THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 Professor Aram Torossian 
 1884-1941 
 
V 
 
 i 
 
A STUDY OF THE DKAMA 
 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER ^ MATTHEWS 
 
 V_- 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA 
 
 UNIVERSITY, MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN 
 
 ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Cambrib0e 
 
COPYRIGHT, IpIO, BY BRANDER MATTHEW 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March IQIO 
 
PA/ 
 
 THIS ANALYSIS OF AN ART 
 IN WHICH HIS COUNTRYMEN HAVE LONG 
 EXCELLED IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED TO 
 
 JULES JUSSERAND 
 
 AMBASSADOR OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 
 AND HISTORIAN OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 777 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THIS book is a study of the technic of the drama. It 
 is intended, not for those who want to write plays, but 
 for those who wish to learn how plays are written now, 
 and how they have been written in the past. It is the 
 result of a belief that the fundamental principles of 
 the drama are the same throughout the ages, and that 
 they can be discovered as well in the plays of Sophocles 
 as in the plays of Shakspere, as well in the plays of 
 Moliere as in the plays of Ibsen. And therefore the 
 author has not confined his attention to the English 
 drama alone; he has preferred to consider the whole 
 history of the theater, ancient and medieval and mod- 
 ern, in the belief that this is the only method which 
 will result in a real understanding of the dramatic 
 practices of any particular period and of any particular 
 people. He has held fast also to the conviction that 
 all the masterpieces of the dramatic art were originally 
 written to be performed by actors, in a theater, and 
 before an audience of the dramatist's own contem- 
 poraries; and he has therefore kept in mind always 
 the theatrical circumstances which conditioned the 
 work of the dramatist. In other words, this study is 
 devoted mainly to an examination of the structural 
 framework which the great dramatists of various epochs 
 have given to their plays; and it discusses only inci- 
 dentally the psychology, the philosophy, and the po- 
 etry which we now admire in these pieces. Although 
 the author had no intention of neglecting the content 
 
vi PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 of the masterpieces of the drama, he has centered his 
 attention rather on the form wherein this content is 
 presented, since it is only by so doing that he can set 
 before the student certain of the secrets of the art of the 
 
 In the preparation of this volume, in which he has 
 endeavored to consider the differing aspects of the 
 playwright's craft, the author has availed himself freely 
 of the various papers which he has published during 
 the past few years in the North American Review and 
 the Forum, the Atlantic and the Century, Scribner's and 
 Putnam' *s ; but, of course, this material has been un- 
 hesitatingly rehandled to adjust it to the ampler scheme 
 of this more comprehensive treatment of the subject. 
 
 The author takes pleasure in recording here his 
 indebtedness to the friends who have kindly lent him 
 their aid as this book was passing through the press, 
 Professors Ashley H. Thorndike and William W. 
 Lawrence of Columbia University, and Professor 
 Charles Sears Baldwin of Yale University. 
 
 B. M. 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 February 21, 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE STUDY OP THE DRAMA .... 1 
 
 II. THE INFLUENCE OP THE ACTOR ... 24 
 
 III. THE INFLUENCE OP THE THEATER . . 44 
 
 IV. THE INFLUENCE OP THE AUDIENCE . . 68 
 V. THE LAW OF THE DRAMA . . . .92 
 
 VI. A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS . . . 109 
 
 VII. TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS . . . 132 
 
 VIII. DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION . . . 152 
 
 IX. THE LOGIC OP CONSTRUCTION . . . 175 
 
 X. THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY .... 211 
 
 XI. THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS . . . 232 
 
 XII. THE POETIC DRAMA AND THE DRAMATIC 
 
 POEM 249 
 
 XIII. THE THREE UNITIES 272 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A: SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY .... 299 
 B: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS . . . 302 
 
 INDEX 309 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Stage of Theater built by Richelieu in Paris (1639) and 
 occupied by Moliere (1661-1673) .... Frontispiece 
 
 1 Plan of the Theater of Dionysus at Athens .... 48 
 Plan of the Roman Theater at Orange ..... 50 
 Plan of the Fortune Theater, London 60 
 
 Plan of the Richelieu-Moliere Theater, Paris ... 60 
 
 
 
 Plan of the Drury Lane Theater, London .... 60 
 
 Plan of the Empire Theater, New York 60 
 
 Remains of the Theater of Dionysus at Athens ... 74 
 
 Restoration of the Stage of the Roman Theater at 
 Orange 140 
 
 [After a drawing by Paul Steck, from the model in the Li- 
 brary of the Opera, Paris.] 
 
 Stage-sets of the Italian Corned y-of-Masks in Seventeenth 
 Century, as used by Moliere in many of his Plays . 172 
 
 1 [The plans were drawn by Albert D. Millar, Esq., on exactly the 
 same scale, thus indicating the striking difference in size.] 
 
x ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Interior of Drury Lane Theater, London (1808) . . .192 
 
 [From an aquatint by Thomas Rowlandson. This theater 
 was substantially identical with the earlier house on the 
 same site, for which Sheridan wrote the "School for 
 Scandal" (1777).] 
 
 Interior of the Fortune Theater, London (1599) . . 238 
 
 [From the restoration by Walter H. Godfrey, Esq., after 
 the builder's contract. Reproduced (by permission) from 
 an article by William Archer, Esq., in the Quarterly 
 Review.] 
 
 Restoration of the Stage on which a Passion-Play was 
 acted at Valenciennes (1547) 292 
 
 [From the model belonging to Columbia University, New 
 York.] 
 
 Plan of the Passion-Play Stage at Valenciennes . , .292 
 
A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 A history of the stage is no trivial thing to those who wish to 
 study human nature in all shapes and positions. It is of all things 
 the most instructive, to see not only the reflection of manners and 
 characters at several periods, but the modes of making their reflec- 
 tion, and the manner of adapting it at those periods to the taste and 
 disposition of mankind. The stage indeed may be considered as the 
 republic of active literature, and its history as the history of that 
 state. The great events of political history, when not combined with 
 the same helps towards the study of the manners and characters of 
 men, must be a study of an inferior nature. EDMUND BURKE, 
 Letter to Edmund Malone. 
 
 He therefore who is acquainted with the works which have pleased 
 different ages and different countries, and has formed his opinion 
 upon them, has more materials, and more means of knowing what 
 is analogous to the mind of man, than he who is conversant only with 
 the works of his own age or country. What has pleased, and con- 
 tinues to please, is likely to please again ; hence are derived the rules 
 of art, and on this immediate foundation they must ever stand. 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, Discourses on Painting. 
 
 WHEN we approach the study of the drama, we must 
 begin by reminding ourselves that this art does not lie 
 wholly within the limit of literature, a fact which makes 
 investigation into its principles at once more inter- 
 esting and more difficult. The novel, the short-story, 
 the epic, the lyric, the essay, can all of them be weighed 
 and measured by purely literary tests ; the drama can- 
 
2 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 not. And here it has a certain resemblance to history 
 on the one hand, and to oratory on the other. There are 
 not a few historians highly esteemed by their fellows 
 whose work, however scientific it may be, lacks art, 
 and is deficient in those twin qualities of literature 
 which we term structure and style. There are public 
 speakers, able to move multitudes by their impas- 
 sioned appeals, whose perfervid addresses when put 
 into chill print seem empty and inflated. So there are 
 playwrights of the past as well as of the present, many 
 of whose pieces, although they may have pleased the 
 vast majority of playgoers when they were performed 
 in the theater, are now none the less quite unworthy 
 of serious criticism when the attempt is made to ana- 
 lyze them from the standpoint of literature alone. The 
 success achieved by these pieces on the stage itself is 
 proof that they possessed theatrical effectiveness, 
 which is the first requisite of a good play. But even 
 though they had this indispensable quality, they were 
 not lifted up into literature by any mastery of structure, 
 by any charm of style, by any grace of poetry, by any 
 sincerity of treatment, or by any subtlety of psychology. 
 Pieces of this kind are abundant in every period when 
 the theater has been flourishing ; but they are the mere 
 journalism of the stage. They are for their own day 
 only, not for all time. 
 
 We may even go further and point out that a panto- 
 mime proves to us that there is at least one kind of play 
 which can exist and achieve its purpose satisfactorily 
 without the use of words, and thus without the aid 
 of the most obvious element of literature. In a pan- 
 tomime, we see a story told in action, by gestures only; 
 and a few years ago an adroit and inventive French 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 3 
 
 playwright composed a play without words, the "Pro- 
 digal Son," in which he showed that it was possible to 
 make a pantomime very interesting to the spectators 
 in the theater and to endow it with all the needed ele- 
 ments of the drama, especially pathos and humor. 
 And the ingenious narratives in action devised of late 
 for the moving-picture machines are equal evidence of 
 the adequacy of pantomime to tell a dramatic story, 
 either serious or comic, so clearly that every beholder 
 can apprehend it at once. 
 
 We may note also that while the drama does not 
 lie wholly within the limits of literature, it is at liberty 
 to call to its aid others of the arts, not only the art of 
 the actor, with which the art of the playwright must 
 ever be most intimately associated, but even the arts 
 of the musician, of the painter, and of the sculptor. It 
 can force each of these into its service whenever it 
 wishes, and it can borrow from them any device it may 
 need. Not without good reason did Wagner assert that 
 the music-drama was "the art-work of the future," 
 since the theater is the one place where the arts may 
 all unite, each contributing its share to the harmony 
 of the whole. 
 
 Thus it is impossible to consider the drama profit- 
 ably apart from the theater in which it was born and 
 in which it reveals itself in its completest perfection. 
 All the masterpieces of the dramatic art were planned 
 and elaborated on purpose to be performed by actors, 
 in a theater, and before an audience of the poet's con- 
 temporaries. The great dramas of the mighty masters, 
 without a single exception, were intended to be played 
 rather than to be read ; they were prepared primarily 
 for the stage, and only secondarily if at all for 
 
4 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the study. Neither Shakspere nor Moliere was eager 
 to publish his immortal plays in his own lifetime, 
 seemingly careless, each of them, in regard to any 
 other judgment than that which had been passed in 
 the theater itself. Lope de Vega and Calderon took 
 the same attitude. They had contrived their plots in 
 accordance with the conditions of the theaters of their 
 own time, the only conditions with which they were 
 familiar ; they had fitted the chief parts to the best of 
 their fellow-actors ; and they may very well have dis- 
 trusted any criticism not the result of the actual per- 
 formance under the special conditions with which they 
 themselves were content. Indeed, Mdliere, in the 
 preface to his " Precieuses Ridicules," was emphatic 
 in declaring his own willingness to abide by the test 
 of the theater alone and to refrain from any appeal 
 to the test of the library. Again in another preface, 
 that to his "Amour Medecin," Moliere asserted that 
 everybody knows "comedies are written only to be 
 acted." 
 
 ii 
 
 When we take up the study of any art, we find that 
 there are two ways of approach. We may trace the 
 growth of the art, or we may inquire into its processes. 
 In the one case we consider its history, and in the other 
 we examine its practice. Either of these methods is 
 certain to lead us into pleasant paths of inquiry. 
 
 If we determine to investigate the slow development 
 of the drama through the ages, we shall find ourselves 
 in time better fitted to answer questions which are 
 often very puzzling to those who do not recognize the 
 necessity of going back into the past if they wish to 
 understand the present. Why did the Greeks put a 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 5 
 
 chorus into their tragedies ? In Shakspere's plays, why 
 do the scenes change so frequently ? These are queries 
 which many a commentator has striven vainly to an- 
 swer, simply for lack of historical knowledge. Re- 
 search into the origin of the Attic theater reveals to us 
 that the Greeks did not put a chorus into their tragedies 
 and that on the contrary they put a tragedy into their 
 chorus, since it was out of the chorus that their 
 drama was evolved. Inquiry into the growth of the 
 Elizabethan theater shows us that the scenes in Shak- 
 spere's plays do not change frequently, or at least 
 that the scenery does not, since in Shakspere's stage 
 there was apparently no scenery to change. 
 
 On the other hand, we shall not err if we decide to 
 devote ourselves not so much to the development of 
 the drama as to its technic. The basis of a genuine ap- 
 preciation of any art is an understanding of its prin- 
 ciples. Any attempt to discuss architecture as separate 
 from construction is certain to be sterile, for the beauty 
 of architecture is often in the exquisite adaptation of 
 the means to the end, a beauty not to be appre- 
 ciated by those who are indifferent toward the technic 
 of the art of building. So also some acquaintance with 
 the various methods of putting pigments on canvas 
 is a condition precedent to any firm grasp of the prin- 
 ciples of pictorial art. And the technic of the drama 
 is less simple than either of these, since the architect 
 builds in stone and steel, and the painter draws with 
 colors, whereas the work of the dramatist must be de- 
 vised for interpretation by the actor. The dramatic< 
 art is really twofold, since it is the result of a neces- 
 sary union of the efforts of the playwright and of the 
 player. Neither of them is able to accomplish his pur- 
 
6 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 pose without the aid of the other. To achieve a dra- 
 matic masterpiece, the dramaturgic skill of the author 
 must utilize to the utmost the histrionic skill of the 
 actor. 
 
 As we seize the importance of these lines of ap- 
 proach, the historical and the practical, we see that a 
 sound knowledge of the drama is not possible unless 
 we seek to attain both a perspective of its develop- 
 ment and an insight into its technic. Just as the study 
 of music is most stimulating when it includes an in- 
 quiry into the value of each of the several instruments, 
 and also into their gradual combination into the most 
 marvelous instrument of them all, the modern orches- 
 tra, so the study of the drama is most likely to be profit- 
 able when it leads us to consider the successive modi- 
 fications in the shape and size of the theaters wherein 
 plays were acted; the varying circumstances of per- 
 formance to which the playwrights had to conform ; the 
 conventions of the art, some of them shifting from 
 century to century or from country to country, and 
 some of them immutable in the very nature of the 
 drama. Especially stimulating is it for us to recognize 
 the real unity of history, the continuity of the art of the 
 drama, which enables us so often to explain the past 
 by the present and the present by the past. 
 
 If we combine the study of technic with an inquiry 
 into the history of the dramatic art, we shall find our- 
 selves in a condition to make many suggestive com- 
 parisons. We shall be in a position to see, for instance, 
 that the comedies of Menander were probably in their 
 outward form very like the comedies of Moliere, and 
 that the former varied from the latter in content partly 
 because of the difference between the two dramatists 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 7 
 
 themselves, and partly because of the unlikeness of 
 the social conditions in which they were each of them 
 placed. We shall find pleasure in contrasting the 
 comedy-of-manners as it was composed at the end of 
 the eighteenth century in France by Beaumarchais 
 and in England by Sheridan, arch-wits both of them 
 and masters of inventive ingenuity. 
 
 We can also make the striking comparison between 
 two dramatists of genius separated by a gulf of twenty 
 centuries, Sophocles and Ibsen, discovering in the 
 "(Edipus the King" of the one the same massive sim- 
 plicity that strikes us in the " Ghosts" of the other, the 
 Greek showing how fate is inevitable and the Scan- 
 dinavian 'seeking to prove that heredity is inexorable. 
 Sophocles, it is true, "saw life steadily and saw it 
 whole," while Ibsen seems to some of us to have rather 
 a morbid liking for the abnormal ; but none the less is 
 there a startling similarity in their constructive ability 
 and in their surpassing technical mastery. We can in- 
 struct ourselves by tracing the potent influence exerted 
 now and again by the drama of one nation upon that of 
 another, inquiring how Spanish pieces affected Cor- 
 neille in his tragedies, how Italian plays supplied an 
 early model to Holier e for his comedies, how French 
 comedy was the exciting cause of English comedy 
 under the Restoration, how the English drama served 
 to stimulate Lessing in his reform of the German drama, 
 how the social plays of Ibsen have powerfully modified 
 the aims and ideals of latter-day dramatists in France 
 and in Spain, in Germany and in England. And in 
 preparing ourselves to make these international com- 
 parisons we can scarcely fail to gain a more intimate 
 knowledge of the dramatic art. 
 
8 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 in 
 
 But we need always to bear in mind that Sheridan 
 and Beaumarchais, Shakspere and Moliere, Sophocles 
 and Ibsen, however much they may differ from one 
 another, are alike in this at least, that they all repre- 
 sent an advanced development of the drama as a de- 
 partment of literature and that they were preceded 
 and made possible by countless unknown experimen- 
 ters. The masterpieces of these accomplished crafts- 
 men are the final achievements of a long effort sustained 
 through the dim centuries. They are the culmination 
 of an artistic evolution, the beginnings of which must 
 be looked for far back in the history of mankind. They 
 are the final expression in cultivated and self-conscious 
 communities of the primary play-impulse of primitive 
 man. The literary drama, the play in which the finer 
 attributes of structure and style are added to essential 
 theatrical effectiveness, is the direct outgrowth of a 
 wholly unliterary drama, which emerges into view 
 very early in the annals of civilization. At first, when 
 man still lingers in the lower levels of savagery and 
 barbarism, the dramatic instinct expresses itself boldly 
 enough, but crudely and coarsely. It is only after long 
 centuries of striving that a more shapely drama at last 
 emerges in view, even if far back in man's progress 
 upward we are able to discover that desire to personate 
 and to get out of himself, which is the foundation of 
 the art of the theater. Very early also can we perceive 
 the allied pleasure of being a passive spectator of this 
 active personation. 
 
 Until recently, it was the general belief that the drama 
 arrived comparatively late in the history of any litera- 
 ture. This belief is voiced eloquently in Victor Hugo's 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 9 
 
 preface to "Cromwell," in which he asserts that the 
 chronological sequence is first of all the lyric, then the 
 epic, and finally the drama. There is a sense in which 
 this is true ; that is to say, the literary drama, the play 
 which is also poetic or philosophic, comes into being 
 only after the lyric and the epic have given flexibility 
 and elevation to the language and after they have also 
 invented the stories which the literary dramatist can re- 
 handle. But the researches of the anthropologists have 
 made it indisputable that there is a dramatic element 
 in the very earliest lyrics themselves, and that a rude 
 drama is perhaps earlier even than these earliest lyrics. 
 Letourneau insists that the drama in its rudimentary 
 form 
 
 " goes back to the very origin of literary esthetics, for choral 
 and mimic dances constitute nearly all the literature of primi- 
 tive peoples, and a rudiment of scenic art has been found, 
 even in Tasmania, among an extremely inferior race. In 
 reality, scenic poetry preceded all other kinds, and most fre- 
 quently constituted their mold. By the simultaneous employ- 
 ment of mimicry, song, speech, and instrumental music, the 
 opera-ballet of the early ages was the form of esthetics most 
 fitted strongly to impress spectators and actors, and at the 
 same time to satisfy a very lively psychical want, that of pro- 
 jecting mental images outward, of reproducing with all the 
 relief of reality what exists in the brain only in the state of 
 recollection or desire. The civilized theater is only the natural 
 development of this opera-ballet, and it preserves an equal 
 attraction and an equal power, even after losing the lyrical 
 form, which dated from its origin." 
 
 And Hirn takes the same point of view. 
 
 "A literary drama, which fulfils all the claims of a work 
 of art," so he declares, " is possible only on a highly advanced 
 level of culture, and it has consequently by most authors on 
 esthetics been considered as the latest of all art-forms. When 
 
10 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 dealing, however, with the productions of primitive tribes, 
 we have to adopt a lower esthetic standard. Although we 
 do not meet with any tragedies, nor even with any real come- 
 dies, at this stage of evolution, we can at least point to the 
 fact that simple farces, pantomimes and pantomimic dances 
 are to be found among tribes who have so far been unable 
 to create any kind of epic, and whose lyrical poetry is re- 
 stricted to a few rhythmical phrases with no intrinsic mean- 
 ing. And if we use the word in its widest sense, so as to in- 
 clude every representation by action, drama can be spoken 
 cf as the very earliest of all the imitative arts. It was certainly 
 in use long before the invention of writing, either by pictures 
 or letters; perhaps it is even older than language itself. As 
 an outward sign of thought, action is more immediate than 
 words." 
 
 Grosse is quite as emphatic. 
 
 "The drama is regarded by most historians of literature 
 and esthetics as the latest form of poetry; yet we can say, 
 with a certain degree of right, that it is the earliest. The 
 peculiar feature of the drama is the representation of an 
 event simultaneously by speech and mimicry. In this sense 
 nearly every primitive tale is a drama, for the teller is not 
 simply relating history, but he enlivens his words with ap- 
 propriate intonations and gestures. . . . Children and prim- 
 itive peoples are unable to make any narration without ac- 
 companying it with the appropriate demeanor and play of 
 gesture. Pure relation requires a command of language and 
 of one's own body which is rarely found among civilized 
 men and hardly ever among savages. Pure epic is therefore 
 probably the latest among the three chief kinds of poetry.'* 
 
 Grosse further maintains that "common usage 
 means by a drama, not the relation of an event en- 
 livened by mimicry, but its direct mimic and verbal 
 representation by several persons " ; and he asserts that 
 "we can prove the existence of the drama even in 
 this narrow sense in the lowest stages of culture." He 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 11 
 
 then points out that these primitive plays are partly 
 mimetic, merely imitative representations of hunting 
 or fighting, but that they are ever tending to rise to 
 the depiction of "an action in constant development." 
 He admits that "words play so subordinate a part in 
 the dramatic performances of hunting peoples that they 
 rather resemble our pantomimes than our dramas," 
 but a pantomime may be just as truly dramatic as 
 a play in which there is spoken dialogue. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the quotations from Professor Grosse, there is 
 one specially significant passage, that in which he 
 classes together "children and primitive peoples." If 
 we wish to understand the feelings and the actions of 
 primitive peoples, we can get great help from a study 
 of the ways of children. It seems now to be generally 
 admitted that in our infancy and childhood we live over 
 again, more or less completely, the slow evolution of 
 humanity from savagery to civilization. We find in 
 children the same tendency to mimicry, the same de- 
 sire to personate which we discover in primitive peo- 
 ples. Professor William James, after noting that "a 
 successful piece of mimicry gives to both bystanders 
 and mimic a peculiar kind of esthetic pleasure," and 
 that "the dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend 
 one is some one else, contains this pleasure of mimicry 
 as one of its elements," then remarks that " in young 
 children this instinct often knows no bounds." He 
 cites one of his own children who, at the age of three, 
 delighted in playing that he was " a hyena or a horse- 
 car, or whatever the feigned object might be." A hyena 
 or a horse-car ! that is to say, it did not matter to the 
 
12 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 child whether the object he impersonated was animate 
 or inanimate. This childish attitude is excellently il- 
 lustrated in the familiar anecdote of the three little 
 boys who explained that they were " playing automo- 
 bile." The eldest was the chauffeur, the next was the 
 machine itself, while Baby ran in the rear, repre- 
 senting the lingering odor of the gasoline. 
 
 A more elaborate illustration of this youthful fond- 
 ness for assuming another personality can be found 
 in the chapter of the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," 
 wherein we see Tom about to begin the distasteful task 
 of whitewashing his aunt's fence. Just then his friend 
 Ben Rogers hove in sight eating an apple and 
 
 " giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by 
 a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was 
 personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened 
 speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to star- 
 board and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp 
 and circumstance for he was personating the Big Mis- 
 souri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of wa- 
 ter. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, 
 so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane- 
 deck giving the orders and executing them: 
 
 " * Stop her, sir ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! ' The headway ran al- 
 most out and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. 
 
 "' Ship up to back ! Ting-a-ling-ling!' His hands straight- 
 ened and stiffened down to his sides. 
 
 "'Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! 
 Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!' His right hand, meantime, 
 describing stately circles, for it was representing a forty- 
 foot wheel. 
 
 " * Let her go back to thelabboard ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Chow- 
 ch-chow-chow ! ' The left hand began to describe circles. 
 
 " * Stop the stabboard ! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Stop the labboard ! 
 Come ahead on the stabboard ! Stop her ! Let your outside 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 13 
 
 turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling ! Chow-ow-ow! Get out 
 that head-line ! Lively now ! Come out with your spring- 
 line what 're you about there ! Take a turn round that 
 stump with the bight of it ! Stand by that stage, now let 
 her go! Done with the engines, sir ! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh't! 
 s'h't! sh't!' (trying the gage-cocks)." 
 
 A friendly correspondent in Arizona once sent me 
 an account of a play his two children had performed. 
 They were found in the ruins of an old house ; and in 
 a sad voice the boy explained that they were " offering 
 up little Isaac." A broken toy was Isaac. A brick un- 
 der a bush was the ram. They told how they had built 
 a fire under Isaac, admitting at once that the fire was 
 only make-believe. And when they were asked, " Who 
 was Abraham?" the little girl promptly answered, 
 "We was." The girl was four years old and the boy 
 was only three. It is easy to seize the likeness between 
 the scene thus acted by these children and the rudi- 
 mentary dramas which are performed by savages. 
 Underlying both is the desire to personate, the impulse 
 to take part in an action, and the abundant willing- 
 ness to make believe. 
 
 The real difference between the little play of these 
 children and the rudimentary drama of savages lies in 
 the fact that the children are acting as individuals, 
 whereas the savages are playing in large groups. In the 
 rudimentary drama of savages there is likely to be a 
 communal element. At certain seasons of the year, 
 especially at springtime and at harvest, at midsummer 
 and at midwinter, the whole community takes part in 
 the performance, or if not the whole community, a 
 
14 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 representative group which expresses the sentiment of 
 all. In the primitive stages of poetry, so Professor 
 Gummere tells us, there is seen 
 
 "a throng of people without skill to read or write, without 
 ability to project themselves into the future, or to compare 
 themselves with the past, or even to range their experience 
 with the experience of other communities, gathered in festal 
 mood, and by loud song, perfect rhythm and energetic dance, 
 expressing their feelings over an event of quite local origin, 
 present appeal and common interest. Here, in point of evo- 
 lution, is the human basis of poetry, the foundation courses 
 of the pyramid ; in point of poetic process here is the social 
 as opposed to the individifal element." 
 
 Sometimes the individual element is evolved after 
 a while out of the social element, or is superadded to 
 it ; and then we may have a rapid development of the 
 drama. This is the way that the Greeks slowly achieved 
 their glorious drama. Out of the humblest origins, it 
 was elevated to a lofty pinnacle. As Sir Richard Jebb 
 has told us, the Greek drama 
 
 ** sprang from the species of lyric poem called the dithyramb 
 . . . originally a convivial song definitely associated with 
 the god Dionysus ... a song to the wine-god had presum- 
 ably a wild, impassioned character, and was accompanied 
 with gesticulation. . . . When Arion formed his dithyram- 
 bic chorus of satyrs, he was assigning the song of Dionysus 
 to specially appropriate performers . . . and he was also 
 making the performance something more lively, more char- 
 acteristic than an ordinary choral song. Thespis, in pro- 
 ducing a dithyrambic chorus, came forward as a reciter of 
 verses, addressing his chorus of satyrs and doubtless per- 
 sonating a satyr himself. . . . But even then the entertain- 
 ment fell short of being dramatic. The reciter of verses who 
 addressed the dithyrambic chorus could indeed relate action. 
 But action could not yet be represented as taking place be- 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 15 
 
 fore the eyes of the spectators. . . . Instead of the single re- 
 citer, ^Eschylus introduced two persons, both, like the single 
 reciter, detached from the chorus. These two persons could 
 hold a dialogue and could represent action. By this change 
 JSschylus altered the whole character of the lyric tragedy, 
 and created a drama. The dialogue between the actors now 
 became the dominant feature of the entertainment; the part 
 of the lyric chorus, though still very important, had now 
 only a diminished importance." 
 
 Sophocles employed a third actor, and each of these 
 three performers could appear in several characters. 
 It was possible then to show a story in action and to 
 present before the spectators that conflict of human 
 wills which has ever been the mainspring of the drama. 
 
 These are the successive stages of the evolution of 
 the noble Greek drama out of a rude communal song. 
 And not unlike are the successive stages of the evolu- 
 tion of the drama of the several modern languages out 
 of very simple mimetic interpolations into the ritual 
 of the medieval church as prescribed for Christmas 
 and Easter. At Christmas, a single chorister was set 
 apart to announce the glad tidings, and a group of 
 choristers was assigned to represent the shepherds 
 who were guided by a star to the manger. At Easter, 
 three priests spoke the words set down for the three 
 Marys, at the tomb, and another appeared "in the 
 likeness of a gardener." In time, the Christmas cycle 
 of dialogues and hymns and narrative was combined 
 with the Easter cycle, and the passion-play came into 
 being. Its several episodes had each of them been de- 
 vised to illustrate the service of a special day of the 
 church year ; and they had each of them been first 
 performed in Latin in the church by ecclesiastics or 
 choristers. Then, after the mystery was full grown, 
 
16 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 it was felt to be too great a burden ; and it was thrust 
 out of the church, confided to laymen and translated 
 into the several vernaculars. The laymen who took it 
 over meant to continue all the traditions of the per- 
 formance within the church, yet sooner or later they 
 were led to apply the same methods to secular stories. 
 Thus it was that in each of the modern languages the 
 drama had a common origin in a religious exercise, 
 and that in each of them it developed in accord with 
 racial characteristics, so that in time there came to be 
 a wide differentiation between the plays performed in 
 the several tongues, although they were all outflower- 
 ings from the same Latin stock. 
 
 As we study these evolutions of dramatic form, we 
 see that what was at first more or less communal be- 
 comes more or less individual, and what was at first 
 more or less spontaneous becomes more or less tradi- 
 tional. In time, custom crystallizes ; and then out of the 
 established custom there is a pew departure, another 
 step forward. There comes into existence an accepted 
 way of telling a story in action, a formula satisfactory 
 to actors and spectators alike; and this formula tends 
 constantly to become more effective theatrically as the 
 casual performers more and more take on the aspect 
 of professionals, conscious that they are exercising an 
 art. The plays they present may still be rough and crude ; 
 their art may be rather elementary as yet; but it is 
 alive and it contains the possibility of progress. At 
 this moment, the drama is still unliterary ; there is little 
 skill of structure, little polish of style, little insight into 
 human nature. But the dramatic formula is slowly get- 
 ting into shape, and making itself ready for the hand 
 of the literary artist whenever he shall happen along. 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 17 
 
 As the earlier unliterary efforts have not been pre- 
 served, no one can now specify with any certainty the 
 exact moment when the Greek drama began to lift it- 
 self into literature. Only literature is permanent; and 
 the unliterary drama is never cherished and guarded. 
 A few of the plays of ^Eschylus have been handed down 
 to us, probably the best of them, since only the best 
 would be multiplied in many manuscripts ; and we can 
 see that they are literature beyond all question. But 
 the dialogues of Thespis with his chorus have all per- 
 ished ; and we shall never know whether or not they 
 really attained to literature. In the Middle Ages, it was 
 not till long after Latin had given place to the several 
 vernaculars that we begin to find gleams of literary 
 merit; and the most of the mysteries and moralities, 
 which have been abundantly preserved, are deadly dull, 
 whether they are in French or English, in Italian or 
 in German. The mystery had been succeeded in Eng- 
 land by the chronicle-play, and this had long pleased 
 the public before any man of indisputable literary gift 
 undertook to compose it. And in France, it was not 
 until Corneille succeeded Hardy that the drama rose 
 to the lofty level of poetry. 
 
 Corneille did at first very much what Hardy had 
 done, but he did it better, being more richly endowed 
 with the native playmaking instinct. So Marlowe did 
 very much what his predecessors had done, using the 
 same rough framework, but putting into the mouths 
 of his characters the mighty lines of which he alone 
 was then capable. At any period of the development 
 of the drama, in the days of Corneille as in the days of 
 Marlowe, in our own time as well, the same framework, 
 the same external form, the same method of handling 
 
18 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the material, characterize both the literary play and 
 the unliterary play. They are always very much alike 
 in outward appearance; it is in the inner soul that 
 they differ. Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy" belongs to the 
 strange type of piece now known as the tragedy-of- 
 blood, and so does Shakspere's "Hamlet." Victor 
 Hugo's "Ruy Bias" is essentially a melodrama distin- 
 guishable only by its lyrical affluence from the contem- 
 porary pieces of Ducange and Pixerecourt, on which 
 it was modeled. To-day, the social dramas of Ibsen 
 and Hervieu, the comedies of Barrie and Shaw, are 
 composed in accord with the same formula which serves 
 for the hack playwrights who write uninspired pieces 
 to order. The difference between the play which is lit- 
 erature and the play which is not literature, which is in 
 fact only a form of journalism, sufficient unto the day 
 and no more, this difference is not external but in- 
 ternal. It is to be felt far more easily than it is to be 
 defined. And the play which we gladly hail as literature 
 succeeds in the theater, pleases its many audiences, 
 delights a succession of spectators, year after year, 
 and century after century, because of its possession 
 of qualities not in themselves literary, because it has 
 the intangible but essential something which makes 
 a story interesting to the multitude when it is set forth 
 in action on the stage. 
 
 The unliterary plays of any period are likely to be 
 neglected by the historian of dramatic literature be- 
 cause they are now more or less unreadable, although 
 in their own day they were preeminently actable. These 
 unliterary plays are likely also to be inaccessible, even 
 if they have been preserved, which is rarely the case. 
 Of the thousands of plays produced in Greece, we have 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 19 
 
 only a few selected masterpieces of JEschylus, Sopho- 
 cles, and Euripides. Of the thousands of plays pro- 
 duced in England while Shakspere was yet alive, only 
 a few hundreds have come down to us to-day. In so 
 far as the writings of the less literary of the Elizabethan 
 playwrights have been transmitted to us, they are in- 
 valuable for the light they cast on the theatrical con- 
 ditions of the time and for the insight they give us into 
 the circumstances of actual performance, the circum- 
 stances which governed Shakspere as much as they 
 governed Heywood; but in themselves these pieces 
 are not really important. 
 
 Charles Lamb ventured to call Heywood a "prose 
 Shakspere," but it is only now and again in a few pas- 
 sages of "A Woman Killed with Kindness," and occa- 
 sionally in another play or two, that Heywood rises to 
 the level of literature. Heywood was the most adroit 
 and prolific playwright of his time; but for the most 
 part his work is journeyman and journalistic ; it was 
 actable then, but it is well-nigh unreadable now. Yet 
 Heywood's plays were written for the same audiences 
 as Shakspere's, and they conform to the same theatri- 
 cal conditions. And in the nineteenth century in France, 
 Scribe was the master of the theater, a wizard of dra- 
 maturgy, a technician of marvelous dexterity. But he 
 is a man of the theater only ; he is not a man of let- 
 ters, and very few of his countless pieces have any pre- 
 tension to literature. Yet when Dumas fits and Augier 
 followed in Scribe's footsteps and borrowed Scribe's 
 formula, enlarging it to contain their vision of life, 
 they were able to lift their plays into literature. They 
 were men of the theater who were also men of letters, 
 and their plays are readable as well as actable. 
 
20 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 VI 
 
 When we undertake to consider whether a play de- 
 serves to be considered as literature or not, we need 
 to clear our minds of a current misconception as to the 
 constituents of literary merit, so-called. True literary 
 merit is not a matter of fine writing, of pretty phrases, 
 of style only. The real literary merit of a play does not 
 reside so much in its mere wording as in its solid struc- 
 ture, in the logic of the plot, in the sincerity of its char- 
 acter-drawing. Fine writing has never yet made a 
 good play ; and the good play is a good play independ- 
 ently of all its phrases, however glowing and gorgeous 
 these may be. This Aristotle saw quite as clearly as 
 Lessing and Sarcey; and he was emphatic in insisting 
 on the primary importance of plot, of the story which 
 is interesting in itself, and which is interestingly articu- 
 lated. We may be sure that the great Greek critic 
 would have approved of the shrewd remark of a mod- 
 ern Frenchman, to the effect that the skeleton of a 
 good play is always a pantomime. That is to say, the 
 story must be so strong and so clear that it can stand 
 by itself, whether well or ill written, whether the au- 
 dience can or cannot appreciate its added poetry or 
 philosophy. We may see many things in "Hamlet," 
 we may acclaim it as the absolute masterpiece of the 
 poetic drama ; but it would move the majority of the 
 spectators if it should be acted before the inmates of 
 a deaf-and-dumb asylum, unable to seize the beauties 
 which delight us, but quite capable of being carried 
 away by the sheer power of the splendidly theatric 
 plot. 
 
 This is what has always been felt by the literary as 
 well as by the unliterary playwrights. Scribe used to 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 21 
 
 say that "when my subject is good, when my scenario 
 is very clear, very complete, I might have the play writ- 
 ten by my servant ; he would be sustained by the situa- 
 tion; and the play would succeed." From Scribe, 
 who was only an ingenious mechanician of the drama, 
 this may not surprise us ; but his saying would not be 
 greatly objected to by any true dramatist, poet, or prose- 
 man, for it is only an overstatement of the truth. Me- 
 nander, the master of Greek comedy, was once asked 
 about his new play, so Plutarch tells us, and he an- 
 swered : " It is composed and ready ; I have only the 
 verses to write." Racine's son reports an almost iden- 
 tical remark of his father's in answer to a similar in- 
 quiry. And there is no dispute possible as to the ele- 
 vated position attained by Racine and by Menander 
 when they are judged by purely literary standards. 
 
 In other words, the literary quality is something that 
 may be added to a drama, but which is not essential to 
 its value as a play in the theater itself. And while we 
 cannot have a great play unless it is lifted into litera- 
 ture by skill of structure, by veracity of character, by 
 felicity of dialogue, it does not attract the public by its 
 possession of these qualities alone. Joseph Jefferson, 
 speaking out of his long experience on the stage, de- 
 clared that " you may have all the good literature you 
 wish in a play, if it does not interfere with the play's 
 action." He added that "the absence of fine writing in 
 a play will not injure it if the story and construction 
 are right. Literary merit will enhance the chances of 
 success if it be subservient to the action." And so de- 
 claring his opinion, Jefferson was only echoing what 
 Aristotle had said two thousand years earlier. 
 
 This is a hard saying for the merely literary critic, 
 
22 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 whether it comes from the mouth of the Greek philoso- 
 pher or from that of the American comedian ; and yet 
 it needs to be taken to heart by all who seek to pene- 
 trate to a real knowledge of the drama. The merely 
 literary critic is competent only to perceive the less im- 
 portant of the merely literary qualities of a drama. He 
 can appreciate the external poetry with which the ac- 
 tion of the play may be clothed ; but this action itself is 
 not easy for him to estimate at its true value. He studies 
 the play in the library, where the quality of style is 
 most obvious, and not in the theater, where story and 
 structure are more important. The merely literary 
 critic tends to neglect, and perhaps even to despise, the 
 purely theatrical qualities which must always sustain a 
 vital play; and he does not care to consider the con- 
 temporary unliterary pieces which would often help him 
 to a better understanding of these purely theatrical 
 qualities, revealed at once where the piece is acted on 
 the stage. 
 
 There is one thing that every student of the drama 
 should try to train himself to accomplish. In reading 
 any play, ancient or modern, in English or in a foreign 
 tongue, he should endeavor always to transport him- 
 self from the library into the theater and to visualize 
 an actual performance. He should strive to translate 
 the cold printed page of the book into the warm action 
 of living performers on the stage. He should call up 
 a mental image of the scene where the story is laid ; and 
 he should evoke moving pictures of the several char- 
 acters, not merely with his eye reading the dialogue, but 
 with his ear hearing it as actors would speak it. He 
 should do his best to put himself in the place of the 
 spectators for whose enjoyment the play was originally 
 
THE STUDY OF THE DRAMA 23 
 
 composed ; and he should make what Jebb aptly termed 
 an " effort of imaginative sympathy," that he may as 
 far as possible realize the conditions of actual perform- 
 ance. Stevenson recorded that his friend, Fleeming 
 Jenkin, had acquired this art of visualizing a drama 
 from the printed page, and he asserted that this was 
 " a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and some im- 
 agination, comparable to that of reading score." To 
 do this is not easy; indeed, to achieve it completely 
 is not possible; but the effort, however feeble it may 
 be, is worth while. And it will be its own reward, for 
 only by its aid can we teach ourselves and train our- 
 selves to disentangle the essential theatrical effective- 
 ness of the masterpieces of the great dramatic poets. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOB 
 
 For ill can Poetry express 
 
 Full many a tone of thought sublime, 
 And Painting, mute and motionless, 
 
 Steals but a glance of time. 
 But by the mighty actor brought 
 
 Illusions perfect triumphs come, 
 Verse ceases to be airy thought, 
 
 And Sculpture to be dumb. 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL, To John Philip Kemble. 
 
 IN the nineteenth century, there were British and Amer- 
 ican poets of high distinction who were attracted to 
 the dramatic form, and who sought to express them- 
 selves in it, but without considering the conditions of 
 the stage of their own time, which seemed to them a 
 period of decadence. They disregarded the spectator 
 in the theater itself and sought to interest solely the 
 reader in the library. They liked to think of themselves 
 as dramatists and to claim praise for dramatic achieve- 
 ment, but without facing the ordeal by fire before the 
 footlights. Looking upon the drama as an easy form, 
 they took no trouble to spy out its secrets or to master 
 its technic. And perhaps deep down in their hearts, 
 there was a vague contempt for the acted drama, be- 
 cause it had to appeal to the mere mob, to the vulgar 
 throng. We can listen to their sentiments as these 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 25 
 
 are voiced by the Poet in the Prologue on the Stage of 
 Goethe's " Faust" :- 
 
 " Speak not to me of yonder motley masses, 
 Whom but to see puts out the fire of Song! 
 
 Hide from my view the surging crowd that passes, 
 And in its whirlpool forces us along! 
 
 No, lead me where some heavenly silence glasses 
 The purer joys that round the Poet throng." 
 
 This attitude may not be unbecoming in the lyric 
 poet, who has but to express his own emotions; but 
 it is impossible in a true dramatic poet, who feels that 
 what he has wrought is not complete until he has seen 
 it bodied forth by actors on the stage before the motley 
 masses and before the surging crowd. The true drama- 
 tic poet would never hesitate to adopt Moliere's state- 
 ment of his own practice : " I accept easily enough the 
 decisions of the multitude, and I hold it as difficult to 
 assail a work which the public approves as to defend 
 one which it condemns." But however much the lyric 
 poet may detach himself from the surging crowd and 
 despise the motley masses, even he must not forget 
 his readers absolutely; it is only at his peril that he 
 can neglect the duty of being readable. Taine declared 
 that Browning had been guilty of this fault in "The 
 Ring and the Book," wherein the poet " never thinks 
 of the reader, and lets his characters talk as though 
 no one were to read their speeches." 
 
 What may be only a minor fault in the lyric poet 
 becomes a gross blunder in the dramatic poet, who can 
 never claim the right of solitary self-expression, which 
 the lyrist may assert. The drama has for its basis an 
 appeal to the whole public, and not to any coterie of 
 dilettants. Since we write poems to be performed, 
 
26 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 " our first duty ought to be to please the court and the 
 people and to attract a great throng to their perform- 
 ances " ; so said Corneille, declaring frankly the doctrine 
 of every genuine dramatic poet. " We must, if we can, 
 abide by the rules, so as not to displease the learned, 
 and to receive universal applause; but, above all else, 
 let us win the voice of the people." The great drama- 
 tists of every period when the drama was flourishing 
 would have echoed this firm declaration of Cor- 
 neille's. By their own splendid experience, they had 
 learnt how greatly the artist may profit by a resolute 
 struggle with limitations and with obstacles ; and they 
 could scarcely refrain from contempt for the timorous 
 poets who have shrunk from this profitable effort. And 
 as the result of a choice of the easier path, these craven 
 bards have failed to reach the goal toward which they 
 fondly believed themselves to be aiming. The closet- 
 dramas are all unactable; most of them are unread- 
 able; and many of them are unspeakable. Although 
 important poets have condescended to the composi- 
 tion of plays not intended to be played, their impor- 
 tance is not due to their closet-dramas ; and perhaps 
 their fame would be almost as high if they had re- 
 frained from these poems in dialogue. 
 
 The dramatic poets Sophocles, Shakspere, Mo- 
 liere have always been willing to take thought of 
 the players by whom their plays were to be presented, 
 and of the playgoers whom they hoped to attract in 
 motley masses. Consciously, to some extent, and un- 
 consciously more often, they shaped the stories they 
 were telling to the circumstances of the actual perform- 
 ance customary on the contemporary stage. Whether 
 they knew it or not, their great tragedies and their 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 27 
 
 great comedies, as we have them now, are what they 
 are, partly because of the influence of the several ac- 
 tors for whom they devised their chief characters, 
 partly because the theater to which they were accus- 
 tomed was of a certain size and had certain peculiarities 
 of structure, and partly because the spectators they 
 wished to move had certain prejudices and certain 
 preconceptions natural to their race and to their era. 
 This is why it is useful to consider the influence which 
 the actor, the theater, and the audience can severally 
 exert upon the dramatist, influences necessarily 
 felt by every dramatic poet, great or small, in every 
 period in the long evolution of the drama. 
 
 ii 
 
 Of these three influences, the most immediate is that 
 of the actors, with whom the playwright has ever 
 to work in cordial sympathy, and without whose as- 
 sistance his play cannot be represented as he has con- 
 ceived it. The critic nowadays who looks upon the 
 drama as lying wholly within the circle of literature, 
 and who fails to perceive its vital connection with the 
 actual theater, is often moved to make it a matter of 
 reproach to certain contemporary playwrights that 
 they are wont to write plays to fit a special actor or a 
 special actress. In thus finding fault, the critic reveals 
 not only his misunderstanding of the needful relation 
 between the dramatist and the performers who are to 
 personate his characters, but also an inability to ap- 
 preciate the way in which the mind of the artist is often 
 set in motion by accidents that may seem casual and 
 trifling. 
 
 In every art, there is often a startling disproportion 
 
28 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 between the exciting cause and the ultimate result. 
 We might almost liken the artist to the oyster which 
 is moved by a grain of sand to produce a pearl of great 
 price. More than one of the most triumphant artistic 
 feats of the Italian Renascence is what it is because 
 the painter had to make the best of a certain particular 
 wall-space over an altar or because the sculptor had 
 to get his statue out of a given block of marble of un- 
 usual shape and size. The painter and the sculptor 
 accepted the limitations of the wall-space and of the 
 marble-block, and found their profit in so doing; they 
 made a stepping-stone out of that which would have 
 been only a stumbling-block to the less ingenious and 
 the less imaginative. 
 
 So the artist in playmaking sees his opportunity 
 and finds his profit in the special accomplishments 
 of the actors of his own time. Of course, the dramatist 
 ought not to subject himself to the actors, nor ought 
 he to limit what he conceives to the capacity of the 
 special performers he may have in view. But he must 
 always take account of them and keep them in mind, 
 because the art of the drama is a twofold art, and be- 
 cause the playwright and the players must work in 
 unison, ever aiding each other because they always 
 depend on each other. The dramatist is quite as help- 
 less without the actors as the actors are without the 
 dramatist. Without them, the playwright has only the 
 barren appeal to posterity, which is certain never to 
 reach its ears. Without him, the performers can be 
 seen only in old plays, of which the public is sure to 
 tire, sooner or later. 
 
 This ideal harmony of these partners in art has not 
 always been obtained, since both parties to the alliance 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 29 
 
 are likely to be endowed with the occasional irritability 
 and with the swift susceptibility of the artistic tempera- 
 ment. But the best results have been achieved by both 
 when they have labored together loyally. It is without 
 surprise, therefore, that we find it recorded that Sopho- 
 cles, the foremost of Greek tragic dramatists, the su- 
 preme artist of a most artistic race, was believed to 
 have composed his chief characters for some one par- 
 ticular actor, although we do not now know the name 
 of this special performer, whose histrionic gifts stimu- 
 lated the dramaturgic energy of the austere poet. In 
 more than one of the surviving plays of Sophocles, 
 we can easily discover what would nowadays be called 
 a " star-part," a single character who has always the 
 center of the action and in whose fate the interest of 
 the story culminates. 
 
 It is a matter of inference, rather than of actual record, 
 that Shakspere kept in mind the histrionic capacity 
 of the several leading performers of the company of 
 which he was himself a member, and for which all his 
 plays were composed. Apparently, the greatest of dra- 
 matic poets was not himself an actor of abundant 
 native endowment, however keen might be his insight 
 into the principles of the histrionic art. So far as we 
 know, he confined his efforts to parts for which in- 
 telligence, dignity, and delivery were sufficient equip- 
 ment, the Ghost in "Hamlet," old Adam in "As 
 You Like It," and the elder Knowell in "Every Man 
 in his Humor." In other words, the greatest of dra- 
 matic poets was probably as an actor of only respect- 
 able rank ; and he seems to have yielded the chief char- 
 acters even in his own plays to the more gifted of his 
 fellow-players. It was not for his own acting that he 
 
3d A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 wrote " Hamlet/ ' but for Burbage's; and Burbage cre- 
 ated the most of the star-parts in Shakspere's pieces. 
 
 A close scrutiny of Shakspere's text will enable us 
 to make more than one inference about the actors with 
 whom he was associated and for whom he wrote his 
 comedies and his tragedies. It has been pointed out 
 how the gauntness of Holof ernes is evidence that there 
 was a lean actor in the company, the same performer 
 probably who was later to play the envious Cassius. 
 There were no actresses in the Shaksperian theaters, 
 as there had been none in the mysteries and moralities 
 which had preceded the Elizabethan drama and which 
 had made it possible. All the women's parts were per- 
 formed by boy-actors, difficult as this fact may be to 
 reconcile with the variety and subtlety of the female 
 characters in Shakspere's dramas and with their essen- 
 tial womanliness and abundant femininity. It has 
 been said that even if there are few heroes in Shak- 
 spere's plays, there are many heroines ; and yet all these 
 heroines sprang into life for the acting of one or another 
 of the smooth-faced boys who were then employed by 
 the associated actor-managers. Only a little while be- 
 fore Shakspere composed the gloomy group of come- 
 dies, so-called, of which "Measure for Measure" and 
 " All's Well that Ends Well" are the most significant, 
 he had produced a swift succession of gay and joyous 
 romantic-comedies, "As You Like It" and "Twelfth 
 Night," the "Merchant of Venice" and "Much Ado 
 about Nothing." Perhaps we may ascribe the exist- 
 ence of the delightful heroines of these witty and pa- 
 thetic pieces, Rosalind and Viola, Portia and Beatrice, 
 to Shakspere's appreciation of the unusual ability of 
 some clean-shaven lad to personate these charming 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 31 
 
 maidens, sparkling yet tender, willing to be wooed and 
 yet coy. 
 
 In our modern theaters, when these parts are en- 
 trusted to actresses, there is an obvious lack of plausi- 
 bility in the performance as soon as the girls try to 
 pass themselves off as boys. A spectator to-day cannot 
 help wondering how it is that Orlando fails to see that 
 the self-styled Ganymede is a woman, and how it is that 
 Portia was able to fool the Duke into a belief that she 
 was a lawyer of the sterner sex. In Shakspere's time, 
 this difficulty did not exist. Then a boy impersonating 
 a girl could disguise himself as a boy without too great 
 a strain upon the spectators' willingness to accept fic- 
 tion for fact. Yet even in Shakspere's time, there may 
 have been a puzzling complexity in the performance 
 of " As You Like It," when a boy-actor played the 
 part of a girl who gave herself out for a lad, and who 
 then as a lad was willing to let Orlando pretend that 
 she was his lady-love. 
 
 in 
 
 Many critics have expressed wonder at the violence 
 and coarseness of " Titus Andronicus " ; and they have 
 been unable to reconcile these crudities with the gentler 
 spirit and loftier view of life revealed in the later trage- 
 dies. Here again an explanation may be found in a 
 consideration of the playwright's relation to the players. 
 The "Titus Andronicus," which we have in Shak- 
 spere's works, is now believed to be his revision or 
 amalgamation of two earlier dramas dealing with the 
 same subject, both of which had been often performed, 
 and both of which had then come into the control of 
 the company of actors to which Shakspere belonged. 
 
32 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 He was at that time only a beginner, with none of the 
 authority which is the result of a series of successes. 
 He was but a prentice playwright, whose task it was 
 to patch up old pieces and to make them more worthy 
 of performance by his comrades. Even if he had re- 
 volted against the inartistic vulgarity of the earlier 
 tragedies-of-blood which he had to make over, even 
 if he had wished to modify and to soften their harsh 
 and repellent features to accord with his own finer 
 taste, he would not have been permitted to do so, be- 
 cause the associated actors who were his employers 
 would not have accepted his new version, if they found 
 it shorn of the bombast and of the brutal extravagance 
 which characterized the two old plays and which gave 
 the performers occasions for overacting, the effect of 
 which had been tested by long usage. Perhaps one rea- 
 son for the rant and the violence that strikes us in the 
 plays of Shakspere's immediate predecessor, Marlowe, 
 especially in his" Jew of Malta" and in his "Tam- 
 burlaine," is that he wrote the chief parts in these 
 pieces for Alleyne, a most robustious actor, who was 
 nearly seven feet in height and who possessed a pro- 
 portionate physical energy. 
 
 Charles Lamb, who had a humorous relish for para- 
 dox, once ventured to suggest that Shakspere's plays 
 can be appreciated better in the study than on the 
 stage. He held that it was a disadvantage to have 
 Hamlet, for example, forever associated with the per- 
 son of John Philip Kemble. Now, it may be admitted 
 at once that there are many things in Shakspere's plays 
 which we can best taste as we study them reverently, 
 book in hand. But there are also many things which 
 affect us far more powerfully in the theater than in the 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 33 
 
 library, and these are the essentially dramatic things. 
 These are the things which we can be sure that Shak- 
 spere meant us to feel when we are witnessing his plays. 
 He wrote them to be acted ; and it is only when we see 
 them performed that we are enabled to see them as 
 their author intended us to see them. It is to be noted 
 also that Lamb did not follow his own advice ; he was 
 a most assiduous theatergoer, as almost every essay of 
 his testifies. We shall do better if we are guided rather 
 by his practice than by his precept. Indeed, one of the 
 first rules which every student of the drama ought to 
 lay down for himself is not to neglect any opportunity 
 to see any play of Shakspere's which may happen to 
 be announced, even if the performance does not pro- 
 mise to be entirely adequate. Nothing furnishes the 
 memory more satisfactorily than a collection of Shak- 
 sperian performances. 
 
 Moliere, whose name must always be linked with 
 those of Sophocles and Shakspere, was the most ac- 
 complished comic actor of his day ; and, of course, he 
 devised a leading character in all his comedies for his 
 own acting. To certain of these characters he gave his 
 own physical characteristics, his cough, for example, 
 just as he gave lameness to other characters intended 
 for the acting of his lame brother-in-law, Bejart. He 
 wrote the gay serving-maid in the "Bourgeois Gen- 
 tilhomme" to utilize at once the infectious laughter of 
 Mile. Beauval, who had only recently joined his com- 
 pany. For his own wife, the fascinating Armande 
 Bejart, he composed a succession of brilliant parts, 
 varied and veracious. Chief among the characters he 
 wrote for her are the charming Elmire in "Tartuffe" 
 and the witty Celimene in the " Misanthrope." And 
 
84 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the tragic heroines of Moliere's younger contemporary, 
 Racine, were the result of his intimate knowledge of the 
 power of personation possessed by Mile. Champmesle. 
 
 IV 
 
 Accepting the fact that Sophocles and Shakspere, 
 Moliere and Racine, and all the chief dramatists in the 
 long history of the theater, have always composed their 
 plays with a keen appreciation of the histrionic ability 
 of the actors by whom their pieces were to be performed , 
 there is interest and profit in an inquiry as to the exact 
 measure of the influence which the actors may have 
 exerted upon the authors. And here we can find help 
 in considering the performers of our own time, since 
 the histrionic temperament as such probably varies 
 very little with the lapse of centuries. The actor is 
 apparently to-day the same kind of human being that 
 he was yesterday and the day before yesterday. In his 
 attitude toward his own calling, toward the exercise 
 of his own art, Roscius probably was not unlike Gar- 
 rick and Coquelin. What they wanted, each of them, 
 was a play in which he had a good part, and in his 
 eyes a good part was one in which he could act to his 
 heart's content. A good part is one in which the actor 
 has something to do or somebody to personate. He 
 demands action and character, and these are pre- 
 cisely the qualities which the playgoer also demands. 
 
 Therefore, the influence of the performers on the play- 
 wright has been wholesome in so far as their desire for 
 good parts has tended to stiffen the dramatic action, 
 to intensify the passionate climax of the play. And this 
 pressure of the actors on the author has tended also 
 to persuade the poet to a larger and a deeper reproduc- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 35 
 
 tion of human nature, so that he could provide the 
 performers with characters that richly rewarded their 
 faculty of impersonating creatures wholly unlike them- 
 selves. No doubt, the playwright has not infrequently 
 yielded too much to the wishes of the players and has 
 been satisfied merely to compose a vehicle for the self- 
 exhibition of the actors. Of course, the author can 
 claim no mercy if he is willing to subordinate himself 
 wholly to the actor and to put together what is but lit- 
 tle better than a framework for the display of some 
 special actor's tricks. This is what Sardou did not dis- 
 dain to do more than once for Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt, 
 surrendering the proper independence of his art so that 
 she could show off all the artificialities of hers. "Fe- 
 dora," for example, was so tightly adjusted to the clever- 
 ness of the French performer that it lost the most, of 
 its effect when acted by Signora Duse, because the 
 Italian actress found in its tricky ingenuity no oppor- 
 tunity for the poignant veracity she revealed in a sim- 
 pler and sincerer study from life, like Verga's " Caval- 
 leria Rusticana." 
 
 Yet an adroit and self-respecting dramatic poet can 
 get the utmost out of the varied powers of an actor of 
 versatile genius without any enfeebling complaisance 
 and without any unworthy self -surrender. And if 
 proof of this assertion were needed, it could be found 
 in "Cyrano de Bergrac." It is not too much to say 
 that if the masterpiece of M. Rostand had never been 
 acted or published and if it were suddenly to be dis- 
 covered after its author's death, the general opinion 
 would then be that it was a most ingenious specimen 
 of the dramatic poem, probably composed without any 
 expectation that it could ever be performed, since the 
 
36 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 central figure was so various and so many-sided, now 
 grotesque, and then lyric, now broadly humorous, and 
 then loftily heroic, that the author could never have 
 hoped to find any actor multifarious enough to imper- 
 sonate the character and to reveal its contrasting as- 
 pects. But we happen to know that this brilliant play 
 was written especially for a brilliant actor, and that it 
 was put together with an eye single to his extraordinary 
 range of personation. Coquelin was an incomparable 
 comedian, who had played countless parts, some lyric 
 and heroic, some humorous and grotesque. He had a 
 variety so marvelous that "he seemed to be not one 
 but all mankind's epitome." There was in "Cyrano 
 de Bergerac" no demand made on the actor that 
 Coquelin had not already met in some one of the hun- 
 dred dramas he had appeared in; and many of the 
 separate effects he had achieved in his best parts were 
 carefully combined in this one character. There was 
 never a more skilful example of theatrical tailoring 
 than M. Rostand's cutting and fitting of his poetic 
 fabric to the exact size and shape of Coquelin's his- 
 trionic accomplishments, yet this did not in any way 
 detract from the originality and the charm of the play 
 itself. Although it is a fact that " Cyrano de Bergerac " 
 is what it is solely because Coquelin was what he was, 
 nevertheless the play was performed by many other 
 actors; it was translated into h^alf a dozen different 
 languages ; it was read with delight by all who appre- 
 ciate pointed and polished verse; it lost nothing of its 
 literary value from the circumstance that it had its 
 origin in the poet's desire to write a great part for a 
 great actor. Other comedians may attempt to act 
 Cyrano indeed, a score of other actors have been 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 37 
 
 tempted to do so; but Coquelin's performance of the 
 part remains inimitable and unapproachable. He was 
 the best Cyrano because Cyrano was measured to fit 
 him. There is excellent excuse for the French phrase 
 which declared that the actor who first plays a part 
 " creates the character." This, at least, is what Coquelin 
 did with Cyrano. 
 
 The knowledge we chance to possess that M. Ros- 
 tand composed this play specially for Coquelin will 
 explain the final act, which puzzled not a few critics. 
 Why does the hero die at the end of the play ? Why 
 should he die ? The piece is called a " heroic-comedy," 
 and we do not expect to have a comedy end with a 
 death-scene. On the other hand, there is no real rea- 
 son why Cyrano should not die, that is to say, there 
 is no logical and necessary conclusion of the highly 
 artificial story which would require the hero either to 
 pass away in the fifth act or to survive to fight again 
 some other day. This being the case, it is easy to see 
 why M. Rostand chose to let the spectators behold 
 the last moments of his hero. It gave him as fine a 
 finish as any other possible termination; it enabled 
 him to touch lightly the chords of pathos; and, above 
 all it supplied Coquelin with a death-scene, more 
 or less of a novelty even for that marvelous comedian, 
 who may often have envied Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt 
 the many death-scenes which she has presented and 
 which have permitted her to draw easily upon the 
 tears of all who heard her dying speech and confes- 
 sion. 
 
 Perhaps a few of those who have been surprised that 
 this heroic-comedy should end as sadly as a tragedy, 
 may have wondered also why the old soldier Flambeau 
 
38 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 was allowed to occupy a disproportionate place in M. 
 Rostand's other poetic drama, the "Aiglon," wherein 
 he was not the chief figure, with the chief figure of 
 which, indeed, his connection seems almost episodic. 
 Could not the story of the masterful Napoleon's weak- 
 ling son have been set forth without dragging in this 
 ancient and loquacious warrior? Here, again, the 
 explanation is easy when we are aware that Flambeau, 
 although not originally acted in Paris by Coquelin, 
 was actually written for him ; and that the origin of the 
 play is to be found in the fact that the actor had ex- 
 pressed to the poet his desire to appear as one of the 
 faithful old guard of the great Emperor. The stalwart 
 figure of the veteran, loyal to his master's memory, 
 thus suggested by Coquelin, fascinated M.Rostand; 
 but when the poet sought for a plot in which to set this 
 character to work, he was led irresistibly to the feebler 
 form of the puny King of Rome, the impotent heir of 
 a mighty name. As the playwright worked out his 
 story in scenes and acts, he found the princeling taking 
 the center of the stage and the old soldier becoming 
 inevitably a subordinate character, full of color, no 
 doubt, and very useful in building up the situations 
 of the play, but no longer the focus of interest. 
 
 When we peruse Legouve's "Memories of Sixty 
 Years," we learn how "Adrienne Lecouvreur" came 
 to be composed especially for Rachel, and we see why 
 the heroine does not appear in the opening act of the 
 play to which she gives her name, and why she first 
 comes in view clad in the costume of one of Racine's 
 characters. And in the same interesting and instruc- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 39 
 
 tive reminiscences, M. Legouve also records how he 
 wrote a certain speech in his earlier piece, " Louise de 
 Lignerolles," half a dozen times because Mile. Mars 
 insisted that it was not what it ought to be, until finally 
 she told him that what she wanted was something like 
 " la-la-la la." That is to say, her histrionic instinct 
 made her feel the emotional rhythm of the proper 
 speech for the character at that moment in the play; 
 and Legouve, having full confidence in her judgment, 
 promptly set fit words to the tune she had indicated. 
 Every other dramatist could recall instances of the 
 unpremeditated effects he has achieved, now and again, 
 by thus accepting the hints of his actors. Many a great 
 drama is the greater because of practical suggestions 
 made by the actors, just as many a great drama has 
 been due to the desire of the poet to profit by the rich 
 gift of some contemporary performer. There is char- 
 acteristic shrewdness in a remark which Augier once 
 made to the comedian Regnier: "My experience has 
 taught me that an actor deprives me of all that he does 
 not add to the part I have written." 
 
