CHAPTER III – SERIOUSNESS – ΣΠΟΥΔΗ
“Tragedy,” said Aristotle, “is an imitation of an action that is serious.” The word he uses here, σπουδαίας, is explained by Butcher as uniting the two notions of grave and great; it has been paraphrased by Arnold in the expression “high and excellent seriousness,” and these phrases come as near as any to indicating a certain quality of greatness which we all recognize as indispensable to the serious drama.
To begin with, one must carefully guard oneself against the mistake of confusing greatness of subject with greatness of treatment. Only the second can produce greatness in the art-product, yet these two things have been, and still are, constantly confounded. Donne’s poems, we are told, are sublime because their theme is so. Milton’s Paradise Lost is greater than Virgil’s Aeneid by the whole difference in grandeur between the conceptions of the two poems, one dealing with the founding of Rome, the other with the fall of man from his first state. It is easy to see the absurdity of such judgments, taking them individually, and nearly as easy to fall into similar absurdities on one’s own account. The reason may be that there is in such notions a root of truth. For, if the subject does not make the poem, at least subject and poem have a common source, the one being chosen, the other created, by the poet; and it is quite probable that if a “sublime” subject genuinely appeals to a poet, he has in him elements of sublimity, although these may not be accompanied by the power to create a sublime poem.
And we must make another distinction, between the subject-matter as it exists apart from the artist in the actual world of experience, and the subject as recognized by the artist, recreated in his mind as his theme. Sometimes one of these is truly great when the other is not. Thus, a jealous man does not usually impress us as having any elements of greatness, yet Othello is great, because greatly conceived; querulous and impotent old age seems unpropitious for drama, as do the half-crazed murmurs of an old clown, yet Lear and his fool are among the greatest dramatic creations. Such greatness is due, not to the original subject-matter, but to the poet who, whatever his theme, views it so truly and deeply that he reaches its inner significance as human life – and it is in the depths of human life that greatness will be found, if found anywhere.
The necessity that tragedy and the serious drama shall possess an element of greatness or largeness – call it nobility, elevation, what you will – has always been recognized. The divergence has come when men have begun to say what they mean by this quality, and – which is much the same thing – how it is to be attained. Even Aristotle, when he begins to analyze methods, sounds, at first hearing, a little superficial. The hero must be, he says, “one who is highly renowned and prosperous, – a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, and other illustrious men of such families.” [1] Now we are used to seeing tragic effects produced in the treatment of characters who are neither renowned nor of noble family. Yet, for his own time, Aristotle was right. For dramatic action means struggle, and struggle of the most intense kind; the dramatic agent must therefore possess, not only latent passion and potential energy, but opportunity which shall make this energy kinetic. Such opportunity came in the past chiefly to such men as by birth or fortune were placed in positions of power, who were forced to take part in affairs having large issues and demanding positive and individual activity. They had, as others did not have, opportunity for self-expression in action; they had greatness thrust upon them, while the average man of their times was lost in the corporate body. For, even in Greece, society had not yet wholly freed itself from the tradition of tribal solidarity and tribal responsibility, and the individual appears in half-relief, epic rather than dramatic, controlled by events rather than originating action. This the Greek dramatists felt, and it was one of the reasons why they sought their heroes in the rolls of kings and their actions in the annals of nations. They were right, and Aristotle merely stated, in his somewhat bare way, a generalization from their practice. What is wrong is the assumption made by later theorists and dramatic artists that, because the Greeks had found their tragic heroes among kings, therefore royalty was sufficient to constitute a tragic hero, and a great national issue was, as such, fit subject for a tragic action. Thus Racine, in Athalie, has chosen a crisis in Hebrew history. He has not, however, presented to us actions in themselves of great tragic import – or rather, he has not interpreted to us the tragic import of the actions which he presents. A vicious queen, who has won her throne by murder, retains it by force. By a successful coup d’état of the minority, she is deposed and put to death. This theme has historical importance; it lacks dramatic importance because the sources of the action are not rooted in the spiritual nature of the heroine or of any other of the actors. Yet two points in the action might have furnished a theme that would have been truly dramatic. One is the conflict between the queen’s ambitious lust of power and her impulse of love for the boy who proves her rival. Another is the conflict of impulses in the old general, Abner, whose instinctive patriotism bids him free his country from an oppressive and unrighteous rule, but whose military training enjoins him to render unquestioning obedience to his sovereign. Each of these themes is suggested in Racine’s drama, and as each suggestion occurs the reader awaits its further development, but awaits it in vain. The author evidently had in mind the historical importance of his action rather than its spiritual import.
[1 Poetics, XIII.]
Compare the way in which Shakespeare has treated a similar subject. Julius Caesar, like Athalie, is concerned with a crisis in a nation’s history, where a tyrant is overcome by a small but steadfast minority. But the tragic interest does not depend upon our knowledge that the fate of Rome hung upon the result of Brutus’ conspiracy. This fact, kept in the background, or used as a motive force in the half-prophetic consciousness of Brutus himself, does indeed enhance the appeal to our interest, but the nearer and stronger appeal is made through the individuality of the men Caesar, Antony, Brutus, Cassius, while the tragic theme is found in the spiritual experiences of Brutus, torn by a double and conflicting allegiance. Thus, in Brutus, Shakespeare has done exactly the thing that Racine missed doing, and Julius Caesar has in this respect a greatness that Athalie wholly lacks.
