GIFT OF
JANE KoMTHER
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Greek Tragedy
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
WITH OTHER ESSAYS
BY
GILBERT NORWOOD
METHUEN & GO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.G.
LONDON
First Published in ig2Z
FN
NOTE
TWO of these essays were originally
lectures. " Euripides and Shaw " was
delivered in 1911, ''The Present Re-
naissance of English Drama" in 1913. I
have to thank the Literary and Debating
Society of Newport (Mon.) and the Editor
of the Welsh Outlook • respectively for per-
mission to reprint them. Both have been
revised, and the second has been brought
up to date.
For the Index I am indebted to the kind-
ness of my friend, Mr. Cyril Brett.
GILBERT NORWOOD
Preston
470560
PAGE
1
CONTENTS
Euripides and Shaw: A Comparison
The Present Renaissance of English Drama 49
The Nature and Methods of Drama . 109
Index
. 211
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
A COMPARISON
OUR subject can best be understood
if viewed, in the first instance, his-
torically. Both Euripides and Mr.
Bernard Shaw have been voices of an
age of reaction, of an age which stood in
marked and recognized contrast to the era
which had immediately preceded it. Let
us begin then with the briefest historical
survey and endeavour to compare these two
reactions.
It is usually hard or impossible for any
man to describe, perhaps even to under-
stand, the history and spirit of his own
generation. But the present epoch is ex-
ceptional; it can be understood even by
those who live in it if they keep before
their eyes a strong contrast, precisely the
contrast which it is my present business to
indicate. There is a real gulf between us and
the middle of the nineteenth century. In Eng-
2 EUBIPIDES AND SHAW
land, at any rate, the march of affairs broke
into a kind of hand-gallop, ending with a
leap over a chasm which can hardly be
defined, into a morass from which we have
not yet found our way. This jerk in our
progress, this turning-point (to use a more
decorous metaphor), is to be found in the
Education Act of 1870, a piece of legislation
which has already given results of gigantic
importance, generating and letting loose
energies, the history of which has hardly
more than begun. But their activity has
already shaken society. On many momen-
tous subjects it is impossible for us to think
or act as we thought and acted fifty years
ago. The present age is severed from what
is called the Victorian era with a complete-
ness which is truly amazing when we con-
sider the fewness of the years ; but not
more amazing than the extent to which
analogous conditions enable us to enter
into the spirit of an epoch so far sundered
from us in time as the age of Euripides.
We can understand Pericles better than we
understand Palmerston.
It will be enough for our purpose if we
confine ourselves to pointing out the differ-
ence in spirit between the present time and
A COMPARISON 8
the Victorian age. Consider the legislation
of two generations ago, the tone and the
implied assumptions of statesmen, of orators,
of political and social theorists ; the for-
mulae, sometimes not expressed but often
definitely proclaimed, which ruled the differ-
ent classes of society in their inward life
and their outward contacts. Above all,
consider the literature of those days — ^the
writers who were not only great but also
popular, and who therefore voiced the opinions
and emotions of their less articulate fellows
— Dickens, Macaulay, Wordsworth, Tenny-
son. Add to these that invaluable chronicle
of manners and customs, the back numbers
of Punch. Are we not already far enough
removed from them to observe, in spite of
their manifold differences, a unity of spirit,
a definite tone ? Above all we are conscious
of a robust faith in everything Englisli
and of the nineteenth century, a certainty
that all the men of the past have been but
so many coral insects building up that
perfect structure which has at last emerged
above the waters of humiliation and experi-
ment into the sunshine of the Great Exhibi-
tion. England is the heir of all the ages
and the centre of space. From London
4 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
there is a slight fall to the provinces, and
then again to Scotland and Wales, with a
deep but isolated depression to mark Ireland.
The level falls rapidly as we come to " for-
eigners," among whom the French have a
bad pre-eminence. Farther down the slope
are Germans, Americans, and then the rest
of Europe. Thus at length we reach the
dim collections of humanity known as
" natives," whose territory provides the
Englishman with a species of drill-hall in
which to exercise his celebrated bull-dog
virtues and enjoy to the full the luxury of
patronizing people who can never annoy
him by rivalry.
Even the greatest of the popular writers
were not untainted by this childishness.
The more free an author was from it, the
harder was it for him to gain a high reputa-
tion in his own day ; Carlyle is an example,
and Shelley above all. In the work of
those who really struck the imagination of
their contemporaries, in writers like Macaulay
and Tennyson, there is a tone of gentlemanly
arrogance, of urbane self-satisfaction, which
impels one to echo Sydney Smith's wistful
remark : "I wish I were as sure of anything
as Tom Macaulay is of everything."
A COMPARISON 5
Since those days we have passed through
a profound reaction. The nation which
seemed to believe that Queen Victoria was
immortal has seen her fade into a name to
which there clings already the faintest strange
tinge of unfamiliarity. With that great
figure has departed all the crude but not
ignoble certainty, all the superficial worship
of progress. The heir of all the ages has
cut the entail. Where most we were self-
confident, we question most. We who spoke
with such confidence about far Cathay have
begun to realize how little we know of our
own country. The people that saw a great
light now sits in darkness, half-lit by gleams
of which it knows not whether they are the
radiance of a new dawn or the marsh-fires
of diseased yearning and perverted energy.
It would be an almost warrantable con-
ciseness to remark at this point that, as
for the reaction in which Euripides was a
leading figure, it has been already described ;
that the contrast between the period of his
greatest activity — or, to put it more accur-
ately, of his extant dramas — and the earlier
part of the fifth century B.C. is roughly the
same as the contrast in England. The
magnificent exploits of Athens in the struggle
6 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
against Persia, the political power and the
undying glory which she had won by her
victories over the barbarian invaders, had
indeed given an enormous impulse to Athen-
ian patriotism and so to the national art
in its varied forms of the drama, painting,
sculpture, and architecture, an impulse re-
minding us of the flood of pride and energy
which filled the English nation during and
after its contest with Napoleon. But by
the time at which the Peloponnesian War
broke out (the year 431 B.C.), which is also,
roughly, the time of Euripides' earliest
surviving work, this impulse had already
passed away. Athens had begun to descend
from the pinnacle of political and artistic
achievement. She was, indeed, destined
still to be important in politics, and her
literature, both in poetry and in prose,
maintained itself at a splendid height, but
for the time decadence seemed to have set its
mark everywhere else. The Delian League
had become an empire and then a tyranny ;
philosophy was for a while, to all appear-
ance, undermined by the shallow accom-
plishments of the Sophists ; democracy was
becoming ochlocracy. The spectacle of the
rapid fading of so much glory had tainteli
A COMPARISON 7
men with that cynicism of which Euripides
often speaks. Like Shaw, he was compelled ^
by the m^gency of his environment and by
the law of his own nature to express the
prevalent sense of moral and intellectual
bankruptcy, but at the same moment to
seek for, and to follow, the road towards a
new, more humble, hope.
Let so much suffice as an outline of tlie
historical conditions which have brought
these two great dramatists into a kinship
of ideas and method. It is now time that
we should study this similarity in a more
detailed manner. The comparison between
Euripides and Mr. Shaw has often been made
and is, indeed, quaintly suggested to us by
the delightful passage in Major Barbara
where Shaw himself alludes to Euripides,
and almost brings him upon his stage in the
person of the professor of Greek. There
are four main features which are to be found
in both dramatists, characteristics of funda-
mental importance in the workmanship and
intellectual outlook of both.
First should be placed a spirit of challenge
to all accepted beliefs. The dramatist sees
around him a whole world of assumptions, a
whole gallery of revered portraits of human
greatness. Jtie is tne very voice oi an age
of questions, and by the law of his nature
he insists on revising all notions however
fundamental, all conventions however uni-
versal, all religious systems however august.
This by no means implies that he thinks
the whole world mistaken. He may, per-
haps, endorse the verdict of ages when he
has completed his examination — ^but not
before. He feels that the world spurns all
truth while it is fresh and stimulating,
embracing it only when, by the force of
obsolescence, it is already becoming error.
Once in every generation at least, a nation
must take stock of its creed and its conduct.
The whole history of human sorrow and waste
is nothing but the admission that such re-
visions have been often and terribly overdue.
It is the deep glory of these two writers
that their self-examination, their sturdy sin-
gularity, their almost fierce determination to
sound and test everything, is as complete
as it can be in a human creature. This
merciless sincerity can endure the last trial
of all : they are both capable of ridiculing
their own reasoned position as if it were the
most superficial pose. Take this passage
from The Doctor's Dilemma. It occurs in
the scene where Louis Dubedat, artistically
a genius but morally a complete scoundrel,
is confronted by a sort of committee of
doctors, who are trying to bring his baseness
home to him :
Louis : You're on the wrong tack
altogether. I'm not a criminal. All your
moralizings have no value for me. I don't
believe in morality. I'm a disciple of
Bernard Shaw.
Sir Patrick : Bernard Shaw ? I never
heard of him. He's a Methodist preacher,
I suppose ?
Louis (scandalized) : No, no. He's tlie
most advanced man now living : he isn't
anything.
What could be more clear than that Mr.
Shaw, under the flippancy of this, is quite
aware how his own position about morality
— a position he has elsewhere succinctly
defined in the words " morality may go to
its father the Devil " — may become a mere
pose and a justification for any clever black-
guard ? He is always turning on his own
would-be followers. The whole of that
slight amusing piece called How He Lied to
her Husband is an example — a demonstra-
tion of what cheap folly even such a pro-
foundly touching and indeed terrible situa-
10 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
tion as that of Candida may become when
transplanted to an atmosphere of second-
hand characters and shoddy thinking.
Turn for a moment to Euripides, and we
find a surprisingly similar case in the
Bacchce, his last and perhaps his greatest
drama. Throughout his life Euripides has
been attacking the traditional beliefs about
the orthodox Olympian gods with every i
resource of his splendid moral earnestness, ,
his intellectual penetration, and his technical !
skill. And yet, at the end of his life, what
does he say ?
I do not rationalize about the gods. Those I
V" . ancestral traditions, coeval with time, which i
are our possession, no reason can over- |
\ throw, not even if subtle brains have dis- i
covered what they call wisdom. I
This passage, which I have translated |
clumsily but as fairly as I can, has often !
been regarded as the poet's recantation of
the convictions and the teaching of a life- ?
time. I, for one, cannot think so. It is il
unsafe to affirm anything more definite than '
this, that the poet is setting himself against |
dilettantism in matters where dilettantism
is fatal. A restless spirit of inquiry into the i
credentials of traditional ideas, on whatever i
A COMPARISON 11
subject, had long been general in the more
cultivated communities of Greece. Nothing,
however venerable, could escape a close and
often hostile scrutiny. In this movement
Euripides had taken a leading part, and he
was just as ready in his latest years — ^this
the Bacchce, as a whole, abundantly proves
— to fight for the same cause as he had been
when young. But he was at odds with
those who made a potent medicine their
daily beverage — ^those young wits of whom
Aristophanes says that " the give-me-a-
definition look is coming out on you for all the
world like a rash." Euripides had found
that it w^as as important to restrain, even to
disown, disciples who made his principles
an excuse for their own folly and mis-
behaviour, as to insist on the principles
themselves. ,
But this is only a special case, striking
though it may be as the final proof of
spiritual clearness and candour ; both these
writers know practically no limits to their
range of scrutiny. Think of the number of
typical heroes whom Mr. Shaw turns inside
out — ^the different kinds of men and women
who have been, and are, revered as pillars
of society and stalwart witnesses to the
12 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
greatness of humanity. Sergius Saranoff,
the splendid warrior who turns defeat into
victory by a heroic cavalry-charge, and
comes home to the plaudits of his friends
and the rapturous homage of his future bride
— ^how he wilts in the cold dry air of Shavian
criticism ! His cavalry-charge is an insane
act of suicide which succeeds by miracle
because the enemy run short of ammunition ;
his love affair is an elaborate pose of courtly
adoration on both sides ; his melodramatic
affectations are punctured at every turn by
the irony of circumstances or by the contrast
of the real humdrum value of the Swiss
officer whom he despises.
Candida — an even finer play than Arms
and the Man — contains a similar example of
this method. There the character to be
vivisected like Sergius is Morell the clergy-
man. The searchlight is turned pitilessly
upon his weakness and self-indulgence, but
— ^this is a point of vast importance — ^he is
not the ordinary clergyman of theatrical
satire. He is neither the inept fool of The
Private Secretary nor the farcical sham-
ecclesiastic of The Importance of Being
Earnest. He is a good Christian, hard-
working and sympathetic, a fine speaker.
A COMPARISON 13
an intelligent thorough man, a man even
with some sense of humour. We see through
him in the end, but it is asuredly not be-
cause we find his goodness to be a fraud,
his sympathy a piece of professional tech-
nique. Morell is no hypocrite grinding his
teeth in the last act ; he will preach just
as well and sincerely to-morrow — nay,
with greater sincerity and effect. He is
found out simply because Mr. Shaw is keen-
sighted enough to disregard conventional
reverence for the popular clergyman and
to see and show us the human being under-
neath, Morell is as good as most people,
but he is not so much better as we thought
and as he thought. He has mistaken bustle
for life, applause for conversion ; we all do
this. The dramatist has turned aside from
such easy quarry as the forger, the child-
stealer, the betrayer of political secrets,
and all the rest of popular villains ; he has
studied ordinary people.
If his work at any point impinges upon
melodrama, it is only that he may the more
startlingly convince us of the truth by its
contrast with theatrical absurdity. Shaw
begins where melodrama leaves off. Most
of us have, in the presence of a child, told
14 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
some laughable anecdote which ends abruptly
with a repartee, whereupon the child has
asked, " And what did the other man
say ? " Shaw is for ever telling us what
the other man says and does; often it
is the best part of the story. General
Burgoyne, in The DeviVs Disciple, is de-
scribing to his colleague the plight of his
forces when face to face with the American
insurgents : —
Do you at all realize, sir, that we have
nothing standing between us and destruction
but our own bluff and the sheepishness of
these colonists ? They are men of the same
English stock as ourselves : six to one of
us, six to one, sir ; and nearly half our
troops are Hessians, Brunswickers, German
dragoons, and Indians with scalping-knives.
These are the countrymen on whose devotion
you rely ! Suppose the colonists find a
leader ! Suppose the news from Springtown
should turn out to mean that they have
already found a leader ! ^Vhat shall we do
then, eh ?
Now comes the crushing answer of the
footlights : —
Our duty, sir, I presume.
Loud cheers and a Union Jack in the
A COMPARISON 15
background, with quick curtain ? No .
Burgoyne is allowed to reply : —
Quite so, quite so. Thank you, Major
Swindon, thank you. Now you've settled
the question, sir — ^thrown a flood of light on
the situation. What a comfort to me to
feel that I have at my side so devoted and
able an officer to support me in this emer-
gency ! I think, sir, it will probably relieve
both our feelings if we proceed to hang
this dissenter without further delay, especi-
ally as I am debarred by my principles
from the customary military vent for my
feelings.
Or take a simpler example from The Man
of Destiny, Napoleon is addressing a woman
who has robbed one of his officers of some
papers : —
Napoleon : I am waiting for the de-
spatches. I shall take them, if neces-
sary, with as little ceremony as the hand-
kerchief.
The Lady : General, do you threaten
women ?
Napoleon : Yes.
Is this merely a theatrical trick, the know-
ledge when, and when not, to drop the
^curtain ? Assuredly not. One of Mr. Shaw's
constant aims is to free his hearers from the
16 EURIPIDES AND SHAW '
dominion of mere phrases. The power of
these catchwords consists in this, that they
impress the surface of the mind with a sense
of dignity, above all of finality. Therefore
the surest way to break the spell is to refuse
to regard them as final, to consider them
open to question ; and, in the drama, to
allow an opportunity of reply. At the same
time as he clears away this verbal lumber,
Mr. Shaw throws off allegiance to the con-
ventional hero, the pillar of society, the
demigod of the stage. His plays are full
of these discredited pundits : Sir Ralph
Bloomfield Bonnington, the great physician ;
Mrs. Dudgeon, the godly mater-familias ;
Napoleon, the Man of Destiny : Broadbent,
the liberal-minded Englishman ; Sir Howard
Hallam, the upright judge ; Morell once
more, and Major Saranoff.
I Euripides will be found to supply a list
/equally long and significant. First let us
look at Achilles in the Iphigenia at Aulis, sl
character not unlike Sergius Saranoff. This I
dazzling Homeric hero, the most glorious |
figure in Greek story, finds himself here in i
an awkward and ludicrous situation. The ,
Greek host has assembled at Aulis, about to
cross the sea to Troy under the leadership
A COMPARISON 17
of Agamemnon. But contrary winds have
been sent by the goddess Artemis; the
leaders are in despair, the army on the verge
of mutiny. At this point the prophet Cal-
chas informs Agamemnon that the wrath of
Artemis can be averted only if Agamemnon
will sacrifice Iphigenia, his own daughter,
on the altar of the goddess. After much
wretched hesitation the King consents and
summons her from her home in Argos. The
hideous purpose of her coming is concealed ;
Agamemnon sends a message that he wishes
to marry her to Achilles, the son of the
goddess Thetis. But he tells Achilles noth-
ing of this plot. In due time the maiden
arrives, but her father learns with horror
that her mother, his wife, has shared her
journey. Not only is his heart breaking at
the coming slaughter ; he knows that he
will have to face his wife's desperate op-
position. For the moment he contrives to
withdraw, but in his absence Clytsemnestra
and her daughter learn from an old slave the
true meaning of the summons. They decide
to appeal to Achilles, and when he comes
upon the scene Clytsemnestra makes a des-
perate yet dignified appeal. What is his
reply ? He is represented by all tradition
18 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
as the son of a goddess, by far the bravest
and strongest of the Greek warriors ; in
Homer the very sound of his battle-cry is
enough to make the Trojans flee. How
does he act now ? Does he bestow three or
four lines of hurried consolation on the
distressed ladies and then, brandishing his
sword, bound away to hew Agamemnon and
his followers into a more reasonable frame
of mind, after which, no doubt, he returns
to marry Iphigenia in sober earnest ? No.
He makes a speech which it is worth while to
quote at length, for its length is important.
And we must remember that all the while a
royal lady is hanging vipon his words in un-
speakable anguish. Thus then Achilles : —
Magnanimously my heart is lifted on
high ; it knows how to be vexed at evil and
to rejoice, not immoderately, in lofty station.
Such men as I are led by deliberate reason
to live their lives correctly with the help
of discretion. Now there are occasions when
it is pleasant not to be too wise, and other
occasions when it is good to have useful
wits. I was reared in the abode of Chiron,
a most righteous man, and so learned sim-
plicity of character. And as for the sons of
Atreus, if they show themselves good leaders,
I will obey them ; if not, I won't. Both
here and at Troy I shall show my freedom
1
A COMPARISON 19
of spirit, while so far as in nie lies I do
deeds of knightly daring. And as for thee,
who hast been shamefully entreated by thy
dearest, in so far as a young man may, so
far will I enfold thee in my pity, and never
shall thy daughter be slain by her father,
when she hath been called mine ; for I will
not give my person to thy husband to weave
his plots withal. For it is my name, even
if it did not draw the sword, that will
jslaughter this thy child. The cause, to be
Ipure, is thy husband ; but myself will be
no longer guiltless, if through me and
marriage with me she must perish — she the
damsel that hath suffered shamefully and
intolerably, and hath in wondrous unworthy
wise been dishonoured. I am the basest
Greek alive ; I, even I, am naught, and
Menelaus is a true man ; I am not the son
of Peleus but of a fiend ; if my name in thy
husband's cause shall slaughter her ! By
Nereus I swear, Nereus reared amid the
billows of the sea, the sire of Thetis my
mother, that King Agamemnon shall not
touch thy daughter, not even with his finger,
not even touch her garment. Or Sipylus,
on the frontiers of Heathenesse, the place
from which these generals trace their de-
scent, shall be a city, while Phthia, my own
home, shall be forgotten on the earth.
Calchas, the soothsayer, shall rue his sacri-
ficial barley-meal and his holy water. Nay,
what soothsayer is a man? Few truths he
speaks, and many lies — and all by chance ;
then, when chance fails him, he is lost. Not
20 EURIPIDES AND SHAW ,
because I wish for this marriage do I speak j
thus ; thousands of girls pursue me for my ;
hand. No ; King Agamemnon has insulted i
me. He ought to have asked my permission |
that my name should be used to ensnare his ]
child ; it was the thought that I should be i
the bridegroom that tempted Clytsemnestra •
most. I would have granted this use of my !
name to the Greeks, if here lay the hitch in ;
their voyage to Troy ; I would not have j
refused to aid the common weal of my |
companions in arms. But now I am a j
cipher in the eyes of our generals — to treat \
me honourably or no is a light matter, j
Soon shall this sword make question, this j
sword which even before I come to Troy \
I will stain with slaughterous drops of gore,
whether any man shall tear thy daughter '
from me. Keep quiet. I have appeared to i
thee a mighty god. I am not one. But I i
will be one.
" Was there ever such a fool ? " you say.
What a gloriously inept oration ! Rodo-
montade and conceit, not even selfishness —
it is nothing more. One is not surprised
to hear that when Achilles appeals to the
Greeks (probably in a similar harangue)
they throw stones at him, and he comes
rushing back to Clytsemnestra to report
progress, or rather the lack of it. He again
talks of fighting, but at this point Iphi-
A COMPARISON 21
genia, whose delicate nerves must have been
hideously tried by all this beating of tom-
toms, interferes and proclaims her readiness
to die for the hopes of Greece. Achilles,
after an awkward attempt at expressing his
admiration, declares that he will none the
less fight to save her. At the end of the
play we learn that so far from doing this
the loquacious champion has actually taken
part in the ceremony of sacrifice : " the son
of Peleus, with the basket and the holy
water, ran round the altar of the goddess."
Both Achilles and Sergius Saranoff are
made ridiculous, not necessarily by any
fault of character, but by their attempt at
critical moments, not to say what they feel,
but to say what they think they ought to
feel. Each has an impossible pose to keep
up. Sergius, a thoroughly commonplace
vulgar person, thinks he must talk like the
mediaeval knight and lover, merely because
he is a military officer and has recently been
in danger of his life. Achilles is a super-
ficial spoiled young fellow, who has been
taught that his mother is a goddess and
who tries to live up to this impossible
standard. He is too good a soldier not to
know that any five (at most) of the Greeks
22 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
are a match for him ; but he has to make
himself think that he can rout the whole
host single-handed. Both these sawdust
heroes deceive the audience for a long time,
simply because of tradition. All the greater
is the shock when the hero is found out ;
and it is not only the hero, but the cult of
X such people, which quivers under the blow.
And that is precisely the aim both of
Euripides and of Mr. Shaw.
Let me point to another parallel. These
dramatists both handle the subject of re-
venge — ^the alleged unwritten law that those
who are wronged but are prevented by the
accident of law from seeking redress at the
hands of the State, may, with perfect right,
redress themselves. Captain Brasshound's
Conversion is Shaw's study of this theory.
Brassbound's mother has been neglected
and cheated by her brother-in-law, an Eng-
lish judge. But nothing has been done
against which the law can be reasonably
invoked. The judge is respected as a model
of respectability and uprightness ; his nephew
can do nothing save by stratagem and the
help of luck. But luck does favour him.
It so happens that Brassbound has the
opportunity of taking Sir Howard into the
A COMPARISON 23
North African desert and there handing
him over as a slave to an Arab chief. He
proclaims his intention of doing so, hurling
bitter reproaches and taunts at the judge,
who thinks he has a right to rob his rela-
tives and then to put on a robe of ermine and
sentence his fellow-creatures to vindictive
penalties under the name of legal punishment.