 We may read in the life of Bulwer Lytton how he 
 listened to the advice of Macready and made over 
 both the " Lady of Lyons " and " Richelieu " in accord- 
 ance with the valuable advice which the actor gave 
 him. So Mr. Bram Stoker has told us how Henry 
 Irving felt that Tennyson's "Becket," in the form in 
 which the poet had published it, was not likely to suc- 
 ceed as a play, although it contained the superb figure 
 of the martyred prelate which the actor-manager was 
 longing to personate. Finally, Irving saw the practi- 
 cability of a few rather radical alterations, the suppres- 
 sion of a scene here, and the writing of a new speech 
 
40 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 or two there. With fear and trembling, he took these 
 suggestions to Tennyson; and the poet, longing for 
 success on the stage, accepted them gladly, writing 
 at once the added lines that the actor wanted and giv- 
 ing permission for the omissions and transpositions 
 that Irving believed to be necessary. 
 
 Here we find the actor rising almost to the level of 
 the poet's collaborator ; and it would be easy to collect 
 many another illustration of this harmonious partner- 
 ship between the creative and the interpretative artists. 
 The plot of "Gringoire," Banville's charming little 
 play, was changed for the better by the author in con- 
 sequence of suggestions from Coquelin, who created 
 the part of the starving poet. The ingenious turn of 
 the story toward the end of the piece was the invention 
 of the comedian ; and when he proposed this to the 
 author, Banville asked scornfully: "Do you want me 
 to write a play like Scribe?" Coquelin laughed and 
 replied that this was just what he did want. " Very 
 well, then," said Banville, smiling in his turn, " that is 
 just what I will do!" 
 
 Not only does the wise dramatist profit by every 
 available suggestion of the actors, and not only does 
 he take advantage of the special capabilities of the per- 
 formers he may have in mind for this part or that, he 
 is also moved sometimes to refrain from putting into 
 his play scenes which are not likely to be properly 
 acted by the special comedians whom he expects to 
 personate certain characters. Sheridan was the man- 
 ager of Drury Lane when he brought out his own 
 "School for Scandal." Every part in that glittering 
 comedy was written particularly for the performers 
 who first played it ; and so admirably was it then per- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 41 
 
 formed as a whole that Charles Lamb thought it some 
 compensation for growing old that he had been born 
 early enough to see the "School for Scandal" in its 
 glory. Indeed, the several performers were so closely 
 fitted that when a friend asked the author-manager 
 why his comedy did not contain a love-scene for the 
 two characters whose marriage brings it to an end, 
 Sheridan was ready with the obvious answer that 
 Smith and Miss Hopkins could not make love. Now, 
 Smith was the original Charles Surface, and Maria was 
 first acted by Miss Priscilla Hopkins (afterward the 
 wife of John Philip Kemble). 
 
 Evidence of this adjustment of the story of a play 
 to the limitations of the performers for whom it was 
 intended, can be found abundantly in certain of the 
 comedies of John Lyly, written for the Children of 
 Paul's, one of the companies of boy-actors in vogue 
 in the earlier days of Queen Elizabeth. In these pol- 
 ished pieces of suave rhetoric and artificial sentiment, 
 there is nothing of the terror and of the horror which 
 characterized many of the contemporary plays written 
 for the full-grown performers of the regular theaters. 
 There is no rude power, no rant, no bombast ; all is 
 decorous, and everything is suppressed which is likely 
 to be too exacting for their youthful inexperience of life. 
 
 And this same artful adaptation of a plot to the 
 performers for whose use it was devised can be seen 
 also in the earliest of English comedies that has come 
 down to us, "Ralph Roister Doister," written by 
 Udall, the master of Eton, for performance by his own 
 pupils. For all its imitation of Plautus in its external 
 form, this English comic play smacks of the soil ; and 
 it has an obvious likeness in its robust fun, in its 
 
42 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 frequent horse-play, and in its occasional snatches of 
 song to the nondescript pieces which undergradu- 
 ates undertake for their own pleasure to-day. " Ralph 
 Roister Doister" is just the sort of bold and hearty 
 farce which mature schoolboys could perform with 
 zest and with unfailing effect. And its successive epi- 
 sodes made no demands upon the original performers 
 to which they were not likely to be equal. In fact, a 
 careful examination of this unpretending little play 
 seems to suggest that the Eton schoolmaster had a 
 premonition of the truth which the later Scribe once 
 expressed to Legouve. The wily French playwright 
 declared that dramatists did well to study the qualities 
 of the contemporary actors, but that there was a more 
 constant advantage in availing one's self also of the 
 defects of these performers, "since their merits 
 might abandon them, whereas their faults would never 
 leave them." 
 
 This may have been said more or less in jest; and 
 yet it has a kernel of truth. The playwright needs to 
 take stock of his performers, and if he can find his 
 advantage in utilizing their failings, so much the better 
 for him, although, of course, it is their real endow- 
 ment that he will utilize the more often. And he may 
 gain by considering special actors while he is compos- 
 ing his play, even if he may not actually expect that 
 they will be employed in the performance of that piece. 
 Although these special actors may be unavailable, per- 
 haps because they are engaged elsewhere or because 
 they have retired from the stage, the dramatist may 
 find a stimulus to his invention, if not to his imagina- 
 tion, in keeping in mind the personality of these per- 
 formers while he is composing his play. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ACTOR 43 
 
 In fact, the more closely we study the history of 
 dramatic literature, and the more sharply we analyze 
 the structure of the masterpieces of the drama, the 
 more firmly we become convinced that the dramatic 
 poets of every age and of every race have never failed 
 to weigh scrupulously the gifts, the deficiencies, and the 
 special qualities of the various performers upon whom 
 they had to rely for the proper presentation of their 
 plays to the public. And this has been for our pleasure 
 as well as for their profit. Mme. de Sevigne accused 
 Racine of "writing plays for la Champmesle, and not 
 for posterity." No doubt Racine was guilty of the 
 charge; but as it has happened, the plays that fitted 
 Mile, de Champmesle have succeeded also in retaining 
 the admiration of posterity. They survive as the unex- 
 celled masterpieces of French tragedy. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 
 
 It is obvious that the general spectacle presented by the interior 
 of a Greek theater during the representation of a drama must have 
 been quite unlike anything we are accustomed to in modern times. 
 The open-air buildings, the performance in broad daylight, the vast 
 crowds of spectators, the chorus grouped together in the center 
 all these characteristics of a Greek theatrical exhibition must have 
 combined to produce a scene to which there is no exact parallel at 
 the present day. This fact should be kept clearly in view. A. E. 
 HAIGH, The Attic Theater. 
 
 IN every period when the literature of any language 
 has been characterized by abundant dramatic produc- 
 tivity, the playwright will be found to have composed 
 his plays in accordance with the conditions of the 
 actual theater of his own time. He may not have liked 
 these conditions and he may have believed that they 
 could be bettered ; but he has always begun by accept- 
 ing them, whatever they might be. He has done this 
 necessarily and inevitably, whether he himself was 
 truly a dramatic poet like Sophocles and Shakspere or 
 merely an ingenious stage-craftsman like Kotzebue 
 and Scribe. What the playwrights of every age have 
 done instinctively and without hesitation, the histori- 
 ans of literature are now beginning to perceive; and 
 only a few of them have yet grasped the full significance 
 of the fact that it is impossible justly to appreciate the 
 art of the truly dramatic poet, Sophocles or Shakspere, 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 45 
 
 Moliere or Ibsen, without a clear understanding of the 
 chief circumstances of an actual performance in the 
 particular theater for which the dramatist prepared 
 his plays, and to the size and shape of which, and to 
 the scenic appliances of which, he had to adjust the 
 construction of his story. 
 
 We are now well aware that there have been many 
 types of theater in different countries and at different 
 times, most of them varying very widely from our snug 
 modern playhouses. We all recognize that the im- 
 mense outdoor theater of the Athenians was as unlike 
 as possible to the smaller half-roofed cockpit of the 
 Londoners under Elizabeth, and also to the long nar- 
 row tennis-court of the Parisians under Louis XIV. 
 But while these differences between the theaters of 
 earlier periods may be a matter of common knowledge, 
 we do not always apply our information when we under- 
 take to discuss the dramaturgic skill of the playwrights 
 of these several epochs. We must always keep in mind 
 the extent to which the theater has often dictated to 
 the author what he could put into his play and what 
 he had to leave out, and how he had to present what he 
 desired to set forth. We ought to give full weight to 
 the pressure exerted on the playwright by the changing 
 conditions of the playhouses of successive centuries, 
 by the size of the theater, for one thing, which may be 
 so huge as to forbid the author's choice of any but 
 broad and simple themes, by the elaboration of 
 heavy scenery, which may impose on him the duty of 
 compacting his plot so that he will need few changes 
 of place, or by the improved modern modes of 
 artificial illumination (candles first, then oil-lamps, 
 after a while gas, and finally electricity), all of which 
 
46 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 have wrought in turn significant modifications of dra- 
 maturgic method. For example, it is only as we come 
 to a realizing sense of the influence exerted upon the 
 art of the dramatist by the specific conditions of each 
 of the special types of theater which have existed each 
 in its own time and place, that we can measure the 
 wisdom of Shakspere in rejecting the advice of Sidney 
 to model his plays after those of the Greek dramatists ; 
 and that we can gage also the unwisdom of Tennyson 
 in taking Shakspere's histories as the pattern of his 
 own poetic dramas, composed centuries later, when 
 the conditions of the English theater had entirely 
 changed. 
 
 The critics of any particular period of the drama 
 have not always been familiar with the conditions 
 existing during other periods. The historians of Greek 
 literature are acquainted with our modern playhouses 
 and they are now studying the ruins of the theaters 
 still accessible in Greece and in the Grecian colonies ; 
 but they have paid little attention to the methods of 
 presenting plays in the Middle Ages, at first in the 
 churches, and later, on platforms in the market-places. 
 The historians of English literature have scarcely yet 
 attained to a fairly clear perception of the way in which 
 plays were acted under the Tudors, and they have not 
 yet seized the full significance of the changes which 
 resulted during the Restoration from the introduction 
 of painted scenery and of artificial light. The schol- 
 ars who knew only one manifestation of the drama 
 have rarely possessed the perspective which would 
 be supplied to them by a knowledge of other aspects 
 in the other periods when the drama was flourishing. 
 There is a striking unity in the drama as we trace its 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 47 
 
 development down through the ages ; its essential prin- 
 ciples are always the same, since the aim of the real 
 dramatist has varied little, whether he was a Greek 
 of old, a Frenchman of the seventeenth century or a 
 Scandinavian of the nineteenth. And his methods were 
 affected by traditions still surviving from the play- 
 houses of an earlier generation. These traditions the 
 dramatist profits by even if they are no longer in exact 
 accord with the actual conditions of the theater for 
 which he is writing; and so we find the Elizabethan 
 playwrights making use of the two doors on opposite 
 sides of the stage to indicate two wholly distinct places, 
 a device which is apparently a survival from the 
 several "mansions" of the French miracle-plays. In 
 fact, it is impossible really to understand the drama- 
 turgic methods in vogue at any particular period with- 
 out taking into consideration the circumstances of per- 
 formance at least half a century earlier. 
 
 No one, it may be noted, has undertaken to trace 
 the slow development of the art of the scene-painter, 
 distinguishing sharply between true scene-painting as 
 we now know it, a realistic perspective intended to re- 
 produce the place itself, and that very different thing, 
 the building up in miniature of the house or of a part 
 of the house (such as we find in the Middle Ages and 
 again in the Italian comedy-of -masks) , which is the 
 work of carpenters completed by the work of house- 
 painters. No one has collected the many references 
 which make it plain that properties of all sorts 
 altars, thrones, arbors, etc. were in use long before 
 there was any attempt at true scene-painting. And no 
 one has ever made a collection of plans of theaters, 
 all drawn to the same scale, so that we could see at a 
 
48 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 glance how immense was the theater of Dionysus at 
 Athens and how small the tennis-court wherein Moliere 
 acted. With the aid of a collection of these plans and 
 with the collateral information now available, we could 
 follow the changes in the method of performance from 
 Sophocles to Ibsen, and we should be led to one inter- 
 esting conclusion, that instead of there being only 
 two types of theater, as is often assumed, the ancient 
 and the modern, there are in reality many, of which 
 the medieval is not the least important. 
 
 We should be induced to acknowledge that the the- 
 ater in England for which Marlowe and Shakspere and 
 Jonson wrote, and the theater in Spain for which Lope 
 de Vega and Calderon wrote, were neither of them really 
 modern ; and they were both medieval in their methods 
 or at least semi-medieval. We should be made to see 
 that Moliere is apparently the earliest of the moderns, 
 in that his plays now need no readjustment, no editing, 
 no transposing of any kind, to fit them for the play- 
 houses of to-day. And we should discover that a very 
 striking change in the practices of the playwrights was 
 brought about in the second half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, when the stage was at last abundantly lighted in 
 every part by electricity and when the curving bow of 
 the footlights was cut back to the curtain, which there- 
 after rose and fell inside a picture-frame. 
 
 The difference between the playhouse in which we 
 can to-day see one of Mr. Clyde Fitch's plays and the 
 playhouse in which Sheridan's comedies were originally 
 given, is greater than the difference between Sheridan's 
 Drury Lane and the house for which Congreve wrote 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 49 
 
 and in which Betterton acted. And in its turn, this 
 Restoration playhouse was very unlike the Elizabethan 
 theater for which Shakspere wrote and in which Bur- 
 bage acted. Even more apparent is the difference 
 between the theater of Dionysus at Athens and the 
 Roman theater at Orange, in the south of France. 
 These several theaters, ancient and modern, are sharply 
 distinguished from one another by their size, by their 
 shape, by their method of illumination, by the absence 
 or presence of real scenery, and also by the arrange- 
 ment of the seats for the spectators ; and as we study 
 these successive changes, we are confirmed in the con- 
 viction that the physical conditions of the playhouse 
 must always have exerted a powerful influence upon 
 the dramatic poets who followed each other down 
 through the centuries. 
 
 The theater of Dionysus at Athens is accepted as 
 the earliest of the great Greek theaters, yet it is so well 
 preserved that it is possible for a traveler now to sit 
 on its marble benches and look down into the orchestra 
 where the chorus circled with solemn chant about the 
 altar of the god in whose honor the drama had come 
 into being. 1 For a long time, the primitive Greek plays 
 were acted in the market-place, and the spectators sat 
 on temporary benches. After one of these rows of 
 seats had broken down, a space was leveled at the foot 
 of the Acropolis, and the spectators grouped them- 
 selves on the hollow hillside above. In time, the slope 
 was rounded out, and from the level space where the 
 actors stood, tiers of marble seats rose high up the 
 shoulders of the mountain. The orchestra itself was 
 paved ; and some kind of low structure must have been 
 1 See illustration facing page 74. 
 
50 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 erected behind the semi-circular space of the orchestra 
 to serve as a background for the movements of the 
 actors and for the evolutions of the chorus. It is gen- 
 erally admitted now that there was no elevated stage 
 in the Attic theater; and the acting took place in the 
 orchestra itself, the semi-circular level space which 
 bowed out into the curving tiers of seats. It is coming 
 to be admitted also that there was no scenery, although 
 there may have been properties. Of course, the author 
 was free to avail himself of the doors and of the roof 
 of the low structure which shut in the orchestra, and 
 which probably served also for a dressing-room for all 
 those who took part in the performance. 
 
 The arc of the semi-circle, where this structure 
 stood, was seventy- two feet long; and the farthest 
 point of the prolonged semi-circle was about the same 
 distance away. And above this level space, there rose 
 nearly eighty tiers of seats. It has been asserted that 
 more than twenty thousand spectators could be present 
 at a performance. As we sit on those benches to-day, 
 and glance down to the orchestra and see how small a 
 single figure looks so far away, and how impossible it 
 is to perceive any play of feature, we are not surprised 
 that the Greek actors were raised on lofty boots and 
 wore masks that towered above their heads, increasing 
 their apparent stature. We recognize that under such 
 circumstances the dramatist was wise to avoid all acts 
 of physical violence impossible to performers thus 
 accoutered. We perceive that he was well advised 
 when he preferred a plot already familiar to his spec- 
 tators, so that they would not lose the thread of the 
 story, even if a sudden gust of wind from the ^Egean 
 might now and again wrap the floating draperies about 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 51 
 
 the heads of the performers and for a moment deprive 
 the audience of the spoken words. We can approve 
 also his practical shrewdness in choosing a theme not 
 only already known in its outline, but also possessing 
 a bold simplicity, which demanded a massive treatment. 
 We can understand more clearly the function of the 
 chorus, which supplied a restful lyrical variety, and 
 also that spectacular element which appeals to the eye 
 and which seems to be required to hold the attention 
 of an immense gathering in the open air. And we end 
 by seeing the obvious likeness which exists between 
 one of the old Greek tragedies and one of our broader 
 modern music-dramas of the Wagnerian type, if this 
 should be performed out-of-doors. 
 
 In building their playhouses, as in most of their 
 other artistic endeavors, the Romans followed in the 
 footsteps of the Athenians. 1 They modified the Greek 
 theater to suit their own needs. Giving up the seats 
 on the curving hillside which enabled the audience to 
 look down on the actors, they filled the orchestra with 
 benches, and they were therefore forced to raise up a 
 stage so that the spectators could see the performers. 
 This stage was a long and narrow shelf; and it had 
 behind it a high wall, pierced with doors and richly 
 decorated with columns and statues. This stately piece 
 of ornate architecture was the unchanging background 
 for every play ; and its doors were utilized as the plot 
 might demand. In the theater at Orange in the south 
 of France, the stage was about one hundred and ninety 
 feet wide. The radius of the auditorium was more 
 than one hundred and eighty feet. There was accom- 
 modation for six thousand spectators. Although this 
 1 See illustration facing page 140. 
 
52 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 theater at Orange is a little late, the earlier Roman 
 playhouses were not unlike it in size and in shape. 
 
 Such a theater seems to be better suited for panto- 
 mime and for the feats of acrobats than for a drama 
 dealing truthfully with the pathos and the humor of 
 life. Perhaps we can catch a glimpse of one reason 
 why the delicately polished comedies of Terence failed 
 to please his contemporaries when they were performed. 
 The style of that accomplished man of letters could 
 hardly be expected to convey much pleasure to tfre 
 audience collected in a very large theater of this type. 
 The Comedie-Fran9aise, on one of its visits to Orange, 
 ventured to perform there a neo-Greek playlet, the 
 "Ilote" of M. Paul Ferrier; but although this had 
 been successful in Paris at the Theatre Fran9ais, it 
 was found to evaporate into immediate insignificance 
 in the vast space of the old Roman theater. On the 
 other hand, the " (Edipus " of Sophocles, and one or two 
 other French versions of massively planned Greek 
 tragedies, were really more effective when performed at 
 Orange than they ever had been in Paris, as though 
 they demanded a larger frame than any modern theater 
 could provide. 
 
 Gaston Boissier, who was not only one of the most 
 learned students of Latin literature but also one of the 
 acutest of critics, visited the substantial ruin at Orange 
 and also most of the other surviving Roman theaters. 
 As a result of these investigations, he declared that 
 when he sought to evoke a vision of the spacious Latin 
 playhouse and to reconstruct a mental image of it as it 
 must have been in the full splendor of the imperial 
 period, he believed that he was enabled thereby better 
 to understand the pieces which were performed in 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 53 
 
 these stately edifices. "No doubt, this theater was 
 made for these plays, but they were also made for this 
 theater; they were instinctively accommodated and 
 appropriated to the place where they were to be repre- 
 sented. The actual circumstances of their performance 
 imposed on them certain necessities, which they had 
 to accept and which in time erected themselves into 
 rules. It would be easy to prove that many of their 
 qualities and of their defects, for which subtle expla- 
 nations have been sought, have, in fact, no other origin 
 than this obligation of the dramatist to conform to the 
 conditions of performance in the only type of theater 
 with which the Latin dramatists were familiar." And 
 the shrewd Frenchman then pointed out the skill with 
 which the artful Plautus " solved the problem of getting 
 himself listened to (in a vast uncovered space) by in- 
 attentive and noisy spectators, who had at bottom little 
 real liking for the entertainment which was offered to 
 them." 
 
 in 
 
 In the Middle Ages, the tradition of the Greek the- 
 ater, and even that of the Roman, seems to have been 
 lost ; and we find a new dramatic form evolved spon- 
 taneously out of the ritual of the church. Just as the 
 Ara Cceli in Rome still exhibits at Christmas a wax- 
 work reproduction of the infant Jesus cradled in the 
 rude manger of the inn, so the medieval priests put 
 into dialogue and presented in action other episodes 
 of the Birth and also of the Resurrection. Choristers, 
 with shepherd's crooks in their hands, came in by the 
 eastern portal and advanced through the congrega- 
 tion, singing the glad tidings, until they drew near to 
 the manger within the chancel, in front of which they 
 
54 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 might meet other officials of the church, representing 
 the Three Wise Men . Later, a place apart was found for 
 Herod and his soldiers ; and other places, here and there, 
 in the vast cathedral, were assigned to other actors in 
 other episodes of Christ's career, the Temple, for 
 one, and, for another, the house of the High Priest. 
 
 These several places were called "stations." When 
 the swollen mystery was turned out of the cathedral, 
 and when its presentation was undertaken by laymen, 
 the traditions established in the church were carefully 
 preserved with only the necessary modifications. In 
 one manuscript of a mystery acted in Valenciennes in 
 1547, there is a miniature of the stage on which it was 
 acted ; and from this picture a model has been made, 
 which gives us a good idea of a medieval performance 
 in France. 1 The stage was a shallow platform about 
 one hundred and thirty feet in length ; and at the back, 
 in a long line, were little houses representing each of 
 the several stations, the various places required in the 
 course of the drama. At the extreme right of the spec- 
 tators is Heaven, raised high on pillars; and at the ex- 
 treme left is Hell-mouth. Ranged between were the 
 Inn, the Temple, the House of the High Priest, and the 
 other necessary " mansions " (as the French termed the 
 stations) , used only when they were called for by the spe- 
 cial episodes of the story, the rest of the acting taking 
 place anywhere on the stage, which was accepted as a 
 neutral ground whereon anything might be represented. 
 
 In England, instead of massing the stations at the 
 
 back of a long stage, the more general practice was to 
 
 set them up separately on wagons, like the floats of a 
 
 Mardi Gras parade, and they were called "pageants." 
 
 1 See illustration facing page 292. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 55 
 
 But even in England, more or less of the acting was 
 done, not on the floats, but in the street itself, in the 
 midst of the assembled spectators, just as had been 
 the case when the earlier performances were given in 
 the church itself. The street was then the neutral 
 ground which might be supposed to be anywhere, 
 the shore in front of Noah's Ark, or the space between 
 the palace of Herod and the house of the High Priest 
 (these two dwellings being represented by two pageants 
 brought forward at the same time). This is the tradi- 
 tion which survived in the Elizabethan theater, where 
 the acting took place also on a neutral ground. The 
 stage was only a platform unincumbered by scenery, 
 and it was therefore free to represent any needed place. 
 At right and left, there might be two doors, which 
 properly labelled, could stand, if need be, one for Asia 
 and the other for Africa. 
 
 Under the later Tudors, there sprang into being 
 several companies of actors, patronized by the great 
 nobles. They went about acting where they could, in 
 palaces and in townhalls, on village greens and in the 
 courtyards of inns. They carried a few properties, 
 swords and scepters, and the like ; but they knew no- 
 thing of scenery painted on frames. When at last they 
 were forbidden to act in the inns of London, they went 
 a little outside the city and put up playhouses of their 
 own. They had no models to go by, for they knew as 
 little about the theaters of Greece and Rome as their 
 medieval predecessors had known. But they had found 
 that the courtyards of inns, hollow rectangles girt with 
 galleries, were suitable for their purpose ; and so it is 
 that the playhouses that they built were very like the 
 inn courtyards, with the inn itself omitted. They 
 
56 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 put up a square or circular or oval structure, open to 
 the sky, except over the galleries, and except also over 
 Ihe back part of the platform which jutted into the 
 yard where the groundlings stood. 
 
 We have the contract for the building of one of these 
 playhouses, from which we learn that it was square, 
 eighty feet on each side, and that the platform-stage 
 was forty- three feet wide. 1 Two pieces of arras (or of 
 cloth painted like tapestry) were hung from the gal- 
 lery at the back where it crossed the platform. It was 
 through these curtains, or through the two doors one 
 on either side, that the actor made his entrances and 
 his exits. The draperies could be looped back to re- 
 veal a supposed cave or study, while the gallery above 
 could serve as a balcony or as the outer wall of a castle, 
 or merely as another place from which some character 
 could oversee what took place on the stage below. The 
 platform, although it had no painted scenery, was often 
 enriched with properties, thrones and arbors and 
 wells, as these might be called for by the story. 
 
 This platform-stage was the neutral ground whereon 
 any character might meet any other character without 
 any question as to the exact spot where the meeting 
 was supposed to take place. If the action of the play 
 could be made clearer by particularizing the special 
 place, then one of the characters was careful to say 
 where they were supposed to be. But the spectators, 
 some of them seated on stools on the stage itself and 
 almost mingled with the actors, some of them standing 
 in the yard on three sides of the platform, and some 
 of them accommodated more comfortably in the pri- 
 vate boxes of the galleries, asked no questions about 
 1 See illustration facing page 238. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 57 
 
 place or time ; they wanted to see a story set forth in 
 all its phases, and they cared nothing to know just 
 where it was that any two characters were supposed 
 to be at the very moment when the plot was thickening 
 to a crisis. The playwright had the largest liberty of 
 time and place, a larger license than was good for most 
 of the Elizabethan dramatists, who did not compact 
 their plots and who were amply satisfied if they suc- 
 ceeded in interesting their unexacting audiences. And 
 when we contrast this London theater for which Shak- 
 spere wrote with the Athenian theater for which Sopho- 
 cles wrote, we get a glimpse of the gulf that yawns be- 
 tween the English drama and the Greek. We perceive 
 one of the chief causes of the differences between them ; 
 and we see at the same time how distinctly the form 
 of each was conditioned by the circumstances of its 
 performance. 
 
 In his ample and acute study of the " Tragic Drama 
 of the Greeks," Haigh called attention to the fact that 
 one of the chief characteristics of the Shaksperian 
 drama, "the calm and tranquil manner in which the 
 scenes were brought to a close, originated in the casual 
 circumstance that the old English theater had no drop- 
 scene ; the successive portions of a play were terminated, 
 not by a curtain, but by the actors walking off the stage ; 
 and for this reason it was impossible to finish up with 
 a climax, as is now the invariable custom." And Haigh 
 then remarked that the unity and simplicity of Greek 
 tragedy were due to the force of circumstance, espe- 
 cially to the influence exerted by the constant presence 
 of the chorus, which prevented any change of place. 
 
 In one respect, similarity in the circumstances of 
 performance brought about a significant similarity of 
 
58 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 treatment in the Greek drama and in the Elizabethan. 
 In the theater of Dionysus at Athens, as in the Globe 
 Theater in London, there was no painted scenery, a 
 theatrical adjunct as unknown to Shakspere as to 
 Sophocles; and therefore the dramatic poet was not 
 only tempted to put into his dialogue the description 
 of any special place which he wished to call up in the 
 minds of the spectators, he was actually compelled to 
 do this, since he could accomplish his purpose in no 
 other way. From the descriptions of the wild and lonely 
 spot where the hero is fixed to the rock, given by one 
 or another character in the earliest episodes of the 
 " Prometheus Bound" of JSschylus, some commenta- 
 tors have chosen to assume the existence of some sort 
 of scenery which would suggest to the assembled mul- 
 titude the gloom and horror of the spot. But this is 
 an unwarranted inference, for if an adequate scenic 
 representation of the place had been possible, the poet 
 would not have felt called upon to put its description 
 into the mouths of his characters. We do not find 
 Ibsen or Rostand delaying the action of their dramas 
 by any detailed description of the background which 
 the spectators have now before their eyes. For the 
 modern dramatic poet, any such digression would be 
 an impertinent superfluity, since he knows that he can 
 rely on the skilful scene-painters to represent pictori- 
 ally the outward aspects of the place where the action 
 passes. To the audience of JSschylus, as to the audi- 
 ence of Shakspere, poetic description was not super- 
 fluous or impertinent; it might be helpful. And we all 
 know how freely Shakspere availed himself of this 
 privilege of pictorial description, a privilege denied 
 to the dramatic poet of to-day. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 59 
 
 IV 
 
 In France, the strolling companies had become ac- 
 customed, not to the courtyards of inns, but to tennis- 
 courts ; and it is in an altered tennis-court that we find 
 Moliere acting more than once. A tennis-court was 
 a rectangle of a little less than one hundred feet long 
 by a little less than forty feet in width. It had galleries 
 along the sides ; and it had a solid roof, and therefore 
 it had to be lighted by candles. A stage was easily put 
 up at one end, shut in by a proscenium arch, in which 
 a curtain probably rolled up at the beginning of every 
 act. But here again we have spectators seated on the 
 sides of the stage, not on separate stools, but on benches 
 perpendicular to the footlights ; and again we find the 
 actors surrounded by the audience as in England 
 and in Greece. Behind these benches there might be 
 painted scenery, although this was at first little more 
 than a drop-cloth. The French dramatists, following 
 Corneille's example, had accepted the so-called " unity 
 of place" ; and in most of Moliere's plays, he confined 
 all his acts to a single and unchanging scene. 
 
 It is true that certain of his earlier plays, on the 
 model of the Italian comedy-of-masks, were probably 
 performed in a set representing a public square with 
 houses (solidly built of wood) on each side, into the 
 doors of which the characters went and from the win- 
 dows of which they could lean out. 1 This set was 
 familiar to Moliere and to his audiences, as it was that 
 used by the Italian comedians who played in the same 
 theater on alternate nights. And thus we see that we 
 need to know the earlier Italian conditions to under- 
 stand how it was and why it was that Moliere was able 
 1 See illustration facing page 172. 
 
60 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 to put on the stage the story of the " School for Hus- 
 bands" which, as Voltaire said, seems to be all in 
 narrative, although it really is all in action. After a 
 while, Moliere dispensed with the convenient devices 
 of the Italians; but his set is always very simple, as 
 had to be the case when the stage was encumbered with 
 spectators. His characters always stand, except when 
 chairs are absolutely necessary; and the action is 
 adroitly arranged so as to be easily presented in a 
 neutral ground, the narrow space between the specta- 
 tors on the stage and the painted drop-scene which 
 hung at the back. This is one reason why his plays 
 can now be performed in any modern theater. They 
 do not need elaborate scenery, although elaborate 
 scenery can be used without doing them any harm. 
 
 Moliere is in reality the earliest of modern drama- 
 tists, since Shakspere's conditions were at least semi- 
 medieval. Shakspere's courtyard playhouse was un- 
 roofed and lighted only by the sun, and it had no 
 scenery, whereas Moliere's tennis-court playhouse was 
 roofed and artificially lighted and had painted scenery. 
 And Moliere did not always act in a tennis-court play- 
 house. He was allowed to move his company into the 
 stately theater built by Richelieu on the model de- 
 vised by the Italian architects after their study of the 
 ruins of the Roman theaters still surviving here and 
 there in the peninsula. 1 Palladio had even attempted 
 at Vicenza what he believed to be a reproduction of a 
 Roman theater. Under this Italian influence, the tennis- 
 court playhouse was given up in France, as the court- 
 yard playhouse was given up in England ; and every- 
 where there were erected theaters externally not unlike 
 1 See frontispiece. 
 
PLAN OF THE FORTUNE THEATER, 
 LONDON 
 
 A, front stage; B, back stage ; C, inner 
 stage; D, entrance; E, courtyard 
 
 PLAN OF THE DRURY LANE THEA- 
 TER, LONDON 
 
 A, back stage ; D, front stage, or apron; 
 E, auditorium ; C, entry 
 
 PLAN OF THE RICHELIEU-MO- 
 LIERE THEATER, PARIS 
 
 A, stage; B, parterre ; (7, seats; D, D, 
 galleries ; E, E, E, entrances 
 
 PLAN OF THE EMPIRE THEA- 
 TER, NEW YORK 
 
 A, stage; 5, orchestra ; C, entrance , 
 D, auditorium 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 61 
 
 our modern places of amusement, although in Paris, 
 a portion of the audience continued to have seats on the 
 stage until the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 and when Voltaire's "Semiramis" was produced, the 
 ushers had to beg these spectators to yield a passage 
 for tfye Ghost of Ninus. As many of these Italianate 
 theaters were intended to serve also for the perform- 
 ance of opera with its customary spectacle, they were 
 much larger than the buildings which had been earlier 
 found satisfactory. It was difficult to light the stage 
 adequately with the sputtering candles or the feeble 
 oil-lamps which were then the only means of illumina- 
 tion. Probably this is one reason why the stage was 
 made to curve out into the audience far beyond the 
 proscenium-arch in which the curtain rose and fell. In 
 England, this projecting area between the bow of the 
 footlights and the line of the curtain was called the 
 "apron," and the best lighted central spot was known 
 as the "focus." It became the habit of the actors to 
 present every important moment of the piece out on 
 the apron, and as near to the focus as possible, because 
 it was only there that there was sufficient light to en- 
 able the spectators to perceive their play of feature. 
 This brought them very close to the audience, and 
 they actually turned their backs on the spectators who 
 sat in the boxes nearest to the stage. 
 
 This was the prevailing type of theater for two cen- 
 turies after the Restoration; and there is no better 
 example of it than the Drury Lane, which Sheridan 
 managed and for which he wrote the " School for Scan- 
 dal." * The proscenium-arch was about seventy feet 
 wide; the stage was about the same depth; and there 
 1 See illustration facing page 192. 
 
62 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 was an apron of eighteen feet in front of the curtain. 
 The scenery was very much what we are still permitted 
 to see in the present performance of the earlier and 
 simpler Italian operas, that is to say, there was a 
 drop-scene at the back, and there were on each side, 
 and parallel with the drop, five or six "wings," repre- 
 senting trees or columns or side walls. It was through 
 the broad openings between these wings that the per- 
 formers came out on the stage. The place of the action 
 could be shifted any number of times by merely push- 
 ing out half-scenes which met in the middle of the stage, 
 and by sliding back the wings of the first set and sliding 
 forward those of the second. 
 
 This is the method of presentation which allowed 
 Sheridan to put two or three different places into a 
 single act of the "School for Scandal" and to display 
 his characters first at Lady Sneerwell's and then at 
 Lady Teazle's. It was the only method known to 
 Shakspere's earliest editors, from Rowe and Theobald 
 down; and in their ignorance of the more primitive 
 Elizabethan theater, they assumed, naturally enough, 
 that this was the method employed by Shakspere ; and 
 so they divided the text of his plays into acts and scenes, 
 whenever they thought they could detect any indica- 
 tion of a change of place. This division into acts and 
 scenes conveys a wholly false impression of Shakspere's 
 real method. He conceived his play as a story told in 
 action in a series of dialogues, many of which were held 
 on the neutral ground that might be anywhere. Only 
 where there was an advantage to be gained by particu- 
 larizing the exact spot where the action lay, did Shak- 
 spere take trouble to indicate it; and we may be sure 
 that nothing was further from his thought than that 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 63 
 
 his story should be cut up into the snippets of scenes 
 that we find in the ordinary library editions of his 
 plays. 
 
 v 
 
 T6ward the end of the two hundred years which 
 extended from the Restoration to the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, the conditions of performance 
 began to change. The art of the scene-painter became 
 more elaborate; and the box-set was devised, whereby 
 a room could be shown with its walls and its ceiling. 
 The influence of the realistic movement of the middle 
 of the nineteenth century imposed on the stage- 
 manager the duty of making every scene character- 
 istic of the period and of the people, and of relating 
 the characters closely to their environment. The facil- 
 ities for lighting were greatly improved, first by the 
 introduction of gas, then by the invention of the lime- 
 light, and finally by the perfecting of the electric light. 
 It was found to be possible to illuminate the stage so 
 as to show the expression on the actors' faces, even in 
 the remoter corners of the stage. The apron behind 
 the curving footlights was no longer necessary or even 
 useful; and the stage was therefore cut back to the 
 proscenium-arch, which became a frame for the stage- 
 opening. Sir Hubert Herkomer declared the modern 
 practice when he asserted that " the proscenium should 
 be to the stage-picture what the frame is to the easel- 
 picture; it should separate the stage-picture from the 
 surroundings, just as a painted picture should reach 
 the frame." 
 
 It is for this picture-frame stage that every dramatist 
 of to-day is composing his plays ; and his methods are 
 of necessity those of the picture-frame stage; just as 
 
64 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the methods of the Elizabethan dramatic poet were of 
 necessity those of the platform-stage. Probably we 
 have not yet seen all the consequences of this striking 
 change in the physical conditions of the theater; and 
 probably we have not yet seized the full significance 
 of the transformation. For example, as the actor is no 
 longer partly surrounded by the audience, as the per- 
 formers are now withdrawn beyond a magic line of 
 separation, the drama is certain hereafter to be less 
 oratorical, less rhetorical, less bombastic; it is bound 
 to be simpler in its language, more "natural." The 
 long soliloquy, the confidential self-revelation, which 
 was not out of place on the platform-stage, when a 
 character was on the neutral ground that might be 
 anywhere, and when he was so close to some of the 
 spectators that he could put out his hand to touch 
 them, this is obviously inappropriate now when the 
 actor is remote behind the proscenium, and seated on 
 a real chair in what looks like a real room. 
 
 The assertion has been made that the relinquishing 
 of the soliloquy is to be ascribed to the influence of 
 Ibsen; and it may be admitted that the Norwegian 
 dramatist has been masterly in his adjustment of his 
 methods to the conditions of the picture-frame stage. 
 But we can shift the real responsibility for the banish- 
 ing of the soliloquy a little further back ; it does not lie 
 on Ibsen's shoulders, but on Edison's, since it was 
 an inevitable consequence of the incandescent bulb. 
 Here we find the confirmation of a remark made by 
 Ludovic Celler in his account of stage-conditions in 
 France in the seventeenth century: "Artificial light 
 creates a realm of convention, where an imitation is 
 more easily accepted and where the eyes are less exact- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 65 
 
 ing ; a compromise is attained between fact and fiction ; 
 and artificial light is what has most contributed to the 
 progress of theatrical representation." 
 
 Upon the picture-frame stage of the twentieth 
 century, it is now possible to present, without any al- 
 teration or transposition, the tragedies of Sophocles, 
 composed in accordance with the conditions of the 
 immense open-air theater of Athens, and also the 
 comedies of Moliere, composed in accordance with 
 the conditions of the tennis-court playhouse of Paris. 
 But the plays of Shakspere and of Sheridan can be put 
 on this picture-frame stage of ours only after they have 
 been rearranged, because Shakspere's were composed 
 in accordance with the wholly different and absolutely 
 incompatible conditions of the courtyard theater, and 
 Sheridan's in accordance with the conditions of the 
 post-Restoration playhouse. The picture-frame stage 
 may be superior to its several predecessors, or it may be 
 inferior to them, but it is at all events different from 
 them; and it is the stage to which we are nowadays 
 accustomed. If Shakspere and Sheridan were writing 
 plays to-day, it is the picture-frame stage that they 
 would write for ; and we should find them so arranging 
 the episodes of their stories that these could be pre- 
 sented with only a single set in each act, since the elabo- 
 ration of our modern scenery makes it disadvantageous 
 to attempt a change of place during the act. This is a 
 technical difficulty to be vanquished, which could not 
 fail to affect their method of treatment, and even to 
 some extent their choice of theme. The technical pos- 
 sibilities of any art at any moment must more or less 
 determine and may more or less limit, not only how the 
 artist shall express what he has to say, but also what 
 
66 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 he shall attempt to express. And it is only after we 
 have analyzed these technical possibilities that we 
 are really prepared to appreciate what the artist has 
 actually accomplished. 
 
 Attention must be called also to one other point, 
 to the fact that since the scene-painters have gained 
 the skill needful for the satisfactory and more or less 
 realistic representation of interiors and of exteriors, 
 and especially since the invention of the electric light 
 has made it possible to illuminate every corner of the 
 stage on which these interiors and exteriors are set, the 
 conditions of performance are now very similar through- 
 out the civilized world, differing only in minor and 
 unimportant details. A modern theater in Paris or in 
 London is structurally very similar to a modern theater 
 in New York or Melbourne, in Budapest or Buenos 
 Ayres. This standardizing of the playhouse is a new 
 thing in the history of the drama. There may have 
 been a general resemblance between the conditions 
 under which Shakspere worked and those under which 
 Lope de Vega worked; but these early English and 
 Spanish conditions are wholly unlike those of the 
 Greek theater, of the Roman theater, of the French 
 theater of Moliere's time, and of the English theater 
 of Sheridan's day, which all varied widely from one 
 another. Now at last, out of all these contending tradi- 
 tions there has been evolved the type of theater best 
 suited to the circumstances of .our modern civiliza- 
 tion ; and the plays written to-day in any one of the 
 modern languages can be transported anywhere and 
 translated for performance without any structural 
 modification. 
 
 The world-wide uniformity of theatrical conditions 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEATER 67 
 
 has brought with it a substantial identity of drama- 
 turgic method. In its framework, a French play is now 
 closely akin to a German play, an Italian play to an 
 American. And as a result, the modern dramatist is 
 enabled to make a cosmopolitan appeal, not possible 
 to any of his predecessors in any of the earlier periods 
 when the drama has most abundantly flourished. The 
 plays of Ibsen, of Rostand, of d'Annunzio, and of 
 Echegaray have passports permitting them to go any- 
 where and everywhere. The method of any one of 
 these dramatists is fundamentally the method of every 
 other, however national and individual may be his 
 material. And it is curious to note that this acceptance 
 of a cosmopolitan form has been accompanied by a 
 deeper appreciation of local color, of racial types of 
 character, and of themes peculiar to the several races. 
 The form is cosmopolitan, but the content is increas- 
 ingly national. Ibsen is intensely Scandinavian; Verga 
 is immitigably Italian; Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. 
 Henry Arthur Jones are rigorously British; Mr. Au- 
 gustus Thomas and Mr. Clyde Fitch are thoroughly 
 American ; and yet each of them, whatever his stock, 
 has built his plays in accord with the same interna- 
 tional formula, the only formula which is really satis- 
 factory in our uniform theaters. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 
 
 Shakspere, we know, was a popular playwright. I mean not 
 only that many of his plays were favorites in his day, but that he 
 wrote, mainly at least, for the more popular kind of audience, and 
 that within certain limits, he conformed to its tastes. A. C. BRAD- 
 LEY, Oxford Lectures on Poetry. 
 
 THE shape of the special theater for which a dramatist 
 has composed his plays, its size, its scenery, and its 
 lighting, all exert an influence upon the playwright 
 and combine to condition the form which his work 
 must take, even if they do not more or less modify its 
 content also. But the strongest pressure upon the con- 
 tent of the drama of any special period and of any 
 special place is that of the contemporary audience for 
 whose delight it was originally devised. How any au- 
 thor at any time can tell his story upon the stage de- 
 pends upon the kind of stage he has in view ; but what 
 kind of story he may tell depends upon the kind of 
 people he wants to interest. As Dry den declared in one 
 of his epilogues : 
 
 "They who have best succeeded on the stage 
 Have still conformed their genius to the age." 
 
 And this couplet of Dryden's recalls the later lines of 
 Johnson : 
 
 "The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
 And we who live to please, must please to live." 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 69 
 
 In other words, the dramatic poet is not independent 
 of his audience, as the lyric poets may be, since he can 
 never be satisfied with mere self-expression. His work 
 depends for its effect upon his hearers, and he has to 
 take them into account, under penalty of blank failure. 
 He must give them what they want, even if he gives 
 them also what he wants. The author of a drama 
 cannot labor for himself alone; he has to admit the 
 spectators as his special partners. There is ever a tacit 
 agreement, a quasi-contract between the playwright 
 and the playgoers. As the ingenious and ingenuous 
 Abbe d'Aubignac asserted, more than two centuries 
 ago, when he was laying down laws for the drama: 
 " We are not to forget here (and I think it one of the 
 best Observations I have made upon this matter) that 
 if the subject is not conformable to the Manners as well 
 as the Opinions of the spectators, it will never take." 
 And a later remark of his proved that he possessed the 
 prime requisite of a dramatic critic, in that he had 
 worked out his principles not merely in the library but 
 also in the theater itself : " For if there be any Act 
 or Scene that has not that conformity to the Manners 
 of the spectators, you will suddenly see the applause 
 cease, and in its place a discontent succeed, though 
 they themselves do not know the cause of it." 
 
 Just as the theater for which Sophocles wrote dif- 
 fered in almost every way from the theater for which 
 Shakspere wrote, so the audience that the Greek poet 
 had to please, if he was to win the awarded prize, was 
 very unlike the audience that the English poet had to 
 please, if he was to make his living as a professional 
 playwright. There is not a wider difference between 
 the theaters of Louis XIV's time, wherein Moliere's 
 
70 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 comedies were first produced, and the cosmopolitan 
 modern playhouses wherein Ibsen's dramas are per- 
 formed, than there is between the burghers of Paris, 
 whom the French humorist had to amuse, and the 
 narrow-minded villagers of Grimstad, whom Ibsen 
 had always before him as the individual spectators 
 he wished to startle out of their moral lethargy. 
 
 Even though the playwright has ever to consider the 
 playgoers, their opinions and their prejudices, he is 
 under no undue strain when he does this ; and the most 
 of his effort is unconscious, since he is always his own 
 contemporary, sharing in the likes and dislikes of his 
 fellow-countrymen, the very men whom he hopes to 
 see flocking to the performance of his plays. Sophocles 
 did not need to take thought to avoid what would be 
 displeasing to the thousands who sat around the hol- 
 low slope of the Acropolis ; he was an Athenian him- 
 self ; and yet, no doubt, he acted always on the advice 
 Isocrates used to give to his pupils in oratory, who 
 were told to "study the people." Shakspere did not 
 have to hold himself in for fear of shocking the en- 
 ergetic Elizabethans; he was himself a subject of the 
 Virgin Queen, one of the plain people, with an instinc- 
 tive understanding of the desires of the playgoers of his 
 age. As M. Jusserand has acutely asserted, the Eng- 
 lish playgoing public of Shakspere's time demanded 
 " nourishment suited to its tastes, which were spon- 
 taneous and natural; it imposed these on the play- 
 makers ; it loved, like all peoples, to see on the stage, 
 made more beautiful or more ugly, that is to say, more 
 highly colored, what it found in itself embryonically, 
 what it felt and could not express, what it could do and 
 yet knew not how to narrate." 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 71 
 
 Mofiere was able to choose themes to interest his 
 contemporaries because he was himself a Frenchman, 
 sympathizing with the sentiments of his time and 
 governed by the same heredity as the spectators of his 
 plays. He is himself the superb example of the truth 
 of Nisard's assertion that " in France the man of genius 
 is he who says what everybody knows ; he is only the 
 intelligent echo of the crowd ; and if he does not wish 
 to find us deaf and indifferent, he must not astonish 
 us with his personal views he must reveal us to our- 
 selves." And as Moliere is the type of the urban and 
 urbane French dramatic poet, guided by the social 
 instinct, ever dominant in France, so is Ibsen rather 
 a rural type forever preaching individualism to the 
 dwellers in the tiny seashore village where he spent his 
 youth, and giving little thought to the inhabitants of 
 the larger world where he had lived since his maturity. 
 Although cosmopolitan audiences have appreciated 
 Ibsen's power and skill, it was not for cosmopolitan 
 audiences that he wrote his social dramas, but for the 
 old folks at home in Norway, whom he wanted to 
 awaken morally and mentally. And here, in his mem- 
 ory of the feelings and of the failings of the men and 
 women among whom he grew to manhood, we can 
 find the obvious explanation of that narrow parochial- 
 ism which is sometimes revealed most unexpectedly 
 in one or another of his plays. 
 
 ii 
 
 A certain knowledge of the people to whom the play- 
 wright belonged, and for whom he wrote, is a condition 
 precedent to any real understanding of his plays. And, 
 on the other hand, a study of the drama of any period 
 
72 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 or of any place cannot fail to supply interesting in- 
 formation about the manners and customs, the modes 
 of thought, and the states of feeling of the people of that 
 country at that time. For example, the medieval drama 
 seems to have had its earliest development in France, 
 and perhaps for this reason one mystery is very like 
 another mystery all over Europe, whether it is French 
 or English, Italian or German; but one of the varia- 
 tions from this monotony is to be found in the scene 
 between Joseph and Potiphar's wife, which the Eng- 
 lish redactors treated in outline only or omitted alto- 
 gether, but which the French compilers elaborately 
 amplified for the greater joy of their compatriots. To 
 this day the French are willing to laugh loudly at the 
 humorous side of conjugal infidelity, whereas, we who 
 speak English are unwilling to take this other than 
 seriously. Here we can see reason why many a skittish 
 farce, which has amused thousands in Paris, has failed 
 to please in New York and in London. 
 
 The lack of popular appreciation about which Ter- 
 ence often complained bitterly was due to his incom- 
 patibility with the only audiences which Rome then 
 knew. He proportioned his intrigues and polished his 
 dialogue when his spectators were accustomed to 
 coarse buffoonery. Terence was born out of his time; 
 and he might have been a really successful writer of 
 comedies had he lived in the Italian Renascence, when 
 he could hope for an audience of scholars swift to 
 enjoy his delicate finish and his delightful felicity of 
 phrase. As it was, Terence, refusing to gratify the 
 tastes of the populace of his own time, had to confess 
 failure. The more practical Lope de Vega accepted 
 the audiences of his day for what they were, less vio- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 73 
 
 / 
 
 lent than Terence's, but quite as robust and wilful as 
 Sliakspere's ; and the Spanish playwright made the 
 best of the situation, disclosing his marvelous inven- 
 tiveness and his splendid productivity in countless 
 pieces of the widest variety. In his apologetic poem 
 on the " New Art of Making Plays, " he pretended that 
 he composed these pieces against his own better know- 
 ledge of the so-called " rules of the drama," and that 
 before he sat down to write, he was careful to put Ter- 
 ence and Plautus out of the room; but he was prob- 
 ably too completely his own contemporary, too much 
 a man of his time and of his race, to have been forced 
 to any great sacrifices of his artistic code. In reality, 
 he seems to have felt no awkward restraint as a result 
 of his desire to please his public; and apparently he 
 was able to express himself freely and fully in his plays, 
 even if he also took care to have them conform to the 
 likings of the populace of Madrid. So Shakspere was 
 careful to have his plays conform to the likings of the 
 populace of London ; and he also was able to use his 
 dramas for the amplest self-expression. Here we may 
 observe once more that the true artist unhesitatingly 
 accepts the conditions imposed on him, whatever they 
 may be, and that he is often able to turn the stumbling- 
 block in his path into a stepping-stone to higher things. 
 Even if a Greek dramatic poet could by his pro- 
 phetic power have foreseen the potency of modern ro- 
 mantic love, he could never have dared a " Romeo and 
 Juliet," because the contemporary spectators would 
 have failed to understand the swift and sudden emo- 
 tion which is its mainspring. And, on the other hand, 
 the Greek dramatic poets dealt with many a motive 
 with which the modern audience can have no sym- 
 
74 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 pathy. For us the beautiful pathos of the "Alcestis" 
 of Euripides is spoilt by the contemptible alacrity 
 with which the husband allows his devoted wife to die 
 for him, although his conduct did not seem at all repre- 
 hensible to the Greeks, who held so exalted an opinion 
 of the value of the young male citizen to the state, that 
 they saw no impropriety in his accepting his wife's 
 lovely sacrifice of herself. The "Antigone" of Sopho- 
 cles turns also on a Greek sentiment very remote from 
 our modern feeling, a sentiment which has to be ex- 
 plained to us before we can grasp its significance or 
 understand its importance to the noble heroine. And 
 again, in the " Medea" of Euripides, the wrathful hero- 
 ine's slaughter of her children to revenge herself for 
 their father's abject desertion of her seems to us un- 
 endurably repugnant. 
 
 At the period when the Homeric poems were com- 
 posed, there still survived among the Greeks a belief 
 that the sacrifice of a virgin before a fleet set sail would 
 bring favorable winds. At the period when the Attic 
 tragedies were written, this superstition had probably 
 passed away; but the memory of it lingered. The 
 Athenian spectators who sat in the theater of Dionysus 
 were well aware that their ancestors had held this belief; 
 and therefore they were not unwilling to accept the 
 legend of Iphigenia, when it was presented in a play 
 by Euripides. But we moderns can have no sympathy 
 with a superstition like this ; and we do not easily un- 
 derstand how it could ever have been accepted. And 
 as a result, Racine and others have wasted their efforts 
 trying to interest us in a subject which is to us incon- 
 ceivable, not to say, abhorrent. 
 
 Shakspere may not himself have had any belief 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 75 
 
 either in witches or in ghosts, but he knew that his con- 
 temporaries had no doubt about these weird creatures 
 and these spectral beings. And he had therefore no 
 hesitation in making effective use of them whenever 
 occasion served. No modern dramatist dealing with a 
 modern theme would dare to invoke the aid of a ghost 
 or of a witch, because the belief in them is no longer 
 a common possession of his contemporaries. Nowa- 
 days, we may be willing to accept stranger things, 
 telepathy, for example, mental healing, and the like; 
 but we are not willing to believe that the slaying of a 
 maiden will have any influence upon the storms of the 
 sea, or that a sheeted ghost will walk the earth to bid 
 his son avenge his taking off or to fright his murderer 
 with his gory locks. 
 
 It would not be difficult to adduce examples of the 
 effect exerted on the dramatist, not by the lapse of time, 
 but by the change of country, by the divergence of 
 racial points of view even in the same period. For 
 instance, in Sudermann's strong drama, "Heimat," 
 known to us by the name of the heroine Magda, the 
 unbending rigor of the aged father and his violent 
 harshness are almost repulsive to us in America, where 
 we are not accustomed to yield so blind a deference to 
 the head of the family as the old colonel insists upon 
 in Germany. But there is no need to multiply these 
 examples, since we all know the divergent attitudes of 
 different peoples toward the social organization. In 
 this divergence we can find the explanation why more 
 than one excellent play is little known outside the land 
 of its birth. The finest of French comedies of the 
 nineteenth century is the "Gendre de M. Poirier" of 
 Augier and Sandeau ; and although it has been trans- 
 
76 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 lated into English or adapted more than once, it has 
 failed to interest our audiences, because it is funda- 
 mentally French both in theme and in treatment. Its 
 appeal is fundamentally local ; and the veracity of its 
 interpretation of characters essentially French has pre- 
 vented its acceptance in Great Britain and the United 
 States. The more truthfully a dramatist reproduces 
 the life about him, the more sincerely he presents the 
 special types his countrymen will most surely appre- 
 ciate, the more he subordinates plot and situation to 
 the revelation of character, the less likely he is to see his 
 plays successful outside of his own language. The 
 ingenious complications of the inventive Scribe, in 
 which the characters were only puppets in the hands 
 of the playwright, were performed all over the world, 
 while the rich and solid comedies of Augier have rarely 
 been exported beyond the boundaries of France. 
 
 There are striking differences to be observed even 
 between the playgoers of two countries speaking the 
 same language and inheriting the same social opinions ; 
 such differences are discoverable sometimes between 
 the audiences of London and the audiences of New 
 York. For example, in Bronson Howard's " Banker's 
 Daughter," the young artist to whom the heroine is 
 engaged when the piece begins and whom she thinks 
 she then loves, even when she marries another man to 
 save her father, has to be eliminated in the course of 
 the action, so that she may find herself absolutely free 
 to give her true love to her devoted husband. There- 
 fore, one act took place in Paris, and a noted French 
 swordsman was introduced to force a quarrel on the 
 young painter and to kill him in a duel. Although the 
 duel is no longer possible in the United States, Ameri- 
 
TllE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 77 
 
 can audiences know that it still exists in France, and 
 we are familiar with the feud of the southwest and 
 with the street-shooting of the mining-camps. But 
 when Bronson Howard's play was adapted for London, 
 with its characters localized as British subjects, his 
 London collaborator protested against the duel, on the 
 ground that a British audience would not accept it. 
 If the young artist was to become an Englishman, then 
 he would laugh at the suggestion of crossing swords. 
 So the artist ceased to be, and in his stead there was a 
 young soldier; and the act in Paris took place at the 
 British embassy, where the officer had to appear in 
 uniform. There the French swordsman insulted him 
 and his uniform, and in his person the whole army of 
 the Queen, until the British spectators fairly longed 
 to see the Englishman knock the Frenchman down. 
 And when the stalwart young fellow was goaded at last 
 to this violence, the London audience could not there- 
 after object to his giving to the French swordsman 
 " the satisfaction of a gentleman." 
 
 This shows the difference between the two audiences 
 speaking the same language; and another illustration 
 will serve to show the difference that may exist between 
 two audiences in contrasting quarters of the same 
 American city. When Mr. Clyde Fitch's "Barbara 
 Frietchie" was produced at the Criterion Theater in 
 New York (where the best seats sold for two dollars) , 
 the Southern heroine, in her quarrel with her Northern 
 lover, tore the stars-and-stripes into tatters, only to 
 sew the flag together later that she might be shot be- 
 neath its folds. But when this play was taken to the 
 Academy of Music (where the best seats sold for fifty 
 cents), the heroine was no longer allowed to destroy 
 
78 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the national flag, for fear that an act so unpatriotic 
 would forever alienate from her the sympathy of the 
 spectators in that popular playhouse. This anecdote 
 is not well vouched for and it may not be a fact ; but 
 perhaps it is quite as significant even if it chances to 
 be only an invention. 
 
 These may seem but trifles, after all ; and no doubt 
 they are. But they serve to make clear how dependent 
 the dramatist is upon the unreflective sympathy of the 
 spectator. This the practical playwrights of every 
 e[Jbch and of every clime have always felt. Sometimes 
 they have been tempted to take advantage of it un- 
 worthily by crude appeals to the prejudices of the play- 
 goers they were seeking to please ; sometimes they have 
 even descended to overt claptrap. On occasion, they 
 have not been ashamed to bring in the national flag to 
 capture unthinking applause. Some of them have not 
 hesitated to seize every opportunity to praise their own 
 country and to contrast their own countrymen favor- 
 ably with foreigners. In French plays, the British and 
 the Americans are almost unfailing subjects for satire 
 and for caricature ; and, on the other hand, the French- 
 man has been a butt in countless comedies in the 
 English language. 
 
 Even the foremost of dramatic poets have now and 
 again been glad to voice eloquently their own patriotic 
 sentiments, certain that these would prove welcome to 
 their audiences. Shakspere, for example, let slip no 
 opportunity to praise England, precious stone set in the 
 silver sea ; and he was so subdued to what he worked in 
 that he revealed no insight into the nobility of Jeanne 
 d'Arc. Euripides, so Professor MahafFy has pointed 
 out, was prone to make his Athenian heroes paragons 
 
\ 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 79 
 
 of perfection, while going out of his way to blacken the 
 legendary heroes of rival cities like Sparta and Thebes. 
 And in his "Medea," the same dramatic poet seized 
 a very slim excuse to insert a superb choral ode to the 
 glory of Athens. 
 
 in 
 
 These are merely more or less unfortunate illustra- 
 tions of the inevitable dependence of the dramatist 
 upon the spectators whose sympathy he must capture 
 and whose interest he must awaken. A play must 
 please the people for whom it is composed ; and if, for 
 any reason, it is unable to do this, then it has missed 
 its mark. The final verdict has been rendered; and 
 there is no hope of moving for a new trial. And it 
 must please the whole people, the crowd at large, for 
 the strength of the drama lies in the breadth of its 
 appeal. It misses its purpose unless it has something 
 for all, for young and old, for rich and poor, for men 
 and women, for the educated and for the uneducated. 
 More than any other literary form, it has preserved 
 the communal quality which characterizes all primitive 
 poetry. Of all the arts, the drama is essentially the 
 most democratic, for it cannot exist without the multi- 
 tude. It has been called " a function of the crowd." 
 It cannot hope for success when it seeks to attract only 
 a caste, a coterie, a clique; it must be the art of the 
 people as a whole, with all their divergencies of culti- 
 vation. And this it has been whenever it achieved its 
 noblest triumphs, in Greece, when Sophocles and 
 Euripides followed ^Eschylus ; in England, when Shak- 
 spere succeeded Marlowe; in Spain, when Lope de 
 Vega and Calderon worked side by side; and in France, 
 
80 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 when Moliere came as a connecting link between 
 Corneille and Racine. 
 
 Any attempt to organize the drama on an aristocratic 
 basis is foredoomed to failure ; and every effort to make 
 it independent of the average man has resulted in 
 sterility. Just as it is unfortunate for dramatic litera- 
 ture that poets have sometimes been unwilling to 
 master the form which was suited to the theater of 
 their own times, and have let themselves lazily de- 
 scend to the lower level of the so-called "closet- 
 drama," so it would be unfortunate also if they had 
 the privilege of composing their plays for a theater set 
 apart from the plain people, appealing only to the 
 dilettants, and independent of the takings of the door. 
 It is good for every man, even if he is truly a poet, and 
 especially if he is truly a poet, that he should go down 
 into the arena and meet his fellow-men face to face. 
 There is mischief in any attempt to found an endowed 
 theater which shall not rely for the major part of its 
 support upon the public as a whole. 
 
 This is an experiment which has been tried more 
 than once, notably when Goethe had sole control of 
 the court-theater at Weimar. He chose the plays ; he 
 trained the actors; he was the autocrat even of the 
 audience, for when the students from Jena expressed 
 their feelings, he rebuked them with an Olympian frown 
 until they ceased coming. And the result was what 
 might be expected. Of the plays which were prepared 
 specially for the Weimar theater, only those written by 
 that born dramatist, Schiller, have kept the stage. 
 And Goethe himself, in his old age, seems to have seen 
 the futility of his efforts, for he told Eckermann that 
 "nothing is more dangerous to the well-being of a 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 81 
 
 theater than when the director is so placed that a 
 greater or less receipt at the treasury does not affect 
 him personally." Probably Goethe would have ad- 
 mitted without hesitation that the theater is a function 
 of the crowd. The drama is not for the selfish delight 
 of the poet alone, who must never neglect his duty of 
 revealing the people to themselves. 
 
 The Corned ie - Francaise is not supported by the 
 French government ; it is only helped out by the gift 
 of the theater itself rent-free and by a subsidy which 
 makes possible a proper pension-fund and which frees 
 the manager from any temptation to produce the coarser 
 types of popular melodrama. It has to reckon with the 
 people and it depends for its prosperity upon the sale 
 of its seats. This is the case also with the court-theaters 
 of Germany and with the subsidized opera-houses as 
 well. Although these opera-houses and these theaters 
 are aided by subsidies, either public or private, they 
 are never rendered independent of the box-office. They 
 have to rely for support on the whole body of play- 
 goers and opera-lovers; and if they do not succeed in 
 attracting these, then their bankruptcy is unavoidable. 
 And this is as it should be, for no art is ever prosperous 
 when it is aristocratic, since the basis of every art is 
 our common humanity. 
 
 It is possible that those superfine spirits who culti- 
 vate an aristocratic aloofness from their fellow-men 
 may be tempted to assert that if the theater is a func- 
 tion of the crowd, then the drama must be of neces- 
 sity the vulgarest of the arts, incapable of delicacy of 
 analysis, of subtlety of expression, and of any higher 
 poetic flight than can be appreciated by the common 
 herd. But this assertion is based on a confusion be- 
 
82 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 tween the residuum of the populace and the whole 
 body of the public, including the most intelligent and 
 the most cultivated. It is to the whole public that the 
 dramatist must appeal; and he mistakes his larger 
 opportunity if he prefers to attract only the residuum. 
 If the theater is to-day a function of the crowd, so it 
 always has been; and there is a patent absurdity in 
 suggesting that the necessity of pleasing the people as 
 a whole prevented Racine from delicacy of analysis, 
 Moliere from richness of expression, and Shakspere 
 from exalted flights of poetic self-expression. 
 