That the spiritual issue might have been made yet clearer may be acknowledged; it will certainly be recognized if we extend our field of comparison, and consider Browning’s use of a similar theme in Strafford. As in Athalie, as in Julius Caesar, there is in Strafford the tyrant, the oppressed people crying for relief, the reluctant, sad-hearted leaders shrinking from the issue, yet forced to meet it. But here, as in Julius Caesar, the greatness of the interests involved does not constitute the tragedy, though it furnishes the occasion for it and makes for it a background of sombre grandeur. The tragic interest gathers about the three figures Pym, Charles, Strafford; it centres in the spiritual experiences of the great statesman who is forced by fate to do violence to one-half of himself in being true to the mandates of the other half. All the powers of the dramatist are exerted toward this one end – toward laying bare the inner life of the man, the mortal pain of a great soul forced to be untrue to itself. To say that Strafford is a greater drama than Julius Caesar would be at least venturesome; it would probably be a mistake, for there are many considerations to be taken into account in the final judgment of a drama. The three plays are here presented as a group to illustrate the way in which political eminence in the actor and national issues involved in the action may be used or abused by the dramatist. [1]
[1 The three, or more particularly the last two, would well repay study from other points of view. The characters and motiving of Caesar as compared with Charles, and of Brutus as compared with Strafford and Pym, the use made of historical background, the treatment of the subordinate characters, all these are subjects that could be so treated as to illuminate the questions of dramatic effect in general.]
It is apparent that a proper use of these elements, as subsidiary aids to dramatic effect, is entirely legitimate. It is equally apparent that they must be recognized as subsidiary only, that they must not be given first place as factors of this “greatness” which we have been discussing. The essential requirement is that the dramatic hero be free to express himself in action, that he be given scope first to develop and then to express his individuality; and material power, social and political eminence are valuable only because they furnish these things, and only when they do so. What is required lor great drama is not great political or religious or social issues as such, but the enlargement of soul and stress of passion that sometimes accompanies great issues. What is needed for the tragic hero is not the crowned head, but the royal nature. “Royal” by a figure only, for such a nature is not now necessarily found among monarchs; and kings, once singularly fit subjects for dramatic treatment, are becoming singularly unfit, The monarch, bound and shackled by constitutal provisions, loses his personality, though in his private capacity he may still keep his freedom. The very eminence that once gave scope to his individuality now tends to repress it, and, private individuality and official greatness being thus dissevered, the special dramatic meaning of this greatness is gone; there is no longer the identity expressed in the significant title, “Oedipus, King.”
On the other hand, this freedom and scope for individuality, no longer the concomitant of royalty as such, is in modern times often found in the status of the so-called “private” man. The “royal” nature that is developed by power and opportunity, and which in turn uses power and opportunity for its self-expression, may be found in a man whose eminence is social or political; it is even conceivable that a great tragic hero may be found in one who has no apparent “eminence” of any kind. Such a one, it may be said, is Beatrice Cenci, but the case is not clear enough to prove the point. Certainly our modern stage-drama, with its love of “middle-class” subjects, has not yet produced anything really great. On the other hand, it is significant that the greatest classic dramas – those of Shakespeare and of Sophocles, those of Schiller, Euripides, Corneille – all conform to this seemingly superficial rule of Aristotle, as do the greatest English dramas of this century, those of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning, and of Swinburne. The German “familiendrama” and the French society drama lack this element of greatness, or where they possess it they too will be found to be in conformity.
There is another consideration which might have motived Aristotle’s remark, though it probably did not do so. Dramatic action is not merely action as seen in the outer event, but action viewed in relation to its source in passionate emotion and in relation to its reactionary emotional effect. It is therefore necessary that we understand the spiritual states of the agent, and this is in the main brought about only through his own words. For the medium of the drama is self-expression by the actors, not description by the writer, and self-expression principally in words. But such power of self-expression implies in the agent a large degree of culture of a certain kind, as well as a certain bent of character; in general, men must reach rather a high level, intellectually, before they become sufficiently conscious of their own spiritual states to express them.
In the modern drama, owing to the increased complexity and subtlety of the dramatic motiving, it is increasingly important that we understand the thought as well as the acts of the persons involved. Consider what the play of Hamlet would be if its hero were not endowed with the most marvellous power of self-expression, counterbalancing his power of self-repression. Our appreciation of the play depends upon our understanding of the relation between his apparently meaningless acts and his spiritual states, which are deeply significant; and it is because, whether intentionally or not on the author’s part, Hamlet does not, after all, adequately express these spiritual states [1] that the drama still remains not perfectly clear in its motiving.
[1 Possibly the reason why he does not is because these spiritual states were not clearly conceived by the author himself. He seems to have been working away from an earlier, traditional Hamlet, toward a new conception of the character, but never to have quite freed himself from the earlier tradition. Cf. Corbin: The Elizabethan Hamlet.]