But Sir Howard's sister-in-law, Lady-
Cecily, is with the party. She talks to
Brassbound as only a woman can who is a
miracle of common sense and tact. Brass-
bound is made to see that his mission of
vengeance is prompted far less by love for
his mother than by hatred for his uncle,
and that even if it were not, as his mother
is dead, he can do nothing to help her now ;
moreover, that his whole life has been
uselessly hardened and withered by brooding
over his wrongs. But his quiver contains
one more shaft : "It will teach other
scoundrels to respect widows and orphans.
Do you forget that there is such a thing as
justice ? " To which Lady Cecily replies :
" Oh, if you are going to dress yourself up
in ermine and call yourself Justice, I give
you up. You are just your uncle over
again ; only he gets £5000 a year for it.
24 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
and you do it for nothing." The whole
drama leads to this conclusion, that revenge
is a waste of energy and time, and worse.
Bloodshed and oppression may be more
intelligible if performed by way of reprisal ;
they are none the less offences against the
true economy of society.
Such seems to be the moral of Euripides'
Electra also, which deals with the most
famous vendetta in Greek story. Agamem-
non, after sacking Troy, returned to his
home at Mycenae in triumph, only to be
murdered by his wife, Clytsemnestra, and her
lover, ^gistlius. At the time of his death
the King had two children — a daughter,
Electra, and a son, Orestes, who was still
a child. Electra, fearing for the heir to
the throne, at once sent her brother across
the border, herself remaining at home.
Clytsemnestra and ^Egisthus became joint
rulers of the country. At length, when
Orestes had grown to manhood, he was
ordered by the Delphic oracle to go home
and slay his mother and i3^gisthus in requital
for his father's murder. This he did, but
avenging fiends, the Furies, pursued him
for his matricide, until he was freed from
them by Apollo.
A COMPARISON 25
Such is the story in outhne — a magnificent
subject for a playwright. But clearly the
dramatist's point of view will make a world
of difference. A poet penetrated by belief
in the orthodox Olympian religion will lay
tremendous stress on the fact that Orestes
was impelled to his frightful deed by the
direct and inevitable decree of Pleaven ; he
will not admit the kinship between the
victim and the slayer to be anything more
than an important detail. This is the
method which ^schylus has followed. Eurip-
ides' outlook is very different, even the
opposite. In effect he says : " The kinship
between the avenger and his victim is —
must be — ^the cardinal point. If the oracle
commanded Orestes to do this thing, so
much the worse for the oracle." And so
he insists on studying the grim old tale from
the human standpoint, depicting, as does
Shaw, the effects of a vendetta cherished
for many years. Orestes, having lived
abroad, has something (but not very much)
of the many-sidedness which marks a well-
developed man. But Electra all these years
has lived on the thought of her murdered
father and on the passionate thirst for more
blood, even that of her mother. If Agamem-
26 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
non has been murdered, that is no reason,
the poet thinks, why his daughter should
commit a slow moral suicide. She and her
brother ruin their lives, as well as destroy
their mother and ^Egisthus, by their servility
to a barren creed.
There is more than this. Both Shaw and
Euripides have felt that, even granting the
justice and wisdom of revenge, its pursuers
can hold to their purpose only by keeping
their eyes closed to some of the facts. It may
be exaggeration to exclaim tout corajprendre
c^est tout pardonner, but every villain has some
redeeming feature ; nay, many " villains "
are not villains at all. Quite legitimately,
both writers have made their black sheep as
white as possible. For Sir Howard Hallam
there are real excuses enough to show us
that he is at least as good as the average
man. Brassbound himself at length de-
clares : " My uncle is no worse a man than
myself — better, most likely, for he has a
better head and a higher place. Well, I
took him for a villain out of a story-book."
What of Euripides ? He remembers that
the murder of Agamemnon happened many
years before. Why should not the mur-
derers have become better instead of worse ?
A COMPARISON 27
And is not an act of revenge, like that of
Orestes, carried out (as it had to be) by-
craft, necessarily repulsive ? So it comes
about that our sympathies are with uEgisthus
and Clytsemnestra, not with their foes,
^gisthus is accosted by Orestes while on
his farm celebrating a rustic sacrifice. He
genially invites the strangers to join in the
festival, and is struck dead from behind
while engaged in an act of religion. Clytaem-
nestra is lured to her daughter's house by
the most dastardly excuse which can be
imagined. A message is sent to her that
Electra has given birth to a child. It is
Electra's own invention, which she thus
expounds :
Announce that I have been delivered of a
male child, ten days ago, and that the time
of my purification is thus at hand. She will
come when she hears that I have been
through the pains of childbirth ; aye, and
she will weep over the low estate of my
babe. Then when once she has come, of
course, it is her death.
Could any speech, any situation, show
more vividly the master-hand ? In a few
chill words it portrays the hideous poisoning
of all natural love, sympathy, decency.
28 EURIPIDES AND SHAW *|
which we noted a moment ago ; it reminds
us further that it is precisely because
Electra has not had children that she can
thus, in the course of years, be narrowed
and blighted into a fiend ; and it makes sure,
not only that Clytaemnestra will come, but
that she will come with just those emotions
stirring her which make a woman most
sincere and loving — at the moment when she
is to be put to death, and that too by the
help of one who should have been reminded,
if not by her heart, yet by her own lie, how
near and precious the victim should seem
to her own children. The act of blood is
performed, and the two awake to a tardy
repentance, even then not reflecting that
perhaps years ago their mother had her
tardy repentance too.
One might offer many other such examples
from Euripides of traditional heroes on
whom the light of common day is poured
with woeful results for the tinsel and
sham jewellery — Jason, for instance ; Jason
whom so many generations have admired
as the embodiment of chivalry, journeying
to a far country in quest of the Fleece, that
very symbol of romance, and from the
edge of the world bringing with him Medea,
A COMPARISON 29
who left all for love. So have we all regarded
Jason. But Euripides, whose interest in
and sympathy for women surpassed that of
any leminist of antiquity, prefers to ask
himself what happened next. V\^at of
Jason as a married man, settled down to
" getting on," with no definite profession
and few assets beside the Golden Fleece ?
Could his wife prove a social success ?
Would she aid her husband's ambition by
showing herself a tactful hostess and a
grande dame in general ? " Absurd," you
say, " positively vulgar." Perhaps. And
there is very real tragedy hovering round
a haughty, noble, simple nature forced to
live in an alien atmosphere. If Euripides
chooses to interest himself in life as it is,
rather than in magnificent episodes of the
world's youth, you may call him Philistine
if you will, but you cannot argue with a
point of view. His treatment of this
situation in the Medea is, perhaps, his
greatest and most poignantly real work.
The barbarian princess appears in the quiet
aristocratic little courts of Greece like a
destroying flame. At lolchos, the home of
Jason, she murders the old King Pelias, his
enemy, by her savage cunning — the famous
1
30 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
trick of the rejuvenating cauldron. Her
husband and she, with their children, are
forced to go into exile and find a home at \
Corinth. There Jason, still with no re-
sources but his ancestry and his sword,
determines to mend his fortunes by —
marriage ! His view, apparently, is that
Medea is not exactly his wife — he is, indeed,
very hazy about this — and that she ought
not to object if, by a brilliant marriage, he
secures his own prospects (for he intends to
ally himself to the royal family) and inci-
dentally hers and those of their children.
Anyhow, Medea is only '' a native." Learn-
ing his purpose, she breaks forth into
passionate reproach and recital of all that
she has done for him. Without her magical
aid he would never have won the Fleece,
nay, he could not have escaped from Colchis
with his life. By thus assisting him she
has been forced to leave her home and
country, to entrust all her future to him.
Jason is but little ruffled by this terrible
appeal. He feels that the benefits she has
wrought are indeed great — " You have not
done badly," he remarks — but that the
return he has already made is a full quittance ;
as thus : —
A COMPARISON 31
First of all, you live in Greece, instead of
a barbarous land. You now understand
justice and obedience to law, in place of
arbitrary violence. Then, all the Greeks
know of your wisdom and you have become
a celebrity, whereas, if you had still been
living at the end of the world, you would
never have been heard of.
So might an impresario address a wonder-
ful soprano whom he had " discovered " in
Queensland or Dakota. We have travelled
far indeed from the mediaeval knight and
his distressed damsel. The sequel, the
frightful overthrow of all Jason's happiness
and hopes, does not here concern us.
Let us now turn to our other topics. First
of these must come social questions. On the
Euripidean and Shavian treatment of this
subject alone a volume could be written, but
we shall here pass over it lightly. The two
great social questions which attract Mr.
Shaw beyond any other are the relations of
the sexes and economic inequality : he is a
feminist and a socialist. Euripides also is
deeply concerned about such problems,
but far more in the position of women
than in that of the.pxjor^ for the sufficient
reason that economic inequality seemed
to him, and indeed was, less dangerous
32 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
than the legal and social inequality of the
sexes.
The reader does not need to be reminded of
the industry and the wit which Mr. Shaw
has expended upon the problems of poverty.
Two whole plays are devoted to them —
Major Barbara and Widowers^ Houses.
John BulVs Other Island and Mrs. Warren's
Profession deal with the same theme, though
there it is interwoven with other matters,
in the first with imperial politics and in the
second with the sex-question. Whatever
one thinks of Mr. Shaw's conclusions, no one
save a partisan journalist can deny the sin-
cerity and the public spirit of liis method
and aims. That which in Euripides corre-
sponds to this feature of Shaw's work
is his indignation, not so much against
j^ financial inequality as against political
j I inequality and bureaucracy. He loves to
I [inveigh against officials, whether they are
' rulers and generals, or whether they are
mere Bumbles, and he is never weary of
praising the middle class. The poet seems
to have been a very moderate democrat.
5 He distrusts the rich and nobly-born, but
he also fears the masses. Probably he
would have liked to see a return to the
A COMPARISON 83
Solonian regime, to give prima facie political
equality to all citizens, with the important
reservation that the archonship and the
board of generals should be filled from
certain classes only. Against the oligarchy
of the rich and the anarchy of the mob the
middle class, according to him, formed an
effective, and the only, safeguard.
More startling than this, to an Athenian
at any rate, was his championship of slaves.
The statement of Aristotle, a man almost as
broad-minded as profound, that a slave is
a living tool, expresses the popular opinion
and the legal view. Euripides is apparently
the only man of his day who showed any
sort of real sympathy for slaves ; his name-
less messengers, attendants, old men, and
the like, form a noble company of obscure
and faithful ones.
But by far the strongest claim of Eurip-
ides to renown as a social theorist is his
study of women —their character, their actual
position in society, and their possibilities.
It is a feature in the work of this dramatist
which, before any other attribute, has ar-
rested attention in his own day and in every
other age in which he has been intelligently
studied ; it accounts, probably, for several
34 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
anecdotes about his life. There is hardly a
single extant tragedy of his which does not
contain some wonderfully penetrating and
illuminating study of female character. But
far more than this : several of his finest'
works are devoted primarily, almost ex-
clusively, to this theme— ^the Medea, the
Hippolytus, the Alcestis, and the Andro-
mache. In all these instances Euripides'
opinions and emotions are plain and ex-
pressed with admirable incisiveness ; and
in all he is observing, not the heroine of
legend, but the contemporary Athenian
woman. In all, too, he is striving to create
a more healthy public opinion. It has been
said that " of all ancient moralists, he is
alone, or alone with Plato, in showing an
adequate notion of that radical disease, an
imperfect ideal of woman, of which, more
than of anything else, ancient civilization
perished." Against this disease no man ex-
cept Plato struggled so bravely as Euripides,
and not even Plato with equal discernment.
It is not so much that he admires women,
still less that he regards them as superior
to men ; his subtle and true delineations \
bring out as many favilts as virtues. He is
impressed by two things': first, the sorrows
A COMPARISON 35
of women, whether they arise from the
indifference of individuals and of the State,
or whether they are the special pains and
hardships which no reform can lift from
their shoulders ; second, the danger to the
community which lies in allowing a great
mass of persons to pass their lives and spend
their energies within its borders without
attempting to understand them, without
forming some sort of working hypothesis,
good or bad, about their function as a part
of the community — without, in short, digest-
ing them. He thinks of women as a man
of human sympathies, and as a citizen of
political foresight.
In describing the sorrows of women, then,
Euripides shows a knowledge of the female
heart which excites the liveliest interest and
wonder. We are told that he was twice
married, and unhappily. Unhappy his
married life may have been according to the
gossips, but there is good evidence that the
poet talked to his wife, and more, that he
let her talk to him ; still more, that while
Ishe talked he listened. No man unaided
jcould have written that marvellous first
speech of Medea, a foreigner at Corinth,
seeing herself and her young children on the
36 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
point of being deserted by Jason. She is
addressing the company of Corinthian ladies
who have come to condole with her.
Now, as for me, this unlooked-for hap- \
pening hath broken my heart. Friends, I i
am lost. The joy of life hath left me, and I
I fain would die. For, as ye know well, he, i
my husband, in whom were all my hopes, ,i
hath shown himself an utter villain. Of ^
all creatures that have life and reason we i
women are the most unhappy. For, first, j
by payment of much wealth we must needs!
purchase a husband, a master of our persons. ,|
. . . And herein lies a fearful peril : will he j
be base or good ? For the wife is disgraced li
by divorce, yet to refuse marriage is im-l
possible. Then, when a woman has come )
to live with a strange character and strange i
ways of life, she must needs have second-!
sight (for her past experience tells heri
nothing) if she is to know how to deal with]
her husband. If, then, we solve this riddle, )
and the spouse who dwells with us proves i
not a brutal yoke-fellow, our life is to be',
envied ; otherwise, death were best. Whenij
a man is wearied of his home, he walks!
abroad and relieves his spirit of its distasted
in the society of some friend or companion ;:<
but we are forced to look to one person'
only. And they say of us that we pass i
within the house a life unthreatened by ■
any peril, whereas they engage in the toil/
of war. Fools ! I had rather fight three i
■M
-1
A COMPARISON 37
pitched battles than face the pains of child-
birth once. But no more. What is true
of me cannot be said of thee. Thou hast
this city and thy father's house, a happy
life, and the company of friends ; while I,
deserted and homeless, am outraged by my
husband, I that have been reft from a
foreign land and have no mother, no brother,
no kinsman, to whom, as to a haven, I may
flee from this calamity. This, then, will I
ask of thee, this only. If I discover some
means, some plot, whereby to win revenge
for these my wrongs from my husband,
from him that gave his daughter, and from
herself, be silent. In all things else a
woman is full of dread and dares not look
upon battles and the sword ; but if she is
wronged in her affections, there is no other
soul so bloodthirsty.
Nothing need, or can by me, be added to
the earlier part of this. It is only one
example among many that could be cited
of the poet's subtle sympathy and under-
standing of women — an understanding, no
doubt, helped by his love for children ; the
yearning of a parent over his child has never
been expressed more poignantly than by a
few verses in this very play of Medea. But
observe particularly the last few words in
which Medea hints to the Corinthian ladies
that she has a plan of vengeance. It is in
38 EURIPIDES AND SHAW \
this way that the great speech which I have \
tried to render brings us to the second part j
of this subject, Euripides' feeUng that the j
contemporary attitude towards women was )
a menace to society. He understood the i
frightful explosive force of a nature adult I;
in its passions, its will, its audacity. But in i
intellectual wealmess and unbalanced im- |
pulsiveness a child. At all costs, he felt, j
we must recast our social system ; we must j
open to women activities which can give j
their natures space to develop healthily. 1 1
suspect that he would have assented to the |
epigram which declares that " the last thing |
man will civilize is woman " ; but the j
longer Athens put off the attempt the greater i
was the danger. This belief, that the harem- I
system which prevailed at Athens was aj
real peril, appears repeatedly. In the An- 1
dromache he is principally concerned to I
show us the evil which may be wrought by]
an impulsive untrained woman, denied all j
interest in outside things but allowed de- 1
spotic power in her own house. The curse j
of the Athenian system was, according to I
him, that it stunted all a woman's good If
qualities, while it left her free to indulge )
her cruel or thoughtless whims. To quote i
i
A COMPARISON 39
the Medea once more, the female sex is
called " helpless for good, but of all mischief
plotters most cunning." As in that play he
has painted a woman of pride and courage
goaded by her wrongs into crime, so in the
Andromache he presents us with a weaker,
more febrile, girl led by her own unguided
impulses — still into crime.
Two remarks should here be offered. The
first is that Euripides' lesson applies, at the
utmost, only partly to us. On any view,
the condition of women is not now so
spiritually and intellectually debased as it
was in Athens during the fifth century B.C.
The second remark is still more germane
to our subject. Allowing for differences in
circumstances, it can be said that Mr. Shaw
takes up much the same position as Eurip-
ides. Those who have read that powerful
and terrible drama, Mrs, Warren's Pro-
fession, will remember that Mrs. Warren
devotes herself to the basest and most anti-
social of all trades just because she is forced
into it by the social and economic conditions
which make everything else but starvation
impossible. Man and Superman, magnifi-
cent as it is, need not detain us now. No
comparison with the work of Euripides is
r
40 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
here possible, as the play is based on a con-
ception of woman which was a sheer im-
possibility to any Greek of classical days.
It is time that we turned to a very obvious
feature of both these writers — a feature
observed by the most casual reader, and
sometimes held to be Mr. Shaw's single
literary virtue. I mean the directness, wit,
and athletic brilliance of their style. From
>\ Euripides one may select a fine piece of
invective uttered by the captive Andro-
mache, the widow of Hector, when she has
been shamefully lured to her death by the
King of Sparta : —
Ye hated wretches, spurned of all mankind,
Tenants of Sparta, souls of crawling craft.
Plotters of villainy and lords of lies.
Whose souls are rotten, yea, a labyrinth
Of cheating, this your glory 'mid the Greeks
On sin is founded and by sin has thriven !
What foulness know ye not ? Love ye not blood
And shameful gains ? Are ye not ever found
With lips confirming what your hearts deny ?
Curses upon you ! But, for me, my death
Hath lost its sting — thou'rt cheated. Then I died
When hapless Troy was taken, and my lord
Fell like a chieftain, he whose spear full oft
Chased thee from land to quake upon thy ship.
Now, lo ! thou'rt come in panoply of war
To fright a woman, and to slay me. Aye,
Slay on ! These lips shall never beg my life
From child of thine or fawn on such as thou !
Mighty art thou in Sparta ? So was I
Erstwhile at Troy. And if I fall to-day.
Forbear thy vaunts. Soon may'st thou fall as low.
A COMPARISON 41
Or take this passage from the Iphigenia at
Aulis, in which the young princess makes
her magnificent avowal that she is ready to
die that she may give the Greek fleet a fair
wind for Troy : —
Hellas, mightiest of nations, now on me bends all her
gaze ; '^^
I can ope the broad ^^Igean, I can Ilion's towers raze !
I can drown in blood of Trojans Helen's flight and Paris'
crime ;
I can school each lewd barbarian, through the years of
after-time,
Ne'er again to steer his pinnace to the happy shores of
Greece.
Dying, I shall save a nation, and my fame shall aye in-
crease,
Raising me in death to greatness, Hellas' saviour, blest
indeed.
Nay, 'twere ill my life to cherish, shunning thus for her
to bleed.
I was born the child of Hellas, not, O mother, only thine.
See, ten thousand armed heroes ! See their linked bucklers'
line !
See ten thousand straining oarsmen, every heart with
courage high.
Ready in their country's quarrel to avenge her wrongs or
die I
Shall the life of one weak woman baffle all this fair
emprise ?
Nay, 'twere sin ! What guiltless answer to our falt'ring
lips could rise ?
Think once more ! Achilles yonder, would'st thou see him
strive — and fall —
Battling with the host of Argos single-handed at my call ?
Twere a gain one man should live, were e'en ten thousand
maids the price.
Yea, and Artemis demands my body to her sacrifice.
When the hand divine hath beckoned, shall a mortal shun
her fate ?
42 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Never ! To the hopes of Hellas I my being consecrate.
Slay me ! Vanquish Troy ! I die not childless, since
through ages down
Lives, in place of home and children, this my never-
dimmed renown !
From Mr. Shaw's work let us select this
fine piece of declamation from Ccesar and
Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, walking alone by
night across the Egyptian desert, comes
upon the Sphinx : —
Hail, Sphinx : salutation from Julius
Caesar ! I have wandered in many lands,
seeking the lost regions from which my
birth into this world exiled me, and the
company of creatures such as I myself. I
have found flocks and pastures, men and
cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to
me, no man kindred to me, none who can
do my day's deed, and think my night's
thought. In the little world yonder. Sphinx,
my place is as high as yours in this
great desert ; only I wander, and you sit
still ; I conquer, and you endure ; I work
and wonder, you watch and wait ; I look
up and am dazzled, look down and am
darkened, look round and am puzzled,
whilst your eyes never turn from looking
out — out of the world — ^to the lost region —
the home from which we have strayed.
Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of
men, are no strangers to one another : have
I not been conscious of you and of this
place since I was born ? Rome is a mad-
A COMPARISON 43
man's dream : this is my reality. These
starry lamps of yours I have seen from afar
in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly,
signalling great secrets to some eternal
sentinel below, whose post I never could
find. And here at last is their sentinel —
an image of the constant and immortal
part of my life, silent, full of thought, alone
in the silver desert.
Lastly, here is a trenchant passage from
Major Barbara, The self-made millionaire
is discussing with his aristocratic son the
profession which the latter should choose.
After several of his suggestions have been
declined, the father goes to the point : —
Undershaft : Well, come ! Is there any-
thing you know or care for ?
Stephen : I know the difference between
right and wrong.
Undershaft : You don't say so ! What !
No capacity for business, no knowledge of
law, no sympathy with art, no pretension
to philosophy ; only a simple knowledge of
the secret that has puzzled all the philoso-
phers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all
the men of business, and ruined most of
the artists : the secret of right and wrong.
Why, man, you're a genius, a master of
masters, a god ! At twenty-four, too !
Stephen : You are pleased to be facetious.
I pretend to nothing more than any honour-
44 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
able English gentleman claims as his birth-
right.
Undershaft : Oh, that's everybody's
birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill,
the Salvation lassie ! She would think you
were laughing at her if you asked her to
stand up in the street and teach grammar or
geography or mathematics or even drawing-
room dancing ; but it never occurs to her
to doubt that she can teach morals and
religion. You are all alike, you respectable
people. You can't tell me the bursting
strain of a ten-inch fgun, which is a very
simple matter ; but you all think you can
tell me the bursting strain of a man under
temptation. You daren't handle high ex-
plosives ; but you're all ready to handle
honesty and truth and justice and the whole
duty of man, and kill one another at that
game. What a country ! What a world !
Finally, there is a likeness between these
two men in the treatment they have received
from their contemporaries. That both have
attracted vast attention is a point which
needs no proof; but combined with this
we notice a strong reaction. Euripides
produced plays at Athens for about fifty
years ; only five times was he awarded the
first prize in the dramatic contest, and one
of these victories was obtained after his
death. The official leaders of public opinion
A COMPARISON 45
scouted himj^ men /fc) their position could
not support a writer who habitually ridiculed
the claims of the Delphic oracle, who showed
scant respect even for Athena, the guardian-
goddess of the State, who hated officialism,
who discussed at large the rights and the
feelings of mere slaves, who appeared to
think that women had souls, perhaps even
a social value, who was for ever examining
and condemning the most revered traditions,
who was, in short, "queer." We have
learned from a recently-discovered manu-
script that he was indicted by the statesman
Cleon for impiety. The chief voice of this
hostility was the comic dramatist Aristoph-
anes, as great a genius as Euripides him-
self, whose magnificent comedy of The Frogs
is in the main an elaborate attack upon
Euripides' teaching, and who is never weary
of directing laughable and trenchant gibes
against the great apostle of rationalism.
