2009-05-16

Drama: Its Law and Its Technique Part 2 Chapter 5

CHAPTER V – PLOT IN COMEDY

In many respects the laws of structure determined for the serious drama are equally valid for comedy, but there are also important differences between the two kinds of dramatic creation. First, it may be generally stated that in comedies the action of the plot is much more independent of the characters than it is in the serious drama: it is, as we have already implied, even possible to create a comic plot which shall be really comic, while its persons are nothing more than puppets, the development of the plot being wholly extraneous to the characters. This is the case in The Comedy of Errors, in much so-called farce, in much of the Spanish comedy. Again, the comic action is far less bound to emphasize law in its treatment of events; it can make free use of what we call accident and chance.

Passing now to a more detailed consideration of its structure, we find that comedies fall into two main groups, according as their comic interest does or does not determine the main plot. Compare, for example, King Henry IV with Every Man in His Humour. In the former there is a serious main plot, based on events in English history wherein the fiercest passions were aroused and the largest interests involved, and wherein the actors were of heroic type. The comic interest is found in a number of interspersed scenes whose action is loosely connected with the serious main plot; cut out these scenes, and with few changes the play becomes a serious historical drama. In Jonson’s play, on the other hand, the exact converse is the case. The serious interest – and there is very little – is subordinate. The comic interest is not merely developed in the main plot, it actually constitutes it; cut out this and you destroy the play.

These two plays may be accepted as typical of two great classes of comedies. To those of the first type the name “romantic comedy” has been given, for reasons not wholly connected with its structure; those of the second type have been variously styled, according to considerations foreign to this discussion. To it belong all of Aristophanes, most of Plautus and Terence, most of Jonson and Molière, the comedies of Massinger and Middleton and Congreve. With Henry IV are to be classed all of Shakespeare’s comedies except Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew.

Since the romantic comedy has as its basis a serious main plot, and its comic interests are episodic, it may be temporarily disregarded. It is in the second class of comedies that we shall find the typical comic structure.

Reverting to our illustration of the primitive form of comic plot, – our case of the man who sits down on the floor, – let us start again from this. In actual life we know that this may occur for various reasons: (1) he may have miscalculated the position of the chair, and the fault is therefore his own; or (2) the chair may break, and the fault is no one’s; or (3) some one with malice prepense may have pulled the chair from under him, or may have placed a weak chair where he was likely to sit.

So in comedies. The action may be one where the mistakes, the comic disappointments, arise out of the weakness of the victim, and he alone is to blame, or they may spring from circumstance, and no one is responsible, or they may be deliberately planned by one of the play’s persons, an arch-intriguer, assisted, perhaps, by lucky accident, which he knows how to turn to account.

An example of the first sort is seen, though not with perfect clearness, in Love’s Labours Lost, through the fourth act. The four gentlemen have simply miscalculated their own powers and attempted something beyond them. Hence, all fail signally, and the great scene for which the play is planned, IV, 3, merely presents this failure. Each does in turn expose his fellow, in true “house-that-Jack-built fashion,” but no one of them has planned the downfall of another.

The second kind is exemplified with typical clearness in The Comedy of Errors. Here the whole complication is the result of chance, no one guides its progress, and its conclusion is as much accident as any part of its course.

The third sort is seen, as has just been said, in the last act of Love’s Labour’s Lost, but it is better to select an instance where the entire play is constructed on this principle. Among the multitude of such, we may mention, as being, for one reason or another, unusually good instances, Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (Brainworm and Ed. Knowell are the intriguers); The Silent Woman (arch-intriguers, Dauphine, Clerimont, and Lovewit); Chapman’s All Fools (intriguers, Rinaldo, for the main plot, Cornelio, for a subordinate counter-plot); Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts (intriguers, Wellborn, for the main plot, Allworth and Lovell for the underplot); Molière’s L’École des Maris (intriguers, Isabelle and Valère). Among them, the simplest in structure is Molière’s, and next comes Massinger’s, which we will take as a type because it is English. The argument is, briefly, as follows:

Act I. Wellborn, a prodigal, has ruined himself by his excesses, and his estate has passed into the hands of his uncle, Overreach, an unscrupulous old man who has amassed large wealth by sharp practice. In despair, Wellborn turns for help to Lady Allworth, a rich widow whose late husband he had once befriended in time of need. Out of gratitude for this, Lady Allworth consents to feign a betrothal to Wellborn.

Acts II, III, and IV. On the strength of his expectations, Wellborn is instantly restored to credit. His uncle is anxious to facilitate the match, hoping ultimately to get hold of Lady Allworth’s wealth as he already has got Wellborn’s. He therefore pays his nephew’s debts and entertains him royally.

Overreach has a daughter, Margaret, whom he longs to see married to a title, and he offers her in marriage to Lord Lovell. In the lord’s service is young Allworth, stepson to Lady Allworth, who loves Margaret and is loved by her. Lord Lovell befriends his cause, and while feigning consent to the marriage for himself, helps young Allworth convey Margaret away and marry her.

Meanwhile Marrall, an attorney and an unscrupulous attaché of Overreach, decides that it will be more profitable to serve Wellborn.

Act V. Through Marrall’s agency it is discovered that the deed transferring Wellborn’s estates to his uncle is worthless, and the ownership, therefore, reverts to Wellborn. Next, Overreach learns of the marriage of his daughter with young Allworth. At the double catastrophe he goes mad.

Now, it will be seen that the entire structure of the plot depends on the deliberately planned schemes of Wellborn and Allworth to outwit Overreach. Does this differ from the plan of the serious drama?

In a sense, we might adopt the phraseology of the tragedy, and call the action “a losing struggle, by an imperfect character, against the overpowering forces of life.” We might say that there is found here, the three things essential to tragedy: suffering, struggle, causality.

In a sense, yes; but in a sense so different from the tragic that, though the words may be unchanged, the ideas can no longer be treated as the same.

First: the character is indeed imperfect, but the imperfections are here regarded as material for comic contrast, and subjects for judicial reprehension, not for pity and sympathy. This has already been discussed.

Next, as to the struggle. The result of it in both cases is the overthrow of some one, but the process is different in principle and significance – as different as is our case where the malicious person pulls away the chair from the case where two men grapple in a fair fight. In the serious drama, the hero is contending, it may be against one man, it may be against a host, it may be against himself, it may be against the remorseless “course of things.” We may even know from the beginning that the struggle must end in failure, as we do know in the Oedipus, or in The Cenci; but our hero really fights, he has his chance, all his energies go into the struggle and are staked on the issue. In this kind of comedy, on the other hand, he does not really fight; he is a victim, his overthrow is not really inevitable, it is artfully prearranged.

Finally, the causality in the two kinds of drama is totally different. Tragedy must be based on law, and, as we saw, it is better for the tragedian not to use such events as have about them an air of chance. For comedy this requirement is not imperative. The main thing is the presentation of striking incongruities, and we do not care whether these are evidently grounded in the law of the universe or not; in fact, the range of comic view being limited, it is often better that it should not call too vividly to mind the iron rule of law. Accordingly, we find in comedy the widest license allowed. When Shakespeare, borrowing for his use the old story of the twin brothers, complicates its situations by postulating a second pair of twins as servants to these brothers, we do not cavil at the improbability. If he chose to postulate two pairs of twin sisters, too, we should not object, provided he was master of his material. These considerations have, as will appear, an important bearing on the nature of the comic catastrophe.

So much for general questions. Contrast now more particularly the plans of the two types of drama:

The serious drama usually begins in an apparent equilibrium, from which the conflict develops. In the first part of the play, one of the two contending forces is paramount; in the second, the other, and the outcome is a final equilibrium wholly different from the apparent equilibrium at the beginning.

In the comedy just summarized the case is quite different. Instead of an aggressor meeting an aggressor, there is an aggressor and a victim. It is the natural result of the difference in principle between comedy and tragedy. Instead of a conflict of forces, the comic plots of this type present a process rather like the picking of the lock of a safe; it may be interesting, it may involve great ingenuity and address, but it is on a wholly different basis.

To pursue, for a moment, the figure of the lock: the beginning of the play presents the problem; we see the strong safe, with its lock, apparently secure; we see the would-be lock-breaker, his eyes fixed on the safe, his fingers twitching to get at its secrets. Next, it is hinted that despite this seeming security there are weak points – possibly the lock can be forced. Then comes the process of forcing it, until finally the successful lock-breaker carries out his scheme and enjoys the fruits of his ingenuity.

What the corollaries are, which may be deduced from the fundamental difference between the two problems, will be evident if we consider, one by one, the logical divisions of this type of drama.

[1] Exposition. This has no peculiar features. In the Massinger play, the first act is mainly expositional, the rising action being only suggested at the end of the third scene.

[2] Exciting Force and Rising Action. The exciting force is always found in the resolution of the arch-intriguer to outwit his victim. In the play before us, it is Wellborn’s desperate resolve to have one more try at fortune. Sometimes, as often in the plays of Plautus and Terence, a preliminary action is presented, which is the immediate occasion of this resolution, e.g. a young man falls in love, and plans how to circumvent his father, who opposes him. It is evident that, if in such a case the love-plot is given serious enough emphasis, and our attention is drawn to the issues therein involved, and away from the circumventing of the authorities considered in itself, the play may become serious instead of comic. The emphasis is laid, not on the intellectual problem, but on the emotional crisis. This comes near being the case in As You Like It; it is the case in Romeo and Juliet, and perhaps the impression of weakness left upon us by the last act of this play is partly due to this resemblance between its plan and that of the ordinary comedy; for its tragic catastrophe is brought about, not by the essential constitution of things and the nature of the spiritual problem in itself, but by the accidental failure of an ingeniously arranged scheme which might just as well have been successful.

[3] Climax, and [4] Falling Action. There is, strictly speaking, no climax and no falling action. For, from the very nature of the case, the victim cannot retaliate; it would spoil the play if he did. The movement of the rising action goes steadily forward through the play, though not necessarily at uniform rate. From the standpoint of the intriguer, it might be represented by a line trending upward; from the standpoint of the victim, by one trending downward. In the Massinger play, there is no climax, in the sense in which we have hitherto been using the term. The only possibility of making one would be to take it as formed by Act III, Scene 2, because this scene is the most elaborate one in the play, and the only one in which both main plot and subplot are interwoven. But such an external test is not the sort one uses for tragedy.

