, 60, 71 
 Master Builder, The, see 
 
 Ibsen 
 Maugham, Mr. Somerset, 66 ; 
 
 Jack Straw, 66 ; The 
 
 Land of Promise, 67 
 Maximes et Reflexions Morales, 
 
 of La Rochefoucauld, 
 
 161 
 
 Measure for Measure, see 
 
 Shakespeare 
 Medea, in E. M., 29 ff., 35 ff., 
 
 I35> 148 
 Medea, see Euripides 
 Meilhac-Hal^vy, Froufrou, 
 
 154 
 Menelaus, in E. /. at A., 19 
 
 — in E. Androm., 40 
 Merchant of Venice, The, see 
 
 Shakespeare 
 Mercutio, in Sh. R. and J., 
 
 151 ; his Queen Mab 
 
 speech, 156, 158 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 
 
 see Shakespeare 
 Messengers in Greek tragedy, 
 
 156 n. 
 Micawber, 138 
 Michael and his Lost Angel, 
 
 see Jones 
 Micio, in Terence, Brothers, 196 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 see Shakespeare 
 Milestones, see Bennett 
 Miranda, in Sh. Tp., 156 
 Misalliance, see Shaw 
 Misanthrope, Le, see Moliere 
 
 MOLIERE, 121, 148-9 
 
 — George Dandin, 116 n. 
 
 — [L'Avare], 141-2 
 
 — Le Misanthrope, 150, 176, 
 
 197 
 
 — Tartuffe, 124, 184 
 
 M. Piegois, see Capus 
 
 Montague, Mr. C. E., Dra- 
 matic Values, p. 27 qd., 
 116 n. ; p. 227 qd., 156 n. ; 
 pp. 180 et seq. referred to, 
 180 n. 
 
 Montagues and Capulets, in 
 
 Sh. R. and J., 158 
 More 11, Rev. James, in Shaw, 
 
 Cand., 12-3, 16, 103-4 
 Mozart, 133 
 Mrs. Dane's Defence, 180 
 
 — Gorringe's Necklace, see 
 
 Davies 
 
 — Warren's Profession, see 
 
 Shaw 
 de Mullins, The Last of the, 
 
 see Hankin 
 De Musset, 125, 
 
218 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Nan, The Tragedy of, see 
 
 Masefield 
 Napoleon, 6, 134; in Shaw, 
 
 Man ofD., 15-6 
 Nereus, mentioned in E. /. at 
 
 A., 19 
 Nora Helmer, in I. D.'s H., 
 
 56, 131, 180, 194 
 Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, The, 
 
 see PiNERO 
 Nym, in Sh., 151 
 
 Oberon, in Sh. M. N. Dr., 165 
 O'Connell, Amy, in B. Waste, 
 
 89, 95 
 CEdipus, in S. OE. Col., 171 ; 
 
 in (E. Tyr., 179 
 CEdipus Coloneus, Rex, Tyran- 
 
 nus, see Sophocles 
 Old Wives' Tale, see Peele 
 Olivia, in Sh. Tw. N., 200 
 One of the Best, 138 
 On ne badine pas avec V amour, 
 
 see De Musset 
 Orestes, in JE., 146-7 ; 
 
 Choeph., 190 ; in E. EL, 
 
 24-5, 27 ; Or., 148 
 Orestes, see Euripides 
 Orgon, in M. Tartuffe, 184 
 Othello, in Sh. 0th., 167, 182, 
 
 185 
 Othello, see Shakespeare 
 Otway, Thomas, Venice Pre- 
 
 serv'd, 180 
 
 Palmerston, 2 
 
 Paris, mentioned in 1^. I. at A., 
 
 Patrick Cullen, Sir, in Shaw, 
 
 Dr.'s Dil. (qd.), 9 
 Patterne, Sir Willoughby, 138 
 Paulina, in Sh. A W.'s T., 200 
 Peace, The, see Aristophanes 
 Peele, George, Old Wives' 
 
 Tale, 157 
 Peer Gynt, see Ibsen 
 Peleus, 19, 21 
 Pelias, 29 
 Pericles, 2 
 
 PerscB, see ^schylus 
 Perseus, 137 
 
 Persians, in IE. Perscs, 185 
 Peter Pan, see Barrie 
 
 Phaedra, in E. HippoL, 148, 
 
 168 
 Phidre, see Racine 
 Philanderers, The, see Shaw 
 Philistines, The, see Jones 
 Phillips, Stephen, 59 
 Phormio, see Terence 
 Pickwick, Samuel, 139 
 Piigois, M., see Capus 
 Pierre, in Otway, V. Pres., 181 
 Pigeon, The, see Galsworthy 
 PiNERO, Sir Arthur, 53, 55, 
 