Much the same is the position of Mr. Shaw.
No statesman brings him to trial for impiety,
perhaps because we do not agree as to what
piety is ; but the role of Aristophanes is
filled with painstaking emulation by the
Press. It must be allowed that the on-
slaughts of our journalists are not so brilliant
46 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
or so searching as those of the Athenian
dramatist, but they do their best. Faihng
the genius of Aristophanes, they fall back
on his unfairness and his sneers. To judge
from The Frogs one would suppose Euripides,
not a great but misguided and misguiding
poet ; rather a mere scribbling, pernicious
fool. A weekly review of the highest
standing published an article on one of Mr.
Shaw's volumes in which the word " jester "
was employed a dozen times. It is a
significant word. The English publicist
knows well that the shortest way to rob a
man of influence is to call him amusing,
the rooted belief of the British public being
that if a man is funny he cannot be in earnest.
Accordingly Mr. Shaw is dubbed " the
licensed jester " — ^that is to say : " This is a
funny man ; therefore you may read and
enjoy him without feeling bound to pay any
respect to what he says." And the news-
papers have one vast advantage over Aris-
tophanes. Few men in Athens took him
seriously, while to-day most people are
positively hypnotized by whatever they see
in print if only it is repeated often enough.
And it is repeated, very often. The de-
liberate and unending misrepresentation of
A COMPARISON 47
Mr. Shaw by hosts of journahsts who know
better is a public scandal.
Still, there is another side to the picture.
That Euripides should be hated by Cleon,
and Shaw despised by Broadbent, is natural
enough. They have both found a recom-
pense in the delighted respect of their
younger contemporaries. What especially
annoyed Aristophanes was the unbounded
influence which Euripides wielded over
educated young men. The future was with
him, and during the centuries which have
passed since his death few Greek writers
have enjoyed so continuous and discrimi-
nating a popularity. When the contest in
the world of the dead, the contest between
iEschylus and Euripides portrayed in The
Frogs, is about to begin, iEschylus complains
that he is at a disadvantage because he has
left his works on earth alive, while his rival's
plays have died with him. Never was a
prophecy more utterly refuted by time.
It is not unreasonable to prophesy similar
permanence for the dramas of Mr. Shaw.
No work will die which is so instinct with
wit, with breadth of mind and lively in-
terest, with such a passionate zeal for the
common health. Already, as did his
48 EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Athenian counterpart, he is coming into his
kingdom ; no name stands higher with
educated people of the new generation than
his. And this assures his popularity and his
influence for future time ; as years go by
he will be more respectfully studied and
more highly valued. He can repeat, as
Euripides might have done, the words
uttered by one of Schiller's characters :
" The century is not ripe for my ideal. I
live a citizen of a future commonwealth."
THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
ENGLISH DRAMA
BETWEEN the year 1779, in which
Sheridan's Critic was produced, and
the year 1889, when A DolVs House
was first performed in England, hes the
Dark Age of our dramatic Hterature. During
those hundred and ten years the theatres
themselves had flourished, and first-rate
actors had not been rare ; but the art of
dramatic composition lay in torpor. While
the novel attained glory in the hands of
Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, the most
rioted writers for the stage were Joanna
Baillie, Thomas Robertson, Dion Boucicault,
and Westland Marston. Of all the theatrical
matter produced in that period by writers
no longer living, there are perhaps only
:wo works which the playgoing public has
lot completely forgotten — Robertson's Caste
and David Garrick, The censorship estab-
ished by Walpole in 1737 had warned men
)f genius off the stage. Fielding is a cele-
50 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
brated instance ; what the novel gained,
play writing lost. But where original genius
was forbidden to tread, Robertson and his
congeners rushed in. The result was horrible.
One might harrow up the reader's soul with
extracts from the works which for four
generations degraded the theatre of Van-
brugh and Sheridan into the abyss where
the disciples of Ibsen found it.
But he shall be spared such an anthology.
Only let him imagine the most difficult form
of literary art, where architectonic power
is essential, where so much depends upon
the collision of genuine personalities, upon
sound ethics and skill in language. Imagine
the law thus laid down for the writer who is
to practise such an art. '' You shall not
discuss religion, though you may occasion-
ally employ its more orthodox forms as part
of your upholstery. Politics are to be
eschewed, unless you wish to remind your
hearers of the glory of Britain — we shall not
object to a few honest tars or even to a comic
soldier, provided he is of non-commissioned
rank. Satire of course is permitted, except
that you must satirize only people who have
been satirized already — a lawyer, provided
he is only an attorney ; a politician, so long
ENGLISH DRAMA 51
as he is not a Minister ; a farmer, but mind
you demonstrate the goodness of his heart.
What ? You complain that we are shackHng
your inventive genius ? Nothing of the
kind 1 You can portray society. Show us
the great heart of the EngHsh People — of
course without hurting anyone's feelings,
for you will remember that you are a gentle-
man. Literature should uplift. Therefore
yovi will teach us that love is always un-
selfish, that men in high positions have
characters to correspond, that dramatic
heroes are unswervingly muscular, tall,
brave, and generous. Marriages are always
happy ; children are always obedient, except
in farces, and then, fortunately, they have
idiotic fathers, whom you can't expect
them to take seriously ; there are only two
sorts of women — (a) ladies, who invariably
behave as ladies ; and (b) females, who can
be relied upon for a little comic relief."
Finally, conceive this difficult art prac-
tised, under such poisonous restrictions, by
men of third-rate or fourth-rate talent.
One pretentious writer after another came
forward, not with a " slice of life," as the
saying now is, not even with a self-consistent
romantic fantasy, but with an exercise in
52 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
the theatrical manner. That is the real
vice of the stage — ^to copy the latest " suc-
cessful " play instead of looking at men and
women. This is what is meant by staginess
— not merely the striking of attitudes :
Shakespeare is full of them ; not simply
long speeches : Mr. Shaw revels in them,
and Mr. Barker's Trebell is a leading article
on two legs. No ; it is the unmistakable
imitation of an imitation. Those who ob-
jected to stage plays as immoral would
have stood on much firmer ground had they
accused them of a paralysing dullness.
Precisely one hundred years after Sheri-
dan's success with The Critic, Copenhagen
witnessed the production of A DolVs House,
Ten years later, after triumphs in Scandinavia
and Germany, the play was given in London
by Mr. Charles Charrington and Miss Janet
Achurch. " It was this production that
really made Ibsen known to the English-
speaking peoples," says Mr. William Archer.
By this play and by his other " realist "
works, such as An Enemy of the People,
Rosmersholm, The Wild Duck, Ibsen, single-
handed, saved English drama at the moment.
I say " at the moment," for even had there
been no Ibsen, one cannot believe that the
ENGLISH DRAMA 53
English nation would have battened till
doomsday upon works like Caste or The
Hobbyhorse. But to Ibsen, alone of in-
dividual men, belongs the credit of the
fact that we now possess real dramatists.
What are his special virtues, the lineaments
of his genius ?
As a dramatic poet, Ibsen stands beyond
question in the front rank. Setting himself
to produce a certain form of art, he has
reached an achievement as near perfection
as that of Sophocles or Shakespeare ; Hedda
Gabler, in its genre, is as great as (Edipus
Rex or Macbeth in theirs. We are, of course,
to note that the genre is different. Neglect
of this simple fact vitiated all the judgments
which English critics offered upon the new
writer in the last years of the nineteenth
century. What they meant was that Ibsen
is not like Robertson, to say nothing of
Shakespeare. In the same way French
critics who worshipped Aristotle's canons of
tragic art declared that Shakespeare was a
drunken savage. One remembers the even
more idiomatic criticism in Punch : " There's
a stranger ! 'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im ! "
Every insulting adjective that the printer
could be induced to put into type was hurled
54 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
at the stranger when Ghosts was performed
in 1891. People were simply blaming him
for not possessing qualities which would
have prevented them from ever hearing
about him, for not following a fashion which
it was his chief aim to eradicate. The genre
of Hedda Gabler is different from that of any
other school. Whether it is as sublime and
edifying a type as that of the Elizabethan
and of the Greek tragedians is quite a dif-
ferent matter. It is, in any case, a magni-
ficent creation, capable of values which can
be attained in no other way. In brief, the
aim of Sophocles was to make man accom-
modate his intellect to his spiritual environ-
ment ; the aim of Shakespeare to entertain
by chastening the emotions ; the aim of
Ibsen to instruct by a new appeal to ethical
facts.
This brings us to the first salient charac-
teristic of the Norwegian — his courage. He
never runs away from facts in life, nor from
the situations which he himself portrays.
The customary procedure being to get over
a difficulty by pretending that it does not
exist, Ibsen not only proves that it does
exist, but also — a vital point — that it is
only by ignoring it that we give it full power
ENGLISH DRAMA 55
over us. Nor does he shrink from the con-
sequences of his own imagination. There
is nothing which the third-rate dramatist
loves better than the attempt to make the
best, so to speak, of both worlds — ^to win
approbation from the stalls by a daring
scene, and then run away from it, to snatch
the cheers of the gallery. So, in The
Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Sir Arthur Pinero
depicts a spirited, hard-driven woman who,
at a crisis, is offered a Bible. She flings it
into the fire. '' Here ! " says the culture-
hunter, " is courage of one's convictions.
Here is an advanced playwright ! And how
advanced of me to be here ! Pinero and I
are making history." But Mrs. Ebbsmith
utters a scream. It cannot be ! She rushes
to the stove and drags forth the volume,
brandishing it aloft amid the ecstasies of
the gods. Here is "something for every-
one," in truth ! Ibsen, of course, like every
other dramatist worth his salt, never dreams
of thus running with the hare and hunting
with the hounds. Compromise may be the
life of politics, but it is the death of art.
Ibsen's own uncompromising honesty has
led to queer results, not the least odd being
the history of A DolVs House, In that
56 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
celebrated conversation between Nora and
Torvald Helmer with which the play ends,
it is of course essential that the wife should
stick to her guns, quietly but with complete
assurance. \Vlien the play reached Germany,
theatrical managers actually provided it
with a " happy ending," in which Nora did
not leave her husband after all, and the
famous slam of the door, the neatest and most
legitimate coup de theatre in the history of
the stage, was left out ! At that time his
works had no protection in Germany, and
the master himself was driven to devise, for
the moment, another finale in which Nora,
for her children's sake, remained at home.
He explained that he " preferred to commit
the outrage himself." His revenge was signal
and almost laughably appropriate. The very
next work he wrote was Ghosts, in which the
wife did not leave her husband. The results
of that wifely compliance were so horrible
that for many years Ghosts lay under the
veto of the English censor.
I allude merely in passing to the splendid
reality of his character-drawing and the
pungency of his situations, so terrifying in
their earnestness and sincerity, so purifying
and regenerating in proportion to their
ENGLISH DRAMA 57
ruthlessness. Another side of his genius is
the architectonic skill by which he rivals the
Athenian masters. He knows hardly any-
thing of underplots ; there is not a scene
or a character, hardly a word, which is not
a stone in a simple edifice — always necessary,
always adequate for the advancement of
the one purpose. As to his subject-matter,
he is (so far as England at any rate is con-
cerned) the father of the so-called " drama
of ideas," but he himself belongs to that
school only in the most general sense. Ibsen
has no social theory or political propaganda
or religious or ethical dogma, of any very
specialized sort, to advance. No specific
abuses or temporary " causes " claim him
as their opponent or champion. He is too
fundamental for that ; what he writes is
written sub specie ceternitatis , He wishes us
to revise our attitude towards life, to change
our notion of values. By him we are taught,
as by all great teachers, not so much what
to think as how to think, not action but the
reasoned basis of action. An ingenuous
tyro, who should study these dramas in order
to cleanse his way, would be perplexed to
find that in An Enemy of the People truth-
speaking at all costs is Stockmann's duty.
58 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
whereas in The Wild Buck it wrecks a home
and kills an innocent, affectionate child ;
that in Hedda Gabler a wife shoots herself
in order (as it appears) to avoid the im-
portunities of a lover, while in Gliosis a
woman who has been saved from infidelity
traces all the misfortunes of her family to
her own lack of initiative. But the secret
is that, for Ibsen and his followers, the
spring of action is not conventional morals,
but a far-seeing economy of happiness ; it
has been admirably expressed by Mr. Shaw :
"The real slavery of to-day is slavery to
ideals of goodness." Dogmatic morality is
an idol, prompting mere waste of character
and energy. The only criterion of goodness
in an act is its effect on happiness. If
morality demands that one should sacrifice
one's happiness and usefulness, so much the
worse for morality. Many of the furious
cavalry-charges, which have flung themselves
upon his lines, are in one sense justified.
Those who say he is immoral are right,
but it does not follow that they are right in
objecting to his immorality. Morals are the
codified expression of the current behaviour
of the day. A man who breaks the code
may be wicked ; he may equally well be the
ENGLISH DRAMA 59
apostle of a new morality, whose first duty is
to challenge the old. The whole mistake of
the early attacks upon Ibsen was that people
took him for a law-breaker of the first type,
whereas he belongs to the second. Such
teaching as his must of course be dangerous,
like all exploring expeditions ; a path is to
be made through a jungle infested by savage
beasts. And there will be camp-followers
to disgrace the march, because they have
joined, not for exploration, but for plunder.
Such, in brief, are the doctrine and
methods of Ibsen. What are their effects
in England ? The native playwrights of
our time form a highly variegated band,
but it may be divided with fair accuracy
into four divisions. One may here be dis-
missed summarily though respectfully — the
school represented by the late Stephen
Phillips and by Mr. Gordon Bottomley.
Though much of their work is magnificent,
a discussion of " the present renaissance "
must pass them by, since they have devoted
themselves to the " poetical " drama and
are manifestly in the technical tradition of
Browning and Tennyson, with little or no
specific relation to the spirit of our own time.
The second category, by far the most popular
60 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
and influential, practises an artificial and
theatrical criticism of contemporary manners.
A Of this school the most notable members
to-day are Sir Arthur Finer o and Mr. Henry
\ Arthur Jones. The third category contains
'^^only Mr. John Masefield. To the fourth
belong Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. Galsworthy,
^ Mr. Shaw, and, of deceased writers, George
Calderon and St. John Hankin. Let us
discuss these last three divisions in turn.
The first finds its "Morning Star" in
Oscar Wilde, who, if cleverness could suffice
for drama, would have been the greatest
master since Congreve of the Comedy of
Manners. The Importance of Being Earnest
is perhaps the best farce in existence, ex-
emplifying to admiration Wilde's magnifi-
cence of epigram, elegance of language,
deadness of soul. Wliat could be better
than the prospective mother-in-law's dismay
at finding that the suitor is a foundling, a
man whose career began by being dis-
covered in a handbag ? " You can hardly
imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would
dream of allowing our only daughter — a girl
brought up with the utmost care- — to marry
into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with
a parcel ? " The same brilliance is lavishly
ENGLISH DRAMA 61
spread over his serious plays. Perhaps the
finest epigram in the world occurs in Lady
Windermere's Fan : " What is a cynic ? "
— " A man who knows the price of every-
thing and the value of nothing." But is
this drama ? It does not help the action,
it throws little light on the character of
the man who utters it; Lord Darlington
is only a name, though one of the chief
personages in the play. That particular
scene is a celebrated blaze of epigrams.
" Wicked women bother one, good women
bore one. That is the only difference
between them." " Scandal is gossip made
tedious by morality." " In this world there
are only two tragedies. One is not getting
what one wants. The other is getting it."
But an orgy of confectionery is not a solid
meal, nor are these decadent blossoms
capable of making a play. Wilde's char-
acters are feeble utterly — either comic,
pouring forth brassy wit in season and out
of season ; or serious, mere gramophones
emitting platitudes on love, honour, or
social service. The old theatrical situations
which satisfied Robertson and Westland
Marston, the strained improbable crises
unreally handled, furbished up by a peerless
62 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
gift of wit in order to impress the uncritical
with a sense of ultra-modernity — such is
his work. We see him now as essentially
commonplace, a verdict which would have
sent him into a swoon.
Wilde is the earliest and most brilliant
member of what we may call the Neo-
British School. Succeeding writers do, to
be sure, exhibit special qualities, but the
seal of Wilde is upon them all. They are,
in short, the heirs of Robertson, who have
latterly obtained a spurious appearance of
freshness by a pretence of following Ibsen
or by a half-hearted attempt to follow him.
In the Robertsonian era the formula ran
thus. Take a simple love-story — a girl
with beauty and a heart of gold, a man
in a cavalry uniform ; this will charm the
audience into accepting any improbability
of detail. Next we insert dramatic effect.
This is done by attaching to one of the lovers
an incongruous parent. (In Caste there are
two, the lady's drunken father and the
hero's Plantagenet mother ; hence the long-
continued vogue of the whole.) The in-
congruous parent causes fun and trouble.
As a foil or antidote to hirn, introduce a
humble friend, who by dropping his (or her)
ENGLISH DRAMA 63
aitches will evince the goodness of his (or
her) heart. Punctuation consists in making
your •' immaculate swell " sit on his silk hat.
An " effective curtain " to each act is
secured by the mechanical intrusion of
something to make the audience jump.
Let the tipsy friend reel in and offer the
Duchess his mug of beer. Or the postman
(that most hard-worked of all theatrical
characters) will ring the bell ; and the
curtain goes down to " We are ordered to
India ! " or " Thank Heaven, my child is
found ! "
Most members of the Neo-British School
are aware that this kind of writing will not
do without some kind of disguise or revision.
For one thing, mere repetition has made
it stale beyond endurance. For another,
most of them have far too much intellect
and sense of artistic decency to be content
with the well-nigh incredible badness of the
typical mid-nineteenth-century play. And,
thirdly, there is Ibsen to count with ; people
may hate or despise or misunderstand
Ibsen as much as they please, but after
seeing a work of his they are no longer quite
so satisfied with their own favourite play or
type of play. Accordingly, the Neo-British
64 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
School is pseudo-Ibsenist or (if that sounds
too offensive) quasi-Ibsenist ; for one should
distinguish between those who have merely-
picked up Ibsenian tricks and those who
are really seeking to learn from him some-
thing new about life and art. Our one
reason for placing these latter in our second
category and not in our fourth is precisely
this, that Ibsen's influence upon them has
been too intermittent or slight for them to
break with dramatic Victorianism.
Accordingly the method of this school
is to write a play thoroughly conventional
at heart, and to tag it out with details or
flourishes which look like Ibsenism. The
audience finds nothing to cause hostility or
misgiving, and yet it has a delicious sense
of being in the movement, of facing the
music. Take the old Robert sonian formula,
but instead of a hero in the Heavy Dragoons
give us a hero in shirt-sleeves ; instead of
militiamen, talk of aviation ; and don't
make all your foreigners either fools or
scoundrels. You will then win the respect
due to antiquity together with the admi-
ration deserved by originality. Thus Mr.
Rudolf Besier's play, Don, made a notable
stir. There is the framework of a gentle
ENGLISH DRAMA 65
scholarly ecclesiastic and his wife, both
devoted to their brilliant son ; the " cho-
leric " old general and his wife, with a
sweet wise daughter. The brilliant son
and the sweet wise daughter are, one learns
with small astonishment, engaged to be
married. But now let us show we have a
sense of the Zeitgeist. Instead of a comic
Irishman or the sale of military plans to
a foreign foe, let us depict a domestic
problem. The son therefore runs away with
a married woman. Your pseudo-advanced
writer invariably reveals his calibre by this
assumption that the " problem-play " must
treat of marital infidelity : there is only
one sin — ^the Decalogue has become a mono-
logue. But it must be owned that Mr.
Besier has achieved novelty, since the
brilliant son aforesaid has eloped for quite
" innocent " reasons. The lady has a posi-
tive bogey-man for a husband, whose ex-
traordinary bristliness is killing her. The
hero, a most unworldly person, feels that
she must be taken away for a little rest
and petting ; he brings her to his own home,
and hands her over to his mother. The
husband pursues, and there follows an
elaborate contest between the gentle
66 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
ecclesiastic (who positively reeks of Christ-
church) and the fanatical Nonconformist
ranter. Such is pseudo-Ibsenism, as shown
by a favourable specimen, for Mr. Besier
is almost the best writer of the whole school ;
his dialogue and situations, in Don at any
rate, do not smell of the footlights.
A good deal of this praise must be given
also to Mr. Alfred Sutro, who in an amiable,
light-hearted, not too vigorous way has
given us credible and sincerely - written
scenes. But one cannot help feeling that
his work is actually composed in a theatre ;
there is too much of Wilde's artificial gloss.
It is somewhat quaint that Mr. Sutro's
best piece should be actually named The
Man in the Stalls. Mr. Somerset Maugham's
work has on the whole about the same value
as Mr. Sutro's, but he varies far more in
excellence. At one time he was terribly
unreal, the Robertson of an England which
supposed that when good Britons died they
went to Monte Carlo. At that period he
was perhaps the most repellently stagey of
the whole Neo-British School ; it is almost
incredible that Jack Straw was produced
as recently as 1908 ; the play is obsolete
beyond words, except that the foreign
ENGLISH DRAMA 67
ambassador speaks excellent English — a
daring stroke which reveals Mr. Maugham
upon his watch-tower, reporting the time of
day. Since then he has become equal to
Mr. Sutro ; The Land of Promise, despite
the rather violent severance of its first act
from the others, is good, forceful drama.
Mr. Arnold Bennett, in The Honeymoon^
Milestones, and The Title, has shown some
charm, originality, and " sense of the
theatre," but on the whole he has mildly
and unexcitingly followed the Neo-British
manner.
There remain three members of this
category whose dramatic reputation with
the majority of playgoers stands far higher.
Sir J. M. Barrie has charmed us all so
poignantly with his marvellous Peter Pan —
which is by this time not so much a play as
an institution, like Alice in Wonderland —
that one finds difficulty in considering him as
a dramatist. But most of his work consists
of traditional ideas aerated by a novel
mise-en-scene (as in The Admirable Crichton)
— ^the ethical and emotional standards of a
novelette draped in raiment of delightful
hue and texture. Mr. Henry Arthur Jones
has far more dramatic force and sincerity ;
68 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
he is, indeed, rightly regarded as the finest
playwright of this school. As Mr. Jones
vigorously repudiates Ibsen, for instance in
the preface to his Divine Gift, and as he
undoubtedly possesses technical skill of a
high order combined with a genuine interest
in ethical truth, one hesitates to attribute
his progress in stage-mastery and pungency
to Ibsen's influence. But he is none the
less Neo-British. His ideas are striking
and presented by excellent situations ; but
the treatment of them, despite admirable
apergus by the way, peters out into con-
ventional moralizing and futility. In The
Philistines, The Liars, Michael and his Lost
Angel, we feel that we are witnessing a play,
not a picture of life.
Thus do we finally reach the portentous
Sir Arthur Pinero. Of all contemporary
English dramatists whom one can take
seriously he is the most popular, the most
prolific, and the most meretricious ; one
cannot imagine the action in his plays as
happening in any but artificial light. His
earliest published work. The Magistrate
(revived as The Boy), is perhaps the best.
Granted the old conventions of impossible
misunderstandings, amazing and endless
ENGLISH DRAMA 69
coincidences, this farce is distinctly good ;
" Gone — and without a cry — ^brave fellow ! "
is an inspiration. But when one considers
that the plot hinges on the imposture of a
mother who for her own sake knocks off
several years from her son's age, with the
result that a stripling of more or less
marriageable age is presented as a boy
young enough to be kissed and petted by
various ladies, who one and all accept the
fraud without murmur — when one considers
this, one cannot award Sir Arthur any very
impressive laurels. The Magistrate is, how-
ever, his cleverest play ; of the others we
cannot attempt to give a catalogue. But
although Sir Arthur, in a letter prefaced to
Mr. W. L. Courtney's Idea of Tragedy, men-
tions with very scant respect the greatest
playwright since Shakespeare, his work is
the most instructive example that could
be chosen of Ibsen's influence on the Neo-
British School. Noticing the vogue which
the incomprehensible Norwegian was gain-
ing, even in London, Sir Arthur Pinero
seems to have exclaimed, " Britons never
shall be slaves ! " and produced The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray and The Notorious Mrs,
Ebbsmith. The latter person has been dis-
70 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
cussed earlier. As for her colleague, Mrs.