 Even the vulgar residuum of the populace is often 
 warmly responsive to loftiness of theme and to large- 
 ness of treatment. "Hamlet" is ever one of the most 
 popular plays which can be presented on the English- 
 speaking stage; and "Tartuffe" is unfailingly attrac- 
 tive to French audiences. The intellectual aristocrat is 
 often tempted to underestimate the good sense of the 
 plain people as this is displayed in art and in politics. 
 President Butler, in his suggestive discussion of 
 "True and False Democracy," has warned us never 
 to forget " that the same individuals constitute both the 
 mob and the people. When their lower nature rules, 
 these individuals are a mob ; when their higher nature 
 guides, they are the people. The demagogue makes 
 his appeal to the mob ; the political leader, the states- 
 man, to the people." So in the theater, even though 
 the cheap playwright may prefer to put together pieces 
 good enough only for the mob, sometimes even pander- 
 ing to their baser instincts, the true dramatist never 
 fears the result of a lofty appeal to the people as a 
 whole. He knows, even if others forget, that the 
 poetic dramas which the literary critics now most 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 83 
 
 esteem, were widely successful when they were first 
 produced in the theater. He would echo the opinion 
 of Cicero, an artist in letters if ever there was one, that 
 "given time and opportunity, the recognition of the 
 many is as necessary a test of excellence in an artist as 
 that of the few." 
 
 It is a significant fact that the real dramatist, tragic 
 or comic, has never expressed that contempt for the 
 mere multitude which sometimes falls from the mouth 
 of the dilettant and of the amateur. He does not ex- 
 press this sentiment because he does not feel it; in- 
 deed, he could not feel it without self -betrayal. It is 
 his duty to understand the multitude, to sympathize 
 with it, to reveal it to itself. Moliere was frank in his 
 declaration of his reliance on the common sense of the 
 plain people. "I hold it to be as difficult to attack a 
 work which the public approves," so he declared in 
 a preface, " as to defend one which it condemns." Suc- 
 cess on the stage is probably impossible to a dramatist 
 who really has a contempt for the crowd. Dryden, for 
 example, was free in voicing his distaste for the comic 
 drama of his own day, and he seems to have despised 
 the contemporary playgoers he strove to please by la- 
 bored attempts at fun. And Dryden is not one of the 
 masters of English comedy ; in fact, his fame might be 
 fuller if he had never adventured himself into the comic 
 drama. It is related that a distinguished contemporary 
 novelist once remarked that whenever he wrote in a 
 play any passage which made him tingle with shame, 
 then he knew he had done something the theatrical 
 public would like. But his knowledge of the theatrical 
 public was apparently insufficient, since no one of the 
 plays containing these passages has succeeded on the 
 
84 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 stage. He might think the public foolish, but he failed 
 to appreciate its shrewdness. It may be foolish, in cer- 
 tain ways and to a certain extent ; but it knows what it 
 likes, and above all else, it likes sincerity. 
 
 IV 
 
 Probably the cause of this novelist's error can be 
 found in the fact that he was a novelist, and that he 
 believed that the drama was only another form of fic- 
 tion, in which he could put the same things that he had 
 put into his novels. But a play is not a novel ; and it 
 has to be something wholly unlike a novel. Its methods 
 are not the same, and its subject-matter is also differ- 
 entiated from that proper enough in a narrative to be 
 read by the fireside. There are themes which the nov- 
 elist can treat and from which the dramatist is de- 
 barred, because his work is to be set before men massed 
 together, and not before scattered individuals. But 
 what the dramatist may lose from the duty of taking 
 into account the spectators in the theater, he more 
 than regains by the greater impressiveness of the play, 
 by its more direct effect on those who see it, an effect 
 far more powerful than that of the novel, just as the 
 influence of the orator is deeper than that of the es- 
 sayist. The French government permitted the publi- 
 cation of "Oncle Sam" and of "Germinal," but it 
 forbade the performance of Sardou's play and the 
 dramatization of Zola's novel. There is no need of de- 
 nying that the drama has its limitations, for so has 
 every other art ; and effects possible to one art are not 
 possible to another. There is no need of denying even 
 that the novel has its own advantages over the play,just 
 as the play in its turn has its advantages over the novel. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 85 
 
 Theophile Gautier, who disliked the stage, perhaps 
 because he had to earn his living as a theatrical critic, 
 used to disparage the drama as lagging far behind 
 fiction in that it never dealt with a new idea until long 
 after this had been exploited in newspapers and in 
 prose-fiction. Perhaps he would have found it difficult 
 to prove his assertion ; but it would be easy to give a 
 good reason why there might be some warrant for it. 
 It is because the drama must appeal to the people as a 
 whole, and not merely to the more intelligent, the more 
 cultivated, the more advanced. Until an idea has sunk 
 into the popular consciousness, until it has been ab- 
 sorbed by the main body of a playwright's contem- 
 poraries, he can put it into a play only at his peril. 
 What Wordsworth said of the poets is true especially 
 of the dramatic poets, that they write under the 
 restriction of hoping to give "immediate pleasure to 
 a human being, possessed of that information which 
 may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, 
 a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, 
 but as a Man." In other words, the dramatist has ever 
 to find the greatest common denominator of the public 
 as a whole, whereas the lyric poets and the novelists 
 can, if they choose, narrow their appeal to a single 
 caste or a single class. Here we can perceive the justice 
 of the general feeling that partisan politics and secta- 
 rian religion are, both of them, totally out of place on 
 the stage. 
 
 The theater is a function of the crowd ; and the work 
 of the dramatist is conditioned by the audience to 
 which he meant to present it. In the main, this influ- 
 ence is wholesome, for it tends to bring about a dealing 
 with themes of universal interest. To some extent, it 
 
86 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 may be limiting and even harmful, but to what ex- 
 tent we cannot yet determine in our present ignorance 
 of that psychology of the crowd which Le Bon has 
 analyzed so interestingly. We are only beginning to 
 appreciate the fact that a group of men and women 
 gathered together has a psychic unity of its own, a 
 consciousness of itself as an entity, a soul which is not 
 merely the sum total of the souls of the men and women 
 present. No one has asserted this more sharply than 
 Professor Hibben. He declared that a patent fallacy 
 underlies the saying that "the whole equals the sum 
 of the parts." Although the saying may be sound in 
 mathematics it is false in sociology: 
 
 " In any group of men, in a clan, a tribe, a society, in church 
 or in state, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The 
 parts may be seen, they may be counted. We find them in 
 registers, in rosters, in tables of census statistics, and yet 
 the communal spirit which makes for unity and solidarity 
 is unseen. It is the esprit de corps, without which the body 
 dies and returns to its elemental parts. And, within the still 
 larger range which embraces the circle of mankind in gen- 
 eral, the several parts are bound together as members one 
 of another, because they are united in a common ancestry 
 and a common destiny, a common weal or woe. The spirit 
 of humanity makes all one." 
 
 Thus it is that, in the playhouse, every successive 
 audience has an individuality of its own, differing col- 
 lectively from other audiences, seeing the same per- 
 formance in the same theater in the same week. An 
 afternoon audience, composed mostly of women, will 
 take the points of a play in quite different fashion 
 from an evening audience, in which there is a larger 
 proportion of men. Humorous speeches and effects 
 which bring hearty laughs at night will sometimes 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 87 
 
 scarcely evoke even a condescending smile in the after- 
 noon. 
 
 An audience is a crowd, and it has the special char- 
 acteristics of any other crowd, of the spectators at 
 athletic sports, of the participants in a camp-meeting, 
 of the delegates to a political convention. And it has 
 also certain characteristics peculiar to itself, to the 
 fact that it is gathered in a theater, that it is composed 
 of a group of playgoers. Every crowd consists of hu- 
 man beings who, when they are a part of the crowd, 
 and. in consequence of that fact, have each of them lost 
 consciousness of certain of his individual mental char- 
 acteristics. On the other hand, every one of them has 
 acquired a keener consciousness of certain mental 
 and emotional qualities which he has in common with 
 the other members of the audience. M. Le Bon's doc- 
 trine has been neatly condensed into this series of 
 statements : 
 
 "The mental qualities in which men differ from one an- 
 other are the acquired qualities of intellect and character; 
 but the qualities in which they are at one are the innate basic 
 passions of the race. A crowd, therefore, is less intellectual 
 and more emotional than the individuals that compose it. 
 It is less reasonable, less judicious, less disinterested, more 
 credulous, more primitive, more partisan; and, hence, a 
 man, by the mere fact that he forms a part of an organized 
 crowd, descends several rungs on the ladder of civilization. 
 Even the most cultured and intellectual of men, when he 
 forms an atom of a crowd, loses consciousness of his acquired 
 mental qualities and harks back to his primal nakedness of 
 mind. The dramatist, therefore, because he writes for a 
 crowd, writes for an uncivilized and uncultivated mind, a 
 mind richly human, vehement in approbation, violent in 
 disapproval, easily credulous, eagerly enthusiastic, boyishly 
 heroic, and carelessly thinking." 
 
88 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 And Mr. Clayton Hamilton, from whom this ex- 
 tract is quoted, added that 
 
 ** both in its sentiments and in its opinions, the crowd is hugely 
 commonplace. It is incapable of original thought and of any 
 but inherited emotion. It has no speculation in its eyes. What 
 it feels was felt before the flood ; and what it thinks, its fa- 
 thers thought before it. The most effective moments in the 
 theater are those that appeal to commonplace emotions 
 love of woman, love of home, love of country, love of right, 
 anger, jealousy, revenge, ambition, lust, and treachery." 
 
 This is what underlies Victor Hugo's assertion in 
 the preface of his " Ruy Bias," that there are three 
 classes which go to the theater, the " main body of 
 spectators who demand action, women, who desire 
 emotion, and thinkers who look for character." In 
 other words, story, plot, incident, is of primary im- 
 portance in a play, since this is what is most pleasing 
 to the largest number; and delicacy of character- 
 delineation and veracity of psychology are only sec- 
 ondary. This truth was seized long ago by Aristotle ; 
 and it was as imperative in Athens then as it is now in 
 Paris and in New York. It seems to explain the boast 
 of the elder Dumas that all he required for success 
 on the stage was " four boards, two actors and a pas- 
 sion." 
 
 The audience in a theater is first of all a crowd, with 
 the characteristics it has in common with all crowds. 
 But it is also a crowd of a special type, in that it has 
 come together with the desire of recreation, of amuse- 
 ment, of pleasure. Its purpose is not serious, like the 
 purpose of the camp-meeting or of the political con- 
 vention. It is inclined to resent instruction or edifica- 
 tion, since it feels that the theater is not the fit place 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 89 
 
 for either of these useful things. This is one reason 
 why the chief dramatists have rarely attempted to 
 preach or to assume the attitude of the instructor ; they 
 have been satisfied to present life as they saw it with 
 their own eyes, to mirror one or another aspect of 
 the infinite complexity of human existence, leaving the 
 spectator free to draw his own moral from the picture. 
 This is the reason also why no great dramatic poet 
 has ever been a pioneer in philosophic speculation. It 
 has been the strength of the great dramatists that they 
 were not too far in advance of their time, that they 
 held most of the opinions of their contemporaries, con- 
 tenting themselves with restating the eternal common- 
 places of life in imperishable phrase for immediate 
 effect on their contemporaries. And thus in not striv- 
 ing strenuously to be up-to-date, they have largely 
 escaped the peril of being out-of-date. "Dramatic 
 art," so Professor Letourneau has asserted, "being 
 an essentially collective sort of literature, addressing 
 itself to the multitude, can not express more than the 
 average of the prevailing opinions, of the ideas current 
 in the surrounding social medium ; too original views, 
 too special feelings, are not in its domain." 
 
 As a result, we can see that any people is likely to 
 have, at any period, the drama that it deserves, since it 
 can have only the kind of play that it is willing to ac- 
 cept. In the golden days of Athens, the Greeks had 
 tragedy of the noblest type; and in the decadence of 
 Rome, the drama was degraded to vulgar and violent 
 pantomime, which had to compete for popular favor 
 with the brutal sports of the arena. And even a spec- 
 
90 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 tator to whom these were abhorrent had to yield to the 
 infection that emanated from his fellows, massed all 
 around him in the amphitheater. Saint Augustine tells 
 us of an acquaintance of his who had renounced gladia- 
 torial shows, but who yielded to the solicitation of 
 friends. For a while he sat with closed eyes, refusing 
 to witness the deadly combats, but when he relaxed 
 his guard over himself and opened his eyes, he was 
 soon caught by the contagion, and he swiftly found his 
 soul filled with sanguinary joy. 
 
 In the Colosseum, the crowd had the baser instincts 
 of the mob ; and even to-day, in places of amusement 
 of the lower sort, we can discover not a little of a similar 
 brutality. Yet these are exceptions. In the theater 
 nowadays, the crowd is not to be confounded with the 
 mob; it is representative of the average of the com- 
 munity and not of the inferior elements only. It is 
 representative of the main body of men and women; 
 and at bottom, the instinct of the main body is to be 
 relied on. Burke, who is not to be suspected of undue 
 partiality to democratic ideals, did not hesitate to as- 
 sert that " man is a most unwise and a most wise being. 
 The individual is foolish. The multitude for the mo- 
 ment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; 
 but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as 
 a species it almost always acts right." 
 
 It is to the species that the dramatist addresses 
 himself; and the history of the drama affords abun- 
 dant evidence not only that the species acts right, but 
 also that its judgment is sound. The great dramatists 
 whose works we study reverently to-day were the most 
 popular playwrights in their own times. The plays of 
 Sophocles and Shakspere, of Calderon and of Moliere, 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 91 
 
 filled the theaters when they were first produced. The 
 spectator of these masterpieces may not have sus- 
 pected that they were masterpieces ; he may not have 
 appreciated the rare qualities in them which the stu- 
 dent discovers now; but they gave him the specific 
 pleasure he was seeking in the theater, and he was 
 ready to return there again and again when they were 
 acted. 
 
 We may go further and assert that this broad popu- 
 lar acceptance is far more significant of abiding merit 
 than the laudation of any minority of professed critics. 
 Whenever there has been a divergence of opinion about 
 a play between the classes and the masses, time has 
 generally proved that the masses were wiser than the 
 classes. When Shakspere was a young man, Sidney 
 published his "Defence of Poesy," in which he poured 
 scorn upon the plays that then held the English stage ; 
 he besought poets to take pattern by the drama of 
 Greece and of Rome. But the playgoing public of 
 London would not accept sterile imitations of this sort ; 
 and it gave a warm welcome to the large and free 
 dramas Shakspere wrote in accord with the bolder 
 sentiment of the Elizabethan age. In France, again, 
 the French Academy, at Richelieu's request, condemned 
 the " Cid " of Corneille for its violation of the so-called 
 "rules of the drama." But the playgoing public at 
 Paris knew what it wanted, and in despite of the aca- 
 demicians, it flocked to the theater whenever the " Cid " 
 was performed. The true dramatic poet puts into his 
 plays many things which the public as a whole may 
 not appreciate ; but it is always for the public as a whole 
 that he writes his plays. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 
 
 It is sometimes supposed that the drama consists of incident. It 
 consists of passion, which gives the actor his opportunity; and that 
 passion must progressively increase, or the actor, as the piece pro- 
 ceeded, would be unable to carry the audience from a lower to 
 a higher pitch of interest and emotion. A good serious play must 
 therefore be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where 
 duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple. ROBERT Louis 
 STEVENSON, Memories and Portraits. 
 
 THE literary drama has grown out of the folk-drama ; 
 and it is composed to be performed by actors, in a 
 theater, and before an audience. But what is its es- 
 sential quality? In what vital way does the drama 
 differ from the epic of old or from the novel of our own 
 day? What are its necessary characteristics? What 
 specific quality is it that sets the drama apart from all 
 other literary forms ? To attempt to define this differ- 
 entiation by saying that the drama has to tell a story by 
 means of dialogue is inadequate, since dialogue is often 
 used for story-telling in poetry and in prose-fiction, in 
 the idyls of Theocritus, for example, and in the social 
 satires of the French lady who has chosen to call her- 
 self Gyp. We approach nearer to a satisfactory defini- 
 tion when we say that a drama is a story in dialogue 
 shown in action before an audience. Its essential 
 quality is due partly to the fact that it is to be per- 
 formed by actors in a theater, but mainly to the fact 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 93 
 
 that it is intended for the public as a whole and not for 
 the separate constituent elements of the public. Its 
 specific characteristic is the result of its appeal to the 
 throng and not to the individual. Its appeal is to the 
 mass, and to the communal desires of the main body. 
 What does the mass wish to see when it comes together 
 to behold a story in dialogue shown in action by per- 
 formers on the stage ? What does the crowd demand, 
 under these circumstances, which the individuals taken 
 severally would not insist upon ? 
 
 It is the late Ferdinand Brunetiere who has most 
 clearly declared the distinctive element of the drama. 
 To the volume of the " Annales du Theatre" for 1893, 
 the French critic contributed a preface, which he 
 called the "Law of the Drama." In this essay, he 
 formulated more elaborately a theory which he had 
 already summarily suggested and casually applied in 
 the series of lectures on the "Epoques du Theatre 
 Francais (1636-1850)," delivered at the Odeon Thea- 
 ter in the winter of 1891-2. This theory had there 
 emerged into view in his opening lecture on Corneille's 
 " Cid " ; and it had been a little more fully stated in his 
 final lecture on Scribe and Musset. As Brunetiere 
 pursued his task, the importance and the utility of this 
 theory seem to have impressed him more and more ; he 
 considered it anew, and in its remoter implications, 
 before setting it forth by itself in his contribution to the 
 "Annales du Theatre" for 1893. 
 
 In this prefatory essay, he began by pointing out that 
 the so-called " rules of the drama " are evidently invalid. 
 By the rules of the drama, he meant the code of restric- 
 tions which were held to give correctness to comedy 
 and especially to tragedy. This legislation was the 
 
94 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 result of the amplification (by La Harpe and Nepomu- 
 cene Lemercier) of principles laid down by Boileau and 
 d'Aubignac, and derived directly from the Italian the- 
 orists of the Renascence, Castelvetro and Robortello. 
 The decisions of these critics have been overruled by 
 the authority of the great modern dramatists who have 
 unhesitatingly violated these alleged rules. 
 
 Yet since the drama differs fundamentally from 
 the epic and from prose-fiction, it must have some 
 essential principle of its own. If this essential prin- 
 ciple can be discovered, then we shall be in possession 
 of the sole law of the drama, the one obligation which 
 all writers for the stage must accept. Now, if we 
 examine a collection of typical plays of every kind, 
 tragedies and melodramas, comedies and farces, we 
 shall find that the starting point of every one of them 
 is the same. Some one central character wants some- 
 thing; and this exercise of volition is the mainspring 
 of the action. In Corneille's "Cid," Chimerie wishes 
 to avenge her father. In Moliere's " School for Wives," 
 Arnolphe wishes to marry Agnes, whose ignorance 
 seems to him a guarantee of fidelity. Even in a farce 
 of Labiche's, the hero wishes to get out of the awkward 
 complications in which he is involved. But Labiche's 
 hero is opposed in his desires by the fear of reprisals ; 
 Moliere's elderly hero is unable to achieve his desire, 
 because love for Horace awakens the unbending reso- 
 lution of Agnes; and Corneille's heroine is thwarted 
 in the attaining of her desire by the opposition of a 
 stronger will than her own. In every successful play, 
 modern or ancient, we shall find this clash of contend- 
 ing desires, this assertion of the human will against 
 strenuous opposition of one kind or another. 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 95 
 
 Here, then, we have what Brunetiere declared to bet ^ 
 the law of the drama. He made it plain that the drama 
 must reveal the human will in action; and that the 
 central figure in a play must know what he wants and 
 must strive for it with incessant determination. This 
 is what differentiates the drama from the novel, 
 "Figaro," for instance, from "Gil Bias." The hero of 
 Beaumarchais has a will of his own and fights for his 
 own hand; he knows what he wants and he knows 
 why he wants it. The hero of Le Sage drifts through 
 life along the line of least resistance; he has no plans 
 of his own and he takes what chances to come his 
 way. Figaro acts; Gil Bias is acted upon. The play of 
 Beaumarchais may be made into an acceptable novel ; 
 but the novel of Le Sage cannot be made into an ac- 
 ceptable play. A novel may be dramatized success- 
 fully only when it is inherently dramatic, that is to 
 say, only when its central figure is master of his fate and 
 captain of his soul. Action in the drama is thus seen 
 to be not mere movement or external agitation; it is 
 the expression of a will which knows itself. 
 
 The French critic maintained also that, when this 
 law of the drama was once firmly grasped, it helped to 
 differentiate more precisely the several dramatic species. 
 If the obstacles against which the will of the hero has 
 to contend are insurmountable, Fate or Providence 
 or the laws of nature, then there is tragedy, and the 
 end of the struggle is likely to be death, since the hero 
 is defeated in advance. But if these obstacles are not 
 absolutely insurmountable, being only social conven- 
 tions and human prejudices, then the hero has a pos- 
 sible chance to attain his desire, and in this case, 
 we have the serious drama without an inevitably fatal 
 
96 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 ending. Change this obstacle a little, equalize the 
 conditions of the struggle, set two human wills in op- 
 position, and we have comedy. And if the obstacle 
 is of a still lower order, merely an absurdity of custom, 
 for instance, we find ourselves in farce. Of course, 
 these several dramatic species rarely exist in complete 
 purity of type; comedy often declines into farce, for 
 example, and farce not infrequently elevates itself 
 toward comedy. 
 
 Brunetiere found a confirmation of his theory in the 
 fact that the drama has most amply flourished when 
 the national will has stiffened itself for a magnificent 
 effort. Greek tragedy is contemporary with Salamis ; 
 and the Spanish drama is contemporary with the con- 
 quest of the New World. Shakspere was a man when 
 the Armada was repulsed ; Corneille and Moliere were 
 made possible by the work of Henry IV and Riche- 
 lieu ; Lessing and Goethe and Schiller came after Fred- 
 erick. And the Orientals have no vital drama because 
 they are fatalists, because they do not believe in that 
 free will without which the drama cannot exist. It 
 is significant that men of action, Richelieu, Conde, 
 Frederick, Napoleon, have ever been fond of the 
 theater. A belief in free will is always favorable to the 
 drama, whereas a belief in foreordination may be not 
 unfavorable to the novel, the chief figures of which are 
 not required always to know their own minds. 
 
 Here Brunetiere rested his case. He concluded by 
 calling attention to the difference between the so-called 
 rules of the drama which are always narrow, always 
 rigid, and always certain to be broken sooner or later 
 because of this narrow rigidity and this one single 
 law of the theater, as he stated it, large, supple, flexible 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 97 
 
 in its application, simple in itself and yet general, rich in 
 its consequences and ever ready to enrich itself still 
 further by all the confirmations which experience and 
 reflection may supply. 
 
 It is not too much to say that this statement of the 
 law of the drama is the most suggestive and the most 
 important contribution to the theory of the theater 
 which has been made for many years. It is as signifi- 
 cant as any of Lessing's contributions to the theory 
 of art. The more clearly it is perceived, the more illu- 
 minating it will be found. Brunetiere has here given 
 us the key to many an obscurity. He has provided us 
 with an instrument for gaging the true dramatic value 
 of a play. He has put into our hands the means where- 
 by we can explain difficulties otherwise very puzzling. 
 For instance, he has enabled us to see why it is that 
 the medieval mysteries, and also the English chron- 
 icle-plays (which more or less follow the medieval 
 model) are not so interesting as the tragedies in which 
 we find the hero "at war with the words of fate." 
 To the central figure of the chronicle-play things 
 merely happen, and while we may be interested now 
 and again in the separate episodes, our attention is 
 only languidly held by the story as a whole ; whereas the 
 central figure of any one of the tragedies stands forth 
 the embodiment of will, knowing what he wants and 
 bending all his powers to the accomplishment of his 
 purpose. This law of the drama explains also why 
 novels, full of bustle and abounding in variety of in- 
 cident, have often failed to attract the public when 
 they were dramatized. 
 
98 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 If any cavil must be made, it is that Brunetiere took 
 upon himself to lay down the law somewhat arbitra- 
 rily. Perhaps it might have been better to say that a 
 consideration of all the masterpieces of the drama, 
 and of all the plays of less value which have now and 
 again achieved a fleeting success on the stage, discloses 
 the fact that the attention of an audience in a theater 
 can be aroused and retained only by an exhibition of 
 the human will. As individuals, we can find pleasure 
 in reading about the misadventures of characters with 
 no minds of their own ; but when we are massed together 
 as spectators in the playhouse, these nerveless creatures 
 no longer satisfy us,. and we demand men of a sterner 
 sort, with iron in the blood to struggle valiantly for the 
 desire of their hearts. The career of a character to 
 whom things merely happen seems to us insufficiently 
 interesting when it is represented in action on the 
 stage before us collectively, although we may sever- 
 ally follow such a career more or less eagerly when we 
 read about it in the study. Now and again, of course, a 
 piece may delight some few of us solely by its subtle 
 revelations of character or by its ironic picture of life ; 
 but the plays which have pleased long and pleased 
 many have always an essential struggle to serve as a 
 backbone. In other words, what Brunetiere promul- 
 gated as a hard and fast decree may be set forth, if we 
 prefer another statement, as a logical deduction from 
 the accumulated experience of mankind. 
 
 While the credit for declaring this law thus clearly, 
 and of applying it so as to bring out the special qual- 
 ity of the drama, and to make plain the fundamental 
 difference between a play and a novel, is undoubtedly 
 due to Brunetiere, he had not a few predecessors who 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 99 
 
 had caught sight of the theory which he was to iso- 
 late sharply. It is impossible that so pregnant a truth 
 about one of the foremost of the arts should not have 
 been perceived by earlier critics. Voltaire, for exam- 
 ple, in one of his letters, asserted that every scene in 
 a play should represent a combat ; and Stevenson de- 
 clared that " a good serious play must be founded on 
 one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and 
 inclination come nobly to the grapple." This coin- 
 cides with Schlegel's assertion that tragedy deals 
 with the moral freedom of man, which can be dis- 
 played only " in a conflict with his sensuous impulses." 
 So Coleridge emphasized the fact that accidents ought 
 not to be introduced into tragedy, since " in the tragic 
 the free will of man is the first cause." And in " Wil- 
 liam Meister," Goethe had gone so far as to say that, 
 while the hero of a novel might be passive, the hero 
 of a play must be active, since "all events oppose 
 him, and he either clears and removes every obstacle 
 out of his path, or else becomes their victim." 
 
 Goethe's opinion reappears more elaborately stated 
 in Hegel, who treated tragedy at length and with his 
 customary subtlety. In setting forth compactly Hegel's 
 opinions, Professor Bradley noted that " in all tragedy 
 there is some sort of collision or conflict conflict 
 of feelings, modes of thought, desires, wills, purposes; 
 conflict of persons with one another, or with circum- 
 stances or with themselves." Then the British critic 
 brought out the German philosopher's insistence on 
 the essential point that " pity for mere misfortune, like 
 fear of it, is not tragic pity or fear, since these are due 
 to the spectacle of the conflict and its attendant suffer- 
 ing, which do not appeal simply to our sensibilities or 
 
100 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 our instinct of self-preservation, but also to our deeper 
 mind or spirit." This truly tragic conflict appeals to our 
 spirit because it is of the spirit, being a conflict "be- 
 tween powers that rule man's spiritual life and have the 
 right to rule it. They are the substance of humanity, 
 and especially of man's ethical nature. The family and 
 the state, the bond of parent and child, of brother and 
 sister, of husband and wife, of citizen and ruler, or 
 citizen and citizen, with the obligations and feelings 
 appropriate to these bonds ; and again the powers of 
 personal love and honor, or of devotion to a great 
 cause or an ideal interest like religion or science, or 
 some kind of social welfare such are the forces 
 exhibited in tragic action." And as these are all ac- 
 knowledged to be " powers rightfully claiming human 
 obedience, their exhibition in tragedy has that in- 
 terest, at once deep and universal, which is essential 
 to a great work of art." 
 
 in 
 
 But is Brunetiere's law of the drama really con- 
 tained in Hegel's theory of tragedy ? After all, Hegel 
 is dealing with tragedy only and not with the whole 
 range of the drama ; and he is but giving his own anal- 
 ysis of the old theory of the tragic conflict. Brune- 
 tiere went much further ; he declared a principle by 
 which the drama as a whole is differentiated absolutely 
 from the epic and prose-fiction. His law governs com- 
 edy and farce as well as tragedy. Furthermore, even 
 in considering tragedy, Brunetiere laid stress not so 
 much on the circumstances of the conflict, of the strug- 
 gle in which the hero is involved, as on the stark as- 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 101 
 
 sertion of the hero's will. He made plain the fact that 
 the truly dramatic element does not lie in the mere 
 clash of contending forces, but rather in the volition 
 of the hero himself, in the firm resolution which steels 
 a man for the struggle. This is a most significant 
 simplification of the older idea; and it is most helpful. 
 
 In this simplification, Brunetiere has gone behind 
 Hegel; indeed it may be said that he has gone back 
 to Aristotle. The "master of all that know" was ever 
 the ardent champion of free will against determinism ; 
 and perhaps this sympathetic advocacy of a principle 
 which is the fundamental characteristic of the drama 
 is added evidence that Aristotle was not only the first 
 but also the foremost of dramatic critics. He held 
 Sophocles to be the mightiest of the three great Greek 
 dramatic poets; and one reason for this preference is 
 probably his keen appreciation of the dramaturgic 
 dexterity of the author of "CEdipus," the faculty of 
 construction, the sheer playmaking skill revealed again 
 and again ; but another reason might be found in the 
 fact that Sophocles never allowed his hero to be a mere 
 plaything in the hands of fate, and always so contrived 
 his story that the impending curse did not become 
 operative except by the volition of the individual. 
 
 Aristotle anticipated Coleridge in ruling out acci- 
 dents and in declaring that poetry rebels against the 
 rule of chance. And he emphasized the necessity of 
 plot, that is, of a story guided by the human will. 
 "Without action there cannot be a tragedy," he as- 
 serted; "there may be without character." As Profes- 
 sor Butcher has explained, " the drama not only implies 
 emotion expressing itself in a complete and significant 
 action and tending toward a certain end, it also im- 
 
102 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 plies a conflict." The British scholar has also sug- 
 gested that "we may even modify Aristotle's phrase 
 and say that the dramatic conflict, not the mere plot, 
 is 'the soul of tragedy/" And we may in turn modify 
 Professor Butcher's phrase and say that the soul of the 
 drama is not in the dramatic conflict so much as in the 
 naked assertion of the human will which is the cause 
 of the conflict. 
 
 That these modifications are necessary is evidence 
 that Brunetiere's law of the drama is not explicit in 
 Aristotle's treatise, any more than in Hegel's, although 
 it may be a development of their kindred theories 
 which they would both of them accept. It was Brune- 
 tiere who shifted the emphasis from the more or less 
 external conflict to the internal act of volition which 
 determines the struggle. It was the French critic who 
 first made it unmistakably plain that the drama de- 
 pends on man's free will. He supported his doctrine 
 by examples drawn mainly from the French drama; 
 but other illustrations as striking can be found in 
 other literatures. 
 
 The development of English tragedy, for example, 
 out of the lax chronicle-play, which was only a strag- 
 gling panorama of the events of a reign, was due largely 
 to the influence exerted by Seneca's tragedies, poor 
 enough as plays, but vigorous in the stoical assertion 
 of man's power over himself and of his right to con- 
 trol his own destiny. This development of English 
 tragedy may even have been helped a little by the re- 
 moter influence of Machiavelli, traces of which are 
 abundant throughout Elizabethan literature. The so- 
 called Machiavellian villains of the tragedy-of-blood 
 may reveal a total misconception of the acute Italian's 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 103 
 
 principles; and yet none the less the sharpening of 
 the dramatic conflict may have been helped at least a 
 little by Machiavelli's reiterated emphasis on the duty 
 of the strong man to work his will as best he can, de- 
 ciding all doubtful points in his own interest. 
 
 The chief advantage of Brunetiere's law is that it 
 enables us to set off the true dramatic conflict from 
 the grosser forms of combat. The drama cannot exist 
 without the theater; and the theater is only a little 
 differentiated from the amphitheater. The stage is 
 first cousin to the arena ; and Professor Groos was on 
 safe ground when he asserted that " the pleasure af- 
 forded by the drama has one very essential feature in 
 common with ring-contests, animal fights, races, etc., 
 namely, that of observing a struggle in which we 
 may inwardly participate." That is to say, we want to 
 take sides ; we long to see one or the other of the two 
 parties gain the victory ; we have a communal instinct 
 to sympathize with some one strong, central character 
 battling against odds, with whom for the moment we 
 may even identify ourselves more or less. 
 
 In the ancient arena, the gladiators fought to the 
 death ; and with so poignant a presentation of the dra- 
 matic conflict as this no Roman playwright could hope 
 to compete. In the modern circus, the bloodless effort 
 to overcome difficulty has often an element of lurking 
 danger which supplies an added piquancy. Even at 
 its loftiest elevation, the drama cannot help having an 
 obvious kinship with the "show-business"; and as we 
 climb steadily from the cruel and deadly sports of the 
 Colosseum, past the startling exploits of the circus, up 
 to the sumptuous spectacle of the ballet, and then, at 
 last, aloft to the subtlety of comedy and the serenity 
 
104 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 of tragedy, we find the several steps of our ascent so 
 close together we cannot tell exactly where it is that 
 the true drama actually emerges into view. Here 
 Brunetiere's law may serve as a test, in that it shifts 
 the emphasis from the outer struggle to the inner 
 stiffening of the human will, which controls the 
 combat. 
 
 Even in the cheaper kinds of melodrama, when we 
 behold the rivalry of a villain absolutely villainous 
 with a hero entirely heroic, apparently only a bald 
 antithesis of black and white, both the villain and the 
 hero want the same thing, usually this is the pos- 
 session of the heroine ; and there is therefore a tense 
 conflict of contending determinations. In plays of a 
 higher class, especially in the social drama, dealing with 
 themes of contemporary importance, with the burn- 
 ing questions of modern life, the opposition is not be- 
 tween a bad man and a good man ; it is between two 
 opinions, between two men each of whom believes 
 that he is in the right, each of whom, in fact, is in 
 the right from his own point of view. And the true 
 dramatist does not take sides; he holds an impartial 
 attitude, letting both his characters express themselves 
 honestly. Perhaps there is no better example of this 
 than the "Gendre de M. Poirier" of Augier and 
 Sandeau ; and probably the spectators of this comedy 
 sympathize some of them with Poirier and some with 
 his son-in-law. 
 
 It may not be easy always for the spectator to de- 
 clare exactly what the struggle is, but he can always 
 recognize the desire of the central figure. In "Ham- 
 let," for instance, externally the struggle may seem 
 to be between Hamlet and Claudius, or between Ham- 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 105 
 
 let and his own weakness of will, or between Hamlet 
 and an overmastering fatality which broods over him 
 from the beginning. But there is no doubt about the 
 desire of Hamlet himself; he wants to do what is 
 right, even if he is ever in doubt as to what he ought 
 to do and even if he finds it hard to make up his mind. 
 And in " As You Like It," the strife between Orlando 
 and his brother, between Rosalind and her uncle, 
 these are only necessary elements of the mechanism 
 of the story. Orlando knows what he wants ; he wants 
 Rosalind; and Rosalind wants him to want her. 
 
 IV 
 
 When we have once accepted and assimilated 
 Brunetiere's law of the drama, we can utilize it to in- 
 terpret a principle laid down by Sarcey. That very 
 practical critic, who passed all his evenings in the 
 theater and who deduced all his theories from obser- 
 vation of the effect of the acted drama upon audiences, 
 declared that in every story which is fit to be set on the 
 stage, there are certain episodes or interviews which 
 must be shown in action and which cannot be narrated 
 by the characters. He called these the "scenes that 
 must be treated," the scenes a faire. If any one of 
 these essential scenes is shirked by the playwright, if 
 he describes it in his dialogue, instead of letting the 
 spectators see it for themselves, then the audience will 
 be disappointed and their interest will flag. 
 
 The spectators may not be able to declare the rea- 
 son for their dissatisfaction ; but they will be vaguely 
 aware that they have been deprived of something to 
 which they were entitled. They feel that they have 
 been defrauded of their just expectations, if they are 
 
106 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 not made eye-witnesses of a vital incident which the 
 inexpert dramatist has chosen to bring about behind 
 closed doors or during one of the intermissions be- 
 tween the acts. Sarcey insisted that here was a certain 
 test of the born playwrights, of the artists who have 
 an instinctive mastery of the theater, that they have 
 always an unerring intuition as to the meetings which 
 the spectators will expect to see. 
 
 Now, what are the essential scenes without which 
 a play will fail to impress the audience? What are 
 these scenes which must be shown in action? Ob- 
 viously, they are the scenes in which we can see the 
 struggle of contending wills. They are the episodes 
 wherein the dramatic conflict enters on its acutest 
 stage, the interviews wherein there is the actual colli- 
 sion of the several resolves, the clash of volition against 
 volition. They are those wherein "passion must ap- 
 pear upon the scene and utter its last word," to 
 borrow Stevenson's apt phrase. Thus we see that 
 Sarcey 's theory links itself logically with Brunetiere's. 
 The essential characteristic of the drama is that it 
 deals with the human will ; and a play therefore loses 
 interest for the audience when the playwright fails to 
 let us see for ourselves the acute crisis of this clash of 
 contending determinations. 
 
 Brunetiere and Sarcey derived their theories from 
 observation of the practice of the great dramatists ; and 
 there is no difficulty in adducing illustrations from the 
 masterpieces of the drama in support of these theories. 
 All the great dramatists, ancient and modern, have 
 done instinctively what Brunetiere and Sarcey declared 
 to be necessary. In the "Agamemnon," for example, 
 JSschylus lets the murder of his chief character take 
 
THE LAW OF THE DRAMA 107 
 
 place out of sight, for that is only the inevitable conse- 
 quence of the meeting of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra 
 which he sets before us. In "Macbeth," Shakspere 
 shows us the guilty determination of Macbeth and Lady 
 Macbeth just before the murder of Duncan, which is 
 itself all the more impressive because it is not shown. 
 In " Othello," we are made witnesses of the working 
 of the poison of jealousy in Othello, as this is distilled 
 by lago. 
 
 In "Tartuffe," Moliere puts before us the attempt 
 which the sanctimonious rogue makes upon the vir- 
 tue of Elmire; just as Sheridan sets on the stage the 
 assault of Joseph upon Lady Teazle. In the " Doll's 
 House," Ibsen lets us hear all that Nora has to say 
 after she has discovered the depths of her husband's 
 pettiness. The expert playwright of every age has 
 been aware that spectators are interested only in what 
 they can see for themselves and that they remain but 
 tepidly attentive to what is told them. It is the special 
 privilege of the theater that it can make a visible ap- 
 peal, with all the impressiveness of the thing actually 
 seen and not merely narrated. And it is only at his 
 peril that the playwright fails to profit by this privi- 
 lege. 
 
 The validity of the principles laid down by Brune- 
 tiere and by Sarcey we can all of us test for ourselves 
 when we analyze the impression made upon us in the 
 theater. If we have found ourselves languid and bored, 
 we have only to analyze the conduct of the story to 
 discover the cause of our dumb dissatisfaction and to 
 assure ourselves that the playwright failed to present 
 before us the essential scenes of the essential struggle. 
 On the other hand, when a play, tragedy or comedy, 
 
108 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 melodrama or farce, has held our attention, a little 
 analysis will reveal to us that this is because the drama- 
 tist has made us spectators of the scenes that must be 
 treated to bring out the full value of the clash of con- 
 tending volitions. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 
 
 A country may be overrun by an armed force, but it is only con- 
 quered by the establishment of fortresses. Words are the fortresses 
 of thought. They enable us to realize^pur dominion over what we 
 have already overrun in thought ; to make every intellectual conquest 
 the basis of operations for others still beyond. SIR WILLIAM 
 HAMILTON, Lectures in Metaphysics and Logic. 
 
 IN the mechanic arts, and in the market-place, the 
 need of new words is met by the swift selection of the 
 term nearest at hand, ill-chosen it may be, but filling 
 an immediate want and thereby at once justifying its 
 use. For example, in the art of electricity, their con- 
 venience forced promptly into circulation such a mis- 
 begotten word as "cablegram" and such a startling 
 combination as "separately excited boosters." But in 
 the library and in the lecture room, higher standards 
 obtain, and the rough-and-ready methods of the ma- 
 chine shop are unacceptable. As a result of our squeam- 
 ishness in the manufacture of the new terms needed, 
 and in consequence also of the difficulty in winning 
 general acceptance for those which we do venture to 
 make, the vocabulary of criticism lacks many a word 
 which it ought to have. For instance, there is no sat- 
 isfactory way of distinguishing the true short-story 
 from the casual narrative which happens to be brief, 
 although it might have been long. And there is no 
 single word for that most precious gift to humanity 
 
110 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 known as the sense-of-humor, the negative quality 
 which prevents a man from taking himself too se- 
 riously, and which is often lacking even in those who 
 possess abundantly the positive quality known as 
 humor. 
 
 In the liberal arts, wherein emotion dominates and 
 individuality is all-important, we cannot hope for the 
 exact vocabulary of the sciences, wherein fact rules 
 and the personal equation is cautiously eliminated. 
 Horse-power, foot-tons, kilowatts, these are all terms 
 of precision absolutely independent of the user's own 
 feelings, whereas tragedy, romance, imagination are all 
 words which may call up different ideas in the mind 
 of every individual writer and reader. A writer can- 
 not make sure that any reader will take any one of 
 the words in the same sense that he himself employs 
 it. Professor Gummere, tracing the history of the 
 popular ballad, had to devote many of his early pages 
 to the definition of the type itself, pointing out clearly 
 just what he holds it to be. Probably he would be the 
 first to admit that he has no right to impose all the 
 elements of his definition upon every other historian 
 of literature who shall hereafter consider the subject; 
 and certainly the other historians would be emphatic 
 in denying his claim if he had insisted on it. In like 
 manner, we find the opening chapter of Professor 
 Thorndike's illuminating history of English tragedy 
 occupied by the author's effort to arrive at a defini- 
 tion of the type, as it arose in Greece and as it has 
 developed in Great Britain. 
 
 There is an advantage in insisting upon resolute 
 definitions. Even if scientific precision is not to be 
 hoped for, every writer gains by the sturdy struggle to 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 111 
 
 make sure that at least he knows exactly what he him- 
 self intends by the words he employs. He cannot be 
 certain that the majority of his readers will always take 
 these words in his sense ; but if he can impose his defi- 
 nition upon only a few, others will follow in due season, 
 until the terminology of the art is made more precise. 
 We all recognize now the value of Coleridge's distinc- 
 tion between imagination and fancy. We can all ap- 
 preciate the distinction between true romance, peren- 
 nial and eternal, and the neo-romanticism which was 
 aping it a century ago. We are most of us ready now 
 to admit that the short-story is a type by itself, differ- 
 ing from the novel, as the lyric differs from the epic, 
 not in its brevity only, but also in its object. We have 
 been led to a clearer understanding of the development 
 of the Elizabethan drama by the devoted labors of the 
 scholars who have revealed to us the existence of the 
 special types which they have called the chronicle-play 
 and the tragedy-of-blood. These names for groups of 
 plays, hitherto lost in the immense mass of our older 
 drama, are not merely convenient, they are positively 
 helpful to every student of the stage. 
 
 When we set out to investigate the slow evolution of 
 the drama in our language, we are entitled to feel that 
 we have taken a long step in advance as soon as we 
 have attained to a knowledge of the special character- 
 istics of the mystery, the morality, the chronicle-play, 
 the tragedy-of-blood, tragi-comedy, the comedy-of- 
 humors, the heroic-play, the ballad-opera, sentimental- 
 comedy, the closet-drama, and the problem-play. We 
 have gone still further forward when we have learned 
 how tragedy was developed out of the tragedy-of-blood, 
 as the tragedy-of-blood had been developed out of the 
 
112 
 
 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 chronicle-play. And in like manner, any one under- 
 taking a study of the history of fiction cannot fail to 
 find profit in the history of the rise and fall of the 
 pastoral-romance, the romance-of-chivalry, the pica- 
 resque-romance, the oriental-tale, the short-story, the 
 detective-story, the sea-tale, and the novel-with-a-pur- 
 pose. 
 
 These names may mean little or nothing to the sev- 
 eral authors, each bent on expressing his vision of life 
 as best he could ; nor need they be pressed unduly on 
 the attention of ordinary readers, content to enjoy 
 without question. Every student can find his profit 
 in keeping them in mind; but he must remember al- 
 ways that we have no right to assume that the author 
 ever gave a thought to the specific name the historians 
 of literature might one day bestow on his masterpiece. 
 Often he would have been puzzled himself to declare 
 the literary type to which it properly belonged. Rare 
 indeed is the writer who has set himself down delib- 
 erately to compose a chronicle-play or a tragedy-of- 
 blood which should be only and strictly a chronicle-play 
 or a tragedy-of -blood. These questions of terminology 
 are for critics only. The creators are careless in the 
 matter ; they are seeking to express themselves in one 
 of the forms popular at the moment, never hesitating 
 to stretch this form till it cracks, or to contaminate it 
 with some other type. 
 
 If any one had told Moliere that his two master- 
 pieces, the " Misanthrope" and " Tartuffe," stepped out 
 of the domain of pure comedy and crossed over into that 
 of tragedy, it is probable that this revelation would 
 have worried him very little ; and Shakspere made fun 
 of the mania for classification when he had the pedantic 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 113 
 
 Polonius present to Hamlet a company of actors the 
 best in the world for " tragedy, comedy, history, pas- 
 toral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical- 
 historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene 
 undividable or poem unlimited." And in Professor 
 Baker's " Development of Shakspere as a Dramatist," 
 he makes the point that the tragedies of the English 
 dramatist may have seemed to the public of their own 
 day "not tragedies at all but merely more masterly 
 specimens of dramatic story-telling than the things 
 that had preceded them." The Elizabethan audience, 
 accustomed to the loosely knit chronicle-plays, found 
 the tragedies more interesting without ever stopping 
 to think that they were different in kind as well as in 
 degree. To Shakspere, it is possible that "Macbeth" 
 may have been only a chronicle-play more effectively 
 constructed. 
 
 When M. Rostand had written a part around M. 
 Coquelin and had invented a story to carry the part, he 
 found himself confronted by the difficulty of classifying 
 his drama; and he solved the puzzle by reviving an 
 old name for the new type. He declared that " Cyrano 
 de Bergerac" was a heroic-comedy. Goldsmith called 
 "She Stoops to Conquer" a comedy; and when cer- 
 tain critics insisted that it was only a farce, and that 
 it contained some scenes "too mean even for farce," 
 he may have shrugged his shoulders, since the public 
 had laughed at his play, not asking whether their risi- 
 bles had been excited by a farce or a comedy. And 
 Mark Twain would probably be surprised if it should 
 be pointed out to him that "Huckleberry Finn" is 
 really a picaresque-romance, a direct descendant of 
 "Gil Bias" and "Lazarillo de Tonnes." Very likely 
 
114 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the statement would not interest him, since " Huckle- 
 berry Finn" would remain thereafter just what it had 
 been before. 
 
 n 
 
 But if those labels matter little to the creators, they 
 have their importance to the investigators of literary 
 evolution. We may modify Pascal's dictum and de- 
 clare that half of the art of criticism lies in the preci- 
 sion of the definitions. And to the student of any art, 
 there is unfailing profit in a firm grasp of classification. 
 When he has really apprehended the essential char- 
 acteristics of any special type, he is likely to be sur- 
 prised to discover it unexpectedly turning up in pe- 
 riods when it has been supposed to have practically 
 disappeared. There is the chronicle-play, for example, 
 which flourished abundantly in Shakspere's youth. 
 Professor Schelling thinks that it died out when it had 
 run its course in the seventeenth century, and no doubt 
 the name has departed from ordinary speech ; but the 
 thing itself can be found again and again in the dra- 
 matic literature of the nineteenth century, and two 
 striking examples are visible already in the first decade 
 of the twentieth century. The writer of a chronicle- 
 play applied to a lay subject the practices of the mys- 
 tery which set forth the gospel-story; and he sought 
 to put into action and dialogue all the episodes of the 
 career he dealt with. He took it as a whole and pre- 
 sented it as it came to him, with little selection, sup- 
 pression, or climax. He felt no call to focus interest on 
 an essential struggle and to make every scene con- 
 verge toward a central point. His method was only 
 externally that of the drama; for what he wanted to do 
 was only to show a narrative in action for the benefit 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 115 
 
 of those who could not or would not read the original 
 story. When we have once grasped the characteristics 
 of the type, we can see easily enough that this is in 
 fact the method of the elder Dumas in his "Napo- 
 leon" and of Giacommetti in his "Marie Antoinette." 
 It is the method also of Mr. Stephen Phillips in his 
 "Ulysses" and of Mr. Percy Mackaye in his "Jeanne 
 d'Arc." Tennyson's "Queen Mary" and "Becket" 
 are both of them chronicle-plays, histories, if we 
 prefer the Shaksperian term. They are modelled on 
 the loose and straggling pieces written by Shakspere 
 before he had learnt how to compact a tragic plot. 
 And there is no denying that the chronicle-play is 
 likely to reappear again more than once in the coming 
 century, since it is a lax and easy form, forever tempt- 
 ing to poets who are unwilling to take the trouble to 
 master the technic of the theater of their own time. 
 It has been a distinct advantage to the student of 
 the drama that the terms, chronicle-play and tragedy- 
 of -blood, have won general acceptance to describe 
 special types of the drama. It would be a far greater 
 advantage if we were able to use with equal precision 
 two more important terms. These are comedy and 
 tragedy, both of them words of loose meaning, which 
 cannot be applied with any rigorous exactness. Even 
 when taken together, they fail hopelessly to cover the 
 field, which seems to be divided between them. The 
 setting up of these two words over against each other 
 would appear to imply that any play which is not a 
 tragedy must be a comedy, and any play not a comedy 
 must be a tragedy. But this is obviously absurd, for 
 there are plays a-plenty which are neither tragedy nor 
 comedy, and which also are not even tragi 7 comedy, 
 
116 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 in any of the many shifting meanings of that bastard 
 term. 
 
 The word tragi-comedy seems to have been first 
 used by Plautus in his " Amphitryon/* because he com- 
 bined serious and comic effects, setting gods by the 
 side of slaves. Sidney declared that its distinguishing 
 quality was to be found in its "mingling kings and 
 clowns," and in that its author was willing to "match 
 hornpipes and funerals." Here we perceive a survival 
 of the now exploded belief that tragedy could properly 
 present only exalted personages and that it ought to 
 be free from all admixture of the comic, although 
 the "Alcestis" of Euripides has both a humorous 
 character, the intoxicated Heracles, and a happy end- 
 ing. Nowadays we take a larger view of tragedy, and 
 are ready to see it even in the humblest of families. 
 Few would be disposed to-day to deny the term to the 
 somber "Ghosts" of Ibsen; although this drama is 
 in plain prose, although it presents plain people, and 
 although it does not actually end in death, we feel in 
 it the largeness of a truly tragic theme. 
 
 Both in English and in French, tragi-comedy had 
 a long struggle for life; and finally failed to establish 
 itself in either language, although Corneille used it 
 to describe his "Cid" and Fletcher to describe his 
 "Faithful Shepherdess." Even in Fletcher's time, 
 three centuries ago, its proper application was so 
 doubtful that he was forced to declare his own defini- 
 tion in his preface to this pastoral play : " A tragi-com- 
 edy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but 
 in respect that it wants death, which is enough to make 
 it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough 
 to make it no comedy, which must be a representation 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 117 
 
 of familiar people." To-day we have no special term 
 to apply to a piece such as Fletcher here describes, 
 and the best we can do is simply call it a "play." Yet 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones chose to revive tragi-comedy 
 as the proper designation for his " Evangelist," and it 
 would have been convenient to be able to use tragi- 
 comedy to describe Mr. Clyde Fitch's "Climbers," 
 which although satiric in intent, skirted the edge of 
 tragedy; indeed, it is said that one manager declined 
 this drama because he did not believe that the public 
 would take any interest in a play "which began with 
 a funeral and which ended with a suicide." 
 
 For a variant of the type of play which Fletcher and 
 Beaumont originated and which Shakspere took over 
 from them (in the "Winter's Tale," for example), 
 Professor Thorndike has suggested the appropriate 
 term of dramatic-romance. And here again is a con- 
 venient term to describe certain modern pieces only 
 too prevalent in our theaters of late, most of them 
 dramatizations of pseudo-historical or wholly fantastic 
 tales of adventure, such as "When Knighthood Was 
 in Flower" and the "Prisoner of Zenda." The word 
 tragedy seems to convey a fairly simple idea ; but, as 
 Fletcher remarked, it connotes a deadly termination 
 of the story, and so it apparently excludes all those 
 serious dramas which fail to end fatally. On the other 
 hand, the word comedy has been broadened to in- 
 clude all the manifestations of the comic spirit on the 
 stage the lyrical-burlesque of Aristophanes and the 
 acibbatic farce of the Italians, which we know as 
 the comedy-of-masks, as well as the brilliant satires 
 of contemporary society such as Sheridan and Beau- 
 marchais gave us. That is to say, tragedy is applied 
 
118 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 strictly to only one of the several types of serious drama, 
 the one in which death rings down the curtain ; whereas 
 comedy is stretched to include every kind of humor- 
 ous piece. As a result, we have no name for the special 
 type of comedy which corresponds to the special type 
 of tragedy the comic play which deals with life sin- 
 cerely and satirically, without exaggerated caricature 
 in the character-drawing and without extravagant 
 fun-making in the episodes. High-comedy is what 
 one might call the play of this class, taking as our 
 typical specimens the "Femmes Savantes" of Moliere, 
 the "Way of the World" of Congreve, the "School 
 for Scandal" of Sheridan, and the "Gendre de M. 
 Poirier" of Augier and Sandeau. In this wise and 
 witty comedy-of -manners, to give it another name, 
 more widely used but less exactly descriptive the 
 action, however serious it may seem, never stiffens 
 into serious drama; and, on the other hand, however 
 amusing it may be, it never relaxes into the robust and 
 boisterous mirth of mere farce. Rich as is the dra- 
 matic literature of the world, the plays worthy to be 
 classified under this head are surprisingly few. Mod- 
 ern British dramatists have given us occasional speci- 
 mens of this difficult form, Oscar Wilde's "Lady 
 Windermere's Fan," for example, and Mr. Henry 
 Arthur Jones's " Liars." The Greeks, from whom we 
 have perfect examples of pure tragedy, left us not a 
 single specimen of high-comedy although, of course, 
 it is possible that one may yet be discovered amid the 
 plays of Menander, if we can replevin them from 
 oblivion. 
 
 What is even more curious is that there is not really 
 a satisfactory specimen of high-comedy to be selected 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 119 
 
 out of the immense mass of the Elizabethan drama. 
 No one of Shakspere's comedies and not one of Ben 
 Jonson's conforms to this special type. The comic 
 dramas of Ben Jonson belong to the class known as 
 the camedy-of -humors ; and the most beloved of Shak- 
 spere's lighter plays, the "Merchant of Venice" and 
 " Much Ado about Nothing," are best to be described 
 as examples of romantic-comedy, the form which the 
 great dramatist specially affected and which he im- 
 proved for his own use, even if he took the suggestion 
 of it from Greene. In this romantic-comedy, we find 
 Shakspere sustaining the interest of the more playful 
 theme, with which he is chiefly concerned, by the 
 powerful episodes of an underplot which is allowed 
 at times to become almost tragic in its intensity. 
 
 However delightful may be the romantic-comedies 
 of Shakspere, with their unceasing poetic charm and 
 their unfailing contrast of character, they have not 
 afforded a model to modern dramatists, who seem to 
 have felt that this type of play was a special product 
 of the semi-medieval, semi-renascence theater of the 
 Elizabethans, and that it would not flourish on our 
 modern stage, set with realistic scenery. Indeed, the 
 only poet of the nineteenth century who was attracted 
 to this Shaksperian form was Alfred de Musset; and 
 it must be remembered that the most of his dramatic 
 fantasies, passionate yet mocking, were not originally 
 intended for the actual theater. 
 
 On the other hand, the high-comedy of Moliere, 
 prepared for a playhouse which was modern in the most 
 of its conditions, has served as a model for Congreve 
 and Sheridan, for Augier and Sandeau, and for all 
 who have since essayed the comedy-of-manners. That 
 
120 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 only a few have been able to handle this form success- 
 fully is evidence that it is inherently difficult. Appar- 
 ently the danger is twofold, and it is very like that 
 which confronts the lyrist who ventures upon the true 
 vers de societe. The playwright, who ought to make 
 his plot the result of the clash of character on charac- 
 ter, is tempted either to surcharge his story with senti- 
 ment or to permit his sense of fun to run away with 
 him. In the one case, the plot ceases to be comic and 
 becomes unduly emotional, as happened in "Frou- 
 frou," which begins in the best vein of high-comedy 
 only to sink at last submerged in sentiment. And in 
 the other case, the play becomes wholly comic, and 
 abandons sentiment for breadth of humor, as hap- 
 pened in " She Stoops to Conquer," which fails some- 
 what to justify its claim to be considered strictly as a 
 comedy-of -manners. In fact, if we closely scrutinize 
 Goldsmith's dramatic masterpiece, we find in it what 
 may fairly be called fun for its own sake. An element 
 of frank farce makes itself evident ; and a similar farci- 
 cal excess is discoverable also in the " Rivals." Probably 
 this is what Sir Arthur Pinero had in mind when he 
 ventured to define a comedy as "a successful farce 
 written by a deceased author." 
 
 in 
 
 Often has farce been seized as a term of reproach to 
 hurl in the face of a living playwright ; and melodrama 
 has also served many times as a missile of offense. But 
 even if they are less noble, farce and melodrama are 
 types of plays quite as legitimate as comedy and tragedy, 
 and, to the student of the development of the drama, 
 each of them has an interest of its own. All the more 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 121 
 
 reason is there that the two words should be defined, 
 and that we should be able to see why farce and melo- 
 drama are properly held to be inferior to comedy and 
 tragedy. The cause of this inferiority is simple and it 
 may be stated simply. In high-comedy (the comedy-of- 
 manners) and again in the serious drama (of which true 
 tragedy is one class) we perceive that the plot is made 
 by the characters, that the characters dominate the plot, 
 and that the plot is what it is solely because the char- 
 acters are what they are. But in farce, and again in 
 melodrama, the reverse is seen to be the case; the 
 plot, the situation, the incidents are the controlling 
 factors, and the characters are only what the plot 
 allows them to be or forces them to be; they exist 
 solely in order that they may do what their maker 
 bids them, instead of going forward, apparently of 
 their own volition, impelled by the logic of their own 
 individuality. In high-comedy (in "Tartuffe" and 
 in the "School for Scandal"), and in true tragedy (in 
 "OEdipus" and in "Othello"), the successive events 
 of the story are brought about almost inevitably, as 
 though they could not happen otherwise; whereas in 
 farce and in melodrama, the action of any character 
 may be arbitrary at any moment. 
 
 If the characters seem to lead an independent life 
 of their own, existing apart from the circumstances 
 in which they happen to have been presented, if they 
 linger in our memories as fellow human beings, whose 
 course of conduct we can venture to predict from what 
 we already know of them, then the play in which they 
 appear is not fairly to be classified as farce or as melo- 
 drama. But if the characters fade into nothingness, 
 when we seek to separate them from the events in 
 
122 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 which they took part, and if their movements have 
 been so illogical and so completely controlled by an- 
 other will than their own, that we are ever left in won- 
 der as to what they will do next, then the play in which 
 they are puppets is farce or melodrama. 
 
 If we apply this test sincerely, we shall find our- 
 selves declaring that at least a dozen of Moliere's most 
 joyous pieces are farces excellent farces, beyond all 
 question, but farces nevertheless. Furthermore, we 
 shall find ourselves putting the same label on at least 
 two of Shakspere's plays, the " Comedy of Errors/' 
 and the " Merry Wives of Windsor" ; while yet another 
 of his so-called comedies, the " Taming of the Shrew," 
 is not only farce, but often farce of a violent type, of 
 the slapstick and knockabout variety. And we shall 
 be forced also to record that "Titus Andronicus," 
 the rank tragedy-of -blood, revised by Shakspere in 
 his dependent youth, and also the " Cymbeline" of his 
 later years, are both of them melodramas, and that 
 neither of them is a masterpiece of plot-making. 
 
 When two surviving comrades of Shakspere, years 
 after his death, piously gathered his plays into a single 
 folio volume the most precious possession of all mod- 
 ern literature they risked a rough-and-ready clas- 
 sification into three groups, comedies, tragedies, and 
 histories; and even then they could find no fit place 
 for that nondescript narrative in dialogue, "Troilus 
 and Cressida." Later criticism has accepted as fairly 
 accurate the grouping together of the so-called his- 
 tories, since the loosely knit pieces thus assembled 
 are all of them chronicle-plays. The group of trage- 
 dies is now seen to include not only true tragedies, 
 like " Macbeth" and "Othello," but also at least one 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 123 
 
 specimen of the tragedy-of-blood. But the designa- 
 tion of the plays in the third group is unsatisfactory 
 and misleading, however wide an extension may be 
 given to comedy. Even if we might fairly include under 
 this head the romantic-comedies, the farces, and such 
 humorous fantasies as the "Tempest" and the "Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," wherein we find fairy folk 
 commingled with our grosser humanity, and the 
 dramatic-romances (of which the "Winter's Tale" is 
 an example), even then we cannot but feel that com- 
 edy is absolutely the one word most inapplicable to 
 "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well that Ends 
 Well," those dark plays of unlovely intrigue wherein 
 Shakspere dealt with themes which were unworthy 
 of him and which not even he could make worthy. 
 
 IV 
 
 We may rest certain that if Shakspere were to re- 
 turn to life to-day, he would waste little of his time 
 on the immense mass of contradictory criticism with 
 which commentators have obscured his works. When 
 he was alive, he never took himself too seriously ; and 
 if he came back to this modern world of ours, he 
 would find many things to do more interesting than 
 to grope through guesses of all sorts about his inten- 
 tions in this or that play, which he wrote primarily 
 to please the theatergoers of his own time, and second- 
 arily to express himself as he was at that particular 
 period of his life. Probably it would surprise him 
 hugely to learn that the plays, which he did not even 
 take the trouble to have printed, were deemed worthy 
 of study in our universities, and that critics were 
 engaged in classifying them, setting down this as a 
 
124 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 tragedy-of-blood and that as a dramatic-romance, a 
 third as a romantic-comedy, and a fourth as merely 
 a farce. If asked whether "Troilus and Cressida" 
 ought to be grouped with the tragedies or with the 
 comedies or with the histories, he might answer only 
 with a shrug of the shoulder. 
 
 We may smile at the long list which Polonius rattles 
 off glibly, and we may be sure that Shakspere meant 
 us to smile at it ; but none the less is classification the 
 beginning of knowledge. The student has got hold of 
 something solid when he finds out for himself what 
 need there was for a term like tragi-comedy in both 
 England and France in the seventeenth century, and 
 why the eighteenth century saw in France the devel- 
 opment of the comedie-larmoyante (known in English 
 as sentimental -comedy), and of the tragedie-bourgeoise 
 (known in German as tradesman 's-tragedy) . He has 
 made an advance in knowledge when he ascertains 
 just what a ballad-opera is and a musical-comedy, an 
 opera-comique and an opera-bouffe, and when he can 
 trace the influence they have exerted on one another. 
 He will find a profit in grasping the exact scope of 
 the English heroic-play, and the Spanish comedy-of- 
 cloak-and-sword. He will gain if he keeps clearly in 
 mind a working definition of farce and of melodrama, 
 to enable him to perceive more swiftly the relation of 
 the former to comedy, and of the latter to the serious 
 drama. 
 
 Of course, it is needful for us always to remember 
 that classification is a means only; it is never an end 
 in itself. It is useful only in so far as it enables us to 
 appreciate the exact position of the more important 
 plays which have come down to us from the past, and 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 125 
 
 to measure the value of the more important of the plays 
 which are now proffered to us in the present day. It 
 is a constant aid to the apprehending of the signifi- 
 cant fact that the development of the drama has been 
 continuous, and that it is subject to laws which re- 
 veal themselves at work in every period. Although the 
 past and the present may seem very unlike, they have 
 many aspects in common; and therefore it is an ad- 
 vantage to the critic of the acted drama of our own 
 time, as well as to the historian of the dramatic litera- 
 ture of other centuries, to be able to explain the one 
 by the aid of the other. 
 