[5] Catastrophe. It presents the completed results of the intriguer’s plans, and the total overthrow of the victim. In contrast to the tragic catastrophe it need not be causally determined by what has preceded. Here, as elsewhere throughout the action, causality is not emphasized, and here as elsewhere chance may determine the issue. Thus, in the play mentioned, one-half of the misfortune of Overreach is due, not to Wellborn’s machinations at all, save very indirectly, but to the “Deus ex machina” in the person of Marrall. Nor need the catastrophe have any quality of finality; it is sufficient that it furnish some sort of finish, which may not preclude further activity, renewed machinations, more victimizing, or even a later “turning of the worm” in a retaliatory stroke. Whereas tragedy must be final, comedy need not be more than provisional; it offers a solution only of the specific problem presented. Not that its conclusion is bound to be provisional; this will depend partly upon what has been the underlying purpose of the intrigue. Compare, as illustrating this, the character of the conclusion in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which is approximately final, with that of The Alchemist, which impresses one as not more than provisional. In many cases, it is true, an air of conclusiveness is given by a sweeping moral regeneration of all knaves, taking place in the last act, but this is usually specious and unsatisfying; it is always quite different from the fundamental and absolute readjustment in the true tragic solution.

These are the chief differences to be noted between the comic and the tragic plot. Subordinate differences will, of course, follow as corollaries, but to take them up here would involve detailed analysis of comedy after comedy. The essential thing is to have marked the principal lines of divergence in the two types.

There are, indeed, cases where the lines seem to cross, and perhaps really do so. In Othello, for example, we have an action which conforms, in some respects, rather to the comic than the tragic type. Othello himself is less a fighter than a victim, while Iago’s attitude from the beginning is that of the arch-intriguer in the comedies we have been discussing. He considers himself injured, as does Wellborn; he plans a deliberate attack, as does Wellborn, and enlists the help of others; he chooses the point where his victim is weakest and makes his assault there, appealing to Othello’s impulsive and unreasoning love, as Wellborn appeals to his uncle’s consuming greed of gain. There is, moreover, in Iago’s attitude a kind of grim, colossal humor, while in his scheming there is a cool, if somewhat crude, power that makes us respect him and wins our intellectual sympathy, as does the arch-intriguer in a comedy. The divergence from comedy is found in the fact that (1) the character of the victim is so noble, and is so treated as to evoke our emotional sympathy; and (2) that he is strong enough, when finally aroused, to retaliate with terrible energy and with such terrible effectiveness that our thought is drawn away from the intellectual phases of the case to its emotional issues. [1] But, great as these differences are, the similarity in plan of the first four acts can scarcely be ignored, and it may be one reason why the play does not appeal to all of us as being tragic in the highest sense.

[1 Compare the case of Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, where the feeling toward the victim may range, according to the character of the audience and of the actor, all the way from pity to scornful derision.]

To take an instance of the converse: Molière’s Le Misanthrope seems, to some readers at least, not at all the typical comedy, and if we examine the plan of the plot we shall find that it has traits distinctive rather of tragedy than of comedy; it presents, namely, a real conflict of forces, and one that is grounded in the spiritual nature of the persons concerned. With very slight changes it might have been made a tragedy, and as it is, when read in some moods, it is apt to seem more tragic than comic.

To resume: the plan of the comic action differs decidedly from that of the serious drama in the character of its conflict, in its freedom from the necessity of emphasizing law and its consequent license in use of chance or accident, in the absence of a true climax and a true falling action, and in the nature of its catastrophe. If the serious drama is represented by the projected pyramid, the comedy, such as Massinger’s, may be represented by two lines, an ascending one for the intriguer, a descending one for the victim.

Applying these results to other comedies, it will be seen that they conform fairly well. In the comedies of Plautus the victim is usually a rich old man, the intriguer usually his son or nephew, always assisted by a slave, and often by some other young man. The differences between play and play are found in the differences in the method of attack and in the motives for it. In Jonson’s comedies the plan is the same in principle, but the schemes are exceedingly complicated; there are usually several intriguers with plans somewhat opposed, and there results a number of separate little puzzles, with separate solutions, but all finally brought together in the general solution of the dénouement. Molière’s plots, again, are more simple. [1]

[1 For a fuller discussion of this type of comedy, cf. Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson’s Comedy.]

Turning now from this large group of comedies, let us see how far its principles apply to the group loosely classed as “romantic.” At the beginning of the chapter we turned away from these because the other, by virtue of its simplicity and its clearness of definition, lent itself more readily to analysis. The results thus gained may help us in dealing with the more difficult and elusive “romantic” comedy, or, at least, may afford a firm base from which we may proceed to its investigation.

In the intrigue comedy it was noted that, in supplying the intriguer with a motive for his scheming, the love-interest was usually employed, and it was suggested that if the love-interest was sufficiently emphasized it might overbalance the comic interest, and the play might become more or less serious. In turning from the plays of Plautus to those of Terence one notices, in some cases, a tendency toward this very thing. Terence’s more delicate talent seems to have inclined him to lay a slightly greater emphasis on the serious element of the plot, and there results a change in the proportionate values of the serious and the comic elements. It varies in different plays, but on the whole it seems fair to say that Terence treats the motive-interest, if we may so distinguish it from the intrigue-interest, with a tenderness of touch and gentle delicacy of sympathy that in a later age would have developed into the so-called “romantic” plot. In the Heautontimorumenos, the remorseful old father doing self-imposed penance for his harshness toward his son, the devotion of that son to his mistress, Antiphila, the little touches that sketch the character of the girl Antiphila herself; in the Andria, the overwhelming love of Pamphilus and Glycerium, which seems to have in it something more than the passion we find depicted in Plautus; – these give us glimpses, though no more than glimpses, of a possible development into another sort of comedy.

Such a development is found in full maturity in the work of Shakespeare; and though we may not take the plays of Terence as a link in an actual evolutionary chain, – for the evolution took place on other lines, – we may use them in our own thought as furnishing a transition phase between the two kinds of comedy. [1]

[1 In Italian comedy, however, there seems actually to have been some such evolution. Cf. Violet Paget’s Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy.]

In dealing with Shakespeare we have, it must be remembered, only approximate dates, and cannot base too much on chronology, yet enough seems established to give us some rough notions of grouping and development. The comedies, following the approximate chronology now agreed upon, may be arranged as follows:

  1. Love’s Labour’s Lost.
  2. The Comedy of Errors.
  3. The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
  4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
  1. The Merchant of Venice.
  2. The Taming of the Shrew.
  3. King Henry IV, two parts.
  4. The Merry Wives of Windsor.
  5. Much Ado about Nothing.
  6. As You Like It.
  7. Twelfth Night.
  1. All’s Well that Ends Well.
  2. Measure for Measure.
  1. Cymbeline.
  2. The Winter’s Tale.
  3. The Tempest.

Of the earliest group two, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors, have been already accounted for. In both the comic interest determines the main plot, which is in the one case developed out of the characters, in the other out of pure incident apart from character. Yet in the latter case it is significant that Shakespeare, using Plautus’ plot, added to it here and there touches of seriousness not in his original, and the proportions of the two elements in the play are more nearly as in some of Terence’s comedies.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have the romantic comedy proper: there is the comic episode, which could be cut out without maiming the play’s structure, and the serious love-plot, double (as often in Terence) and following in its logical divisions the lines of the serious drama. Because it is so simple and typical, it is worth while to examine it somewhat in detail.

Act I. Exposition: love of Proteus and Julia, friendship of Proteus and Valentine.

Rising Action: Valentine leaves for Milan, Proteus also is to be sent thither.

Act II. Exposition, continued: love of Valentine and Silvia.

Rising Action, continued: in development of Proteus’ treachery toward Julia and toward Valentine. A possible opposition is hinted in Julia’s resolution to go to seek Proteus.

Act III. Climax: apparent success of Proteus’ plans, and banishment of Valentine.

Act IV. Return Action: turn of fortune for Valentine suggested in his being made king of the outlaws; for Proteus it is suggested by the appearance of Julia in Milan; for both it is precipitated by Silvia’s plan to run away.

Act V. End of Return Action, and Resolution: Silvia’s flight accomplished, the pursuit of her brings about the solution.

Here it will be seen that there is a true conflict of forces, a true rise, turning-point, and descent. And if Proteus has some of the characteristics of the arch-intriguer, it is the serious, not the comic aspect of his activity that is emphasized, and its criminal nature.

The broad comedy in the play is embodied in the episodes where Speed and Launce appear. They could be cut out, yet they are really related to the main-plot scenes. For, as the Greeks used to follow up their tragedies by a comic parody, so Shakespeare seems here to have intended a parody of his own serious situations. In II, 2, is presented the parting of the two lovers; in the next scene Launce appears and sets forth, with the help of his slippers and his cane, his own farewell to his family: the tears of his parents, the wails of his cat, and the unnatural indifference of his “stony-hearted dog.” Again, in III, 1, immediately following upon Valentine’s desperate grief at the separation from Silvia, comes Speed with the announcement that he, too, is in love, and he proceeds to discuss the situation. The parallelism may be accidental, but it can scarcely be deemed so. A similar case occurs in Love’s Labour’s Lost, in the Armado-Costard-Jaquenetta episodes, while in As You Like It the parody is elaborated, in Touchstone and Awdry, past the point of mere parody, almost into an independent sub-interest.

But, besides this burlesque treatment of the serious issue, there is, in the presentation of the issue itself, the beginning of a kind of comedy peculiar to Shakespeare, namely, a touching of the serious with a slightly comic light, – of the most tenderly delicate sort, it is true, but unmistakable comedy nevertheless. This is the case in the scenes in which Julia appears (note especially Act I, Scene 2). It is the first trace of the author’s power to look at things in two ways at once, a first gleam of the genius that was later to look at the old Lear through the eyes of the “bitter fool,” and utter his tragedy in a jest, “And yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle”: (Goneril enters) “here comes one o’ the parings.”

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, again, there are the two distinct lines: one the love-interest, – double again, and as usual with the lines inter-crossing until straightened out by Oberon, – and the other the comic interest in the tradesmen of Athens and their interlude. The third group, the fairies and Puck, brings in a semi-lyric element foreign to our present discussion. So far all is clear: the comic in the tradesmen’s scenes is easily placed, and it does not affect the main plot. But once more, in this main plot, we find the note of comedy even stronger than in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, while in the entire treatment there is a tone of whimsicality that is perhaps a result of the midsummer night’s witchery. The serious and the comic standpoints are represented for us in Oberon and Puck, as they look on at the confusion of the two pairs of lovers. Oberon, taking it earnestly, thinks of the consequences:

 “What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite
  And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight:
  Of thy misprision must perforce ensue
  Some true love turned and not a false turned true.”