 60, 68-70, 105, 173 
 Pistol, in Sh., 151 
 Plantagenet kings, in Sh., 140 
 
 — mother in Robertson, Caste, 
 
 62 
 Plato and women, 34 
 Playboy of the Western World, 
 
 see Synge 
 Players, in Sh. Hamlet, 142 
 Playmaking, see Archer 
 Plutus, see Aristophanes 
 Pogram, Elijah, in Dickens, 
 
 M. Chuz., 203 
 Polonius, in Sh. H., 115 n., 
 
 143-4 
 Polydorus, in E. Hecuba, 169 
 Polyxena, in E. Hecuba, 169 
 Pompey the Great, see Mase- 
 field 
 Portia, in Sh. M. of V., 140, 
 
 154, 168, 202 
 Preserving Mr. Panmure, see 
 
 PiNERO 
 
 Prince Hal, in Sh. Hy. IV., 
 
 168 
 Prism, Miss, in W. Import., 200 
 Private Secretary, The, 12 
 Professor A. C. Bradley, 
 
 Shakespearean Tragedy, 
 
 115 n., 142-3 
 Professor of Greek, in Shaw, 
 
 Maj. B., 7 
 Prometheus, in IE. Prom. V., 
 
 147, 169 
 Prometheus Bound, see 
 
 iEsCHYLUS 
 
 — Unbound, see Shelley 
 
 — Vinctus, see ^schylus 
 Prospero, in Sh. Tp.. 128 
 
 and n., 141, 165, 203 ; his 
 narrative, 156 
 
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 219 
 
 Prunella, see Barker and 
 
 HOUSMAN 
 
 Puck, in Sh. M. N. Dr., 165 
 Punch, 3, 53 
 Pygmalion, see Shaw 
 Pylades, 170 
 
 Racine, Phedre, 156 n. 
 Raina, in Shaw, A. and M., 
 
 150, 169 
 
 Ramsden, in Shaw, Man and 
 Sup., 176 
 
 Raphael's " School of Athens," 
 129 
 
 " Recits de Theramene," 156 n. 
 
 Rejane, Mme., 192 
 
 Renault, in Otway, V. Pres., 
 181 
 
 Return of the Native, The, see 
 Hardy 
 
 Return of the Prodigal, The, 
 see Hankin 
 
 Rhesus, see Euripides 
 
 Robertson, Thomas, 49-50, 
 53, 61-2, 66, 107 
 
 Caste, 49, 53 ; char- 
 acters in, 62 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 107 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, see Defoe 
 
 Rochefoucauld, La, see 
 La R. 
 
 Rodin, 73 
 
 Roman triumvirs, in Sh., 140 
 
 Romeo, in Sh. R. and J., 128, 
 158, 171, 175 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, see Shake- 
 speare 
 
 Rosalind, in Sh. As You, 
 141 
 
 Rosmersholm, see Ibsen 
 
 Rostand, M., Chantecler, 153, 
 156, 163 
 
 Sabine, in Hervieu, La C. du F., 
 
 151. 176 
 
 Sabine Women, The, see 
 
 Andreiev 
 Saranoff, in Shaw, A. and M., 
 
 12, 16 ff., 169 
 Sartorius, Blanche, in Shaw, 
 
 Wid. Ho., 10 1 
 Schiller, 48 
 Schnitzler, Anatol, 174 
 
 School for Scandal, screen- 
 scene in, see Sheridan 
 
 " School of Athens," 129 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 49 
 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The 
 see Pinero 
 
 Shakespeare, 52, 69, 84, loi, 
 115 n., 140, 142 ff., 148, 
 158, 182, 187-8, 198 ; as 
 comedian, 121 ; his chief 
 aim, 54, 124 
 
 — Antony and Cleopatra, 136 
 
 — As You Like It, 1 70 
 
 — Coriolanus, hostile collision 
 
 in, 150 
 
 — Cymbeline (qd.), weak con- 
 
 clusion of, 169, 198, 
 203 
 
 — Hamlet, 112 n., 122, 142 ff.; 
 