 The likeness of certain ancient manifestations of 
 the drama to certain modern manifestations is as easy 
 to exaggerate as it is impossible to deny; and there is 
 no occasion to give undue weight to the suggestion 
 that the lyrical-burlesque of the Greeks reveals a cer- 
 tain similarity to the nondescript medley made famil- 
 iar of late in America by Messrs. Weber and Fields, 
 just as the comedies of Plautus show a certain like- 
 ness to the plays of tenement-house life in New York, 
 put together by Mr. Edward Harrigan. So in Calde- 
 ron's day, there were Spanish analogues to the modern 
 swashbuckler romanticist pieces, just as there were, 
 in Shakspere's time, English analogues of the modern 
 Bowery melodrama. The precursor of the problem- 
 play of Ibsen can be found more than once in the list 
 of Moliere's works, where it is possible also to dis- 
 cover an anticipation of our latter-day musical-comedy. 
 And for a final illustration of these survivals of form 
 and of these reincarnations of spirit, take the comedy- 
 of-humors, which Ben Jonson built up solidly with 
 his imaginative exaggerations, and set it by the side of 
 
126 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 any dramatization of a loose-jointed serial story by 
 Dickens, in which we cannot fail to find the same vio- 
 lent distortion of character into caricature. A drama- 
 tization of any one of Dickens's novels can hardly help 
 being a comedy-of -humors. 
 
 The French, among whom the critical faculty is 
 more acutely developed than among other peoples, 
 have a larger vocabulary of critical terms than there 
 is in any other language; and they have devised a 
 classification of certain of the effects of dialogue which 
 are common to every type of comic play. They call 
 a jest which evokes laughter a mot., and they make a 
 distinction which is not easy to render in English be- 
 tween mots d'esprit, mots de situation, and mots de 
 caractere. The mot d'esprit is the witticism, pure and 
 simple, existing for its own sake, and detachable from 
 its context like the remark of one of the characters 
 in " Lady Windermere's Fan " : " I can resist everything 
 except temptation." The mot de situation is the 
 phrase which is funny, solely because it is spoken at 
 that particular moment in the setting forth of the story, 
 like the " What the devil was he doing in that galley ? " 
 which is not laughter-provoking in itself and apart 
 from the incident calling it forth, but which arouses 
 peals of merriment in its proper place in Moliere's 
 " Scapin." And the mot de caractere is the phrase 
 which makes us laugh because it is the intense ex- 
 pression, at the moment, of the individuality of the 
 person who speaks it like the retort of the wife 
 to her sister in the "Comedy of Errors," when she 
 has been roundly abusing her husband. Luciana 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 127 
 
 satirically comments that a man no better than this 
 is no great loss to be bewailed. Whereupon Adriana, 
 smiling through her tears, returns : " Ah, but I think 
 him better than I say" a line which gets its laugh, 
 of course, but which lingers in the memory as a sud- 
 den revelation of the underlying character of the 
 speaker. 
 
 It is with the mot d'esprit that we must class the 
 most of the so-called epigrams which glisten on the 
 surface of the dialogue. They are mere jokes, smart 
 sayings, and ingenious aphorisms, taken out of a 
 notebook and pinned into this play or that, as appro- 
 priate to the one as to the other. They offer to a clever 
 young man a short and easy way to attain the bril- 
 liancy and the verbal glitter which we have been ac- 
 customed to expect in English comedy, since the 
 author of the "Way of the World" sent up his Con- 
 greve rockets. They delight us at first, even though 
 at last they fatigue us a little, in the comedies of 
 Sheridan and in the comedies of Oscar Wilde ; and yet 
 neither of these ingenious dramatists relied for suc- 
 cess upon this superficial flashing of brisk witticisms, 
 being very careful, in "Lady Windermere's Fan," as 
 well as in the " School for Scandal," to construct a 
 solidly framed plot, with a clearly defined struggle of 
 contending desires, to sustain the interest of the spec- 
 tators. Underneath the crackling of artificial wit, there 
 is a well-built play, the story of which would please in 
 the theater, even if the spoken words were absolutely 
 commonplace. 
 
 This device of sprinkling detachable witticisms 
 throughout the dialogue has the obvious disadvantage 
 that it forces the author to endow his empty-headed 
 
128 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 characters with his own alertness of intelligence. For 
 instance, Mrs. Malaprop's blunders are far too felici- 
 tous to be natural in the mouth of a lady so limited in 
 understanding; and the elaborate system of swearing 
 expounded by Bob Acres is far too clever for that rather 
 fat-witted country squire. Sheridan, who had not only 
 humor, but also the rarer sense-of-humor, did not 
 fail to detect the weakness of his practice, and in the 
 "Critic," when one of the spectators of the play, 
 which is being rehearsed * ventures to suggest that a 
 certain speech is rather above the capacity of the 
 character who had just delivered it, the author promptly 
 retorts that he is " not for making slavish distinctions, 
 and giving all the fine language to the upper sort of 
 people." 
 
 The temptation to attain brilliancy of dialogue by 
 the use of these portable witticisms projected into the 
 play by main strength is one w r hich the true dramatist 
 outgrows as he gains in years. It was in their youth 
 that Congreve and Sheridan gave their comic master- 
 pieces to the stage. It was in his youth that the younger 
 Dumas displayed the facets of his wit in the " Demi- 
 Monde," which bristles with obvious mote d'esprit, 
 surface adornments lacking in the "Francillon" of 
 his maturer years, in which there are few quotable 
 phrases, but in which the wit is incessant, pervasive 
 rather than paraded, integral, and not external. This 
 later comedy of Dumas's deserves the praise which 
 Mr. William Archer once bestowed on a play of Bron- 
 son Howard's, whereof the dialogue abounded in 
 witty speeches which belonged there, "like blossoms 
 on a laburnum," instead of being stuck on, "like 
 candles on a Christmas tree." 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 129 
 
 VI 
 
 Closely akin to the mot d'esprit are the longer pas- 
 sages, also existing for their own sake, and enriching 
 the dialogue, it may be, but not serving to help along 
 the action of the play. There is no logical necessity 
 for Jaques to set forth the seven ages of man, or for 
 Touchstone to nominate in order the seven degrees of 
 the lie. Even though we cannot wish either of these 
 speeches away, we cannot deny that the one, as well 
 as the other, is an excursus. Touchstone's explanation 
 seems doubly out of place, in that it is inserted in the 
 last scene of all, when the comedy is hastening toward 
 its happy end. Perhaps it was written to fatten the 
 clown's part, and perhaps it was put precisely where 
 it is to give Rosalind time to change from the boyish 
 costume of Ganymede into the ampler habiliments of 
 her own sex. Jaques 's cynical denunciation of his fel* 
 low-man can easily be defended, it is only fair to note, 
 by the plea that it is the completest revelation of its 
 speaker's character ; in other words, that it is in fact to 
 be classed not only with mots d 'esprit but also with mots 
 de caractere. And a like defense might be proffered 
 for the hunting speech of Lady Gay Spanker in " Lon- 
 don Assurance," a highly artificial tirade. 
 
 But every one of these glittering passages bears a 
 striking likeness to a tenor or soprano solo in Italian 
 opera, devised to exhibit the accomplishments of the 
 performer rather than to contribute to the rounding 
 out of the play. Such bravura passages are common 
 also in later Roman tragedy, when the dramatic poet 
 steps aside for a moment to air his eloquence at greater 
 length than is necessary. This is one of the vulnerable 
 spots in the armor of the dramatists, pierced by the keen 
 
130 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 wit of the authors of the "Rehearsal," the attack on 
 Dryden (the framework of which Sheridan borrowed 
 when he wrote the " Critic ") . When one of the by- 
 standers remarks that a certain passage in the piece 
 that is being rehearsed is " not to the purpose, for the 
 play does not go on," since "the plot stands still," the 
 irritable author promptly retorts with the unanswer- 
 able query: "What is the plot good for but to bring in 
 fine things?" It deserves to be noted that Shakspere, 
 who indulges freely in these pleasant digressions in his 
 comedies, is chary of them in his tragedies, as though 
 the severer tragic mold forced him to strive for the 
 loftiest standard, such as he found no need to impose 
 on himself in comedy, which seemed to him a form 
 looser and less clearly defined. 
 
 The mot de situation is far more valuable to the play- 
 wright and far more mirth-provoking to the audience 
 than the mot d'esprit. But it is less easy to illustrate 
 because it is part and parcel of the story of the play, 
 and it is therefore not quotable without an explanation 
 of the incident which evokes it. As good an example 
 as any is the "sister, sister, every way" of Congreve 
 in " Love for Love," which owes its point to the attempt 
 of Mrs. Foresight to corner Mrs. Frail by producing 
 unexpectedly a gold bodkin and by asking where the 
 other lost it; "oh, sister, sister!" Taken aback for a 
 moment, Mrs. Frail collects her wits quickly and re- 
 torts : " If you go to that, sister, where did you find this 
 bodkin? Oh, sister, sister, every way!" But the great 
 master of the mot de situation is Moliere, who always 
 scornfully refrained from the easier mot d'esprit. With- 
 out descending to the mechanical trick of the catch- 
 word, Moliere more than once redoubles the effect 
 
A CHAPTER OF DEFINITIONS 131 
 
 of a mot de situation by carefully calculated repetition. 
 And the trick of the catchword, mechanical as it is, 
 can be varied adroitly. In " Lady Windermere's Fan," 
 for example, a young girl, whom we see taking part 
 in the general conversation, and after a while wooed 
 and finally engaged to be married, is never heard to 
 say anything except "Yes, mamma." 
 
 As for the mots de caractere, there is no need to say 
 much, for examples will spring swiftly to the minds 
 of all lovers of Moliere and of Shakspere. Falstaff 
 abounds in them : " I think the devil will not have me 
 damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on 
 fire," which is a mot d'esprit as well as a mot de carac- 
 tere. Indeed, it would not be difficult to pick speeches 
 out of Falstaff's which combine the merits of the mot 
 d'esprit, the mot de situation, and the mot de caractere. 
 And the characteristics of all three types are united also 
 in the speech of Sir Peter to his wife in one of the 
 famous quarrel scenes of the "School for Scandal," 
 when Lady Teazle says: "I should think you would 
 like to have your wife thought a woman of taste"; 
 and the husband explosively retorts : " Taste ! Zounds ! 
 madam, you had no taste when you married me!" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 
 
 Tragedy or comedy, every stage-play is, in a certain sense, only 
 a tissue of conventions. It is a convention to compact into a few 
 hours of time the whole drama of an existence or the duration of the 
 catastrophe which historically brought it to an end; it is a conven- 
 tion to lend to the persons of this play the language of verse or even 
 that of a prose which is generally neither their maternal tongue nor 
 the speech of their condition. F. BRUNETI^RE, Histoire de la 
 litterature franpaise classique. 
 
 As the dramatist writes for the theater of his own time, 
 he begins always by accepting the theatrical traditions 
 which he finds established, and as he seeks to interest 
 the spectators, he has no hesitation in utilizing the con- 
 ventions which he finds in favor with his audiences. 
 Art exists only when the artist in his search for truth 
 is allowed to depart from the mere facts of life. Paint- 
 ing "steals but a glance of time," and represents as 
 motionless that which we know to be vibrating with 
 movement. Sculpture is not only motionless, it is also 
 monochrome ; and the sculptor transmutes into the uni- 
 formity of marble or bronze the varied hues of the hu- 
 man figure and sometimes even the variegated tints of 
 customary costume. To deny to the painter or to the 
 sculptor the privilege of thus ignoring the accidental 
 facts of life, is to refuse him the right to delight us with 
 his work. Strictly speaking, of course, the immobility 
 of a picture or of a statue is not "natural"; but unless 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 133 
 
 we grant at once this departure from nature, we deny 
 ourselves the enjoyment of painting and of sculpture. 
 Underlying every one of the arts, there is a kindred de- 
 parture from " nature," which we must tolerate before 
 we can give ourselves up to the pleasure which that art 
 offers us. Even in the primitive ballad, we find the char- 
 acters talking in rime, which was never the practice 
 of mortal man. But we like rime, in its proper place, 
 and we gladly allow the lyrist to assume that he is set- 
 ting before us beings who are wont to express them- 
 selves in rime as well as in meter. 
 
 A convention is thus seen to be a denial of the actual 
 fact, known to us all, a denial which we permit for 
 our own profit. In most of the arts, we have accepted 
 these necessary conventions so completely that we are 
 wholly unconscious that they authorize the artist to be 
 "unnatural." We are so constituted that what is fa- 
 miliar tends to be received as right and proper in a 
 word, as rational. But what is familiar to us is not 
 necessarily familiar to others; and the American In- 
 dians, when they first saw a portrait in profile, used 
 to ask where the other side of the face was, a ques- 
 tion which would never occur to any of us, accustomed 
 as we are to frequent the picture galleries. Indeed, 
 we are so familiar with the art of the draftsman that we 
 recognize a portrait in black ink on white paper, or in 
 white chalk on a blackboard, although we have none of 
 us either a black or a white line around our faces. 
 
 The conventions which underlie each of the arts are 
 permanent, for without them the art could not exist. 
 They are tacit agreements between the artist and the 
 public that if he shall be authorized to ignore certain 
 of the mere facts, he will do his best to present the truth 
 
134 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 as he sees it. A convention is an implied contract be- 
 tween two parties; and neither party has a right to 
 violate the conditions of the treaty. It is the convention 
 of opera, for instance, that there exists a race of human 
 beings, whose natural speech is song; and the opera- 
 goer has no right, therefore, to object to the death- 
 song of Tristan on the ground that a dying man would 
 not have the physical strength to sing for half an hour 
 on his death-bed. It is the refusal of Tolstoy to abide 
 by this implicit contract which invalidates his con- 
 temptuous attack on the opera. So the convention 
 which underlies pantomime is that there exists a race 
 of human beings, whose natural speech is gesture, and 
 who are able to employ it to express all those emotions 
 which the rest of us would translate into spoken words. 
 To be willing to accept this contract is a condition 
 precedent to our enjoyment of pantomime. We may, 
 if we choose, refuse to be parties to this agreement; 
 but then there is nothing for us to do but to keep out 
 of the theater whenever a pantomime is represented, 
 as Tolstoy should have kept away when an opera was 
 performed. 
 
 Besides these permanent conventions which are the 
 basis of each of the several arts, we can discern others 
 which are temporary and accidental, accepted in only 
 certain places and only for certain periods, but not 
 prerequisite to the existence of the art. For example, 
 in the wall-paintings of the royal tombs of Egypt, 
 men are depicted in ruddy brown and women in pale 
 yellow, while the Pharaoh is always very much larger 
 in proportion than are his subjects. So in the Pom- 
 peian pictures of mythological themes, the less impor- 
 tant figures are painted upon a smaller scale. Tern- 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 135 
 
 porary conventions of this sort are due sometimes to 
 special conditions. A sculptor who intends to repro- 
 duce his clay model in bronze can rely upon the firm 
 'supports to be concealed inside that metal; but if he 
 expects to make a statue of marble he has to intro- 
 duce something, a falling drapery or an arbitrary 
 column, which will add strength to the ankles, where 
 the marble would be most fragile. There are even 
 Roman sculptures, in which the body of a horse is 
 frankly sustained by a wholly impossible trunk of a 
 tree projecting up from the ground into the belly of 
 the animal. 
 
 ii 
 
 The drama, being an art, has its necessary conven- 
 tions, like all the other arts ; and it has also its tempo- 
 rary and accidental conventions, often due to special 
 circumstances of a particular theater. The necessary 
 conventions of the drama are the result of three con- 
 ditions of theatrical performance. The first of these is 
 that the dramatist has at his disposal only a limited 
 time two or three hours at the most ; and he is there- 
 fore compelled to select rigorously the vital elements 
 of his theme and to compact his dialogue out of all 
 resemblance to the ample and repetitious speech of 
 ordinary life. The second and the third are the obli- 
 gation so to handle his story that everything done on 
 the stage can be seen by the spectators in the theater, 
 and that everything said on the stage can be heard by 
 the audience. The playgoer wants to have as much 
 as possible packed into the " two hours' traffic of the 
 stage"; he wants also to see everything and to hear 
 everything; and he is therefore ready to grant to the 
 
II 
 136 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 playwrights every privilege which will help them to 
 give him what he wants. 
 
 First of all, of course, he insists on understanding 
 the story ; and therefore the dramatists always employ 
 the language which they and the spectators have in 
 common. This is so needful that we take it for granted ; 
 and yet it is not "natural" that the Persians in the 
 tragedy of JSschylus should speak Greek, that Julius 
 Caesar and Hamlet and Romeo should speak English 
 and not Latin and Danish and Italian; and that the 
 Cid of Corneille and the Don Juan of Moliere should 
 speak French. In " Henry V," Shakspere pushes this 
 convention still further; the English characters speak 
 English, of course, and so also of course do the French 
 characters among themselves except in one scene; 
 but when Henry V is wooing Katherine, she uses the 
 hesitating broken English of a learner of our tongue. 
 
 It is true that condensation is also necessary in the 
 dialogue of prose-fiction, a rigorous selection of signifi- 
 cant remarks. The most realistic novelist, striving to 
 echo the accent of contemporary triviality, has never 
 dared to let his characters discourse at one half the 
 length to which their chatter would run in real life. 
 The pressure of time forces the playwright to compact 
 his dialogue to an extent never dreamed of by the 
 novelist. This is one reason why the dramatizer of 
 a novel has to rewrite its dialogue in conformity with 
 the different scale demanded by the theater. On the 
 stage, a love-scene of supreme importance may be so 
 artfully condensed that it does not last more than five 
 minutes, although in real life it might have taken at 
 least one hour. 
 
 Not only does the dramatist condense the speech 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 137 
 
 of his characters, but he clarifies it also. Every per- 
 son in a play is supposed to be capable of saying just 
 what he means the first time of trying, and in the few- 
 est possible words ; and this is a very violent departure 
 from the practice of everyday life, where our speech 
 is uncertain, halting, and ragged. Every character also 
 uses the best possible words to voice his thought, and 
 every other character immediately takes his meaning 
 without hesitancy; and this is again a variation from 
 the fact, since we are continually failing to catch the 
 exact intent of those with whom we are talking. 
 Praise is abundant for the verisimilitude of the dia- 
 logue of Ibsen's social dramas and for the skill with 
 which Ibsen has given to every one of his characters 
 the actual vocabulary which that character would 
 use. Yet his compact and polished prose rests as 
 frankly on a convention as the song of the operatic 
 hero or as the all-sufficient gesture of the pantomimist. 
 The convention underlying Shakspere's tragedy is 
 that the characters belong to a race of human beings 
 whose habitual speech is blank verse, the unrimed 
 decasyllabic iambic. Yet in some of his earlier plays, 
 Shakspere varies from this convention, frequently 
 dropping into rime, while in certain of his other plays, 
 notably in " Julius Caesar," he makes another depar- 
 ture, and we find the heroic figures employing blank 
 verse, the less distinguished characters using a stately 
 rhythmic prose, while the populace appropriately 
 sinks into the every-day speech of the common folk. 
 The corresponding convention underlying the trage- 
 dies of Corneille and Racine and the comedies of 
 Moliere is that the characters belong to a race of be- 
 ings whose habitual speech is the alexandrine, with 
 
138 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 alternating couplets of masculine and feminine rimes. 
 As we who speak English are used* to blank verse, 
 Shakspere's lines seem to us " natural " ; and as we 
 are not accustomed to hear rime on the stage, Cor- 
 neille's lines often seem to us "unnatural." But both 
 are departures from the actual facts of human speech ; 
 each is a convention accepted willingly by the com- 
 patriots of the author. So in the Spanish drama, we 
 find asonantes relieved by an occasional sonnet, with 
 its complicated metrical construction. But this is 
 scarcely a bolder contradiction of the mere facts of life 
 than the convention which obtains in the comedies 
 of Congreve and of Sheridan, where all the characters, 
 even illiterate servants, are endowed with the keen and 
 finished wit of the author. 
 
 in 
 
 It is imperative that we should approve of the essen- 
 tial conventions of the drama, or we must deny our- 
 selves the pleasure of the theater. We may not even 
 be aware that they are conventions, but we permit 
 them none the less. Almost any non-essential con- 
 vention we are willing also to accept, if its acceptance 
 is helpful, even though it contradicts all our habits. 
 We moderns are accustomed now to realistic scenery 
 and characteristic costumes in the theater; the Greeks 
 of old and the Elizabethans after them had the full 
 pleasure of the drama without these accompaniments. 
 And yet we are willing enough to get along without 
 either of these accompaniments, if the bargain is 
 frankly presented to us beforehand. Henry Irving 
 once performed the "Merchant of Venice" at West 
 Point in the mess-hall, on a platform draped with 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 139 
 
 flags, without any scenery; and Edwin Booth once 
 gave "Hamlet" at Waterbury, the whole company 
 appearing in their traveling clothes, because their 
 stage-costumes had miscarried. In both cases, the 
 spectators were warned in advance; they knew what 
 to expect and they speedily adjusted themselves to the 
 novel conditions. Moliere's "Misanthrope" was once 
 performed before Louis XIV in the marble court of 
 Versailles without any attempt at an appropriate back- 
 ground. 
 
 In a play, all the details of action and of speech must 
 be significant, or else the playgoer is misled and his 
 interest distracted. He wants to see everything that is 
 done; and therefore the fourth wall of every room 
 is removed, so that he can behold what takes place on 
 the stage. He wants to hear everything that is said ; 
 and therefore a character whispering a sharp warning 
 to another character, in the presence of a third, so 
 pitches his voice that it carries to the back of the 
 auditorium, although it is supposed to be inaudible 
 to a third character only a few feet distant. 
 
 In the English playhouses of the eighteenth century 
 and of the early nineteenth, the most important epi- 
 sodes of a play were acted in the "focus" close to the 
 pit, and remote from the scenery, for it was only here 
 that there was light enough for the spectators to see 
 the changing expression on the faces of the actors. 
 This was a convention then acceptable to the play- 
 goer, since it increased his pleasure; but it is unac- 
 ceptable in our smaller theaters wherein the electric 
 light illuminates every part of the stage. To-day we 
 expect an actor to remain " in the picture." Acting in 
 the focus was a temporary convention due to temporary 
 
140 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 conditions; and when these conditions ceased, the con- 
 vention was no longer tolerable, although it survived 
 the conditions out of which it arose. We are still will- 
 ing that the lilting lyric trolled by Rosalind in the 
 Forest of Arden shall be accompanied by the full 
 orchestra of the theater ; the arrant absurdity of this 
 does not annoy us, partly because we are used to it, 
 and partly because we prefer it. 
 
 But we should resent immediately any similar ab- 
 surdity to which we were not accustomed. It is a little 
 difficult for us to understand how it was that the mass- 
 ing of spectators on the right and left of the stage when 
 Shakspere's and Moliere's plays were first acted, 
 did not interfere with the verisimilitude of the per- 
 formance. This is a state of affairs which would strike 
 us now as very strange, although it seemed natural 
 enough then to the rest of the audience, as they were 
 used to it and knew no other device. These spectators 
 on the stage were supposed not to be there, and there- 
 fore they did not interfere with the pleasure of the 
 others. A similar convention still exists in the Japanese 
 theater. One American visitor to the playhouse in Tokio 
 has recorded his impressions of the performance with 
 significant analysis of the ultimate effect : 
 
 " The prompter sat on the stage in view of the audi- 
 ence, and the fact that he was dressed in a skin-tight suit 
 of black with a black hood, like a chimney sweep or a 
 goblin, and that he kept his face always from the specta- 
 tors, was supposed to render him invisible. Another black 
 imp remained on the scene to act as dresser and stage 
 manager. It was his duty to assist an actor in making any 
 alteration in his costume, and to carry away any prop that 
 had been used : a letter, fan, or tea-tray. If he thought an 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 141 
 
 actor's sash was not properly fastened, he would creep up 
 behind him, even though the actor were speaking, and tie 
 it properly. We were not supposed to see him do this. 
 As a matter of fact, it was curious how soon one failed to 
 note his presence." 
 
 Just as the Japanese attendants in black are sup- 
 posed to be invisible, like the spectators on the English 
 stage, so we can find analogues to Shakspere's medley 
 of prose and verse in the classic Sanskrit drama, in 
 which the heroes speak the nobler Sanskrit, while the 
 women and the servants are allowed only the humbler 
 Pali. In the medieval Portuguese passion-plays, the 
 devil often spoke Spanish; and in the more modern 
 pieces written for the east side Jewish theaters of New 
 York, it is only the broadly comic characters who are 
 frankly Yiddish in their vocabulary. 
 
 It is not easy always to distinguish between a con- 
 vention and a tradition. Strictly speaking, a conven- 
 tion is a departure from the fact in order to give the 
 spectator something he would otherwise have to forego. 
 A tradition is an accepted way of doing things, which 
 may or may not be completely "natural." Conven- 
 tions are all traditions, but not all traditions are con- 
 ventions. In the Latin drama, we find a tradition taken 
 over from the Greek drama, the frequent employment 
 of an intriguing slave, who plots for his master's bene- 
 fit. This scheming servant may be truthfully portrayed 
 along the traditional lines; but when he reappears in 
 Moliere, he has no longer any relation to real life ; he 
 stands forth as a tradition which has become a conven- 
 tion. In the Greek drama, again, we find the " recogni- 
 tions" which Aristotle discussed, such as the sudden 
 discovery by parents of long-lost children. Now, in 
 
142 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Greece, where there was ever intermittent war and 
 casual piracy, children were captured and sold as 
 slaves ; and it was always possible that they might be 
 restored to their parents at the end of the play. But 
 when the Latin drama took over this tradition of the 
 Greek drama, it became only a convention, since the 
 conditions of life had changed and there was little 
 likelihood that sons might be sold into slavery and 
 bought by their own fathers, as in the "Captives" of 
 Plautus. And when this Greek tradition, which had 
 hardened into a convention in Rome, is transplanted 
 into Italian comedy and into French, its convention- 
 ality is seen to be flagrant, a fact which did not 
 prevent Moliere from employing it. 
 
 When Moliere borrows plots from the Italians, he 
 is forced to make a convention out of another tradi- 
 tion. In Southern Italy, where the comedy-of-masks 
 flourished, people live out of doors; and the traditional 
 scene of the Italian improvised play is a public square, 
 in which all the characters meet to talk about their 
 private affairs. But when Moliere transplanted this 
 tradition to Paris, where the climate is colder and 
 damper, and where business is transacted indoors, 
 when he represented M. de Pourceaugnac and the 
 two doctors sitting down for their comic consultation, 
 in chairs set out in the street, he was obviously trans- 
 forming the Italian tradition into a mere convention. 
 
 The traditions of the medieval stage survived for 
 a long while, and they are visible abundantly in Shak- 
 spere's plays and even in the earlier pieces of Corneille. 
 In our modern theaters, the changes of scenery are 
 consecutive; the scene of the second act may be dif- 
 ferent from that of the first act, and the later acts may 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 143 
 
 each have its own set. But on the medieval stage, 
 especially in France, the traditions of the earliest per- 
 formance of the passion-play in the church had led 
 to a wholly different arrangement. In the church, the 
 several episodes were acted in several places, each of 
 which was known as a " station " ; and in France, when 
 the mystery was thrust out of the church, these sta- 
 tions were all erected in one long line at the back of 
 the platform on which the performance took place, 
 and they were known as " mansions." Thus it was that 
 the French theater came to have the "simultaneous 
 set," all the places needed in the action being then in 
 sight at once, not displayed consecutively, as is the 
 custom to-day. It is this tradition of bringing together 
 places actually remote, which Shakspere follows in 
 " Richard III," when he sets on the stage at the same 
 time the tent of Richard and the tent of Richmond. 
 Probably these tents were represented in the Globe 
 Theater only by a looping back (at the extreme right 
 and at the extreme left) of the tapestry pendant from 
 the upper gallery. When Corneille adapted the "Cid" 
 from the Spanish, he employed this simultaneous set, 
 erecting on the stage the mansions required for his plot, 
 and letting the stage itself serve as a neutral ground 
 where all the characters might meet as they entered 
 each from his own dwelling. This was absolutely in 
 accord with the medieval tradition. 
 
 Of all the conventions of the drama, none has a more 
 interesting history than the soliloquy, the speech in 
 which a character talks aloud, not to any person on the 
 stage with him, but directly to the audience. And one 
 
144 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 of the most striking changes which have taken place 
 in the drama of our own time is the sudden disap- 
 pearance of the soliloquy. In the final decades of the 
 nineteenth century, the leading playwrights of every 
 modern language began to display a distaste for this 
 monologue, with Ibsen setting the example of renuncia- 
 tion. Time was, and not so long ago, when the play- 
 wright found it very convenient to have the villain lay 
 aside his mask and bare his black soul in a speech to 
 himself. But now this device, convenient as it may be, 
 is discarded. No longer does a character come down, 
 to the footlights for a confidential communication to 
 the audience, telling them his thoughts, declaring his 
 intentions, and defending his acts. So sharp is the 
 reaction against the practice, that the French writer 
 of a eulogistic study of the later German naturalistic 
 dramatists, after praising the technic of Hauptmann, 
 asserts positively that the soliloquy and the aside are 
 hereafter banished from the stage. 
 
 Yet this abandonment of these conventions, how- 
 ever complete it may seem now, is very recent indeed. 
 Ibsen made a frank use of these devices in his earlier 
 dramas. In Sudermann's "Honor," one character, 
 Trast, talks aloud to himself, and then still soliloquiz- 
 ing, rebukes himself for talking aloud. In Mr. Henry 
 Arthur Jones's "Middleman," the soliloquy and the 
 aside are used without question, and with no anticipa- 
 tion that they were so soon to fall out of fashion. In 
 these modern plays, they are employed as they had 
 been utilized in the medieval drama, as well as in the 
 tragedies and comedies of the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 Perhaps the French writer on the German drama is 
 justified in believing that the doom of the soliloquy is 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 145 
 
 sealed and that the sentence of banishment has been 
 pronounced on the aside. But his dislike for them 
 expressed in 1905 is diametrically opposed to the lik- 
 ing confessed in 1684 by the English translator of 
 the Abbe d'Aubignac's "Pratique du Theatre." The 
 translation is ingenuously entitled " The Whole Art of 
 the Stage, containing not only the Rules of the Dra- 
 matick Art, but many curious Observations about it" ; 
 and one of these curious observations is the confession 
 " that it is sometimes very pleasant to see a man upon 
 the Stage lay open his heart and speak boldly of his 
 most secret thoughts, explain his designs, and give a 
 vent to all that his passion suggests." The French au- 
 thor had deduced his principles of the dramaturgic art, 
 partly from the practice of the ancients, and partly 
 from his own examination of what gave pleasure to a 
 French audience in the days of Louis XIV. He had 
 noted that the soul-unveiling soliloquy was welcome 
 in the dramas of his own contemporaries, and he had 
 discovered it to be freely employed in the plays of 
 Plautus also. And for two centuries or more, this con- 
 vention was found convenient by the composer of plays 
 and acceptable to the audience. Then, in the final years 
 of the nineteenth century, we observe the dramatists 
 discarding it hastily, and the spectators crying out 
 against an outworn trick unworthy of a self-respecting 
 workman. Why this unexpected change of attitude 
 on the part of playwright and playgoer alike? What 
 had happened to open their eyes to the obvious fact 
 that the soliloquy was " unnatural " ? Now, to find the 
 answer to these questions we need to take a long glance 
 back over the history of the theater. As the drama of 
 the Greeks was an outgrowth of their song, we might 
 
146 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 expect to observe in their plays a freedom of lyric self- 
 expression; and in JSschylus, for example, we hear 
 the bound Prometheus proclaim his woes to the wintry 
 sky, before the winged chariot brings the daughters 
 of ocean to comfort his windy solitude. Even in Sopho- 
 cles, certain of the longer speeches of the chief char- 
 acters, although delivered after the chorus has circled 
 into the orchestra, are rather spoken at large than 
 addressed directly to this band of courteous listeners. 
 In the classicist tragedy of the French, the chorus has 
 shrunk to a single attendant for each of the chief fig- 
 ures. Thus in Racine's masterpiece, Phedre is ever 
 accompanied by CEnone, Aricie by Ismene, and Hip- 
 poly te by Theramene, and to these they can unbosom 
 themselves freely, the wily poet thus avoiding the sem- 
 blance of the soliloquy while profiting by all its ad- 
 vantages. These confidants are colorless creatures, 
 sketched in vague outline only and existing for the 
 sole purpose of being talked to. Mere shadows of their 
 masters and mistresses, they share the same fate ; and 
 in the tragedy which is rehearsed in Sheridan's " Critic," 
 where the heroine goes mad in white satin, the con- 
 fidant unhesitatingly goes mad in white muslin. The 
 confidant was one of the outward and visible signs 
 which excited the special detestation of the ardent 
 romanticists of 1830. Victor Hugo dismissed these 
 pale figures from his dramas ; and the exuberant lyrist 
 was thereby driven back to the soliloquy. The argu- 
 mentative monologue which he bestowed on the king 
 in "Hernani" is one of the longest soliloquies discov- 
 erable in all dramatic literature. This introspective 
 oration is a superb specimen of Hugo's swelling rheto- 
 ric, splendid and stately with soaring figures of speech. 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 147 
 
 In his " New Art of Making Plays," Lope de Vega 
 discussed the various stanzas and suggested that the 
 sonnet was suitable for a soliloquy, a suggestion 
 which raises a very pretty question as to whether the 
 artificiality of the soliloquy itself might not be dis- 
 guised by the artificiality of the form in which it was 
 presented. An arbitrary interweaving of rimes recall- 
 ing the structure of the true sonnet is to be found more 
 than once in the earlier plays of Shakspere, wherein 
 we may readily detect the delight of the young poet in 
 mere verbal ingenuity. But Shakspere was a practical 
 playwright, up to every kind of trick of his trade, and 
 making his profit out of every convention acceptable 
 to his audiences. The soliloquy was far too convenient 
 a device to be given up; and probably the thought 
 never entered Shakspere's head that he could get along 
 without it. 
 
 In scarcely any of his strongest plays, has he taken 
 more trouble with his plot, with its structure, with its 
 conduct, than he has in "Othello"; and in scarcely 
 any other is the soliloquy more frequently employed. 
 He uses it again and again to let lago reveal his own 
 villainy, as though he did not want the turbulent 
 groundlings to be in any doubt as to the wickedness of 
 his honest lago. And so it is that at the end of the first 
 act, lago simply talks aloud to the audience, frankly 
 taking them into his confidence and exposing his own 
 dark designs. In the middle of the second act, and 
 again at the end of that act, lago explains his schemes 
 to the spectators, as his plans take shape in his foul 
 brain. 
 
 As lago is the incomparable villain of the master 
 of the English stage, so is Tartuffe the incomparable 
 

 148 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 villain of the master of the French stage ; and it must 
 be confessed that Moliere is able to make his hypocrite 
 transparent without the aid of a single soliloquy or 
 a single aside. Disclaiming these artless devices, he 
 so contrives his story that we cannot help knowing 
 Tartuffe for what he really is, long before we first hear 
 his voice, and here Moliere reveals himself as truly 
 modern, whereas Shakspere, having accepted the Eliza- 
 bethan tradition as he found it, is perforce semi-me- 
 dieval in his methods. 
 
 But often Moliere is no more logical in his use of 
 the soliloquy than Shakspere is. Neither the French 
 dramatist nor the English made any distinction be- 
 tween that soliloquy which reveals the character and 
 that which informs us as to the facts of the plot. Both 
 held that the soliloquy was equally pleasing, no matter 
 whether it was merely supplying information which 
 a more scrupulous playwright would have conveyed 
 to the audience by some less arbitrary contrivance, or 
 whether it displayed before us the conflicting emotions 
 of a hero at the crisis of his fate, not possible to be 
 made known except out of his own mouth. Yet the 
 distinction between these two purposes for which the 
 soliloquy may be used, ought to be obvious enough, 
 even if it was not seized by Moliere and Shakspere. 
 
 Nowadays, playwrights are forced to find a better 
 way for a character to "explain his designs" than to 
 leave him alone on the stage, so that he can tell the 
 spectators what he is going to do. Such a proceeding 
 seems a little too easy to be quite worth while ; and the 
 soliloquy which merely transmits information to the 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 149 
 
 audience can be defended only with difficulty. But 
 the soliloquy in which a character speaks "boldly of 
 his most secret thoughts" stands on a higher plane. 
 It lets a tortured hero unpack his heart; it opens a 
 window into his soul ; and it gives the spectator a plea- 
 sure not to be had otherwise. It allows us to listen to 
 the communing of a character with himself, as though 
 we were not overhearing what he is saying. Professor 
 Bradley has remarked, in his stimulating discussion of 
 "Shaksperean Tragedy," that "in listening to a so- 
 liloquy we ought never to feel that we are being ad- 
 dressed." He declared that in this respect, as in others, 
 many of Shakspere's soliloquies are masterpieces; but 
 he admitted that "in some the purpose of giving in- 
 formation lies bare, and in one or two the actor openly 
 speaks to the audience." And Moliere is as vulnerable 
 to this reproof as Shakspere. 
 
 The fact is that when Shakspere and Moliere came 
 to the theater, they found the soliloquy a labor-saving 
 contrivance that they took over without bestowing a 
 thought on the principle underlying it. This principle, 
 if formally declared, would be that the soliloquy is a 
 means of exposing to the spectators the actual thoughts 
 of a character when he is alone. In other words, an 
 actor soliloquizing must be supposed to be thinking 
 aloud. But so little did either Shakspere or Moliere 
 care for the principle involved, that both of them 
 unhesitatingly set before us a character soliloquizing 
 and yet overheard by some other character. This is 
 a contradiction in terms, if we analyze it philosophi- 
 cally, but that is exactly what was not attempted by 
 either of these great dramatists or by any of the play- 
 goers of their times. What to us may seem an arrant 
 
150 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 absurdity is to be found as early as Terence and as 
 late as Beaumarchais. Shakspere lets Romeo overhear 
 Juliet's soliloquizing on the balcony; and Moliere is 
 as careless in the "Miser." 
 
 There was a clever man once who justified his habit 
 of talking to himself by two good reasons, he liked to 
 talk to a man of sense and he liked to hear a man of 
 sense talk. It is in the " Miserables " that Victor Hugo 
 tried to justify the monologue by one bad reason; he 
 declared that it was an error to believe that the solilo- 
 quy was not natural, since "often a strong agitation 
 speaks out loud." But a strong agitation does not 
 speak out loud a speech of a hundred lines and more, 
 as the King does in "Hernani." There is no advan- 
 tage in maintaining that the soliloquy is "natural." 
 It is not; and no more is blank verse or highly con- 
 densed prose. As Professor Bradley has remarked: 
 "Neither soliloquy nor the use of verse can be con- 
 demned on the mere ground that it is unnatural. No 
 dramatic language is natural." 
 
 It may seem strange that audiences which still ad- 
 mit without protest many another convention quite 
 as contrary to the actual fact, should have awakened 
 suddenly to the lack of verisimilitude in the soliloquy. 
 They accept it without cavil in "Rip Van Winkle," 
 in one act of which no voice is heard but Rip's 
 talking to himself or speaking to the dumb specters. 
 They accept it again in a protean piece like the one 
 act "Dick Turpin," in which all the parts are as- 
 sumed by the same actor, and which is necessarily 
 nothing but a succession of monologues. But they 
 are annoyed when the characters in a modern play of 
 real life take the liberty of soliloquizing, because both 
 
TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 151 
 
 authors and audiences have discovered that it is out 
 of place on the picture-frame stage of to-day, how- 
 ever appropriate it may have been to the platform- 
 stage of yesterday. The dramatist can utilize it now 
 only at his peril ; at best he can use it on rare occa- 
 sions and very briefly, merely to give a fleeting glimpse 
 of the speaker's deeper emotion. If it is boldly em- 
 ployed in the fashion formerly acceptable, it will revolt 
 us by what we now see to be its flagrant incompati- 
 bility with the conditions of the modern theater. It 
 will probably survive as a tradition in the poetic drama, 
 where we are glad always to listen to noble thoughts 
 loftily phrased. It may even linger also in the lighter 
 forms of comedy, where we shall not sharply feel its 
 incongruity, because we do not take these humorous 
 pieces seriously. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 
 
 Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage 
 of the poet's brain. What, then, are they not real ? They are as real 
 as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we 
 who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above 
 that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy 
 through his own mishaps or those of others ; whoever has borne about 
 with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself " too 
 much i' th' sun" ; whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed 
 by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world 
 before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; 
 whoever has known " the pangs of despised love, the insolence of 
 office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes"; he 
 who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart 
 like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth stag- 
 gered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well at 
 ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a specter; whose 
 powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the 
 universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of 
 soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as 
 his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by 
 a mock representation of them this is the true Hamlet. WIL- 
 LIAM HAZLITT, The Characters of Shakspere's Plays. 
 
 FOR immediate success on the stage, a play must have 
 a story strong enough to arouse and retain the interest 
 of the spectators ; and it is characteristic of Aristotle's 
 shrewdness that he seized this fact firmly, and de- 
 clared it sharply more than two thousand years ago, 
 with only his experience in the Attic theater to guide 
 him. But while a sufficient story is a prerequisite to 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 153 
 
 immediate success, it will bestow only a fleeting popu- 
 larity, if the play is not peopled by characters that lin- 
 ger in the memory independently of the action in which 
 they have been presented. Taste in stories varies from 
 century to century and from country to country, and the 
 number of possible situations is so strictly limited that 
 the most the new dramatist can do is to shuffle the old 
 plots and to carry them on with new characters. But 
 human nature is much the same the wide world over, 
 and generation after generation. A character which 
 has once impressed itself upon the contemporaries of 
 the author as vital and significant has a chance of long 
 life ; and in the final analysis, it is by his power of pro- 
 jecting characters that the dramatist survives. 
 
 On the plot, on the situations, on the sequence of 
 events, which the playwright needs first of all to win 
 the favor of the throng, he must expend his invention, 
 and he must be as ingenious as may be in adroit de- 
 vices to sustain the interest of his story. On the char- 
 acters who live and move inside this plot, he must 
 bestow the best of his imagination; and into them, 
 he must breathe the breath of life, so that they will 
 exist for us long after we have lost our liking for the 
 kind of story in which they originally figured. To us 
 nowadays, the central incidents of the " Merchant of 
 Venice" are unconvincing, not to call them puerile; but 
 Shylock is an unforgettable figure, as alive to-day as 
 when he first strode on the stage of the Globe Theater. 
 The plot of the "Winter's Tale" is a tissue of absurdi- 
 ties ; but the young loves of Perdita and Florizel still 
 enchant us because they are eternally human. In the 
 "Merchant of Venice," we tolerate the impossibility 
 of the situations for the sake of the central character; 
 
154 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 and we are almost as lenient toward the "Winter's 
 Tale," although its characters do not loom so large in 
 our memories. A story of some sort, there must be; 
 but we reserve our warmest regard for the men and 
 the women who carry it on. It is by veracity of char- 
 acter delineation, by subtlety of psychology, that the 
 great plays are great. It is by this power of creating 
 living and breathing human beings, recognizable fellow- 
 creatures with ourselves, that the playwright estab- 
 lishes his title to be considered truly a dramatist. If 
 he lacks this power, if he cannot leave behind him 
 characters that the next generation will recognize and 
 relish, then his reputation is fleeting; he exists by 
 virtue of his plots only, and these the playwrights of 
 the next generation will surely make over in accord 
 with the changing tastes of their own time. 
 
 Yet the dramatist is strictly limited in his means of 
 presenting his characters. He can show them only as 
 they appear to their associates. He can put them be- 
 fore us only by what they say and by what they do; 
 and he cannot explain or extenuate any word or any 
 deed. These things must speak for themselves, since 
 the dramatist is forced to keep himself out of his story, 
 and since he is denied all privilege of comment. Here 
 is perhaps the most striking difference between the 
 play and the novel. The novelist can chat to his 
 readers about his characters ; he can tell us not only 
 what they say and what they do, but also what they 
 think; he can go further, if he so chooses, and let us 
 know what he thinks of them and what he wants us 
 to think of them. 
 
 Much of the charm of Thackeray's novels, for in- 
 stance, is due to the incessant intervention of the 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 155 
 
 author and to the confidential commentary in which 
 the action of the story is constantly immersed. We may 
 like this method of Thackeray's or we may prefer 
 the sterner impartiality of Balzac; but to no play- 
 wright is anything of the sort permitted. In the thea- 
 ter, no comment is possible, no foot-notes, no sign-post 
 hands. On the stage, every character must stand on 
 his own feet and speak for himself ; he must justify him- 
 self out of his own mouth and by his own deeds ; and 
 if he is supposed to be shrewd and clever, he must 
 prove his shrewd cleverness in the sight of us all, for 
 we will not believe it unless we see it. If he is called 
 witty, we refuse to credit this, except on the evidence 
 of our own ears. If we behold him guilty of a contemp- 
 tible act, the author can urge no specious argument 
 to make us overlook it. The characters stand before 
 us on the stage, and they are what they are, not what 
 the author might like us to believe them to be. 
 
 In spite of this limitation of his methods of repre- 
 senting character, perhaps it may be, more or less 
 because of them, the dramatist makes a virtue of 
 necessity and brings before us human beings who de- 
 clare themselves clearly by what they say and by what 
 they do. Hamlet and Othello are as real to us as Don 
 Quixote ; and Becky Sharp is not more alive than Lady 
 Teazle. The genius of Moliere is great enough to de- 
 pict in a play a hypocrite, Tartuffe, who never drops the 
 mask of assumed piety, and whom we know for what 
 he is, even before we have heard his voice. Indeed, if 
 we call the roll of imaginary characters who crowd our 
 memories, we are likely to find that at least half of 
 them belong to the drama. The CEdipus of Sophocles 
 and the Medea of Euripides are as distinct in our re- 
 
156 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 membrance as the Achilles of Homer and the Dido of 
 Vergil. The task of bodying forth these characters 
 may have been more difficult in the dramas than it 
 was in the epics; but beyond all question, it has been 
 as satisfactorily accomplished. 
 
 The character reveals himself to the spectators by 
 what he says and by what he does. He exists by his 
 actions ; he exists first of all, for the sake of the plot of 
 the play, and only secondly for his own sake. And we 
 may go further and suggest that the dramatist often 
 takes little thought about those parts of the career of 
 any one of his characters, which are not directly con- 
 nected with the special story in which they appear, and 
 which do not lie within the play wherein that char- 
 acter figures. The character is what he must be in 
 that drama ; but how he came to be that kind of crea- 
 ture, the dramatist does not trouble to tell us ; he may 
 not know, and he may not care. What the characters 
 are inside his play, the dramatist is intensely interested 
 in ; but what they may have been or what they will be 
 outside of his play, he does not ask. 
 
 Especially is this true of Moliere. Who was Tar- 
 tuffe, before his sinister shadow crossed the threshold of 
 Orgon's happy home? W T hat misdeeds had he been 
 already guilty of and what misadventures had he al- 
 ready met ? Moliere does not tell us ; and very likely 
 he could not have told us. Probably he would have 
 explained that it did not matter, since Tartuffe is what 
 he is ; he is what we see him ; we have only to look 
 at him and to listen to him to know all we need to 
 know about him. And who was Celimene, the young 
 widow who drove the Misanthrope to despair ? What 
 was her family ? What was her education ? Who was 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 157 
 
 her first husband ? When did he die ? These are ques- 
 tions Moliere is not moved to answer. Celimene is 
 alive, as Tartuffe was alive ; that is enough for their 
 creator. Moliere's characters emerge into view, full- 
 grown and full-blooded; they play their parts in the 
 plot ; and then the curtain falls and that is the last we 
 see of them. 
 
 Here, as in so many other aspects, Shakspere is at 
 one with Moliere. We find the melancholy Jaques in 
 the Forest of Arden, moralizing at large and bandy- 
 ing repartees with a chance clown ; he talks and we 
 know him at once, as we know a man we have met 
 many times. But who is he ? What is his rank ? Where 
 does he come from ? What brought him so far afield 
 and so deep into the greenwood ? Shakspere leaves us 
 in the dark as to all these things ; and perhaps he was 
 in the dark himself. Jaques is needed where we find 
 him, in the play with the Banished Duke and his men; 
 and there Shakspere put him, conceived all of a piece 
 and all of a sudden, for this special purpose. And 
 lago, who is he? How came such an incomparable 
 villain to be intimate with Othello ? How was it that 
 he had many friends among the foremost men of 
 Venice? Where had he met and married Emilia? 
 How was it that his wife was the attendant of Des- 
 demona ? These things Shakspere does not delay to 
 explain; he takes them for granted; they are because 
 they are; and lago, being what he is in the play, it 
 matters little what he was before the play began. 
 
 Before writing a novel, Turgenieff used to set down 
 the exact and detailed biography of every character 
 who was to appear in his story, thus deciding in advance 
 their antecedents, their birth, their education, and their 
 
158 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 relations to each other previous to the beginning of 
 the tale in which they were all to take part. No doubt, 
 other novelists have found it profitable to make use of 
 similar devices ; but to a dramatist, such particulariza- 
 tion would seem needless. His characters appear to 
 him moving and talking ; he puts them into his play 
 alive; and there they are once for all. He asks them 
 no questions as to the existence they must have led 
 before they came on the stage to play their parts in 
 his piece. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson wrote a charming and fanciful book 
 on the " Girlhood of Shakspere's Heroines," in which 
 she tried to reconstruct the home-life in which each 
 of these delightful creatures had flowered into woman- 
 hood, Portia and Rosalind, Beatrice and Ophelia. 
 She was ingenious in amplifying what seemed to her 
 the hints that Shakspere let fall. Her work is proof 
 that the great poet was able to evoke characters so 
 interesting that we want to know more about them 
 than he has chosen to tell us. But, after all, pleasant 
 as her labor was, it was futile. Portia and Rosalind, 
 Beatrice and Ophelia live in the plays in which they 
 appear; they came into being for that purpose and 
 for that purpose only. And probably, if it could come 
 to his knowledge, no single one of all the immense 
 number of books which have been written about his 
 plays would be more likely to bring a smile to Shak- 
 spere's face than this affectionate tribute of Mrs. 
 Jameson's. 
 
 These girl-heroines of Shakspere, and all the other 
 characters, male and female, who inhabit his plays, are 
 self-explanatory. We accept them at first sight, without 
 hesitation. We recognize their humanity and their 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 159 
 
 vitality, although it is only a fleeting glimpse of a frag- 
 ment of their lives that we are allowed. Limited 
 though our vision may be, the opportunity is ade- 
 quate for Shakspere, as it is for Sophocles and for Mo- 
 liere, and for all the other masters of the drama, each 
 in- his own fashion. The characters they set before us 
 on the stage seem to us full, rounded, and complete. 
 We feel that we are acquainted with the chief of these 
 characters as we do not feel ourselves acquainted with 
 our intimate friends. We know all we need to know 
 about them, for we can guess in advance what they 
 will do in the hour of trial. We anticipate their emo- 
 tions and their acts at the moment of stress. We do 
 not doubt that they will be true to themselves. 
 
 We feel this even when these characters are super- 
 natural, when they are outside any possible experience 
 that we could have had in this mortal life. Shakspere, 
 for example, delights in ghosts and in witches and in 
 fairies ; and once, at least, in Caliban, he invites us to 
 behold a strange, uncanny, abnormal being only half- 
 human. And yet we never question the propriety of 
 these weird creatures, each of whom obeys the law 
 of its own being. They may be beyond nature, as we 
 apprehend it, but they never strike us as unnatural. 
 Where Shakspere seems most to recede from humanity, 
 so Charles Lamb declared, "he will be found the near- 
 est to it. From beyond the scope of nature if he sum- 
 mons possible existences, he subjugates them to the law 
 of her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to that kind 
 of sovereign directness even when he seems most to 
 detest her. Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the 
 laws of their own nature (ours with a difference) as 
 Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth." 
 
160 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 ii 
 
 Vital as the chief characters are in the major plays 
 of the leading dramatists, existing independently of the 
 plot, as they seem to do -when we think about them, 
 every one of them is not only a character but also a 
 part composed for execution by an actor, often by 
 some one particular actor to whose capacity it was 
 skilfully adjusted, Burbage or Coquelin, Mile, de 
 Champmesle or Mile, de Moliere. In the plays of the 
 inferior playwrights, there are parts only, and these 
 parts depend for their individuality upon the his- 
 trionic power of the performers. In the plays of the 
 superior dramatists, these parts, adjusted conscien- 
 tiously to the actors, are also characters whose abiding 
 life is detached from the performer and even from the 
 play itself. As parts, they may have been enlarged or 
 limited to fit themselves to the comedian or the trage- 
 dian to whom they were first intrusted when the piece 
 was originally acted; but as characters, they so im- 
 press themselves upon us that we do not necessarily 
 think of the stage when we consider them. 
 
 What special aspects and attributes of any character 
 the author shall set before us, must always be decided 
 by the situations of the piece in which that character 
 is to figure. This is made plain when we find a drama- 
 tist presenting the same character to us in successive 
 plays, for we cannot help discovering that the charac- 
 ter is never quite identical in both pieces. Sophocles 
 represents Creon in "CEdipus" and in "Antigone"; 
 and the character is distinctly different in the later 
 play, with a difference not to be accounted for by the 
 lapse of time and by the strain of the passing years. 
 The later Creon varies from the earlier Creon, because 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 161 
 
 the plots of the two plays are unlike, and because he 
 cannot be exactly the same person in all his charac- 
 teristics in the one piece that he was in the other. 
 When Shakspere showed the fat knight in love, it was 
 a sadly shorn Falstaff which the plot of the " Merry 
 Wives" forced him to bring before us. The action of 
 that farce, the arbitrary sequence of its comic situa- 
 tions, compelled the dramatist to let us see a Falstaff 
 who is only a shrunken copy of the superb figure that 
 swaggered through the earlier chronicle-play. And 
 Moliere acted Sganarelle in half a dozen different 
 pieces, in no two of which is he exactly the same being. 
 
 In their broad outlines, the two Creons, the two Fal- 
 staffs and the half-dozen Sganarelles are alike, but 
 they differ in many minor traits, sometimes even con- 
 tradicting the characteristics they had when they first 
 appeared before the public. And it would not be dif- 
 ficult to show that these divergencies are the direct 
 result of the plots of the later plays. Even if the 
 dramatist had wanted to make these creatures of his 
 imagination retain all their original characteristics, he 
 could not very well have done so, since the original 
 plot and the original character are intertwined and in- 
 terwoven so inextricably that, when the characters are 
 disentangled from this first plot to be immeshed in an- 
 other series of complications, they have to adjust them- 
 selves to these new conditions. They cannot help being 
 subdued to what they work in. On the stage, the au- 
 thor can show us the character only as it is involved 
 in the action ; and the action itself decides just how 
 much of the character can be shown, and what aspects 
 of it are to be emphasized. 
 
 In every really important play, the characters make 
 
162 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the plot, and the story is what it is merely because the 
 characters are what they are. Yet after all, the char- 
 acters are only and can be only what the plot permits 
 them to be. The conjunction of character and action 
 is no chance mechanical mixture; it is rather an inti- 
 mate chemical union. Character and plot are not set 
 side by side ; they are united ; each exists for the sake 
 of the other and in combination with the other. This 
 is perhaps the reason or at least one of the reasons 
 why the dramatist knows and cares little about his 
 characters except as they reveal themselves in the situ- 
 ations of his play. He cares intensely about what they 
 are and what they do and what they say, while they 
 are on the stage in his play. What they may be, or 
 what they may have done or said at other times, he 
 cares little. They have their significance for him only 
 within the framework of his drama. 
 
 It is but a small portion of the life of any character 
 that the dramatist can show ; and if we seek to deduce 
 the whole man from the part the author has chosen 
 to present in action before us, we need a minute know- 
 ledge of human nature and a constructive imagination, 
 like Cuvier's when he demonstrated his ability to re- 
 constitute an unknown animal from a few fragmentary 
 bones. And when we are tempted to this adventure, 
 we shall do well to remember that Cuvier was bring- 
 ing to life again a being before unknown, whereas the 
 great characters of the great plays are already as well 
 known to us as they are ever likely to be. We may 
 amuse ourselves by following in the footsteps of Mrs. 
 Jameson, but the exercise must be its own reward ; and 
 we do well to be on our guard against overestimating 
 its importance. 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 163 
 
 in 
 
 Stevenson once told a friend that he knew only three 
 ways of making a story. One might start with a group 
 of characters and devise a plot to exhibit them ; or one 
 might begin with a plot and fit characters to this; or 
 one might subordinate both plot and characters to a 
 special atmosphere, which was to be realized and made 
 impressive. In the theater, this third method is im- 
 possible, since atmosphere alone is insufficient to hold 
 the attention of the throng. The other two methods 
 are available for the playwright ; and there is no diffi- 
 culty in adducing examples of plays composed in ac- 
 cord with the one or the other of these methods. The 
 "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," for example, is plainly a 
 piece in the conception of which the author began with 
 the character of M. Jourdain ; having this central figure 
 clearly in mind, Moliere devised situations specially 
 to set off the several facets of M. Jourdain's person- 
 ality. Indeed, so intense was Moliere's interest in this 
 character, which he was elaborating for his own acting, 
 that he was a little careless in the putting together of 
 the plot wherein the ambitious burgher is presented; 
 and as a result, the actual story of the play does not 
 get under way until the third act, the two earlier acts 
 having been taken up with the exhibiting of the foibles 
 and personal peculiarities of M. Jourdain. In the 
 "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," we cannot help feeling 
 that Moliere did not take trouble enough to find a 
 plot proper for the full display of his central character; 
 at least, we are compelled to confess that in this piece 
 he has sacrificed plot to character. 
 
 In the great Greek tragedies, we discover the results 
 of the other method, that of taking a story ready-made 
 
164 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 and of fitting characters to it. In fact, this method was 
 more or less imposed on the writers of Attic tragedy 
 by the recognized demand upon them to select their 
 themes from one or another of the many legends which 
 were held to be the best material for the purposes of 
 the theatrical poet. Thus the Athenian dramatist, 
 whatever story he might choose to handle, found his 
 freedom circumscribed by the public expectation that 
 he should not depart too widely from the sequence of 
 events consecrated by tradition. The details of in- 
 cident he might vary at will ; but the main lines of his 
 story were laid down for him before he began. As 
 soon as he had announced his subject, the spectators 
 knew in advance the successive episodes which he was 
 at liberty to represent. He might suppress some of 
 these episodes, and he might make others more sig- 
 nificant than any of his predecessors had done; but 
 he was not at liberty to contradict the legend as it had 
 been transmitted from earlier generations. 
 
 As a result of this limitation of the themes of tragedy 
 to a prescribed body of traditional tales, the drama- 
 tists were compelled to treat the same subjects again 
 and again. Every poet was familiar with the plays 
 which various of his predecessors had written on any 
 subject he might undertake, and he was well aware 
 that his successors would make use of the same sub- 
 ject, each in turn modifying it to suit his mood. The 
 treatment of the theme was therefore all-important, 
 since the playwright-poet could not profit by absolute 
 novelty of story. Probably the Attic dramatists felt 
 always that they were working in a severe competition 
 with their predecessors and with their successors; 
 and very likely this put them on their mettle and kept 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 165 
 
 them up to the mark. They had to take a twice-told 
 tale and interpret it anew ; they had to revive the faded 
 figures of the legend and to give fresh meaning to the 
 old story; and this is what the greatest of them did 
 with unfailing felicity. JSschylus and Sophocles wrote 
 tragedies on these traditional themes and under these 
 restrictions, in which there is no suggestion of con- 
 straint. The " Agamemnon " and the " (Edipus " seem 
 to us to have been wrought with the utmost freedom ; 
 and their plots appear to be only the logical result of 
 the interrelation of the several characters. 
 
 The same praise may be bestowed also upon Shak- 
 spere. If there ever was a play in which character seems 
 to condition plot, in which the action is what it is only 
 because the central figure is what he is, that play is 
 "Hamlet." In this tragedy, all the successive situa- 
 tions are the result of the special characteristics of the 
 hero. If we did not know better, we might well be- 
 lieve that Shakspere had first conceived Hamlet, and 
 then cast about him for a story in which that charac- 
 ter might be revealed. But we do know better; we 
 are aware that this was not the case and that the plot 
 of "Hamlet" had been constructed by an earlier play- 
 wright, possibly Kyd, who had seen fit to make a mere 
 melodrama of it, a violent tragedy-of -blood, full of 
 broad theatrical ism, certain to please the strong-nerved 
 playgoing public of those tumultuous days. This 
 tragedy-of-blood Shakspere took for his own, and made 
 it his own, partly by purging away some of its grosser 
 effects and partly by elevating the character of Hamlet 
 to his own loftiest level. Apparently, he did not ac- 
 complish this all at once ; finding the theme congenial, 
 lie returned to it again and again, as though it were 
 
166 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 a labor of love. He gave "Hamlet" revision after re- 
 vision until he had put himself into it amply, and until 
 he had so ennobled it that it was the richest expres- 
 sion of his genius. What he found a coarse melodrama, 
 he left the most intellectual of tragedies, the play 
 in which he seemed most abundantly to have voiced 
 himself. He took over another man's invention and 
 transfigured it by his own superb imagination. 
 
 What JSschylus and Sophocles had done with 
 "Agamemnon" and "CEdipus," and what Shakspere 
 did with "Hamlet," Moliere did with "Don Juan." 
 The skeleton of his great play did not differ very much 
 from that of the Spanish piece from which he derived 
 it more or less indirectly; but its meaning, its vitality, 
 its final value, these qualities it owed to Moliere, as 
 indisputably as "Hamlet" was indebted to Shakspere 
 for its enduring power. And this is evidence that it 
 matters little where the dramatist actually begins, 
 whether with plot or with character. What does mat- 
 ter is where he ends, whether the resultant play pre- 
 sents a story wherein the characters are merely the 
 creatures of the plot, or a story wherein the plot seems 
 to be subordinate to character. It is by the final result 
 that the dramatist must be judged, and not by his 
 original choice of a method of procedure. 
 
 The leading characters in the great plays are all 
 good parts, forever tempting to the ambitious actor. 
 Although they may have been devised originally for 
 some one performer contemporary with the author, 
 they transcend the limitation of this actor's personal- 
 ity. They are not mere profiles; they are rounded 
 figures to be approached from all the points of the 
 compass; and therefore they are open to a wide va- 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 167 
 
 riety of interpretation by later actors. In fact, the au- 
 thor would often be surprised to discover that a char- 
 acter which he imagined for a performer of a special 
 type, might be taken successfully by a performer of an 
 entirely different temperament. 
 
 Perhaps the most obvious illustration of this is to 
 be found in the stage-history of the " School for Scan- 
 dal." Sheridan fitted the parts in this comedy to the 
 company he had inherited from Garrick, and no one 
 of them was more closely adjusted to the special per- 
 former than the character of Lady Teazle, which was 
 intended for Mrs. Abington. Lady Teazle is a country- 
 girl who has become a woman of fashion ; and Mrs. 
 Abington was the incomparable representative of the 
 fine ladies of high-comedy. But when Mrs. Abington 
 retired, Lady Teazle was undertaken by Mrs. Jordan, 
 whose reputation had been made by the performance 
 of romps and hoydens. Mrs. Abington had seen in 
 Lady Teazle only the woman of fashion ; and Mrs. 
 Jordan saw in Lady Teazle rather the country-girl 
 who was aping the airs and graces of a fine lady. This 
 second interpretation of the character was probably 
 not at all what Sheridan had intended; but he had 
 builded better than he knew and the character was 
 richer in variety than he had supposed. In its way, 
 Mrs. Jordan's performance of the part was quite as 
 effective as Mrs. Abington's had been. The character 
 which can be seen from only one angle is as thin as a 
 silhouette. It lacks the rotundity of reality. 
 