Puck, the mocker, enjoys the situation:

 “Captain of our fairy band,
  Helena is here at hand;
  And the youth, mistook by me,
  Pleading for a lover’s fee.
  Shall we their fond pageant see?
  Lord, what fools these mortals be?
  Oberon. Stand aside: the noise they make
  Will cause Demetrius to awake.
  Puck. Then will two at once woo one;
  That must needs be sport alone;
  And those things do best please me
  That befall preposterously.”

And again, when Oberon reprimands the imp:

 “This is thy negligence: still thou mistakest.
  Or else committ’st thy knaveries wilfully.”

Puck answers, unabashed:

 “Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
     .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
  And so far am I glad it did so sort
  As this their jangling I esteem a sport.” [1]
[1 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III, 2.]

And evidently the poet himself was able to see at once with the eyes of Oberon and of Puck.

In The Merchant of Venice a sterner note is struck. As always, there is the episodic comedy and the love-plots, but there is also the Shylock-Bassanio interest. And here the query intrudes itself: did Shakespeare mean the Shylock plot to be comic or not? It has, indeed, even now a grim kind of comic effect, but we must suspect that the Elizabethan audience laughed where we do not. Possibly Shakespeare meant him to be comic, and without purposing to do so lapsed occasionally into a sympathetic treatment simply because he could not help doing this with any character that he handled long. This would account on the one hand for the hardness of tone in the Jessica plot, and on the other hand for the sympathetic insight in such passages as Shylock’s magnificent outburst in answer to Salarino:

Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what’s that good for?
Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge... I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands... If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” etc.
[1 The Merchant of Venice, III, 1.]

According to this interpretation, we see in Shylock, despite such passages, our familiar comic victim, grown indeed more formidable, and requiring, not the justice but the injustice of the law courts to overcome him, but the comic victim nevertheless, whose downfall, as in typical comedy of intrigue, brings with it the happiness of the lovers. Shakespeare’s mistake, then, was in making us sympathize too keenly with Shylock, though, as we have said, this may not have been the case for his own day.

This brings us to Henry IV, whose structure we have already settled. For, though the character of Falstaff really overshadows the entire play, it does not affect its structure, and the comic scenes are episodic.

In The Merry Wives of Windsor we have a unique case: the episodic comedy of the two preceding plays is, by a tour de force, made the main plot of this one, while a serious subplot is added. The victimizing is an end in itself, instead of being, as in the usual comic main plot, a means to some other end; and Falstaff, from a unique comic hero, has deteriorated into a commonplace comic butt. He has lost his peculiar wit, and – most impossible of all – he takes himself seriously, so that instead of laughing with him we are laughing at him. The character of the play bears out the tradition concerning its writing; it is evidently a piece of hack work, and though the hack work of genius cannot be ignored, the play may, in the present discussion, be set one side.

The next three comedies form a closely related group, which need here scarcely be considered apart. All have serious love-plots and all have comic by-play, that in Twelfth Night being curiously affiliated with the type found in Molière and Jonson, while in Rosalind we might, if we chose, see an arch-intriguer turned somewhat ethereal and exceeding moral, managing the others for their best good and her own innocent amusement. In all three the serious plot is occasionally given a comic tone, the comedy being also partly perceived even by the participants themselves. In these three plays we get the perfection of the Shakespearean comedy, and we need not go on to the last two groups, for, though the bitter jests of All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure and the idyllic temperateness of The Tempest show a tremendous range in tone and many interesting points of detail, there is nothing new in underlying structure.

Pausing here, then, and looking over the range of Shakespearean comedy, we find certain qualities characterizing it: a main plot embodying the love-interest, and episodic scenes embodying the comic interest, the love-interest tinged with comedy yet not so as to destroy its seriousness. It is thus allied with both kinds of drama: with the serious, in that its main ends are serious and its use of the emotions is so; with the comic by reason of this touch of comedy in the treatment, and also by its emancipation from law. For these serious plots have in this respect almost as much license as has pure comedy, and, whereas tragedy is grounded in the spiritual laws of human life, these present to us situations constructed by the fancy and imagination from materials furnished by human life. In the reconstruction, certain things are left out, and that which is above all emphasized in tragedy is here steadily ignored, the binding force of the law, – “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The imagination is free to work, and in the result there is an element of the fanciful, even of the whimsical.

Thus, of the three forms, tragedy, comedy, and this Shakespearean type of comedy, each selects out of life certain parts – no one is complete. Comedy is, in one way, the most limited in its view and the most superficial, it emphasizes certain intellectual phases of things but leaves out others, and it avoids an appeal to the emotions; tragedy is the deepest, laying stress on the emotional phases of life, but treating them not simply in themselves, as does the lyric, but in their relations to will and to outer fact. The romantic comedy is somewhere between these two extremes: its treatment hovers between the surface view, which is characteristic of the comic, and the deeper insight that is essential to the tragic; it makes use of the emotions, but ignores their causal relations.

It will be evident that this intermediate position gives the fullest possible scope to the poetic imagination, and we see how in The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream it almost passes out of drama proper and verges on what we might call free dramatic fantasia. It is because of these qualities, too, that it is to the lover of the drama peculiarly satisfying. It has neither the thinness that often characterizes pure comedy by reason of its preponderating intellectuality, nor the almost oppressive emotional intensity of tragedy; yet it is free to employ the resources of both tragedy and comedy, while it may range in tone from the temperateness of the epic to the emotional depth of the lyric. It has at once richness and delicacy; it is at once philosophical and fanciful; it is the most “poetic” of forms. Even Jonson, the high priest of the intellectual in drama, when, for the only time in his dramatic career, he gave freer play to the other side of his nature, adopted a form akin to this; and Shakespeare, though his mightiest achievements are in tragedy, attained in this form his most nearly perfect artistic excellence.

2009-05-11

Drama: Its Law and Its Technique Part 2 Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV – THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF TRAGIC EFFECT

The word “tragic,” as commonly used, denotes anything sad, especially something having the qualities of suddenness and finality. It is scarcely distinguished from the pathetic, and, though when the two words are brought together a difference is felt, it is a difference rather of intensity than of quality. But for our purposes the word must be interpreted more narrowly, to mean the kind of effect produced by the sight of a losing struggle carried on between a strong but imperfect individuality and the overpowering forces of life. This will do as a rough beginning, as a trial definition, to be corroborated or modified as it is applied to those tragedies which are by universal consent held to be among the greatest. Choosing almost at random, let us take for this purpose the tragedy Macbeth, the tragedy Othello, and the tragedies whose centre of interest is the figure of Orestes.

In Macbeth we have a double protagonist, for a treatment of Lady Macbeth as subordinate involves one in great difficulties. We have here a man in whom are mingled great strength and great weakness: he is a brave and able soldier, but is incapable of prolonged and consistent effort; his thinking is superficial and his morality is therefore not vital and durable; a man of generous and kindly impulses, but open to influence either for good or evil if another stronger and steadier force be brought to bear upon him. Such a force is found in Lady Macbeth. Her mind is cool and steady, and her effectiveness in carrying out any policy she may take up, whether that policy be good or bad, is therefore greater than his could ever be. The occurrence of favorable opportunity, and her ambition for her husband determine her toward evil. Macbeth, morally unsound but wavering in his policy, is upheld by his wife, and together they enter upon the series of acts which end in the ruin of both. The tragic effects are found in their struggles to do that which is impossible to escape the consequences of their own acts.

Othello presents, stated briefly, a struggle between two natures: the one impulsive, passionate, generous, endowed with tremendous power to love and hate, but not well poised, without controlling judgment; the other cold, intellectually agile, self-sufficient and self-controlled, able to use himself and others as tools with a skill founded in an accurate though limited understanding of human motives. In this struggle, Othello’s weakness brings about his fall, but Iago’s success is not complete because his understanding is thus limited – because the world is not, after all, wholly moved by the motives which he understands and counts upon. Each falls a victim to the laws of society which are based in human nature.

In Orestes we have the spectacle of a man who, through no fault of his own, is placed in a position where he must choose between two evils, and, whichever he chooses, he will be contravening some of the most sacred laws of religion and of nature. He chooses, and bears the retribution which his act, though necessary, necessarily involved.

In these instances we find certain constant elements which had been already implied in our trial definition. There is always a struggle, there is the fighter, and there is the opposing force. Let us examine these elements.

And first, the fighter. Our definition said, a strong but imperfect individuality. It has already (chap. III) been suggested that the dramatic person must be vital and positive. Not that he must necessarily act positively; the colorlessness of much of Hamlet’s outer activity is quite different from that of his two friends, Rosenkranz and Guildenstern. It is not the result of forcelessness, but the resultant of conflicting forces within him. The hero must be imperfect, because, for one reason, a perfectly poised character is usually too nearly invulnerable for the opposing force to get a firm hold. Aristotle clearly saw this when he said that the hero must not be a perfectly good man, but, as we shall see, this provision has to be accepted with some reservations. [1] The deepest reason for it is found in the nature of the opposing force.

[1 Cf. infra, pp. 117 ff.]

For the best form of tragedy is found, according to Hegel, when the opposing force is closely united with the soul of the fighter himself – when it has effected a lodgment in the enemy’s trenches and fights from within as well as from without. Such is the case in Macbeth, such is Orestes’ case, such is the case in Othello, such is preeminently the case in Hamlet and in Wallenstein. The hero is, as it were, his own worst enemy. So that one is almost inclined to state categorically that the hero must be thus imperfect, because the tragic struggle must be within him in order to be truly tragic.

But tempting as it is to generalize from these supreme examples, we must be careful not to construct such a theory of the tragic as will exclude such plays as Antigone, and Romeo and Juliet. Here we have another class of effects which we cannot ignore, and in which the tragic element is certainly of a different kind from that found in the other group. We have, in each of these cases, a tragic hero or heroes whose struggle is with outer circumstances, and whose fall is necessitated, not by inner weakness, but by the brute strength of external fact. Thus, Antigone is, so far as her tragic end is concerned, a perfect character. But a combination of circumstances suddenly arises, because of which she is forced to choose between conformity to a social or political law and obedience to a spiritual or religious law. Her brother’s corpse lies unburied outside her native city. Her king and uncle – having over her since her father’s death also a father’s authority – imperatively commands that the body shall not be buried. This command Antigone feels bound, by all the sacredness of family ties and religious custom, to contravene. She chooses to break the law of the state, and by the state she dies. The story of Orestes might, of course, be similarly interpreted, and thus brought within this group of tragedies.