 Ervine on, and peripeteia 
 in, 115 n. ; supernatural 
 agency in, 165 
 
 — Henry the Fifth, 138, 156, 
 
 175 
 
 — Henry the Fourth, 150, 168, 
 
 203 
 
 — Henry the Sixth, a chronicle, 
 
 140 
 
 — Julius Ccssar, 133, 135-6 
 
 (qd.), 196-7; funeral 
 speech in, 156 ; catas- 
 trophe in, I 8 1-2 
 
 — King Lear, 151 
 
 — Macbeth, 53, 112, 167, 175, 
 
 188-9 ; double recoil in, 
 178 
 
 — Measure for Measure, 200 
 
 — Merchant of Venice, 75-6 
 
 (qd.), 150, 165, 170; 
 preparation for peripeteia 
 in, 187 ; Fifth Act. 
 peripeteia, denouement, 
 and conclusion in, 201 
 
 — Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 
 138 
 
 — Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 203 ; magic in, 165 
 
 — Othello, 117 ff.; a melo- 
 
 drama, 124, 137, 150, 167 ; 
 catastrophe of, 185 
 
 — Romeo and Juliet, 128, 172, 
 
 175; accident in, 151; 
 Mab speech in, 156-7 
 
220 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Shakespeare, Tempest, 127, 
 12811. ; accident in, 130, 
 151 ; magic in, 165 ; Pros- 
 pero's narrative in, 156, 
 203 
 
 — Titus Andvonicus, 133 
 
 — Twelfth Night, 108, 200 
 
 — Winter's Tale, The, 165, 200 
 Shakespearean Tragedy, see 
 
 Bradley 
 Shaw, Mr. George Bernard, 
 1-48 passim, 52, 58, 60, 
 71, 74, 79 ff., 95 ff., 155, 
 
 173 
 
 Androcles and the Lion, 
 
 100 
 Arms and the Man, 12, 
 
 150, 169 
 
 — • — Back to Methuselah, 98-9 
 
 Blanco Posnet, 99 
 
 CcBsar and Cleopatra 
 
 (qd.), 42 ff., 97-8 
 Candida, 10, 12 ff., 
 
 103 (qd.) 
 Captain Brassbound's 
 
 Conversion, 22-3 
 Devil's Disciple, 14-5, 
 
 96 ff. 
 
 Doctor's Dilemma, 8 
 
 Don Juan in HeU = 
 
 Act iii. of Man and Sup., 
 
 102 
 Getting Married, loi, 174, 
 
 186 
 
 Heartbreak House, 98, 193 
 
 How He Lied to her 
 
 Husband, 9 
 John Bull's Other Island, 
 
 32, 104 
 Major Barbara, 7, 32, 
 
 43-4. 99, loi, 179; dia- 
 logue in, 159 
 Man and Superman, 39, 
 
 150, 176, 196 
 
 Man of Destiny, 15-6 
 
 Mrs. Warren's Profes- 
 sion, 32, 39, 122 
 
 Pygmalion, 160 
 
 The Philanderers, loi 
 
 Widowers' Houses, 32 
 
 You Never Can Tell, loi 
 
 Shelley, 4 
 
 — Prometheus Unbound, 147 
 
 Sheraton, 106 
 
 Sheridan, 50 ; Critic, 49-50 ; 
 School for Scandal, 185 
 
 Shylock, in Sh. M. of V., 75-6, 
 139, 168, 182, 187-8 (qd.), 
 201-2 
 
 Silver Box, The, see Gals- 
 worthy 
 
 Skin Game, The, see Gals- 
 worthy 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 4 
 
 Solness and others, in I. 
 M. B., 136 
 
 Sophocles, 54, 115 n., 121, 
 125, 146, 148, 172 ; 
 dialogue in, 155 ; his 
 chief aim, 54, 124 
 
 — Ajax, 171, 209 
 
 — Antigone, 149-50, 170 
 
 — CEdipus Coloneus, 122, 171 
 
 — CEdipus Rex {=Tyr.), 53 
 
 — CEdipus Tyrannus, 123, 124, 
 
 163, 196; accident in, 
 127-8; complication, peri- 
 peteia, solution in, 178 
 
 — Philoctetes, 154 
 Spanish Tragedy, see Kyd 
 Sphinx, in Shaw, C. and CI., 42 
 Spintho, in Shaw, Andro., 100 
 Stangy, in Hervieu, La C. du 
 