 What is true of characters in comedy, is true also of 
 characters in tragedy. lago, for example, was played 
 by Edwin Booth as the steely incarnation of evil, pur- 
 suing his malignant purpose with indomitable will. 
 
168 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 But other actors have chosen to present rather the 
 bluff, hearty, soldierly side of "honest lago," and thus 
 to give greater plausibility to Othello's confidence in 
 him. And Lewes, who saw them both, dwelt on the 
 extraordinary differences which existed between the 
 Othello of Salvini and the Othello of Edmund Kean. 
 The English actor was impetuous, fiery, volcanic, 
 where the Italian was stately, massive, and overwhelm- 
 ing. As wide a gulf yawned between the Hamlet of 
 Fechter on the one hand, and the Hamlet of Booth 
 and of Irving on the other. What Fechter saw in the 
 play was chiefly the immensely effective series of situa- 
 tions ; and he treated it as if it was a melodrama only. 
 Booth and Irving made the situations subordinate to 
 the poetry they felt in the hero; they diminished the 
 violence of the plot as far as possible and bathed the 
 performance in melancholy beauty. 
 
 Consider also Jaques in "As You Like It," and ask 
 how he ought to be played. Is he a bitter cynic railing 
 against the world and venting his venom on all man- 
 kind, the ultimate type of misanthropic pessimism? 
 Or is he a humorist, always exaggerating his feelings 
 and often saying far more than he means, certain in 
 advance that his associates will not take him seriously, 
 certain, indeed, that they will be readier to smile at 
 his utterances the more extravagant his speech may 
 be ? Either of these interpretations is in accord with 
 the language which Shakspere has put into the mouth 
 of Jaques; and it is by this language only that the 
 character reveals himself. We have no other informa- 
 tion about him; he must be judged by what he says; 
 and what he says may be interpreted in these two 
 wholly inconsistent ways. 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 169 
 
 We can know a character in a play only by what 
 he says and by what he does. Jaques, as it happens, 
 does nothing ; his function in the comedy is merely to 
 talk. And the remarks of the other characters in "As 
 You Like It" throw no light on his enigmatic char- 
 acter. Probably Shakspere did not intend these con- 
 tradictory interpretations; probably he meant Jaques 
 to be clearly perceived for what he is. But Shakspere 
 so projected the character that the other interpreta- 
 tion whichever this may be is quite as accept- 
 able now as that which he did intend. In Jaques, 
 as in lago and Othello, as in Hamlet, Shakspere en- 
 dowed his character with the complexity of a living 
 human being, whose peculiarities of conduct and of 
 speech we may discuss as we analyze those of one of 
 our own intimates. The character is alive; and like 
 all living things, it is infinitely various, taking on dif- 
 ferent aspects in the eyes of different observers. 
 
 This variety and this complexity in the representa- 
 tion of character may not be the result of the deliberate 
 aim of the dramatist ; but he deserves the credit for it, 
 none the less, since he did it, even if he did not mean to 
 do it and even if he did not know that he was doing it. 
 Perhaps he may have supposed that he was giving to 
 the creature of his imagination only the limited vitality 
 demanded by the plot, and yet his imagination may 
 have endowed this creature with a larger life and with a 
 richer personality than the story called for. The more 
 vigorous his imagination and the deeper his insight 
 into human nature, the more likely is he to perform this 
 marvel all unwittingly. The artist who always does 
 his best often does better than the best he intended ; by 
 sheer integrity of effort, he is able to surpass himself. 
 
170 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 IV 
 
 This guerdon is granted only to the true dramatist, 
 and it is not bestowed upon the mere playwright. The 
 inferior craftsman, however adroit and ingenious he 
 may be, is not distinguished by fecundating imagina- 
 tion; and in his plays, the characters do not disclose 
 themselves as more human than he had intended. In 
 fact, the mere playwright does not create character; 
 the most he can do is to devise effective parts for spe- 
 cial performers ; these parts derive their fleeting vital- 
 ity from the actors who sustain them. In default of 
 the creative imagination, the mere playwright is forced 
 to rely on his plot rather than on his characters. The 
 mechanism of the action, which is of only secondary 
 importance in the plays of the true dramatists, is of 
 primary importance in the pieces of the playwrights. 
 Kotzebue, for example, and Scribe, displayed a most 
 prolific inventiveness in devising situations; but no 
 character from any one of their plays lingers in the 
 memory. After beholding one of their pieces, we re- 
 call what the various personages did, but we have no 
 definite impression as to what these personages are. 
 
 Kotzebue's characters, and Scribe's also, exist only 
 in connection with the plots of the plays in which they 
 appear; they were called into being for the sake of 
 the plot; they are sufficient to carry on the action, and 
 outside of that special story, they have no validity. 
 This is the reason why Kotzebue and Scribe are no 
 longer read; and their marvelous dexterity in stage- 
 craft has not kept alive any single one out of all their 
 scores of plays. 
 
 Even in the most flourishing periods of theatrical 
 productivity, the true dramatists are only a few; and 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 171 
 
 the immense majority of those who supply the theater 
 are mere playwrights. These playwrights rely on 
 their plots to please the public ; and if the stories they 
 narrate in action are interesting enough in themselves, 
 the characters may be the stock-figures of the theater, 
 which the public seems willing to accept generation 
 after generation. There is the young hero, very young 
 and very heroic, blameless and self-sacrificing. There 
 is the lovely heroine, equally exalted in sentiment and 
 equally addicted to self-sacrifice. There is the smiling 
 villain, who sticks at nothing to accomplish his fell 
 purpose and who hates everybody except the hero- 
 ine. There is the cantankerous mother-in-law, exhaling 
 her scorn upon the unfortunate man who was unlucky 
 enough to marry her daughter. There is the comic 
 servant, perpetually blundering in his misunderstand- 
 ing of his master's orders. There is the stern father, 
 implacable in his determination to force his son or 
 his daughter into the marriage he has arranged, re- 
 gardless of love's young dream. 
 
 These are only a few of the traditional figures likely 
 to reappear at any moment in a popular play. Figures 
 equivalent to these are recognizable in the drama of 
 every period. Latin comedy, for instance, took over 
 from the Greek at least a dozen stock-figures which 
 appear and reappear in play after play of Plautus and 
 Terence. There was the greedy parasite, earning 
 his dinner by gross flattery of his patron. There was 
 the braggart coward, forever boasting of his exploits 
 and yet keeping his skin whole, wherever his courage 
 was challenged. There was the intriguing slave, who 
 was prolific in ingenious methods for extracting money 
 from his old master's pocket for the benefit of his young 
 
172 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 master, and who was untiring in running errands 
 and in carrying love-letters. 
 
 These stock-figures of Greek and Latin comedy re- 
 appear again in the improvised play of the Italians, in 
 the comedy-of-masks, which is one of the most interest- 
 ing developments of the drama in all its long history. 
 It was a development possible only among the Ital- 
 ians, who are facile actors and who have the faculty of 
 improvisation. A strolling troop consisted of perhaps 
 a dozen performers, every one of whom impersonated 
 always the same character, a stock -figure of unchang- 
 ing peculiarities. One of them might be the young 
 lover, Lelio, the same in name and in nature, what- 
 ever the imbroglio in which he was involved. An- 
 other might be Pantaleone, an old merchant, speaking 
 the Venetian dialect. A third might be the Doctor, an 
 elderly pedant, speaking the Bolognese dialect. Yet 
 another might be Pulcinella, the rascally domestic, 
 indefatigable in ingenious roguery, and speaking the 
 Neapolitan dialect. And a fifth might be the Captain, 
 the self-vaunting soldier, always boasting about his 
 marvelous feats of valor. Of the women, one might 
 be Leonora, the young and lovely heroine ; and another 
 might be Isabella, her equally beautiful rival. A third 
 might be Franceschina, the pert waiting-maid, as un- 
 scrupulous as the intriguing valet with whom she was 
 likely to pair off. If the company contained a performer 
 of old women, this would be a man, who was bold in 
 suggesting the least attractive attributes of elderly 
 females. Add three or four other performers to fill in 
 the less important personages, and we have a company 
 competent to perform any plot without the aid of a 
 written play and often without even a rehearsal. 
 
STAGE-SETS OF THE ITALIAN COMEDY-OF-MASKS IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
 CENTURY, AS USED BY MOLIERE IN MANY OF HIS PLAYS 
 
DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 173 
 
 If the manager, who was likely to be also a leading 
 actor as well as the deviser of the plots, had happened 
 to read the Italian story out of which Shakspere made 
 "Romeo and Juliet," he might have " cast" it to such 
 a company as this, discarding the tragic termination, 
 emphasizing the romantic aspects and providing oppor- 
 tunities for the clowning of the comedians. Panta- 
 leone would have had a quarrel with the Doctor. Lelio 
 would have been the son of Pantaleone, and Leonora 
 would be the daughter of the Doctor. The man who 
 played the "old women" would be the nurse of Leo- 
 nora ; and the Captain would swagger as the cousin or 
 brother of Leonora, whom Lelio would kill in a duel. 
 Franceschina would be the serving-maid of Leonora, 
 and Pulcinella would be the valet of Lelio. The man- 
 ager-author would call the company together and ex- 
 plain to each the relation he was supposed to bear 
 toward all the others. Then he would indicate the 
 sequence of scenes in the several acts; and this sce- 
 nario, as it was called, would be written out and pinned 
 up behind the scenes. The play might begin with a 
 violent altercation between Pantaleone and the Doctor ; 
 but this would be no* difficult demand upon either per- 
 former, since they had often quarrelled in earlier plays. 
 A little later might come a long love-scene for Lelio 
 and Leonora : and this again would be no novelty, since 
 he had been making love to her in almost every other 
 piece since he joined the company. Lelio had in stock 
 a dozen perfervid declarations of devotion; and Leo- 
 nora had by experience a dozen different ways of re- 
 ceiving his declaration. 
 
 In this fashion, the story of the loves of Romeo 
 and Juliet might be unrolled by means of these stock- 
 
174 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 figures, each of which retained his own name always 
 and his own individuality. And in this same fashion, 
 any other story, tragic or comic, might be represented 
 by a similar company of Italian comedians, accustomed 
 to one another, and realizing the advantages of con- 
 scientious "team-play." The unchanging and highly 
 colored type, which any one of these comedians im- 
 personated and made his own, has an obvious likeness 
 to the bishop or knight or any other piece of a set of 
 chessmen,whose rights and privileges are strictly limited 
 and absolutely invariable, but who can be set in motion 
 in varied and limitless relations with the other pieces. 
 That the Italians were able to interest audiences, 
 generation after generation, with primitive plots of 
 this kind in which character was subordinated to story, 
 is added evidence that action is of primary importance 
 in the theater. But the pieces these Italians impro- 
 vised abundantly had only a fleeting vogue. Nothing 
 except depth and sincerity of character-drawing can 
 endow a play with the enduring merit which will re- 
 sist the inevitable changes of theatrical fashion. The 
 "Romeo and Juliet "of Shakspere survives to-day, as 
 vital as when it was first acted, ^because its two fore- 
 most figures are eternal types of the heedless and head- 
 strong passion of ardent youth. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 
 
 You are not going to make or ruin your imagination while here. 
 That is something that will remain if you have it in you; that you 
 cannot acquire if you are not blessed with it. But here you may 
 learn to handle your tools. So measure, copy, plumb. A carpenter 
 who constantly uses a foot-rule can guess the length of a foot better 
 than one who seldom refers to it. AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS, 
 to his pupils, as reported by Homer Saint-Gaudens. 
 
 THE technic of the drama is more difficult to grasp than 
 the technic of prose-fiction, because the novelist needs 
 to consider his readers only, whereas the dramatist has 
 always to consider his actors, his theater, and his au- 
 dience. When we contrast the constructive faculty re- 
 quired by the playmaker with that which we tolerate in 
 the story-teller, we are led to the conclusion that the 
 novel may be the product of unskilled labor, whereas 
 the play must be the work of a craftsman who has 
 learned his trade and acquired the mastery of his 
 tools. Many a modern novel in the English language, 
 more than one of Dickens's, is a sprawling invertebrate. 
 The conduct of the story is haphazard ; and we may 
 guess that the author modified his earlier intentions 
 more than once in the course of his writing. Scott be- 
 gan " Woodstock" without knowing how he was going 
 to end it; and he recorded in his journal that when 
 he had finished the first of the three volumes in which 
 
176 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the story was originally published, he was at a loss to 
 find matter for the second volume. 
 
 Now, the playwright cannot take things in this 
 easy-going fashion. He needs a subject strong enough 
 to carry him through, since charm of treatment and di- 
 versity of incident will avail him little, if his theme is 
 not interesting in itself. He cannot rely on constructed 
 decoration; he can only decorate his construction. As 
 the shrewd Voltaire insisted, the success of a play de- 
 pends very largely on the subject chosen. This subject 
 must, as Aristotle tells us, have a certain magnitude, 
 that is to say, it cannot be trivial or casual ; and it must 
 have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Moreover, 
 it must be conducted from the beginning through the 
 middle to the end, as directly as may be. The story 
 cannot straggle into by-paths; it cannot meander into 
 backwaters; it must move forward steadily and irre- 
 sistibly, setting before the spectators the essential scenes 
 of the essential struggle. The elder Dumas once de- 
 clared that the secret of success on the stage was to 
 make " the first act clear, the last act short, and all the 
 acts interesting." This is no easy feat; and it can be 
 achieved only by a scrupulous forethought akin to 
 that employed by the architect in designing a building 
 for a special purpose on' a special plot of land. The 
 dramatist must accept the obligations thus imposed, 
 and he must meet them as best he can ; for it is in meet- 
 ing them that he fails or triumphs. 
 
 Many years ago, before he had adventured himself 
 in playwriting, Mr. Henry James stated the case with 
 his customary insight. 
 
 " Between a poor drama and a fine one, there is," he said, 
 "a wider interval than anywhere else in the scale of success. 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 177 
 
 A sequence of speeches headed by proper names a string 
 of dialogues broken into acts and scenes does not con- 
 stitute a drama ; not even when the speeches are very clever 
 and the dialogue bristles with points. The fine thing in a 
 real drama, generally speaking, is that more than any other 
 work of literary art, it needs a masterly structure. It needs 
 to be shaped and fashioned and laid together, and this pro- 
 cess makes a demand upon an artist's rarest gifts. He must 
 combine and arrange, interpolate and eliminate, play the 
 joiner with the most attentive skill ; and yet at the end effect- 
 ually bury his tools and his sawdust, and invest his elaborate 
 skeleton with the smoothest and most polished integument. 
 The five-act drama serious or humorous, poetic or pro- 
 saic is like a box of fixed dimensions and inelastic mate- 
 rial, into which a mass of precious things are to be packed 
 away. It is a problem in ingenuity, and a problem of the 
 most interesting kind. The precious things in question seem 
 out of all proportion to the compass of the receptacle; but 
 the artist has an assurance that with patience and skill a 
 place may be made for each, and that nothing need be clipped 
 or crumpled, squeezed or damaged. The false dramatist 
 either knocks out the sides of his box, or plays the deuce with 
 the contents; the real one gets down on his knees, disposes 
 of his goods tentatively, this, that, and the other way, loses 
 his temper but keeps his ideal, and at last rises up in triumph, 
 having packed his coffer in the one way that is mathematically 
 right. It closes perfectly, and the lock turns with a click ; be- 
 tween one object and another you cannot insert the point 
 of a penknife. To work successfully beneath a few grave, 
 rigid laws, is always a strong man's highest ideal of success." 
 
 The dramatist has to choose a theme and to develop 
 this theme into a story suitable for the stage ; he has to 
 set this story in motion so that the scenes which must be 
 shown will follow one another easily ; he has to people 
 this story with characters, interesting in themselves and 
 contrasting with one another ; and he has to place these 
 
178 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 characters in appropriate surroundings, devising op- 
 portunities for them to come together without unduly 
 straining probabilities. He has to do one thing at a time 
 and all things in their turn. He has to remember always 
 that the spectators for whose delight he is working 
 have only one pair of ears apiece and one pair of eyes. 
 The theater is not a three-ringed circus ; and he must 
 never forget Herbert Spencer's declaration of the doc- 
 trine of Economy of Attention, quite as applicable in 
 the other arts as it is to rhetoric. The dramatist must 
 make it easy for the spectators to follow his story, 
 however complicated its plot may be. He must avoid 
 confusing them or leaving them in doubt as to the 
 reason for anything done on the stage. The first act 
 must be clear, of course ; but then all the acts must be 
 clear, or they will not be interesting. The dramatist 
 has not done his duty when the spectators are puzzled 
 even for a moment and ask each other what it is all 
 about. 
 
 Yet Dumas is right in insisting that it is of prime 
 importance that the first act shall be clear, for if this 
 is obscure, the attention of the audience is distracted, 
 and they will not be able to follow what comes after. 
 Two of the most salient differences between a play 
 and a novel are due to two of the actual facts of per- 
 formance; first, that in the theater, every minute is 
 counted, whereby the playwright can waste time only 
 at the risk of boring and of bewildering the specta- 
 tors; and, second, that the spectators must seize the 
 thread of the story as it is unrolled before them, being 
 denied the privilege of turning back to the first chap- 
 ter to pick up any hints they may have missed inad- 
 vertently. 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 179 
 
 ii 
 
 Every work of literary art must have a beginning, a 
 middle, and an end; and here is where art sharply 
 separates itself from life, which is all middle, with an 
 end that no man may see, and with numberless begin- 
 nings lost in the dark backward of Time. The artist 
 has to decide just what portion and just how much he 
 will present of this unending pattern which is a-weav- 
 ing on the loom of eternity. He must have a beginning 
 somewhere and he must make an end somehow. The 
 epic poet of old, and his later inheritor, the novelist 
 of to-day, have to conform to this as well as the dra- 
 matic poet ; but narrative art is far freer than dramatic, 
 far more flexible, far less restricted by the demands 
 of a rigid form. 
 
 The strict limitation of the time allotted to him de- 
 bars the dramatist from the leisurely method of ap- 
 proach which the novelist may adopt if he sees fit. In 
 a story, the author can begin as far back as he likes, 
 filling his opening pages with a detailed record of his 
 hero's ancestry, even unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion, dilating at will upon details not strictly essential, 
 and digressing as much or as little as the spirit moves 
 him. But in a play, the writer must select what is sig- 
 nificant, and he must so present this that its signifi- 
 cance is manifest at first sight. He can neither digress 
 nor dilate ; he must keep to the straight line which 
 is the shortest distance between two points. Many 
 things must have happened before he lifts the curtain ; 
 and out of all these, he has to make his choice, so that 
 he can center attention on those special things which 
 he knows the audience must have in mind for the full 
 comprehension of his action. He suppresses rigorously 
 
180 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 all the rest, however tempting they may be in them- 
 selves. He must supply the spectators with exactly 
 the information they will need to apprehend the move- 
 ment of the plot, no more and no less. 
 
 The first desire of the audience present at the per- 
 formance of a play is to understand what it is all about, 
 and their second demand is that the action shall de- 
 velop before their eyes so that it can be followed with- 
 out effort. When two characters of the play meet for the 
 first time on the stage, the spectator is glad if he already 
 knows who they are, what their relation is the one to 
 the other, and what they are each of them striving for. 
 If this information has already been given to him, he 
 can listen to their dialogue with intelligent interest. If 
 this information has been withheld, his attention is 
 likely to be distracted by his effort to place the two char- 
 acters and to guess what they are driving at. Often 
 the two characters can explain themselves in a word or 
 two at the beginning of their talk ; but often again their 
 relations are more or less complicated, depending on 
 an unusual series of antecedent events. The more in- 
 tricate this complexity may be, the more obvious is 
 the obligation of the playwright to set it forth with the 
 utmost sharpness, so that it cannot be misunderstood. 
 A full appreciation of the relations of the several char- 
 acters to each other is a condition precedent to the 
 playgoer's interest in the action, as it is unfolded before 
 him. 
 
 In the vocabulary of stage-craft, this conveying to the 
 audience of the knowledge necessary to enable them 
 to follow the plot is known as "exposition." It is a 
 very important part of the art of construction. It is 
 one of the tests by which we can gage the dexterity 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 181 
 
 of a dramatist, and by which we can measure his com- 
 mand over the resources of his craft. Some play- 
 wrights have to perfection a knack of taking the play- 
 goer right into the middle of things in the opening 
 scenes of the first act, with a simplicity apparently so 
 straightforward that he has never a suspicion of the 
 artfulness whereby he has been supplied with all sorts 
 of information about the past history of the chief char- 
 acters. Some dramatists are careless and slovenly in 
 exposition; and some are leisurely and cumbrous. 
 
 But no dramatic author can evade the necessity of 
 telling the audience all about that portion of his plot 
 which took place before the curtain rises on his first 
 act. Sooner or later this information must be supplied 
 somehow. The dramatist can do it in a prologue 
 which is spoken before the play begins, as Plautus does 
 in the " Captives." He can do it inside the play in a 
 long soliloquy which is practically a prologue, as Eu- 
 ripides does in " Medea." He can put it into tense dia- 
 logue supported by swift action in the opening scenes 
 of the first act, as Shakspere does in "Othello." He 
 can postpone it for a while and scatter it through the 
 whole play, as Ibsen does in " Ghosts." But he must 
 not put it off until it is too late, as Ibsen does in " Ros- 
 mersholm," where we do not learn until the final act 
 the real motive which has been guiding Rebecca West. 
 This we should have liked to know earlier in the play, 
 since it would have enabled us to perceive the trans- 
 formation that had been wrought in her character. 
 
 If we may deduce a principle from the practice of 
 the most expert playwrights, we should be led to be- 
 lieve that the best method of exposition is to compress 
 it into the first act, even at the risk of making the 
 
182 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 earlier scenes a little slow and labored. When they 
 first take their seats in the theater, the spectators are 
 alert and ready to seize even the slightest hint. They 
 have not had time yet to be tired and they are there- 
 fore less easily bored. Besides, even if they are bored 
 by the first act, they have paid their money for the 
 evening's entertainment, and therefore they can be 
 relied on to stay where they are and to await patiently 
 the second act with the firm hope that this will turn 
 out to be more interesting. 
 
 This was Scribe's habit, and Scribe was a past-master 
 of all the mysteries of playmaking. He massed all his 
 explanatory matter in the earliest scenes of his piece, 
 making everything transparently clear, so that even 
 the dullest and the laziest spectators could not fail to 
 understand the situation. He brought his characters 
 into the action one by one, introducing them to the 
 audience carefully so that they might always thereafter 
 be identified. If he thought it advisable, he did not 
 hesitate to give up a whole act to mere exposition, well 
 aware that he could recapture the full attention of the 
 spectators by the celerity with which the action would 
 go forward, after these preliminary explanations and 
 introductions had been got rid of. Thus it is that in 
 " Adrienne Lecouvreur," he kept the heroine out of the 
 opening act, in which all the other characters appear 
 to lay the foundation of the plot, and he artfully re- 
 served her first appearance to awaken fresh interest 
 in the second act. 
 
 Scribe's contemporary, the elder Dumas, was quite 
 as careful and as skilful in his introductory scenes. 
 He liked to begin briskly, and to combine his exposi- 
 tion with the action itself. He has told us that he had 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 183 
 
 invented the story of one of his most successful plays, 
 "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," two or three years be- 
 fore he was ready to write it, postponing the actual 
 composition until he happened on an effective open- 
 ing. One day he heard about a pair of lovers who had 
 broken a coin in two, each keeping a half, with the 
 understanding that when either tired of the other, the 
 half-coin should be returned as a token of the end 
 of their intrigue. He seized on this eagerly and used 
 it as the starting-point of the play already completely 
 plotted in his head. 
 
 The younger Dumas, the author of the perennial 
 and pathetic piece known to American playgoers as 
 "Camille," inherited from his father a native gift for 
 playmaking and a subtle insight into its conditions. He 
 declared that the art of the dramatist is an art of pre- 
 paration chiefly, and that every scene should be led 
 up to so adroitly that the spectator expects it vaguely 
 and welcomes it warmly. And he had derived from 
 his father also a liking for a striking beginning, which 
 should grip the interest of the audience at the very 
 rise of the curtain, forcing them to perceive at once 
 and without hesitation the relations of the chief char- 
 acters to one another. 
 
 But it is in one of his later and less successful pieces, 
 the "Femme de Claude," that he provides the most 
 ingenious specimen of his skill in opening a play with 
 a scene which is at once explanatory and effective in 
 itself. When the curtain rises, the stage is dark and 
 the spectators can dimly perceive a room with its shut- 
 ters closed. An old servant enters with a night lamp, 
 which she holds up to the face of a clock; it is morn- 
 ing, and she is going to let in the dawn. Then she 
 
184 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 hears a tapping at the window, followed by a woman's 
 voice, which she recognizes with regret. " Why the 
 devil is she coming back?" she asks herself. "All 
 was going well here." Then she throws wide the shut- 
 ters and opens the door for the woman outside. And 
 from the brief dialogue which follows, as sharp and as 
 cold as the crossing of two swords in a duel, the spec- 
 tators learn that the returning woman is the wander- 
 ing wife of the master of the house, and in response 
 to her questions as to what has happened during her 
 absence, the old servant sets before us all of the facts 
 which are necessary to interest us in the strange play. 
 
 Sardou, the contemporary of the younger Dumas, 
 and the successor of Scribe as a dramaturgic artificer, 
 was also ingenious in his expositions. The first act of 
 " Fedora," for example, is a prologue which is needed 
 to explain and to justify the play it precedes ; but it is 
 also swift in its action and pictorial in its movement ; 
 and when at last the curtain falls on it, we see that the 
 clever playwright ended it with an interrogation mark, 
 with a suggestion of suspense which keeps us in our 
 seats wondering what will be the outcome of the fatal 
 episode we have witnessed. 
 
 Often, however, Sardou adopted another method, 
 as in his earlier social satires, "Nos Intimes" and the 
 "Famille Benoiton," and in his later historical melo- 
 dramas," Theodora" and " Gismonda." In these plays, 
 he used his first act, and often his second also, to paint 
 a phase of society, modern or ancient. He brought 
 before us a crowd of characters, entertaining in them- 
 selves and humorously contrasted with one another, 
 making amusing remarks and revealing themselves in 
 amusing situations. As the play goes forward, the 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 185 
 
 spectator begins to have his attention drawn to a little 
 group of more striking figures ; and in the later acts, 
 these figures take the center of the stage, the host of 
 merely pictorial characters sinking into the background, 
 after having served their purpose. It is by means of 
 the talk of these subsidiary personages that we have 
 been made aware of the relations of the really important 
 characters. In Sardou's hands, this method was em- 
 ployed to advantage ; but it is dangerous, since it tends 
 to distract the attention of the audience from the core 
 of the real drama. For its successful use, it requires 
 the marvelous dexterity of a wizard of stage-craft, such 
 as Sardou was ; and it was Sardou's misfortune that his 
 delight in his own skill as a contriver of artful devices 
 led him too often to be content with a play which is 
 only an empty mechanism, in which the spectators 
 can see the wheels go round and by which all human 
 feeling has been crushed out of the story. 
 
 in 
 
 One of the oldest devices, outworn now and long 
 ago discarded by self-respecting dramatists, is to open 
 the play with the conversation of two or three servants, 
 dusting the room and setting the furniture to rights. 
 These domestics are allowed to inform the spectator 
 that it is two years or ten since master and mistress 
 quarrelled and parted, and that now husband and 
 wife are to meet again for the first time since their 
 separation. Equally ancient is the obvious artifice of 
 beginning the piece by compelling one character to tell 
 another what that character already knows. The ar- 
 tificiality of this seems to us now a little too transpar- 
 ent. Yet Dryden did not scorn to employ it more than 
 
186 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 once, notably in his "Spanish Friar," which begins 
 with the meeting of two officers at night who repeat 
 aloud what each of them is already familiar with. 
 It is no wonder that Sheridan saw the absurdity of this 
 threadbare convention and made fun of it in the bur- 
 lesque tragedy which is rehearsed in the " Critic." 
 
 And yet the audience must be told somehow, and 
 even the clumsiest exposition is better than leaving the 
 spectator in the dark. In the drama, as in all the other 
 arts, simplicity is the best policy; and that exposition 
 is most satisfactory which is at once straightforward, 
 and swift and clear. This is what every great dra- 
 matist has tried to attain, well aware that it cannot 
 be achieved without taking thought. The principles 
 of dramatic art are unchanging through the ages, 
 and ^Eschylus in Athens, Shakspere in London, and 
 Moliere in Paris, had to solve the same problem that 
 Scribe and Sardou had to struggle with in their turn. 
 Each of them, in his own fashion, had to take the au- 
 dience into the heart of his story, supplying the inform- 
 ation necessary for its appreciation as best he could. 
 
 ^Eschylus opens his masterpiece, "Agamemnon," 
 with a watchman on the roof of the palace, waiting for 
 the fiery beacon which shall announce the fall of Troy ; 
 and as he waits, he delivers a long soliloquy conveying 
 to the spectators the needful knowledge of the state of 
 affairs which the returning hero will find when he 
 comes back to his long-deserted home. Moliere opens 
 his masterpiece, " Tartuffe," with a piquant discussion 
 of the character of the hypocritical intruder, which 
 strikes the note of the play and which prepares us for 
 all that follows. Goethe said that the first scene of 
 "Tartuffe" is "the greatest and best example of an 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 187 
 
 introduction which shows the significance and impor- 
 tance of what is to come " ; and he declared that Moliere 
 was "the man from whom most about the technic of 
 the modern drama can be learned." And yet Moliere 
 was sometimes bold in employing more primitive 
 methods of exposition, not hesitating to begin a play 
 by sending on a character to make a soliloquy in which 
 the situation is set forth boldly. 
 
 Shakspere was careful in the exposition of his ear- 
 lier pieces, both comic and tragic. He plunges into the 
 thick of his story in the opening scene of "Othello," 
 in which he shows us lago waking Desdemona's father, 
 with the unwelcome news that the daughter of a Vene- 
 tian patrician has married a Moor. And he follows this 
 with the meeting of the Senators, where Othello is called 
 upon to tell the story of his wooing. When the first act 
 of the play is over, we know all that we need to know, 
 and our attention has been kept keenly on the alert, 
 while we are eager to be told how the strange marriage 
 will turn out. Equally ingenious and effective is the 
 first act of " Romeo and Juliet," in the opening scene 
 of which we find the feud between the Montagues and 
 the Capulets so embittered that it breaks out into a street 
 brawl. And then, when this envenomed quarrel has 
 been shown unforgettably, we are allowed to be wit- 
 nesses of the love-at-first-sight of the son of one house 
 for the daughter of the other. 
 
 It is characteristic of the incisive but often hap- 
 hazard criticism of Hazlitt that he casually dismissed 
 the "Comedy of Errors" as a careless piece of work. 
 Now, it is a fact that Shakspere, who was capable of 
 an infinity of pains in handling his plot when his theme 
 had kindled his interest, was careless enough in the 
 
188 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 construction of some of his later pieces, in "Cymbe- 
 line" especially, and in the "Winter's Tale."" But 
 there are few evidences of this relaxing of his artistic 
 standard in his earlier plays, and none at all in the 
 "Comedy of Errors." Indeed, careless is just what 
 this play is not and just what it could not be, since it 
 depends entirely on the adjustment of its mechanism. 
 It is only a farce, after all, inferior, and perhaps un- 
 worthy of the hand that was to give us " Othello" and 
 " Macbeth." Like other farces, it has to rely not on the 
 humor and the veracity of its characters, but on the 
 adroitness of its situations. It stands revealed frankly 
 as farce when we examine its plot, which is patently 
 impossible, since it requires us to accept the existence 
 of two pairs of twins so alike in looks, in speech, in 
 manner, and even in costume that they can be con- 
 stantly taken the one for the other, in spite of their 
 having been brought up in different places. 
 
 That the spectators may get amusement out of the 
 various mistaken identities which make up the plot, 
 it is absolutely essential that they should be told plainly, 
 at the very beginning, all about the two sets of twins, 
 and that they should have explained to them the strange 
 combination of circumstances which has resulted in 
 bringing both pairs of brothers together unexpectedly 
 in the same city, the one master and his servant hav- 
 ing every reason to believe that the other master and 
 the other servant have been lost at sea. To tell these 
 things so that there shall be no doubt about them is 
 no easy task ; and Shakspere accomplished it with ab- 
 solute certainty and with perfect apprehension of dra- 
 matic effect. He opened his play with a hearing before 
 the Duke, who is judging the case of the father of the 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 189 
 
 two young masters. This bereaved parent has come 
 to seek his missing son, and in so doing he has violated 
 the local law against strangers. He pleads as his ex- 
 cuse his paternal love for his lost child. Thus the whole 
 story of the two pairs of twins, of their birth and of 
 their separation, of their survival each unknown to 
 the other, all this is set forth in the speech of an old 
 man on trial for his life, a situation which instantly 
 arouses the sympathy of the audience and secures their 
 unflagging attention. 
 
 We can see one reason for Shakspere's extreme care- 
 fulness in exposition when we recall the fact that more 
 than half of the Elizabethan playgoers were not pro- 
 vided with seats. The groundlings, as they were called, 
 had to stand all through the performance, and they 
 could not help being more restless and therefore less 
 alert to follow the explanations of the author than if 
 they had been comfortably seated. But even if they 
 were a little restless at times, the audiences for whose 
 delight Shakspere composed his plays were quick 
 enough to seize and to appreciate what the dramatist 
 gave them. Here Shakspere was far more fortunate 
 than Plautus who had to amuse the Roman populace, 
 made up of freedmen and of foreigners, the riffraff and 
 the rabble of the city, often only imperfectly acquainted 
 with Latin. In his "Captives," Plautus dealt with a 
 story the beginnings of which are rather complicated, 
 although not really so intricate and so difficult to ex- 
 plain as the antecedents of the characters in the " Com- 
 edy of Errors." The Roman playwright evidently had 
 no confidence in the intelligence or in the attention 
 of his audience ; and so he took no chances. He did 
 not dare develop the relations of his characters in the 
 
190 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 play itself until he had made use of a prologue, in 
 which the whole situation is elaborately explained so 
 that even the dullest must get hold of it. Nor did this 
 satisfy him; he made the speaker of the prologue in- 
 sist on his explanation two or three times over, until 
 it was driven into the heads of the spectators, however 
 stupid they might be. And no doubt this extreme 
 emphasis of exposition was only what was absolutely 
 necessary under the circumstances. 
 
 It is difficult always for a dramatist to gage the aver- 
 age intelligence of his successive audiences. What is 
 only explanation enough for one set of spectators may 
 be undue insistence on the obvious for another. And 
 the wise playwright is ready to risk offending the quick- 
 minded few to make sure of the understanding of the 
 slow-witted many. Planche records the advice given 
 to him early in the nineteenth century by a sagacious 
 old stage-manager named Bartley. " If you want the 
 British public to understand what you are doing," 
 this shrewd observer declared, "you must tell them 
 that you are going to do it; then you must tell them 
 that you are doing it ; and after all you must tell them 
 that you have done it. And then, confound them, 
 perhaps they will understand you." 
 
 IV 
 
 This is a hard saying, yet it contains much wisdom. 
 Especially is it important for the playwright to tell 
 the spectators what he is going to do, or at least to 
 evoke the interest of expectancy and to lead them 
 vaguely to desire what he is about to set before them. 
 In prose-fiction, it is possible to captivate readers by 
 keeping a secret from them, disclosed only at the most 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 191 
 
 impressive moment. In fact, the effect of the detective- 
 story depends solely on this device ; the author invents 
 an enigma and he tries to keep us guessing until the 
 last page. And even novelists of a richer endowment, 
 possessing true imagination in addition to mere in- 
 vention (which is all that the writer of mystery-tales 
 needs), novelists like Fielding and Thackeray, may 
 legitimately leave us in doubt for a little while, and 
 reveal the secret of the birth of Tom Jones and of 
 Henry Esmond only when they see fit. But this the nov- 
 elists may do because their unhurried reader can take 
 time to think. And this the dramatist cannot do. One 
 of the first rules of the stage is not to keep a secret 
 from the spectators. The failure of Charles Lamb's 
 "Mr. H." was more or less due to the circumstance 
 that the misguided author chose to conceal the real 
 name, of which his hero was ashamed, not only from 
 the other characters in the little farce, but also from the 
 audience. The spectators must know the facts, even 
 though the characters may be left groping in the dark 
 until the last act. Indeed, the audience finds special 
 pleasure in the perplexity of the people in the play ; it 
 wonders what will happen when Othello discovers the 
 villainy of lago, or when Sir Peter Teazle finds out that 
 Joseph Surface is a hypocrite. 
 
 In Mrs. Oliphant's uninspired biography of the au- 
 thor of the " School for Scandal," she exhibited her 
 total failure to grasp this principle. Herself a success- 
 ful writer of prose-fiction, she had no understanding 
 of the fundamental differences which necessarily exist 
 between the art of the novelist and the art of the 
 dramatist. When she came to deal with the screen- 
 scene of the "School for Scandal," one of the most 
 
192 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 effective episodes in the whole range of comedy, she 
 was guilty of a masterpiece of undramatic criticism. 
 Sir Peter has come to the library of Joseph and he is 
 told that there is a little milliner hidden behind the 
 screen which stands before the window ; and suddenly, 
 when this screen is overturned, he finds himself face 
 to face with his own wife. And then Mrs. Oliphant 
 made this hopeless comment : " It would no doubt have 
 been higher art could the dramatist have deceived his 
 audience as well as the personages of the play, and 
 made us also parties in the surprise of the discovery." 
 That is to say, she would have substituted a single 
 shock of astonishment for the long-drawn series of an- 
 ticipations aroused in the spectators, from the moment 
 of the husband's entrance, by their knowledge that it 
 was Lady Teazle who was hidden behind the screen. 
 The playgoer likes to exercise his ingenuity and to 
 foresee what is about to happen on the stage. In fact, 
 his interest is really not so much in what is to happen 
 as the way in which this event is going to affect the 
 characters involved. He thinks it likely enough that 
 Sir Peter will discover that Lady Teazle is paying a 
 visit to Joseph Surface ; but what he is really anxious 
 to learn is the way the husband will take it. What 
 will Lady Teazle have to say when she is discovered 
 where she has no business to be ? How will Sir Peter 
 receive her excuses ? What will the effect be on the 
 future conduct of both husband and wife ? These are 
 the questions which the spectators are eager to have 
 answered. The dramatist may excite curiosity by all 
 sorts of ingenious devices, but he must never deceive 
 the spectators. He may keep them in suspense or in 
 doubt, but he must not absolutely mislead them. 
 
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THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 193 
 
 Even in prose-fiction, the impression made by a 
 startling surprise is only fleeting. When we have once 
 been granted an explanation of the mysterious deeds, 
 our curiosity is satisfied ; and the book is rarely taken 
 up a second time. Few of us ever care to peruse a tale 
 of Wilkie Collins after we have once found out the 
 key of the puzzle, although we may return again and 
 again to Tom Jones and to Henry Esmond, following 
 the career of either with renewed interest, in spite of 
 the fact that we are in possession of the secret of his 
 birth. Poe was very shrewd when he asserted that 
 "Barnaby Rudge" would have been more interesting 
 if Dickens had eschewed all mystery-mongering. In 
 the drama, our knowledge of the end of a play in no 
 wise interferes with our enjoyment. We go to see the 
 "School for Scandal" and "Othello," whenever they 
 are properly presented, regardless of the fact that the 
 end is familiar in advance. We are glad to have new 
 dramatists handle again the old themes, "Francesca 
 da Rimini," and " Faust," curious to observe the vari- 
 ations which the younger generations can play on the 
 *old tune we have known from our own youth. In this, 
 we are like the Greeks of old, the Athenians who, in 
 spite of their longing to hear some new thing, con- 
 tented themselves in the theater with the traditional 
 stories which every dramatist took over in turn, trans- 
 forming them to suit his own genius. 
 
 Here, as in all matters of art, the Greeks displayed 
 their good sense. Novelty of plot is possible only 
 within narrow limits ; and every dramatist has to bor- 
 row again the situations which were the common 
 property of his predecessors. Gozzi, the Italian play- 
 wright, once declared that there were only thirty- 
 
194 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 six possible situations ; and when Goethe and Schiller 
 tried to catalogue them, they could not find even 
 thirty-six. There was truth of a kind in the school- 
 boy's definition of a plagiarist as " a writer of plays." 
 The dramatist must be forever working over old ma- 
 terial, since there is nothing new under the sun. But 
 if the situations he can use are very few, the char- 
 acters he may create are without number. Human 
 nature is infinitely various, and the playwright has un- 
 limited credit when he is drawing a draft on our com- 
 mon humanity. His plot may be as old as the hills, 
 if he can only people it with lovers as young as the 
 springtime, with men and women eternally fresh be- 
 cause they are true to life. Brisk young fellows had 
 wooed coy maids in many a comedy before Orlando 
 and Rosalind met again in the Forest of Arden, and 
 Orestes had set out to avenge his murdered father cen- 
 turies ere the same burden was too heavily laid on 
 Hamlet. 
 
 The plot is only the frame in which the portrait is 
 suspended, even though plotting is more essential than 
 character-drawing. The ultimate value of the situations 
 is that they enable the dramatist to reveal human na- 
 ture. And this is one reason why dramatists of high 
 distinction have sometimes seemed careless in winding 
 up their plays. Of course, every playwright must work 
 out the end of his piece before he writes his first line. 
 Until he knows just where he is going, he cannot set out 
 on his journey, since he has no leisure for a false start. 
 And yet this goal to which he is journeying may be 
 arbitrarily chosen, and when it arrives it may seem 
 illogical or even contradictory. 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the necessity of an expo- 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 195 
 
 sition so clear that no misunderstanding is possible 
 even on the part of a preoccupied spectator. The be- 
 ginning of a play is really more important than the end, 
 although in strict logic the proper untying of the knot 
 would seem to be the more necessary. But if an au- 
 dience has sat for three hours, following with keen en- 
 joyment the successive episodes of a conflict between 
 forces evenly balanced, it does not insist upon logic; 
 it is often better pleased to have the knot cut arbitrarily 
 than to be delayed by the process of untying. It has had 
 its pleasure, pressed down and running over ; and it is 
 not churlish in denying to the author the privilege of 
 finishing off the play as he thinks fit. The play itself 
 is what counts, not the way the story is made to end. 
 The picture of life is what the spectators have enjoyed ; 
 and they do not or at least the most of them do not 
 care what moral may be tagged to the fable by which 
 they have been entertained. Perhaps this is one reason 
 why Shakspere and Moliere are sometimes so casual in 
 the winding up of their plots, as though they were ad- 
 mitting that since in real life nothing ever comes to an 
 end, so on the stage, even if an end of some sort is asked 
 for, one end is about as good as another. 
 
 The modern playgoer prefers a happy ending. He 
 has a fondness for the old-fashioned fairy-tale finish, 
 " and so they lived happily ever after." It is only in 
 opera that he is willing to tolerate the sadness of death, 
 He is not like the playgoer of Athens who seems to have 
 expected always to see the doom fulfilled and fate ac- 
 complished. And this is not a recent trait of the play- 
 goer's temperament; we can find an earlier yielding 
 to this in the marrying off in the last acts of " Measure 
 for Measure," for example, when that gloomy play 
 
196 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 demanded a more serious conclusion. And Moliere 
 not only brought Tartuffe to justice, but also took the 
 trouble to restore the fortune of Orgon, which is in the 
 nature of a concession to this predilection of the pub- 
 lic for a pleasing solution. So Mr. Gillette, in his " Secret 
 Service," an admirable play in its veracity as well as 
 in its ingenuity, carried us straight to the tragic end 
 which is the only logical issue of the circumstances 
 and the characters, and then, at the culmination, 
 when the prompter's hand was on the bell to ring 
 down the curtain, the author suddenly reprieved his 
 hero and married him off in the twinkling of an eye. 
 The effect is as though the dramatist was saying to the 
 audience, " Of course, this play is a tragedy, and it 
 cannot really be anything else, but, if most of you insist 
 on a happy ending, you may have it your own way ! " 
 It is true that there had been so much comedy here 
 and there in "Secret Service" that the spectators were 
 not ready to take the play as a tragedy. 
 
 Such a violation of logic would have been very offen- 
 sive to the younger Dumas, who was stern in his in- 
 sistence that the plot of a play ought to be like a mathe- 
 matical demonstration. The conclusion must be the 
 sum total, the working out, of all the other scenes. This 
 principle is sound enough when it is applied to Dumas's 
 own pieces in which he was defending a thesis or ex- 
 pounding his own opinions. It is sound when applied 
 to the social-drama of Ibsen, sustained by a moral 
 proposition. In the social-drama, the playwright is 
 bound to be honest with himself and with the audience. 
 He has then no right to be illogical, for logic is of the 
 essence of the contract, as the lawyers say. He must 
 keep faith with the spectators, since he is presenting 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 197 
 
 to us a sociological problem and inviting us to accept 
 his solution of it. But in the comedy-of-character and 
 in the comedy-of -manners, no such obligation is really 
 imposed on the playwright. In the plays of these allied 
 types, the dramatist has no thesis to sustain, no private 
 opinion to parade ; and he is content to set before us a 
 group of human beings whom he puts through their 
 paces, whom he turns inside out before us. And when 
 he has done this, he has accomplished his purpose, and 
 the play can be wound up summarily by the customary 
 wedding bells. 
 
 v 
 
 This license allowed him at the termination of his 
 work, the playwright sometimes asks for in the middle 
 also; and here he is on dangerous ground, where he 
 must move circumspectly, picking his way cautiously. 
 It must be ever his chief aim to make his work appear 
 as " natural " as may be ; and his art is held in the high- 
 est esteem only when he is able to avoid not only the 
 extravagant and the arbitrary, but even the accidental. 
 It should be his constant endeavor so to present the re- 
 sult of his loving labor that it can be apprehended and 
 appreciated with as little effort as possible. This is a 
 quality of sculpture and of painting, when these arts 
 are at their best. It is a characteristic more especially 
 of those literary arts in which the poet undertakes to 
 tell a story either in drama or in prose-fiction. Whether 
 the story-teller is setting his tale in action on the stage, 
 or presenting it in narrative in verse or in prose, he is 
 bound to do his best to give the utmost verisimilitude 
 to the series of events to which he is inviting the atten- 
 tion of the spectator or the reader. In planning his plot, 
 he must endeavor to make these events coherent and 
 
198 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 clear and complete in themselves. He can do this only 
 by isolating them from all the other events which have 
 been taking place at the same time. From out of the 
 tumultuous turmoil of existence, he must select a se- 
 quence of happenings to which he has to give a sem- 
 blance of unity; and he chooses this particular chain 
 of events, and not any other, because he can see in it 
 a significance worthy of artistic presentation. 
 
 These actions of certain characters plucked out from 
 the tangled web of real life he has to set by themselves ; 
 he has to condense them and to relate them logically; 
 he has to keep out all extraneous and casual circum- 
 stances not bearing directly upon them. Only by this 
 process of exclusion is he able to focus attention upon 
 the group he has determined to show us. He is com- 
 pelled to neglect and deliberately to leave out of ac- 
 count all the other persons then going about their busi- 
 ness anywhere in the world at large. It is his duty so 
 to deal with this group of picked men and women that 
 their deeds shall seem to be determined by themselves 
 and by themselves only, unaffected by what might be 
 done by outsiders. 
 
 Here, of course, the artist has to depart from the 
 mere facts of life as we all see them ; and by tacit agree- 
 ment, the spectators authorize him to make this de- 
 parture. In life, there are no groups of human beings 
 detached from their fellows, sufficient unto themselves 
 and uninfluenced by the rest of humanity. We cannot 
 help knowing that every man and every woman is eter- 
 nally immeshed in the intricate complexity of existence, 
 and that we are all of us affected by the myriad move- 
 ments of our fellow-creatures. And yet when we are 
 spectators at a play, or readers of a novel, we not only 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 199 
 
 permit this departure from the circumstances of actual 
 life, we demand it absolutely. We are eager to have the 
 artist profit by the convention proper to his art. 
 
 What we desire from the artist is not the exact fact, 
 but the underlying truth, of which the several facts 
 are only the external accompaniment. We want him 
 to choose his little knot of characters and to segregate 
 them from out the mass of their fellow-beings, that 
 we may the more easily follow the story he is ready to 
 set before us. It is this isolated action of an isolated 
 group of characters that we want to see. And we are 
 swift to praise the artist for the skill with which he can 
 depart from the actual to give us what we are glad 
 to accept as the real. As Victor Hugo insisted in the 
 preface of "Cromwell," the "domain of art and the 
 domain of nature are absolutely distinct," since a re- 
 ality in art is and must be different from a reality in 
 nature. 
 
 The dramatist and the novelist demand from the 
 public the permission to select what they prefer, to ar- 
 range this as they may see fit, and to leave out all that 
 they have no immediate use for; and they do this so 
 that the public shall be called upon to give its atten- 
 tion only to a single group of characters taking part in 
 a single sequence of events, logically related the one 
 to the other, and moving forward without any inter- 
 ruption from the outside world and without any ob- 
 trusion of chance. And this the public gladly allows, 
 hoping to see in the story, whether it is on the stage 
 or in a book, the working out of a single notion, taken 
 by itself, naked of non-essentials, and uncontaminated 
 by external accidents such as occur commonly enough 
 in actual life. 
 
200 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 In childhood , we can be amused easily by tales of the 
 Impossible and of the Improbable ; and most of us never 
 outgrow this childishness. But as we advance in years 
 and in wisdom and in knowledge of the world, many 
 of us become more exacting ; and we insist that the au- 
 thor who wants our regard shall not stray too widely 
 from the Probable. A few of us will go so far as to be- 
 stow our warmest welcome on the writer who seeks to 
 deal only with the Inevitable, and who tries resolutely 
 to tell the truth about his characters and to let them 
 obey the law of their being, doing only what they must 
 do and eschewing everything that they would not do 
 if they were left to themselves. 
 
 We hold those plays and those novels to be the finest 
 and the most enduring in which we are made to feel 
 that nothing has happened by accident or because the 
 author himself intervened at the critical moment, and 
 in which every action of every character is what it is 
 because it could not be otherwise, if the conditions 
 are what they have been represented. This ultimate 
 truth, this abiding veracity, this inexorable inevitabil- 
 ity, is what we are delighted to proclaim in most of the 
 mightier masterpieces of literature in the " CEdipus" 
 of Sophocles, in the "Macbeth" of Shakspere, in the 
 "Tartuffe" of Moliere, and also in the "Heart of 
 Midlothian" of Scott, in the "Scarlet Letter" of 
 Hawthorne, in the " Smoke" of Turgenieff, and in the 
 "Anna Karenina" of Tolstoy. 
 
 While both the novelist and the dramatist are held 
 strictly accountable to this ethical standard and are 
 both of them bound to tell the truth as they see it, the 
 playwright has a more difficult task esthetically than 
 the story-teller. His explanations have to be summary, 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 201 
 
 and the deeds of his characters must speak for them- 
 selves. It is always difficult for the dramatist, and in- 
 deed it is not always possible for him, to make his plot 
 as clear and as swift as it ought to be, without a single 
 intervention of chance or a single deed which is not the 
 spontaneous result of the individual will of the char- 
 acter who performs it. While we have a right to demand 
 from the leisurely novelist a strict obedience to the 
 letter of the law, we are inclined to relax the code now 
 and again for the benefit of the dramatist. And the evi- 
 dence that we are not so severe with the playwright as 
 with the story-teller is to be found in the fact that we 
 tolerantly overlook in more than one of the great plays 
 the intervention of chance or the obtrusion of the arbi- 
 trary, which we should be much less likely to pardon 
 in a story claiming equal rank. 
 
 For example, " Romeo and Juliet" is a tragedy, and 
 in a tragedy nothing ought to be left to chance and 
 everything ought to be the result of the volition of the 
 various characters. And yet we cannot help seeing 
 that the fatal termination of the story, seemingly in- 
 herent in the deadly feud of the rival houses, is brought 
 about at last by what is only an accident. If Friar Lau- 
 rence had but thought of the device of the potion two 
 minutes earlier, before Romeo parted from Juliet in 
 the cell, or if only the letter Friar Laurence sent after 
 Romeo to Mantua had not miscarried, then Romeo 
 would have known that Juliet was not dead but sleep- 
 ing ; he would not have taken poison ; and Juliet would 
 not have been glad to die on his dead body. A recent 
 commentator has made bold to defend this as a subtle 
 touch of Shakspere's art, in that it serves to remind 
 us of the large part which chance plays in all human 
 
202 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 affairs. Ingenious as this defence may be, it is radi- 
 cally unsound, since it confuses the reality of nature 
 with the reality of art. 
 
 The reason why this obtrusion of accident into this 
 tragedy of Shakspere's does not shock us, or even an- 
 noy us, is twofold. In the first place, we cannot help 
 feeling that doom is ever impending over the ill-starred 
 lovers, and that even if Romeo had known about the 
 potion, something else would assuredly have brought 
 about the unavoidable end. And in the second place, 
 Shakspere very adroitly wastes little time on explaining 
 why the letter failed to reach Romeo. Indeed, the let- 
 ter is something we do not see ; it is something that we 
 are merely told about. Now, in the theater nothing 
 grips our attention except what is actually shown to 
 us. What is talked about makes little or no impression ; 
 the empty words go in one ear and out the other. And 
 nobody knew this better than Shakspere. 
 
 In "Romeo and Juliet," the plot ends as it does be- 
 cause of an accident, which is indisputably arbitrary. 
 In certain other of Shakspere's plays, the action is 
 what it is, because one or another of the characters acts 
 arbitrarily, not of his own accord, but solely because 
 the poet compels him to this deed that the plot can be 
 carried on. If this arbitrary character is one of the 
 important personages of the play, then this act of his 
 focuses our attention and we cannot help noticing it. 
 But if this arbitrary character is unimportant in him- 
 self, we pay little heed to him, and we may even not note 
 his departure from truth. In the first case, the falsity 
 of his conduct is so paraded that the interest of the 
 play suffers, whereas in the second case, we are so 
 taken up in following the fortunes of the vital figures, 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 203 
 
 that we pay no heed to the misdeeds of the minor char- 
 acters, who exist merely to work the plot. 
 
 In "As You Like It," for instance, the conduct of the 
 usurping Duke and of Oliver, the elder brother of Or- 
 lando, is not logical, or at least it is not so presented as 
 to make us believe in its strict relation to their char- 
 acteristics. The Duke and Oliver fulfil their purpose, 
 when their ill-founded jealousies bring about the 
 union of Rosalind and Orlando in the Forest of Arden. 
 And their sudden and absurd repentance at the end of 
 the play, their reformation in the twinkling of an eye, 
 does not vex us because we really do not care what they 
 may do or how completely they may contradict them- 
 selves. So also in "Much Ado about Nothing," the 
 malignant machinations of Don John , and Borachio 
 are almost motiveless, at least their willing wicked- 
 ness is taken for granted by the playwright and ac- 
 cepted by the playgoers. The cause of their villainous 
 intrigue against the gentle Hero is suggested summa- 
 rily, with no serious effort to buttress it into plausi- 
 bility. We can discover this weakness, if we care to 
 look curiously at the construction of the plot ; but this 
 is just what we are not tempted to inquire into. We 
 are so busy following the wit-battle of Benedick and 
 Beatrice that we have no leisure to peer into the mo- 
 tives which move two minor but necessary persons to 
 bring about the startling climax of the comedy. 
 
 On the other hand, if the character who acts arbi- 
 trarily is in the thick of the story and holds the center 
 of the stage, then with all our good will we cannot help 
 noticing what he is doing, and it irritates us to be forced 
 to observe his inadequately motived actions. Neces- 
 sarily our interest flags, when we hear the machinery 
 
204 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 creak a little too loudly. In the "Winter's Tale," for 
 instance, the swift jealousy and violent rage of Leontes 
 seems to us in the twentieth century merely wilful, and 
 almost without justification. It is quite possible that 
 this unexpected transformation of character was pleas- 
 ing to the Elizabethan audiences, for whom the play 
 was originally prepared and who relished surprises of 
 all kinds, even if these contradicted the strict logic of 
 the character. But nowadays we like tb see every 
 character obeying its own logic ; and when it renounces 
 this continuity, we are vexed that the author had not 
 taken more pains to attain plausibility. So in the 
 " Two Gentlemen of Verona," a chief personage of the 
 piece, Proteus, is shown to us as a perfect gentleman 
 at one moment, and at the next as an unspeakable 
 cad; and the plot turns on this unexplained and in- 
 explicable change in him. And in this arbitrariness of 
 Proteus and of Leontes, set in the forefront of these 
 dramas, we may find one reason why the "Winter's 
 Tale" and the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" are not so 
 popular in the theater to-day as are "As You Like It" 
 and " Much Ado about Nothing," in both of which the 
 
 arbitrary characters are subordinate and unimportant. 
 
 
 
 VI 
 
 These illustrations have been taken from Shakspere, 
 but they might have been chosen from almost any 
 modern playwright. Sardou, for example, never wrote 
 a more ambitious drama than his " Patrie," a historical 
 play having for its background the manly resistance 
 of the Netherlands to Spain. The piece abounds in 
 pathetic situations and in adroit inventions; but it 
 has always proved disappointing in the theater, be- 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 205 
 
 cause the heroine, whose shoulders bear the burden 
 of the plot, acts more than once not as she would have 
 acted, but as the author forced her to act so that the 
 play may be what he had plotted. The ordinary spec- 
 tator may not be able to give this as the reason why he 
 has not enjoyed the performance, but he feels dumbly 
 that something is wrong. 
 
 A central character who acts arbitrarily before the 
 eyes of the spectators, so that they are forced to wit- 
 ness his self-contradiction, is certain to alienate the sym- 
 pathy of the audience and to imperil the success of 
 the play, unless this central character happens to be 
 either of two distinct things. He may be enigmatic, and 
 then the spectators will tolerate what they do not 
 clearly understand ; or else he must be openly the vil- 
 lain of the play, and then they are ready enough to 
 accept any dark scheme, however obscure its motive. 
 
 Hamlet is the best possible example of the char- 
 acter who is both arbitrary and enigmatic ; but Hedda 
 Gabler is almost as significant. Hamlet is subtle and 
 moody and changeable; and we never know what 
 he will do next. Hedda is queer and abnormal and 
 freakish ; and we accept her for what she seems to be 
 at the moment, tolerating in her many things which 
 would be intolerable in another woman. It is only 
 when we study this play of Ibsen's in the library and 
 endeavor to dissect its mechanism, that we perceive 
 that more than one of the heroine's actions, which 
 appeared sufficiently spontaneous in the theater, was 
 really the result of the adroit author's desire to bring 
 about the fatal termination he had resolved on. 
 
 lago is the best possible example of a very important 
 character who acts arbitrarily without interfering with 
 
206 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 our interest in the play. lago's hatred of Othello is the 
 mainspring of the plot ; and this Shakspere calmly takes 
 for granted. It is true that the author feels the need 
 of explaining it, and of justifying it. He gives three or 
 four different reasons for it; but none are convincing. 
 Indeed, one of them is almost absurd, lago's jeal- 
 ousy of Othello because he suspects his chief of an in- 
 trigue with Emilia. All of them taken together fail 
 to account adequately for the fiendish malignity of 
 lago's revenge. But we are not moved to protest, since 
 we see in lago a figure of incarnate evil, capable of any 
 wickedness and working destruction without restraint 
 and almost without cause, simply because of his black- 
 ness of soul. From a creature morally so hideous 
 nothing astonishes us. 
 
 But it is only a villain or an enigmatic character 
 whom we are willing to pardon for acting arbitrarily. 
 The hero and the heroine of a play must conform to 
 our idea of the natural. They must act as we think they 
 would act in real life, or else they lose our sympathy. 
 If the hero and the heroine continually do before our 
 eyes what seems to us unreasonable, our interest in their 
 story slackens and is soon dispersed. This is a chief 
 reason why Browning's "Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 
 powerful as it is, has never been able to establish it- 
 self in the theater. Nor is Browning the only poet 
 who has fallen into this error. The plays of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, for example, abound in scenes of infi- 
 nite pathos and of striking theatrical effectiveness ; but 
 these authors were careless of probability and reckless 
 in the conjunction of incoherent episodes. In any one 
 of their pieces, any character may do anything at any 
 moment wholly regardless of consistency. 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 207 
 
 This liking for the unusual and for the violent is not 
 uncommon among the tragic dramatists, many of whom 
 seem to have felt that ordinary life is so commonplace 
 that nothing is really dramatic unless it is strange and 
 unheard of. Corneille, for example, deliberately sought 
 for the most unlikely combinations, and searched his- 
 tory to find them, not unsuccessfully, since fact is often 
 stranger than fiction. Again, Schiller allowed Karl Moor, 
 in the " Robbers," to believe the worst on a mere hint 
 from his villainous brother, although the hero is well 
 aware that no dependence ought to be placed on any- 
 thing from such a source ; and yet such is the sweeping 
 force of Schiller's story as it surges swiftly along that 
 the spectators have scarcely time to notice this incon- 
 sistency. Victor Hugo also constantly made use of 
 very improbable coincidences. In his "Ruy Bias," 
 almost every character is more or less arbitrary, and 
 hardly a single incident occurs except by the more or 
 less obvious intervention of the author; and yet such 
 is the charm of the resonant verse with which these 
 prearranged happenings are presented, that the play 
 still pleases in spite of its inherent artificiality. 
 
 Ibsen, on the other hand, sought to express the inner 
 significance of the commonplace and to disclose the 
 tragedy which may lie latent in the humdrum. The 
 arbitrariness of incident and the frequency of coinci- 
 dence, which are raised to the maximum in Hugo's ro- 
 manticist pieces, are reduced to the minimum in Ibsen's 
 realistic social-dramas. But even Ibsen is sometimes 
 a little disconcerting; and the startling transformation 
 of Nora in the final act of the "Doll's House" has 
 seemed to some critics, if not actually in contradiction 
 to her character, at least not satisfactorily prepared for. 
 
208 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Perhaps also the confession and self-abasement of 
 Consul Bernick, in the " Pillars of Society," is not what 
 the author had led us to expect from a character so 
 self-seeking and so smugly self-complacent. In both 
 of these plays of Ibsen's, however, this element of the 
 arbitrary is to be found only in the last act, after our 
 interest has been aroused and sustained by the veracity 
 of all that has gone before. 
 