It may indeed be said that such a death in such a cause is not defeat but triumph, and so it is, from one standpoint. But such a standpoint is not one from which we can judge drama with any practical helpfulness. It would involve us in endless subtleties, probably ending in the assertion that the only thing truly tragic is the moral ruin of a soul, – which would cut out nearly everything in drama except Macbeth and Browning’s A Soul‘s Tragedy, or at least would swing around the whole emphasis in the tragedies we know, transferring the interest from the so-called “heroes” to the so-called “villains,” who, having power only to “kill the body” of their victims, kill, in so doing, their own souls.

Evidently this will not do, and we must return to a simpler and perhaps a somewhat more external way of judging. Antigone may be spiritually a conqueror, – her death is surely amply avenged, – but considered simply as a woman, as a human being with but one earthly life to live, she is conquered. This, indeed, she herself recognizes when she answers the chorus, who have been trying to show her the heroic aspect of her fate:

Chorus. But ‘tis great renown for a woman who hath perished that she should have shared the doom of the godlike, in her life, and afterward in death.
Antigone. Ah, I am mocked! In the name of our fathers’ gods, can ye not wait till I am gone, must ye taunt me to my face, O my city, and ye, her wealthy sons? Ah, fount of Dirce, and thou holy ground of Thebe whose chariots are many; ye, at least, will bear me witness, in what sort, unwept of friends, and by what laws I pass to the rock-closed prison of my strange tomb, ah me unhappy! who have no home on the earth or in the shades, no home with the living or with the dead... From what manner of parents did I take my miserable being! And to them I go thus, accursed, unwed, to share their home. Alas, my brother, ill-starred in thy marriage, in thy death thou hast undone my life!” [1]
[1 Antigone, trans. Jebb, pp. 155 ff.]

To change the instance: – the end of the prison-scene in Faust means that the girl has won for herself the great spiritual victory:

Marguerite. Gericht Gottes! Dir hab’ ich mich
       übergeben!
  Dein bin ich, Vater! Rette mich!
  Ihr Engel! Ihr heiligen Schaaren,
  Lagert euch umher, mich zu bewahren!
  Heinrich! Mir graut’s vor dir.
  
  Mephistopheles. Sie ist gerichtet!
  
  Stimme. [von oben] Ist gerettet!”

But her drama is none the less a tragedy, and while the “voice from above” proclaims her “saved,” Mephistopheles is, humanly speaking, entirely right in deeming her “lost.” The two judgments here thus opposed may be taken as representative of the two standards – the standard which judges a human life by itself, and sees in death an ultimate fact; and the standard which looks beyond and above to a different set of spiritual values, in which death is a comparatively unimportant element, or important only as it acts upon the hero’s nature as a motive. The second standard may or may not be the true one; the first seems the only practicable one to apply to art. For, as we have already said, the artist works with phenomena only; life has for him only what it seems to have for those who live it, and death for him is ultimate because it ends our known activity. [1]

[1 Cf. supra, pp. 32-34, and infra, pp. 88-90.]

Remembering, then, that there is another way of judging, we may once more return to our definition of tragedy: as a losing struggle wherein the opposing and victorious forces may lie either chiefly within the hero’s own nature, in which case we have a conflict which is chiefly spiritual – Hamlet, Orestes; or they may lie chiefly outside, in which case we have a struggle more or less external, the hero remaining unmoved – Antigone, Romeo, and Juliet; or it may be both internal and external – Othello, possibly Wallenstein. Of course in one sense it must always be both, for the spiritual forces of the inner struggle will always have some outward and material embodiment, the outer conflict will always have an answering inner phase. [1] Here, as always, it is a question of proportion, of relative emphasis, and there is no possibility of strict demarcations of classes.

[1 Cf. infra, pp. 129 ff.]

One other element there is which these all have in common, besides the necessity of there being a struggle and a losing one: the element, namely, of causality. Aristotle saw this clelirly and laid great emphasis upon it:

“Tragedy is an imitation ... of events terrible and pitiful. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow from one another. The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even accidents are most striking when they have an air of design.” [ Poetics, IX.]
“These last [reversal of fortune and recognition] should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether one event is the consequence of another, or merely subsequent to it.” [ Ib., X.]
“It is therefore evident that the unravelling of the plot, no less than the complication, must arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the Deus ex Machina. Within the action there must be nothing irrational.” [ Ib., XV.]

That is to say, the opposing force must derive its power, not only really but evidently, from what has gone before. Aristotle even goes so far as to say that if the event be not really probable, it should at least, by a kind of sleight of hand, be made to seem so. [1] But, if such jugglery is necessary, it means weakness. The drama should be the place where we may see, more easily recognizable than in actual life, the universal operation and validity of irresistible law. Othello is not a great tragedy because a husband mistakenly kills his wife, but because he is seen to be, in so doing, the victim and the agent of absolute and remorseless law. Wallenstein is not a great tragedy because the general is assassinated, or even because he is a traitor, but because these things are seen to be the inevitable conclusion of the given series of events. The thing which we must be made to feel is, in Amiel’s phrase, “The fatality of the consequences which follow upon every human act, – the leading idea of dramatic art and the most tragic element of life.” [2]

[1 Poetics, XXIV.]
[2 Journal, 6th April, 1851.]

To take an opposite instance, the following is a true story of our Civil War: A young Confederate soldier had, after months of service, obtained leave to go home for a few weeks. His companions crowded around him, giving him messages to friends, and letters to be sent when he reached a safe district. As he was ready to start he turned back, with the words, “Guess I’ll have one more look at the Yanks,” and went out again to the intrenchments. He leaned forward on the ridge, raised his head above it, and a bullet from the Union ranks struck him. He fell forward, dead.

Such an event appeals to us with more than common force, by virtue of its grim irony. It is one of those accidents which Aristotle would have said have an air of design, but it is not available for tragedy – at least, not for the chief event of tragedy – because it is, after all, accident. It may, indeed, be said that nothing is accidental, everything is the result of unvarying law, and this is certainly true. But not all events bear upon them the recognizable stamp of this causality, and there are therefore in our experience a vast number of occurrences which go by the name of accidents. The dramatist may be able by his insight and power of presentation to take some of these occurrences out of this category. If he can, they are his to use. If he cannot, they are not fit material for tragedy; their appearance in drama is a sign of decay, it is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the “melodramatic.” If examples of this kind of abuse are wanted, they may be found in almost any of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.

Such an incident as that just given, if not strictly speaking tragic, is certainly pathetic, and we are now ready to return to the distinction, suggested at the beginning of the chapter, between these two classes of effects. That is pathetic which involves suffering, unmerited, or out of proportion to guilt, or at least considered without reference to the guilt of the sufferer. It implies a certain passivity on his part, or a resistance so manifestly inadequate as to amount to the same thing. Thus, the sufferings of animals under abuse are pathetic, the sufferings of sick people are so, so is much spiritual suffering which is recognized as inevitable and endured as such. Thus, Ophelia and Desdemona may be called pathetic, while Hamlet and Othello are tragic, and we might multiply examples indefinitely. This is perhaps the reason why children have never been used as tragic heroes. To themselves, their world is great and their emotions intense, and, suffering being a wholly subjective matter, their actual sufferings are doubtless often as great as those of adults. But the dramatist is concerned with act as well as feeling, with struggle as well as pain, and the child has not the command of himself and of the world to meet these requirements. Occasionally the treatment of children in literature, by some singular combination of good fortune and skill and sympathy, does approximate the tragic; it does this in Kipling’s remarkable story, The Drums of the Fore and Aft. But the means by which the author has attained this result, so far as they are discoverable, only go to prove the truth of the general rule. An interesting instance of its validity may be found in the three Theban plays of Sophocles. In the Oedipus Rex Antigone and Ismene are simply pathetic figures, used to enhance the effect of their father’s fall. In the Oedipus Coloneus Antigone is rising out of this passivity, but she is still in the main pathetic in this sense. In the Antigone she has become truly tragic, though retaining a certain pathetic tone, by virtue of the quietness of her resistance. [1]

[1 It is not meant to imply that the three plays were written in sequence or regarded as a trilogy. They were written at long intervals, and probably not in the order of the story, and were not performed together. Cf. Jebb’s introduction to his translation of Antigone, §§ 22, 23.]

It is, then, not enough that an incident be pathetic that the recital of it saddens us. It must not be merely

             “a tale of things
  Done long ago, and ill done,”

but must involve action and reaction, blow and counterblow, the conflict of forces.

It has become a commonplace of dramatic criticism to say that the Greek tragic differs from ours in that their tragic force was a resistless fate, while with us it springs from recognized antecedents, usually to be found in the voluntary acts of the hero himself. Thus Freytag says:

“The dramatic ideas and the dramatic actions of the Greeks dispensed with a rational world-order, dispensed, that is, with an interlinking of events that is completely accounted for by the conditions and the onesidedness of the characters represented. We are become freer men, we recognize on the stage no other fate than such as arises out of the essential nature of the hero himself.” [2]
[2 Die Technik des Dramas, p. 81. And cf. pp. 119-20.]

Such phrases are, however, apt to be misleading. Whatever be the difference in the form of statement, the underlying tragic motive in Oedipus, and in Lear or Hamlet or Othello, is really the same, namely, “the fatality of the consequences which follow upon every human act.”

It has been assumed that much of Ibsen’s work is in this respect Greek rather than modern. But even in Ghosts, where the idea of an overpowering fate is most prominent, this idea affords the tragic material only, and neither in Ibsen nor in Sophocles is the victim of this “fate” regarded, per se, as the tragic hero. In Ghosts the victim, Oswald, is not the hero at all – he is a passive sufferer under what the dramatist, mistakenly or not, represents as unalterable law. The real protagonist is Oswald’s mother, and the tragic effect is found in the spectacle of her heroic struggle against a power that she finally discovers to be unconquerable.

There is, as has been suggested, a type of tragedy which does not entirely conform to the principles we have been deducing. We have examples of it in Shakespeare’s Richard III, in Jonson’s Catiline and Sejanus, in Massinger’s The Roman Actor. In these cases the hero is an absolutely vicious character who holds his place as hero at all only by reason of high intellectual powers. The tragedy presents to us the spectacle of his downfall, it presents the vengeance taken by society upon one who has done violence to all its laws. It does not portray an inner struggle, it does not present a spiritual problem; it shows the means by which a moral monster is prevented from permanent enjoyment of the fruits of his vices and his crimes.