 F., 176 
 Stephano, in Sh. Tp., 202 
 Stephen Phillips, 59 
 Stockmann, in I. En. Pea., 
 
 57 (qd.). 172 
 Strife, see Galsworthy, 57 
 Supplices, see ^schylus 
 SuTRo, Mr. Alfred, 66-7 
 Swindon, Major, in Shaw, 
 
 Devil's D., 15 
 Synge, J. M., dialogue in, 
 
 155 ; The Playboy of the 
 
 Western World, peripeteia 
 
 in, 185 
 
 Talbot, in Sh. [Hy. VI.], 140 
 Tanner, John, in Shaw, Man 
 
 and Sup., 150, 176, 196 
 Tanqueray, Mrs., in P. Second 
 
 Mrs. T., 69-70 
 Tartuffe, in M. Tart., 184 
 Tartuffe, see Moliere 
 Tchekof, 98, 192 
 
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 221 
 
 Tempest, The, see Shake- 
 speare 
 
 Tennyson, 3-4, 59 
 
 Terence, 185 ; dramaturgic 
 economy of, 169 ; 
 
 Phormio, 185 ; The 
 Brothers, 185 ; climax in, 
 196 
 
 Tess of the D'Urhervilles, see 
 Hardy 
 
 Teucer, in S. Ajax, 171 
 
 Thackeray, 49 
 
 " Theramene, Recits de," 
 156 n. 
 
 Thetis, 17, 19 
 
 Tims, in G. Pigeon, 81 
 
 Title, The, see Bennett 
 
 Titus Andronicus, see Spiake- 
 
 SPEARE 
 
 Tortoise, in Rostand, Chante- 
 
 cler, 153 
 Tragedy of Nan, see Mase- 
 
 FIELD 
 
 Trebell, Henry, in B. Waste, 
 
 52, 89, 94 ff. 
 Trench, Harry, in Shaw, Wid. 
 
 Ho., loi 
 Trenchard, Voysey, in B. 
 
 V. Inherit., 92 
 Trinculo, in Sh. Tp., 202 
 Trois Filles de M. Dupont, Les, 
 
 see Brieux 
 Trojans, in E. /. at A., 41 ; 
 
 Rhesus, 194; in Homer, i8 
 Tubal, in Sh. M. of F., 170 
 Tudor nobles, in Sh., 140 
 Twelfth Night, see Shake- 
 speare 
 Two Mr. Wetherhys, The, see 
 
 Hankin 
 Tybalt, in Sh. R. and J., 151, 
 
 175 
 
 Types of Tragic Drama, see 
 Vaughan 
 
 " Uncle Peter," as deus ex 
 
 machina, 164, 176 
 Undershaft, in Shaw, Maj. B. 
 
 (qd.), 43-4 
 
 — Barbara, in Shaw, Maj. B., 
 
 179 
 
 — Stephen, in Shaw, Maj. B. 
 
 (qd.), 43-4 
 
 Valentine, in Shaw, You Never, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Vanbrugh, 50 
 
 Vaughan, Professor C. E., 
 
 Types of Tragic Drama, 
 
 115 n. 
 Venice Preserv'd, see Otway 
 Victoria, Queen, 5 
 Viola, in Sh. Tw. N., 200 
 Viveurs, see Lavedan 
 Voysey family, in B. V. 
 
 Inherit., 88, 91, 93-4, 195 
 Voysey Inheritance, The, see 
 
 Barker 
 
 Walkley, Mr. A. B., Drama 
 
 and Life, 142 ff., 160 andn. 
 Professor Bradley's 
 
 " Hamlet," 143-4 (<ld.) 
 — • — on Sh. Hamlet, 157 n. 
 Walpole, Horace, his saying 
 
 on life, 117 
 — Sir Robert, and stage 
 
 censorship, 49 
 Waste, see Barker 
 Watchman, in S. Antigone, 
 
 170 
 Watts, the painter, 72 
 Wells, Mr. H. G., Love and 
 
 Mr. Lewisham, 92 
 Werle, Gregers, in I. Wild 
 
 Duck, 76 
 Wetherby, Richard, in H. 
 