A very recent attempt to introduce’ the uneducated classes into the drama as its central figures seems only to bear out the principle just developed. Hauptmann, in Die Weber, presents a society of working people degraded by crushing labor and hopeless poverty almost to the level of brutes. The result is not satisfying. There are scenes of keen pathos, there are scenes with tragic lights, but the participants have not sufficient power of self-expression: they need a spokesman. We know they are hungry, sick, dying, and we pity them; but they are incoherent, and their incoherence is none the less baffling because we know that in reproducing it the author is giving us a faithful portrait of actual conditions. The same material might have been used with great effect in another literary form – in the story, for instance, or the novel, for this form would have given the author a chance to interpret his characters to the reader, to speak for them where they cannot speak for themselves. But they are not suitable for dramatic treatment – at least it yet remains to prove them so.
Summing up, then: Aristotle’s generalization from Greek usage is seen to have been borne out by later dramatic writers, but the reasons for its validity must be recognized, or there is danger of a superficial and conventional interpretation. The use of great national issues is right so long as the dramatist does not rely for his great effects upon our knowledge of the great issues involved. It is well that the hero be outwardly great as well as inwardly, – the two things will usually go together, – but the dramatist must not be content to substitute the outward for the inward greatness.
But if this quality of “greatness” does not essentially consist in these things, in what does it essentially consist?
Shelley, in another connection, says:
“The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself.” [1] And an answer to the question just propounded would be, that a drama, which deals truly and – which is the same thing – vitally with the human heart in its struggles with itself and with the outer world, will possess greatness and seriousness. Such an answer may seem utterly hackneyed, but it is, in the end, the only one that can be given. For the artist has to do with phenomena, and in the world of phenomena the human spirit – whatever we may think of it absolutely – is relatively the greatest thing we know. There are ideas metaphysical which bring with them a kind of enlargement of mind technically known in Aesthetic as the feeling of sublimity: such are the conceptions of God as found in the Hebrew religion and in some of the religions of the far East, the conception of the soul, or of a future life. Such ideas as these are found in the writings of Dante and of Milton, and it is occasionally suggested that their writings are for this reason greater than, for example, Shakespeare’s. In reply, we may say that it is at least doubtful whether it is the metaphysics of Milton that give him his greatness, while we may be sure it is not this which gives Dante his. But, even if it were so, Shakespeare’s defence is clear. With metaphysical notions as such the dramatist has nothing to do. His concern is, first and last, with the human spirit, and these ideas concern him, not directly, but only in so far as they appeal to and influence the men and women whom he is portraying. It is not his province to
[1 Preface to the Cenci.]
“Assert eternal providence And justify the ways of God to men,”
but rather to show the ways of men toward God, or whatever stands to them for God, and toward each other. Dante may say:
“Varamente quant’io del regno santo Nella mia mente potei far tesoro, Sara ora materia del mio canto.” [1]
[1 Paradiso, XXXIII.]
The dramatist approaches such subjects only indirectly, through his created persons. It is thus that Hamlet gazes out into
“That undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns.”
It is thus that Antigone faces death, firm, but hopeless, in those last words of hers:
“Ah, fount of Dirce, and thou, holy sons 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... Unwept, unfriended, without marriage-song, I am led forth in my sorrow on this journey that can be delayed no more. No longer, hapless one, may I behold yon day-star’s sacred eye; but for my fate no tear is shed, no friend makes moan.” [1]
[1 Antigone, trans. Jebb, pp. 161 ff.]
It is thus that Beatrice looks over the brink, shuddering:
“My God! can it be possible I have
To die so suddenly? So young to go
Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living being; ...
. . . . . . . . .
“What! O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
Sweet heaven forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
If all things then should be my father’s spirit, ...
. . . . . . . . .
... “Who ever yet returned
To teach the laws of death’s untrodden realm?
Unjust, perhaps, as those which drive us now,
O, whither, whither?” [1][1 Shelley: The Cenci, V, 4.]
This is the sublimity of the dramatist. [1] But such passages as these show also, better than any exposition can do, the source of the dramatic σπουδη in the poet’s interpretative portrayal of human souls. We might say that any human soul, so long as it be strong and positive, – that is, truly alive, – might, if deeply viewed, be a “great” subject. He might not possess the kind of qualities that become dramatic; his story might not have the kind of unity necessary in a play; but simply in this one quality of greatness and seriousness he would be fit. The quality is not, of course, confined to drama; hardly, even, to so-called “serious” writing. It is possessed by Dante and Shakespeare and Sophocles, it is true, but it also underlies Rabelais and pervades Cervantes. It marks every line of Browning’s writing, while to take examples somewhat at random – Tennyson seldom shows it, Byron almost never. But while other forms of writing may possess this quality, the serious drama must possess it. There are other sources of greatness and seriousness: a poem may have it by virtue of its sweep and velocity of thought, as in Byron’s Cain; or of its nobility of thought and its majestic sound and rhythm, as in Milton; or by a certain large simplicity, as in Keats’ Hyperion. The serious drama may have all these; it must have the greatness that springs from a wise and vital treatment of human nature.
[1 Cf. infra, pp. 40-42.]