Such a theme can, it is evident, never be treated so as to attain the highest tragic effect. It may contain much pathos in the subordinate characters – it usually does contain this. When it is great at all its greatness is intellectual solely. It might be better to call this group satiric tragedies, with emphasis on the “satiric,” for it possesses the grim irony of satire and its judicial attitude, and thus affiliates with one group of satiric comedy. The differences between Richard III and Sejanus on the one hand, which are called tragedy, and Volpone on the other, which is called comedy, are superficial; their kinship is essential.

Thus far we have been considering the elements of the tragic in themselves, and, so far as is possible, apart from their effect on the spectator. Aristotle chose the other point of view and defined the tragic solely in terms of its effect. [1] The two elements of this effect he made pity and fear, with a third element which may be here disregarded because, despite the efforts of philosophers and commentators, it is still not quite clear what he meant, nor are we sure that his statement, if we do understand it, is true for us moderns. But pity and fear will be found to be readily convertible into the terms we have used. “Pity” corresponds to the suffering and the struggle, “fear” corresponds to the causality. For Aristotle elsewhere distinguishes pity from fear by saying that pity is caused by the perception of suffering which we do not think of as affecting ourselves; fear is caused by the perception of suffering which we realize may be ours. Now this last element is exactly what is involved in causality, it is the element of universal law, whose universality involves us in its sweep, and the perception of which produces, according to our mood, either an enlargement of spirit or a sense of oppression which is probably another name for Aristotle’s fear.

[1 Poetics, VI.]

Thus we may sum up the elements of tragic effect in three words: suffering, struggle, causality. Suffering alone is pathetic merely; struggle alone may be heroic merely (note the Heracles of Euripides’ Alkestis); causality alone gives us the rational merely: the union of the three produces the tragic.

Drama: Its Law and Its Technique Part 2 Chapter 3

CHAPTER III – THE MECHANICAL DIVISIONS OF THE DRAMA

(1) The Acts

We have called the division of the play into acts and scenes a mechanical one, in distinction from the logical division which has just been discussed. The single fact that the five acts of a play are commonly of about equal length would make it antecedently improbable that they should correspond to the organic articulation of the action’s parts. That they actually do not so correspond will be evident from the most superficial inspection of any play. For the first act does not cover the introduction alone; the second act does not suffice to contain the rising action, which begins in the first act and overlaps into the third; the third act almost always contains the climax, but it also includes the penultimate stages of the rising action and the initial stages of the falling action; the main part of the falling action is contained in the fourth act, but its last part runs over into the fifth act, which is therefore not exclusively devoted to the catastrophe.

The relation between the mechanical and the logical divisions of the play may be thus diagrammed:

Structure of Acts

It might seem, then, that the acts have no organism in themselves – that they are merely marked off with a tape at equal distances in the course of the play. This is not altogether the case. The division into acts is indeed somewhat a matter of stage convenience: it gives the audience time to relax, and the actors time for rest or for change of costume, it furnishes opportunity for extensive scene-shifting. Moreover, from the author’s point of view it is useful because it gives him a few points in the action wherein, the continuity being completely broken, he may assume greater changes and longer lapses of time than is advisable between scenes.

But each act ought to be, to some extent, a whole in itself; it ought to have a “beginning, middle, and end,” a rise and fall somewhat like the rise and fall of the drama as a whole. In the Greek tragedy the sections of the action falling between the choruses formed such wholes, while in the Senecan tragedies, whence modern drama took its formal five-act structure, each act is distinctly complete in itself. In the Medea, for example, the five acts present each a distinct stage of the action. Disregarding the choruses, they may be thus epitomized:

Act I. Presents Medea’s turbulent mood as she realizes that she is about to be deserted by her husband.

Act II. Stirred by the bridal chorus, she meditates revenge, but does not yet determine on whom it shall fall. In order to perfect and carry out her yet immature plans, she obtains leave to remain in the palace one day longer.

Act III. Her anger increases and hardens into cold resolve. In an interview with Jason she assures herself that he really loves the two children he has had by her. She therefore decides to kill them, as well as Creusa, his new bride.

Act IV. She invokes the aid of magic to endow with destructive powers the rich gifts she purposes to send to Creusa. Her incantations finished, she sends the gifts by her sons.

Act V. A messenger announces that Creusa and her father have died in agony, and that the city is in flames. Medea, rejoicing in this first fruit of her vengeance, proceeds to complete it. One of her sons she kills before his father arrives, the other she kills in Jason’s presence. She herself departs in her magic chariot.

It will be seen that each act makes one step in the course of the action, each is dominated by a distinct mood in Medea herself: in the first act, it is half-dazed surprise and anger; in the second, wild rage and fierce longing for vengeance; in the third, hard and deliberate resolve; in the fourth, the elation of conscious power; in the fifth, exultation in completed vengeance, alternating with horror at her own deeds.

Each act, moreover, besides completing its section of the action, points forward, at its close, to the action that is to follow. Thus at the end of Act I comes her dark prophecy that, as through crime she entered the house of Theseus, through crime she will leave it. At the end of Act II this is made more definite when she gains the day’s reprieve in which to work out her vengeance. At the end of Act III she suggests the details of the plot she is to carry forward in the next act. At the end of Act IV she sends the fatal gifts, and we wait for Act V to learn the result.

Turning now to the modern drama, we find that the structure of the classic French plays is closely similar to their Senecan models. But with Shakespeare the case is different. Of no one of his plays can such an epitome as the one just given possibly be made. The acts have no such unity; instead of presenting a single step in the action, a single mood in the protagonist, they are a network of activities, a complex of moods.

Yet in some cases a kind of unity is discoverable. This is especially true of Macbeth. Here, the first act shows Macbeth yielding to the evil promptings of ambition, while Duncan’s visit gives him the opportunity to follow out his desires. The second act centres about the murder of Duncan. The third act presents the consummation of Macbeth‘s plots and the beginning of the reaction. The fourth and fifth acts, which are, as is usual with Shakespeare, not so well constructed, present the preliminary and the final stages of the reaction. Take now, in greater detail, the third act:

Scene 1. As a kind of introduction, Banquo sums up Macbeth’s course hitherto:

“Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all
As the weird women promised; and, I fear,
Thou play’dst most foully for’t——”

Part 1. Then his mind reverts to the part of the witches’ oracle which has concerned himself. This second thought strikes the keynote of the act, since it is the memory of that prophecy which leads Macbeth to plan Banquo’s murder.

Part 2. The court enters, and Macbeth enjoins Banquo to be back for the night’s feast. His emphasis on Banquo’s return – “fail not our feast,” “Adieu, till you return at night” – points forward with double irony, first, to the measures Macbeth is about to take that Banquo may not “return at night,” and, second, to the terrible manner in which the murdered man is, after all, to fulfil the king’s injunction.

Part 3. Then follows the interview between the king and the murderers, really a scene in itself, with its own introduction (lines 73-85), rise (86-115), climax (116-126), and conclusion.

Thus the scene falls into three parts, an introduction, a transitional part, and a last part forming the first link in the rising action of the act.

Scene 2. This scene is chiefly of value as character-exposition. It does not advance the story. The opening words again insist, like the repetition of a theme in music, upon the Banquo motive:

Lady Macbeth. Is Banquo gone from court?
Servant. Ay, Madam, but returns again to-night.”

Then follows the interview between Lord and Lady Macbeth, giving the necessary insight into their desperate moods. The phrases, “these terrible dreams that shake us nightly,” “the torture of the mind,” “life’s fitful fever,” “O, full of scorpions is my mind,” are needed to give the spiritual atmosphere of the act. The scene ends by reverting to the theme with which it began.

Scene 3. The murder of Banquo. The escape of Fleance is the first check to Macbeth’s plans.

Scene 4. The banquet-scene. It is in three parts:

The brilliant introduction emphasizes the king’s royal state. The few words with the murderer serve to set Macbeth’s mind at rest as to the success of his plot against Banquo.

With the entrance of the ghost the change comes, and there follows the half-crazed agony of the king, and the hurried breaking up of the banqueters.

The last few lines of the scene sketch the after-mood of the king, varying between remorse and a feverish and desperate resolution.

This scene is, of course, the climax of the act, as of the play. It presents the consummation of the king’s plans and the beginning of the reaction. If we seek a turning-point in a few lines, we might find it in these, where he seems dimly conscious of the nemesis to come:

              “the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end: but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.”

Scene 5. The witches and Hecate plan to draw on Macbeth “to his confusion.”

Scene 6. The two lords hint their suspicions with regard to Macbeth, and speak of the party Macduff is raising for resistance.

Thus the act has a regular rise and fall. It rises to the murder of Banquo, the escape of Fleance suggests the turn, while the banquet-scene and the two following scenes develop the threefold character of the reactionary forces, the forces, namely, of the moral order, of the supernatural realm, and of the political world.

In Lear, Act III, there is, considering the complicated nature of the double plot, a fairly compact structure. For the Lear-plot the act may be considered as extending from Scene 1 to Scene 6; for the Gloucester-plot, from Scene 3 to Scene 7. Making a double order, we may sketch it as in the accompanying diagram:

Structure of King Lear

It is to be noted that the treatment of the two plots is in this act different in kind: that of Lear is expository, that of Gloucester is narrative. The first has its expository climax in the hovel-scene, it falls away in the gentler tone of the farmhouse scene, ending in the old king’s exhausted sleep; the second has a steady rise through the three scenes, culminating in the blinding of Gloucester, and having an abrupt fall in the wounding of Cornwall.

But such cases of good act-structure are not to be taken as typical of Shakespeare. In Lear, for example, the other four acts are, in this respect, hopelessly inorganic. Macbeth is more evenly good, though the first three acts are the best. It is noteworthy, too, that where, as in Lear, one act surpasses the others in structural compactness, it is the third. Now the third act has for its nucleus the climax of the play as a whole, and it can thus hardly help having a well-marked rise and fall. However, an act may be well constructed and not have both rise and fall – everything depends on what is its position in the play. Take the first two acts of Macbeth; Act I may be thus summarized:

  • SCENE 1. Witches. Introductory suggests the “tone” of the play.
  • SCENE 2. Camp. Introductory exposition.
  • SCENE 3. Witches, Macbeth, and Banquo. Exciting force.
  • SCENE 4. Duncan, his generals, etc. Exciting force strengthened by partial fulfilment of the witches’ prophecies, which increases Macbeth’s confidence in them.
  • SCENE 5. Lady Macbeth resolves on the murder of Duncan. This initiates the rising action.
  • SCENE 6. Duncan received by Lady Macbeth.
  • SCENE 7. Lady Macbeth strengthens Macbeth’s resolution.