 The Two Mr. W.'s, 199- 
 
 200 
 Wetherby s. The Two Mr., see 
 
 Hankin 
 White field, Ann, in Shaw, Man 
 
 and Sup., 150, 196 
 Widowers' Houses, see Shaw 
 Wild Duck, in I. W. D., 
 
 206 
 Wild Duck, The, see Ibsen 
 Wilde, Oscar, 60 £E., 66, 75, 
 
 79, 103, 105, 180 andn. 
 
 ^ dialogue in, 161-2 
 
 Lady Windermere's Fan, 
 
 61 ; catastrophe and 
 
 denouement in, 180 
 The Importance of Being 
 
 Earnest, 12, 60, 119 
 Windermere, Lady, in W. 
 
 Ly. W.'s Fan, 180 
 
222 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Windermere, Lord, in W. Ly. 
 W.'s Fan, i8o 
 
 Winter's Tale, The, see Shake- 
 speare 
 
 Wordsworth, 3 
 
 Yorick, in Sh. Hamlet, 142 
 You Never Can Tell, see 
 Shaw 
 
 Zeus, in IE. Prom. V., 169, 207 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 Accident in drama, 126 £E. 
 
 Action, Unity of, 208 
 
 -^schylean plays, 202 ; scenes 
 in Goethe's Faust, 147 ; 
 trilogy, 202 
 
 Aim of art, 125-6 ; of dra- 
 matic art, 123 ff. ; of 
 Ibsen, Shakespeare, and 
 Sophocles, 54, 124 
 
 Amateur productions, 108 
 
 Americans, 4, 194 
 
 Anglo-Indian Colonel, in H. 
 Charity, 78 
 
 Apron-stage of Elizabethan 
 theatre, 157 
 
 Architectonic skill, necessary 
 in drama, 50 ; of Ibsen, 57 
 
 Art and Science, 72 
 
 Art, object of, 124 
 
 Athenian citizen, in Ar. 
 Acharnians, 183 
 
 — decadence, 6 ; democracy, 
 57 ; dramatists, 57 ; 
 literature, 6 ; ochlocracy, 
 57 ; patriotism, 6 ; philo- 
 sophy, 6 ; politics, 6 ; 
 women, 33 
 
 Audience, Elizabethan, 181 ; 
 English, 181 
 
 Bow of Philoctetes, in S. 
 
 Philoc, 154 
 Burlesque, 121 
 " Bushiness," in drama, esp. 
 
 Russian d., 192-3 
 " Business," 153-4 
 
 Canon, in W. Import., 200 
 Carpets, in M. A gam., 154 
 Caskets, in Sh. M. of V., 154 
 Catastrophe, 175, 196 ; in 
 tragedy, 185 ; liable to a 
 
 special danger, 191 ff. ; 
 misuse of the word, 206 ; 
 not " disaster," 206 
 Catastrophe, in I. A D.'s Ho., 
 179-80 
 
 — in W. Ly. W.'s Fan, 180 
 
 — in Sh. Macb., 179 
 
 — in S. CE. Tyr., 179 
 
 — in Sh. 0th., 185 
 
 — in M. Tartuffe, 184 
 
 — in Terence, The Brothers, 
 
 185 
 Censorship Commission, 95 
 
 — of stage, 49, 56 
 Character-drawing of Ibsen, 
 
 56 
 Characterisation in drama, 
 
 132 fi. 
 " Circumstance " in tragedy, 
 
 206 
 Classical and romantic drama, 
 
 170 
 
 — dialogue in Ibsen, 172-3 
 " Click," in drama, 151 ff. 
 Climax, 196, 206 
 Coincidence in drama, 127 
 Collision in drama, 145 n., 
 
 150-1 
 Comedy, 117, 145 
 
 — of Manners, 60 ff,, 148 
 
 — peripeteia in, 177 
 
 — Roman, 123 
 
 — what it is, 116 ff. 
 Complication in drama, 193 ; 
 
 in life, 11 1 
 
 — in S. CE. Tyr., 178 
 
 — liable to a special danger, 
 
 191 
 Conclusion in drama, 196 
 Contrast in drama, 145 n. 
 Conventions in drama, 118 
 Crisis in drama, 145 n., 175 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 223 
 
 Crutch, in I. Little Eyolf, 154 
 " Curtain," 152 
 
 — " descends on a note of 
 
 interrogation," 193 
 
 — "effective," 63 ; " strong," 
 
 204 
 
 Danger of prose-dialogue, 159 
 Dangers of catastrophe, com- 
 phcation, dSnouement, 191 
 