 If an author cannot work out his plot absolutely 
 without the intervention of the arbitrary, then he will 
 do well to follow Aristotle's advice and keep it out of 
 that part of the story which he is going to present, and 
 to throw it back before the beginning of the play. This 
 is what Sir Arthur Pinero did in " His House in Order," 
 which turns on the discover} 7 by a downtrodden second 
 wife that her predecessor had been unfaithful. Here 
 the arbitrary character is the first wife ; and she is dead 
 long before the play begins. This again is what Sopho- 
 cles did two thousand years earlier in "(Edipus the 
 King." An oracle had predicted that (Edipus would 
 kill his father and marry his mother; and when the 
 play opens, the prediction has been fulfilled. If (Edi- 
 pus had ever inquired into the circumstances of the 
 death of locasta's first husband, he would have been 
 able to avoid the predicted incest. But if he had made 
 this inquiry, we could not have had the play. As we 
 look back over the whole story, we cannot help per- 
 ceiving the overwhelming improbability that after the 
 warning of the oracle, locasta should ever have dared 
 to marry a man young enough to be her son. The 
 Greek poet was not bound to supply any explanation 
 for this inexplicable procedure of hers, because he was 
 only dramatizing a legend long familiar to the immense 
 
THE LOGIC OF CONSTRUCTION 209 
 
 majority of the Athenian audience. The improbability 
 being in the legend, it had to be in the drama dealing 
 with the legend ; and Sophocles very wisely wasted no 
 time in any effort to explain it away. Here he was 
 shrewder than the modern poets who have handled 
 the same myth, and who fatigued themselves in a vain 
 attempt to make the improbable a little less improbable, 
 with the sole result of forcing the spectators to notice 
 something they might otherwise have taken for granted. 
 These two arbitrary situations, the failure of (Edipus 
 to pursue the slayer of Laius, and the marriage of lo- 
 casta with a man many years her junior, this is the 
 foundation of the story. The two things may be im- 
 possible to accept, but if we refuse to accept them, then 
 we reject the play which is based on them. It was an 
 interesting discovery of Sarcey's that an audience is 
 never unduly exacting about the assumption on which 
 a play is founded. It will listen to the exposition of a 
 most unlikely state of affairs ; it will give its attention 
 to the author while he sets forth the existence of two 
 pairs of twins so alike that their own wives cannot 
 tell them apart (as in the "Comedy of Errors"); or 
 while he explains that a wandering Englishman is 
 the very image of the sovereign on the throne (as in 
 the "Prisoner of Zenda"). It will sit back calmly and 
 wait to see what will happen next, giving the author 
 all the rope he asks for, but whether to hang himself 
 or to pull himself on deck is as the event turns out. 
 If the play which the author builds on an arbitrary 
 supposition of this sort catches the interest of the spec- 
 tators and holds them enthralled as the story unrolls 
 itself, then they forget all about its artificial basis and 
 they have no leisure to cavil. If, on the other hand, the 
 
210 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 play is dull and fatiguing to witness, their attention 
 strays away from it and they have time to go back 
 to its arbitrary foundation. And then they rise up in 
 their wrath and denounce the foolishness of the author 
 who dared to suppose that they could ever be interested 
 in anything built upon an absurdity so flagrant. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 
 
 Back of every art product there is a conception, vaguely or 
 definitely present in the artist's mind. Upon the character of this 
 conception or content depends the significance of the work of art; 
 its formal beauty depends upon the artist's skill to express his thought 
 or feeling in the particular medium he has chosen. Content and form 
 are therefore most intimately related in the artist's personality. He 
 can express nothing through the concrete medium of his particular 
 art whether it be a pigment or clay or a harmony of musical 
 sounds or a succession of words unless it has first passed through 
 the lens of his own nature. It is always difficult, and in a certain sense 
 unnatural, to make a sharp separation between the elements of con- 
 tent and form. The artist himself rarely attempts it. He " thinks 
 in color " or feels in terms of musical sound. The finer the work of 
 art, the more indissolubly are the elements fused through the per- 
 sonality of the artist. And yet it is often of the greatest value to the 
 student to attempt this separate analysis, to distinguish what 
 has gone into the work of art from the external form in which it is 
 clothed. BLISS PERRY, A. Study of Prose Fiction. 
 
 WHEN we have witnessed the performance of a play 
 in the theater, or when we have read it in the library, 
 making the imaginative effort needful to visualize its 
 action, we find ourselves either liking it or disliking it. 
 We have an opinion as to its merits and its demerits ; 
 but we may not be able to formulate this opinion to 
 our satisfaction or to bring forward the several reasons 
 which have led us to it. We may wish to analyze the 
 emotions we have experienced and to find justification 
 for the faith that is in us. If the play pleased us, we 
 
212 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 want to know why it pleased us. We may even go fur- 
 ther and desire also to know whether our pleasure was 
 legitimate or not. What was the source of it ? Is the 
 play really as good as it seemed to us ? We may have 
 felt that here was a drama that we ought to like, and 
 yet that it did not interest us ; and in that case, was the 
 fault in the play or in us ? On the other hand, we may 
 have enjoyed it, having all the while a sneaking suspi- 
 cion that it was not really worthy of our approval. In 
 short, what are the proper tests to apply that we may 
 each of us be assured of our own judgment ? 
 
 The beginning of wisdom is honesty with ourselves. 
 Our own impressions must always be the basis of our 
 opinions, or we are certain to be insincere and to weaken 
 our grasp on reality. First of all, did this play in- 
 terest us ? If so, why ? If it did not, why did it not ? 
 Interest is something that can easily be gaged. If the 
 play was actually seen in the theater, when did our 
 attention begin to flag ? If it was only read in the li- 
 brary, when did we fail to visualize the action and 
 begin to skip as though in haste to be done with it ? Just 
 here, use can be made of a device which may seem a 
 little pedantic at first sight, but which is in fact practi- 
 cal and. helpful. We can make a diagram of the inter- 
 est aroused in us as the play progressed, drawing a 
 single line which shall rise with our increased attention, 
 which shall run on a level when our attention slackens, 
 and which shall droop when we admit ourselves to be 
 bored. 
 
 This diagram of interest will mark and measure the 
 path we have traveled. It is a visible record of our im- 
 pressions, and it gives us a tangible foundation for fur- 
 ther inquiry. It is wholly distinct from the artificial 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 213 
 
 pyramid which Freytag exploited in his " Technic of the 
 Drama"; and it has no relation to the needlessly com- 
 plicated figures which have been devised to elucidate 
 (or to obscure) Shakspere's plot-making. It is simplicity 
 itself, and yet it serves to bring before us graphically the 
 immediate effect of the play upon ourselves. 
 
 As the dramatist has carefully to attend to his expo- 
 sition in the first act, to introduce his several characters, 
 to inform us as to their past lives and as to their present 
 desires, and, in a word, to get his machinery started, we 
 need not be surprised if the line of interest is almost 
 level in the earlier scenes. But it ought to begin to rise 
 before the end of the first act. And it ought not to droop 
 again until toward the end of the last act, flattening a 
 little perhaps when the spectators are at last able to 
 foresee just how the story is going to turn out. In a well- 
 made modern play in three acts, the line of interest, 
 broken into three pieces, is not likely to vary greatly 
 from this : 
 
 DIAGRAM A. 
 
 This diagram would represent exactly the increasing 
 interest the average spectator would take in such a play, 
 if he had kept his finger on his pulse, so to speak. A 
 similar but unbroken line would serve to indicate the 
 interest taken by the audience at the performance of a 
 great Greek tragedy, except that it would rise more 
 sharply and that it might fall off more emphatically 
 
S14 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 toward the end, since the delicate artistic perception of 
 the Greeks led them to relax the tension after the cul- 
 minating moment. Here is the diagram of interest of 
 the "(Edipus the King" of Sophocles: 
 
 DIAGRAM B. 
 
 "Whether it can be artistic," so Professor Bradley has 
 declared, "to end any serious scene whatever at the point 
 of greatest tension seems doubtful, but surely it is little short 
 of barbarous to drop the curtain on the last dying words, 
 or, it may be, the last convulsion, of a tragic hero. In tragedy, 
 the Elizabethan practice, like the Greek, was to lower the 
 pitch of emotion from this point by a few quiet words . . . 
 and so to restore the audience to common life, 'in calm of 
 mind, all passion spent.'" 
 
 There is a modern play, akin to this masterpiece of 
 the Greek drama, in its somber gloom and in its inex- 
 orable inevitability. This is Ibsen's " Ghosts" ; but the 
 Scandinavian playwright refused to relax the tension 
 at the end. He even prolonged it beyond the limits of 
 the play, leaving us wondering what happened after the 
 final curtain fell. So we may represent its line of inter- 
 est thus : 
 
 DIAGRAM C. 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 215 
 
 In "Hamlet," the interest is constantly ascending 
 from the very beginning, that admirably effective open- 
 ing scene on the battlements of Elsinore, which carries 
 us at once into an atmosphere of impending doom ; but 
 it wavers a little in the fourth act and it flattens off al- 
 most in the Greek fashion after the death of Hamlet 
 himself. This then would be the diagram : 
 
 DIAGRAM D. 
 
 In "Othello," the exposition is also swift and grip- 
 ping ; and the attention is held all through the first act. 
 But in the second act, the story shifts to Cyprus ; and 
 several scenes elapse before the dramatist can key up 
 the action to the same pitch of intensity. When he does 
 achieve this at last, he is able to intensify our interest 
 by every succeeding episode almost to the final word. 
 And this is made clear in the diagram : 
 
 DIAGRAM E. 
 
 Victor Hugo, in two of his plays, "Hernani" and 
 "Ruy Bias," was so far negligent of cumulative effect 
 
216 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 that his fourth acts were filled with matter not closely 
 knit into the central theme. And it is therefore not un- 
 fair to disclose this defect in the diagram of " Hernani, " 
 thus : 
 
 DIAGRAM F. 
 
 and in that of "Ruy Bias," thus: 
 
 DIAGRAM G. 
 
 This diagram makes clear the reason why the English 
 adaptation, acted by Fechter and Edwin Booth, was 
 in four acts only, the uninteresting act being boldly 
 omitted. 
 
 In the "Weavers" of Hauptmann, one of the most 
 striking of social-dramas, there is unity of impression 
 but no concentration of story. The several acts have 
 each of them an interest of their own ; but, as a whole, 
 the plot is not coherent or cumulative. And this is dis- 
 closed at once in the diagram : 
 
 DIAGRAM H. 
 
 Now and again we happen upon a play which is 
 frankly disappointing and which is quite unable to hold 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 217 
 
 our interest whether on the stage or in the study. And 
 then we might be forced to a discouraging diagram like 
 this: 
 
 DIAGRAM I. 
 
 or even to another, still more condemnatory : 
 
 DIAGRAM J. 
 
 This translation into a diagram of our fluctuating 
 interest in a play is a test primarily only of the skill of 
 the playmaker. It is a test of the form of the piece and 
 not of its content ; for every work of art is to be judged 
 by its form as well as by its content. The great plays 
 are great only because a worthy content is presented 
 in a worthy form. The dramatist must do his best to 
 arouse and to hold the interest of the spectators before 
 whom his play is performed. And the merit of any mes- 
 sage he may have to deliver does not excuse him for any 
 failure to master the technic of the dramaturgic art. If 
 he prefers to express himself dramatically, then he must 
 abide by the decision of the theater. From that there is 
 for him no appeal, since an audience of his own con- 
 temporarie^ is the tribunal he has himself chosen. He 
 may have a message of high importance, he may have 
 his own vision of human life, he may have his own phi- 
 losophy ; but these things he can present in a play only 
 after he has acquired the craft of the playwright. And 
 the value of his subject-matter will not excuse him for 
 
218 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 i 
 
 any technical deficiencies. He must master the methods 
 of the stage of his own time, adjusting his story to the 
 actor and to the theater, and keeping in mind always the 
 opinions and the prejudices of the audience for whose 
 pleasure he is working. 
 
 ii 
 
 The dominant peculiarity of a body of spectators 
 assembled in a theater is their unwillingness to be inter- 
 ested unless they have presented to them a story which 
 discloses an essential struggle, an assertion of human 
 volition, a clash of contending desires. This essential 
 struggle, whether comic or tragic, must be the core of 
 the play ; it must be sharply visible ; or else the attention 
 of the audience will wander. If we are moved by any 
 performance to make diagram I or diagram J, we shall 
 probably find that the play thus disparaged lacked an 
 essential struggle, that the characters did not know 
 their own minds, and that things seemed merely to hap- 
 pen and not to be brought about by the logic of char- 
 acter and circumstance. If we find ourselves led to 
 make diagram H, we may be assured that the play 
 had no dominating figure, and that the struggle was 
 fragmentary and not concentrated and coordinated. 
 If we consider carefully the plays for which diagrams 
 E, F, and G were made, we can easily discover that the 
 level or dropping lines were due to a straying away 
 from the essential struggle, to a momentary wandering 
 into a by-path, after the dramatist had indicated to us 
 the main road along which he promised to travel. 
 
 Yet diagrams not unlike E and F and G would have 
 to be made for the plays of many of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, especially for certain of those credited to 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 219 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, because these authors were 
 able to obtain their startlingly effective situations only 
 by an arbitrary change in one or more of their charac- 
 ters. It is disconcerting to us nowadays whatever it 
 may have been to Elizabethan playgoers to see an 
 important character do or say something which we feel 
 he never would have done or said. We cannot help 
 applying the standard of common sense, of normal 
 human conduct. And when a character fails to attain 
 this standard, when we see him doing something which 
 he would not naturally do, something which is in con- 
 tradiction with all we know about his motives, then we 
 have our attention violently distracted. We are forced 
 for the moment to consider this deed ; and thus we lose 
 contact with the play as it is going on before us. 
 
 Our interest may fall for yet another reason not quite 
 so simple to grasp. The author may have avoided the 
 arbitrary and he may have stuck to his main story, but 
 without presenting in action all the special scenes which 
 he had led us to expect, the scenes a faire, as Sarcey 
 called them. If he has suppressed these or shirked 
 them, then we find ourselves disconcerted, as though 
 deprived of a promised pleasure. We do not always 
 know exactly what it is that we have been defrauded 
 of, but we are vaguely conscious that all is not as it 
 should be. Thus our attention is again distracted, al- 
 though it is only by taking thought that we can discover 
 the special scene which we had hoped for and did not 
 get. Here a diagram reveals its utility. It tells us just 
 where it was that the interest fell off and it points out 
 the precise spot where we must seek the explanation. 
 A supreme test of dramaturgic instinct lies in the choice 
 of those parts of the plot which shall be shown in action 
 
220 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 and those which shall be merely narrated. Goethe re- 
 vealed his deficiency in the native gift of playmaking in 
 his version of "Romeo and Juliet," wherein he omitted 
 the actual quarrel between the Montagues and the Cap- 
 ulets and contented himself with telling about it instead 
 of putting it visibly before the spectators. 
 
 Another cause of relaxing interest is the use of out- 
 worn traditions, of temporary conventions no longer 
 acceptable to us, even if they were satisfactory enough 
 to an earlier generation of playgoers. The permanent 
 conventions we are glad to allow always, since by deny- 
 ing them we should be depriving ourselves. But there 
 are temporary conventions, which correspond to tempo- 
 rary theatrical conditions and which begin to strike us 
 as absurd as soon as these theatrical conditions have 
 changed. For example, a device, now so outworn that 
 it is likely to raise a smile and thus to break the cur- 
 rent of sympathy, is eavesdropping. When we see a 
 gentleman concealing himself deliberately behind a 
 curtain, to overhear the conversation of two ladies, 
 we feel that this is an act of which he ought not to be 
 guilty. He loses our regard and the play suffers immedi- 
 ately. It was the duty of the dramatist to invent some 
 less obvious method of putting this gentleman in posses- 
 sion of the information thus improperly obtained. The 
 audience is ever applying the standard of good man- 
 ners as well as the standard of common sense. 
 
 in 
 
 Another source of distracted attention is to be sought 
 in the uneasiness which spectators sometimes feel 
 when they find that the play they are witnessing does 
 not belong to the type which they had been led to 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 221 
 
 expect. A good farce affords amusement to many; 
 and farce itself is a perfectly legitimate type. But when 
 we are invited to a comedy-of -manners, or when a play 
 begins as though it was a comedy-of-manners, and then 
 degenerates into farce and turns out to be quite different 
 from what it had at first declared itself to be, then we 
 are likely to be disconcerted. Naturally, we are tempted 
 to apply to this farce the standards proper enough to 
 the comedy-of-manners and not to those of the farce it- 
 self ; and the result is unsatisfactory. Sooner or later, 
 we may make a mental readjustment, and take the 
 farce for what it is and not for what we had supposed 
 it to be; but in the meanwhile, we have felt a certain 
 confusion. 
 
 So it is that when we go to see a poetic play, a tragedy, 
 whether in prose or verse, we apply the standards 
 proper to tragedy, and we expect to be thrilled by the 
 deeds of men and women governed by the stern logic 
 of their own characters. The sadness of tragedy is 
 due to the pity of it, to our feeling that it had to be 
 what it is, and that the catastrophe was all foredoomed 
 by fate. Our pleasure may be austere, but it is noble, 
 and it depends upon the artistic honesty of the poet. 
 It is his duty to make us sympathize with the characters 
 who are battling with destiny, who are doing their best, 
 and who are waging a losing fight. And we are swift 
 to perceive and to resent any arbitrary intervention of 
 the author, whereby his tragic figures lose their large 
 humanity and sink into mere puppets pulled here and 
 there by the visible hand of the playwright. 
 
 Here we find an explanation for the doubt which 
 often obsesses us after we have witnessed the perform- 
 ance of a poetic play. We recognize the poetry; we 
 
222 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 cannot deny the fine quality of the writing; and yet we 
 wonder why it is that the play has left us cold. Our 
 modesty may even make us believe that the fault is in 
 us and that we ourselves may be incapable of appre- 
 ciating a work of art at once delicate and noble. We 
 know what we like, after all, and we are aware that this 
 drama did not give us the pleasure proper to the theater. 
 Of course, the fault may be in us; but in the case of 
 Browning's "Blot in the 'Scutcheon," for example, the 
 fault is in the author. If we have failed to enjoy his 
 play, the blame must lie at his door, because he has 
 not been able to sustain his tragedy on the lofty tragic 
 level. The discredit for the failure of a play of high 
 aspiration is very rarely to be borne by the audiences. 
 It must be assumed, more often than not, by the dra- 
 matist himself, because he has not really given us what 
 he thought he was giving us. 
 
 As the French painter put it pithily to his American 
 colleague : " True art is a method of expression, done 
 by a man who has something to say in poetry or prose, 
 paint or clay." It is not sufficient that he have some- 
 thing to say; he must also master the method of ex- 
 pregsion which he has chosen. He must say what he 
 has to say in such fashion that we cannot choose but 
 hear. He must deliver his message so appealingly that 
 we are glad to listen to it, even if we may be unwilling 
 to accept it. He must remember always that the con- 
 tent of his work will avail him little or nothing if the 
 form of it is not also satisfying to the main body of his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 IV 
 
 Closely akin to this necessary veracity of character- 
 delineation is the larger truth of the play as a whole. 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 223 
 
 Is this portrayal of our common humanity in accord, 
 not only with the logic of the several characters intro- 
 duced, but also with the manners and customs of the 
 time? Is it true to life as we all know life? We are 
 disappointed if we fail to find the accent of verity in 
 what purports to be a picture of existence as it is. If 
 this accent of verity is lacking in a serious drama or 
 in a high-comedy, the principle of Economy of Atten- 
 tion is violated at once." We cease following the story 
 on the stage while we look at each other with dumb 
 inquiry. We find ourselves asking who these strange 
 creatures are that behave in this curious fashion, re- 
 fusing to play the game of human intercourse accord- 
 ing to the established rules. 
 
 Mr. Henry James once suggested as a test of the rank 
 of a novel that we ask ourselves whether it aroused in 
 us the emotions of surprise or the emotions of recog- 
 nition. If it amuses us only by the ingenuity of its story 
 and by the startling effect of its unexpected incidents, 
 it stands on a lower plane than if it please us by reveal- 
 ing unsuspected recesses of the human soul, which we 
 accept as veracious although we had never before per- 
 ceived them. The same test is as valid in the theater 
 as in the library ; and in a serious drama, as well as in a 
 high-comedy, mere surprise must always be subordinate 
 to the subtler recognition. We expect the dramatist 
 to explain us to ourselves and to turn his lantern on the 
 hidden corners of character, whether tragic or comic. 
 When we see a personage in a play do this, or when we 
 hear him say that, we ought to feel instantly that how- 
 ever unforeseen the deed or the saying may be, it was 
 precisely what that personage would have done or said 
 at that particular moment of his life. 
 
224 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Of course, we are not justified in applying this test 
 to the humbler forms of the drama, perfectly legitimate 
 as they are, but dwelling on a lower level. We have no 
 more right to expect the emotions of recognition in a 
 melodrama or in a farce than we have in a detective- 
 story or in a tale of ao!venture. In these humbler forms 
 of prose-fiction and of the drama, the story itself, the 
 successive situations, the plot, are of primary impor- 
 tance; and they awaken chiefly the emotions of sur- 
 prise. The characters exist for the sake of the story ; the 
 story is not created by the characters moved by their 
 own volition. When we go to a farce or a melodrama, 
 we cannot justly expect to discover in them the essential 
 qualities of serious drama or light comedy. We ought 
 to be satisfied if the author has given us the essential 
 qualities of farce or of melodrama. 
 
 The playgoer is disconcerted when the story repre- 
 sented before his eyes on the stage is peopled by char- 
 acters who seem to him unreal and untrue to them- 
 selves. But he is willing enough to accept any frank 
 departure from the actual; he is not insistent on the 
 mere facts of life. If he can get the deeper truth, he has 
 no objections to make believe if he is invited to do so ; 
 he is willing enough to accopt the supernatural, for 
 example, and to follow with unflagging interest the 
 actions and the words of ghosts, of witches, and of 
 fairies, although he refuses to credit the actual exist- 
 ence of any such beings. All he demands is that these 
 non-existent creatures shall be represented as obeying 
 the law of their own being. He knows well enough that 
 the story of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" never 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 225 
 
 happened and that it is not in accord with the facts of 
 life. But he accepts it as artistically true, since the 
 fairies in that delightful fantasy are seen to do pre- 
 cisely what he imagines fairies would do if there were 
 any fairies. So he does not cavil at the Ghost in " Ham- 
 let" or at the Witches in "Macbeth," because their 
 words and their deeds are just what might be expected 
 from such creatures. The spectator accepts them for 
 what they are in the play, so long as they comport 
 themselves as he conceives such weird embodiments 
 would comport themselves. He is glad to adventure 
 himself in a realm of fantasy; but he expects its in- 
 habitants to be bound by its own legal code. In other 
 words, essential veracity has no relation to the mere 
 actuality of every-day existence. It is the permanent 
 truth that the audience expects, not the accidental fact. 
 
 And this leads us to a consideration of the question 
 of the moral influence of a work of art. Morality enters 
 into art only when art deals with human conduct, when 
 it sets before us that which may have an influence 
 upon our own acts. Music, architecture, pure decora- 
 tion, landscape and marine painting, and also the 
 poetry which is only music or decoration, these forms 
 of art have no moral quality. They lie wholly outside 
 of the domain of ethics. But the lyric of human feel- 
 ing, epic poetry, prose-fiction, the drama, these are 
 forms of art which deal directly with human passions ; 
 and therefore they cannot evade moral responsibility. 
 Whenever an artist is dealing with human beings, he 
 is subject to the moral law ; and he must be judged by 
 the ultimate effect of his portrayal of life. In man, and 
 in man only, is morality bound up. 
 
 This is why we do not protest against the customary 
 
226 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 puppet-play of " Punch and Judy," which we allow our 
 children to laugh at. Considered by any human stand- 
 ard of conduct, this little drama is hideously immoral, 
 for it sets before us a career of triumphant and self- 
 satisfied crime. We behold Punch rejoicing in a series 
 of atrocious assassinations ; he kills his baby ; he mur- 
 ders his wife; he slays the policeman; he hangs the 
 hangman ; and finally he beats the life out of the Devil 
 himself. And throughout the long succession of evil 
 deeds, Punch remains smilingly cheerful, wholly un- 
 conscious of his own total depravity. And this is the 
 reason why the little play is not really immoral. It has 
 no possible relation to mankind ; and we never dream of 
 applying to Punch, only a little figure animated by the 
 hand of the concealed performer, the strict code of 
 human conduct. Punch stands outside the circle of 
 our common humanity; we do not accept him as one 
 of ourselves ; and his example carries no weight. 
 
 If the lamentable tragedy of Punch is morally in- 
 nocuous, can the same plea be made for other plays, 
 such as the British pantomimes at Christmas, and the 
 American musical -shows, peopled with beings of a fan- 
 tastic unreality ? Probably there is a certain validity 
 in this plea. These pantomimes and these musical- 
 shows are absurdly remote from life as we all know it ; 
 and they contain a very large element of fantasy. And 
 yet they are performed by men and women, after all, 
 not by puppets; and it is impossible for them wholly 
 to escape from the jurisdiction of the moral law. It 
 was this plea that Charles Lamb put forward in behalf 
 of the English comedy of the Restoration. He admitted 
 that it was immoral, if tried by the ordinary code of 
 human conduct ; but he insisted that the characters of 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 227 
 
 Congreve and Wycherley were so far removed from 
 reality, they showed so contorted a vision of life, that 
 they were no more human than Punch. " The whole is 
 a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned 
 at the issues of life or death, as at the battle of frogs 
 and mice," so Lamb asserted, after having declared 
 that he confessed himself "glad for a reason to take 
 an airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience." 
 Lamb presented his paradox with all his frolicsome 
 humor ; but none the less it is a paradox, as Macaulay 
 had no difficulty in proving. Perhaps Lamb himself 
 could sit as unconcerned before the unlovely intrigues 
 of Congreve's gallants and fine ladies as at the battle 
 of frogs and mice ; but the rest of us cannot attain to 
 this fanciful detachment. After all, these gallants and 
 these fine ladies are human beings, going about their 
 affairs, and differing only in the callousness of their arid 
 souls. They cannot subtract themselves from the juris- 
 diction of the moral law, by renouncing " any preten- 
 sions of goodness or good feelings whatsoever." We 
 feel them to be flesh and blood with us ; and we apply 
 to them properly enough the standard of morals. 
 
 VI 
 
 To say that the English comic dramatists of the 
 Restoration are immoral, because their plays convey 
 a totally misleading impression of life, is a very differ- 
 ent thing from saying that they are blameworthy be- 
 cause their comic pieces are not explicitly moral. The 
 playwright is never called upon to be a preacher. The 
 direct inculcation of morality in the drama or in prose- 
 fiction is bad art. Charles Lamb justly complained 
 of the writers who insisted on tagging a moral to their 
 
228 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 tales, " like the God send the good ship safe into harbor 
 of the old bills of lading." We have cast aside the an- 
 tiquated theory of poetic-justice, so-called, which prac- 
 tically required a playwright to endeavor to prove 
 that vice always comes to a bad end. This doctrine 
 obtained generally in the eighteen tlj century; and we 
 can find it declared emphatically in the English trans- 
 lation of d'Aubignac, in 1684 : 
 
 " One of the chiefest, and indeed the most indispensable 
 Rule of Drammatick Poems, is, that in them Virtues ought 
 always to be rewarded or at least commended, in spight of 
 all the Injuries of Fortune ; and that likewise Vices be always 
 punished, or at least detested with Horrour, though they 
 triumph upon the stage for that time." 
 
 The doctrine of poetic-justice demanded that the 
 drama should be overtly didactic, even at the cost of 
 departing from the truth of life. We all know that vice 
 does not always come to a bad end in this world, what- 
 ever may happen to it in the next. We all know, also, 
 that if the author persists in blackening his evil char- 
 acters, he may end by arousing our sympathy for them 
 as victims of persecution; and it seems as though 
 Thackeray had not quite escaped this blunder in his 
 insistent unfairness to Becky Sharp. Bret Harte told 
 us of a Californian who contemplated Hogarth's series 
 of engravings contrasting the careers of the Idle and 
 Industrious Apprentices, and who was moved with aji 
 irresistible feeling in favor of the one whom the moral- 
 ist had condemned. It seemed to him, he said, that 
 "the cards had been stacked against that fellow from 
 the start." And in a work of art, this is ever the danger 
 of a paraded moral purpose, external rather than inter- 
 nal, not inherent in the theme but applied to it from the 
 
THE ANALYSIS OF A PLAY 229 
 
 outside. Stevenson spoke of the morality which is 
 thrust into many an English novel "like a carpet 
 thrown over a railing." 
 
 We have outgrown the demand for this sign-post 
 preaching. The artist cannot evade his moral respon- 
 sibility, if he chooses to handle human life ; but he is 
 no longer required to get up into the pulpit. It is not 
 the artist's business to prove a thesis, but to picture 
 life as he sees it and feels it and knows it. His attitude 
 has been stated admirably by Shelley in the preface to 
 the"Cenci": 
 
 "The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest 
 species of the drama is the teaching of the human heart, 
 through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of 
 itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge, 
 every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind." 
 
 To teach the human heart the knowledge of itself 
 this is a lofty aim ; and it can be attained only by 
 resolute honesty in dealing with the problems of con- 
 duct. The artist must ever be sincere with himself. 
 He must tell the truth as it is given to him to see 
 the truth, to tell nothing but the truth, even if he 
 is not bound always to tell the whole truth, because 
 it is not given to any man to grasp the whole truth. 
 That he is privileged and empowered to do this is 
 the supreme happiness of the artist. " The conscious 
 moralist often seems rather stupid and arbitrary," so 
 Professor Gilbert Murray remarks ; " the poet has the 
 immense advantage that he is not trying to say what 
 he believes to be good for other people, or what he be- 
 lieves they believe to be good for them, but is simply 
 expressing what he himself loves most." 
 
 Although the dramatist need not put morality into 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Forty poets, amongst them ten of superior rank, as well as one, 
 the greatest of all artists who have represented the soul in words; 
 many hundreds of pieces, and nearly fifty masterpieces; the drama 
 extended over all the provinces of history, imagination, and fancy, 
 expanded so as to embrace comedy, tragedy, pastoral and fanci- 
 ful literature, to represent all degrees of human condition, and all 
 the caprices of human invention, to express all the perceptible 
 details of actual truth, and all the philosophic grandeur of general 
 reflection; the stage disencumbered of all precept and freed from 
 all imitation, given up and appropriated in the minutest particulars 
 to the reigning taste and public intelligence: all this was a vast 
 and manifold work, capable by its flexibility, its greatness, and its 
 form, of receiving and preserving the exact imprint of the age and 
 o' the nation. H. TAINE, History of English Literature. 
 
 I 
 
 THERE have been four or five periods in history when 
 the drama has risen to a supreme height. The first of 
 these was in Greece when ^Eschylus, Sophocles and 
 Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander, followed one 
 another in swift succession. The second and the third 
 were almost simultaneous in England and in Spain, 
 when Marlowe, Shakspere, and Ben Jonson led the 
 way in the one language, while Lope de Vega and Cal- 
 deron revealed the lyrical richness of the other. The 
 fourth was in France, when Moliere followed Corneille 
 and preceded Racine. And we may perhaps add a fifth 
 period, in France again, in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, when Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas were 
 followed by Augier and the younger Dumas. 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 233 
 
 Each of these epochs of superb playmaking has its 
 own characteristics; and each of them will amply re- 
 ward lifelong study. Yet for us who have English as 
 our mother-tongue, there is no doubt which is the 
 most interesting of the five. It is that splendid expres- 
 sion of the poetic power of our race, which took place in 
 the spacious days of Elizabeth, and which died down 
 in the leaner years of James. In any study of the drama 
 among us, the plays of Shakspere and of his gifted 
 contemporaries must always be the center of our in- 
 terest. 
 
 There is no denying that the dominant character- 
 istic of the English-speaking race is energy, and that 
 this energy never expressed itself in literature more 
 completely than it did in the later years of Elizabeth's 
 reign. There was then the most abundant revelation of 
 the power and passion of this sturdy people, the most 
 magnificent luxuriance of its essential imagination, and 
 a sudden outflowering of the vigor of a hardy and pro- 
 lific stock. And above all the turmoil of those glorious 
 days, there towered aloft the genius of Shakspere. 
 Small wonder is it that many lovers of literature have 
 been blinded by the effulgence of all this genius, and 
 have closed their eyes to all except its glory, unable to 
 perceive anything but absolute perfection. So long have 
 we made a habit of using a megaphone to proclaim 
 its manifest and manifold beauties, that a microphone 
 would suffice for our infrequent and unwilling admis- 
 sions that all was not equally faultless in this splendid 
 era. Some of us still recall the shock of surprise with 
 which we first happened upon a passage in one of 
 Matthew Arnold's essays, seeming to suggest that there 
 might be weak places in Shakspere's works, and that 
 
234 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 even his genius did not always maintain him at the 
 topmost pinnacle of transcendent achievement. 
 
 But to adopt an attitude of insistent admiration is 
 to renounce the privilege and the duty of criticism, as 
 Gautier did when he declared that, if ever he found a 
 single line of Hugo's to fall short in any way, he would 
 not confess it to himself alone, in a cellar, on a dark 
 night. We deny ourselves the pleasure of knowing 
 wherein the Elizabethan poets are truly mighty, if we 
 give them all credit for all possible excellence, or if we 
 carelessly fail to see clearly that even the mightiest of 
 them does not always sustain himself at his highest 
 level. The work of the great Elizabethans is what 
 it is ; and for that we love it. But also it is not what it 
 is not ; and we ought to be honest enough not to claim 
 for it the qualities which it lacks, and which it could 
 not have because they are inconsistent with those it 
 actually has. Largeness of vision it has, and depth of 
 insight, and the gift of life itself, and many another 
 manifestation of the energy of the race. These posses- 
 sions are beyond question ; and yet, because it possesses 
 these qualities, because it has sweep, and penetration, 
 youthful daring, and robust vitality, it is often vio- 
 lent, often trivial, often grotesque. Reckless and ill- 
 restrained, it is likely to be wanting in taste and lacking 
 in logic. Energy it has above all things else, and a 
 compelling imaginative fire ; but balance and propor- 
 tion it rarely reveals. Infrequently do we find symmetry 
 and harmony, qualities somewhat incompatible with 
 the wastefulness of effort always characteristic of this 
 masterful people. 
 
 More than any other group of the Elizabethans, have 
 the dramatists suffered from this practice of indiscrim- 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 235 
 
 inate praise and from the absence of measured apprecia- 
 tion. Sometimes it seems as though the commentators 
 have chosen wilfully to shut their eyes to everything 
 they would wish away. They have made no effort to 
 free themselves from the spell of Lamb's contagious en- 
 thusiasm ; and they have not resisted the evil influence of 
 the extravagant eulogy habitual with Swinburne, whose 
 overpowering rhetoric once bade fair to have as perni- 
 cious an effect on literary criticism as Ruskin's over- 
 powering rhetoric had for a while upon criticism of 
 painting. As Ruskin misled many and discouraged 
 more, who, under wiser guidance, might have learned 
 in time to take keen pleasure in the painter's art, so 
 Swinburne by his indiscriminate overpraise must have 
 repelled many a reader who might have been lured into 
 a liking for the real value of the Elizabethan dramatic 
 poets, if this had been set forth modestly. 
 
 Many commentators and critics yield themselves up 
 to be hypnotized by the dramatic poet they are dealing 
 with, crediting him with a host of merits and refusing to 
 counterbalance their commendation by allowing weight 
 even to such demerits as they are compelled to record. 
 An amusing instance of this abdication of the critical 
 function can be found in the introduction to a recent 
 edition of "Old Fortunatus," in which the editor is 
 permitted to say that this comedy of Dekker's, " though 
 containing numberless faults in construction, in weak 
 and ineffective character-drawing, and in improbable 
 psychological deduction, is nevertheless one of the 
 greatest of Elizabethan dramas." Surely, this is the 
 very negation of criticism, to call a piece containing 
 "numberless faults" one of the "greatest of dramas." 
 Such writing is disheartening, not to term it dishonest. 
 
236 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 The truth is that " Old Fortunatus" is only a narrative 
 in dialogue; it has little dramaturgic merit; its char- 
 acter-drawing is mere prentice- work ; and it pleases be- 
 cause of its primitive unpretentiousness and its fleeting 
 glimpses of poetry. It has none of the broad humor or 
 of the hearty veracity of character which lends charm to 
 its author's "Shoemaker's Holiday," a brisk comedy 
 of the contemporary life of London, which the sturdy 
 author knew so well and relished so keenly. 
 
 ii 
 
 In considering the lack of playmaking skill, abun- 
 dantly evident in the works of the Elizabethan poets, 
 two points must ever be borne in mind. The first of 
 these is that the literary form which happens to be pop- 
 ular and therefore profitable, in any period, attracts to 
 it many who have nttle or no native gift for that special 
 art. In the nineteenth century, for example, the vogue 
 of the novel was overwhelming; and many a man of 
 letters who had but a small share of the narrative fac- 
 ulty undertook to express himself in fiction. So, at the 
 end of the sixteenth century, the drama was the one 
 field in which an aspiring genius might hope to make 
 money ; and it is not surprising, therefore, to find only a 
 few among all the mass of Elizabethan dramatic poets 
 who either were born playwrights, or willingly took the 
 trouble, by dint of hard work, to master the secrets 
 of the craft. Chapman, for one, had no natural bent 
 toward the theater ; and Webster, for another, for all his 
 striving after the horrible, does not prove his possession 
 of the native endowment of the instinctive playmaker. 
 Chapman and Webster were poets, beyond all question; 
 but they were not born playwrights. 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 237 
 
 The second point to be kept in memory is that the 
 dramatic art was not highly esteemed in Elizabeth's 
 time. The theater was a means whereby a poet might 
 earn his living ; but plays were scarcely held to be litera- 
 ture ; they were devised only to satisfy the two hours 'traf- 
 fic of the stage ; they were looked down upon by men of 
 letters, much as journalism is looked down upon to-day. 
 Accustomed as we are to consider the drama as the 
 chief glory of Elizabethan literature, we do not always 
 remember that the Elizabethans themselves scarcely 
 held it to be literature at all. Nothing is more significant 
 of this contemporary opinion than the fact that Shak- 
 spere corrected the proof of his two narrative poems 
 carefully, while he gave no thought to the printing of 
 his plays, carelessly abandoning the manuscripts to his 
 comrades of the theater. One result of this contemptu- 
 ous attitude toward the drama was that the poet was 
 not held to any high standard, and that what was good 
 enough for the rude playgoing public of those turbulent 
 times was often good enough for the playwright himself. 
 
 Perhaps it is well also to note a third point, the re- 
 calling of which will help us to understand certain of the 
 dramaturgic deficiencies of those days ; and this is that 
 the drama had not yet come into its own. It was still 
 imperfectly differentiated; it had not disengaged itself 
 from elements wholly undramatic. Just as the Greek 
 drama in the time of JEschylus retained a lyrical ele- 
 ment which often delayed the movement of the play 
 itself, so the English drama in the time of Shakspere 
 had not freed itself from elements which had nothing to 
 do with the setting of a story on the stage. It needs to 
 be remembered that, in those early days, the theater 
 was not only the theater ; it was also, to a certain extent, 
 
238 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 the newspaper, the lecture-hall, and even the pulpit. So 
 it is that we find the dramatic poet sometimes halting 
 his plot to deliver a lecture or a sermon, which his audi- 
 ence received gladly, but which clogged the movement 
 of his action, and which is seen now to be a hindrance 
 to the artistic shaping of his plot. 
 
 Here we touch the connection between the drama as 
 it was under Elizabeth and the drama as it had been 
 under Henry VIII and his predecessors. An Eliza- 
 bethan playhouse was open to the air; it got its light 
 from the sky; its stage, encumbered with spectators, 
 had no drop-curtain and no scenery ; its methods were 
 those of the mystery performed in the market-place and 
 the churchyard. There is really very little difference in 
 structure between the miracle-play of the later Middle 
 Ages and the chronicle-play of Elizabeth's youth. If 
 the method of the elder is medieval, the method of the 
 younger is semi-medieval, to say the least. It could not 
 be anything else until the roofed and lighted theater 
 came into being, with its separating drop-curtain and 
 its realistic scenery. There was no modern theater in 
 London until after the Restoration ; and so it is that the 
 Elizabethan drama could not be modern ; it had to re- 
 main at least semi-medieval even in its loftiest efforts. 
 It was not the fault of the Elizabethan drama that it 
 had not the severe simplicity of the ancients or the neat 
 dexterity of the moderns ; but there is no denying that it 
 had neither, and that it could not have them. 
 
 And when we consider what were the actual circum- 
 stances of performance in the Globe Theater, our 
 wonder is not that the structure of Shakspere's plays 
 is often straggling and slovenly, but rather that the 
 great dramatist was ever able to attain to a more orderly 
 
INTERIOR OF THE FORTUNE THEATER, LONDON (1599) 
 From the restoration by Waller H. Godfrey, Esq., after the builder's contract 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 239 
 
 conduct of his plot, such as he did achieve in " Othello ' ? 
 and in " Macbeth." Perhaps, indeed, there is no better 
 proof of the might of Shakspere's genius than this, 
 that now and again he was able to overcome conditions 
 which seem to be unconquerable, and to produce a play 
 which endures for all time even though it was originally 
 adjusted adroitly to the circumstances of performance 
 upon a semi-medieval stage. 
 
 Furthermore, the Elizabethan dramatist not only put 
 his plays together in conformity with the customary 
 methods of representation that obtained in the Eliza- 
 bethan theater, he also kept in mind always the audi- 
 ence before which they were to be produced. It was for 
 the playgoer of the present that he exerted himself; it 
 was not for the reader of the future. The absence of 
 critical standards and the contempt of the acted drama, 
 account for many of the defects of the plays of that 
 renowned period; but the chief cause is ever to be 
 sought in the necessity of pleasing a special public, prob- 
 ably far more brutal in its longings than any other to 
 which a great dramatist has had to appeal. The Athe- 
 nians, for whom Sophocles built his massive and austere 
 tragedies, and the Parisians, for whom Moliere painted 
 the humorous portrait of his fellow-burghers, these 
 were quite other than the mob before whom Shakspere 
 had to set his studies from life, a mob stout of stom- 
 ach for sheer horrors, and shrinking from no atrocity. 
 It is the Elizabethan public which is mainly respon- 
 sible for the fact that the Elizabethan drama, glorious 
 as it is with splendid episodes, taken separately, has 
 only a few masterpieces, only a few plays the conduct of 
 which does not continually disappoint even a cordial 
 reader. As M. Jusserand has pointed out, with the 
 
240 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 calm sanity which is characteristic of French criticism, 
 it is not difficult to select many " luminous parts, scenes 
 brilliant or tragic, moving passages, characters solidly 
 set on their feet," but it is very rare indeed to find com- 
 plete wholes sustained as a lofty level of art, "plays 
 entirely satisfactory, strongly conceived, firmly knit 
 together, carried to an inevitable conclusion." 
 
 in 
 
 Why take the trouble to knit a story strongly and 
 to deduce its inevitable conclusion, when the public 
 the play had to please cared nothing for this artistic 
 victory? Not only did the playgoers of those days 
 find no fault with the lack of plausibility in the conduct 
 of the story, with sudden and impossibly quick changes 
 in character, with coincidences heaped up and with ar- 
 bitrary artificialities accumulated; but these, indeed, 
 were the very qualities they most enjoyed. They pre- 
 ferred the unusual, the unexpected, the illogical; and 
 it was to behold startling turns of fortune and to get 
 the utmost of surprise that they went to the theater. 
 We are now annoyed by the huddling of two and three 
 stories into a single play, wholly unconnected, the 
 joyous and the gruesome side by side, and in no wise 
 tied together ; but to them, this was entirely satisfactory, 
 for it gave them variety, and this was what they were 
 seeking. We must always be ready to " make believe," 
 when we surrender ourselves to the charm of these 
 semi-medieval poet playwrights. 
 
 No doubt, there were gallants sitting on the stage 
 who had a tincture of cultivation ; and there must have 
 been other men of education in the rooms of the gal- 
 lery. But the most of those who stood in the yard be- 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 241 
 
 low were unable to write or to read. Among them were 
 discharged soldiers home from the wars, sailors from 
 the ships of Frobisher and Drake, runaway apprentices, 
 and all the riffraff and rabble of a seaport town which 
 happened also to be the capital of an expanding nation. 
 They were violent in their likings, with a constant 
 longing for horse-play and ribaldry, and with a persis- 
 tent hankering after scenes of lust and gore. They 
 were used to cock-fighting and bear-baiting and bull- 
 baiting; and these brutal sports were shown some- 
 times within the very building where on other occasions 
 there were performances of those raw tragedies-of- 
 blood, the plays which could best stir the nerves of 
 so tumultuous a public. These supporters of the stage 
 were used to battle, murder, and sudden death, not only 
 in the theater, but in daily life, for there were scores of 
 public executions every year ; and in those spectacular 
 times, the headsman of the Tower was a busy man, with 
 his ghastly trophies frequently renewed on the spikes 
 above the gate. 
 
 The pressure of the main body of playgoers upon the 
 playwrights was not unwholesome then, as it is not 
 unwholesome now, in so far as it led the dramatic poets 
 to avoid preciosity and to eschew style-mongering, in 
 so far as it forced them to deal directly with life, and to 
 handle passion boldly and amply. But the playgoers 
 of those days had cruder likings also ; they craved con- 
 stant excitement, both for the eye and for the ear ; and 
 the aspiring playwright gave them good measure, 
 pressed down and running over. For the pleasure of 
 the eye, he lavished processions, coronations, funerals, 
 encampments, single combats and serried battles. 
 For the pleasure of the ear, he was prolific of songs, 
 
242 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 melancholy or smutty ; and he never stinted such other 
 sounds as he could command, the roll of the drum, 
 the staccato call of the trumpet, the clangor of loud 
 bells, the rattle of musketry, and the long reverbera- 
 tion of thunder. Sheeted ghosts and bloody specters 
 were sure of their welcome in advance ; and the play- 
 wright was prompt to produce them whenever he had 
 an excuse. He knew also that these ignorant playgoers 
 had a rough sense of fun and liked to laugh heartily; 
 and so he sprinkled throughout his pieces a variety of 
 ingenious retorts and of obvious repartees, even de- 
 scending now and again to get his laugh by the more 
 mechanical humor of a practical joke. Furthermore, 
 he was aware that, gross as was the taste of the yard- 
 lings, they could enjoy pretty sentiment, sometimes pre- 
 sented with simple truth, and sometimes surcharged 
 with the utmost of lyric exaggeration. 
 
 When we consider how rank was the quality of those 
 who stood in the yard of the Globe in those days, how 
 deficient their education, how harsh their experience 
 of life, how rude their likings, the wonder is not that 
 the play prepared for their pleasure was often violent 
 and arbitrary and coarse, but rather that any play de- 
 vised to delight them was ever logical and elevated, 
 shapely and refined. If the best of Shakspere is for 
 eternity, the worst of him was frankly for the ground- 
 lings who were his contemporaries, and whose inter- 
 est he had to arouse and to retain as best he could. It 
 is evidence of the intense practicality which ever di- 
 rected his conduct that he was in the habit of taking 
 over old plays which had already proved their power 
 to attract paying audiences. It is evidence of his strict 
 adaptation of his plays to his semi-medieval audiences 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 243 
 
 that he had a total disregard of chronological, historic, 
 or geographic accuracy, giving clocks and cannons to 
 the Romans and having the Italians going from Verona 
 to Milan to take ship when the tide served, because 
 this was the mode of travel most familiar to the Lon- 
 doner then. It is evidence of his understanding of his 
 public that he is open in having his villains proclaim 
 their own wickedness, so that the spectator might never 
 be in doubt as to their motives. 
 
 In nothing else is the superiority of Shakspere over 
 his contemporaries more obvious than in the adroit 
 dexterity with which he played upon the prejudices of 
 his audience and made profit out of them. He sought 
 always to give the spectators of his own time what he 
 knew they wanted; and yet, now and again, perhaps 
 a dozen times in the score of years of his playmaking, 
 uplifted by his genius and by his love of his craft, he 
 looked above the spectators and beyond them, and he 
 took a trouble they did not require of him. On these 
 occasions, all too few, he made a play, pleasing to them 
 indeed, but also pleasing to himself, and to his own in- 
 tense artistic enjoyment of technical mastery. So it hap- 
 pens that we have the compact and logical " Othello," 
 as well as the sprawling and incoherent " Cymbeline," 
 which came a few years afterward. 
 
 The most of his contemporaries, brilliant and highly 
 gifted as they were, were incapable of this, and they 
 were unable to profit by the example Shakspere had 
 set them in those of his plays in which he was himself 
 interested enough to do his best and to put forth his 
 full strength. It is because he is at his best only on oc- 
 casion, and when the spirit of perfection moved him, 
 that he founded no school. He was not a master to 
 
244 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 follow unhesitatingly, partly because the mark at which 
 he aimed was not always the best target for others, 
 since he was willing often to let the incomparable fe- 
 licity of the poet cover up and cloak the careless plan- 
 ning of the playwright ; and partly, also, because no 
 weaker arm could bend the bow of Ulysses. His chief 
 gift was incommunicable ; it was the power of endow- 
 ing all his creatures with independent life. This power 
 is the test of his work ; and it never leaves him. We dis- 
 cover it abundantly even in his most recklessly arbi- 
 trary plots, and even in those of his episodes which are 
 based on a childish make-believe. It is not to the credit 
 of critics like Brandes, that they gloss over the absurdi- 
 ties that abound in Shakspere's plays, because Shak- 
 spere was ready enough to give the spectators of his 
 own time the puerile devices they delighted in, the 
 pound of flesh and the trial of the caskets in the " Mer- 
 chant of Venice," for example, and the test of the affec- 
 tion of Lear's daughters, when that fatherly monarch, 
 unless he was already imbecile, ought to have learned 
 the characters of his children in the long years of their 
 family life. If a critic does not see these absurdities, if 
 he is blind to the arbitrary and muddled plot of " Cym- 
 beline" and to the shocking callousness of the last act 
 of " Much Ado about Nothing," then we may well doubt 
 whether he is really able to appreciate the masterly 
 simplicity of "Othello" and the orderly richness of 
 "Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 IV 
 
 The significant fact is that Shakspere was, after all, 
 an Elizabethan; and that, like the others, he had to 
 accept the conditions of a semi-medieval theater and 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 245 
 
 to please a full-blooded public. The others cannot 
 climb with him; but not infrequently he sinks with 
 them. They were ready enough to be satisfied them- 
 selves when they had satisfied the playgoers of their 
 own day. They had no hesitation in sacrificing con- 
 sistency of character to immediate effect on the mass 
 of spectators, very much as their fellow playwrights 
 in Spain were doing at the same time and for the same 
 reason. Climbing to impossible heights of honor or 
 sinking to impossible depths of dishonor, abounding 
 in the most romantic reversals of fortune and in the 
 most inexplicable transformations of character, caring 
 little for reality or even for plausibility, disregarding 
 the delicacy of art no less than the veracity of nature, 
 they were fertile in inventing striking episodes; and 
 they failed, as a rule, to combine the several parts into 
 a coherent whole, sustaining itself throughout and 
 gathering power as it proceeded. Capable on occasion 
 of the finest shadings of a subtle psychology, they 
 were content, for the most part, with a bald daubing 
 of character in the primary colors. In other words, 
 they often proved themselves true poets, but far less 
 frequently did they reveal themselves as real play- 
 wrights. 
 
 This is the reason why the flamboyant and iridescent 
 eulogy of Swinburne is doing them an ill service to-day, 
 while they gained greatly by the apt selection of Lamb, 
 who artfully singled out the perfect passages. Only too 
 often the parts are far finer than the whole ; and Lamb 
 presented the best bits so enticingly that he must have 
 lured to disappointment many readers who went 
 straight from his " Specimens " to the complete works 
 of the several dramatic poets. Here, also, we may find 
 
246 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 an excuse for Hazlitt and for Lowell, who have praised 
 these poets more especially as poets to be read in a li- 
 brary, while almost wholly neglecting to consider their 
 plays as plays intended to be performed by actors in 
 a theater and before an audience. To Hazlitt and 
 Lowell, these dramatic poets appealed primarily as 
 poets ; and that the poets were also dramatists rarely 
 arrested the attention of either of these acute critics. 
 
 Of a certainty, there must be many other readers 
 who are willing enough to follow the example of Hazlitt 
 and of Lowell, and to accept the pure poetry which is 
 abundant in the works of the Elizabethan dramatists, 
 without caring to consider whether or not the plays 
 enriched by this poetry are all that they ought to be, 
 merely as plays. Some of them may even be inclined 
 to resent any attempt to call attention to the drama- 
 turgic defects of plays possessing a host of splendid 
 passages, wherein poetry combines with psychology to 
 give the keenest pleasure. Others there are who are 
 willing to admit the existence of the defects themselves, 
 but who deny the justice of a criticism which gages the 
 semi-medieval playwrights by tests properly applicable 
 only to the modern drama. This protest was voiced 
 most persuasively not long ago by a devout admirer of 
 the old dramatists, who insisted on the impropriety 
 of judging Massinger and Greene by the standards 
 proper enough in judging Scribe and Ibsen. 
 
 There is a certain speciousness in this claim; but 
 analysis shows that it is not valid. It may be unfair 
 to weigh the semi-medieval Greene and Massinger on 
 the same scales as Scribe and Ibsen, who are mod- 
 erns; but it is not unfair to measure them by the 
 standards we can derive from the comparison of the 
 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS 247 
 
 greatest dramatists, both ancient and modern. If we 
 find certain principles of the art of playmaking ex- 
 emplified in the best dramas of JSschylus and of Soph- 
 ocles, of Shakspere and of Moliere, of Calderon and 
 of Racine, of Beaumarchais and of Scribe, of Ibsen, of 
 Sudermann and of Pinero, it is not unfair to consider 
 these principles as the eternal verities of dramaturgy, 
 and to point out that Massinger and Greene fail to 
 achieve an excellence of which we find frequent ex- 
 amples all through the long history of the drama, some 
 of them a score of centuries before Scribe and Ibsen 
 were born. 
 
 At its best, the dramatist's art reveals itself as akin 
 to the architect's ; and a really good play ought to have 
 a solid framework and a bold simplicity of planning, 
 with a foundation broad enough to sustain the super- 
 structure, however massive or however lofty this may 
 prove to be. It ought to have unity of theme, freedom 
 from all extraneous matter, veracity of motive, contrast 
 of character, clearness of exposition, probability of in- 
 cident, logical coherence, swift movement, and culmi- 
 nating intensity of interest. These qualities can be 
 found in " Agamemnon " and " (Edipus the King," as 
 well as in " Othello " and in " Tartuffe," in the " Alcalde 
 of Zalamea" and in "Phedre," in the "Barber of Se- 
 ville " and in the "Ladies' Battle," in "Ghosts," in 
 " Magda," and in the " Second Mrs.Tanqueray." But 
 these qualities are not to be found in any large degree in 
 " Doctor Faustus " or in the " Roman Actor " ; and they 
 are not often to be found in the plays of any of the Eliza- 
 bethan dramatists, far more often in Shakspere than 
 in any of the others. 
 
 And if these deficiencies exist, surely it is unwise to 
 
248 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 close our eyes to the fact ; surely it is unjust to pretend 
 that the Elizabethan drama, as a whole, possesses that 
 which it has not ; surely it is safer and honester to ad- 
 mit frankly that the art of building plays solidly and 
 symmetrically was little cultivated by the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, just as it was little considered by the 
 Elizabethan critics. Surely, again, it is wisest to try to 
 see things as they really are and to tell the truth about 
 them, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
 Even in criticism, honesty is the best policy; and the 
 Elizabethan poets are indisputably great enough to 
 make it worth while for us to assure ourselves wherein 
 their true greatness lies. They are none the less great 
 as poets when we have seen clearly that excepting 
 Shakspere they are great as playwrights only occa- 
 sionally, and almost, as it were, by accident. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE POETIC DRAMA AND THE DRAMATIC POEM 
 
 The attempt to write tragedy for the closet rather than for the 
 stage has resulted either in adopting the supposed conditions of the 
 Greek or some other foreign theater, or in breaking away from 
 the strict limits defined by the stage and writing lyrical medleys or 
 dramatic monologues or imaginary conversations. . . . Object as 
 tragedy rightly may at times to the limitations and trivialities of the 
 theater, it cannot safely leave its precincts without losing its own 
 identity. 
 
 In the past nearly all tragedies of any effect on the drama's de- 
 velopment have not only been planned for the stage but have suc- 
 ceeded when acted. This seems likely to be the case in the future. 
 For the reader of a play is confronted by difficulties not found in 
 other fiction ; and, in general, only a play suited to presentation on 
 the stage is likely to secure for a reader the visualization, the im- 
 personations, the illusion of actuality, similar to those experienced 
 in the theater. ASHLEY H. THOBNDIKE, Tragedy. 
 
 THE divorce between poetry and the drama, visible 
 in English literature in the nineteenth century, is 
 acknowledged to be most unfortunate for both parties 
 to the matrimonial contract ; and those of us who have 
 a warm regard for either of them cannot help hoping 
 that they may be persuaded soon to make up their 
 quarrel and get married again. The theater is flour- 
 ishing more abundantly than ever before; and the 
 prose-drama of modern life, dealing soberly and sin- 
 cerely with the present problems of existence, has at 
 last got its roots, into the soil, and is certain soon to 
 yield a richer fruitage. Perhaps it is even not too much 
 
250 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 to foresee the possibility of a speedy outflowering of 
 the drama in the next half-century, in the English lan- 
 guage, as well as in the other tongues. In all the earlier 
 epochs of dramatic expansion, the masterpieces of the 
 art have been truly poetic, in theme and in treatment. 
 Have we any reason to suppose that our coming drama 
 will also be poetic, both in essentials and in externals ? 
 If the law of supply and demand were as potent in the 
 arts as it is in commerce, we should be justified in ex- 
 pecting that return of the poetic drama, which is eagerly 
 awaited by all who cherish the muses. But when we 
 station Sister Ann on the watch-tower, and when we 
 keep on asking if she sees any one coming, we ought 
 to have in our own minds a clear vision of the rescuer 
 we are looking for. When we cry aloud for the poetic 
 drama, what is it that we stand ready to welcome? 
 Of course, we do not mean that bastard hybrid, the so- 
 called closet-drama, the play that is not intended to be 
 played. A mere poem in dialogue not destined for per- 
 formance by actors, in a theater, and before an audi- 
 ence, may have interest of its own to the chosen few 
 who can persuade themselves that they like that sort 
 of thing; but it is not what the rest of us want. The 
 poetic drama, in its most splendid periods, has always 
 been adjusted to the playhouse of its own time. It 
 has always been dramatic, first of all; and its poetry 
 has been ancillary to its action. It is in the theater, and 
 not only in the library, that we desire now to greet the 
 noble muse of tragedy with her singing robes about 
 her. Brunetiere insisted that " it cannot be repeated 
 too often that a dramatic work does not begin to exist 
 as such except before the footlights by virtue of the 
 collaboration and complicity of the public, without 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 251 
 
 which I assert that it never has been and never can 
 be more than mere rhetoric." In other words, we must 
 ever distinguish sharply between the poetic play and 
 the dramatic poem, between the compositions in dia- 
 logue which were intended to be spoken on the stage 
 itself, and the compositions in dialogue which were 
 intended only to be read in the study. So long as these 
 latter make no pretence to be other than they are, 
 dramatic poems and not genuine plays, they are legiti- 
 mate enough. It is only when their authors and their 
 admirers claim for them the praise due to the true 
 drama that we must make a swift protest. The true 
 poetic drama designed for the actual theater and the 
 dramatic poem intended only for the library are dis- 
 tinct things; they are essentially unlike; and there is 
 danger in any attempt to confuse them. The dramatic 
 poem becomes illegitimate only when it claims to be 
 judged as a poetic drama; then it stands exposed as a 
 mere pretender to a crown belonging to another. 
 
 Yet, like other pretenders, it does not lack advocates. 
 One of these has boldly asserted that the so-called 
 closet-drama " is a quite legitimate product of literary 
 jirt/' since "the playhouse has no monopoly of the 
 dramatic form." This assertion reveals a misunder- 
 standing of the essential principles of the drama, as 
 all students of its history will instinctively feel. They 
 cannot help believing that the playhouse has now, has 
 had in the past, and must always have, a monopoly 
 of the dramatic form. And they can see clearly enough 
 that the closet-drama is generally the offspring of the 
 unwillingness or the inability of certain poets to ac- 
 quire the craft of the theater, the special craft which 
 makes \he dramatist what he is. 
 
252 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Probably no one of its admirers would dispute a 
 definition to the effect that a closet-drama is a play 
 not intended to be played. It is a poem in dialogue, 
 conceived with no thought of the actual stage, not 
 contaminated by any subservience to the playhouse, 
 the players, or the playgoers. It is wrought solely for 
 the reader in the library, without any regard for the 
 demands of possible spectators in the auditorium. If 
 we accept this definition, we find ourselves able to sub- 
 tract from any catalogue of the so-called closet-drama 
 two important groups, one containing poetic plays 
 and the other dramatic poems. First of all, there is 
 the group represented by Tennyson's " Becket." If 
 a closet-drama is a dramatic poem not intended to 
 be played, then. " Becket " is not a closet-drama, for 
 Tennyson did intend it to be played. And Tennyson 
 was not the author of a single closet-drama, since he 
 meant all his plays to be acted, and was even intensely 
 anxious that they should be seen in the theater, reveal- 
 ing his readiness to make whatsoever modifications, 
 suppressions, or additions the managers might suggest 
 to him. That these plays met with little success on the 
 stage itself can be accounted for either by asserting 
 that the laureate was without the dramaturgic faculty, 
 or by admitting that he did not take the trouble to 
 master the necessary technic of the theater. Brown- 
 ing's " Straff ord " and " A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" were 
 written not only to be acted, but to be acted by one 
 particular actor. And as Browning had Macready in 
 view, so Shelley had Miss O'Neill in view when he 
 wrote the "Cenci. " Coleridge composed "Remorse" 
 and Johnson wrote "Irene" to be performed, and they 
 were performed. 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 253 
 
 If these poetic plays failed in the theater, this is 
 partly because their authors did not keep an eye single 
 on the stage. They may have had the impatient spec- 
 tator in mind, but they had also the leisurely reader; 
 and as a result they fell between two stools. They 
 laid themselves open to the reproach which Stendhal 
 brought against Manzoni's dramatic poems, that the 
 "characters seem to be held back by the pleasure of 
 finding fine words." And they failed to take to heart 
 the warning which Goethe expressed to Eckermann in 
 1826 : " When a play makes a deep impression on us in 
 reading, we think it will do the same on the stage, and 
 that we could obtain such a result with little trouble. 
 But a piece that is not originally, by the intent and skill 
 of the poet, written for the boards, will not succeed. 
 Whatever is done to it, it will always remain unmanage- 
 able." And then he added out of his own experience: 
 " What trouble have I taken with ' Gotz,' and yet 
 it will not go right as an acting-play." ^ 
 
 The dramatic poems of another class can be con- 
 sidered as closet-dramas only by stretching the defini- 
 tion, since they are frankly dramatic poems, not copy- 
 ing the outward form of the modern play. This second 
 group includes Arnold's "Empedocles on Etna" and 
 Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon," and all the other 
 attempted resuscitations of Greek tragedy. The most 
 obvious characteristic of these attempts to resuscitate 
 a departed form is to be found in the fact that they 
 are deliberate imitations. They are exercises in poetry 
 to be ranked with the anatomies of the old painters. 
 They are pastiches, as the French call them; and the 
 poet has found his chief interest in recalling the flavor 
 of a day that has gone forever. They may reveal the 
 
254 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 range of the metrical artist's accomplishment and his 
 ingenuity in grappling with the endless difficulties of 
 a revival which can never be really successful, since it 
 is frankly impossible for a modern poet to put himself 
 back into the skin of a Greek of old and to strip himself 
 of all the accretions of thought and feeling that he has 
 inherited from the long centuries separating him from 
 the Athenians. "Atalanta in Calydon" may be the 
 most Greek of all English imitations of Attic tragedy; 
 but it is intensely modern and intensely English, none 
 the less. It is not by imitations, however adroit and 
 however skilful, that a poet can establish his fame, 
 even though an imitation or two may serve to broaden 
 our appreciation of his craftsmanship. Lowell was 
 considering Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" when 
 he declared that "every attempt at reproducing a by- 
 gone excellence by external imitation of it, or even by 
 applying the rules which analytic criticism has formu- 
 lated from the study of it, has resulted in producing 
 the artificial, not the artistic." And in the same essay, 
 there is another passage which also demands quota- 
 tion here: "The higher kinds of literature, the only 
 kinds that live on, because they had life at the start, 
 are not the fabric of scholarship, of criticism, diligently 
 studying and as diligently copying the best models, but 
 are much rather born of some genetic principle in the 
 character of the people and the age that produce 
 them." 
 
 ii 
 
 The real reason why the closet-drama fails to justify 
 itself is that it is too easy. Nothing is more stimulating 
 to the artist than the necessity of grappling with dif- 
 ficulty. Then and then only is he forced to put forth 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 255 
 
 his whole strength. To make his work easier in any way, 
 to relax the bonds, to let down the bars, this is not 
 to help the^ artist ; it is to hinder him from lofty achieve- 
 ment. As Huxley once said, it is when a man can do 
 as he pleases that his troubles begin. A strong nature 
 is ever anxious for a wrestle with an opposing force; 
 and he knows very well how the strain braces his 
 muscles. This is what is forgotten by the admirers of 
 the closet-drama, one of whom once ventured to set 
 up this claim for it : 
 
 "As the closet-dramatist is not bound to consider the 
 practical exigencies of the theater, to consult the prejudices 
 of the manager or the spectators, fill the pockets of the com- 
 pany, or provide a role for a star performer, he has, in many 
 ways, a freer hand than the professional playwright. He 
 need not sacrifice truth of character and probability of plot 
 to the need of highly accentuated situations. He does not have 
 to consider whether a speech is too long, too ornate in dic- 
 tion, too deeply thoughtful for recitation by an actor. If the 
 action lags at certain points, let it lag. In short, as the aim 
 of the closet-dramatist is other than the playwright's, so his 
 methods may be independent." 
 