Here the first scene is merely preliminary – like the striking of chords in music; the second is introductory; the third and fourth present the exciting force; the fifth, sixth, and seventh present the first stages of the rise. The act is perfectly compact and ends at exactly the right moment.

Compare now Act II.

  • SCENE 1. Expositional of Macbeth’s highly wrought state.
  • SCENE 2. Contrasting sketch of Lady Macbeth’s mood. Macbeth enters, having done the murder. The knocking on the gate.
  • SCENE 3. The discovery of the murder. Flight of Malcolm and Donalbain.
  • SCENE 4. Ross and Macduff discuss the murder. Macduff will not attend Macbeth’s coronation.

The act, in contrast with the preceding, has a rise and fall: it works up to the murder and presents the beginning of the reaction from the deed as shown on Macbeth and on those about him. Taken in greater detail, it has two points of supreme tension: the first in Scene 2, the second in Scene 3. The first part of Scene 1, the talk between Banquo and Macbeth, is skilfully managed so as to be pregnant with suggestion. Banquo’s frank remark, “I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters,” recalls the theme of the rising action, while Macbeth’s quick, guilty answer, “I think not of them,” is in marked contrast. There follows Macbeth’s soliloquy – really a separate scene, and paralleled by the soliloquy of Lady Macbeth at the beginning of Scene 2. After Macbeth enters, having killed Duncan, the first point of tension is reached; when the knocking commences there is a sudden relaxing. The porter’s entry makes a break, then the second rise begins, culminating in the discovery of the murder. From this point the tension relaxes again.

Thus the movement of this act is seen to be quite different from that of the preceding one, and yet different from Act III. If they were to be symbolized in diagrams, they would be about as follows (the Roman numerals indicate acts; the Arabic, scenes):

Structure of Macbeth

One more point is to be noted. It was seen in the Medea of Seneca that each act had toward its close some suggestion of the action that was to follow in the next. The same thing may be observed at the end of almost any of the acts in Shakespeare’s plays. Of the three acts just analyzed, the first closes with the criminal resolve of Macbeth and his Lady; the second has the scene with Macduff, which is subtly suggestive of his antagonism to Macbeth; the third blocks out the three main forces of the return action.

One might multiply instances of such secondary, anticipatory rise. A notable exception is found in Romeo and Juliet, in the position of the street brawl scene, wherein Tybalt is killed. We should expect it at the end of Act II instead of at the beginning of Act III. It would have given exactly the note of warning needed to intensify the scenes of the climax, yet would not have trenched so closely upon these scenes. The third act would then have begun with the orchard scene, and would have gained the jewel-like unity that is the concomitant of singleness of impression in complexity of material.

In studying act-structure, however, it must of course be remembered that the absence of a curtain made the divisions between the acts much less marked then than now. Yet the case of Macbeth shows that structural act-unity could be, though it seldom was attained by Shakespeare.

The fact is, we must not expect from Shakespeare perfection of structure. In seeing and seizing upon the essential dramatic moments in his theme he was almost unerring, but in the working out he was usually careless – possibly he was really indifferent, conscious that he possessed the “one thing needful.” Certainly the attempt to deduce laws from his act-structure gives, in the main, only negative results, whereas a study of the dramatic moments – what we have called the logical divisions – of his dramas is exhaustlessly fruitful.

Our modern drama has a character intermediate between the French seventeenth century and the English Elizabethan and Stuart drama. Each act has greater complexity than had the French, greater compactness than the English. Ibsen, in so many respects affiliated with the Greek drama, usually preserves the unity of place and sometimes that of time, as in Ghosts, and each act is individual in its presentation of some phase of the theme. Sudermann’s dramas are models in cleanness of construction, and they have the effectiveness that comes of masterly technique. In Wildenbruch’s Heinrich und Heinrich’s Geschlecht, his latest and perhaps his strongest drama, the act-structure is remarkably compact. The play is built up about the humiliation of the emperor at Canossa and is in two “evenings,” each forming a play by itself, of which the first is the more powerful. An analysis of its acts makes an interesting contrast with the Shakespearean form. It has a prologue and four acts.

Prologue. This shows Heinrich when a boy of ten. It serves to give an insight into his original, unperverted nature, and thus to invoke the sympathies of the audience.

Act I. The State House in Worms. King Heinrich returns from a victorious campaign against the rebellious Saxons. Messengers from the Pope arrive, refusing to grant his request for the emperorship, and censuring him for his evil courses. He sends back a message of defiance couched in studiedly insulting terms. The act is chiefly expositional, presenting the two great factors in the struggle that is to ensue, namely, the king’s intense love for his people and the radical antagonism between his nature and ideals and those of the Pope.

Act II. There are two scenes, the first in Rome, the second in Worms.

Scene 1. Pope Gregory is giving judgment on the penitents brought before him. Heinrich’s defiance reaches him. He wavers between the dictates of wordly ambition and those of the spiritual vision.

Scene 2. Heinrich is under the Pope’s ban, but bitter and unyielding. The children of Worms come out with Christmas gifts for the little prince, his son. Softened by this evidence of their love, Heinrich resolves for their sakes to humble himself before Pope Gregory, and secure tranquillity for his people.

Act III. Canossa.

Scene 1. An audience room in the castle. Gregory is beset by the Saxon faction, enemies of Heinrich, who offer to depose him and let the Pope create an emperor who shall be a tool of the church. As Gregory wavers before the temptation to grasp at temporal power, it is announced that King Heinrich has come to do penance.

Scene 2. Another audience room. After three days of struggle with conflicting motives, Gregory admits the royal penitent and recalls his curse. Heinrich, at the height of spiritual exaltation, learns of the Pope’s dealings with the Saxons, and the perception of this double dealing shatters his faith. His mood changes to one of hard cynicism, and he leaves the presence determined to gain the emperorship by force of arms.

Act IV. Rome. A fortified tower where the Pope has taken refuge. Heinrich enters the city with his army. In disguise, he visits Gregory and asks him to crown him emperor. Gregory refuses, and Heinrich goes, to set up a new pope who shall do his will. Gregory dies, while from below are heard the cries of the populace, “Emperor Heinrich and Pope Vibert!”

From this epitome it will be seen how each act presents one phase of the subject treated. The first suggests the factors in the problem; the second presents the two great protagonists, Heinrich and Gregory, showing how each is torn by conflicting impulses; the third brings the problem to its issue; the fourth presents the provisional solution, which the second part of the play is to bring in question, but which affords temporary stability.

Among modern French work, an example of beautiful act-structure is Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which, though called a “heroic comedy,” has a partly tragic theme and the structure of serious drama. It has five acts, each located in a single place: the first, at the Hotel de Bourgogne; the second, at Rageneau’s bakery, a rendezvous for Bohemian Paris; the third, a street before a house; the fourth, a camp at the siege of Arras; the fifth, a convent garden. Each act is a wonder of construction, being highly complex in material, yet close-knit, with no tendency to straggle or fall apart. The first two acts have each a central climax, with a secondary rise toward the close, anticipatory of the following act. The third act has the central climax, but the secondary one is less marked. The fourth act is constructed like a fifth act, with a central climax and a sudden fall to a catastrophe; but the curious double nature of the hero’s activity makes this conclusion only partial, and the brief fifth act is needed for the final resolution.

Summarizing: the division into acts has been called mechanical, in distinction from those logical divisions that are grounded in the development of the theme itself. In the Senecan drama, however, and in the classic French drama modelled thereon, each act has a lyric unity not found in the freer, more epic English drama. The best of the modern work combines the complexity and variety of the English manner with the more careful form of the French.

(2) The Scenes

The word “scene” has several meanings. It may denote merely the place in which the action occurs; it may refer to the entrances and exits of the persons; or it may mean such a section of the play as, in virtue of its significance, constitutes a unit in the treatment. According to French usage, any change in the number of persons on the stage, either by addition or diminution, makes a new scene. In common English usage, a new scene is indicated when the stage has been cleared and a new entrance occurs. The place of the action may or may not be changed. Thus, in Macbeth, Act II, the first three scenes occur in the same place, a court of the castle. The first scene would, according to French usage, be three scenes: one with Banquo and Fleance; one with Banquo, Fleance, and Macbeth; one with Macbeth alone. It is in our editions indicated as a single scene, because the entrances and exits overlap; but between Macbeth’s exit and the entrance of Lady Macbeth the stage is clear, hence a new scene is made. Either method of division has drawbacks. The French method often gives importance to an exit or an entrance – that of a servant, for instance – which does not make a real break in the action, and almost always there will be several, sometimes a dozen, of these little, mechanical scenes, going to make up what we may call the logical scene – that is, the scene which develops one phase of the subject. On the other hand, the English method sometimes leaves unemphasized an entrance or an exit that is of great importance, and we have really two logical scenes in one mechanical one. Thus in Macbeth, Act III, Scene 1, there are three distinct parts: (1) Banquo alone, (2) Banquo, Macbeth, and the court, (3) Macbeth and the murderers.

When, therefore, we say that the scene should have in little what the act and the play has in large, – a compact, organic structure with a “beginning, middle, and end,” – it is of the logical, not the mechanical scene that we are speaking.

If Shakespeare is weak in act-management, he is strong in scene-management. Perhaps this is because the scene is small enough to be kept in view as a whole, even by the careless and rapid worker that Shakespeare often was; but, whatever be the reason, one may choose almost at random and find a scene exhibiting fine technique.

As in the case of the act, so in the scene the rise and fall has not always the same form. Act II, Scene 3, of Macbeth has a central rise, but Scene 1 rises toward the close, Scene 2 falls toward the close, and the three scenes, following Freytag’s method, might be thus diagrammed:

Macbeth Scenes Structure

and Scenes 1 and 2 ought, logically, to be taken either as four scenes or as one great scene in four parts, for Macbeth and his wife count here as one person, and their two soliloquies are complementary parts of the continuous rise to the murder itself.