Tanqueray, the author has sat down to
devise a " strong scene " in the most ad-
vanced style — ^the conversation between
the stepmother and the man who is her
stepdaughter's accepted suitor, and whose
mistress the stepmother herself has been.
All the rest of the piece is scaffolding, and
the climax itself, failing of real cogency
and pathos, becomes merely sordid and
vexatious. The truth is that Pinero is
amazingly trivial. Preserving Mr. Panmure
deals with a governess who is kissed against
her will, and the whole action consists of
complications caused by the fact that she
will not reveal the identity of her admirer
(her employer) while her employer's wife
insists on trying to discover which of
their guests is guilty. And to this theme
the dramatist devotes, not one act, but
four !
Mr. Masefield's position is utterly different.
In downright genius he is one of the greatest
Englishmen now engaged upon literature.
In Pompey the Great we have simply a good
theatrical history-play. But The Tragedy
of Nan is a drama of extraordinary merit.
It is so sound in characterization, so realistic
ENGLISH DRAMA 71
in scene and thought, that one might boldly
label its author a semi-Ibsenist, did he not
exhibit a poetical charm, a splendour of
dark tinting, above all, a richness of atmos-
phere, which sunder him utterly from every
other dramatist of our day. Unfortunately
he does, in fact, stand alone at present in
this enthralling type of work wherein in-
tellect is not clouded, but illuminated, by
emotional sympathy and poetical imagina-
tion ; for Mr. Barker, who gave distinct
signs of it in Ann Leete, has passed over to
a post-Ibsenist manner.
Thus at last we come to the authors
whom I have put* into a third section — Mr.
Shaw, Mr. Barker, Mr. Galsworthy, St. John
Hankin, and George Calderon. Each of these
has special merits and faults, but there
can be no doubt that they form a distinct
body as compared with such writers as
Finer o or Masefield. They are the English
Ibsenists, the realist school. But before
we discuss them separately, let us be clear
as to what we mean by realism.
There are at least two sorts of reality. On
the one hand are the facts of life and nature
as we meet them every day ; on the other are
facts, not as we see them, but as they are.
72 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
There are (that is) two final ways of looking
at phenomena : isolated, as an animal sees
them ; grouped, as the Divine Mind sees
them, an organized whole. Between these
extremes lies the view of that divine animal,
Man. By the law of his intellect he groups
things so that he may understand them,
though he for ever groups them imperfectly.
The more scientific a man's brain, the more
he will systematize his knowledge of physical
facts ; he will understand more deeply and
more widely, in some measure ' thinking God's
thoughts after Him.' That is what is meant
by Science. The more poetical a man's
spirit, the more he will systematize his
sympathy with emotional fact ; the passions
and conduct of an individual will be viewed
more and more as the symbol and expression
of the Divine Spirit, expressing itself through
all humanity. That is the soul of Art. It
follows, then, that the artist never renders
things as they appear to the incurious gaze.
It cannot be said of him always that " he
touched nothing that he did not adorn,"
but it is always true that he touches nothing
that he does not alter. Set Watts to paint
the portrait of an actress or an alderman,
ask Keats to describe a nightingale's song.
ENGLISH DRAMA 73
Rodin to carve some trifle for the garden
of the Tuileries. From each you receive
more than you asked for — not the ware
of a tradesman, but the touch of an unseen
hand, the utterance of a voice hitherto
unheard.
Therefore, if reahsm be a form of art, it is
not the mere portrayal of isolated facts. If
it were, how would a picture be better than
a photograph, a lyric more moving than
a newspaper report ? The simple truth is,
that while transcendental literature works
at two removes from the lowest plane of
reality, realistic literature is still one remove
therefrom. The diviner art works more
inevitably in general truths ; the essences
of emotion are its very drink ; it speaks as if
the daily isolated things were half -forgotten
upon the dark earth. The other form of art
works in generalities too, that it may more
illuminatingiy expound the common experi-
ences which confront it. One artist ascends
the mountain that he may dwell nearer
heaven ; the other, that he may more clearly
discern his path across the earth — but he
does not stand upon the plain so long as the
artistic impulse is upon him. The maker
even of a realistic play uses the so-called
74 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
facts of life merely as raw material. Mr.
Galsworthy, as surely as M. Maeterlinck,
must select, alter, and combine, so that his
work may be an organized artistic whole.
His drama will not be a mere reflex of actual
events, in which endless interruptions and
irrelevancies obscure the lesson which he
seeks to inculcate.
It will now be clear what is meant when
the name " realist " is given to Shaw, Barker,
Galsworthy, and others. There are three
great processes of composition which we
may distinguish in the work of any dramatist.
The distinction is logical only, for the play-
wright carries on all three acts of creation
simultaneously. These three are to be
found in a realist writer quite as certainly as
in any other ; there is no omission of features
vital to art. The great and only difference
between the transcendentalist and the
realist lies in the relative importance at-
tached by them to each of the processes.
First, there is a series of scenes from life,
events, and conversations which may
actually have happened. Secondly, this
subject-matter is kneaded and shaped and
carved ; irrelevant things are left out ; the
significant events are made to grow out
ENGLISH DRAMA 75
of one another in a significant manner;
people are set in circumstances which throw
just the right illumination upon their
characters. Thirdly, the artist, as a master
of language, adds the charm of directness
I and wit to his dialogue. This last is by no
means superficial polish only. No writer
but the merely clever persifleur, like Wilde,
garnishes a bald situation with blazing but
imported epigrams. For the supremely
great author every word is a part of the
plot. Let me take a few instances almost at
random. On the first page of Mr. Thomas
Hardy's most dramatic novel, we are told
that the clergyman jestingly nicknamed an
old peasant " Sir John." This tiny joke,
like the breath of wind which dispatches an
avalanche upon its career, is the starting-
point of all that history of love and blood-
shed which is called Tess of the d' Urbervilles.
Shakespeare gives an amazingly skilful
instance in that scene of The Merchant of
Venice where Shylock entraps Antonio : his
life must be in the bond, but how insert it
without arousing fatal suspicions ? The
usurer, to defend his usury, quotes the
story of Jacob and Laban's flocks. This
puts the notion of Hebrews and flesh and
76 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
usury into Antonio's head. Mark his own
words : —
When did friendship take
A hyeed for barren metal of his friend ?
Thus, when the terms are mentioned, the
shock of surprise, which would have wrecked
the whole plot, is not felt. An equally vital
instance occurs in The Wild Duck, where
Gregers Werle directly causes the death of
little Hedwig by his choice of a metaphor.
All these three processes or features, which
one may briefly call photography, construc-
tion, and wit, are to be found as I said, in
the English Ibsenists. It only needs to be
added that there is perhaps an exaggeration
of photography in most of their work. But,
whatever their faults, they (with minor
writers of their type) form the only school of
British playwrights which practises dramatic
art as distinguished from merely theatrical
adroitness.
St. John Hankin produced seven plays :
The Two Mr. Wetherbys, The Return of the
Prodigal, The Charity that began at Home,
The Cassilis Engagement, The Last of the de
Mullins, and two one-act pieces. The Burglar
who failed and The Constant Lover. I take
this writer first because, though his work is
ENGLISH DRAMA 77
chronologically more recent than that of the
others, it is artistically earlier. Hankin is,
indeed, an interesting study in transition.
The Two Mr, Wetherhys has strong affinities
with the Neo-British School. The exposure
of the husband, through the discovery of a
music-hall programme in his pocket, is only
a symptom of this ; and the feebleness and
the staginess of all the characters, except
the extraordinary Dick, is a weakness in
execution, not in conception. But the
theatrical triviality of the theme, above all
the frantically absurd " happy ending " by
which the devil-may-care husband belies
his whole character and the trend of the
whole play so that the curtain may descend
as of old upon couples instead of units —
these ghastlinesses mark the pre-Ibsenist
born too late. The other works show a
quite different tone. Even the first of them
— The Return of the Prodigal — is so much
more mature and certain in its handling that
I cannot repel the suspicion that The Two
Mr, Wetherhys is a youthful production
brushed up for the stage a good many years
after it was written. But The Prodigal
evinces real observation and artistic sin-
cerity. It is the story of a wastrel who
78 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
really is a wastrel ; he is not a " victim of
circumstances " or "a rough diamond," or
a good trusting fellow betrayed and badgered
by his villainous rival through three acts,
only to save the heroine from a burning mill
in the fourth. No ; he is by birth inefficient
— a gentleman, good-natured, and discreet,
but material prosperity flees from his most
crafty stalking. There are such people, and
Hankin gives us a first-rate study of one of
them, a study both amusing and pathetic,
unmarred by a cowardly " happy ending."
In The Charity that began at Home a lady
decides to "do good " by inviting to her
country-house people whom no one else will
entertain. She thus gathers round her an
extraordinary group of nuisances — an ogre
of a governess who insists on poor Lady
Denison learning der die das at the busiest
hours of the day ; a terribly common
commercial traveller ; a shady ex-lieutenant
of " the Munsters " ; a positively paralysing
bore of an Anglo-Indian colonel of the
" Poona-Horse-my-boy " type, and so forth.
The discovery by these wretches of the
reason Lady Denison had for inviting them
makes an effective scene, but the play as a
whole falls flat, because Hankin never made
ENGLISH DRAMA 79
up his mind whether he intended comedy or
mere farce. The Cassilis Engagement pro-
duces the same effect of amiabihty and
weakness, though here the author is very
successful in his country-house atmosphere.
But the whole rests on a psychological im-
possibility. For a youth of the type repre-
sented by Geoffrey Cassilis to become en-
gaged to a girl like Ethel Borridge is as near
a miracle as a respectable Ibsenist can get.
The dialogue, here as elsewhere, is admirable
— Si kind of compromise between the wit of
Wilde and the wit of Shaw. We still feel
the spirit of transition, another symptom
of which is the exaggerated commonness of
Ethel and her mother. It shows what
Hankin thought of his audience : " They are
so stupid and vulgar themselves that they
won't see I mean these women as vulgar
unless I make them positively gutter-bred."
His best work is undoubtedly The Last of
the de Mullins — ^the story of a girl who de-
liberately breaks loose from the benumbing
life in a home ruled by faded memories of
land-owning and lineage, in order to find
life and interest. Cool and practical, but
not impatient of her emotions, rather in-
spired by them, she is a curiously charming
80 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
figure. The whole work has a tender richness
and appeal. Both this and (still more) The
Prodigal are Ibsenist, but at two removes,
for they were clearly written under the
influence of Shaw.
Mr. John Galsworthy shows the strongest
contrast to Hankin. He seeks neither grace
nor sublimity ; his sole aim is reform.
Moved to indignation by some social in-
justice he takes us by the scruff of the neck
and forces us to stare at the horror. His
hard, driving, doctrinaire manner is often
terribly inartistic ; but at least it makes for
an athletic simplicity, a clear-cut structure.
Yet he seems to forget a vital truth. One
aim of the drama should be to entertain. I
do not mean to amuse ; I employ the word
" entertain " because I cannot think of a
better term for the effect of art : an austere
but solid satisfaction, a quiet possession of
one's soul, a refreshment of the emotions,
which is the ministration of genuine tragedy
as of genuine comedy. Mr. Galsworthy often
seems too busy pommelling some special
form of white-waistcoated iniquity to trouble
about eternal truths. His less known and
less effective plays are in this respect more
successful. The Eldest Son conveys a certain
ENGLISH DRAMA 81
grace of background — that atmosphere of a
country-house which Mr. Galsworthy has so
admirably given in his novels. The Pigeon
is half-way between emotional drama, as in
The Eldest Son, and the nagging admonitions
of Justice, It contains good social satire
and well-drawn types, especially an admir-
able Frenchman with at least one noble
speech which clearly marks the writer's
kinship with Shaw and Hankin. Ferrand
is indeed the prodigal Eustace of Hankin,
with less calculation but more alertness and
profundity. The speech is Galsworthy's own
expression — no other dramatist of our time
could have penned it : —
Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been
in three institutions. They are palaces.
One may eat upon the floor — ^though it is
true — for kings — they eat too much of skilly
there. One little thing they lack — ^Ihose
palaces. It is understanding of the 'uman
heart. In them tame birds pluck wild birds
naked . . . Oh ! Monsieur, I am loafer,
waster — what you like — for all that poverty
is my only crime. If I were rich, should I
not be veree original, 'ighly respected, with
soul above commerce, travelling to see the
world ? And that young girl, would she
not be " that charming ladee," " veree chic,
you know ! " And the old Tims — ^good old-
6
82 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
fashioned gentleman — drinking his hquor
well. Eh ! bien — ^what are we now ? Dark
beasts, despised by all.
The Silver Box (1906) is the earliest of the
plays. A dissipated young man of fair
position, and a dissipated young man of
no position, both commit the same offence.
Each steals something to spite some one
whom he dislikes — the undergraduate a
woman's reticule, the ex-groom a silver box.
For the undergraduate everything is made
easy by his father the M.P., by a discreet
solicitor, and by the smooth negligences of
the law. No one stands up for the ex-
groom, and he goes to prison loudly protesting
against the advantage given to his brother-
offender by money and influence. Con-
struction is given by the ex-groom's wife,
who is a charwoman employed by the
undergraduate's mother, and by the fact
that the stolen box is the property of the
undergraduate's father. The woman is ac-
cused of stealing the box. After denying
the theft she goes home to find her husband
in possession of the plunder. ^Vhile she is
reproaching him, they are surprised by a
detective sent by the M.P. The third act
is concerned entirely with the scene in a
ENGLISH DRAMA 83
police court, where the sinister contrast be-
tween rich immunity and helpless poverty
is demonstrated with pungency. On the
artistic side the play is very good. All the
characters are alive, and work together
admirably to produce dramatic effect. There
is nothing exaggerated or strained ; the
collision in the last act is acute but quite
naturally induced. The propagandist side
of the drama does not fully concern us. It
is, however, important to notice that Mr.
Galsworthy entirely agrees with the com-
ment of the unhappy Jones : " Call this
justice ? What about 'im ? 'E got drunk !
'E took the purse — 'E took the purse, but
it's Hs money got Hm off ! Justice ! " With
this he agrees, and his whole aim is to im-
press us with the contention that men are
not equal before the law. It is not his
1 contention, but his method of handling it,
with which we are concerned, and to which
we shall return.
Justice is more simple in outline — a plain
I heart-rending story of a weak young man
iwho, to save the woman he loves from a
[brutal husband, determines to leave the
I country with her, and for this purpose
I swindles his employers. The fraud is dis-
84 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
covered before he escapes ; the result is prison
for three years and the utter ruin of his
life and of the woman's. The whole second
act is filled by an elaborate law-court scene,
where Mr. Galsworthy's doctrinaire manner
reaches its apotheosis in an extraordinarily
long speech by the counsel for the defence,
in which (here is the vital point) the view
taken by the playwright himself is given with
complete exactness as well as eloquence.
On the stage it must take pretty nearly ten
minutes to deliver — a portentous length.
But Mr. Galsworthy intends to give the
public, not what it wants or thinks it wants,
but what it ought to want. The speech is
not excused by beauty or surprising strokes,
like numberless orations in Shakespeare.
It has nothing but a direct and simple
vigour. "In those four minutes the boy
before you has slipped through a door,
hardly opened, into that great cage which
never again quite lets a man go — ^the cage
of the Law."
The third and fourth acts depict photo-
graphically the prison life of this youth, and
the maimed creature w^ho at length comes
forth with a ticket-of -leave. He cannot
keep employment, he has to forge references,
ENGLISH DRAMA 85
he does not report himself to the poHce;
they come for him again, and he escapes only
by instant suicide. In artistry Justice is
the extreme case of photographic work, and
must take low rank. As a piece of pro-
pagandism it is most effective.
On these two plays the present dramatic
reputation of Mr. Galsworthy chiefly rests,
for his recent Skin Game recalls The Eldest
Son without equalling it ; the atmosphere
is admirably conveyed, but the dramatic
tone is that of diluted melodrama. He is
far too much of a pamphleteer and too little
of a poet. Mr. Galsworthy's social sense, his
burning zeal for righteousness in the State,
command respect and emulation. And
every citizen has a right — it is his duty —
where he thinks institutions cruel and
wasteful, to protest with all his strength.
And he may make his novel, even his
tragedy, a vehicle for such protests. But
it is vital beyond words that he should
beware how he makes his appeal. Never
must he deliver a definite attack upon a
definite abuse. If he does, his success may
be tremendous at the moment, but it is
dearly bought. He will always be re-
membered as a partisan ; and his next pro-
86 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
nouncement will be viewed, by all except
those convinced by his first, with a potential
hostility fatal to the appreciation of art.
They will be alert, but with the wrong kind
of alertness ; the really eternal things he
has to say have been terribly discounted
beforehand. No ; our prophet of the stage
must alter, not the catchwords of the hour,
not the policy of this year, but the human
heart, the attitude of mind from which these
policies spring and over which such catch-
words exercise their dominion. He must so
speak and teach that the foolish opinion
becomes, not merely discredited, but im-
possible.
We turn now to Mr. Granville Barker, j
who has deserved better of the English !
theatre than any man living. As actor, \
as manager, as producer, as playwright, he I
stands in the foremost rank ; he is also one I
of the chief agitators for a National Theatre, j
His plays are The Marrying of Ann Leete, \
The Voysey Inheritance, Waste, The Madras ^
House, and Prunella, the last being written i
in conjunction with Mr. Laurence Housman. I
Prunella is not drama at all, but a sort of
fairy fantasy ; it is with the others, the i
realistic dramas, that we are now concerned. I
ENGLISH DRAMA 87
Ann Leete is a picture of upper-class life
in the eighteenth century. A young girl,
daughter of a soulless politician, is to be
married in order to further his party
schemes. She learns to see through him
and her suitor. Before her eyes, moreover,
is her elder sister, who has been sacrificed
in the same way and is now to be divorced
because her father has deserted her husband's
party. Suddenly Ann throws the whole
sordid system over and asks the gardener
to marry her ; she will rather have the first
man she sees, provided he is honest and
healthy. The play concludes with the only
j beautiful scene in Mr. Barker's dramas, the
home-coming of the strange couple to their
poor little cottage.
Many have thought that Ann Leete is a
different type of play from the rest, de-
ceived by the simple charm of the close and
by the eighteenth-century garnishing of
post-chaises, duels, Brighton, and the like.
Really it is much the same ; the burden of
the whole is ; " Away with shams ! We
don't even know what we want. Let us
find out, and do it." Still, there is in this
first of Mr. Barker's works a touch of archaic
beauty, in virtue of which Ann Leete claims
88 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
affinity with Prunella as well as with
Waste,
The Voysey Inheritance depicts a legacy of
dishonour. A young solicitor, admitted into
partnership by his father, discovers some-
thing wrong in the administration of certain
trusts. On investigation he finds that his
father has for many years been guilty of
shady manipulations. Instructed to invest
money at a low and safe percentage, he has
speculated in high, dangerous percentages,
paying the correct dividends out of his gains.
This was done in the first instance to get
the firm out of difficulties. When the
dangers were past, the buccaneering instinct
prompted him to begin again ; it has not only
created his income but added zest to the
grey decorum of a solicitor's career. The
father, after detailing all this in a curiously
clever gospel of immorality, duly dies, and
Edward Voysey is at the head of affairs,
which are now in a bad state. His first idea
is to proclaim everything and take the
consequences. But he cannot bear to ruin
the small investors, and determines to save
some of them first. This he can only do
by continuing his father's tactics ; he works
on, expecting exposure day by day. Soon
ENGLISH DRAMA 89
an old friend of the father, who has no
confidence in the son, announces that he
wishes to withdraw his own large invest-
ments from the firm. This precipitates
matters. He is told the facts, but is bought
off (for the sake of the poor clients) by a
promise of repayment. The end is a picture
of young Voysey settling down to a life
of toil in order to repair his father's
ravages.
Waste is another simply-conceived story —
that of a young statesman, Henry Trebell, a
genius who has the originality to conceive
great schemes of reform, the talent necessary
to organize them, and the tenacity required
for achievement. His ruin, and the wreck
of all his glorious plans, springs from a
moment's madness in which he becomes
entangled with a married woman, a pas-
sionately egotistical but otherwise entirely
null person. The result of this liaison is
depicted with unflinching candour. Mrs.
O'Connell, unknown to Trebell, undergoes
an illegal operation, which kills her. All
this becomes known, and his colleagues
find it necessary to throw Trebell over.
The tragic fact, that a pretty shell of a
woman can ruin real work and genuine hopes.
90 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
is here depicted with splendid skill and
verisimilitude.
The Madras House is less strong, but more
complicated and varied. There is no real
plot, or rather the formal plot is strangely-
sundered from the genuine interest of the
play ; it recounts merely the sale of a great
costume business to a commercial but ro-
mantic American. On this peg is hung
a magnificent fabric of discussion, mainly
about the social position of women. Female
assistants in large shops, the living-in system,
the life of the normal married woman in
England, the effect on men's work of the
presence and co-operation of women — ^these
topics are handled with brilliant originality
and fluent eloquence. The study is made
dramatic by the contrast between Henry
Huxtable and his partner Constantine Mad-
ras. Huxtable is positively steeped in home
affections and Victorian stolidities ; one
feels that he could not be happy in Heaven
without antimacassars and a marble clock.
Madras is elaborately contrasted with him
at every point. Not only has he so revolted
against English home life that he has de-
serted his wife and son many years ago ;
Mr. Barker, in order to provide the external
ENGLISH DRAMA 91
point of view, has actually converted him
to Mohammedanism, and conferred upon
him a house and harem in an Arabian village.
This person's comments on the Englishman's
attitude towards women are both novel and
deadly, provoking a healthy reaction or
commanding revolution. The upshot is that
women are a disturbing and destructive
factor in the ordinary business of the world ;
confined to the house in the Eastern fashion,
they would perform their function of bright-
ening life and soothing the wearied soul.
We thus arrive, by another road, at the
same conclusion as that to be derived from
Waste,
In describing the plots of these plays, I
have omitted what appears to many their
strongest feature. It is a significant com-
ment on Mr. Barker's art that I could so
omit them. In all the four he has devoted
remarkable skill to depicting a number of
people, usually members of one family,
whom he distinguishes from one another by
the subtlety of his character-drawing. The
instance of the Voysey family is celebrated.
They swarm over the stage — ^the swindling
father ; the placidly deaf mother ; the
rather priggish son, Edward (the hero) ; the
92 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
eldest son Trenchard, a clever and callous
barrister ; other sons, Booth Voysey the
absurd domestic bully, and Hugh the artist ;
then daughters, a daughter's fiance, a son's
fiancee and sons' wives. There was a pre-
monition of this tour de force in the Leete
family, which in the third act holds a kind
of review of these household troops. In
Waste the politicians and their equally
political wives and sisters interweave them-
selves in an ingenious but confusing pattern.
Mr. Barker has received great praise —
deserved praise — for this virtuosity, and
seems to recognize in it his special metier.
At any rate he reaches the climax in the
first act of The Madras House, where he
hurls at one's head no less than six daughters
of the Huxtable line, all alike as lead pencils
after some weeks' use (as he says himself),
differing only in length, sharpening, and
wear. This first act is a mist of daughters,
who circle round their goaded parent like
matadors round a Spanish bull.