 — of various dramatic dia- 
 
 logue-forms, 156 ff. 
 Dark Age of English dramatic 
 
 literature (i 779-1 889), 49 
 Death of hero not a necessary 
 
 ingredient in tragedy, 122 
 Debate in B.'s plays, 94 
 Delian League, 6 
 Delphic Oracle, in E. EL, 
 
 24, 45 ; in Sh. The W.'s T., 
 
 165 
 
 Denouement, 114, 163, 175, 
 176, 196, 197, 206 
 
 — danger to which it is liable, 
 
 191 
 
 — in Ar. Acharn., 183 
 
 — in E. Ale, 130 
 
 — in I. AD.'s Ho., 180, 194 
 
 — in Otway, Ven. Pres., 180-1 
 
 — inSh. /. G., 182, 197 
 
 — inSh. M. of v., 201 
 
 — in S. Gt. Tyr., 178 
 
 — in W. Ly. W.'s Fan, 180 
 
 — weaknesses in, 193 ff . 
 
 — whence it should arise, 132 
 Desisy of Aristotle, 132 
 
 Deus ex machina, " Uncle 
 
 Peter " as, 164 ff., 191 
 Dialogue, Economy in, 170 fi. 
 
 — in Congreve, 150 ; in Han- 
 
 kin, 79 ; in Ibsen, 162, 
 172-3 ; in Maeterlinck, 
 155 ; in Mohere, 148 ; in 
 Rostand, 155 ; in Shaw, 
 155 ; in Sophocles, 155 ; 
 in Synge, 155, 185 ; in 
 Wilde, 161-2 
 
 — poetical form or prose form, 
 
 155 
 
 — varieties of, in drama, 154 ff. 
 Didacticism in drama, 125-6 
 Difficulty appropriately solved, 
 
 in every play, 1 1 1 
 
 Double recoil, in Sh. Macb., 
 
 178 
 Drama of types, 149-50 
 
 — Russian, 192 
 
 " Drama," The word, no 
 Drama, what it is, in 
 Dramatic art. Forms or types 
 
 of, 115 ff. 
 its aim, 125 
 
 — collision, 150 
 
 — conventions as they affect 
 
 the four types, 11 8-9 
 
 — intensity, 152 
 
 — manner, 144 
 
 " Dramatic," The word, 145 ; 
 
 wrong use of, 204-5 
 Dramatic types. Occasional 
 
 approximation of, to each 
 
 other, 1 16-7 
 Duke (Orsino), in Sh. Tw. N., 
 
 200 
 
 — (Vincentio), in Sh. M. for 
 
 M., 200 
 
 Economy in dialogue, 170 if. 
 
 — in drama, 163 
 
 — in management of char- 
 
 acter, 166 ff. 
 
 — in solution, 166 f . 
 Education Act, 1870, 2 
 Elizabethan audiences, 181 ; 
 
 plays, 200 ; theatre, 157 
 Entertainment by drama, 80, 
 124 ff. 
 
 — common aim of all dramas, 
 
 124 
 Exhibition, The Great (1851), 
 
 3 
 
 Explanatory domestics, 135 
 External events or happenings, 
 in drama, 126 ff. 
 
 " Falling over," 175 
 
 Farce, 116 ff., 128, 152 ; deals 
 with experiences of par- 
 ticular persons, 119 ; 
 good, 118; horseplay in, 
 118 ; how it differs from 
 comedy, 119 ; what it is, 
 116 ff. 
 
 Fate in tragedy, 206-7 
 
 — puppets of, 206-7 
 Fool, in Sh. Lear, 151 
 
224 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 French, The, 4 
 
 — critics, 53 ; farces, 108 ; 
 
 tragedy and the Three 
 Unities, 208 ; tragic play- 
 wrights, 121 ; windows 
 in modern drama, 162, 204 
 
 Fundamental characteristics of 
 E. and Shaw, 7 ff. 
 