 Now, almost every advantage which is here claimed 
 for the writer of the closet-drama is in reality a disad- 
 vantage. The more willingly a poet avails himself of 
 these licenses, the more remote must the result be from 
 the true drama, as Shakspere and Moliere conceived it, 
 with their careful adjustment of their characters to the 
 actors of their own companies and with their keen in- 
 terest in the takings at the door. The poet stands re- 
 vealed as a shrinking weakling when he wants to cast 
 off the shackles that all the supreme dramatists have 
 worn lightly. If the aim of the closet-dramatist is other 
 than that of the playwright, and if his methods are 
 
256 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 independent, then in all fairness the conclusion ought 
 to follow that his achievement is not drama. There is a 
 taint of unreality about it. A closet-drama of this sort 
 irresistibly recalls a summer cottage with its shingled 
 turret and with a parapet carefully machiolated so that 
 the residents can the more readily pour molten lead on 
 the besiegers. " When you build a portcullis to let in 
 cows, not to exclude marauders, it is apt to become 
 rather ludicrously unreal ; if you know that your play 
 is to be read and not to be seen, the whole dramatic 
 arrangement is on the way to become a mere sham," 
 said Sir Leslie Stephen, who then asked : " Why bother 
 yourself to make the actors tell a story, when it is 
 simpler and easier to tell it yourself ? " 
 
 In the dedicatory epistle to his collected poems, 
 Swinburne asserted that when he wrote plays, it was 
 " with a view to their being acted at the Globe, the Red 
 Bull, or the Blackfriars," the semi-medieval play- 
 houses with which the Elizabethan playwrights had to 
 be content, since they knew no other, and to the con- 
 ditions of which they carefully conformed their plays. 
 And in discussing his own "Marino Faliero," Swin- 
 burne declared that this dramatic poem, "hopelessly 
 impossible as it is from the point of view of modern 
 stagecraft, could hardly have been found too untheatri- 
 cal, too utterly given over to thought without action, 
 by the audience which endured and applauded Chap- 
 man's eloquence the fervid and inexhaustible de- 
 clamation which was offered and accepted as a sub- 
 stitute for study of character and interest of action, 
 when his two finest plays, if plays they can be called, 
 found favor with an incredibly intelligent and an in- 
 conceivably tolerant audience." 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 257 
 
 The first comment to be made upon this character- 
 istic vaunting is that we do not know whether Chap- 
 man's plays did or did not find favor with Elizabethan 
 playgoers ; and the second is that these playgoers may 
 have tolerated the eloquence and the declamation for 
 the sake of the violently melodramatic plots which held 
 the plays together. A third comment would be to deny 
 incredible intelligence to the audiences of Chapman's 
 time and place. And a fourth would point out that 
 eloquence belongs to the oration and not to the drama, 
 and that the proper place for declamation is the plat- 
 form and not the stage, which expects and has a ] 
 right to expect the "interest of action" and the ! 
 " study of character." 
 
 But there is really little need of comment, since 
 Swinburne revealed a total inability to understand the 
 drama as that has been understood by all the really 
 dramatic poets from Sophocles to Ibsen, and by all the 
 real dramatic critics from Aristotle to Lessing. It is 
 true that Sidney, who had been infected by the sterile 
 theoretic criticism of the Italian Renascence, believed 
 that the English dramatists ought to model themselves 
 on the great Greeks; and yet Swinburne himself has 
 never found fault with Shakspere for rejecting this 
 advice and for adjusting his plays to the actual theater 
 of his own time. It is curious that Swinburne, whose 
 adoration for Hugo is almost as perfervid as his ad- 
 miration for Shakspere, did not follow their example. 
 Shakspere was satisfied with the stage as he found it, 
 semi-medieval and unworthy of his genius as it may 
 seem to us. Hugo, who had perhaps little more of the 
 native dramaturgic gift than Swinburne himself, went 
 to school to the professional playwrights whose melo- 
 
258 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 dramas were popular in his youth, and absorbed their 
 processes. The poet of "Hernani" was no closet- 
 dramatist; his aim was that of the professional play- 
 wrights, and he took over the skeleton of melodramatic 
 action which they had devised to please the multitude, 
 flinging over it the splendor of his lyric verse, with the 
 result of evoking from Swinburne the assertion that he 
 was a dramatist of " the race and lineage of Shakspere." 
 
 in 
 
 It is curious also that Swinburne, in his study of 
 French literature, had not observed that the foremost 
 critics of France have never a good word for the closet- 
 drama, perhaps because the closet-drama has rarely 
 tempted the French poets, who have generally con- 
 tented themselves with the theater as it happened to 
 exist when they took up the art of the dramatist. Ros- 
 tand has found his profit in writing for the stage as it 
 is; and even Musset, who turned his back on it for 
 a season, composed his poetic fantasies so closely in 
 accord with its conditions that they needed very little 
 modification when they were transferred from the 
 library to the theater. 
 
 In Great Britain and in the United States, in the 
 nineteenth century, while these closet-dramas were 
 being published, there was no scarcity of actors capable 
 of performing characters loftily conceived ; and these 
 actors were many of them eager for new parts worthy 
 of their histrionic ability. And the continued popu- 
 larity of Shakspere's plays in the theater proves also 
 that there was no lack of audiences ready to welcome 
 new poetic dramas, if only these novelties resembled 
 the plays of Shakspere in being dramatic as well as 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 259 
 
 poetic. There is no reason to suppose that the poets 
 of the English language would have failed in the play- 
 house any more than the poets of the French lan- 
 guage failed, if these English poets had followed the 
 example of Hugo and of Rostand, and had taken the 
 time and the trouble needful to master the methods of 
 the contemporary theater. But this is what they were 
 not willing to do ; they shrank from the toil ; and there- 
 fore they cannot now claim the guerdon due only 
 to that successful conquest of difficulty which sus- 
 tains the masterpieces of every art. They chose the 
 easier path and they wrote poems in dialogue, devoid 
 of the essential qualities of the drama, even if rich in 
 the essential qualities of poetry. What right have they 
 now to the same laurel we bestow on Hugo and on 
 Rostand ? It is almost as though they had composed 
 music with no understanding of the several instruments 
 which make up the modern orchestra, and with no 
 intention that the composition should ever be heard. 
 It is a significant fact in the history of literature that 
 the closet-drama has appeared only when there is a 
 divorce between literature and the theater. It isjirstl 
 seen in Rome under Nero, when the stage was given 
 over to vulgar and violent spectacle; and so Seneca' 
 seems to have polished his plays solely for recitation 
 by an elocutionist. It is visible again in Italy, when 
 men of letters, enamored of the noble severity of Greek 
 tragedy and of the artistic propriety of Latin comedy, 
 despised the ruder miracle-plays and the lively but 
 acrobatic comedy-of -masks, which were the only types 
 of drama then popular on the stage; and they there- 
 fore attempted empty imitations of the classic drama- 
 tists with no regard to the conditions of the contempo- 
 
260 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 rary theater. It emerged once more in England early 
 in the nineteenth century, when adaptations of Kotze- 
 bue, and later of Scribe and his cloud of collabora- 
 tors, were the chief staple of the stage, and when the 
 overwhelming vogue of the " Waverley " novels drew 
 the attention of authors away from the drama to the 
 novel, which was easier to write, easier to bring before 
 the public, and more likely to bring in an adequate re- 
 ward. Behind every appearance of the closet-drama, we 
 can discover a latent contempt for the actual theater, 
 and a desire to claim its rewards without the trouble 
 of mastering its methods or the risk of facing its perils. 
 This is why the closet-drama has never appeared in 
 any period of affluent dramatic productivity, for then the 
 poets who happen also to be dramatists are glad to 
 study out the secrets of theatrical technic and to brave 
 the dangers of actual performance. 
 
 Even if there were some slight excuse for the ap- 
 pearance of the closet-drama in Rome under Nero and 
 in Italy during the Renascence, there was none for 
 its revival in England in the nineteenth century, when 
 actors and audiences were alike waiting to recognize 
 and to reward a new dramatic poet. For its continued 
 existence in the twentieth century there is still less ex- 
 cuse, since Ibsen has shown us how the austerest themes 
 may be treated in the modern theater. The poet of 
 our time has no right now to despise the stage, where 
 Shakspere and Ibsen are accepted ; he has no right lazily 
 to refuse to comply with its conditions, if he wishes to 
 win its rewards. The drama is not for the library, but 
 for the theater; and it is not for the joy of the little 
 group of dilettants, but for the stimulation of the public 
 as a whole. It was the wise Boileau who once said that 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 261 
 
 " even when a work is approved by a small number of 
 Connoisseurs, if it is not filled with a certain pleasure 
 for the general taste of men, it will never pass for good, 
 and at the end the connoisseurs themselves will admit 
 that they were at fault in giving it their approbation." 
 
 IV 
 
 The closet-drama is like poverty in that it is always 
 with us; and it is far removed from the poetic drama 
 which we hoped to see revived in our language. But 
 what is the exact nature of this poetic drama that we 
 long for ? It is not, or at least it ought not to be, a sort 
 of dramatized historical novel, full of high deeds and 
 pretty words, a costume-play in blank verse, as empty 
 of true poetic inspiration as the " Virginius" of Sheri- 
 dan Knowles or the "Richelieu" of Bulwer Lytton. 
 In the illuminating address on "Literature and the 
 Modern Drama," which Mr. Henry Arthur Jones 
 delivered at Yale in the fall of 1906, he asserted that 
 playgoers on both sides of the Atlantic have a notion 
 that a costume-play, with its scenes laid anywhere 
 except in the last half-century and with its personages 
 talking "a patchwork diction, compounded of every 
 literary style from Chaucer to a Whitechapel coster- 
 monger," seems to have a literary distinction and a 
 profound significance "which rank it immeasurably 
 above the mere prose play of modern every-day life," 
 and which give to the ravished spectator an elevation of 
 mind and " a vague but gratifying sense of superiority." 
 
 Probably this notion is to be found in the heads of 
 not a few playgoers, pleased with the belief that they 
 are revealing themselves possessed of fine literary dis- 
 crimination when they pay their money to behold a 
 
262 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 costume-play in blank verse. But the clothes of long 
 ago and the lines of ten syllables have no power in 
 themselves to confer literary merit, even when they 
 are united. These are but the trappings of the muse, 
 often laid aside when she warms to her singing. They 
 may deck a play wholly artificial, unreal, false to life, 
 and therefore wholly devoid of literary merit. It 
 ought to be evident to us all that an unpretending 
 farce which has happened to catch and to fix a few 
 of the foibles of the moment is really more worthy of 
 serious critical consideration than a tawdry melodrama, 
 bombasted with swelling sonorities and peopled by 
 heroes strutting in the toga or stiff in chain-armor. It 
 ought to be evident also that this farce, in so far as 
 it has its roots in reality, is a better augury for the 
 future of the drama, and may have even more genuine 
 literary quality, than the pretentious costume-play in 
 blank verse, illumined by no gleam of true poetry. 
 
 Poetry, essential poetry, is not a matter of versifying 
 only. Many a play in verse is prosy, whether written 
 in French alexandrines or in English pentameters. 
 Many a play in humble prose is shot through and 
 through with the radiance of poesy. Perhaps the most 
 truly poetic dramas of the end of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury are the little pieces of M. Maeterlinck ; and neither 
 the "Intruder" nor "Pelleas and Melisande" is in 
 verse. Certainly the most poetic plays of the middle 
 of the nineteenth century are the delicious fantasies 
 of Alfred de Musset; and "On ne badine pas avec 
 1'amour," and its fellows, did not need the aid of verse. 
 And it would be easy to give many another example. 
 Aldrich's "Judith," for instance, which is in verse, 
 is not only less dramatic, it is actually less poetic than 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 263 
 
 his "Mercedes," which is in prose. More significant 
 still is the fact that the most charmingly lyric of all 
 the comedies of Shakspere, "As You Like It," filled 
 with the fragrance of young love and of perennial 
 springtime, is very largely in prose. So is the sleep- 
 walking scene of Lady Macbeth, tense with tragic 
 emotion and lifted to the loftier altitudes of poetry. 
 
 It may not be too bold to suggest that Shakspere 
 knew what he was about. He had the right instinctive 
 feeling; and he varied his instrument as the spirit 
 moved him. Nothing will better repay study than the 
 skill with which Shakspere, in " Julius Caesar," for 
 example, commingled blank verse and rhythmic prose 
 and the plainer speech of every day, giving the verse 
 to his nobler characters, Brutus and Cassius and 
 Antony, letting the cadence of balanced sentences fall 
 from the lips of those less important, and bestowing 
 the simplest words on the mob of under citizens. A 
 modern dramatic poet could scarcely have refrained 
 from sustaining the whole of "As You Like It" and 
 "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar" at the higher level 
 of blank verse. And even Shakspere's contemporaries 
 had not his instinctive art. Massinger, for one, often 
 used verse in plays of contemporary life, such as the 
 "New Way to pay Old Debts," which demanded 
 rather the realistic directness of prose. This has led 
 astray many of the later imitators of the Elizabeth- 
 ans, Sheridan Knowles, for example, whose " Hunch- 
 back" is in the blankest of verse. 
 
 The dramatic poets of the other modern languages 
 have sometimes fallen into the same error. Augier's 
 "Paul Forestier" deals with a highly emotional situa- 
 tion in modern life ; but it loses more than it gains from 
 
264 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 its verse. Ibsen eschewed verse after he had written 
 " Love's Comedy," which is the least significant of all 
 his modern plays ; and he declared that prose was not 
 only more appropriate to plays of contemporary char- 
 acter, but "incomparably more difficult." We ought 
 to be able to see that "When We Dead Awaken" and 
 the "Intruder" and "On ne badine pas" are truly 
 poetic, although in prose, whereas "Richelieu" and 
 " Virginius " are emphatically prose, although in verse. 
 It is not the cowl that makes the monk, said the medi- 
 eval proverb. Perhaps it may seem like bad manners 
 to look Pegasus in the mouth; but it is good sense to 
 see that he is entered for the right race before we be- 
 stride him. 
 
 Although the dramatic poets of other modern lan- 
 guages have also made the mistake of employing verse 
 when prose would have served their purpose better, 
 it is the dramatic poets of the English language who 
 have most often been guilty of the blunder. And this 
 is due, no doubt, to the weight of the example set by 
 the Elizabethan dramatists. What these earlier poets 
 did spontaneously, the later bards have striven to do 
 by main strength. Most of the Elizabethans used 
 blank verse indiscriminately, whether their theme was 
 poetic or not. Even Shakspere employed it in handling 
 subjects essentially unpoetic, as in "All's Well" and 
 " Measure for Measure." It is a question whether the 
 overwhelming influence of the Elizabethans has not 
 hampered the true development of a later English 
 poetic drama. They set a standard; and they have 
 been copied in their defects no less than in their vir- 
 tues; indeed, their defects have proved far easier of 
 * imitation than their finer qualities. 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 265 
 
 Our modern theaters impose on the modern play- 
 wright very different conditions from those which the 
 semi-medieval Elizabethan playhouse imposed on the 
 Elizabethan playwright. This may be a gain or it may 
 be a loss; beyond all question, it is a fact. Just as the 
 drama of the Athenians would have been a bad model 
 for the Elizabethans, so the drama of the Elizabethans 
 is a bad model for the poets of to-day. This is not only 
 because the earlier English plays were conditioned by 
 the earlier English theater, but also because certain 
 medieval traditions survived with the result that much 
 that was not truly dramatic was tolerated in a play and 
 even expected. The absence of scenery tempted the 
 poet to passages of pure description, just as the pre- 
 sence of actors who had been choir-boys tempted him 
 to lyrics introduced often for their own sake. Nowa- 
 days the drama has shed these extraneous elements 
 and is sufficient unto itself. The actors of our own 
 time have rarely had a training as singers also ; and the 
 scenery of our time renders it needless for a poet to 
 indulge in description. 
 
 The drama has cast out all that is undramatic; and 
 it has now no room for anything but the action and the 
 characters. It is compacter than ever before; and it 
 rejects not only description but also narrative. Its 
 duty is to show what was done and the consequences 
 of the deed ; and it has neither time nor space for nar- 
 rative for its own sake, however beautiful in itself. 
 Here is one weakness of the modern poets who write 
 plays, Mr. Stephen Phillips, for one. His verse is often 
 epic or lyric or idyllic rather than dramatic. He is 
 
266 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 felicitous in polished narrative and in suggestive de- 
 scription, but he more rarely achieves the stark bold- 
 ness of vital drama, when the speaker has no time and 
 no temper for fanciful comparisons or adroit allitera- 
 tions, and when his phrase ought to flash out suddenly 
 like a sword from its scabbard. His lines have often 
 a beauty of their own, but it is a conscious and elabo- 
 rate beauty out of place when the action tightens and 
 a human soul must be bared by a word. They lack 
 that unforced simplicity, that colloquial ease, that inev- 
 itable naturalness which grip us in the great moments 
 of Shakspere. 
 
 How unadorned are the words of Viola and how full 
 of meaning and of melody also, when she has told the 
 Duke of her alleged sister's unspoken love. He asks : 
 
 "But died thy sister of her love, my boy ? " 
 And she answers : 
 
 "I am all the daughters of my father's house, 
 And all the brothers, too; and yet I know not 
 Sir, shall I to this lady?" 
 
 Consider also how free from fine language and 
 phrase-making, how completely devoid of simile and 
 metaphor, and yet how vitally poetic, is the parting 
 of Romeo from Juliet : 
 
 Juliet, I have forgot why I did call thee back. 
 Romeo. Let me stand here till thou remember it. 
 Juliet. I shall forget, to have thee still stand here, 
 
 Remembering how I love thy company. 
 Romeo. And I '11 still stay, to have thee still forget, 
 
 Forgetting any other home but this. 
 
 The true poetic drama is not the closet-drama ; it is 
 not the mere costume-play in blank verse ; it is not the 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 267 
 
 empty imitation of the Elizabethan formula. It is a 
 play composed in accordance with the conditions of 
 the modern theater, whether in verse or in prose mat- 
 ters little, but poetic in theme and poetic in treatment, 
 as well as dramatic in theme and dramatic in treat- 
 ment. It is a play at once truly poetic and truly dra- 
 matic, only this and nothing more. It is not a play 
 with a commonplace subject decked with fine phrases 
 and stuccoed with hand-made verses. It must be 
 lifted up into poetry by the haunting beauty of its 
 story, since it cannot be made truly poetic by any 
 merely lyrical decoration. The story need not be 
 strange or exotic or unusual ; it may even be a tale of 
 to-day and of every day, one of the old, old tales that 
 are forever renewing their youth. Dramatic art has 
 a right to follow the practice of pictorial art, when, in 
 Whistler's sincere words, it was " seeking and finding 
 the beautiful in all conditions and all times, as did her 
 high priest Rembrandt when he saw the picturesque 
 grandeur in the Jew's quarter of Amsterdam, and 
 lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks." 
 
 The poetic drama must be truly dramatic and truly 
 poetic ; but it must not plead its poetry as an excuse for 
 mere foolishness, and it must not give us characters 
 who are not governed by common sense at the crucial 
 moments of the action. The principle is laid down by 
 Professor Lounsbury in his incisive analysis of a " Blot 
 in the 'Scutcheon": "The plot may be what you 
 please. The story upon which it is based may be so 
 far from probable that it verges on the impossible. But 
 this, while objectionable, can be pardoned. What is 
 without excuse is to find the characters acting without 
 adequate motive ; or, if the motive be adequate, to find 
 
268 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 them acting in the most incomprehensible way for ra- 
 tional beings." The keen critic then pointed out that 
 Shakspere is almost always unerring in his observance 
 of this dramatic propriety. "The plot of his play may 
 rest upon a story which is simply incredible, as is not- 
 ably the case in the 'Merchant of Venice.' All that 
 Shakspere asks is that the story shall be one which 
 his hearers are willing to accept as likely to happen, 
 whether in itself likely or not. This granted, there is no 
 further demand upon our trust in him as opposed to 
 our judgment. We say of every situation : This is the 
 natural way for the characters as here portrayed to 
 think and feel and act. The motives are sufficient ; the 
 conduct that follows is what we have a right to expect." 
 When this test is applied to Browning's play we are 
 told that " the characters throughout scrupulously avoid 
 doing what* they might reasonably be expected to do ; 
 while the things they might naturally be expected to 
 avoid are the very things which they do not seem to 
 conceive the idea of refraining from doing. The play 
 consequently violates every motive which is supposed to 
 influence human conduct ; it outrages every probability 
 which is supposed to characterize human action.'* In 
 other words, Brow T ning, in a " Blot in the 'Scutcheon," 
 has a perfectly possible story, which he has chosen to 
 people with characters arbitrarily unnatural in their 
 conduct, whereas Shakspere in the "Merchant of 
 Venice" has an almost impossible story, carried on by 
 characters unfailingly natural. In Browning's play, 
 " we are in a world of unreal beings, powerfully por- 
 trayed ; for the situations are exciting, and the pathos of 
 the piece is harrowing. But the action lies out of the 
 realm of the reality it purports to represent, and there- 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 269 
 
 fore out of the realm of the highest art," that realm 
 of the highest art which easily includes Shakspere's 
 play in spite of the incredibility of certain of its episodes. 
 Abundance of poetry, of power, of pathos will not 
 excuse paucity of common sense in the conduct of the 
 personages of the play. No bravura fervor of phrase 
 will palliate sheer foolishness of deed. This defect may 
 be more or less hidden from us when we read the play 
 in the library, but it stands out undisguised and naked 
 when we see the story bodied forth on the stage. There 
 is then no excuse for any effort to apologize for it or to 
 gloss it over. It is fatal, for the massed spectators in the 
 theater have sharp eyes and plain tongues; and they 
 resent every effort to make them admire a play which 
 they find revolting to their every-day knowledge of 
 human nature. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nothing is more unfortunate for the future of the 
 poetic drama than the frequent attempts of superior 
 persons to dragoon the ordinary playgoer into the 
 theater to behold a play which he is certain not to 
 enjoy. He resents being berated for not admiring that 
 which has annoyed him by its artificiality or bored him 
 by its clumsiness. The attitude taken by many merely 
 literary critics after a performance of "Pippa Passes'* 
 or of the "Sunken Bell" U distinctly harmful to the 
 cause they have at heart. If these performances wearied 
 the average spectator, as they indisputably did, and if 
 he is scolded because he has failed to appreciate these 
 alleged poetic dramas, he is very likely to stay away the 
 next time these merely literary critics seek to browbeat 
 him into the theater to see another poetic drama. Per- 
 
270 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 haps it is just as well for us all to remember that the 
 playgoer not only knows what he likes, but also that he 
 knows very definitely what he does not like. When he 
 goes to the playhouse, he wants to see a play peopled 
 with recognizable human beings and affording him the 
 kind of pleasure he expects in the theater. He has no 
 objection to poetry, if poetry is added to the play. He 
 rejects poetry unhesitatingly, when he finds it proffered 
 as a substitute for a play. He is in the present very 
 much what he was in the past ; the playgoers of Shak- 
 spere's time did not have to be coerced into paying to 
 see "As You Like It" and "Hamlet"; they went 
 gladly, for they had been told that they would get their 
 money's worth. The playgoers of Mr. Barrie's time 
 have flocked to see "Peter Pan," a truly poetic play, 
 compounded of fantasy and reality. 
 
 The example of Mr. Barrie is suggestive : he has suc- 
 ceeded on the stage because he has mastered its mys- 
 teries. We cannot expect a rebirth of the poetic drama 
 until our poets turn playwrights or our playwrights 
 develop into poets. The poets must go to school in the 
 theater and learn the craft of the playmaker in his own 
 workshop, as Mr. Barrie has done, and as Victor Hugo 
 did when he set himself to spy out the secret of the suc- 
 cess attained by the melodramatists of the unliterary 
 theaters. For a poet to compose a poem in dialogue, 
 and then expect that some adroit stage-manager can 
 lick it into shape and make an actable play out of it, 
 this is very much as if he should ask the monthly nurse 
 to put a backbone into the baby after it is born. A 
 poetic play must be dramatic in its conception, or it 
 will never be a play at all. The fundamental principles 
 of dramaturgy are not really difficult to acquire ; and if 
 
POETIC DRAMA AND DRAMATIC POEM 271 
 
 a poet has it in him to be a playwright, he ought to be 
 able to get hold of the essentials of the new art without 
 a prolonged apprenticeship. But he needs to feel, first 
 of all, that it is an art, a very special art, closely con- 
 nected with the actual theater. If he begins by assum- 
 ing an attitude of haughty disdain, he is not likely to 
 find profit in his venture. 
 
 While some poets will choose to master the craft of 
 the playwright, some playwrights will prove themselves 
 possessed of the faculty divine. We are accustomed to 
 consider the great dramatists primarily as poets, and 
 we do not often look closely enough into their careers 
 to observe that some of them began as playmakers, 
 pure and simple. Shakspere, for one, and Moliere, for 
 another, were at first merely professional playwrights, 
 composing their earliest pieces to please contemporary 
 playgoers and revealing in these earliest pieces scarcely 
 a foretaste of the abundant poetry which enriches their 
 later and greater plays. No examination of the first- 
 lings of their muse would have warranted any predic- 
 tion of their extraordinary development in their riper 
 years. And perhaps some of the professional play- 
 wrights of the twentieth century will rise to loftier 
 heights as they grow in power and in ambition. They 
 may bourgeon into verse when the fascination of a truly 
 poetic theme some day seizes them. They, at least, will 
 not need to be reminded that whenever and wherever 
 the poetic drama has existed, it has been primarily 
 dramatic in its intent and only secondarily poetic. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE THREE UNITIES 
 
 And here the Reader may please take notice that the Design of 
 these Rules is to conceal the Fiction of the Stage, to make the 
 Play appear Natural, and to give it an air of Reality and Conver- 
 sation. 
 
 The largest compass of the first Unity is Twenty-Four Hours: 
 But a lesser proportion is more regular. To be exact, the Time 
 of the History, or Fable, should not exceed that of the Representa- 
 tion : Or in other words, the whole Business of the Play should not 
 be much longer than the Time it takes up in Playing. 
 
 The Second Unity is that of Place. To observe it, the Scene must 
 not wander from one Town or Country to another. It must continue 
 in the same House, Street, or at farthest in the same City, where 
 it was first laid. The reason of this Rule depends upon the First. 
 Now, the Compass of Time being strait, that of Space must bear a 
 correspondent Proportion. Long journeys in Plays are impracticable. 
 The distances of Place must be suited to Leisure and Possibility; 
 otherwise the supposition will appear unnatural and absurd. 
 
 The Third Unity is that of Action. It consists in contriving the 
 chief Business of the Play single, and making the concerns of one 
 Person distinguishable great above the rest. JEREMY COLLIER, 
 Remarks upon the Relapse. 
 
 The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and 
 know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage and 
 that the players are only players. They came to hear a certain num- 
 ber of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The 
 lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; 
 but the different actions that complete a story may be in places 
 very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allow- 
 ing that space to represent first Athens and then Sicily, which 
 was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens but a modern 
 theater? 
 
 . . . Time is, of all modes of existence, the most obsequious to 
 the imagination ; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 273 
 
 of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real ac- 
 tions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only 
 see their imitation. SAMUEL JOHNSON, Preface to Shakspere. 
 
 IN the ever-delightful pages in which Dickens de- 
 scribes the unexpected characters with whom Nicholas 
 Nickleby is brought in contact during the days of his 
 association with the strolling players under the man- 
 agement of Mr. Crummies, we are made acquainted 
 with a worthy country gentleman, Mr. Curdle, who 
 poses as a patron of the drama. When Mr. Curdle 
 is informed that Nicholas Nickleby is the author of 
 the new play in which the Infant Phenomenon is to 
 appear, he expresses the hope that the young dramatist 
 has "preserved the unities." He insists that incident, 
 dialogue, and characters are "all unavailing without 
 a strict observance of the unities." 
 
 " * Might I ask you/ said the hesitating Nicholas, ' what 
 the unities are ? ' 
 
 "Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. * The unities, sir/ 
 he said, 'are a completeness a kind of universal dove- 
 tailedness with regard to time and place a sort of general 
 oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. 
 I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been 
 enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read 
 much upon the subject, and thought much/ " 
 
 Very likely the creator of Mr. Curdle and of Mr. 
 Crummies would have found it difficult to give any 
 better definition of the unities than this which he put 
 in the mouth of one of his comic characters. But then 
 Dickens did not pretend to have read much upon the 
 subject and thought much. Probably many a play- 
 goer who has heard about the dramatic unities and 
 
274 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 about the duty of preserving them, has no more exact 
 idea as to what they really are than Mr. Curdle. In- 
 deed, we may find the term used by some dramatic 
 critics of to-day with a haziness of meaning recalling 
 the vagueness of Mr. Curdle's definition. Yet the term 
 has a precise content, known to those who have really 
 read much upon the subject and thought much; and 
 the theory of the dramatic unities has a history which 
 has been made clear comparatively recently. 
 
 It is not uncommon to read references to the "uni- 
 ties of Aristotle"; and yet Aristotle knew them not 
 and did not discuss them at all. It has happened of 
 late that they have been termed the "unities of Scali- 
 ger"; and yet they were not completely declared by 
 Scaliger. They are to be found formulated with the 
 utmost sharpness in Boileau's "Art of Poetry"; but 
 they were familiar to Sidney when he penned his " De- 
 fense of Poesy." Jonson tried to preserve them; but 
 Shakspere refused to let them shackle him. Lope de 
 Vega admitted their validity and yet evaded their rule, 
 as he regretfully confessed. Corneille had never heard 
 of them when he wrote his fieriest play ; and they were 
 at the bottom of the famous "Quarrel of the Cid," 
 in which Richelieu involved the French Academy he 
 had recently established. Lessing analyzed them un- 
 favorably in the eighteenth century ; and in the nine- 
 teenth, Victor Hugo derided them in his flamboyant 
 preface to " Cromwell, " wherein he raised the red flag 
 of the romanticist revolt. And yet the dramatic uni- 
 ties are preserved once more in the "Francillon" of 
 the younger Dumas, son of Hugo's early rival, and 
 in the "Ghosts" of Ibsen, the austere Norwegian 
 realist, although in all probability neither of these 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 275 
 
 latter-day dramatists had paid any attention to the the- 
 ory which insisted that the unities must be preserved. 
 
 What are then these unities which some dramatic 
 poets believe in, but reject, and which others preserve 
 without taking thought? What are they, and where 
 do they come from ? Why should anybody want to 
 preserve them ? How could anybody achieve this pre- 
 servation without effort ? To find the answer to these 
 queries, we must be willing to go on a loitering excur- 
 sion through literature after literature, straying from 
 French into Italian and then wandering back into Greek 
 before strolling forward again into English, an excur- 
 sion which will force us to fellowship with Boileau and 
 Aristotle, with Shakspere and Ben Jon son, as well as 
 with the ingenious critics of the Italian Renascence and 
 with the ardent playwrights of French romanticism. 
 
 The clearest and most succinct declaration of the 
 dramatic unities was made by Boileau when he laid 
 down the law that a tragedy must show "one action 
 in one day and in one place." It must deal with only 
 a single story ; and this obligation is the Unity of Action. 
 It must never change the scene, massing its episodes 
 in a single locality; and this is the Unity of Place. 
 And it must compress its successive situations into the 
 space of twenty-four hours, into a single day; and this 
 is the Unity of Time. When a tragedy presents a 
 simple and straightforward story without change of 
 scenery and without any longer lapse of time than a 
 single revolution of the sun, then and only then are 
 the three unities preserved, as Boileau understood 
 them. And in thus laying down the law which must 
 bind the tragic poet, the French critic believed that 
 he was only echoing the regulations promulgated by 
 
276 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Aristotle, the great Greek, whose authority then over- 
 awed critics and poets alike. Yet Boileau would have 
 held with the Abbe d 'Aubignac, his predecessor as a 
 critic, and with Corneille, his contemporary as a poet, 
 that the strict observation of the three unities is de- 
 manded not only by authority but by reason also. 
 Two and three hundred years ago, all men of letters 
 seem to have agreed that even if the ancients had not 
 prescribed these limitations, they would have been 
 evolved by the moderns independently, as a result of the 
 strenuous search for the perfect form of the ideal play. 
 
 It was lucky for the theory of the three unities that 
 its advocates sought to prop it up by this appeal to rea- 
 son, since it was not actually supported by the author- 
 ity of Aristotle. Although they were long called the 
 Aristotelian Unities, only one of the three is formally 
 set forth by the Greek philosopher, even if a second 
 has been implied from one of his statements. Boileau 
 and his contemporaries, like their Italian predecessors, 
 made the natural mistake of thinking of Aristotle as 
 a theorist, like unto themselves, as engaged in work- 
 ing out an ideal system for the drama. But this was 
 just what Aristotle was not. Whether he was consider- 
 ing the constitution of Athens or the construction of 
 the Attic drama, the Greek inquirer was unfailingly 
 practical. He dealt with the thing as he saw it before 
 his eyes, taking it as he found it, relishing the concrete 
 and eschewing the abstract. 
 
 Aristotle's attitude is the same as Lessing's in the 
 eighteenth century and Sarcey's in the nineteenth. 
 He did not retire within himself and weave theories 
 out of thin air. He was no closet-critic of a closet-drama. 
 He sat himself down in the theater itself to see plays 
 
THE THRIVE UNITIES 277 
 
 performed by actors before an audience, and the prin- 
 ciples he lays down are the logical deduction from his 
 observation of the effect produced on him by the actual 
 performance of the particular kind of tragic drama he 
 is analyzing. He is no spinner of theories in a vacuum; 
 and he kept himself in close contact with the realities 
 of the theater. He came early in the development of 
 the drama; and the plays of the Greeks were all that 
 he knew. With his marvelous acuteness of insight, he 
 mastered the mechanism of Attic tragedy ; he discovered 
 the principles which had governed its makers and ac- 
 cording to which they had worked, more or less 
 unconsciously, as is the wont of artists. If Aristotle had 
 known any other type of drama than that of the Greeks, 
 he would have had standards of comparison; and his 
 deductions would have been different. As it was, he 
 handled the matter before him with incomparable 
 certainty. Even though he was acquainted with only 
 one form of tragedy, he pierced to the center and said 
 many things which are applicable to every form of 
 tragedy, ancient and modern. It is true that he also 
 said many things which are applicable only to the 
 tragic drama of the Athenians. 
 
 ii 
 
 Of the three unities, only one is to be found^formally 
 stated in Aristotle's treatise. This is the Unity of Ac- 
 tion ; and it is as valid in the modern drama as in the 
 ancient. The Greek critic declared that a tragedy ought 
 to have a single subject, whole and complete in itself, 
 with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is true 
 of every work of art, tragic or epic, pictorial or plastic. 
 Every work of art ought to leave a direct and simple 
 
278 A STUDY OF^THE DRAMA 
 
 impression, which it cannot make without a concen- 
 tration upon its theme and without a rigorous exclu- 
 sion of all non-essentials. It is true that there are great 
 works of literary art, in which we perceive two stories 
 intertwined and demanding equal attention, the 
 "Merchant of Venice," for example, and "Vanity 
 Fair" and "Anna Karenina." But they are great in 
 spite of this bifurcation of interest; and they number 
 very few among the masterpieces of literature. In 
 most of these masterpieces, we find only a single theme, 
 as in the "(Edipus" of Sophocles and in the "Tartuffe" 
 of Moliere; in the "Scarlet Letter" of Hawthorne and 
 in the "Smoke" of Turgenieff. 
 
 Shakspere is often careless in the construction of the 
 plots of his romantic-comedies and of his dramatic- 
 romances, "Much Ado about Nothing," for example, 
 and the "Winter's Tale"; but he is very careful to 
 give essential unity to the loftier tragedies in which 
 he put forth his full strength, in "Othello," and 
 "Hamlet," and "Macbeth." In these supreme efforts 
 of his tragic power, he achieves not only the needful 
 unity of plot, but also the subtler unity of tone, of color, 
 of sentiment. With his customary acuteness, Coleridge 
 dwelt on the "unity of feeling" which Shakspere ob- 
 serves. 
 
 " Read ^ Romeo and Juliet,' " he declared ; " all is youth 
 and spring; youth with all its follies, its virtues, its precipi- 
 tancies ; spring with its odors, its flowers, and its tran- 
 siency ; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes 
 through, and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and 
 the Montagues, are not common old men ; they have an eager- 
 ness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with 
 Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his 
 rash death, are all the effects of youth ; whilst in Juliet, 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 279 
 
 love has all that is tender and voluptuous in the rose, with 
 whatever is sweet in the freshness of spring; but it ends with 
 a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening." 
 
 In asserting the necessity of the Unity of Action, 
 the only unity which is to be found plainly set forth 
 in his fragmentary treatise, Aristotle was anticipating 
 the demand of Mr. Curdle that the dramatist should 
 give to his work " a completeness, a kind of universal 
 dovetailedness, a sort of general oneness." Apparently, 
 the Unity of Action was the only one of the three uni- 
 ties that Mr. Curdle knew anything about, even though 
 he had read much upon the subject and thought much. 
 And it is the only one which has imposed itself upon 
 all the greater dramatists, whether Greek or English, 
 French or Scandinavian. It is the only one of the 
 three which is now accepted as imperative beyond all 
 question; and it is the only one the acceptance of 
 which by the dramatic poet is everywhere to his abiding 
 advantage. 
 
 Thus we see that Boileau was justified in demanding 
 that tragic poets should deal only with a single theme. 
 Was he right also in insisting that they should limit 
 the action to a single day and to a single place ? And 
 what was his warrant for believing that they should 
 impose these limitations on their freedom ? His justi- 
 fication was twofold, the appeal to reason and the 
 appeal to authority, to what had been read into 
 Aristotle's treatise although it had not been explicitly 
 expressed therein. Yet there is possibly some slight 
 foundation for the belief that Aristotle had declared 
 the Unity of Time, as well as the Unity of Action. The 
 Greek drama was acted outdoors in the level orchestra 
 of the theater ; and the single story of the play was un- 
 
280 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 rolled before the audience without any such intermis- 
 sions as our modern interacts. The Greek playwright 
 was therefore under strong pressure to relate his suc- 
 cessive episodes as closely as he could, to avoid distract- 
 ing the attention of the spectators from his plot to the 
 mere lapse of time. Therefore he tended to avoid all 
 mention of time and to present his situations as follow- 
 ing swiftly one after the other. 
 
 "Tragedy endeavors," so Aristotle tells us, "so far 
 as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the 
 sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit." But the great 
 critic is not here laying down the law; he is merely de- 
 claring the habitual practice of the playwrights whose 
 works he was studying, to spy out their secrets. He is 
 not asserting that this must be done ; he is only inform- 
 ing us that it was done as far aS possible. He could not 
 help knowing that it was not always possible, and, that 
 when it was not possible, the Greek dramatists did not 
 hesitate to extend their plot over as long a period as 
 they might think necessary. For example, the "Aga- 
 memnon" of JEschylus begins with the Watchman 
 on the tower looking for the flaming signal which was 
 to announce the fall of Troy, flashing from beacon to 
 beacon, from hilltop to hilltop across leagues of land and 
 sea. At last the Watchman catches sight of the blaze, 
 and he descends to tell Clytemnestra that her husband 
 is that day set free to depart on his long voyage home- 
 ward. It would be many more days before the hero 
 could be expected to arrive; and yet in the middle of 
 the play, Agamemnon appears and enters the palace 
 to meet his death. Here is a long lapse of time, fore- 
 shortened by the dramatist, because it was not pos- 
 sible otherwise to deal advantageously with the story. 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 281 
 
 It may be admitted that the "Agamemnon" is the 
 only extant Greek play which covers so protracted a 
 period. But that ^Eschylus should have ventured to 
 do this is evidence that the Greeks themselves had ac- 
 cepted no hard-and-fast rule compelling them to limit 
 the duration of the story to twenty-four hours. Now, 
 if the Unity of Time was not always observed by the 
 Greek dramatic poets and if it was not formally pre- 
 scribed by Aristotle, how did it come into being ? And 
 thanks to Professor Spingarn's illuminating investiga- 
 tion into Italian criticism during the Renascence, this 
 question is now easy to answer. Giraldi Cinthio, 
 from one of whose tales Shakspere was to derive the 
 suggestion for his "Othello," wrote a "Discourse on 
 Comedy and Tragedy," in which he limited the time 
 of a play to a single day, thus converting Aristotle's 
 statement of a historical fact into a dramatic law, and 
 changing Aristotle's "single revolution of the sun" 
 into a " single day." A little later, another Italian critic, 
 Robortello, cut down the time to twelve hours, " for 
 as tragedy can contain only one single and continuous 
 action, and as people are accustomed to sleep in the 
 night, it follows that the tragic action cannot be con- 
 tinued beyond one artificial day." And a little later, 
 still yet another Italian, Trissino, declared that the 
 Unity of Time is imperative on all playwrights, though 
 it is disobeyed "even to-day by ignorant poets." 
 
 This final sneer is very significant. In the Italian 
 Renascence, all literature and criticism more espe- 
 cially was frankly aristocratic. It made its appeal 
 not to the many, but to the few; it was not for the 
 plain people, but only for the cultivated, who were 
 alone capable of understanding the artist. This at- 
 
282 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 titude is not dead in America to-day ; it was univer- 
 sal in Italy four centuries ago. The educated classes 
 had come into the splendid heritage of the classics; 
 and they felt themselves more than ever elevated above 
 the common herd. What the common herd could 
 enjoy was by that very fact discredited. The men of 
 letters kept aloof from the vulgar throng; they were 
 artists working for the appreciation of their fellow 
 dilettants. To take this attitude is ever dangerous even 
 for the lyric poet; for the dramatist it is fatal. The 
 drama is of necessity the most democratic of the arts, 
 making its appeal to the people as a whole, educated 
 and uneducated alike. But the Italian critics despised 
 the popular acted drama of their own day; and they 
 deemed it wholly unworthy of consideration. How- 
 ever much they as individuals might enjoy the rollicking 
 comedy-of-masks or the more primitive miracle-plays, 
 they as a class despised this unpretending folk-drama. 
 So Sidney, who had been nurtured on Italian criticism, 
 despised the popular drama which was the connecting 
 link between the rude medieval mystery and the noble 
 Elizabethan tragedy. 
 
 Here, indeed, is the difference between Aristotle 
 and his Italian commentators. He was a regular play- 
 goer ; and the principles he sets forth are only the re- 
 sults of his study of a great dramatic literature, as this 
 was vividly revealed in the actual theater. They had 
 never seen a good play well acted. What they had be- 
 held on the stage was not good, according to their stand- 
 ards; and what they esteemed good they could not 
 behold on any stage. This explains their academic 
 theorizing, their pedantry, their insistence upon con- 
 formity with arbitrary limitations. While Aristotle, 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 283 
 
 with the hard-headed common sense of the Greek, had 
 his eye fixed on the concrete as he saw it, they, with 
 the super-ingenious subtlety of the Italian, bent their 
 gaze on the abstract. They longed for a noble dra- 
 matic literature and they tried to make it out of hand 
 by servile imitation of Latin tragedy and Latin comedy. 
 They did not guess that the folk-plays enjoyed by the 
 vulgar throng needed only to be improved, to supply 
 a foundation for a living drama at once poetic and 
 popular. Their aristocratic contempt for the common 
 herd prevented the Italians from developing out of 
 their own folk-drama a type of play dignified and 
 national, such as the English, the Spanish, and the 
 French were to develop. The sacred-representations, 
 medieval as they might be, had in them the germ of 
 lofty tragedy; and the comedy-of -masks might have 
 been purged of its grossness and lifted into literature 
 (and this is exactly what Moliere was to do more than 
 a century later). Because they scorned the acted 
 drama of their own day, meager as it might be and 
 barren of art, the clever Italians deprived themselves 
 of a living dramatic literature. In its stead, they had 
 only a code of laws, arbitrarily declaring what a dra- 
 matic literature ought to be. 
 
 The Unity of Action was proclaimed by Aristotle; 
 the Unity of Time was elaborated into a rule from one 
 of Aristotle's casual statements of fact ; and the Unity 
 of Place was deduced by the Italian critics from the 
 Unity of Time, as Professor Spingarn has made plain. 
 Almost suggested by Scaliger, it was actually formu- 
 lated first by Castelvetro, who differed from his con- 
 temporaries in that he took account of the desires 
 of a possible audience. It is true that Castelvetro, in 
 
284 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 spite of his talk about the actual stage, knew quite as 
 little about it as any of his contemporaries. Yet he 
 declared it to be the duty of the dramatist to please the 
 spectators, of whatever sort, and to consult always 
 their capabilities. He had no high opinion of the intel- 
 ligence of these spectators, believing that they could 
 not imagine a lapse of time or a change of scene. At 
 least, he suggested that they would be annoyed if the 
 action was not confined to one day and contained in 
 one place. 
 
 The fallacy underlying Castelvetro's theory is the 
 result of his assumption that the spectators, while sit- 
 ting in their seats, suppose themselves to be witnessing 
 reality. He fails wholly to appreciate the willingness 
 of an audience to " make believe" almost to any extent. 
 And his own logic breaks down when he convinces him- 
 self that the spectators cannot imagine two or three 
 places in turn, just as well as one at a time, and that 
 they are not ready to let the author pack into the two 
 hours' traffic of the stage the events, not of twenty-four 
 hours only, but of twelve months or more. He does not 
 grasp the conventions which must underlie every art 
 and which alone make an art possible. Every artist 
 must be allowed to depart frankly from the merely 
 actual, if he is to please us by his representation of life 
 as he apprehends it. 
 
 Probably the Unity of Place would not have taken 
 its position by the side of the Unity of Time and the 
 Unity of Action, if it had not seemed to be supported 
 by the practice of the Greek dramatic poets. In the 
 surviving specimens of Attic drama, there are a few 
 instances where the action is apparently transported 
 from one spot to another ; but in the immense majority 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 285 
 
 of the Athenian plays which have come down to us, we 
 note that the story begins and ends in the same place. 
 And the reason for this is not far to seek. The Greek 
 drama had been evolved out of the lyrics of the chorus ; 
 and to the end of the Athenian period, the chorus con- 
 tinued to be a most important element of a tragic per- 
 formance. When the chorus had once circled into the 
 orchestra, it generally remained there until the end of 
 the tragedy. Now, this presence of the chorus before 
 the eyes of the spectators prevented the dramatist from 
 shifting the location of his action even if he had desired 
 to do so. He could ask his audience to imagine a change 
 of place only when the orchestra was empty, which 
 was very rarely the case. Furthermore, we must keep 
 in mind the fact that the theater at Athens was in all 
 probability devoid of scenery, and that therefore there 
 was no way of visibly indicating a change of place. 
 
 in 
 
 This, then, is the theory of the three unities, long 
 credited to the great Greek critic, but now seen to have 
 been worked out by the supersubtle Italian critics of 
 the Renascence. Indeed, there is little exaggeration 
 in saying that they evolved it from their inner con- 
 sciousness. From Cinthio and Scaliger, Castelvetro 
 and Minturno, the theory passed to Sidney and Ben 
 Jonson in England, to Juan de la Cueva and Lope de 
 Vega in Spain, to the Abbe d'Aubignac and Boileau 
 in France. For two centuries and more, this law of 
 the three unities, with the other rules elaborated at the 
 same time by the same Italians, were accepted through- 
 out Europe by almost every critic of the drama. There 
 was an established standard of "regularity" and "cor- 
 
286 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 rectness," which imposed on all playwrights a strict 
 obedience to the critical code. This body of laws was 
 supposed to be supported by the inexpugnable author- 
 ity of Aristotle; but it was also believed to have its 
 basis in reason. It dominated the drama of France 
 until early in the nineteenth century; and even if Cor- 
 neille now and again chafed under it, Voltaire was in- 
 sistent in supporting it. Dr. Johnson suggested that 
 if " Othello " had opened in Cyprus and the preceding 
 incidents been occasionally stated, "there had been 
 little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scru- 
 pulous regularity." Yet this theory was not obeyed 
 by the popular playwrights of Spain, not even by Lope, 
 who was frank in declaring that he knew better than 
 he practised; and it was rejected by the Elizabethan 
 dramatists in England, excepting only Ben Jonson. 
 
 And this raises two interesting questions. If the 
 code of correctness, including the rule calling for the 
 preservation of the three unities, was accepted by all 
 those who discussed the art of the drama, why did the 
 practical playwrights of England and of Spain refuse 
 to be bound by its behests ? And why did the practical 
 playwrights of France submit to be cribbed, cabined, 
 and confined by its restrictions? The most obvious 
 explanation is to be found in the fact that the great 
 expansion of the drama arrived in France at least half 
 a century later than it had in Spain and in England. 
 A really literary drama, rich in poetry and vigorous in 
 character, had been developed out of the popular 
 medieval folk-play far earlier in Spain and in England 
 than it had in France; and the Spanish and the Eng- 
 lish playwrights, having succeeded in pleasing the play- 
 going public with a large, bold, and free drama, saw 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 287 
 
 no good reason why they should surrender their liber- 
 ties and risk their popularity by conforming to a stand- 
 ard of correctness which might gratify the cultivated 
 few, but which would deprive the uneducated many 
 of the variety the main body of spectators had been 
 accustomed to expect in the theater. Indeed, this is 
 the excuse which Lope de Vega makes for himself in 
 his significant address on the " New Art of Making 
 Plays." 
 
 While this may have been the main motive of the 
 chief of the Spanish playwrights, there is no difficulty 
 in surmising that the chief of the English dramatic 
 poets had a better reason for rejecting the law of the 
 three unities and for refusing to submit himself to its 
 chains. Shakspere was preeminently a practical man, 
 with a keen eye to the main chance. He could find no 
 profit in foregoing any part of the freedom which had 
 enabled him to catch the favor of the playgoers who 
 welcomed his "native wood-notes wild." And he could 
 not help fearing an obvious and immediate loss if he 
 should choose to let himself be governed by the Unity 
 of Time. No small part of Shakspere's incomparable 
 power as a dramatist is due to his understanding of the 
 forces which modify character, transforming it under 
 pressure, or disintegrating it under stress of recurring 
 temptation. Now, character is not modified in the 
 twinkling of an eye, nor can it disintegrate in twenty- 
 four hours. If Shakspere had chosen to preserve the 
 Unity of Time, he would have been cotopelled to sup- 
 press all the earlier episodes of "Julius Caesar," for 
 example, which are so significant and which revive in 
 our memories when we are witnesses of the later quar- 
 rel of Brutus and Cassius; and he would have had 
 
288 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 to present Macbeth only in the final stage of his moral 
 deliquescence, without showing us the manly soldier 
 before the virus of mean ambition had poisoned his 
 nobler nature. 
 
 This concentration of action into the culminating 
 moments of the story was not a disadvantage to the 
 Greek dramatic poets, since they were expected to 
 present a trilogy, three separate plays acted in swift 
 succession on the same day to the same audience, 
 whereby they were enabled to show the tragic hero at 
 three different moments of his career. But the obliga- 
 tion to preserve the Unity of Time was a sad restriction 
 upon the French dramatic poets, who had not the 
 privilege of the trilogy and who were compelled always 
 to present characters fixed and unchanging. By his 
 compulsory obedience to this rule, Corneille was robbed 
 of not a little of his possible range and sweep, even if 
 Racine, with his subtlety of psychologic analysis, may 
 even have gained by an enforced compacting of his 
 story and by a limitation to its culminating moments. 
 Shakspere did not care to discuss the principles of 
 his craft, as Ben Jonson was wont to do. He digresses 
 in "Hamlet" into a disquisition on the art of acting; 
 but he nowhere expresses his personal opinions on the 
 art of playwriting. He was no more a theatrical re- 
 former than he was a dramatic theorist. He was con- 
 tent to take the stage as he found it and to utilize all 
 its conventions and all its contemporary traditions. 
 If he declined to listen to the precepts of the critics, 
 and if he refused to preserve the unities, he had his 
 own reasons ; and we can see that they were sufficient. 
 But it is unimaginable that he did not know what he 
 was doing or that he was ignorant of these theories. 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 289 
 
 It is very improbable that he had not in his youth 
 read Sidney's "Defense," in which the rule of the three 
 unities is stated for the first time in English. It is most 
 unlikely that in his maturity, and when he and Ben 
 Jonson were engaging in their wit-combats at the Mer- 
 maid, he had not had occasion to hear the whole code 
 of the drama proclaimed again and again by his robust 
 and scholarly friend. 
 
 We have seen that an Italian critic dismissed the 
 playwrights who failed to preserve the unities as " igno- 
 rant poets." Probably the reproach of ignorance of the 
 rules was one that Shakspere would bear with perfect 
 equanimity. Yet, although he himself drew no atten- 
 tion to it, and, for all we know, may not even have 
 bidden Jonson to remark it, he was moved once, in the 
 later years of his labors in London, to preserve the 
 unities, as if to show that it was not ignorance, but a 
 wise choice, which had led him to reject them in all 
 his other plays, tragic and comic. The "Tempest" is 
 in all likelihood the last play which Shakspere wrote 
 without collaboration, and in the "Tempest," he chose 
 to preserve the unities, as they were then under- 
 stood in England and as they had been preserved 
 by Jonson in several comedies. The Unity of Place 
 required that the action should be confined to a single 
 place, but place was interpreted liberally. A single 
 place meant one palace or one town, not necessarily 
 a specific room in this palace or a specific house in this 
 town. It meant a single locality, but not a single spot. 
 The action of "Every Man in his Humor" passes in 
 London, which is a single locality, but it is not re- 
 stricted to a single room or even to a single house in 
 that city. 
 
290 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 The "Tempest" sets before us, as Professor Louns- 
 bury has pointed out, a single story, direct and swift 
 and uncomplicated; and therefore it preserves the 
 Unity of Action. It is compact within a single revo- 
 lution of the sun, as the author takes care to tell us 
 more than once, and therefore it preserves the Unity 
 of Time ; indeed, its story is compressed within three 
 hours, not exceeding the limit of the performance itself. 
 It has for its locality an island with the w r ater imme- 
 diately surrounding that island; and therefore it pre- 
 serves the Unity of Place (as that was then liberally 
 interpreted). As we study the "Tempest," it is as 
 though we could hear its author saying that he could 
 play the game as well as any one else when he chose, 
 and if he had not played it before, this was simply 
 because he did not deem it worth the candle. 
 
 IV 
 
 That Shakspere wrote the "Tempest" is pretty 
 plain evidence that he knew the "rules of the 
 drama" quite as well as Lope de Vega did. That 
 both the English and the Spanish dramatic poets re- 
 fused to abide by them is equally evident. And this 
 brings up again the question why the doctrine of the 
 unities should have been accepted willingly by the 
 professional playwrights of France after it had been 
 rejected by the professional playwrights of England 
 and of Spain. One answer to this query has already 
 been suggested that the outflowering of dramatic 
 poetry was later in France than in England or in Spain, 
 and therefore after the doctrine of the three unities 
 had hardened into a dogma. Another answer might 
 be that the French are the inheritors of the Latin 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 291 
 
 tradition, that they like to do things decently and in 
 order, and that they relish restraint more than the 
 English or the Spaniards. We might go further and 
 say that the French are naturally the most artistic of 
 the three races and that, to an artist, there is always a 
 keen joy in working under bonds and in grappling 
 with self-imposed obligations. But there is a third 
 explanation of the apparent anomaly which comes 
 nearest to being adequate. 
 
 The drama of every modern literature is the out- 
 growth of the drama of the Middle Ages, of the 
 passion-play and of the popular farce. But the de- 
 velopment from this unliterary folk-drama into true 
 tragedy and true comedy is different in the different 
 countries, and it is only by tracing back this evolution 
 in France that we can lay hold of the chief reason why 
 the Unity of Place was accepted in France, even though 
 it had been rejected in England, where the theater had 
 followed a slightly different line of development. 
 
 The full-grown passion-play was the result of put- 
 ting together the several episodes of the gospel-story, 
 which had been shown in action in the church on 
 different days, more especially Christmas and Easter, 
 as an accompaniment of the service. Each of these 
 episodes had been set forth in the most appropriate 
 part of the edifice, the Holy Child in the manger, 
 on the chancel-steps, the Raising of Lazarus, near the 
 crypt, the Crucifixion, near the altar. These scattered 
 places where the separate parts of the sacred story 
 were represented in action and in dialogue were known 
 as " stations,'* and when the overgrown religious drama 
 was finally thrust out of the church and confined to 
 laymen, the useful device of the stations was taken 
 
292 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 over by the new performers. In France, the passion- 
 play was presented on a long and shallow platform, 
 with the successive stations ranged side by side at the 
 back ; and they were known as " mansions." In fact, all 
 the important places in the play were set on the stage 
 at once, each coming into use in its turn and as often 
 as need be, while the most of the acting was done in 
 the neutral ground further forward on the platform. 
 
 After the performance of the mysteries in Paris had 
 been confided to the Brotherhood of the Passion, this 
 body established itself in the Hotel de Bourgogne, the 
 stage of which was prepared to accommodate as many 
 mansions as the story might demand. In time, drama- 
 tizations of the lives of the saints followed the dramati- 
 zation of the life of Christ ; and, after a while, these were 
 succeeded by dramatizations of the lives of heroes, 
 at first of history and afterwards of romance. Thus 
 the sacred drama gave way to the profane, which had 
 been slowly developed out of it. Yet the lay play- 
 wrights, though they might borrow their plots from 
 modern legends, retained the medieval device of the 
 mansions, finding it very convenient, since it enabled 
 them to show on the stage all the many places where 
 their hero met with his manifold adventures. How- 
 ever incongruous this simultaneous set may seem to 
 us, accustomed as we are nowadays to a succession 
 of sets, it was familiar to French audiences and accept- 
 able to them well into the seventeenth century. But 
 in time, its disadvantages became more and more 
 obvious. The spectators who had not found it hard 
 to follow the well-known Bible story and to identify 
 the Temple at Jerusalem, the House of the High- 
 Priest, and the other mansions it demanded, began to 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 293 
 
 be a little confused when Hardy put before them un- 
 known stories acted amid mansions only summarily 
 indicated by the carpenter and the decorator. Hardy 
 cluttered the stage with all sorts of strange places, 
 bringing together in one play, a ship, a palace, a bed- 
 room and a cave on a mountain ; and the audience had 
 to strain its ingenuity to recognize all these localities. 
 
 It was for a stage thus fitted up that Corneille com- 
 posed the " Cid," the action of which takes place in a 
 neutral ground, backed by the residences of the chief 
 characters. When he wrote this play, he had never 
 even heard of the doctrine of the unities^ which had 
 been ignored by the Spanish dramatist from whom 
 he borrowed his plot. He soon found himself severely 
 criticised for his ignorance of the rules of the drama; 
 and, although his play was overwhelmingly success- 
 ful, he confessed his error. In all his following plays, 
 he preserved the Unity of Place, discarding the medley 
 of mansions that he had employed freely in his earlier 
 pieces; and we cannot doubt that this simplification 
 of the scenery on the stage was most welcome to the 
 spectators, who were no longer forced to guess at the 
 significance of accumulated bits of scenery. And so 
 powerful was the prestige of Corneille, that his con- 
 temporaries and his successors followed his example 
 and showed one action in one place in one day. 
 
 Corneille himself often found it rather irksome to 
 conform to the rules; and Moliere, in his adaptation 
 of the laxly constructed Spanish piece, " Don Juan," 
 was forced for once to disregard them. But they im- 
 posed no painful bonds on Racine, who was satis- 
 fied to deal only with the tense culmination of a tragic 
 complication. What Corneille and Racine had done, 
 
294 A STUDY OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Voltaire was glad to do, although he and his contem- 
 poraries might be reduced to the absurdity of making 
 conspirators hold their meetings in the palace of the 
 monarch they were leagued against. For two centuries, 
 the serious drama of the French was chained in the 
 triple-barred cage of the unities ; and it was not released 
 until Victor Hugo brought out "Hernani," long after 
 freedom had been won in other countries. 
 
 After "Hernani" had blown his trumpet and the 
 hollow walls of classicism had fallen with a crash, the 
 doctrine of the three unities was finally disestablished ; 
 and Mr. Curdle is easily excusable for not knowing 
 exactly what it was. Perhaps its evil effect even upon 
 the drama of France has been overestimated ; at least 
 we may doubt whether Moliere and Racine, Marivaux 
 and Beaumarchais really lost anything by accepting 
 it. On the other hand, we have reason to rejoice that 
 it was rejected by the dramatic poets of England and 
 of Spain. In our own time, no playwright ever gives 
 a thought to the preservation of the unities. And yet 
 even to-day, when a dramatist is dealing with the re- 
 sult of a long series of events, and when he seeks to 
 set this forth as simply and as strongly as he can, we 
 are likely to find him compacting his single action 
 into a single day and setting it in a single place. This 
 is what the younger Dumas did in " Francillon," and 
 what Ibsen did in " Ghosts "; probably either of them 
 would have been not a little surprised if he had been 
 told that in these plays he had preserved the unities. 
 
 This unconscious compliance of two practical play- 
 wrights of the nineteenth century with the theoretical 
 precepts of the dogmatic critics of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, suggests that there is, after all, 
 
THE THREE UNITIES 295 
 
 something to be urged in behalf of the three unities. 
 They represent an effort toward simplicity of plot 
 and toward logic of structure, two qualities greatly 
 needed by the drama in its semi-medieval condition. 
 That the effort was unfortunately misdirected is not 
 to be denied ; yet it had a worthy motive. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 
 
 IT may be well to suggest a series of questions which the 
 student can put to himself when he begins to study any play, 
 ancient or modern. 
 
 A. Has this play a single plot? or is the story double 
 or even treble ? If there is more than one story, which is 
 the main-plot ? Is the under-plot worked into the structure 
 of the play, or is it independent, being merely juxtaposed ? 
 Does the existence of more than one plot divide the interest 
 of the play, or scatter it, or does the under-plot sustain the 
 main story by adroit contrast ? Does the play contain any 
 non-dramatic elements, epic or lyric, oratorical or descrip- 
 tive ? If so, to what extent do these interfere with the dra- 
 matic interest? 
 
 B. Has the play an essential struggle sustaining it from 
 beginning to end? If so, what is this struggle? By what 
 characters is this struggle maintained on the one side and on 
 the other ? Are both opponents justified in their own minds ? 
 Or is one of them absolutely right and the other absolutely 
 wrong ? With which character do you find yourself sympa- 
 thizing ? Why ? Does the outcome of the struggle satisfy you ? 
 If not, why not ? Has the author played fair with his charac- 
 ters ? Or has he obviously intervened to make them do what 
 they would not do ? And, if so, has this interfered with your 
 interest in the play? 
 
 C. What happened before the play began ? At what point 
 in the story does the author choose to begin and at what 
 point to end ? Why did he choose between these points of 
 
300 APPENDIX 
 
 beginning and ending ? Was he well advised in both choices ? 
 How has he conveyed to you what you need to know about 
 the past to enable you to follow the play from the begin- 
 ning? What is his method of exposition? Has he massed 
 his necessary explanations in the earlier scenes? or has he 
 reserved some interesting disclosures for later acts ? If so, 
 was he right in so doing? Has he failed to tell you, early 
 in the play, anything that you would have liked to know 
 then to appreciate better what was being done on the stage ? 
 Does he at any time violate the principle of Economy of 
 Attention ? 
 