All this, of course, is so much photography,
like a great deal of Mr. Wells' work. Both
Mr. Wells and Mr. Barker have been much
lauded for it, and with little discrimination.
Such descriptions are only the raw material
ENGLISH DRAMA 93
of a novel or a play. If a man makes it an
integral part of his completed work, he is
not necessarily to be praised for doing so, any
more than a cook is to be eulogized because
she has chosen the proper ingredients ; the
proof of the pudding is not entirely in her
good intentions. If anyone will compare
the photograph work of Love and Mr, Lewis-
ham with that of The Return of the Native
he will appreciate this distinction.
Now, Mr. Barker's observation produces
admirable work — let that be heartily granted.
The question is, how does he employ these
photographs ? His intention, of course, is
to give atmosphere, in which we can sym-
pathize with the actors and understand the
bearings of the drama. And it generally is
thus useful. In Ann Leete the family tree
bears little dramatic fruit ; it seems to have
been shown merely to interest the audience
in the elaborate entanglement of aunts and
sons-in-law — it would not be missed from
the genuine action. The Voysey Inheritance
marks a definite advance. Old Voysey shows
up far better at home ensconced in this
jungle of relatives. Still more to the purpose
is the fact that we can see the kind of people
young Edward has to deal with, in his
94 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
attempt to put things right at all costs to
his family. Even so, however, great masses
of the dialogue are only first-rate padding,
especially the delightful Major, whose per-
sonality is that of a strenuous blue-bottle.
The statesmen and political ladies of Waste
show a further improvement. Carefully
studied for their own sakes, they are more
germane to the action than the Voyseys.
It is essential that Trebell should be under-
stood in contrast with the more ordinary
types of legislator ; and Mr. Barker does
give us a valuable background, the governing-
class atmosphere, with extraordinary skill.
Finally, in The Madras House this aspect is
more dramatic again. If we are to study
domesticity, it is essential to give an elabo-
rately clear picture of one man's home life.
This dramatist's writings exhibit a second
characteristic of even greater moment — ^the
set discussion. I do not, of course, mean
only the working out of a situation by talk.
Every dramatist above the mask-and-re-
volver level practises that. I refer to the
habit of set debate, discussion almost as
elaborate and self-conscious as in a debating
club. It is herein that Mr. Barker is most
advanced — ^I will not commit myself to
ENGLISH DRAMA 95
saying towards what he has advanced ; but
he has certainly gone beyond Ibsen. In this
regard Ann Leete does show an authentic
difference from the later plays ; there is no
debate at all. But The Voysey Inheritance
has a good deal of it. The Madras House has
more, and it is not vital to the plot. Waste is
a positive portent from the present point of
view. Trebell is talking all the time, and he
talks like a Blue-book drastically revised by a
wary archangel. Around him is a whole galaxy
of lesser talkers, all mouthpieces for various
opinions. The only fine creation is Amy
O'Connell, but she is magnificently drawn.
P^The most distinguished member of this
school is Mr. Bernard Shaw ; among the
writers whom we are discussing he is not
only the most brilliant, he is the most like
Ibsen. In his evidence before the Com-
mission on the Censorship he remarked that
his special work was the composition of
immoral plays. This boast is the clue to
his art as it is to that of his Norwegian pre-
decessor. Realizing the waste that comes
from a blind adoration of the status quo^ he
insists on revising current conventions ; if
anything has been unquestioned for more
than a dozen years it is in his eyes open to
96 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
the worst suspicion. Mr. Shaw's method is
to take a romantic situation, dear to the
unreal stage of pre-Ibsen days, and to
develop that situation in his own way — a
way novel, and therefore literally shocking,
to the unwary spectator, but (as its author
claims) thoroughly true to life. Thus The
DeviVs Disciple contains the melodramatic
conception of a wastrel who takes a good
man's place at the gallows, and so saves him
for his wife and his work. Now, beyond all
question, the seasoned playgoer expects two
things. One is a mass of heroics about self-
sacrifice. Anyone could write them : " I've
been the devil's disciple throughout my
life ; but, by Heaven, in my death I'll serve
something or Some One higher than that ! "
But the Shavian leopard cannot change its
spots ; Dick Dudgeon merely explains that
when the soldiers came for the minister and
arrested himself by mistake, though one
word would have taken the noose from his
own neck and put it round another man's,
he found he simply could not utter it. The
other feature that was inevitable a few years
ago is a sudden love for the minister's wife
springing up in Dudgeon's heart at the
critical hour : *' Yes, I love her ! And how
ENGLISH DRAMA 97
could my love show itself more nobly than
by saving her husband at the cost of my own
worthless life ? And she shall — ^never —
know ! " Nothing of the kind. He has
little interest in the lady, but he cannot save
himself at the expense of an absent man —
that is all. At this point should be related
a most exasperating but laughable proof of
the strength of tradition. When The DeviVs
Disciple was first produced, its author was
out of England. The part of Dick Dudgeon
was acted by no less an artist than Sir
Johnston Forbes-Robertson. Now, in spite
of the obvious trend of the action, the spirit
of the play, the very words of the dialogue, the
actor was so steeped in theatrical tradition
that, in the midst of his colloquy with the
minister's wife, he surreptitiously lifted a curl
of her hair and kissed it. Could anything show
more plainly through what a mass of dead con-
vention the new drama has to dig its way ?
Of this anti-romantic method Ccesar and
Cleopatra, in spite of its gorgeous setting
and august personages, is in all essentials
another example. The mightiest Julius is
here little more than the Shavian spirit
wearing a breastplate and similar trappings ;
I hasten to add that he is delightful beyond
98 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
words — one of the most virile, fresh, gripping
personahties in Hterature. He passes through
the play, the incarnation of inspired com-
mon-sense, pricking mercilessly the bubbles
of vanity, sham ideals, and hypocrisy, spar-
ing neither others nor himself. An oppor-
tunist in detail, he has a genuine ideal,
peace and sane government for the Roman
world.
Mr. Shaw's most recent plays are Heart-
break House and Back to Methuselah, The
former claims to present in the manner of
{e.g.) Tchekof the chaotic state of con-
temporary English society and ideas ; its
technique is clever, but no less chaotic than
its theme. Back to Methuselah consists of
a preface and five short plays depicting
and discussing the necessity to extend in-
definitely the length of human life. In this
work Mr. Shaw passes practically outside
the purview of dramatic criticism. On the
one hand, these i\ve "parts" are (strictly
speaking) not plays at all, but static pre-
sentations of phases in the history of Man's
relation to the conditions of his life. But,
on the other hand, Mr. Shaw has not tried
to write drama at all, in the ordinary sense.
His prefaces have always been important;
ENGLISH DRAMA 99
but here the preface is the main part of the
book, while the plays are merely long
appendices. He puts forward a history of
biological theory and develops therefrom a
sketch of what he regards as the sound
scientific religion of the future. Man must
evolve the power to live for an indefinitely
long period, because only so can he fulfil the
purpose of the Life-Force. All this is set
forth with an erudition, a philosophic vigour
and breadth of comprehension, which awake
the liveliest admiration and gratitude. Be-
side this preface the plays themselves are
like the performances wherewith school-
children are encouraged to realize the great-
ness of Alfred or Cromwell.
For several reasons we must not attempt
a complete survey of Mr. Shaw's work. Let
us merely note certain dominant facts. One
point that he presses ruthlessly upon us is
the importance of instinct. We saw how
Richard Dudgeon's " heroism " was analysed
as neither cynicism nor divinity, but blind
impulse. So too in Blanco Posnet the
abandoned scoundrel acts like a courageous
gentleman, and curses himself afterwards for
doing so ; instinct forces him to risk his life
by surrendering his horse to the lone woman
1
100 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF 1|
and her sick child. Major Barbara has an |
instinct for saving men from themselves '-!
which survives even the collapse of what
she thought most fundamental in her life.
In Androcles and the Lion we observe
the same power of impulse ; none of the
martyrs, different in type as they are, acts
from deliberate valour or calculation or even
clearly understood religious belief. Lavinia
can give no reason for her sacrifice of life ;
Ferrovius flings away his crown of glory
because war is in his veins; and the
wretched Spintho, who seeks martyrdom
that his rascally life may be followed by
eternal joy, flings away his scheme at the
last moment — ^through instinct again.
It is on these lines that Mr. Shaw studies
love between the sexes, a subject to which,
more than any other, he has devoted his
rare psychological insight and sincerity of
expression. Man and Superman contains
the fullest account of his theory. In the
first place, love has nothing to do with
intellect, compatibility, wisdom, public
spirit, perception of beauty or of noble
character ; it is simply Nature (instinct
again, the instinct of the Universe) which
throws two people into one another's
ENGLISH DRAMA ^ ^ i :' > Igi
arms. And secondly, it is the woman who
woos, the man who is won ; the woman
who pursues, the man who — runs away,
to be blunt. In this view it must be owned
that Shaw has support from two great
authors who certainly never heard of Ibsen ;
namely Shakespeare and Dickens. The
Gloria and Valentine of You never can Tell
are trembling combatants in this duel of
sex; more hardy fighters are Charteris
and Julia in The Philanderers; Widowers^
Houses presents the same type, but of com-
moner grain, in Harry Trench and Blanche
Sartorius ; similar, in a more delicate and
repressed manner, are Major Barbara and
Cusins ; the same conflict, more poignant
perhaps than ever, thrills through John
BulVs Other Island, Getting Married is no
duel of this kind ; it is a general engagement,
horse, foot, and guns, between four men
and four women. But Man and Superman
is the most elaborate presentation, and with
finely dramatic audacity it includes an
actual flight of the man, breaking records
indeed in his motor-car, but nevertheless
overtaken on his way to a Mohammedan
country where, as he says, men are pro-
tected from women.
W THE PHESENT RENAISSANCE OF
This great play leads us on to the next
topic — Mr. Shaw's ability and usefulness as
a constructive thinker. For the third act,
the famous dream sometimes separately
played under the title Don Juan in Hell, is
at once the most highly-wrought instance of
the dramatic discussion above referred to,
and an apparently complete pronouncement
of the writer's positive philosophy. As
argumentative eloquence it is one of the
glories of English literature ; as a gospel
it is a lugubrious failure. The high mission
of Man is to carry on the will of the Universe ;
Heaven is a state in which his efforts to
understand that will are to be unclouded by
the preoccupations of the flesh. But what
the will of the world is we are not told, and
the goal of Man is — ^to go on striving towards
a goal, the latter goal being apparently
unknown. This is but a vague boon in place
of an orthodox Heaven, just as Mr. Shaw's
much adored Life-Force is an unsatisfactory
substitute for a personal Deity. There is
in this, however, little to disturb us, unless
we are to demand perfection from our
leaders. Shaw is not a builder, but a de-
stroyer. To create a new world is noble and
necessary ; it is equally necessary and little less
ENGLISH DRAMA 103
noble to clear the ground of whatever false
creeds and sham civilizations encumber it.
More than any other, Mr. Shaw is a
master of the dramatic epigram. In sheer
brilliance, amazing as he is, Congreve and
Wilde perhaps surpass him ; but there is an
immense distinction to be made. Congreve
and Wilde seem to have written plays for
the sake of working off epigrams. Shaw uses
his wit to point the play. Wilde's epigrams
are fireworks ; Shaw's are beacons. A-Miat
could be better than this from Candida ?
MoRELL : Eugene, my boy : you are
making a fool of yourself. There's a piece
of wholesome plain speaking for you.
Maechbanks : Oh, do you think I don't
know all that ? Do you think that the
things people make fools of themselves about
are any less real and true than the things
they behave sensibly about ?
This is more than clever. It is an
astounding illumination to almost every one
who hears it for the first time, both amusing
him and teaching him wisdom. Still more,
it reveals the secret of Eugene's terrible
power — ^^that of a naked soul whose weapon
is an indifference to the ready grin of the
crowd at the man who does not hide his
feelings. Through this power he reveals the
104 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
real woman behind Miss Garnett's brassy
respectability, the inmost soul of the super-
ficially benevolent Candida, the unsuspected
weakness of Morell the clergyman. So with
Larry Doyle's comparison of an Englishman
to a caterpillar in the first act of John BulVs
Other Island : the caterpillar makes himself
look like a leaf so that the birds may over-
look him, while he devours the real leaves ;
so does the Englishman pretend to be a fool
that clever people may not meddle with him
while he eats up all the real fools. This
makes us laugh at the time, and it is the
quintessence of all the rest of the play.
Broadbent wins a seat in Parliament and a
wife by his apparently whole-hearted idiocy.
Let us finally point to one more dramatist,
the lamented George Calderon, whose Fountain
is a play of extraordinary merit. Prefixed to
it is a little jewel of a preface in which Mr,
Calderon repudiates the charge (or eulogium)
of Shavianism ; he claims to have expressed
" a truth which never entered the Shavian
head." This truth is hinted at in the motto
(taken from Longfellow, of all pre-Ibsenists
under the sun !) : " That which the fountain
sends forth returns again to the fountain."
The play deals with slum-work. A
ENGLISH DRAMA 105
spirited girl goes to live among the poor and
thriftless. She does all she can to cheer and
help them, even instituting a pawnshop of
a most unbusinesslike kind. Then, finding
(naturally enough) that she has too little
money, she asks her solicitors to improve
her investments. They refuse. She changes
her solicitors, gets more money for her
work, but is daunted to hear almost at
the same time that the rents of her flock
have been raised. And so the thing goes
on, the exactions of the slum-landlord keep-
ing pace with her endeavours to aid the
poor. Her rage against the oppressor grows
almost hourly, till she finds by accident that
the landlord is herself, and the increase of
funds for social work has been obtained by
rackrenting the objects of her charity. The
whole thing is written with strength and
ingenious simplicity. The dialogue is charm-
ingly crisp and witty, the atmosphere rich
and convincing. Of all modern English plays
it is the only one not by Mr. Shaw which is
comparable to Mr. Shaw's best work.
If I am to sum up my view of the English
Ibsenists, it is this. Hankin is a blend of
the old stagey school represented by Pinero,
of Ibsenism as expounded in England by
106 THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF
Shaw, and of the superficial society-comedy
cultivated by Wilde. Mr. Galsworthy is a
propagandist who uses his " sense of the
theatre " and his perception of psychology
too often as an engine of controversy. Mr.
Barker is almost as much of a pamphleteer,
but also more of an artist. A little insistent
and shrill, he has carried the Ibsen manner
into new and dubious developments. Mr.
Shaw is a great artist, a superb wit, and a
preacher of doctrines too often unsatisfying
even when they are satisfactory. Calderon
is a Shavian with no Shavian shibboleths.
Of the school as a whole it may be said that
they are good workmen, overrated as apostles
and decried as charlatans. Hankin, Barker,
and Galsworthy are good dramatists in the
sense in which the man who made this
writing-table was a good workman ; but
he was not a Hepplewhite or a Sheraton,
neither are they Ibsens. There are two
reasons for the unduly high praise given to
these playwrights by many excellent critics.
Firstly, they deserve great attention, if not
applause, for the opinions which they hold
and expound. But this has nothing in the
world to do with their merits as playwrights.
(It is neglect of this obvious distinction, by
ENGLISH DRAMA 107
the bye, which has caused Mr. Shaw to
lavish amazing eulogies upon that third-rate
writer, Brieux.) Secondly, they do their
work sincerely and well, and English play-
goers compare them, not with Ibsen, but
with their English predecessors and con-
temporaries. When Robinson Crusoe, after
many years spent in conversation with a
sohtary parrot, found a companion in Man
Friday, he did not at once complain of his
primitive costume or his taste in the arts.
Nor does the cultivated playgoer pick holes
in The Voysey Inheritance or The Return
of the Prodigal after the lucubrations of
Robertson, Marston, and their kin. Neverthe-
less our present leaders are mostly but good
second-rate writers if viewed by really high
standards. Mr. Shaw is undoubtedly above
this level, but it is legitimate to conjecture
that his best achievement lies behind him.
A splendid feature of this renaissance is
the rise of repertory theatres in Birmingham,
Glasgow, Dublin, and elsewhere. These are
a welcome sign that the provinces are be-
ginning to escape from the real blight
of provincialism —that humble waiting on
London for the scraps of inferior bread
which she chooses to fling. Even now, for the
108 RENAISSANCE OF ENGLISH DRAMA
majority of our people the discussion set up
in this essay is an academic discussion only ;
the Renaissance of English Drama passes
us by, unless we have a taste for reading
plays or are able to visit London. Many
an English city, renowned to the ends of the
earth for its commerce and material enter-
prise, is content to see in its theatre from
year's end to year's end nothing better than
loose French farces produced at second-hand,
or miserably empty and derivative English
pieces sent on " the road " as " London
successes." But of late, as we said, there are
signs, not only of renewed life in the drama
itself, but in the popular feeling about that
form of art. The high cost of travel and
other difficulties are compelling provincial
towns to forgo the work sent down from
London, and willy-nilly to foster local
amateur enterprise. To exchange the ordi-
nary revue, presented by jaded third-rate
professionals, for Twelfth Night or The Silver
Box, presented by enthusiastic amateurs,
is an immense reform. We may yet see
dramatic art once more a function of the
national culture.
THE NATURE AND METHODS
OF DRAMA
DESPITE the vast accumulation of
written and oral criticism which has
been devoted to particular plays, to
acting and stage management, to the types
of drama, and to drama itself as distin-
guished from other forms of art, there is
room, and even demand, for a plain and
comparatively brief statement setting forth
the principles on which all sound dramatic
work is constructed. Anyone who attempts
such a statement must be fearlessly dogmatic :
detailed reservations and periodical expres-
sions of self-distrust, though manifestly re-
quired in an elaborate disquisition, would
impair the usefulness of a mere introduction
to the subject. This dogmatic method can
mislead no one ; the alleged facts are derived
from induction, and the reader from moment
to moment may test them by reference to
any play which he thinks fit to select.
Considerations of space have made it neces-
109
I
110 THE NATURE AND METHODS
sary to omit all save quite necessary allusions
to well-known theories.
" Drama " is a Greek word meaning
" action," " thing done," and it might there-
fore be supposed that a play is merely the
reproduction, by imitation, of some act or
series of acts. Not so ; the name points
to the artistic medium, not the thing pre-
sented and as presented. All that it implies
is that the artist uses, not pigments or
musical notes, but speaking and moving
human beings, as his raw material. An
imitation by real people of such an event
as Caesar's landing in Britain, or the sealing
of Magna Charta, is by no means necessarily
dramatic, however exciting the spectacle,
however important the event portrayed.
It may be theatrical — ^that is, it may, by
exaggerated gestures, tones, and language,
amid a skilful setting, convey an impres-
sion of momentousness ; but theatricality
and drama are not the same thing. A true
definition can be gathered only from the
achievement of those whom the world in
general has agreed to look upon as good
dramatists.
What, then, is that feature, or what are
those features, which all plays exhibit ?
OF DRAMA 111
One element, and no other, is invariably
present : a difficulty appropriately solved.
Drama is the presentation by living persons
of a complication in life and of the unravel- /
ling as effected by their interplay. It is N
not merely mimic action, but mimic action
governed by a " plot." At the close of the
first stage — in a modern play the first Act
— some quite definite question, with all its
difficulties realized, must be placed before us
and awaken our urgent interest. It may
refer to the broadest hopes or fears of
humanity — \^Tiither will Faust's titanic am-
bition lead him ? How will Hamlet face
the duty laid upon him by his father's
spirit ? Or it may be narrow, even trivial,
though attractive — Wliich man will the
heroine marry ? Will the dispatches reach
Grant in safety ? After reading or wit-
nessing the first Act we should be able to
express in one sentence, yet completely,
the question of the play. Some difficulty,
puzzle, problem, or mystery is as essential
to a drama as sap to a tree. Without it, no
magnificence in the characterization of Hamlet
or Faust, no charm or wit of the heroine,
no historical colour or life-like portrayal of
American generals, can make the work into
112 THE NATURE AND METHODS
a drama. The interlude of Mak in the
Miracle-Play is as truly dramatic, though
it deals but with the detection of a sheep-
stealer, as is Agamemnon or Macbeth, For
whatever mimic performance has plot is
drama, and whatever lacks plot is not
drama, no matter how admirable its mount-
ing, its dialogue, its psychology. Just as
Robinson Crusoe,^ for all its interest and
power, is no novel, since it has no plot, but
is to be called a tale, so Henry the Sixth
is no series of plays, but a chronicle.
The instance of Robinson Crusoe may help
us to greater precision of thought. Is it
true that there is no question or puzzle in
the book's early stages ? Do we not wonder
how the hero will escape from his island-
prison, and even more what kind of existence
he will evolve for himself in his years of
solitude ? Is not this, then, a plot ? And
do we not meet with a solution ? True ;
1 The first draft of this essay was written before I read
Mr. William Archer's Playmaking, and I am interested to
observe that he remarks (p. 25) : " If we want to see will
struggling against obstacles, the classic to turn to is not
Hamlet, not Lear, but Robinson Crusoe ; yet no one, except
a pantomime librettist, ever saw a drama in Defoe's narra-
tive." If the reader chances not to know Mr. Archer's
book, I take this opportunity of recommending it enthusi-
astically for its learning, skill, lucidity, and artistic common
sense.
OF DRAMA 113
we may ask ourselves these questions — we
are certain to do so if we are really inter-
ested. But here is the vital point : the
question does not form the substance of the
action ; it is only the natural outcome
thereof in our own minds. The substance
of the action is a series of interesting events :
his shipwreck, his despoiling of the stranded
vessel, his discovery of a footprint or a
dying goat, his illness, and the like. It is
not the fact that the earlier part of the
story is unified and organized by its for-
mulating in action some difficulty which we
necessarily look to see surmounted, some
problem the unguessed answer to which we
confidently await. Contrast with this the
early scenes of some pla}^ Whereas Defoe
gives us a mere succession of events, having
no vital connexion, joined together only by
the fact that they all concern the same man,
in a drama the successive happenings are ^
woven together into an organism. Each \
scene is interesting and clear in itself, but
it also gains and bestows value through its
I juxtaposition with others. Omit Crusoe's
I parcelling of his gunpowder, and we do no
I harm to any other episode. But omit
! Macbeth's first meeting with the " weird
114 THE NATURE AND METHODS
sisters," or even the scene of the " bloody
sergeant," and we lose something not only
excellent in itself, but of plain importance
to our appreciation of the murder-scenes and
the final combat, indeed of the whole play.
What has been said so far relates to the
question-part of the drama ; but analogous
remarks might be made about the answer-
part, the denouement or " untying of the
knot." The answer or solution must be
evolved by the interaction of the characters
— ^the later scenes must be observed to
come out of the earlier ; to come out, not
necessarily to grow out, for we are talking
at present of drama in the widest sense.
^In a good play the solution will arise organi-
/ cally out of the question itself ; in coarse
drama it may merely leap out surprisingly.
The answer may depend wholly on some
hitherto unguessed revelation that the hero-
ine is the villain's daughter. That would
be poor drama ; but bad drama is still
drama. In a first-rate play the whole solu-
tion is inherent in the terms of the problem,
though no spectator has the subtlety and
wisdom fully to foresee it. But more will
be said later on this important topic.
Other features of a playwright's work are
OF DRAMA 115
momentous, but there is none which stands
on the same plane as structure, or plot.^
All drama by its nature must have that ;
the others can be dispensed with, and often
are dispensed with, in certain types of play.
It therefore becomes necessary at this point to
distinguish the various forms of dramatic art.