 Funeral speech, in Sh. /. C, 
 156; is the peripeteia, 182 
 
 Greek comedy and tragedy 
 parts of religious ritual, 
 123 
 
 — spirit of inquiry, 10 
 Greeks, 16 &., 20 
 Greek theatre, 157 
 
 Handkerchief, in Sh. 0th., 154 
 " Happy ending," 56, 77-8, 
 
 199 
 Hebrews, 75 
 Hero, Conventional stage, and 
 
 Shaw, 16 
 Horseplay in farce, 118 
 Hostile collision in drama, 150 
 " Huddled ending," e.g. in 
 
 Sh. Cymb., 198 
 Humours, Drama of, 149 
 
 Ibsenism, 64, 105 
 
 Ibsenists, English, 71, 76, 
 
 105-6 
 Intensity in drama, 152 
 Interaction of characters in 
 
 drama, 114 
 Interpretation of life the 
 
 task of a dramatist, 207-8 
 Irishman, The comic, 65 
 Irrational elements in drama, 
 
 Aristotle on these, 130 
 
 " Knot, Untying of the," 114 
 
 Lady, The, in Shaw, M. of D., 
 
 15 
 
 Life-force, in Shaw, 102 
 " London successes," 108 
 
 Magic in drama, 165 
 " Main plot," 202 
 Mannequin - scene in B. 
 Madras H., 154 
 
 Manners, Comedy of, 60 ft., 149 
 
 Material details, Use of, in pro- 
 jecting character, 133 f . 
 
 Mediaeval plays, 123 
 
 Melodrama, 118, 128, 133, 152 ; 
 and Shaw, 13 ; good, E.'s 
 Helena one, 119 ; how 
 distinguished from tra- 
 gedy, 119; Othello a (?), 
 117 ; physical action in, 
 120 ; spectacular element 
 in, 120 ; theatricality in, 
 119 ; violence in, 120 ; 
 what it is, 116 ff. 
 
 Messengers' speeches in Greek 
 tragedy, 156 n. 
 
 Methods of drama, 126 ff. 
 
 " Middle " of a play, 174 ff. 
 
 Miracle-play, 112 
 
 Misuse of various words, 203 ft. 
 
 Mohammedanism in B. Madras 
 H., 91 
 
 Morality, in I. and Shaw, 58-9 
 
 Morality plays, 147 
 
 Mufhns, in W. Import., 119 
 
 National theatre, 86 
 Neo-British School, 62, 
 
 66 ft., 69, 77 
 Nurse, in Sh. R. and J., 171 
 
 63, 
 
 Object of art, 124 
 Olympian gods, 10 
 
 — religion, 25 
 Opera, 121 
 
 Oracle, Delphic, 24, 45, 165 
 "Overthrow," 175; in Shaw, 
 Maj. B., 179 
 
 Pantomimes, 121 
 
 Particular and universal in 
 
 drama, 146 ft. 
 Peloponnesian War, 6 
 Peripeteia, 175 ft., 196, 206 
 
 — in IE. PerscB, 185-6; 
 
 Prom, v., 177 
 
 — in Ar. Ach., 183; Birds, 
 
 184 ; Frogs, 177, 184 ; 
 Peace, 184 ; Plutus, 183 
 
 — in Bennett, Honeymoon, 197 
 
 — in 1. D.'s Ho., 179 
 
 — in H. A. Jones, Mrs. Dane's 
 
 Defence, 180 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 225 
 
 Peripeteia in M. Misanthrope, 
 197 ; Tartuffe, 184 
 
 — in Otway, Ven. Pres., 180 
 
 — in Sh. Hamlet, 115 n.; 
 
 /. C, 181-2 ; Mach., 178 ; 
 M. of v., 201 ; 0th., 185 
 
 — in Shaw, Maj. B., 179 
 
 — in Sheridan, School for 
 
 Sc, 185 
 
 — in S. CE. Tyy., 178 
 
 — in Synge, Playboy, 185 
 
 — in Terence, Brothers, 184-5 
 
 — in Wilde, Ly. W.'s Fan, 180 
 
 — in comedy, 177, 182—3; in 
 
 every drama, 186 ; its 
 three qualities, 177 ; pre- 
 paration for, 186 ff.; where 
 does it occur ? 177 
 
 Philistines, and their watch- 
 word, 126 
 
 Physical action in melodrama, 
 120 
 
 Place, Unity of, 208-9 
 
 Plot, III ff. ; an organism, 
 1 1 3-4 ; how is it worked ? 
 174 if. ; the " soul of the 
 play," 144 ; the unum 
 necessarium in drama, 113 
 
 Poetic dialogue, 155 
 
 " Poetical drama," 59 
 
 Post-Ibsenist manner, 71 
 
 Postman, in modern drama, 63 
 
 Poverty, in Shaw, 32 
 
 Pre-lbsenists, 104 
 
 Preparation for the peripeteia, 
 186 ff. ; in Sh. Mach., 
 188 ; M.ofV., 187-8 
 
 Probability, 166 
 
 " Problem-play," 65 
 
 Projection of a character, 133 ff. 
 