In some ways, the words “rise” and “fall” are not helpful, however, and it almost seems unfortunate that Freytag imposed them on dramatic criticism. They are purely figurative, and figurative expressions are misleading when allowed to harden into formulas. As just used, they referred to the tension of the actors in the scenes, and hence of the audience as it follows the action. Thus Scene 1 begins quietly, with Banquo’s words to Fleance, the conversation with Macbeth has more tension, and the soliloquy reaches a spiritual tumultuousness that goes over, on the same pitch, though with difference of tone, into the next scene, and increases on Macbeth’s reëntry after the murder. The knocking on the gate acts like a dash of cold water: it breaks the continuity of mood and produces a sudden relaxation of tension.

For another instance of good scene-structure, take Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene i:

Introduction. Benvolio and Mercutio by their casual talk prepare us for what is to follow:

 “The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl.”

Exciting Force. Tybalt and other Capulets enter; a dispute arises between Tybalt and Mercutio.

Rise. Romeo enters, bears Tybalt’s insults, and tries to calm him.

First Climax. Fight between Tybalt and Mercutio, Mercutio mortally wounded. The news of Mercutio’s death overcomes Romeo’s self-control.

Second Climax. Reëntry of Tybalt. Romeo defies him, they fight, Tybalt is killed.

Return and Resolution. Entry of the populace, with Montagues, Capulets, and the prince. The guilt of Romeo’s action is argued, the prince decides against him and banishes him.

The scene, with its two climaxes, might be thus diagrammed:

Romeo and Juliet Scene Structure

In the above scene, the words “rise” and “fall” have regard not only to the inner excitement of the participants, but to the outer events that advance the story.

In other cases the entire scene is broad exposition of spiritual states. Thus, in Lear, Act III, Scene 4, we have an elaborate study of the old man’s madness. The beginning is quiet, but by the end of his first long speech the king has worked himself up to an excitement whose character he himself recognizes:

 “O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.”

He becomes outwardly calm again, but the entry of Edgar feigning madness brings before his eyes the very madness he fears for himself, and perhaps draws him on toward it. At all events, his excitement grows again until it reaches the frenzy in which he cries, “Off, off, you lendings! come, unbutton here,” and tears away his clothes. This is the point of greatest spiritual tension in the scene. Gloucester’s entrance makes a break, and brings to the front Edgar, whose feigned ravings drop to the whimpered refrain, “Poor Tom’s a-cold,” “Tom’s a-cold,” while Lear’s fury subsides to a dazed quietude. Here the words “rise” and “fall” refer wholly to the spiritual intensity of the scene.

Summing up: the play, as a whole, is like an organism: it is articulated into acts, which are in turn articulated into scenes. Each act and each scene has its own individual completeness – a completeness which is, however, subordinated to that of the whole of which it forms a part. The scenes fall naturally into larger or smaller groups, and cannot be considered out of their position without in some fashion having violence done them. Each scene, regarded as a unit in a greater whole, resembles not one brick in a straight wall, but one stone in an elaborate arch: the form of the stone will be determined by the point in the arch at which it is placed and the purpose – whether this be ornament or support – which it serves.

2009-05-09

Drama: Its Law and Its Technique Part 2 Chapter 2

CHAPTER II – LOGICAL DIVISIONS OF THE ACTION

Whatever be the disposition of the contesting forces, certain things in the working out are unvarying. There is always a rising action, there is always a falling action, no matter to which of these the chief activity of the hero is relegated; there is always a turning-point and a catastrophe; there are certain other minor but essential elements. It is well to consider these before we take up the more mechanical divisions of acts and scenes, and they will be discussed under the heads: Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Catastrophe.

And, first, it will be well to look for a moment at the diagram which has, since Freytag presented it, become stock property in dramatic exposition. The play is represented as a pyramid, rising to its turning-point or climax and falling to its catastrophe. The metaphor will be found to be a helpful one. When the climax occurs at about the mechanical middle of the play, the diagram may be made thus (in the diagrams, A = introduction, B = rising action, C = turning-point, D = falling action, E = catastrophe):

Structure with Climax at mid-point

while, according as it falls before or after this point, we may modify the figure thus:

Structure with Climax before mid-point

or thus:

Structure with Climax after mid-point

indicating in the one case a rapid rising action and a slow descent, and in the other the reverse. Othello is, in one interpretation, an example of the last, if we make the steps of the rising action the successive scenes in which Iago arouses and fixes the jealous suspicion of Othello. According to this, Scene 3 of Act III is only one member of the ascent, which rises further in Scene 4 of the same act, and culminates in Act IV, Scene 1. The falling action may be said to begin in the same scene, where Othello, deeming his fears confirmed, first strikes Desdemona. This places the turning-point appreciably beyond the middle of the play, and gives a relatively short and abrupt descent. [1]

[1] Introduction. The introduction, whose purpose is to prepare the listener for the play, used often to be set apart from the play itself as a prologue, or given by one of the actors in a set speech. It is by Shakespeare incorporated into the tissue of the play, and forms the first scene, or occasionally a scene-group. There are certain things which it must do, and others which it may do. It must, quickly and deftly, put the hearer in possession of enough facts to make him intelligent in following the play. It must tell him who the speakers are and prepare him for those who are soon to enter; it must at least hint to him the place and time of the action, although this duty is much lightened by the extensive use of scenery on our modern stage. Besides this, it may set the tone of the piece, indicate its “stimmung,” thus throwing the sensitive listener into the right mood, much in the same way that the “vorspiel” to some operas does (instance that to Lohengrin and to Parsifal). But not all dramatic introductions are thus successful. As instances where they are so, may be mentioned the witch scene in Macbeth, the scene of the mob in Julius Caesar, of the night watch on the battlements in Hamlet, of the street brawl in Romeo and Juliet.

[1 Cf. supra, p. 73, and infra, p. 84.]

It is evident that the management of the introduction is a severe test of the author’s skill. He must tell his audience a great deal without seeming to tell them anything. To this end various devices have been employed. We are familiar, on our modern stage, with the chambermaid who vivaciously chronicles the family history as she dusts the family apartment; another resource, often used by the Elizabethans, who had not discovered the chambermaid, is that of the friend just returned from abroad, who must be told all the news. Some such expedient the author is almost forced to employ, even at the risk of seeming “stagey,” and few indeed are the plays whose beginnings have not some trace of effort and artificiality; for there is one thing more fatal to a play than artificiality, and that is obscurity. The audience must at any price be made to understand what they are witnessing, and be made to do it with the least possible effort on their part, so that even the boy in the gallery is quite clear in his mind. Under the most favorable conditions, it will always be a rather trying interval, this process of comprehension, and the habitual reader of plays is often conscious of a sinking of the heart as he is confronted with a new set of “dramatis personae.” Many of Shakespeare’s beginnings are not wholly successful: instance the first scene of Hamlet, whose perfection is destroyed by Horatio’s tedious account to Marcellus of the political relations of Denmark. Good beginnings are those of Macbeth, I, 2; Othello, I, 1; the first part of the opening scene in Coriolanus, the whole of the first scene of Romeo and Juliet, and of Julius Caesar. It is an interesting study to go over some of these scenes and see just how much information we have been given, which is absolutely needed to understand the play, and how deftly and without effort this has been accomplished.

It is almost a rule of the stage that the introduction shall prepare the audience to receive the hero, but that the hero himsejf shall not appear. Where the scene is a long one, this is not so necessarily the case, and the hero often enters toward its close (see the opening scene or scenes of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus). On the other hand, King Lear plunges at once into the action – for the few preliminary speeches of Gloucester can scarcely be counted – since, by good fortune of the plot and the author’s skill in taking advantage of it, there was no need of a preliminary exposition.

In a few cases, moreover, the hero appears at once, and the reason for this is easily apparent. Thus, in Richard III, the first monologue of the king is typical of the way in which his personality dominates the whole drama. Iago’s part in the first scene of Othello may be similarly interpreted, if we take the play as having a double hero, and the difference in their respective activities will account for the introduction of Iago and not Othello into the first scene. Compare, too, the different effect of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, where the Jew himself is at once introduced to us, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, where he does not enter until the second scene. There is a corresponding difference, which it is hard to think accidental, between the parts played by the two men in the respective plays, and the attitude of the two authors toward them.

[2] Rising Action. After the introduction comes the action proper of the play. It begins with what is called the “exciting force,” that is, the force which is to change things from their condition of balance or repose, and precipitate the dramatic conflict. From the moment of the exciting force to the moment of the turning-point, the activity thus begun, be it that of the hero or of the opposition, must show a continual, though not necessarily an even-paced, gain in power and reach. We have noted how this continual rise is illustrated by Macbeth: the first two scenes form the introduction, and the third scene, Macbeth’s meeting with the witches, furnishes the exciting force. Here first is suggested to him the thought that afterwards develops into act, in the murders of Duncan and Banquo, while the fulfilment of the first two of the witches’ prophecies, at the end of the same scene, serves to emphasize their authority. From this point through to the turning-point we have a series of scenes, each of which advances the action somewhat, each carries Macbeth and his wife more and more irretrievably forward along the path they have chosen. The only exception is Act II, Scene 4, which is, also, the only one which does not bring forward one or both the protagonists. The scene is perhaps introduced to suggest the beginning of the return action, and, rather curiously, it is balanced by Act IV, Scene 1, where Macbeth’s baleful activity overlaps into the return action. This is only another instance of the singularly symmetrical structure of the play. [1]

[1 Cf. supra, p. 70.]

But the rising action ought also to introduce the opposing forces and make the audience familiar with the characters in which they are embodied, although it is left for the second part of the play to give them greater prominence. Thus, the flight of Malcolm to safety in England hints at a future opponent to Macbeth; Macduff’s refusal to go to the coronation of Macbeth at Scone is significant; the failure to kill Fleance suggests the possibility of further checks; the refusal of Macduff to come to court emphasizes his hostility already shadowed. By this means we are prepared for the return action even before it has actually set in; we are constantly reminded that this seeming success is perhaps only strengthening the hand of avenging fate, that “God is not mocked”; and we are thus, in the first part, kept from forgetting what in the second part is to be borne in upon us with tremendous force, namely, the universality and inviolability of law.

[3] Turning-point or Climax. At a certain point in the rising action a moment comes when the activity of the aggressive force is completed; a moment after which the reversal begins, and there looms into view the force that is to dominate the last half of the action. This point is the climax, or, better, the turning-point of the play. It is, of course, possible intellectually to separate this climactic point of the rise from the initial point of the fall, but actually the two moments are often found organically united in the same scene or scene-group. If the play is of the first type, the turning-point will be the moment when the hero completes the accomplishment of his purposes and feels the check of opposition. Thus in Macbeth the banquet-scene begins with the news of Banquo’s death, which assures the usurper that his most dreaded rival is removed. But with the news comes the first check, “Fleance is scaped,” and this is followed up by the appearance of Banquo’s ghost, foreboding the retribution to come. The two following scenes may be considered as complementary to this, but they are, very properly, less elaborated, and are transitional to the return action. [1]

[1 Cf. supra, p. 70.]