There are four chief types. The dramatist
has always, as we saw, to deal with some
tangle in human life, but his treatment will
vary according to his philosophy of life and
according to his temperament. The first
factor will determine whether he shall por-
tray life as serious or as absurd, there being
of course arguments on both sides. The
second factor determines whether his treat-
1 This statement conflicts strongly with the marked
trend of modern criticism in England. Professor Bradley's
justly famous Shakespearean Tragedy deals far more with
the psychology of Hamlet or Macbeth than with the struc-
ture of their plays. The same tendency is the main feature
of Professor C. E. Vaughan's Types of Tragic Drama ;
and Mr. St. John Ervine, in an Observer of 1920, has
asked, "What is the plot of Hamlet?" with the impli-
; cation that the reply makes no matter. To deal with
this wide topic adequately is impossible here. It can
only be said (i) that the dictum offered above, like the
;' whole essay, is based on consideration of drama ancient
[ as well as modern ; (ii) that plot is in Shakespeare, though
1 highly important, yet less important on the whole than in
■Sophocles. Nevertheless, if one does detect the peripeteia
;of Hamlet — the death of Polonius — one finds even more
I interest in that masterpiece than before.
116 THE NATURE AND METHODS
ment shall be profound or superficial. If
a play presents the solemn view of life with
depth, so that the action is clearly felt to
typify the concerns of all humanity, the play
is a tragedy. Its superficial counterpart is
melodrama : there may be found in a
melodrama as much sorrow, sin, and death
as any tragic play contains, but our imagina-
tion (for whatever reason) is not led onwards
and upwards from individual to universal
concerns. So with the treatment which
envisages the absurd. Comedy is drama
that studies universal interests and depicts
their meaning or influence, quite as certainly
as does the tragic method, but it enlightens
us through our sense of laughter, not of
tears or horror. Its superficial counterpart
is farce — ^the employment of the ludicrous
to engage our attention in what does not
touch our own heart or interests.
These four types one might perhaps expect
on general grounds to approximate to one
another. This does at times occur.^ A
tragedy may interest us more in the special
instance than in the universal aspect raised
1 So Mr. C. E. Montague in his delightful Dramatic
Values (p. 27) mentions " the tang of grotesque tragedy
which there is in many of the best farces and which helps
to make George Dandin one of the best in the world."
OF DRAMA 117
by it ; and in this way tragedy would merge
into melodrama. There are, for example,
a number of fairly good reasons for regarding
even Othello as no less a melodrama than a
tragedy. So with comedy and farce. The
best " comic " scene in the whole range of
letters — ^the passage in Henry the Fourth
where Falstaff describes the Gadshill ad-
venture — ^is as much farce as comedy. Still
further, it is possible for tragedy and comedy
themselves to merge into one another. The
question here has, of course, nothing to do
with tragi-comedy, which is nothing more
than a play consisting of tragic scenes and
comic scenes alternating. That is a " mech-
anical mixture " : what concerns us here is
the possibility of a " chemical compound."
Can a drama be both tragedy and comedy ?
Is it possible to treat a theme both seriously
and laughably ? On general grounds one
would suppose the enterprise highly difficult
but possible. Horace Walpole said that
" Life is a comedy to those who think, a
tragedy to those who feel " ; therefore,
given a playwright with a great brain and
a great heart aiding, not thwarting, one
another, such a drama is possible. To find
a whole play composed in this godlike mood
118 THE NATURE AND METHODS
would be difficult, but scenes or whole acts
written in that vein are well-known. King
Lear owes its special and stupendous potency
more perhaps to this than to any other single
cause ; and many a great passage in Eurip-
ides — parts of Orestes^ for example — belongs
to this category. The four great dramatic
types, then, can and do at times approxi-
mate. But, as a fact, the centrifugal ten-
dency has been far more strongly marked.
Tragedy has grown more solemn and awful,
melodrama more superficially wild, comedy
more laughable, farce more vulgar, than
in strict theory they need have become.
Throughout large areas of dramatic history
the conventions are secure that tragedy
must culminate in the death of the chief
personage, that comedy must not arouse
thought, that melodrama should contain an
unredeemed villain, that farce must exhibit
horseplay with food, clothing, or furniture.
It has often been observed that good
melodrama and good farce are rare ; indeed
" superior " people make a point of pre-
tending that melodrama is actually funny
because so " bad " — ^that is, because it
bears no recognizable relation to life. This
is to attribute to the whole class vices be-
OF DRAMA 119
longing only to feeble and stupid instances
thereof ; and it is easy to do so, because
good melodrama is rare. But it exists —
witness the Helena of Euripides, Kyd's
Spanish Tragedy, perhaps even Othello, The
reason for this rarity is that Man is a gen-
eralizing animal, so that both melodrama
and farce, if well conceived and executed,
might seem bound to become tragedy and
comedy by leading the spectator from the
special experiences before him to the facts
of his own life and of humanity. This is
not actually so ; it is possible to compose
both sorrowful and laughable drama, of
admirable quality, which concerns only the
people portrayed and not the whole race.
Both types are saved by introducing features
which necessarily and obviously pin down
the interest to individuals. Farce is in-
variably distinguished from comedy by this
feature, that the persons act, think, and
speak lopsidedly — ^they ignore what could
not be ignored in reality, and fasten upon
some special, only minor, point, in the
various situations, for example the muffins
in The Importance of Being Earnest, Melo-
drama is invariably distinguished from
tragedy by two qualities, theatricality and
120 THE NATURE AND METHODS
violence. There is no melodrama which
does not depend in considerable degree upon
stage tradition : every drama of this class
is a more or less imposing structure built
from the debris of tragic work. As for the
other feature, all emotions are conveyed by
crude and exaggerated physical action, on
the most elaborate scale allowed by coarse
sentimentalism and the resources of the
theatre. Hatred may no doubt be evinced
in tragedy by murder, but in melodrama
the bloodshed must be wildly spectacular
and complicated. In both types the same
reason holds for these excesses ; it is neces-
sary to depart far enough from probability
to prevent the spectator's identifying him-
self with the persons presented, yet not far
enough to reach the unthinkable, for there
interest would perish. Good melodrama and
good farce, then, are rare because both must
be unnatural yet interesting.
So necessary is it for us to follow only the
main lines of this immense subject, that
certain highly important considerations
which will occur to the reader must be left
on one side. There is, for instance, the
curious fact that great comedy is rarer than
great tragedy. Aristophanes is a mighty
OF DRAMA 121
scenic genius, but his work often passes over
from comedy to farce. Shakespeare has
given us magnificent comic scenes, but no
whole comedy which can be ranked with
his greatest half-dozen tragedies. Moliere is
first-rate, and Marivaux full of delight ; but
it would be a mistake to put them on a level
with Sophocles, however distinctly they
surpass the tragic playwrights of their own
country. Another attractive topic is the
minor forms of drama : burlesque, which is
farce pivoted upon parody ; opera, which
blends music with any one of the four main
types already discussed ; modern panto-
mimes and revues, which tend more and
more to dispense with plot and so inevitably
to lose dramatic quality and revert to chaos.
It is, however, desirable to offer some
remarks on a kind of drama frequent in our
own time. There are many excellent works
which may be thought to fall under none
of our four categories. It may be said that
they are not laughable, and therefore neither
comedy nor farce ; that they appeal strongly
to the instincts, fears, or interests of all
men, and are therefore not melodramatic ;
that they do not culminate in the death
of the chief character, and so are not tragic
122 THE NATURE AND METHODS
— moreover, they lack the pomp and awe
which we associate with tragedy. Wliat
then are they ? It is usual to term them
simply " plays " or — implying some indefin-
itely tense quality — " dramas " ; and critics
more or less vaguely suggest or assert that
they constitute a new type of dramatic
work. We are here, as often in criticism,
within sight of a dispute about mere nomen-
clature, but it is worth while to seek greater
precision. Such works as those just men-
tioned are tragedies. They conform to the
definition of tragedy given earlier, and our
unreadiness to allow them that name is due
to the natural, but in this regard excessive,
influence upon our judgment of the greatest
tragic achievements. It seems at first sight
absurd to place Mrs, Warren's Profession,
excellent as it is, in the same class with
(Edipus Coloneus, Faust, and Hamlet, But
this is not a question of classes of merit ;
it is a question of classes of method. Any
drama, indeed, must fall more or less
definitely into one of our four classes, the
only variations being blends thereof. A
word should be added concerning the theory
that the hero's death is a necessary in-
gredient of tragedy. A very large propor-
OF DRAMA 123
tion of the noblest tragedies do, of course,
exhibit this feature, for reasons which are
too obvious to need mention. But the
function of tragedy can always be carried
out competently, and has sometimes been
carried out sublimely, by a plot which dis-
penses with this device ; (Edipus Tyrannus
and Medea are examples.
So much, then, for the nature of drama.
What is its aim ? Is there any one purpose
which we can attribute to every drama,
every playwright, every school of dramatic
writing, despite the great divergences which
are to be remarked between school and
school, dramatist and dramatist, even be-
tween different works of the same author ?
Is there nevertheless any one object in which
they all agree, just as there was one character-
istic of form, namely, the question-and-
answer plot, in which we found them all to
agree ? The divergences are great. Greek
tragedy and comedy were parts of religious
ritual ; Roman comedy is a light comment
on contemporary manners ; Roman tragedy
(so far as we know it) was translation of
Greek, or, if original, machine-made rhet-
oric ; mediaeval plays are a crude attempt
to impress upon the unlearned the robust
124 THE NATURE AND METHODS
reality of Scriptural stories or the validity
of ethical dogma ; modern dramas, when
serious, deal with difficulties of conduct or
social anomalies ; when frivolous, they play
superficially or deleteriously with the com-
mon emotions. Differences as great are
apparent between dramatist and dramatist.
The chief aim of Shakespeare is to edify
through a study of emotion ; of Sophocles,
to reconcile Man with his environment
through the appreciation of human instincts ;
of Ibsen, to fortify through a new appeal
to ethical fact. Can we point to any
common purpose or purposes ? There is
but one — ^to entertain, by the portrayal of
life. This kind of entertainment — ^that is,
the refreshment and invigoration of the
intellect and emotions by depicting a human
crisis and its solution — is common to CEdipus
Tyrannus, to Othello, to Tartujfe, to The
Importance of Being Earnest, and to the
most dull, derivative, or vulgar piece ever
concocted in Rome or mid-nineteenth-cen-
tury England. It is said that the object
of all art is to give pleasure by imitation.
This dictum, though by no means completely
untrue, is misleading ; for no one with a
sense of accuracy would give the name of
OF DRAMA 125
" art " to a reproduction of creaking cart-
wheels or even of the nightingale's song,
since art must always pass beyond simple
mimicry, through reticence, frugality, and
the blending touch of a human creator
bringing forth what is not the familiar
reproduced but the familiar transfigured.
The aim of all art, then, is to give pleasure,
not by mere imitation, but by reinforced
reminiscence, and the aim of dramatic art
is to give pleasure by the reinforced reminis-
cence of the critical in human life. True,
the playwright often has a further purpose,
some special thesis about conduct or emo-
tion, as had De Musset in On ne badine pas
avec V amour, or some quite definite social
doctrine for which he seeks converts, like
Mr. Galsworthy in Justice, and above all,
M. Brieux in Les Avaries or Les Trois Filles
de M. Dupont. He may, that is, be a pure
artist, presenting life as he sees it, with no
plainly implied comment at all, or he may
be a thoroughly didactic propagandist using
dramatic method merely as a platform, or
he may be anything between these extremes.
The distance between Sophocles and M.
Brieux provides room for many grades, not
only of literary excellence, but of didacti-
126 THE NATURE AND METHODS
cism also. And however openly propagand-
ist a playwright may be, we shall always
find that he provides " entertainment "^ — ^the
bracing and refreshment of mind and heart —
in however attenuated a degree : there are
always, at the least, piquant contrasts and
a vivacity of dialogue which no mere pam-
phlet ever provides. But though such " enter-
tainment " is always present, it is in some
modern work painfully meagre ; and herein
lies some foundation for that watchword of
the " Philistine " which so annoys lovers
of the drama — " I go to the theatre to be
amused." No doubt a series of guffaws
extended over three hours is an experience
not only unnecessary, but intolerable, to
any civilized being not jaded by perverse
and monotonous toil ; and drama, like the
other arts, aims at illuminating people whose
minds are alert, whose taste is critical, not
to provide opportunities for emotional dram-
drinking. Nevertheless, the " Philistine "
has his glance turned in the right direction ;
he is justified in his suspicion of performances
which promise pleasure and betray him with
sermons or social programmes.
The rest of this essay will deal with the
methods of drama — ^the system of com-
OF DRAMA 127
position, the specific devices, whereby a
playwright seeks to effect the purpose we
have described ; namely, to refresh and
brace his hearer's intellect and emotions by
portrayal of some puzzle in life and of its
solution. His task must be carried out
through his personages — that is, mainly
by their characters, their actions, and their
words : what they do. He may also employ
external happenings : what is done to them.
It will be convenient to examine this latter
element first.
By " external happenings " are here
meant things of which the characters must
take account, but which arise without their
volition, events of which we cannot say
that they would naturally happen in the
situation supposed, but only that they might
happen at some time or other — a lightning-
flash whereby the villain is removed, a
violent shock which by restoring speech or
memory makes of some negligible person
an important w^itness, and so forth ; most
commonly of all, the use of coincidence to
bring about meetings or discoveries.
Accidents, and structurally important
accidents, are to be found in the greatest
plays. Prospero's enemies are wrecked
128 THE NATURE AND METHODS
upon the one island, of all islands, where he
himself was cast away.^ CEdipus meets and
slays the one man, of all men, who is his
father. In A DolVs House Mrs. Linden
and Krogstad meet by the merest chance,
and on their meeting the celebrated final
scene structm^ally depends. In lesser work,
especially in melodrama and farce, such
"external events" abound; many farces,
indeed, almost consist of sudden con-
frontations, ludicrous but irrational. Acci-
dent should be sparingly employed in serious
drama, because the author must present a
recognizable picture of life, which depends,
or is thought to depend (here the same
thing), far more upon character than upon
accident. It is accident that Romeo should
fail to receive the Friar's letter and should
enter the Capulets' vault before Juliet
awakes ; it is his character which causes
him to destroy himself before her trance
is broken. And when such accidents are
employed, important distinctions must be
^ The tempest itself is due to Prospero's art, but the
fact that his enemies come within the focus of his power
is the result of chance : —
By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune —
Now my dear lady — hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore.
OF DRAMA 129
observed. It is bad dramatic art to set in
the midst of the play a pure accident on
which the subsequent action absokitely de-
pends. For the spectator reahzes that had
the accident not occurred the story would
have collapsed. It is no help to reply that
vital accidents do appear in real life ; art
cannot be chaotic, and pure accident, to the
human eye, is the incursion of chaos.
But we must note the wording : " to set
in the midst of the play a pure accident
on which the subsequent action absolutely
depends." Two fundamental facts must
be indicated here. First, there is by no
means the same objection to such accident if
it happens before the outset of the drama,
or even at its opening. What starts the
action may be illogical, casual, improbable,
anything short of flat impossibility. One
has to begin somewhere, and we do not
object to an accident so long as the action
itself, once opened, is logical and natural.
One might as well censure Raphael's School
of Athens on the ground that not all the
philosophers there depicted could have
come together, not being contemporaries.
" Supposing they had been," the painter
could reply, " that is how the assembly
130 THE NATURE AND METHODS
would have looked." Aristotle therefore
rightly says that the irrational elements
should be outside the play proper. It is
this consideration which justifies two of the
instances quoted above, those from The
Tempest and (Edipus Tyr annus. The
second point rests on the words " absolutely
depends." It makes all the difference in
the world whether the accident is one of
action or of time only. In the first case the
event itself is casual — that is, the chances are
indefinite thousands to one against the
event itself happening at all ; and yet, if it
did not, the subsequent action would vanish.
An examination of Euripides' Alcestis will
show that the denouement depends, not upon
Alcestis' devotion, or Admetus' anguish,
or the valour of Heracles, but solely upon
the fact that the demigod happens to
become intoxicated ; and unless we admit in
Alcestis the notion so regular in comedy,
that Heracles drinks too deeply whenever
he has the opportunity, we must condemn
Euripides' method in this drama. In most
plays it is not the fact itself which is casual,
but the time. The fact, or something like
it, will certainly happen sooner or later :
the only accident is that it should happen
OF DRAMA 131
just then. On such accidents it is not true
that the subsequent action "absolutely
depends." Did not the event fall precisely
when it does, we should not lose the later
development, only quickness and precision
of development ; the drama in its outlines
would be unchanged. This second con-
sideration justifies the third example given
above, from A DolVs House. It is on the
one hand true that, had not Mrs. Linden
and Krogstad met by pure chance in
Helmer's drawing-room, Krogstad would
not have spared Nora and her husband,
therefore we should not have gained the
great final scene as it stands. But the vital
point is that that scene must necessarily
arrive at some time, given Helmer's char-
acter and Nora's; all that the accidental
meeting gives us is the neatness with which
the last scene happens so early.
The other instrument, or set of instru-
ments, with which a dramatist performs his
task was, we saw, what the persons them-
selves do. This, in the widest interpreta-
tion, means their characters, their actions,
and their words. Psychology, action, and
dialogue are the three great strands of
dramatic composition. Every play must
132 THE NATURE AND METHODS
exhibit them all, though their relative
importance may vary : characterization
must be effected by conduct and dialogue,
action must reveal character and be clothed
with conversation, dialogue must refer to
character and the visible action of the piece.
Of these the most fundamental and most
difficult is characterization. The question
of the drama — the desis ("tying") as
Aristotle calls it, the tangle, problem, or
perplexity — should arise from the psychology
of the persons involved, as well as from the
situation in which they find themselves ;
this is equally, or even more, true of the
denouement. The specific pleasure afforded
by dramatic art is to watch character creat-
ing destiny. It is true that a special situa-
tion is also needed, since a definite crisis
must be raised by a definite cause. Among
existing plays there are many gradations
based on the relative importance of character
and situation. In Monsieur Piegois, by
M. Alfred Capus, the situation is merely
that Piegois notices a lady who is travelling
in the same railway compartment as him-
self. Works of heavier calibre begin more
remarkably, since mighty crises are normally
introduced by highly unusual events ; both
OF DRAMA 133
psychology and situation are wonderful in
such works as Agamemnon and Julius Ccesar,
Numberless feeble but violent productions,
especially melodramas, show slight charac-
terization and a tremendous or elaborate
situation, such as Andreiev's Sabine Women
and the pseudo - Shakespearean Titus
Andronicus,
The means by which a dramatist may
project a character are six : the things done
by the person, the things said by him, the
attitude of people who have been in close
touch with him, things said of him by others,
facts already known to the spectator, and
material details. The last three may be
used as subsidiary, but no one save an inferior
workman relies on them ; none the less, so
arduous is it to create character effectively
by the first three means, that many writers
have depended perforce upon the cheaper
and coarser devices.
Material details, such as the furnishing of
a man's room or significant equipment of
his person, are not really successful, save
by convention. To fill an apartment with
musical instruments and busts of Grieg or
Mozart proclaims the occupant a musician
— perhaps — but that is to tell us his hobby
134 THE NATURE AND METHODS
or trade, not his character. Dress a man in
large checks and give him diamonds to
wear ; that proves his vulgarity — perhaps —
but vulgarity is a matter of tone ; it is
colour, not structure ; and character is
the structure of the soul, while culture is
its colour. Moreover, externals are as
untrustworthy as obvious. The gaudily
attired man may not be viilgar ; he may
hate these trappings and wear them to
please his wife.
Another of these cheap devices was " facts
already known to the spectator " — that is,
the author evades his task by introducing
some real person whose character is already
known from history or legend. Let the
curtain rise upon a short stout figure frown-
ing into vacancy, wearing a cocked hat, and
holding one hand thrust into his bosom, and
the thing is done. He is Napoleon the
Great, and every one in the theatre knows,
not perhaps (or probably) his character,
but those conventional characteristics which
alone such a writer intends to exploit.
The actor has but to snap his fingers
and, without turning his head, exclaim :
" Bernadotte, come here ! " and the
" character " is " created." It is to this
OF DRAMA 135
simple method that the success of Mr.
John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln is
mainly due.
Analogous to this is the fourth expedient,
" things said of him by others " — by far the\^
greatest favourite of all. Just as second- \
rate dramatists open with elaborate un-
natural explanations of the plot uttered by
servants laying a dinner-table, so is character
conveyed by a symposium of minor persons
who have nothing better to do than diagnose
their friend's or their master's private blend
of irritability and a generous heart. When
the person so described appears, he is not
further characterized by more artistic means
if the author is really second-rate ; the fluid
phantasma runs easily into the mould thus
prepared. There is no strong objection to
such preparation if the person described
makes it good by vigorous psychology
authentically displayed. Euripides' Medea
has the familiar explanatory domestics, but
the heroine herself is vibrantly alive, most
cogently real. The bad method may be
watched almost any day, and Shakespeare
himself supplies a capital example in
Julius Ccesar. The dictator is a mere
simulacrum to which an external glow of
136 THE NATURE AND METHODS
life is imparted only by the comments of
others,
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus,
and the rest.
Between this method and the third, " the
attitude of persons who have been in close
touch with him," there may seem little
difference or none. What is exactly meant,
however, is not their verbal attitude towards
him only, but their outlook on things, their
own minor psychology, shown by their
reaction to his influence. If w^e compare
Julius Ccesar with Ibsen's Master Builder,
we see at once how much more powerfully
and intimately the Norwegian has created
his main character by means of Solness'
wife and employees, than the Englishman
has succeeded in projecting a real figure
even by the eloquence of Cassius or of An-
tony. Shakespeare does, however, at other
times wield this instrument superbly ; witness
the perfectly dramatic and illuminating
manner in which Enobarbus reacts to Cleo-
patra, Cassio and Emilia to lago. Indeed,
though this device is a favourite of Ibsen's,
who uses it again and again with miraculous
power (as in The Wild Duck and Hedda
OF DRAMA 137
Gabler), the example from Othello is perhaps
the strongest and most arresting proof of its
possibihties. lago himself is a puzzle : his
character of unredeemed evil is a psycho-
logical problem that has baffled the greatest.
What we realize of him is learnt from the
attitude of others ; we cannot look him in the
face, but must scan his lineaments, as did
Perseus those of the Gorgon, in a mirror.
There remain the first two means of
characterization — the things done, the words
said, by the person himself. These two are
different but inseparable ; together they
constitute the most difficult, most interesting,
most valuable, and (next to plot itself) most
necessary task of the dramatist. In the
first place, it is clear that the playwright
must imagine his character definitely and
then present him performing appropriate
deeds, uttering appropriate words. So far,
the work is not specially difficult. Most
people can imagine a brave, patriotic, military
officer who should (owing to " machina-
tions ") fall under a cloud and be publicly
degraded. They can also cause him at the
critical moment to strike an attitude and
cry : " You may take away my sword, but
you cannot take away my Victoria Cross ! "
138 THE NATURE AND METHODS
If this is all that one needs, why is One of
the Best less admirable than Henry the Fifth ?
We need much more. So far we have only
cut out a figure in the fiat, and this is
not creation at all. The genuine dramatic
master makes characters in three dimensions ;
we can walk all round them, envisage them
from unobvious angles, feel that we know
them, not merely see them. They stand on
their own feet, detached from the back-
ground which happens to be placed behind
them at the moment, ready to walk into
other environments, encountering fresh com-
panions and new enterprises. That is the
one test of a great character study ; we
instinctively imagine them in surroundings
not depicted by the author — " Micawber
would have done so-and-so ! " " What
would Sir Willoughby Patterne have said ? "
A celebrated example relates to the best-
drawn figure in all literature : The Merry
Wives of Windsor was written because of
Elizabeth's curiosity to see Falstaff in love.