 Propagandist playwrights, 126 
 
 Prose dialogue, 155 ; rule 
 for, 160 
 
 Pseudo-Ibsenism, 66 ; Ibsenist 
 school, 64 
 
 Psychological trend of modern 
 English dramatic criti- 
 cism, 115 and n. 
 
 Psychology in drama, 131 ff. 
 
 " Puppets of Fate," 206 
 
 Question - and - answer plot, 
 123 
 
 15 
 
 Question of a drama, whence 
 it should arise, 132 
 
 — of the play, 177 
 
 Realism and reality, 71 ff. 
 Recitations on the stage, 157-8 
 " Recits de Theramene,'' 
 
 156 n. 
 "Recoil," 175; double r., 
 
 or repeated r., in Sh. 
 
 Mach., 178 
 
 — in Ar., 183; in M. Tart., 
 
 184 ; in Shaw, Maj. B., 
 
 179 ; and see Peripeteia 
 " Reinforced reminiscence," 
 
 125 
 Renaissance of English Drama, 
 
 The Present, 49-108 
 Repertory theatres, 107-8 
 Revenge, in E. and Shaw, 22 
 " Reversal," 175 ; in Shaw, 
 
 Maj. B., 179 ; and see 
 
 Peripeteia 
 Revues, 121 
 Roman comedy and tragedy, 
 
 123 
 Russian drama, " bushiness " 
 
 in, 192 
 
 — influence on English drama, 
 
 193 
 
 — playwrights, 192 
 
 Saint Crispin's Day harangue, 
 
 in Sh. Hy. V., 175 
 Salvation Arm^^ in Shaw, 
 
 Maj. B., 179 
 Science and art, 72 
 Screen-scene, in Sheridan, 
 
 Sch. for Sc, 185 
 Semi-Ibsenist, 71 
 Sexes, Relations of the, in 
 
 E. and Shaw, 31 
 Simplicity not the same thing 
 
 as economy, in drama, 163 
 Situations, in Ibsen, 56 
 Slaves, in Aristotle, and E., 33 
 " Slice of life," 149, 207-8 
 Social inequality, in E., 32 ff. 
 Solonian regime, 33 
 Solution, in drama, 114, 124, 
 
 193, 196 ; in I. D.'s Ho., 
 
 179-80 ; in S. or. Tyr., 
 
 178-9 
 
226 
 
 EURIPIDES AND SHAW 
 
 Sophists, 6 
 
 Spartan confederacy, in Ar. 
 
 Ach., 183 
 Staginess, 52 
 " Strong curtains," 204 ; 
 
 " strong scene," 70 
 Supernatural in drama, 165 
 Surprise in drama, 166 
 
 Theatricality and drama not 
 the same, no 
 
 — in melodrama, 119 
 
 — in modern drama, 204 
 Three Unities, 208-9 
 Time, Unity of, 208 
 Tortoise, in Rostand, Chante- 
 
 cler, 153 
 
 Tragedy, 118, 145, 205 ; mis- 
 use of the word, 205 ; 
 peripeteia in, 177 ; 
 Roman, 123 ; what it is, 
 116 ff. 
 
 Tragi-comedy, a " mechanical 
 mixture," 117 
 
 Transcendentalists, 73-4 
 
 " Truth to life," 159 
 " Tying," in drama, 132 
 Tj'^pes, Jonson a dramatist of, 
 148-9 
 
 " Uncle Peter " as deus ex 
 
 machina, 164, 191 
 Underplot, 202 ; in I., 57 
 Unities, The Three, 208-9 
 Universal and particular in 
 
 drama, 1466:. 
 " Untying of the knot," 114, 
 
 163 
 
 Victorian age, 2 ff. 
 Violence, in melodrama, 120 
 
 Watchman, in S. Antigone, 
 
 170 
 Waterloo, Battle of, 181 
 " Weltvernichtungsidee," 183 
 Wit, of E. and Shaw, 40 
 Women, in B., 90 fE. ; in E., 
 
 33 ff . ; in Plato, 34 ; in 
 
 Shaw, 31 ff. 
 
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