In the second type of play, the turning-point shows the converse of this, and represents the hero as passing from a state of relative quiescence to a state of activity. Thus in Othello the great scene, III, 3, between Iago and Othello makes the beginning of the turn, though here again we ought perhaps to make a two-membered climax, consisting of this scene plus the first scene of Act IV to the word “Devil!” spoken by Othello to Desdemona, and the blow that goes with it. In a play where the struggle is subjective, and both the contending forces are lodged within the hero himself, the turning-point should be the moment when that force which is ultimately to conquer first gains its decided supremacy. Of this type is Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, a play which, however, illustrates dramatic principles as much by their breach as by their observance. Its theme is the struggle between passion and honor, but in the actual working out this theme is obscured by the crowd of unessential details. Its turning-point should come at the point where passion conquers. There are two places where this point might be said to be: first, in Athens, when, after the departure of Octavia as mediator to Caesar, Antony returns to Egypt and Cleopatra; second, at Actium, when Antony flies, following the galleys of Cleopatra. In Shakespeare’s play the first of these two points has been wholly ignored, the second has been very inadequately treated. The battle itself is given to a messenger to describe, and the following scene, III, 2, supremely impressive as its first part is, is not enough. It would have been right if set in a larger scene-group, like some of the scene-groups in Hamlet or in Julius Caesar; but, taken as a single one out of the thirteen scenes of which this act is composed, it is artistically inadequate, out of proportion. It is, of course, not necessary that the climax be a scene of great outward magnificence, though, in fact, it often is so (cf. Macbeth, Julius Caesar), yet a certain outward impressiveness is, after all, requisite, simply because, as we have seen earlier, the drama deals solely with the phenomenal. It cannot, as do Ibsen and Maeterlinck in some of their later and more extreme works, deal apparently in commonplaces and expect us to read into these the most supreme spiritual verities. It cannot, as does Shakespeare in this play, scatter half a dozen superb scenes through a play that has a total of forty-two, and leave the hearer to choose these half dozen to remember. The dramatist should expect much of his audience, but not so much as this. He should do his own selecting, his own emphasizing, for herein lies the difference between the raw material and the art-product.

On the other hand, the turning-point or climax must be spiritually emphatic as well as outwardly imposing; the climax in Macbeth is not the climax in virtue of presenting a royal banquet with rich, massive effects; that in Julius Caesar is not so in virtue of its impressive massing of senators assembled in the capitol of the world. There must be inner significance as well, as in these cases there is. So, too, the climax need not be the mechanical middle of the play; it must be its spiritual centre, the point toward which it makes from the beginning, and from which it passes downward to the end.

[4] Falling Action. What the exciting force is to the rising action, that the tragic force is to the falling action. It is, as we have seen, often closely united to the climax; sometimes they are, in a sense, one and the same, as in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where the very announcement that seems to make him perfectly secure really precipitates the discoveries that end in the catastrophe. However this may be, the tragic force is the initiation of the counter activity that is to govern the second half of the play and bring about the catastrophe. In Macbeth, as we have seen, it is tripartite; [1] in Romeo and Juliet it is dual, being embodied in the authority of the state and of Juliet’s parents; note that here one of these two – that of the state – is emphasized before the climax, the other follows immediately upon the climax, being incorporated in the same scene with it. These two forces are the occasion of the lovers’ ruin – the occasion rather than the cause, for the causal connection is, after all, indirect, and if the falling action in the play has a weakness, it is in this fact, – the fact, namely, that the forces of the falling action are not the forces that bring about the catastrophe. [2]

[1 Cf. p 70.]
[2 Cf. infra, p 145]

If, as is commonly the case, the play is of the first type, and the hero has been prominent in the first half of the play, the falling action will bring forward the characters of the opposition, and the hero will either be in the background, as in Macbeth, or, if this is not the case, his treatment will be different, as in Romeo and Juliet.

The management of the falling action offers peculiar difficulties. Up to the climax there has been growing suspense. After the tragic force appears, and the development of the opposition has begun, the listener begins to foresee what is to come, his mind naturally plunges forward, and he is impatient if the dramatist’s exposition be slower than his own thought-processes. It is like being forced to await the completion of a slowly spoken sentence, whose point we have already anticipated. Perhaps this is the reason why the turning-point and tragic force are often put late in the play, making the actual duration of the return action less than that of the rise. But there is another device for breaking through this over-confident expectancy of the listener. It is the insertion, in the midst of the falling action, of an event which for a moment breaks its advance, seems even to turn it back; there is shown a way of escape for the victim, or at least a jutting crag by which he may delay his fall. This is called the “final suspense.” Instances of it are: the victory of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, IV, 7; the successful carrying out by Romeo and Juliet of all the first part of their scheme; the remorse of Edmund in Lear, V, 3, which moves him to revoke his order to kill Lear and Cordelia; the news brought to King Richard in Richard III, IV, 4, that the army and navy of his opponents are both scattered; in Julius Caesar, taking the first part as a whole in itself, Caesar’s determination not to go to the senate house that particular day.

Thus the dramatist, having throughout labored to impress upon us the inevitableness of fate, now for a moment reverses his methods and tries to undo all this. But only for a moment; the check has done its duty by keying up the slackened attention, and this done, the action swings back to its true movement and plunges forward to the catastrophe.

[5] Catastrophe. We have traced the dramatic struggle through its rise, turning-point, and fall. We now come to its termination. In our ordinary thought, the catastrophe is taken as almost synonymous with death, and this is based on a true conception. For the drama deals with human life, and death is, for the dramatist, the end. It is the fitting conclusion for the tragedy because it really concludes – it is final, precluding possibility of amendment or reprieve.

Evidently, however, its true character depends, not on itself, but upon the nature of the action which it concludes. Death is in itself always solemn, it often moves to pity, sometimes to horror; but it is tragic only when it comes as the natural, the inevitable conclusion of a tragic struggle. And in such cases the death itself will often actually seem a relief, just because it does terminate the struggle, just because it has been felt to be inevitable and so its occurrence relaxes the strain of expectation. This is the case in Macbeth. After the horror of the hero’s life, its baleful activity without, its moral disintegration within, the physical conflict at the end comes as a return to health. Macbeth himself feels it. After the first sinking of heart that comes with the loss of his last support, there follows the rebound, the natural, if desperate joy in a fair fight, and there is a ring of freedom in his last defiance:

 “Lay on, Macduff,
  And damn’d be he that first cries, Hold, enough!”

Similarly, Brutus certainly feels death to be a release as he says:

 “Caesar, now be still:
  I killed not thee with half so good a will.”

In King Lear the consummation of the tragedy is, it is true, in a death; not, however, Lear’s death, but Cordelia’s, and this is tragic, not as it concerns Cordelia, but as it touches Lear himself. The climax of “pity and fear” is in the sight of the mad old man, with the strength of despair, carrying in his dead daughter to show to all men, – the sight of him as he holds the feather to her lips to reveal her breathing, and, dim-eyed in the flesh, sees, with the vision of fevered desire, faint tokens of life. The tension breaks, and he dies, but his death is not tragic. It completes the tragedy of his life, and is fit, right, necessary; but for him it is a release. Kent’s feeling is ours:

 “Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him much
  That would upon the rack of this tough world
  Stretch him out longer.”

But death is often, too, the consummation of the tragedy in another way. In Antigone, the young girl’s death is the tragedy, because it marks the completeness of her subjugation to crushing human law; whereas the deaths of Haemon and of Eurydice, in so far as they are tragic at all, are so not in themselves, but in their effect on Creon. In Romeo and Juliet the deaths of the two lovers constitute the tragedy because only thus is forever shut off the possibility of recovered happiness.

What the catastrophe must bring about is not primarily death, but finality, – an equilibrium of forces which shall convince us of its permanence, It may be compared to the crash of the landslide by which the too precipitous cliff regains a natural slope. In Julius Caesar there may be said to be two points of catastrophe: the first for Caesar, the second for the conspirators. In the first half of the play, Caesar falls because he had risen too high; Brutus and Cassius, representing the norm, pull him down. But then they in their turn rise too high, and the second half of the play shows how they are therefore in their turn overthrown.

In the management of the catastrophe, more than anywhere else, there should be concentration, both of thought and expression. During the earlier part of the play, much elaboration is possible, much incident, much working-up of character and episode; but as we near the close the lines should narrow. Earlier, many outcomes were possible; now nothing is possible except the single end to which everything has been tending. Upon this the rays must all converge, everything subsidiary must be eliminated. And if the drama has been well motived and well constructed, there will be no need for elaboration, or even for much emphasis. The end is inevitable, all it requires is bare statement. To give more than this, to attempt explanation and commentary, implies carelessness on the part of the author, or a lack of faith in his work. Of carelessness, we have an illustration in the last lines of Julius Caesar, the conversation between Messala, Strato, and Octavius, concerning the promotion to favor of Brutus’ servant. It is a petty detail, that spoils the simple greatness of the close. In another way, the concluding lines, given to Octavius, will, to some of us, seem another dissonance. The play naturally ends with Antony’s words, “This was a man,” and we would fain rest here. Octavius’ cold words point forward into a new realm of life, and at the moment when we ought to feel that all is finished, we are reminded of the political rearrangements to come, the division of spoil – things which are historically true enough, but which are here not fitting. Perhaps it was Shakespeare’s optimism that moved him to make this sort of mistake as often as he did, but if so it was optimism ill-timed.

Summing up: we find that the action of the drama falls naturally into two parts, a rise and a fall; that the rising action has four parts: the introductory exposition, the exciting force, the working out, and the climax or turning-point. The falling action has three parts: the tragic force, the working out, and the catastrophe, while often the final suspense makes a fourth part.

Often, however, dramatic critics make a three-fold division instead of a twofold, namely, into the rising action, the climax, and the falling action. But if the climax is organically developed out of the rising action, as it ought to be, it is organically a part of it and should not be separated from it, even in thought.

These, then, we have called the essential elements of the drama, in distinction from those mechanical divisions, called acts and scenes, of which the dramatic structure is made up.