But how is this done ? By what devices
does an author make his people " come
alive " ? Here, of course, we approach a
region where there seems to be no footing —
the attempt to explain how genius brings
OF DRAMA 139
itself to bear. It is, nevertheless, worth
while to make the attempt, though an
adequate account is naturally out of the
question. Sometimes a character grows on
the author's hands without his conscious
volition. He imagines a person of minor
calibre, restricted importance ; then it hap-
pens that the man or woman so imagined
appeals to the writer's own temperament —
" grows on him " — and becomes too great
for his environment. So it was, we know,
that Samuel Pickwick developed ; so, in
all likelihood, Shylock grew from a sordid
scoundrel to the colossal representative of a
whole nation, an immemorial history clothed
in a single yellow gaberdine. But normally,
no doubt, such vivid creations are evolved
with full consciousness. How ? The dra-
matist ponders his proposed character not
at first in the environment which is to be
his upon the stage. He lives in his company,
sits down to meat with him, walks in his
society through street, market, and meadow ;
watches his love-making and quarrels, reads
the same book over his shoulder ; discusses
with him religion, war, politics, commerce ;
shares his jests and reads the meditation
of his heart. All this is at first only the
140 THE NATURE AND METHODS
terrific travail and joy of creation, but little
by little the strain of conscious toil becomes
the delighted watching of a creature which
hourly takes to itself as by miracle a seem-
ingly independent life, though never, as in
our earlier instances, too great for its sur-
roundings. Hans Andersen, when he wrote
the fantasy of the man who lost his shadow,
was composing an allegory of all great
fiction. Then, when the imagined man or
woman is complete, then, and not till then,
is the name Falstaff or Portia given, and the
Eastcheap tavern roars with vital gusto
shed abroad by a being more human than
any man in the theatre, the terraces of
Belmont are flooded with the sunny radiance
of one who sums up in her sweet presence
the charm and strength of many women.
Of the hundred conversations which Shake-
speare held with Cleopatra, of all those
valiant affrays wherein he charged stirrup
by stirrup with Talbot or Hotspur, of those
many conferences in camp and court with
Roman triumvirs, Plantagenet kings, and
Tudor nobles, but little has escaped on to
paper. The poet knew Falstaff in his slender
youth. Lady Macbeth as a girl at her sampler
and her prayers, Mark Antony in doublet
OF DRAMA 141
and trunk-hose taking boat for Hampton
Court, Prospero as a neighbour gossiping
of crops and herds by a Stratford fireside,
Rosahnd nursing her babies or seeking her
lost husband upon some nameless battlefield.
It is because the life which these superb men
and women passed in his peerless imagination
was vaster far than the few events which
unroll themselves before our eyes in the
Arden Forest, on the banks of old Nile,
or along the corridors of Dunsinane, that
when we meet them in these surroundings
we salute them as more real than ourselves.
All this might be put crudely by a mere
reminder that such persons make other
remarks, and do other things, than are in
strictness called for by their situation ;
there is a largior cether about their talk and
conduct. One main reason for the impres-
sion of triviality left by many plays is that
the persons keep closely and unsuggestively
to the matter in hand. Whenever Harpagon
appears we know that he will talk about
money. But, on the other side, we shall
not make a character vivid by the mere
bestowal of irrelevant conversation ; it will
not do to hang upon his part sundry tags
of extraneous chat " to give atmosphere."
142 THE NATURE AND METHODS
His author must conceive him from the
centre outwards. The actual written evi-
dence of such complete imagination as we
have tried to expound will of course vary
from character to character. Among Shake-
speare's greatest figures Macbeth perhaps
shows this evidence least. Needless to say,
he is none the less magnificent for that ;
but his darkly terrific speeches are based
on a comparatively narrow expressed reminis-
cence of the thousand daily concerns and
activities shared by average men. Hamlet
certainly shows such evidence most, going
beyond the network of microscopic allusion
which we have most in mind to definite,
sometimes elaborate, disquisition, as in his
memories of Yorick and (still more) in his
interview with the strolling players.
The mention of Hamlet tempts us into
a digression. One of our most brilliant and
esteemed dramatic critics, Mr. A. B. Walkley,
in an essay ^ entitled " Professor Bradley's
Hamlet,'^ has set forth a view diametrically
opposite to that suggested in the two pre-
ceding paragraphs. We may well draw
encouragement to embrace our own theory
from the extraordinary vagaries into which
^ Drama and Life, pp. 148-55.
OF DRAMA 143
Mr. Walkley is plunged by fidelity to his
own. For example, he asserts that such
comments as " Doubtless in happier days he
[Hamlet] was a close and constant observer
of men and manners " show Professor Brad-
ley " unconsciously wandering into specula-
tions about Hamlet as a real person, existing
off the stage, and independently of Shake-
speare's play." And whither is the critic
led by his hostility to this method ? To
nothing less than this : that Shakespeare
did not care whether his characters were
credible or not, that he is just as pleased
to fling a heap of odds and ends on to the
stage with the remark, " These are Hamlet,"
as to create a credible being ! It may
appear impossible that any man who has
read the poet for ten minutes should offer
such statements, but here are Mr. Walkley's
words : " Shakespeare himself had these char-
acteristics, and sought expression for them
on the stage without a perpetual solicitude
for consistency or intelligibility in his mouth-
piece. A father is addressing his son starting
on a journey. Shakespeare sees the ' good
things ' appropriate to that situation in
general, and at once puts them in the mouth
of Polonius, though it suits him afterwards
144 THE NATURE AND METHODS
to make Polonius a ' tedious old fool.' « . .
The theme of the moment was ' A Father's
Advice to his Son ' or ' The Art of Acting '
or ' Meditations on Suicide,' and all the
dramatic resources of that theme were duly
* exploited ' on the spot." In a passage like
this we may watch the art of dramatic
criticism committing suicide.
Returning now to the main theme of
which characterization is one department, —
" that which the persons do themselves," —
we have to treat of their work in carrying
out the plot. The reader may object that
characters are only created and revealed
precisely by such motion and execution.
Certainly ; but for clearness' sake it is
necessary to sunder in discussion things
actually combined, just as the anatomist
studies a single organ which does not, how-
ever, function by itself. We proceed then
to action, the things done and said by our
characters. By their influence upon one
another, their mutual reactions, they give
body to the plot. Plot is the " soul of the
play," as Aristotle put it, action is its flesh,
the characters are its organs. Dramatic
manner consists in the confrontation of
people whose purposes, interests, powers.
OF DRAMA 145
have a clear relationship of cause and effect,
of tendency and obstacle, of aim and op-
posing aim. It is this condition of intense
contrast between persons standing in one
another's presence which is most usually
J implied by the word " dramatic." ^ In the
two highest types of drama, tragedy and
comedy, this confrontation is of a special
and most momentous kind — ^the collision
of personalities which are the vehicle of
opposing ideas, whereas in the other types
the collision is between people who stand
for nothing more than their own concerns.
The author of tragedy or of comedy, owing
allegiance both to the abstract governing
idea and to the particular human being who
is its vehicle, must be true to both. But
how ? If the person is to express the idea
adequately, what room is there for the
individual marks needed to make him
" real " ? If, on the other side, he is to be
1 Mr. William Archer, in his chapter "Dramatic and
Undramatic " {Play making, pp. 23-41), repudiates the
doctrine that drama is the presentment of struggle, and
suggests (p. 29) that " the essence of drama is crisis."
These statements, as general statements, are excellent.
It will be seen that the present writer insists on " collision "
only in the highest types of drama, and later in this essay
the importance of crisis is developed at length. But a
general condition of contrast between the persons is always
an ingredient in dramatic method.
146 THE NATURE AND METHODS
a convincingly human creature, will not the
universality of the idea evaporate ? Here
is the deepest problem of great drama ;
and it is perhaps the most splendid artistic
triumph of the human spirit that it has
achieved a number of amazingly good
solutions, ^schylus is the supreme in-
stance of a mind filled with the profoundest
abstract truths yet expressing them within
the limits of particular time, place, and
personality ; his theological concept of
imperfect godhead rising to omniscience,
omnipotence, universal benevolence, is
magnificently conveyed through Orestes,
Prometheus, and others without spoiling
the individual clearness of the persons. His
people are, to be sure, drawn with simple,
sweeping lines ; there is none of that fine
brush work which a modern master of any-
thing like ^schylus' calibre would give,
and which Euripides — even Sophocles, in
some degree — ^has given. But he has en-
dowed them with as much personal colour
as was possible without blurring the eternal
facts whose messengers and offspring they
are. He has held the scales marvellously
level, for his profound sense of God and his
vivid sense of Man were equally powerful.
OF DRAMA 147
Without that balance we might have found
in his pages a jejune presentation of abstrac-
tions hke the featureless Virtues and Vices of
a morality-play. Something like this, indeed,
happened when Shelley imitated his Prome-
theus : the English poet gives us no characters,
only qualities endowed with vocal chords.
No other dramatist has kept universal and
particular so evenly matched. Ibsen, per-
haps, comes nearest to ^schylus in this
respect. Hedda Gabler is artistically the
modern Prometheus. Yet even she is more
" interesting," as we call it — ^that is, we are
more concerned with her individual sur-
roundings than with those of Prometheus.
Goethe's Faust, again, gives often more
weight to the ideal than to the particular.
The earlier scenes are gloriously ^schylean,
but as the drama progresses the universal
more and more clearly overrides the specific
and individual, until at the close we hear the
"chorus mysticus" singing pure Platonism : —
Alles Vergangliche
1st nur ein Gleichniss ;
Das Unzulangliche
Hier wird's Ereigniss ;
Das Unbeschreibliche
Hier ist es gethan ;
Das Ewig-weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
148 THE NATURE AND METHODS
This is magnificent, but it is not drama.
It is too deep, too ultimate ; and a play-
wright's business is not to expound the
ultimate directly (even supposing he can),"
but to translate it into terms of credibly
particular men, women, and human action.
All other modern dramatists, except Shake-
speare in his greatest work, will be found
stressing either the super -human (or in-
deed infra-human) idea or the particular
example in hand. The latter method has
in modern times been far more common and
successful. In this region Euripides alone
of Greek dramatists can be compared with
Shakespeare and Ibsen ; no figure drawn
by ^schylus, Sophocles, or Aristophanes,
can rival in vividness his Phsedra, his Medea,
his Orestes.
The struggle between the idea conveyed
and the character - vehicle has not only
tended to depress one or the other : it has
influenced character-drawing itself, especi-
ally in comedy. Hence arises the drama
of types instead of strongly individualized
persons, the most notable kind being the
comedy of manners. Moliere is its greatest
exponent ; his lovers, rogues, simpletons,
are little more than the greatest common
OF DRAMA 149
measure of all the members of each class.
Such a method strikes one on a ^priori
grounds as unpromising, and in fact Moliere's
vast charm and power are found far less in
psychology than in dialogue. Ben Jonson
belongs to the same school ; his reputation
(such as it is, for he is but magni nominis
umbra) depends not on characterization but
on a brisk jumble of action. His Bartholo-
mew Fair provides perhaps the best speci-
men in dramatic literature of that famous
desideratum, the " slice of life." But the
" humours " which he so industriously
exhibits give little entertainment ; when
they are unsupported by other attractions
the result is dreariness unspeakable : Every
Man out of his Humour is possibly the
most unreadable work ever penned. Con-
greve, like Moliere, is saved from such
an abyss by brilliant dialogue. Tragedy,
as we said, has suffered less than comedy
from this attempt to achieve universality by
cutting away peculiarities — a sure way to
produce what is less, not more, human than
our next-door neighbour. But it may be ob-
served even at the highest levels ; Sophocles
shows at times, especially in Antigone, a
hardness of surface which is due to this cause.
150 THE NATURE AND METHODS
Our personages, then, whether they convey
such fundamental ideas as a new conception
of Providence or whether they are merely
endeavouring to anticipate one another in
the search for stolen bonds, meet before
our eyes in personal impact. Between the
main characters or groups of characters
there is collision, not necessarily hostile
collision, but a confrontation of unlike aims,
opinions, or instincts. Between Macbeth
and his wife, between Alceste and Celimene
in Le Misanthrope, between Tanner and Ann
Whitefield in Man and Superman, between
Blunt schli and Raina in Arms and the Man,
there is no hostility, but such an impact
of dissimilar temperaments that by the
resulting heat the plot is moulded. It is,
of course, even more obvious that consciously
hostile collision provides the very core of
countless plays : it is enough to quote, for
conscious hostility on both sides, Prometheus
Vinctus, Antigone, Coriolanus, The Merchant
of Venice ; and, for consciousness on one
side only, the Choephoroe, Medea, Othello.
While the chief persons thus come into
marked collision, there is frequently between
two minor characters some kind of clash,
however minute. It varies from the fatal
OF DRAMA 151
duel of Tybalt and Mercutio, through the
contrast between Kent and the Fool during
their attendance upon Lear, to the jars
between Sebastian and Gonzalo in The
Tempest, or the distinctions in rascality ex-
hibited by Pistol and Nym. Even lords-in-
waiting and nameless bystanders are divided
by plain variations of sympathy or opinion.
It will be remembered that our present
topic is action, not plot ; we are not yet
concerned with the development of the
question-and-answer construction, but only
with the commerce between the persons
from moment to moment. Under this head
one topic remains — intensity. The action
must be neat and crisp ; things should
happen with what may be described as a
click. The mere entry of some one with a
seeming-casual remark may in the circum-
stances have the effect of an explosion.
At the end of the Third Act of Hervieu's
La Course du Flambeau occurs this minute
" scene "
Mme. Fontenais {revenant de sa chambre) :
Eh bien ? . . . Ou en es-tu, entre ta mere
et ta fille ? Suis-je du voyage ?
Sabine {repondant d^un signe de tete plutot
que de la voix) : Oui.
152 THE NATURE AND METHODS
In another place this would be nothing.
Set where it is, it is intensely dramatic.
Not only does it doom the mother to death ;
it is the core of the plot and voices the moral
of the whole piece. Few plays equal La
Course du Flambeau in this special quality,
but all playwrights more or less clearly
realize the need. So strongly, in fact, do
writers of our time feel the importance of -
crisp action that they have evolved what is
called the " curtain" — ^that is, the device of
closing an act or scene at the highest possible
point of tension. An excellent example has
just been given from Hervieu ; but many
others may be found with ease. So in
Mrs, Gorringe^s Necklace, by Mr. H. H.
Davies, the First Act ends just after we have
discovered that David Cairn is the thief
and exactly at the moment when his fiancee
innocently induces him to agree, with a
breaking heart, that everything shall be
" like the old times." But a morbid passion
for the " strong curtain " has led some
writers of farce and melodrama to strange
lengths. They bring it about not artisti-
cally but mechanically, as a rule by the
sudden reappearance of some interesting
person whom the audience has half-forgotten
OF DRAMA 153
and who is now unexpectedly and irration-
ally thrust forward into a scene already
tense. Are you a Mason? contains a crude
instance of this. Much less objectionable,
but similar, is the laughable moment in
M. Rostand's Chantecler when at the end of
the long and tumultuous reception held by
the Guinea-Hen, the curtain descends just
as the usher announces " The Tortoise ! "
Like this, but entirely, indeed splendidly, jus-
tified is the craftsmanship whereby Augier,
in his La Pierre de Touche, after mention-
ing a character several times, but never
presenting him, at length causes him to be
announced, and ends the whole play with
the words " Faites entrer." It is a masterly
stroke, because though this lieutenant's
future influence upon the hero's fortunes
is important and necessary to complete the
plot, we need nothing more than this crisp
reminder of the form which that influence
is certain to take.
One delightful and frequent method of
securing the " click " is to employ " business "
with material objects or exciting features
of real life. This method, again, is often
childishly dragged into the lower dramatic
types, as in the racecourse scenes and
154 THE NATURE AND METHODS
criminal trials of melodrama. But there
are a thousand examples of its admirable
employment — the meeting of employers
and strikers in Mr. Galsworthy's Strife, the
mannequin scene in The Madras House of
Mr. Barker, the rehearsal in Meilhac-Halevy's
Froufrou ; and the brilliant use of material
objects may be observed in countless plays,
from the purple carpets in the Agamemnon
and the bow of Philoctetes to Portia's
caskets, Desdemona's handkerchief, and the
floating crutch of the drowned Eyolf .
Two portions of " that which the persons
do themselves " have now been indicated —
characterization and action. The third, dia-
logue or speech, remains. In few respects
do dramatic authors differ more widely.
Sometimes it is not genuine dialogue at all,
but a succession of tirades ; others employ
nothing but short sentences, ostensibly the
exact replica of everyday talk ; and various
stages between these extremes are to be
noted. Nor is length the only standard
of difference. Poetic form or poetic diction
or both are employed by some ; others
write prose ; a third class write neither —
for M. Jourdain was absurdly wrong — but
keep to the formless speech of ordinary
OF DRAMA 155
folk ; a fourth kind, finally, compose a
queer stilted jargon which can best be
described as sanctified journalese. Each
length-difference can of course be combined
with any of the style-differences. Thus, to
take but a few examples, we find in Sophocles
poetic form, poetic diction, and long speeches;
poetic form, poetic diction, and short
speeches in Rostand ; prosaic form, poetic
diction, and short speeches in Maeterlinck ;
prosaic form, prosaic diction, and long
speeches in Shaw.
Ignoring details, we find that the great
difference lies in the choice between poetical
and prose form. The tendency to poetry has
been caused in great degree by the influence
of other literature ; in Greece, for example,
by the prestige of epic and by the lyrics
which formed an integral part of Greek
drama. Another cause is the desire to
distinguish emphatically the language of an
art-form from that of every day. The use
of prose, and of short sentences, is due to the
search for verisimilitude, but this has been
modified by the influence just mentioned in
connexion with poetry — ^the desire for artistic
diction ; the finest result in our time of these
two tendencies is the work of J. M. Synge.
156 THE NATURE AND METHODS
Each form has its pecuhar danger. In
poetic drama it is irrelevance, the play-
wright being constantly tempted to develop
a theme altogether beyond what its dra-
matic value demands, for the sake of its
own poetical possibilities.^ Undoubtedly
a beautiful long speech may be thoroughly
dramatic : every lovely phrase or pungent
stroke of rhetoric may serve the plot or aid
characterization. Antony's funeral oration
is a superb proof of this. Prospero's nar-
rative to Miranda at the opening of The
Tempest and (far more) the soliloquies of
Macbeth are all dramatic timber as well as
poetry excellent or sublime in itself. But
the Queen Mab speech of Mercutio and the
equally exquisite description of the bees'
conmionwealth in Henry the Fifth are on
an altogether different plane ; they are
intruded into the action, which they only
delay and serve not at all. Mercutio's
speech, it may be objected, illustrates his
character. But it is illustrated enough
* Mr. C. E. Montague {Dramatic Values, p. 227) roundly
says of the Recits de Theramene : " They are magnificent,
but not drama." As a matter of fact the original " nar-
rative of Theramenes," in Racine's Phedre (V. vi.), is
perfectly dramatic (and exactly in the tradition of the
Messengers' Speeches in Greek tragedy).
OF DRAMA 157
otherwise ; the purpose is answered at least
equally well by such things as : " 'Tis not so
deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
door ; but 'tis enough . . . ask for me to-
morrow, and you shall find me a grave man."
It is, indeed, plain that Romeo and Juliet
as a whole provides a gloriously beautiful
specimen of transition-form ; it is lyric
passing into drama, much as Peele's Old
Wives^ Tale is narrative passing into drama.
No one doubts that such disquisitions are
brought in only to gratify the sense of
literary beauty, and with no thought of the
plot/ It is of no avail to point out that
poets who compose for theatres with a
platform, so to call it — ^the Greek theatre,
if the actors played in the orchestra, and the
Elizabethan theatre with its " apron " —
naturally find themselves writing elaborate
recitations which the performer declaims
to his audience like an orator on the tribune.
This (even if true) does nothing more than
account for the poet's own standard of length
in speeches : it has no bearing on their
1 There is no recantation here of what was said con-
cerning Mr. A. B. Walkley's remarks on Hamlet. We only-
remark that such passages do not help the drama as drama ;
Mr. Walkley beheves without misgiving that they may
stultify it.
158 THE NATURE AND METHODS
relevance. All we can say is that the
conditions render the temptation to irrele-
vance greater for Euripides and Shakespeare
than for Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Hervieu.
Rhetoric, moralizing, preaching may be
perfectly dramatic, however long. We ob-
jected just now on technical grounds to
Mercutio's Queen Mab '' effort." But take
another passage from the same play. Friar
Laurence muses upon his simples : —
The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night.
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
and so forth for thirty lines in all. It is
a memorable speech, but apparently quite
static. Then what, we ask, has this quiet
musing to do with the fortunes of the young
lovers ? Is it any more to the purpose than
the fantasia of Mercutio ? It is, in fact,
vastly more dramatic. First, it plainly
conveys an allegory of Romeo's waywardness
and of the wasteful enmity between Mon-
tagues and Capulets. Secondly, it is in
tune with the situation. The Friar is alone,
at complete leisure, an aged man taking the
morning air outside his cell. Moralizing
for its own sake is here far more natural
than that a young gallant, amid companions
agog for a frolic, should detain them with
OF DRAMA 159
highly-wrought Jioriture, however exquisite,
on the topic of dreams, while they postpone
their business to listen attentively in a semi-
circle, as no party of young men ever did
since the world began.
The main danger of prose-dialogue is more
insidious. We saw that prose is employed
in order to give verisimilitude, but that
the artist's instinct recoils from complete
likeness ; art makes a picture, not a photo-
graph. Thus the prose-dramatist is threat-
ened on the one side by commonness, on
the other by unreality. He must somehow
portray, at times, the banal or stupid without
losing all dignity and vivacity ; but if he
writes so that every one exclaims " How
unnatural ! " he has failed. The whole
topic of " truth to life " cannot well be
treated here, though it plainly affects
dialogue no less than character, action, and
plot. Still it may be said that it is in-
finitely better to imitate real talk exactly
than to recoil from it into the jargon which
now reads so incredibly in the English
drama of seventy years ago. In the second
act of Mr. Shaw's Major Barbara occur
passages which render with complete real-
ism the conversation and conduct of the
160 THE NATURE AND METHODS
slums ; in Pygmalion he brought upon the
stage a word hitherto supposed securely
unprintable. Objection has been taken to
such fidelity. But compare it with the other
extreme, quoted ^ by Mr. Walkley from a
play highly popular in its time (1841),
Boucicault's London Assurance :
I love to watch the first tear that glistens
in the opening eye of morning, the silent
song that flowers breathe, the thrilling
choir of the woodland minstrels, to which
the modest brook trickles applause; these,
swelling out the sweetest chord of sweet
creation's matins, seem to pour some soft and
merry tale into the daylight's ear, as if the
waking world had dreamed a happy thing,
and now smiled o'er the telling of it.
The rule for prose-dialogue is plain. It
must be like enough to actual speech for
us to imagine ourselves joining in it to-
morrow morning, but more forceful, neater,
richer, and — ^unless characterization demands
this — ^unencumbered by the half-articulated
scraps of phrase which spread fungus-like
over the conversation of most people. This
rule, like so many others, is of small use
without experience, and a commencing play-
wright who has been alarmed by Boucicault
^ Drama and Life, pp. 14 et seq.
OF DRAMA 161
and his peers will produce by reaction
dialogue which is bald and stringy. Seek-
ing a remedy for this, he will take to
crude cleverness : people who are not witty
ex hypothesi will nevertheless talk wittily ;
others will unconsciously reveal their failings
by a neat maladroitness for which we sigh
vainly in the real world ; others will inter-
rupt one another and create a joke by
accidental collaboration. Such devices in
moderation are well enough, but they do not
by themselves constitute excellent dialogue.