 D. What is the main theme ? Is this held to unswervingly ? 
 Or does the story digress into by-paths ? Does the play con- 
 tain any scene which could be omitted ? If so, why was it 
 inserted ? Does the author fail to present any scene which 
 he ought to have shown in action ? If so, can you discover 
 any sound reason for this omission ? Has he led you to ex- 
 pect any scene which he has not given you ? 
 
 E. Does the interest of the play rise steadily from the 
 beginning to the end ? If not, where does it droop ? And 
 what is the cause of this flagging in each case ? Draw the 
 diagram of interest and use it to aid you in your analysis. 
 
 F. What dramatic conventions does the author avail him- 
 self of ? Which of these are permanent and necessary ? Which 
 of them are temporary and peculiar to the theater of his day ? 
 Has he a chorus ? If so, what is the function of this chorus ? 
 Does he employ the soliloquy? If so, is it for constructive 
 purposes, to tell you facts ? Or is it only to reveal the thoughts 
 of a character alone on the stage ? Does he use asides ad- 
 dressed directly to the audience ? Does he employ the de- 
 vice of eavesdropping? And in these things is he merely 
 accepting the traditions of his immediate predecessors ? In 
 other words, how far is his method of construction influenced 
 by the conditions of the actual theater of his own time ? 
 
 G. Do you discover or suspect any evidence that the au- 
 thor had any special actors in mind in composing his play ? 
 Is there anything said or done by any character which is the 
 result of the fitting of that part to the original performer? 
 
APPENDIX 301 
 
 And if so, does this help you to understand better the au- 
 thor's intent? 
 
 H. What evidence do you discover that the author had 
 in mind the opinions or even the prejudices of his contempo- 
 raries, of the audiences of his own time ? Is there any overt 
 appeal to the playgoers of that period and of that time ? Is 
 there any frank claptrap ? What light does the contents of 
 this play cast on the manners, the customs, and the beliefs 
 of the people for whom it was originally written ? Is it local 
 and temporary in its appeal, or permanent and universal ? 
 
 /. Is the play really a picture of life? Are the characters 
 veracious ? Could they have existed ? If so, would they have 
 acted as they do in the play ? Is the conduct of the plot co- 
 herent and logical ? Is the end inevitable or is it arbitrary ? 
 Is the story warped by the obvious effort of the author ? Does 
 casual accident affect the plot ? If so, could this have been 
 avoided ? Ought it to have been avoided ? Is there any ar- 
 bitrary character ? If so, does this interfere with your interest ? 
 And if it does not, why? Are there carefully contrived co- 
 incidences ? If so, are they so brought about as to seem 
 natural in the play ? And how is this accomplished ? 
 
 J. What was the author's aim in writing the play ? Did he 
 set out merely to present the several facets of a single char- 
 acter to whom all the others are subordinate ? Did he intend 
 to present primarily a picture of life, as it is or as it might 
 be? Did he have an ulterior object, a thesis to sustain? 
 Does the play prove anything ? If so, was this the author's 
 deliberate intent ? Or was this merely incidental to his pic- 
 ture of life ? Has the play a moral value ? What effect had it 
 on you ? Did it uplift or depress you ? 
 
 K. Does this play conform to the Unity of Action? To 
 the Unity of Place ? To the Unity of Time ? If it does con- 
 form to any one of these, why ? And was the conformation 
 advisable ? Did the play gain or lose thereby ? Does it con- 
 form to the theory of poetic justice ? If not, ought it to have 
 done so ? Does the author unduly sympathize with any one 
 of the characters ? Does he dislike any one of them ? If so, 
 does this help or hurt the play as a whole ? 
 
302 APPENDIX 
 
 L. Can you classify the play easily ? that is to say, is it 
 a tragedy or a melodrama, a comedy or a farce, a chronicle- 
 play or a dramatic-romance, a romantic-comedy or a comedy- 
 of-manners ? Or is it commingled of two or more types ? If 
 so, what are these types ? And does this departure from the 
 strict type interfere with your pleasure ? Does the author 
 indulge in mote d' esprit? Does he reveal character by mots 
 de caractere ? Is he happy in finding mots de situation ? 
 
 II 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS 
 
 IN the preceding pages, stress has been laid upon the fact 
 that the art of the drama has essential principles which are the 
 same throughout the ages. The conditions of performance 
 may change and the desires of different audiences may differ 
 wholly, but the dramatist has ever to conform to the same 
 code. This being the case, there is profit in considering the 
 drama as a whole, and in comparing the plays produced 
 in different periods and by different people. The following 
 list of plays has been drawn up to facilitate this comparison, 
 and to help the student to attain a perspective of the develop- 
 ment of the drama. The historical evolution of the art of 
 the playwright, with incidental criticism of the successive 
 masters of dramaturgy, has been outlined in my own volume 
 of lectures on the Development of the Drama (Scribners, 
 1903). 
 
 For an understanding of the theatrical performances in 
 Greece, see Barnett's Greek Drama (Dent, 1900); Haigh's 
 Attic Theater (Macmillan, 3d ed., 1908); and also Haigh's 
 Tragic Drama of the Greeks (Macmillan, 1899). There are 
 many translations of the surviving plays of the Greek dra- 
 matists, some of them published in cheap editions. The Sup- 
 pliants of JEschylus, although not one of his best plays, is 
 interesting as illustrating the growth of an actual drama out 
 of the earlier chorus. His two most important plays are the 
 Prometheus Bound and the Agamemnon. The (Edipus the 
 
APPENDIX 303 
 
 King of Sophocles was held by Aristotle to be the most mas- 
 terly of all the Attic tragedies ; and second to it is the Antig- 
 one. Of Euripides, the Medea and the Alcestis are the most 
 characteristic. Perhaps the Frogs is the easiest understood 
 of all the lyrical burlesques of Aristophanes, since its theme 
 is literary rather than political. The best translation of the 
 masterpiece of Greek criticism is in Butcher's Aristotle's 
 Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (Macmillan, 2d ed., 1898). 
 
 Unfortunately no complete play of Menander's has sur- 
 vived. In M. Collins's volume on Plautus and Terence in 
 the Ancient Classics for English Readers, there are abstracts 
 of all their plays with abundant quotation. Perhaps the 
 Captives, although not characteristic, is the play of Plautus 
 most likely to amuse modern readers. The Aulularia might 
 also be read, as well as the Andria of Terence. 
 
 Horace's "Art of Poetry" is to be found in any transla- 
 tion of his poems ; but it is accessible also with the poems 
 of Vida and Boileau in Cook's Art of Poetry (Ginn & Co., 
 1892). 
 
 The most accessible translation of Seneca's plays is that 
 by Professor Miller (University of Chicago Press, 1908), 
 with a preface by Professor Manly. See also Cunliffe's In- 
 fluence of Seneca on the English Drama (1893). There is no 
 single book describing the organization of the Roman thea- 
 ter corresponding to Haigh's Attic Theater. 
 
 But Chambers's Medieval Stage (Clarendon Press, 1903) 
 traces admirably the successive steps by which the modern 
 drama was evolved out of the ritual of the church. And the 
 actual text of the earliest dramatic attempts are collected 
 in two volumes of Manly's Specimens of Pre-Shaksperean 
 Drama (Ginn, 1900). A briefer selection, with a useful in- 
 troduction, is Pollard's English Miracle Plays (Clarendon 
 Press, 5th ed., 1909). 
 
 The most important plays of the Elizabethan dramatists 
 can be found in Gollancz's Temple Dramatists, Baker's 
 Belles Lettres Series, and the Mermaid Series ; and the one- 
 volume selection by Professor Neilson, Chief Elizabethan 
 Dramatists, excluding Shakspere (Hough ton Mifflin Com- 
 
304 APPENDIX 
 
 pany, 1910), will be sufficient for most readers. Neilson's one- 
 volume edition of Shakspere (Houghton Mifflin Company, 
 1906) can also be highly recommended, especially because 
 of its indication that the customary division into acts and 
 scenes is unwarranted. Perhaps the most useful edition of 
 Shakspere in separate volumes is Clark and Porter's First 
 Folio Edition (Crowell). Sufficient abstracts from the Res- 
 toration Playwrights can be found in Crawfurd's English 
 Comic Dramatists (Appleton, 1884) in connection with which 
 attention must be called to Lamb's essay on "Artificial 
 Comedy" and to Macaulay's answer, the "Comic Dra- 
 matists of the Restoration." The later dramatic authors of 
 the English language are accessible in the Mermaid Series 
 and in the Belles Lettres Series. 
 
 The plays of the contemporary dramatists are now gen- 
 erally published, although not always in satisfactory edi- 
 tions. Unfortunately Mr. Barrie has so far refused to put 
 his comedies into print. Perhaps the most significant of 
 these modern plays are Pinero's Second Mrs. Tanqueray 
 and the Benefit of the Doubt, Jones's Liars and Mrs. Dane's 
 Defence, Shaw's Candida and You Never can Tell, Bron- 
 son Howard's Kate, Clyde Fitch's Climbers, and Augustus 
 Thomas's Arizona. 
 
 The masterpiece of French farce is Master Pierre Patelin, 
 translated byHolbrook (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903). 
 There are several complete translations of Moliere, but Pro- 
 fessor Page's two volumes containing the more important 
 plays (Putnam's, 1908) surpass all their predecessors. Of 
 Corneille and of Racine, there are no complete translations 
 in English, but separate pieces can be found in Great Plays : 
 French and German (Appleton, 1901). Translators have also 
 failed to provide adequate English versions of the comedies 
 of Beaumarchais, of Scribe, of Augier, and of the two Dumas. 
 The lyrical melodramas of Victor Hugo are included in the 
 more or less complete translations of his works. And there 
 are several versions of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. 
 
 Lope de Vega has tempted few translators, but one of his 
 comedies can be found in the Drama, edited by Alfred Bates 
 
APPENDIX 305 
 
 (1903). FitzGerald made free renderings of Six Dramas of 
 Calderon ; and there are translations of other of Calderon's 
 plays by Denis Florence MacCarthy. Life is a Dream and 
 the Alcalde ofZalamea are characteristic examples of Calder- 
 on's method. Of the contemporary Spanish dramatists, only 
 Echegaray is represented in English; his Gran Galeotto is 
 most noteworthy. There is an account of the Italian comedy- 
 of-masks in the introduction to Symonds's translation of 
 the memoirs of Carlo Gozzi. Several of D'Annunzio's plays 
 are available in English, especially the Gioconda and Jorio's 
 Daughter. 
 
 There are translations of the works of Goethe and Schiller, 
 which include their chief plays. Perhaps the most note- 
 worthy are Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen and Schiller's 
 Robbers and Don Carlos. Of the contemporary German play- 
 wrights, Sudermann and Hauptmann are the most important. 
 There are English translations of Sudermann's Magda and 
 the Joy of Living and of Hauptmann's Weavers and Han- 
 nele. 
 
 Archer's edition of Ibsen now includes nearly all the plays, 
 both in prose and in verse; the characteristics of Ibsen's 
 method are revealed in the DolUs House, in Hedda Gabler, 
 and in Ghosts. Bjornson's Beyond Human Power and Glove 
 also exist in English translations. 
 
 Spingarn's Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (Colum- 
 bia University Press, 2d ed., 1908) discusses the dramatic 
 theories which resulted in the establishment of the classicist 
 formula in France. The English translation of d'Aubignac, 
 entitled the Whole Art of the Stage, is scarce ; but it is often 
 to be found in the larger libraries. Lessing's Hamburg 
 Dramaturgy is included in the Bonn Series; it prepared the 
 way for Schlegel's lectures on Dramatic Literature (also in the 
 Bohn Series), which is still useful, although unduly polemic 
 in its hostility to the French. There is an inadequate Eng- 
 lish version of Freytag's Technic of the Drama (McClurg, 
 1895) . Later books dealing with dramatic theory are Jerome's 
 Play-writing (reprinted from the Stage, 1888) ; Hennequin's 
 Art of Playwriting (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1890); 
 
306 APPENDIX 
 
 Calmour's Practical Playwriting (Arrowsmith, 1891) ; Price's 
 Technique of the Drama (Brentano, 1892) ; F. Archer's How 
 to write a Good Play (Sampson Low, 1892) ; Woodbridge's 
 Drama; its Law and Technique (Allyn & Bacon, 1898); 
 Price's Analysis of Play Construction and Dramatic Prin- 
 ciple (published by the author, 1908) ; Caffin's Appreciation 
 of the Drama (Baker & Taylor, 1908) ; and Clayton Ham- 
 ilton's Theory of the Theater (Holt, 1910). 
 
 For an insight into the principles of the art of acting, which 
 is so closely allied to the art of playwriting, the student may 
 be referred to Lewes's Actors and the Art of Acting (Smith, 
 Elder, 1875, now accessible also in the Tauchnitz collection) ; 
 and Colley Gibber's Apology and Joseph Jefferson's Auto- 
 biography. See also Archer's Masks or Faces (Longmans, 
 1888). 
 
 For a longer discussion of the non-literary qualities of 
 the drama, the reader may be referred to my papers on the 
 "Relation of the Drama to Literature" in the Historical 
 Novel and other Essays (Scribners, 1901), and to that on 
 the "Importance of the Folk-Theater" in the third edition 
 of Aspects of Fiction (Scribners, 1902). The earlier periods 
 of dramatic evolution are considered from the anthropo- 
 logical point of view in Hirn's Origins of Art (Macmillan, 
 1901), and in Grosse's Beginnings of Art (Appleton, 1897). 
 
 A more elaborate analysis of the conventions of the drama 
 will be found in a paper included in my Historical Novel and 
 other Essays. 
 
 Professor Schelling has traced the career of the English 
 Chronicle-Play (Macmillan, 1902); and in his History of the 
 Elizabethan Drama, he has outlined the development of other 
 dramatic species. To Professor Neilson's Types of English 
 Literature, Professor Thorndike has contributed an illumi- 
 nating study of Tragedy; and for the same series Professor 
 Fletcher is preparing an account of the Pastoral. 
 
 In the opening paper of A. B. Walkley's Drama and Life 
 (Methuen, 1907), there is a consideration of the effect pro- 
 duced on the drama by the change from the platform -stage to 
 the picture-frame stage. To the Stratford Town Edition of 
 
APPENDIX 307 
 
 Shakspere, Mr. Robert Bridges contributed a paper discuss- 
 ing the influence of the Elizabethan audience on Shakspere ; 
 and in Mr. A. C. Bradley's Oxford Lectures on Poetry (Mac- 
 millan, 1909), there is a lecture on "Shakspere's Theater and 
 Audience." 
 
 To be mentioned, also, is Karl Mantzius's History of The- 
 atrical Art, five volumes of which have appeared in English 
 (Lippincott, 1904-1909). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abington, Mrs., 167. 
 
 Academy of Music, the, 77. 
 
 Accident, ruled out by Aristotle and 
 Coleridge, 101; by the best art, 
 197, 200; in Romeo and Juliet.WH- 
 202. 
 
 Acropolis, the, 49, 70. 
 
 Action, placed by Jefferson above 
 literary merit, 21 ; is the expression 
 of will, 95; declared by Aristotle 
 essential to tragedy, 101; the 
 drama a conflict (Butcher), 101- 
 102 ; action and character, 161, 162 ; 
 of primary importance, 174; must 
 be seen unfolding, 180; should sup- 
 port the dialogue, 181 ; in Scribe's 
 plays, 182; in Dumas, the elder, 
 182; in Fedora, 184; of characters, 
 199, 200, 203; in Shakspere's plays, 
 202, 215 ; in the Elizabethan drama, 
 238; in the poetic drama, 250; in 
 the modern drama, 265 ; in the Blot 
 in the 'Scutcheon, 268 ; in the pas- 
 sion-play, 291 ; unity of (See Unity 
 of Action). (See also Human will, 
 Plot, Scenes afaire.) 
 
 Actors, limitations of, 41^43; eager- 
 ness of, for worthy new parts, 258. 
 
 Adventure, the tale of, 224. 
 
 Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the, 
 quotation from, 12. 
 
 ^schylus, 17, 19, 58, 79, 165, 186, 232; 
 Prometheus Bound, 58, 146; Aga- 
 memnon, 106, 165, 186, 247, 280-281; 
 Persians, the, 136, 237, 247, 281. 
 
 Aldrich, T. B., Judith, 262; Mer- 
 cedes, 263. 
 
 Alleyne, Edward, 32. 
 
 America, 125, 282. 
 
 American Indian, the, 133. 
 
 Amsterdam, 267. 
 
 Analogues, 125-126, 129, 141. 
 
 " Apron," the, 61, 62, 63. 
 
 Ara Coeli, the, 53. 
 
 Arbitrary, the, 121, 194, 195, 197, 201- 
 210, 219, 221, 240, 242, 244. 
 
 Archer, William, quoted, 128. 
 
 Arena, sports of the Roman, 89-90; 
 stage first cousin to, 103; gladia- 
 tors in, 103. 
 
 Aristophanes, 232; lyrical-burlesque 
 of, 117. 
 
 Aristotelian Unities, the, 276. 
 
 Aristotle, 20, 21, 88, 101, 102, 141, 152, 
 176, 208, 257, 274, 275, 276, 277, 279, 
 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286. 
 
 Arizona, 13. 
 
 Armada, the, 96. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 233; Empedocles 
 on Etna, 253. 
 
 Artificial light, 45, 46, 48, 59, 60, 61, 
 63, 64, 66, 139, 238. 
 
 Aside, the, 144-145, 148. 
 
 Athenian (See Greek). 
 
 Athens, 48, 49, 79, 88, 89, 186, 195, 276, 
 285. 
 
 Atmosphere, in story-writing and 
 in drama, 163. 
 
 Attic drama, the (See Greek drama). 
 
 Audiences, Elizabethan, 70, 73, 75, 
 91, 113, 123, 140, 165, 189, 195, 204, 219, 
 237-245,256, 257, 270, 287; French- 
 and English-speaking compared, 
 72, 231; of Terence, 72; of the 
 Italian Renascence, 72 ; of Lope de 
 Vega, 72-73 ; of Greece, 73, 74, 193, 
 195, 209, 239; modern, 74, 76-78,86, 
 145, 150-151, 195, 196, 213, 219, 220, 
 270; sympathy of, 78, 79, 189, 205, 
 206, 220, 228, 230; characteristics 
 Of, 87, 88, 90, 182, 190, 195, 209-210, 
 218, 269; of Paris, 91; demands of, 
 98, 105-106, 107-108, 135-136, 139, 
 178, 180, 191, 192, 198-199, 217-218, 
 
310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 220-223, 224, 269-270; of Moliere, 
 140, 196, 239; of Louis XIV, 145; 
 Italian, 174; of Plautus, 189; not 
 responsible for dramatic failures, 
 222 ; and the supernatural, 224-225 ; 
 and the morality of plays, 226-231 ; 
 not considered in the closet- 
 drama, 250-253; favorable to poetic 
 dramas, 258,260, 270; Castelvetro's 
 ideas about, 284; French, 292, 293. 
 
 Augier, mile, 19, 39, 76, 119, 232; 
 Gendre de M. Poirier, the, 75-76, 
 104, 118; Paul Forestier, 263. 
 
 Augustine, Saint, 90. 
 
 Baker, George P., Development of 
 Shakspere as a Dramatist, 113. 
 
 Ballad-opera, the, 111, 124. 
 
 Ballet, the, 103. 
 
 Balzac, Honor6 de, 155. 
 
 Banville, Theodore de, Gringoire, 
 40. 
 
 Barrie, J. M., 18, 270 ; Peter Pan, 270. 
 
 Bartley, quoted by Planche", 190. 
 
 Beaumarchais, 7, 8, 117, 150, 247, 294; 
 Marriage of Figaro, the, 95; Bar- 
 ber of Seville, the, 247. 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 117, 206, 219. 
 
 Beauval, Mile., 33. 
 
 Bejart, 33. 
 
 Bejart, Armande, 33. 
 
 Bernhardt, Mme. Sarah-, 35, 37. 
 
 Betterton, Thomas, 49. 
 
 Blackfriar's Theater, the, 256. 
 
 Boileau, 94, 260, 275, 276, 279, 285; 
 quoted, 261 ; Art of Poetry, the, 
 274. 
 
 Boissier, Gaston, 52. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 38. 
 
 Booth, Edwin, 139, 167, 168, 216. 
 
 Bradley, A. C.; quoted, 68, 150, 214; 
 Hegel's opinions on tragedy, 99- 
 100 ; Shaksperean Tragedy, 149. 
 
 Brandes, Georg, 244. 
 
 Brotherhood of the Passion, the, 292. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 222, 252, 268 ; Ring 
 and the Book, the, 25; Blot in the 
 'Scutcheon, the, 206, 222, 252, 267, 
 268; Straff ord, 252; Pippa Passes, 
 269. 
 
 Brunetiere, Ferdinand, his " law of 
 
 the drama," 93-108; Annales dn, 
 Theatre, 93; Epoques du Theatre 
 Frangais, 93; quoted, 132, 250-251. 
 
 Burbage, Richard, 30, 49, 160. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, quoted, 1, 90. 
 
 Butcher, Professor, quoted, 101-102. 
 
 Butler, Nicholas Murray, True and 
 False Democracy, 82. 
 
 Calderon, Pedro, 4, 48, 79,90, 125, 232, 
 247; Alcade of Zalamea, 247. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, quoted, 24. 
 
 Castelvetro, 94, 283-284, 285. 
 
 Celler, Ludovic, quoted, 64-65. 
 
 Champmeste, Mile, de, 34, 43, 160. 
 
 Chance, 201 (See also Accident). 
 
 Chapman, George, 236, 256, 257. 
 
 Characters, 120, 163, 177, 178, 180, 
 191-192, 194, 200, 201, 203, 213, 228, 
 247; asfound in farce, tragedy,etc., 
 121-122 ; speech of, 136-138, 139, 141, 
 143, 144; in Greek drarna, 146, 159, 
 164, 165; and the soliloquy, 148, 149, 
 150-151 ; vitality of drama resides 
 in, 153, 154, 160, 174; limited means 
 of presenting, 154, 162 ; must speak 
 for themselves, 155, 156, 158, 201; 
 reality of some famous, 155-156; 
 in French drama, 156, 157, 159, 182, 
 183, 184-185, 205, 255, 288; relations 
 of, to plot, 156, 160, 161-162, 194, 224; 
 in Turgenieff's novels, 157; in 
 Shakspere, 158, 159, 165, 168-169, 
 202, 203, 204, 205, 244, 255; in English 
 drama, 167, 226-227, 236; transform- 
 ation in, 181, 204, 207, 287 ; artificial 
 use of, 185, 218; in Plautus, 189; 
 in Secret Service, 196; isolation of, 
 198, 199; arbitrary, 202-208, 221; 
 truth necessary in drawing, 204, 
 219, 222-224; in modern drama, 
 265; in the poetic drama, 267; 
 Professor Lounsbury on, 267-268. 
 
 Chaucer, 261. 
 
 Children of Paul's, the, 41. 
 
 Chorus, the, 5, 14-15, 17, 49, 50, 51, 57, 
 146, 285. 
 
 Chronicle-play, the, 17, 97, 102, 111, 
 112, 113, 238 ; purpose and charac- 
 ter of, 114-115; examples of, 115; 
 of Shakspere, 122. 
 
INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 Cicero, quoted, 83. 
 
 Cinthio, Giraldi, 281,285; Discourse 
 on Comedy and Tragedy, 281. 
 
 Classification, need of, 110, 114; 
 place and purpose of, 124; as de- 
 vised by the French, 126. 
 
 Closet-drama, the, 26, 80, 111, 266, 
 276; general discussion, 250-261. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 101, 111, 
 252; quoted, 99, 278-279; Remorse, 
 252. 
 
 Collier, Jeremy, quoted, 272. 
 
 Collins, Wilkie, 193. 
 
 Colosseum, the (See Arena). 
 
 Comedie-Fran9aise, the, 52, 81. 
 
 Comtdie-larmoyante, the, 124. 
 
 Comedies, the, of Barrie and Shaw, 
 18 ; of Sheridan, 48, 127, 138 ; of Ter- 
 ence, 52, 72 ; of Moliere, 7, 65, 69-70, 
 137; English, 41, 78; French, 75; 
 of Plautus, 125; of Augier, 76; of 
 Oscar Wilde, 127; of Shakspere, 
 119, 122, 124, 130; of Ben Jonson, 
 119, 289; of Congreve, 138; of Du- 
 mas fils, 128 ; of the Greeks and 
 Romans, 144. 
 
 Comedy, 100, 103, 113, 115, 117, 118, 
 120-121, 123, 124, 151, 192, 196, 224; 
 denned, 96; English, 7, 41, 83, 127, 
 226-227 ; French, 7, 124, 142 ; Italian, 
 142; Greek, 171-172; Latin, 171-172, 
 259, 283. 
 
 Comedy-of-Character, the, 197. 
 
 Comedy - of - cloak - and - sword, the, 
 124. 
 
 Comedy-of -humors, the, 111, 119, 125, 
 126. 
 
 Comedy-of-manners, the, 7, 118, 
 119-120, 121, 197, 221. 
 
 Comedy-of-masks, the (See Italian 
 drama). 
 
 Communal element in drama, the, 
 13, 16, 79, 93, 103. 
 
 Confidant, the, 146. 
 
 Congreve, William, 48, 119, 128, 138, 
 227; Way of the World, the, 118, 
 127; Love for Love, 130. 
 
 Content of the drama, the, 217, 222. 
 
 Conventions, 199, 220, 284; in Shak- 
 spere, 288 (See also Traditions; 
 also chap. vii). 
 
 Coquelin, 34, 36-37, 38, 40, 113, 160. 
 
 Corneille, 7, 17, 26, 59, 80, 96, 137, 138, 
 142, 143, 207, 232, 274, 276, 286, 288, 
 293; Cid, the, 91, 93, 94, 116, 136, 143, 
 293. 
 
 Costume-play, the, 261-262, 266. 
 
 " Creating a character," 37. 
 
 Criterion Theater, the, 77. 
 
 Cueva, Juan de la, 285. 
 
 Cuvier, Baron, 162. 
 
 Cyprus, 286. 
 
 D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 67. 
 
 D'Arc, Jeanne, 78. 
 
 D'Aiibignac, Abb<, 94, 276, 285; 
 quoted, 69 ; Pratique du Theatre, 
 145; English translation of d'Au- 
 bignac, 228. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 235; Old Fortuna- 
 tus, 235-236; Shoemaker's Holi- 
 day, the, 236. 
 
 Democracy of the drama, the, 24-27, 
 79-80, 81-82, 85, 89, 91, 282. 
 
 Detective-story, the, 112, 191, 224. 
 
 Devices, artificial, 185-186; of eaves- 
 dropping, 220; of Shakspere, 244; 
 the mansions, a medieval device, 
 292. \ 
 
 Diagram of interest, the, 212-217, 
 219; Diagram A, 213; B, 214; C, 
 214; D, 215; E, 215, 218; F, 216, 218; 
 G, 216, 218; H, 216, 218; I, J, 217, 
 218. 
 
 Dialogue, 92, 105, 114, 122, 127, 128, 
 129, 180,236,251; classification of , 
 126; condensation of, 135, 136, 139; 
 of Ibsen, 137; of English and 
 French dramatists, 137-138, 184; 
 of Sanskrit drama, 141 ; as a means 
 of exposition, 181 ; closet-drama a 
 poem in, 250, 252, 259, 270; in the 
 passion-play, 291. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 126, 175,193,273; 
 Barnaby Rudge, 193; Nicholas 
 Nickleby, 273-274, 294. 
 
 Dick Turpln, 150. 
 
 Dionysus, theater of, 48, 49-61, 58, 65, 
 74. 
 
 Don Quixote, 155. 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 241. 
 
 Drama, the, origin of, quoted from 
 
312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Letourneau, 9; from Him, 9-10; 
 
 from Grosse, 10-11 ; from Jebb, 14; 
 
 defined, 92-93; its kinship with 
 
 the "show-business," 103; laws 
 
 and development of, 125; in the 
 
 16th century, 236, 237. 
 Dramatic-romance, the, 117; of 
 
 Shakspere, 123, 124, 278. 
 Drury Lane Theater, 40, 48, 61-62. 
 Dryden, John, 83, 130, 185; quoted, 
 
 68 ; Spanish Friar, the, 186. 
 Ducange, 18. 
 Dumas, Alexandra, the elder, 88, 
 
 176, 178, 182, 232; Napoleon, 115; 
 
 Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, 183. 
 Dumas, Alexandre, fils, 19, 128, 183, 
 
 184, 196, 231, 232, 294; Demi^Monde, 
 
 the, 128; Camille, 183; Francillon, 
 
 128, 274, 294; Femme de Claude, 
 
 the, 183-184. 
 Duse, Eleanora, 35. 
 
 Eavesdropping, 220. 
 Echegaray, 67. 
 Eckermann, J. P., 80, 253. 
 Edison, Thomas, 64. 
 Egypt, the royal tombs of, 134. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 41, 70, 233, 237, 238. 
 Elizabethan audiences (See Audi- 
 ences). 
 Elizabethan drama, the, 30, 57, 58, 
 
 79, 111, 119, 125, 214, 265, 282 (See 
 
 also chap. xi). 
 Elizabethan dramatists, the, 19, 41, 
 
 47, 48, 57, 64, 218, 256, 263, 264, 265, 
 
 286 (See also chap. xi). 
 Elizabethan literature, 102, 237. 
 Elizabethan theater, the, 5, 45, 48, 
 
 49, 55-57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 119, 138, 237- 
 
 238, 239, 265. 
 Energy of the English race, the, 233, 
 
 234. 
 England, 7, 48, 79, 124, 232, 260, 285, 
 
 286, 289, 290, 291, 294 
 English drama, 258-259, 260, 264 
 
 (See also Elizabethan drama). 
 English, theater, the, 139, 265. 
 Essential principle of drama, the, 
 
 94, 251, 270-271. 
 Essential quality of drama, the, 21- 
 
 22, 92-93, 259. 
 
 Essential struggle, an, 218. 
 
 Eton, 41, 42. 
 
 Euripides, 19, 78-79, 181, 232; Alec* 
 Us, 74, 116; Medea, 74, 79, 155, 181; 
 Iphigenia, 74. 
 
 Europe, 72, 285. 
 
 "Exposition," defined, 180; dis- 
 cussed, 181-190 ; clearness in, nec- 
 essary, 194-195, 213,247; in Othello, 
 215. 
 
 Fantasy, in Shakspere, 225 ; in panto- 
 mimes and musical-shows, 226; of 
 Musset, 258, 262; in Peter Pan, 270. 
 
 Farce, 100, 113, 117, 118, 120, 121, 124, 
 191,221,224, 262, 291; defined, 96; 
 in Moliere's work, 122; in Shak- 
 spere, 122, 123, 124, 161, 188. 
 
 Faust, 193. 
 
 Fechter, Charles, 168, 216. 
 
 Ferrier, M. Paul, Ilote, 52. 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 191; Tom Jones, 
 191, 193. 
 
 Fitch, Clyde, 48, 67; Barbara 
 Frietchie, 77-78; Climbers, the, 117. 
 
 Flaubert, Gustave, 230. 
 
 Fletcher, John, 117, 206, 219; Faith- 
 ful Shepherdess, the, 116. 
 
 " Focus, "the, 61, 139. 
 
 Folk- drama, literary drama devel- 
 oped from, 92, 286, 291; despised 
 by Italian critics, 282, 283. 
 
 Form of the drama, the, 217, 222. 
 
 France, 7, 17, 49, 51, 71, 72, 76, 77, 79, 
 91, 124, 143, 232, 258, 285, 286, 290, 
 291, 292, 294. 
 
 Francesca da Rimini, 193. 
 
 Frederick the Great, 96. 
 
 Free will, belief in, favorable to 
 drama, 96; championed by Aris- 
 totle, 101 ; importance to drama 
 explained by Brunetiere, 102 
 (See also Human will). 
 
 French Academy, the, 91, 274. 
 
 French, characteristics of the, 290- 
 291. 
 
 French drama, the, 79-80, 102, 124, 
 145, 146, 232, 258, 259, 275, 286, 288, 
 290-294. 
 
 French government, the, 84. 
 
 French literature, 258. 
 
INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 French painter, the, quoted, 222. 
 
 French theater, the, 143; tennis- 
 court of Moliere, the, 45, 48, 59-60, 
 65, 69; Italianate theaters at Paris, 
 '61 ; 
 
 Freytag, Gustave, artificial pyramid 
 of, 213; Technic of the Drama,ihe, 
 213. 
 
 Frobisher, Sir Martin, 241. 
 
 Frou-frou (Meilhac and Hatevy), 120. 
 
 " Function of the crowd," the drama 
 as a, 79, 81, 82, 85. 
 
 Garrick, David, 34, 167. 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 85, 234. 
 
 German drama, the, 7, 80, 144. 
 
 Germany, 7, 80 ; court-theaters in, 81 ; 
 subsidized opera-houses in, 81. 
 
 Giacommetti, Marie Antoinette, 115. 
 
 Gillette, William, 196; Secret Ser- 
 vice, 196. 
 
 Globe Theater, the, 58, 143, 153, 238, 
 242,256. 
 
 Goethe, 80-81, 96, 194; quoted, 186- 
 187, 253; Faust, 25, 74; Wilhelm 
 Meister, quoted from, 99 ; Gotz, 253. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 113; She Stoops 
 to Conquer, 113, 120. 
 
 Gozzi, Carlo, on the number of situa- 
 tions in drama, 193-194. 
 
 Great Britain, 76, 110, 258. 
 
 Greece, 79, 110, 142, 232. 
 
 Greek actors, 50-51. 
 
 Greek drama, the, 57-58, 74, 79, 89, 
 91, 118, 141, 142, 144, 163-164, 171-172, 
 232, 237, 265, 279; evolution of, 4-5, 
 14-15, 17, 145, 285 ; analyzed by Aris- 
 totle, 276-277, 280, 282; the uni- 
 ties in, 277, 279-281, 284-285, 288 ; the 
 trilogy in, 288 (See also Greek 
 tragedy). 
 
 Greek dramatists, the, 73-74, 101, 
 164-165, 280, 281, 284, 288. 
 
 Greeks, the, 277; their good sense in 
 art, 193, 283; their artistic percep- 
 tion, 214 ; their tragedy cannot be 
 imitated, 254; Sidney's belief re- 
 garding, 257. 
 
 Greek theater, the, 5, 45, 48, 49-51, 53, 
 57, 58, 65, 74, 138, 152, 279, 285. 
 
 Greek tragedy, 57, 89, 96, 110, 163-165, 
 
 213-214, 259,277; attempted resus- 
 citation of, 253, 254. 
 
 Greene, Robert, 119, 246, 247. 
 
 Grimstadt, 70. 
 
 Groos, Professor, quoted, 103. 
 
 Grosse, Professor, quoted, 10-11. 
 
 Gummere, F. B., quoted, 14; his 
 treatment of the popular ballad, 
 110. 
 
 Gyp, social satires of, 92. 
 
 Haigh, A. E., quoted, 44; Tragic 
 Drama of the Greeks, the, 57. 
 
 Hamilton, Clayton, quoted, 88. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, quoted, 109. 
 
 Hardy, Alexandre, 17, 293. 
 
 Harrigan, Edward, 125. 
 
 Harte, Bret, 228. 
 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 144, 216; 
 Weavers, the, 216; Sunken Bell, 
 the, 269. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Scarlet Let- 
 ter, the, 200, 231, 278. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 187, 246; quoted, 
 152. 
 
 Hegel, 99, 101, 102; quoted on tra- 
 gedy, 99-100. 
 
 Henry IV of France, 96. 
 
 Henry VIII of England, 238. 
 
 Herkomer, Sir Henry, quoted, 63. 
 
 Heroic-comedy, the, 37, 113. 
 
 Heroic-play, the, 111, 124. 
 
 Heroines of Shakspere, the, 30-31, 
 158. 
 
 Hervieu, Paul, 18. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas, 19; A Woman 
 Killed with Kindness, 19. 
 
 Hibben, John Grier, quoted, 86. 
 
 High-comedy, the, 118-119, 120, 121, 
 223. 
 
 Him, quoted, 9-10. 
 
 History, a type of Shaksperian play, 
 the (See Chronicle-play). 
 
 Histrionic temperament, the, 34, 39. 
 
 Hogarth, William, 228. 
 
 Homer, the poems of, 74; Iliad, the. 
 156. 
 
 Hopkins, Miss Priscilla, 41. 
 
 Hotel de Bourgogne, 292. 
 
 Howard, Bronson, 128; Banker's 
 Daughter, the, 76-77. 
 
314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 146, 199, 207, 215, 232, 
 234, 257-258, 259, 270, 274, 294 ; Crom- 
 well, 8, 199, 274; Euy Bias, 18, 207, 
 215-216; preface from, quoted, 
 88; Hernani, 146, 150, 215-216, 258, 
 294; Miserables, the, 150. 
 
 Human nature in the drama, 194, 
 269. 
 
 Human will, mainspring of drama, 
 94, 95, 98, 100-101, 102, 104, 106, 218; 
 Machiavelli's emphasis on, 103; 
 should be spontaneous, 201. 
 
 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 255. 
 
 Ibsen, 7, 8, 18, 45, 48, 58, 64, 67, 70, 71, 
 125, 137, 144, 181, 196, 205, 207, 208, 
 214, 246, 247, 257, 260, 264, 274, 294; 
 Ghosts, 7, 116, 181, 214, 247, 274, 294; 
 Doll's House, the, 107, 207; Rosmer- 
 sholm, 181; Hedda Gabler, 205; 
 Pillars of Society, 208; Love's 
 Comedy, 264; When We Dead 
 Awaken, 264. 
 
 Imagination, 110, 191 ; distinguished 
 from fancy, 111; necessary to 
 character-drawing, 153, 169; in 
 Shakspere, 166 ; not possessed by 
 the mere playwright, 170; in the 
 Elizabethan poets, 234. 
 
 Inevitable, in drama, the, 200. 
 
 International formula, an, 67. 
 
 Invention, 191; necessary to plot- 
 making, 153; to the mere play- 
 wright, 170. 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 39-40, 138, 168. 
 
 Isocrates, 70. 
 
 Italian drama, 7; popular, despised 
 by Italian critics, 282-283; com- 
 edy-of-masks, the, 47, 59, 117, 142, 
 172-174, 259, 282, 283. 
 
 Italian Renascence, the, art of, 28; 
 scholars of, 72; critics and criti- 
 cism of, 94, 257, 275, 281, 282-283, 
 285, 289. 
 
 Italy, 142, 260, 282. 
 
 James I of England, 233. 
 James, Henry, 223; quoted, 176. 
 James, William, quoted, 11. 
 Jameson, Mrs. Anna, 162; Girlhood 
 of Shakspere's Heroines, the, 158. 
 
 Japanese theater, the, 140-141. 
 
 Jebb, Sir Richard, 23; quoted, 14. 
 
 Jefferson, Joseph, quoted, 21. 
 
 Jena, 80. 
 
 Jenkin, Fleeming, 23. 
 
 Jerusalem, the Temple at, 292. * 
 
 Jewish theater, the, 141. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 252; quoted, 68, 
 273, 286; Irene, 252. 
 
 Jones, Henry Arthur, 67; Evange- 
 list, the, 117; Liars, the, 118; Mid- 
 dleman, the, 144; Literature and 
 the Modern Drama, quoted, 261. 
 
 Jonson, Ben., 48, 119, 125, 232, 274, 
 275, 285, 286, 288, 289; Every Man 
 in his Humor, 29, 289. 
 
 Jordan, Mrs., 167. 
 
 Joseph and Potiphar's wife, 72. 
 
 Jusserand, Jules, 70, 239 j quoted, 
 240. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 168. 
 Kemble, John Philip, 32, 41. 
 King of Rome, the, 38. 
 Knowles, J. Sheridan, 263; Vir- 
 
 ginius, 261, 264; Hunchback, the, 
 
 263. 
 
 Kotzebue, 44, 170, 260. 
 Kyd, 165; Spanish Tragedy, the, 18. 
 
 Labiche, Eugene, 94. 
 
 La Harpe, Jean de, 94. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 19, 32, 33, 41, 226-227, 
 
 232,245; quoted, 159, 227; Mr. H., 
 
 191; Specimens,^. 
 Latin comedy, 171-172, 259, 283. 
 Latin drama, the, 141, 142 (See also 
 
 Rome, drama of). 
 Latin dramatists, the, 53. 
 Latin tragedy, 283. 
 Lazarillo de Tormes, 113. 
 Le Bon, Gustave, 86; quoted, 87. 
 Legouv6, 39, 42; Memories of Sixty 
 
 Years, 38; Adrienne Lecouvreur, 
 
 38; Louise de Lignerolles, 39; Lor 
 
 dies' Battle, the, 247. 
 Lemercier, N^pomucene, 94. 
 Le Sage, Gil Bias, 95, 113. 
 Lessing, 7, 20, 96, 97, 257, 274, 276. 
 Letourneau, quoted, 9, 89. 
 Lewes, George Henry, 168. 
 
INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 Line of interest, the, 212, 213 (See 
 also Diagram of interest). 
 
 Literary drama, the, developed from 
 the unliterary, 8, 17-18; essential 
 qualities of, 20-23; denned, 92-93; 
 developed from folk-drama, 92, 
 283, 286, 291. 
 
 Literature and drama, 1-3, 20-23 ; 
 divorced in Elizabeth's time, 237 ; 
 in the 19th century, 249 ; closet- 
 drama follows divorce between, 
 259-260. 
 
 London, 72, 76, 77, 91, 186, 236, 238, 
 289. 
 
 London Assurance, 129. 
 
 Louis XIV, 45, 69, 139, 144. 
 
 Lounsbury, T. R., 267, 290 ; quoted, 
 267-268. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 246; quoted, 
 254. 
 
 Lyly, John, 41. 
 
 Lyrical-burlesque, the, of Aristoph- 
 anes, 117; of the Greeks, 125. 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 39 ; Lady of Lyons, 
 the, 39; Richelieu, 39, 261, 264. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 227. 
 
 Machiavelli, 102-103. 
 
 Mackaye, Percy, Jeanne d'Arc, 115. 
 
 Macready, 39, 252. 
 
 Madrid, 73. 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 262 ; Intruder, 
 the, 262, 264; Pelleas and Meli- 
 sande, 262. 
 
 Mahaffy, John P., 78. 
 
 " Mansions," 47, 54, 143, 292, 293. 
 
 Manzoni, Alessandro, 253. 
 
 Marivaux, Pierre de, 294. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 17, 32, 48, 79, 
 232; Jew of Malta, the, 32; Tam- 
 burlaine, 32; Doctor faustus, 247. 
 
 Mars, Mile., 39. 
 
 Massinger, Philip, 246, 247, 263; Ro- 
 man Actor, the, 247; New Way to 
 pay Old Debts, a, 263. 
 
 Medieval drama, the, 15-16, 53-55, 72, 
 141, 144, 238, 283, 291-292. 
 
 Medieval theater, the, 46, 47, 48, 53- 
 57. 142, 143. 
 
 Melodrama, 18, 104, 120, 121, 124, 224, 
 262; in Shakspere, 122; Hamlet 
 
 developed from, 165-166; Hamlet 
 treated by Fechter as, 168 ; in Chap- 
 man's plays, 257; Hugo's plays 
 modelled upon, 257-258, 270. 
 
 Menander, 6, 21, 118, 232. 
 
 Mermaid, the, 289. 
 
 Mimicry in children, 11. 
 
 Minturno, 285. 
 
 Miracle-play, the, 47, ?38, 259, 282. 
 
 Modern drama, the, 67, 114, 141; 
 compared with earlier drama, 125, 
 265; disappearance of soliloquy 
 from, 144; line of interest in, 213; 
 no excuse for closet- drama in, 
 260; prose and poetry in, 249-250; 
 chief characteristics of, 265; the 
 Unity of Action in, 277. 
 
 Modern dramatists, the, 48, 60, 63, 
 67, 75, 106, 144, 209, 271 ; their viola- 
 tion of "rules of the drama," 94; 
 who have handled the comedy-of- 
 manners, 118; their avoidance of 
 the romantic-comedy, 119; dis- 
 card the soliloquy, 145, 148, 151; 
 their attitude toward the unities, 
 294; compared with Elizabethan, 
 246, 265. 
 
 Modern theater, the, 48, 63, 67, 70, 
 119, 138, 139-140, 142, 151, 238, 249, 
 265, 267. 
 
 Moliere, 4, 6, 7, 25, 26, 33, 34, 45, 48, 
 59-60, 65, 66, 69, 71, 80, 83, 90, 96, 122, 
 125, 130, 131, 137, 140, 141, 142, 148, 
 149, 155, 156, 157, 159, 161, 163, 166, 
 186, 187, 195, 196, 230, 232, 247, 255, 
 271,283,293, 294; Precieuses Ridi- 
 cules, the, 4; Amour Medecin, the, 
 4; Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the, 
 33, 163; Tartuffe, 33, 82, 107, 112, 
 121, 147-148, 155, 156, 157, 186, 196, 
 200, 247, 278; Misanthrope, the, 33, 
 112, 139, 156, 157; School for Hus- 
 bands, the, 60; School for Wives, 
 the, 94; Femmes Savantes, the, 
 118; Scapin, 126; Don Juan, 136, 
 161, 166, 293; Miser, the, 150. 
 
 Moliere, Mile, de, 160. 
 
 Morality, in the drama, 225-231 ; in 
 prose-fiction, 225, 227, 228, 230-231. 
 
 Morality-play, the, 17, 30, 111, 119. 
 
 Mot, the, 12^; mot & esprit, the, 126. 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 127, 128, 129, 130, 131; mot de situ- 
 ation, the, 126, 130, 131; mot de 
 caractere, the, 126, 129, 131. 
 
 Murray, Gilbert, quoted, 229. 
 
 Musical-comedy, the, 124, 125 (See 
 also Musical-shows). 
 
 Musical-shows, American, 226. 
 
 Musset, Alfred de, 199, 258, 262; 
 Brunetiere's lecture on, 93; On 
 ne badine pas avec V amour, 262, 
 264. 
 
 Mystery-play, the, 15-60, 17, 30, 53- 
 55, 72, 97, 111, 114, 143, 238, 282, 292. 
 
 Nero, 259, 260. 
 
 Netherlands, the, 204. 
 
 New York, 72, 76, 77, 88, 125, 141. 
 
 Nisard, quoted, 71. 
 
 Norway, 71. 
 
 Novel, the, and the play, 84, 92, 94, 
 95, 97, 99, 154, 158, 175, 178, 179-180, 
 190-191, 197-198, 199, 200-201, 223, 
 230, 260; and the short-story. 111 ; 
 with-a-purpose, 112; dialogue in, 
 136; haphazard character of the 
 English, 175; in the 19th century, 
 
 Odeon Theater, 93. 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret, 191-192; 
 Sheridan, 191; quoted, from, 192. 
 
 O'Neill, Miss, 252. 
 
 Opera, the convention of, 134; Tol- 
 stoy's attack on, 134; death toler- 
 ated in, 195. 
 
 Opera-bouffe, the, 124. 
 
 Opera-comique, the, 124. 
 
 Orange, the Roman theater at, 49, 
 51-53. 
 
 Orchestra, the Greek, 49-50, 146, 279, 
 285; the Roman, 51. 
 
 Orestes, 194. 
 
 Orientals, have no vital drama, the, 
 96. 
 
 Oriental-tale, the, 112. 
 
 Origin of the drama (See Drama). 
 
 "Pageants," 54. 
 Palladio, Andrea, 60. 
 Pantomime, denned, 2-3; skeleton of 
 a good play always a, 20; the con- 
 
 vention of, 134; British panto- 
 mimes, 226. 
 
 Paris, 38, 70, 72, 76, 77, 88, 91, 142, 186, 
 292. 
 
 Parts, characters composed as, 160, 
 166-167; in the School for Scandal, 
 167 (See also " Star-parts"). 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, dictum of, 114. 
 
 Passion-play, the, 15, 53-55, 141, 143, 
 291, 292. 
 
 Pastiches, 253. 
 
 Pastoral- romance, the, 112. 
 
 Perry, Bliss, quoted, 211. 
 
 Phillips, Stephen, 265-266; Ulysses, 
 115. 
 
 Picaresque-romance, the, 112, 113. 
 
 Picture-frame stage, the, 48, 63-65, 
 151. 
 
 Pinero, Sir Arthur, 67, 208, 247; his 
 definition of comedy, 120; His 
 House in Order, 208; Second Mrs. 
 Tanqueray, the, 247. 
 
 Pixerecourt, 18. 
 
 Plagiarist, the schoolboy's defini- 
 tion of a, 194. 
 
 Planch^, James Robinson, quoted, 
 190. 
 
 Plautus, 41, 53, 73, 125, 144, 171, 181, 
 189; Amphitryon, 116; Captives, 
 the, 142, 181, 189. 
 
 "Play," a, modern definition of 
 tragi-comedy, 117. 
 
 Plot, 88, 101, 121, 127, 148, 153, 163, 170, 
 171, 178, 181, 194, 196, 197, 201, 205, 
 208, 219; in Shakspere, 147, 165, 187- 
 188, 195, 203, 204, 206, 239, 244, 278; 
 repeated use of old plots, 153, 154, 
 164. 165, 193-194, 208-209; relation 
 of character and, 156, 160, 161-162, 
 203; in Moliere, 163, 195; in the 
 comedy-of -masks, 174; of the 
 Weavers, 216; in Elizabethan 
 drama, 238; in Chapman's plays, 
 257; Professor Lounsbury on, 267- 
 268 ; in Greek drama, 280. 
 
 Plutarch, 21. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 193. 
 
 Poetic-justice, 228. 
 
 Poetry, primitive, 14; not a matter of 
 verse, 260-264, 267. 
 
 Pompeian pictures, 134. 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Portuguese drama, the, 141. 
 Preparation, the dramatist's art, 183. 
 Prisoner of Zenda, the, 117, 209. 
 Probable, necessary in drama, the, 
 
 200, 247. 
 
 Problem-play, the, 111 ; of Ibsen, 125. 
 Prodigal Son, the, 3. 
 Prologue, the, 181; in Fedora, 184; 
 
 in the Captives, 190. 
 Prose-Fiction (See the Novel). 
 Psychology of the crowd, the, 86-88. 
 Punch and Judy, 226. 
 
 " Quarrel of the Cid," the, 274. 
 
 Rachel, 38. 
 
 Racine, 21, 34, 43, 74, 80, 137, 232, 247, 
 
 288, 293, 294; Phedre, 146, 247. 
 Red Bull Theater, the, 256. 
 Regnier, 39. 
 Rehearsal, the, 130. 
 Rembrandt, 267. 
 Restoration, the, comedy of, 7, 226; 
 
 theater of, 46, 48-49, 61-62, 63, 65, 238. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, quoted, 1. 
 Richelieu, Cardinal, 91, 96, 274; 
 
 theater of, 60. 
 Hip Van Winkle, 150. 
 Robortello, 94, 281 ; quoted, 281. 
 Roman sculptures, 135. 
 Roman theater, the, 49, 51-53. 
 Romance, 110, 111. 
 Romance-of-chivalry, the, 112. 
 Romantic-comedies, of Shakspere, 
 
 the, 119, 123,124,278. 
 Rome, drama of, 89, 91, 129, 144, 259, 
 
 260 (See also Latin drama). 
 Roscius, 34. 
 Rostand, Edmund, 37, 58, 67, 113, 
 
 258, 259; Cyrano de Bergerac, 35, 
 
 37,113; Aiglon, the, 38. 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 62. 
 "Rules of the drama," 73, 91; de- 
 clared invalid by Brunetiere, 93 ; 
 
 compared with " law of the 
 
 drama," 96-97 (See also chap. 
 
 xiii). 
 Ruskin, John, 235. 
 
 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, quoted, 
 175. 
 
 Salamis, 96. 
 
 Salvini, Tommaso, 168. 
 
 Sand, George, quoted, 230. 
 
 Sandeau, Jules, 119; Gendre de M. 
 Poirier, the, 75-76, 104, 118. 
 
 Sanskrit drama, the, 141. 
 
 Sarcey, Francisque, 20, 105, 106, 107> 
 209, 276; his principle of the scenes 
 afaire, 105-108, 219; quoted, 231. 
 
 Sardou, Victorien, 35, 184, 185, 186, 
 204; Fedora, 35, 184; Oncle Sam, 
 84; Nos Intimes, 184; Famille Be- 
 noiton, the, 184; Theodora, 184; 
 Gismonda, 184; Patrie, 204-205. 
 
 Satires of Sheridan and Beaumar- 
 chais, 117. 
 
 Scaliger, 274, 283, 285. 
 
 Scenery, 5, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 
 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 138, 139, 
 142, 238, 265, 285, 293. 
 
 Scenes afaire, the, 105-108, 219. 
 
 Schelling, Felix E., 114. 
 
 Schiller, 80, 96, 194, 207; Robbers, the, 
 207. 
 
 Schlegel, quoted, 99. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 175; Woodstock, 
 175-176; Heart of Midlothian, 
 the, 200 ; Waverley Novels, the, 
 260. 
 
 Scribe, Eugene, 19, 20, 21, 40, 42, 44, 
 76, 170, 182, 184, 186, 246, 247, 260, 
 Brunetiere's lecture on, 93 ; Ad- 
 rienne Lecouvreur, 182; Ladies' 
 Battle, the, 247. 
 
 Sea-tale, the, 112. 
 
 Semi-medieval drama, 238, 239, 295; 
 the theater, 48, 119, 244, 256, 257, 
 265; playwrights, 240, 246; audi- 
 ences, 242 (See also Elizabethan 
 drama). 
 
 Seneca, 102, 259. 
 
 Sense-of-humor, the, 110; of Sheri- 
 dan, 128. 
 
 Sentimental-comedy, the, 111, 124. 
 
 Serious drama, the, defined, 95; tra- 
 gedy, as a type of, 117, 118, 121 ; as 
 distinguished from melodrama, 
 124, 224; truth necessary in, 223; 
 of the French, 294. 
 
 Sevigne, Mme. de, 43. 
 
 Shakspere, 4, 5, 8, 19, 26, 29, 30-33, 34, 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 44, 46, 48, 49, 57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 69, 
 70, 73, 74, 78, 79, 90, 91, 96, 112, 113, 
 114, 115, 119, 122,123, 124, 130,131,137, 
 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148, 149,157, 
 158, 159, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173, 181, 186, 
 187, 188, 189, 195, 201 , 202, 204, 206, 213, 
 230, 232, 233, 237, 238-239, 242, 243-244, 
 247, 248, 255, 257, 258, 260, 263, 264, 266, 
 268, 269, 271, 274, 275, 278, 281, 287, 288, 
 289, 290; Hamlet, 18, 20, 29, 30, 32, 
 82, 104-105, 112, 124, 136, 139, 152, 155, 
 159, 165-166, 168, 169, 205, 215, 225, 
 270, 278, 288; As You Like It, 29, 30, 
 31, 105, 128, 140, 157, 168-169, 194, 203, 
 204, 263, 270 ; Measure for Measure, 
 30,123, 195, 264; All 's Well that 
 Ends Well, 30, 123, 264; Twelfth 
 Night,30,2G6; Merchant of Venice, 
 the, 30, 119, 138, 153,244, 268, 278; 
 Much Ado about Nothing, 30, 
 119, 203, 204, 244, 278; Titus An- 
 dronicus, 31, 122; Romeo and 
 Juliet, 73, 136, 150, 173, 174, 187, 201, 
 244, 266, 278; Macbeth, 107, 113, 122, 
 159, 188, 200, 225, 239, 263, 278, 288; 
 Othello, 107, 121, 122, 147, 155, 157, 
 159, 167-168, 169, 181, 187, 188, 191, 
 193, 205-206, 215, 231, 239, 243, 244, 
 247, 278, 281, 286; Winter's Tale, 
 the, 117, 123, 153, 154, 188, 204, 278; 
 Comedy of Errors, the, 122, 126, 
 
 187, 188-189, 209; Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, the, 122, 161 ; Taming of 
 the Shrew, the, 122; Troilus and 
 Cressida, 122, 124; Cymbeline,VZl, 
 
 188, 243, 244 ; Tempest, the, 123, 
 159, 289, 290; Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, 123, 224-225; Falstaff, 131; 
 Henry V, 136; Julius Ccesar, 136, 
 137, 263, 287; Richard III, 143; 
 Henry IV, 161; Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, 204; King Lear, 244. 
 
 Shaw, G. B., 18. 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 252; Cenci, 
 the, 252; quoted, 229. 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., 7, 8, 40-41, 48, 61-62, 
 65, 66, 117, 119, 127, 128, 130, 138, 167, 
 186; School for Scandal, the, 40- 
 41, 61-62, 107, 118, 121, 127, 131, 155, 
 167, 191-192, 193; Rivals, the, 128; 
 Critic, the, 128, 130, 146, 186. 
 
 Short-story, the, 109, 112; a type by 
 itself, 111. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 46, 116, 257, 274, 
 282, 285; Defense of Poesy, the, 91, 
 274, 289. 
 
 Situations in the drama, number of, 
 193-194. 
 
 Smith, 41. 
 
 Social-drama, the, 104; of Ibsen, 7, 
 
 18, 71, 137, 196, 207; of Hauptmann, 
 216. 
 
 Soliloquy, the, 64, 143-151, 181, 186, 
 187. 
 
 Sophocles, 7, 8, 15, 19, 26, 29, 33, 34, 
 44, 48, 57, 58, 65, 69, 70, 79, 90, 101, 146, 
 159, 160, 165, 208, 209, 214, 232, 247, 
 257; (Edipus the King, 7, 52, 101, 
 121, 155, 160, 161, 165, 200, 208-209, 
 214, 231, 247, 278; Antigone, 74, 160, 
 161. 
 
 Spain, 7, 48, 79, 204, 232, 245, 285, 286, 
 290, 294. 
 
 Spanish drama, the, 79, 96, 124, 125, 
 138, 232, 245, 286. 
 
 Spanish theater, the,'48. 
 
 Sparta, 79. 
 
 Spectators, the (See Audiences). 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, Economy of At- 
 tention, 178, 223. 
 
 Spingarn, 281, 283. 
 
 Standardizing of the playhouse, 66. 
 
 " Star-parts,'' examples of, in plays, 
 29-30, 32-43 (See also Parts). 
 
 " Stations," 54, 143, 291, 292. 
 
 Stendhal, quoted, 253. 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, quoted, 256. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 23; quoted, 92, 99, 
 106, 229; his methods of story-writ- 
 ing, 163. 
 
 Stock-figures, of the theater, 171; 
 of Latin comedy, f71 -172; of Greek 
 comedy, 171-172; of the comedy- 
 of-masks, 172-174. 
 
 Stoker, Bram, 39. 
 
 Subject of a drama, the, importance 
 of to success, 176; Aristotle's dic- 
 tum on, 176; in the poetic drama, 
 267. 
 
 Sudermann, Hermann, 247; Heimat 
 (Magda), 75, 247; Honor, 144. 
 
 Supernatural, the, in Shakspere's 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 plays, 75, 159, 224-225; audiences 
 will accept, 224. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon, 235, 245, 257, 
 258 ; Atalanta in Calydon, 253, 254 ; 
 Marino Faliero, 256. 
 
 Taine, H., 25 ; quoted, 232. 
 
 Technic, significance of, 5-6 ; com- 
 pared with that of the novel, 175- 
 176; Goethe, on Moliere's, 187; nec- 
 essary to the dramatist, 217-218; 
 not mastered by Tennyson, 252; 
 studied by real dramatic poets, 
 260. 
 
 Tennis-court theater, the (See 
 French theater). 
 
 Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 40, 46, 252; 
 Becket, 39-40, 115, 252 ; Queen Mary, 
 115. 
 
 Terence, 52, 72, 73. 150, 171. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 154, 155, 191, 228, 
 230; Vanity Fair, 155, 228, 278; 
 Henry Esmond, 191, 193. 
 
 Thebes, 79. 
 
 Theobald, Lewis, 62. 
 
 Theocritus, idyls of, 92. 
 
 Thespis, 17. 
 
 Thomas, Augustus, 67. 
 
 Thorndike, Ashley H., 117; Tragedy, 
 110; quoted, 249. 
 
 Tokio, 140. 
 
 Tolstoy, 134; Anna Karenina, 200, 
 231, 278. 
 
 Traditions, 47, 54, 55, 220, 265; in 
 Greek tragedy, 164-165, 193; in 
 Shakspere, 288 (See also Conven- 
 tions; also chap. vii). 
 
 Tragtdie-bourgeoise, the, 124. 
 
 Tragedies, Greek, 5, 51, 52, 74, 118, 
 144; of Corneille, 7, 137; of Sopho- 
 cles, 65, 165; of Seneca, 102; of 
 Shakspere, 113, 122, 124, 130, 137; 
 of Racine, 137; of ^Eschylus, 165; 
 of the Romans, 144. 
 
 Tragedy, 97, 104, 111, 115, 116, 117, 120, 
 121, 201, 207, 221, 222, 282, 283; de- 
 fined, 95; Schlegel, Coleridge, and 
 Hegel on, 99-100; Aristotle on, 101; 
 Butcher on, 102; development of 
 English, 102 , Roman, 129; classicist 
 French, 146; Secret Services, 196; 
 
 in Ibsen, 207; Bradley on, 214; the 
 
 unities in, 275 (See also Greek 
 
 tragedy). 
 Tragedy-of-blood, the, 18, 32, 102, 111, 
 
 112, 115, 122, 123, 124, 241 ; Hamlet 
 
 developed from, 165-166. 
 Tragi-comedy, 111, 124; discussed, 
 
 115-117. 
 
 Trilogy, the (See Greek drama). 
 Trissino, 281. 
 Troy, fall of, 186, 280- 
 Tudors, drama under the, 46, 55. 
 Turgenieff, Ivan, his method of 
 
 writing a novel, 157 ; Smoke, 200, 
 
 278. 
 Twain, Mark, Huckleberry Finn, 
 
 113-114. 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 42; Ralph Roister 
 Doister, 41-42. 
 
 United States, 76, 258. 
 
 Unity, in dramatic development, 
 46-47; necessity of, 198; of im- 
 pression, in the Weavers, 216; of 
 theme, necessary, 247; in Shak- 
 spere 's tragedies, 278. 
 
 Unity of Action, the, 275, 277, 279, 
 
 283, 284, 288, 290, 294. 
 
 Unity of Place, the, 59, 275, 283, 
 
 284, 289, 290, 291, 293, 294. 
 
 Unity of Time, the, 275, 279, 281, 283, 
 284, 287, 288, 290, 294. 
 
 Unliterary drama, basis of the lit- 
 erary, the, 8, 16, 17-19, 291. 
 
 Valenciennes, mystery-play at, 54. 
 Vega, Lope de, 4, 48, 66, 72, 73, 79, 232, 
 
 274, 285, 286, 287, 290 ; New Art of 
 
 Making Plays, the, 73, 147, 287. 
 Verga, Giovanni, 67; Cavalleria 
 
 Rusticana, 35. 
 Vergil, jEneid, the, 156. 
 Versailles, 139. 
 Vicenza, theater at, 60. 
 Visualizing a play, 22-23, 211, 212. 
 Voltaire, 60, 99, 176, 286, 294; Semira- 
 
 mis, 61. 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 3; music-dramas, 
 
 51 ; Tristan und Isolde, 134. 
 Waterbury, Conn., 139. 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Weber and Fields, Messrs., 125. 
 
 Webster, John, 236. 
 
 Weimar, court-theater at, 80. 
 
 West Point, N. Y., 138. 
 
 When Knighthood was in Flower, 
 
 117. 
 Whistler, James McNeill, quoted, 
 
 267. 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, 127; Lady Winder- 
 mere's Fan, 118, 126, 127, 130. 
 Will (See Human will). 
 Wordsworth, William, quoted, 85. 
 Wycherley, William, 227. 
 
 Zola, Emile, Germinal, 84. 
 
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