Wit is, indeed, the regular stopping-place of
good second-rate dramatists ; only the master
goes beyond it. The manner of Oscar Wilde
is here most instructive. His dialogue falls
into two sharply sundered divisions : the
serious, when it is pretentious, hysterical, or
dull ; and the witty, when it is mostly
irrelevant, though blazing with unmatchable
epigrams. It is never what it should be,
thoroughly good normal conversation. A
lady suddenly remarks, " Define women for
me." Pat comes the response : ^^ Sphinxes
without secrets." Such things are very
delightful, but they should be published in
the form of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes
et Reflexions Morales ; they do not justify
162 THE NATURE AND METHODS
the substructure of Adams drawing-rooms,
French windows, secret cheque-books, and
the Hke. In this sphere the unchallenged
master is Ibsen. His conversations are
always vibrant, whatever the topic, but
never florid and never bald — ^unless, as we
said, the character-study definitely requires
such qualities. Every word is interesting,
but he is never merely witty ; as some are
too happy to need amusement, so is he too
brilliant to need wit. His conversations
glow continuously instead of flashing and
crackling at intervals. All this is apart
from their greatest virtue, that of assisting
the plot with an effortless mastery which is
perhaps Ibsen's most splendid merit.
The three divisions of our subject have
now been in some measure described : the
nature, the aim, and the methods of drama.
But it is imperative that we should examine
more closely the nature of plot, the Formal
Cause (as Aristotle might have said) of the
action — ^the shape which makes it what it is.
How must action be modelled or kneaded if
it is to be dramatic ? The main rule, we
saw, was that it should first definitely pose
a question, some riddle to be solved, or
some tangle to be unravelled, and that it
OF DRAMA 163
should as definitely offer the reply, the
solution, the unravelling — what in French
is called the denouement, or " untying." We
must now go further. The next considera-
tion is economy — to draw from every datum
in the situation, every character, every
scene, every speech, the utmost assistance
for the purpose of the whole, and to employ
the minimum number of factors. This is
by no means the same thing as simplicity.
An admirably economical play will often
be found complex in its delicate adjustment
and reaction of parts, e.g. CEdipus Tyrannus
and Hedda Gabler ; whereas many plays
of rudimentary structure contain a lavish
apparatus of minor persons or scenic
changes, e.g, Peter Pan, Chantecler, and
Peer Gynt. Let us now indicate some im-
portant results of the instinct for economy.
First, the solution should be given entirely
in terms of the original question. We said
above that it must " come out " of the
question, in order to include even the
worst dramas, where the main characters
settle their difficulty, or (more often) find
it settled for them, by the aid of novel
factors violently intruded at, or later than,
the middle of the play. Instead of working
164 THE NATURE AND METHODS
out a problem based (let us say) on their
poverty, by using their own abilities, their
own surroundings, and the experience or
opportunities which their poverty itself can
and must supply, they observe near the
close of the last act but one a quaint white-
headed figure approach their house, scanning
the numbers. In a few minutes they learn
that it is their Uncle Peter from New South
Wales, whose existence has been hitherto
concealed both from them and from the
audience ; he has amassed a gigantic fortune
from sheep-farming, he has not married,
and has come home to die. Despite the
concern with which they listen to his hack-
ing cough, they cannot but see that their
financial troubles are nearing the end. Such
a solution " comes out " of the situation
as originally set ; the people, the local
conditions, and the rest, are mostly un-
changed. But there is no necessary tie
between end and beginning ; the structure
is wi'ctchedly bad. Uncle Peter is in fact
the ancient deus ex machina, heavily secular-
ized for the delectation of an age which has
rejected religious myth but still cherishes
myths of finance. The " god from the
machine " is a thoroughly bad device, simply
OF DRAMA 165
because he cuts the knot instead of untying
it. The knot is there to be untied ; it is
skill in doing so which is a leading proof of
good craftsmanship, and which affords the
spectator his strongest thrill of interest.
Analogous powers or events elsewhere in
the drama are not necessarily bad. Thus
the whole action of Hamlet is launched by
a supernatural visitation. The Prince could
not learn the facts in any other way; and,
granted a public which effectually believes in
ghosts, such an opening is perfectly sound.
It is far otherwise when the action of A
Winter^ s Tale is turned upside down by the
intrusion of an unusually clear and complete
response from the Delphic Oracle. But
the magical elements in The Tempest and
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream are quite un-
objectionable ; superhuman powers are con-
stantly and from the first postulated for
Prosper o and Oberon. Objection lies against
the sudden introduction of miraculous short-
cuts into purely human situations. What
should we say if Puck strayed into The
Merchant of Venice and converted " The
Duke, Magnificoes, and train " to Judaism ?
In brief, the ideal plot provides an answer
which in its entirety is latent in the problem.
166 THE NATURE AND METHODS
The persons, acting upon one another by
their psychology, by discoveries about one
another's aims or opinions made through
sudden confrontation, by the persuasions
and enhghtenments of dialogue, manipulate
the difficulty which enmeshes them all in
their several degrees, until it exhibits a
new design made from its original elements.
Sympathy is born, resignation, comfort,
understanding. " Latent in the problem,"
we said. The materials for a solution should
all be present, but it is plainly wrong to
leave things so obvious that any spectator
can prophesy the end. The entertainment
provided by good drama is a curious blend
of the sense of probability and the sense
of surprise. Probability must never harden
into inevitability, nor surprise into disbelief.
The action swings over upon itself, the end
keeps tryst with the beginning — " The wheel
is come full circle, I am here." This close
interweaving of fabric is a leading difference
between drama and other literary forms.
A second feature of economy is to be
observed in the management of character.
First, each person's psychology must sub-
serve the plot. Those qualities in Lear
which the First Act reveals — his love for
OF DRAIVIA 167
his daughters, his imperiousness, whimsical-
ity, and childish temper, form not only a
marvellous study in themselves, but a power
influencing the action at every turn. Mac-
beth's valour is shown by the sergeant's
story ; his superstition by the disturbance
awakened in him by the witches' greeting ;
his ambition by the deep effect on his mind
which their promise exercises. None of
these qualities would have availed without
the others to bring about his crimes ; Dun-
can's murder, the usurpation, Banquo's
death, the butchery in Fife, all are caused
by this trinity, valour, superstition, ambi- \^
tion. That Othello is unused to polite
Venetian society seems at first a thing of
no moment ; we may even ask ourselves
why Shakespeare has gone out of his way
to substitute a negro for the apparently
obvious Italian condottiero. But here lies
what one is tempted to call the most mas-
terly device that even Shakespeare ever
conceived. This ignorance of Othello's
proves to be the one means whereby lago's
devilish cunning can persuade him that
Desdemona is unfaithful. Had Judge Brack
shown himself in the least degree less self-
complacent in his dealings with Hedda
168 THE NATURE AND METHODS
Gabler, probably she would not have killed
herself after all ; his sleek security is the
finishing touch. Euripides' Hippolytus on
his first appearance delivers an exquisitely
beautiful address to his patroness-deity
Artemis. So lovely is it that we perhaps
do not observe the evidence it affords of an
excessive relish for subtle emotion : the
evidence has to be underlined by his brief
colloquy with the aged serving-man. But it
is this relish which later betrays Hippolytus
into a refined gloating over Phaedra's distress
and persuades the over-tried woman to
destroy him. A second economy in the
management of character is to lay upon
each person more than one function. The
chief figures are naturally so employed;
but the able playwright will be found pro-
viding a double duty for minor characters
too : they support and are supported like
the stones of an arch. This admirable
contrivance aids in a high degree the desired
tautness, the sense of grip. Bassanio serves
to bring Shylock and Antonio into collision
by his necessities ; then through his marriage
with Portia he occasions Antonio's rescue.
In Henry the Fourth Prince Hal forms the
link between Falstaff' s group and the public
OF DRAMA 169
issues treated by the play. Louka in Mr.
Shaw's Arms and the Man performs the
quite separate functions of a foil to Raina
in Saranoff's eyes, and of a means to bring
Raina and Bluntschli together. If we turn
to ancient drama we find that this method
lies at the very root of Terence's magnificent
dramaturgy : he loves to pose a double
question and solve the two parts by their
very interdependence. Euripides' Hecuba
contains a most curious example : an aged
slave, who is sent to fetch water for
Polyxena's burial-rites, discovers Polydorus'
corpse while so busied, and thus actually
makes the only bond between the two
portions of the tragedy. A far more skilful
instance is lo in the Prometheus of ^Eschylus.
She draws from the hero some of his most
interesting speeches ; she exemplifies in her
own person once more the cruelty of Zeus,
whom Prometheus is defying ; and she
points forward to his rescuer Heracles, her
own descendant. It is naturally not often
that the absence of such double functioning
is noticed as a distinct flaw ; but in the
Francillon of Dumas fils it is plainly a
serious weakness that the heroine's supposed
lover proves to be a man who has no other
170 THE NATURE AND METHODS
real concern with the plot ; he ought to
have been one of the family-friends to whom
we are introduced at the outset. It need
scarcely be said that many minor characters
perform one duty only without aesthetic
offence, and have important relations with
not more than one person — ^the physicians
and clowns, the lords and citizens, Audrey,
Tubal, Charmian, and a hundred more, the
" feeders," confidants, and purveyors of in-
formation. Even in far simpler casts than
Shakespeare's they are to be found — ^the
watchman in Antigone and the numerous
heralds from iEschylus' Supplices downwards.
Euripides' tendency is to take over such !
characters and mortise them into the plot : i
a comparison of Pylades in the Choej^horoe \
of iEschylus with Pylades in the Euripidean |
Orestes is most instructive. ;j
The third great use of economy is in j
dialogue. Here as elsewhere an important i
distinction holds between romantic and t
classic drama. In the ideal classic play ij
there would not be a single word which (]
gave no help to the development of the [i
plot ; in the ideal romantic play, dialogue
would be often expanded, not perhaps for
the sake merely of a " purple patch " (the
OF DRAMA 171
question which we discussed above), but
to impress upon us more vividly the mo-
mentary situation {e.g. the poverty of
Romeo's Mantuan apothecary), and so less
directly than in the classical type to further
the action. So much is true in theory, but
there is no ideal instance of either form.
Sophocles, on the whole the most " classical "
of all playwrights, does develop speeches,
if not conversations, for the sake of " roman-
tic " momentary vividness, as CEdipus shows
in the Coloneus and Teucer in Ajax, since
(to be pedantic) the defence of (Edipus and
the praises of Ajax could have been put
effectively in fewer words. On the other
side, many passages in which Shakespeare
might seem to delay the plot for the sake
of " getting in " a structurally useless speech
will be found to perform a genuinely dramatic
function. Juliet's Nurse insists on relating
a brisk anecdote of her late husband. What
connexion can it claim with the plot ?
This : the remarkable fact needs explana-
tion, that the Nurse makes no difficulty
whatever in aiding her extremely young
mistress to carry on a love affair and contract
a marriage without the knowledge of her
parents. To understand this we must see
172 THE NATURE AND METHODS
her as what she is, a nerveless invertebrate
mass of hypertrophied sentiment. Nothing
could show this better than the talk assigned
to her, whereas a third-rate poet would have
left her uncharacterized, settling all scruples
about responsibility with the words " Here's
gold for thee ! " The two methods in dia-
logue do, then, often merge into one another ;
but the difference in tendency is unmis-
takable. Ibsen is in this department even
more " classical," in his realist dramas, than
Sophocles. If we take a sentence at random
from An Enemy of the People, our finger
lights upon Stockmann's question to the
Burgomaster : " Can you suggest any other
plan ? " These words extract from the
Burgomaster an expression of opinion about
Stockmann's report on the town water-
supply, and so directly bring Stockmann
into collision with the community. So it is
everywhere in this dramatist's most signifi-
cant work. Herein lies one reason for the
quality of his influence. His dialogue is
close-grained and absorbing, hardly ever airy,
degage. Even at its sprightliest it conveys
a sense of creeping moment ousness. Hence
Ibsen is not " popular " : he is too solid,
too concentrated for a genuine vogue with
OF DRAMA 173
the multitude. But his thoughts are so
profound and permanently applicable, his
I technical skill so stupendous, that his influ-
ence steadily filters down through dramatists,
social theorists, students of literary art,
experts in the theatre, to the innumerable
average people who would not think of
actually going to witness an Ibsen perform-
ance. Thus he has in England collaborated
unseen not only with Mr. Shaw, Mr. Barker,
and others of the new school, but also with
playwrights who ostentatiously ignore him,
such as Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. H. A. Jones.
Returning to the main thread of this
essay, we remind ourselves that two essential
features of plot have now been discussed :
the existence of an answered question, and
the observance of economy. We now ap-
proach the third vital characteristic, the
most important and attractive topic in the
whole study of dramatic technique.
That topic has been partly anticipated
by the statement that the solution should
grow out of the problem. But there we
were considering the nature of a good solu-
tion. We are now to discuss the principles
of growth, the manner in which the relation-
ship between answer and problem is made
174 THE NATURE AND METHODS
out ; in short, how a plot is " worked."
The first rule here is that laid down by-
Aristotle : that a drama must have a
beginning, a middle, and an end. This
looks absurdly obvious ; but when the
philosopher explains that by " beginning "
is meant something naturally followed by
something else, but not necessarily preceded
by anything, that by " middle " is meant
something which implies precedent and pos-
terior events, and that an " end " is some-
thing naturally preceded, but not necessarily-
followed, by something else, we find at once
in these dry phrases a useful standard of
common sense in structure, and an explana-
tion of the vague irritation caused in us by-
many so-called plays. Shaw's Getting Mar-
ried has no middle and no end. Schnitzler's
Anatol and Barrie's Mary Rose have no
beginning, middle, or end ; they start, go
on, and leave off. Much has been already-
said of the first and last stages ; we are now
concerned mostly with " the middle."
Between the problem and the solution
there must intervene a phase of the action
which provides the material for the solution.
From the whole of our preceding discussion,
which showed colhsion, intensity, crispness,
OF DRAMA 175
as qualities of drama, we should expect that
our second stage, the portion which reveals
the way to denouement, would provide the
required illumination not tamely or obviously,
but through some kind of shock. Moreover,
it is precisely here that the tautness and
excitement reach their height ; here is found
the play's culmination. This phase of the
action is named " crisis," " catastrophe,"
or (by Aristotle) " peripeteia." All these
\ words mean more or less definitely the same
thing. " Crisis " means literally " the act
of judging," and in Greek medical science
was applied to the point at which a disease
I took a turn for better or worse — " the critical
moment." "Catastrophe" means "over-
throw." " Peripeteia " is " falling over,"
"reversal," "recoil." All these etymolo-
gies indicate a fact which may be gathered
inductively from innumerable plays ; namely,
that the peripeteia is not any and every
increase of tension. The sudden return of
Romeo and his slaying of Tybalt is not a
peripeteia, nor is Macbeth's assassination
of Duncan, nor Henry the Fifth's harangue
on St. Crispin's Day, nor the scene where
Faust watches the infernal hound "growing
like an elephant " behind the stove in his
176 THE NATURE AND METHODS
study, nor Alceste's declamation of Si le
roi m' avail donne in Le Misanthrope, nor the
realization by Ramsden, in Man and Supper-
man, that Tanner is his fellow-guardian,
nor the first interview between Sabine and
Stangy in La Course du Flambeau, All
these, and hundreds more, are masterly,
some of them sublime ; their vigour, truth,
and tenseness are beyond praise. But none
of them is a peripeteia. The peripeteia
is not only a culmination of some scene or
situation : it is the culmination of the whole
drama, providing (as we said) information or
enlightenment necessary to the denouement,
and must show something more than vigour,
truth, and intensity, though all these are
demanded. That further quality is indi-
cated by its names : there must be a " recoil,"
a sudden blow which alters the relations
between person and person, between the
various aspects of the situation. Let it
be said at once that (although we may find
bad catastrophes as easily as bad psychology
or bad dialogue — "Uncle Peter," in fact)
nothing here contradicts what has been said
earlier about the use of accident or about
organic connexion. The suddenness required
is nothing more than an immense accelera-
OF DRAMA 177
tion of normal development. The persons
of the play have long been manipulating
their difficulty until, like the glasses of a
kaleidoscope, it falls over into a new pattern.
Peripeteia is a readjustment, a complete
change in the situation. As a general rule
tragedy exhibits a peripeteia with three
qualities : it is sudden, it is startling, it is
illuminating. As a general rule, again, the
peripeteia of comedy is simpler : one or
two of these three qualities may be absent.
Furthermore, some tragedies, like uEschylus'
Prometheus, contain peripeteias analogous
to those of comedy, and some comedies,
such as Aristophanes' Frogs, at this point
resemble tragedy. Perhaps the most ex-
hilarating pursuit provided by literary criti-
cism, and certainly the most indispensable
part of dramatic criticism, is to examine
each play that one reads or witnesses,
asking, " Where precisely does the peri-
peteia occur ? " and then to proceed with
study of the whole structure. For it will
occasionally be found that we have not
after all clearly conceived " the question of
the play," whether because we are misled
by our own illogical interest in some minor
point, or because the story is based upon
%
178 THE NATURE AND METHODS
real events familiar to us, and has yet been
so remodelled that the leading interest of
the drama differs somehow from the leading
interest of the actual events.
In Sophocles' CEdipus Tyrannus the three
great stages, Complication, Peripeteia, Solu-
tion, are unmistakable. The Complication
is the necessity to find and expel from Thebes
the man who slew Laius, since the pestilence
will not cease before this is done. CEdipus,
as king, takes measures to find the unknown
murderer, until towards the end his ruthless
questioning of the Herdsman reveals that the
offender is himself, and that therefore he is
not only the slayer looked for, but guilty
of parricide and incest. That is the Catas-
trophe. Finally the Denouement exhibits
the Solution : the suicide of his mother
Jocasta and his own self -blinding — acts
which in some sort expiate his involuntary
offences — and his determination to depart
into exile. Macbeth is full of exciting and
wonderful scenes, but the peripeteia is
clearly the disillusionment of Macbeth when
his magical defences fail. Here the " recoil "
is double, or rather continued — Birnam Wood
comes to Dunsinane, and later he is con-
fronted by an adversary not " born of
OF DRAMA 179
But the suddenness is there ;
the catastrophe begins in a flash, marked
(if we need a mark) by the King's sudden
outcry, " Liar and slave ! " The difference
is simply that the catastrophe itself lasts
longer in Macbeth than in (Edipus. The
reversal is equally plain in Shaw's Major
Barbara : it is where Barbara Undershaft
finds that the authorities of the Salvation
Army are content to accept contributions
from a distiller whose trade is one of the
most powerful influences which they have
to combat. This realization brings her world
crashing about her ears ; she at first feels
that there is nothing left to live for. But
this is only the peripeteia ; as usual it is
to provide a solution. Not only does this
overthrow or recoil give the logical victory
to her father's opposing point of view :
far more than that, as soon as she grows
calm she discovers that her real life-work,
which she had supposed inextricable from
her allegiance to the Salvation Army — ^the
work, that is, of organizing social sanity
and happiness — is not in fact dependent
upon that allegiance, but can survive it ;
she goes on to perform the same task amid
new surroundings. In A DolVs House the
180 THE NATURE AND METHODS
catastrophe occurs with the brief sentence
of Torvald Hehner : "I don't want any
melodramatic airs." All the rest of that
famous scene is the denouement, the working
out of the solution which springs from the
illumination brought to Nora by her hus-
band's words. A beautiful catastrophe is
found in Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.
The play culminates in the brief passage
where Mrs. Erlynne steps from behind the
curtain, quietly claims the fan, and dis-
appears. This leads to a brilliant denoue-
ment wherein Lord Windermere and his
wife have each relinquished their divergent
views about Mrs. Erlynne and accepted
one another's, and that because of the same
fact.^ Still more unmistakably, if possible,
the peripeteia of Mrs. Dane's Defence occurs
where the heroine confesses her identity
with Felicia Hindemarsh ; the whole play
was written for the sake of its peripeteia.
So probably was the Venice Preserved of
Thomas Otway, a tragedy amazingly over-
rated ; the only compensation for the fal-
setto blank verse, the emotional hysteria,
^ How much credit Wilde himself deserves for this first-
rate piece of construction is doubtful. See Mr. C. E.
Montague, Dramatic Values, pp. i8o at seq.
I
OF DRAMA 181
and the babyish poUtics, is the discovery by
Jaffier of Renault's design upon Belvidera,
which discovery impels him finally to reveal
the revolutionary plot and so produces a
somewhat striking denouement based upon
Jaffier's agonized vacillation between love
for Belvidera and love for Pierre.
Julius Ccesar is of the deepest interest
in this connexion, as in so many others.
Apparently, most readers assume that the
catastrophe is the assassination of the dic-
tator ; but there are several objections to
this view. First, does not the war between
Brutus and Cassius, Antony and Octavius,
become a curiously long and otiose adden-
dum ? Secondly (if we may begin to quote
our own rules), where is the surprise which
we noted as one of the three qualities shown
by the tragic peripeteia ? The murder of
Julius has been clearly foreshadowed through-
out the earlier scenes, and corresponds thus
to the murder of Duncan. Moreover —
though it must be confessed that this is an
argument of doubtful relevance — ^this assas-
sination was fatally familiar to Elizabethan
audiences, as familiar as the result of
Waterloo to a modern English audience.
Fourthly, if this event is the culmination of
182 THE NATURE AND METHODS
the tragedy, why has the poet characterized
Caesar so feebly ? This weakness has often
been remarked ; it seems strange that what
might appear the finest moment in hterature,
the moment when the greatest of writers
portrayed the greatest man of action, should
be half-spoiled. Why has Shakespeare made
Caesar a far less engrossing figure than
Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Shylock, and
Falstaff ? All these difficulties are solved
if we merely content ourselves with looking
at what the dramatist has done instead of
what we assume he ought to have intended.
If we look for a turn of events sudden,
startling, and illuminating, we find it at
once, not in the assassination, but in the
thrilling emergence of Mark Antony as a
formidable opponent of the repubhcans.
The " question of the play " is not " What
is to become of Caesar ? " but " What is to
become of the republican rising ? " An-
tony's Funeral Speech is the peripeteia,
and the war which fills the later scenes is
no addendum, but a magnificent and thor-
oughly appropriate denouement.
It was remarked above that in comedy
peripeteia tends to be less remarkable, or
less distinguished as possessing all the three
OF DRAMA 183
qualities we mentioned, than it is in tragedy.
If we turn to Aristophanes, perhaps the
world's greatest comic genius, this impression
will be deepened. In the Plutus, the peri-
peteia or recoil is the recovery of sight by
the blind god of wealth, which is followed
by an effective solution or denouement.
But the catastrophe is not sudden ; it is
foretold and elaborately prepared. Never-
theless it is startling and illuminating.
Here, and in most of this playwright's work
the peripeteia arrives much earlier than
elsewhere, and in most it is of the com-
paratively mild type. His peripeteia usually
occurs at the consummation of the topsy-
turvy idea with which the play opens — what
Heine called the Weltvernichtungsidee. In
The Acharnians the tension rises steadily
until the preposterous private peace between
a single Athenian citizen and the Spartan
confederacy is completed and confirmed by
the overthrow of Lamachus, the bombastic
champion of militarism. This victory is
the peripeteia, fairly sudden, quite startling,
but not markedly illuminating : the illu-
mination has been given progressively.
Nevertheless, the position has been radically
altered. Then follows a long denouementy
184 THE NATURE AND METHODS
with a farcical, not comic, presentation of
the blessings thus secured. The Peace is
closely similar ; so is The Birds and most
other comedies from the same pen. In
Moliere's Tartuffe the catastrophe occurs at
the moment when Orgon crawls from be-
neath the table in complete disillusionment
as to Tartuffe's character : —
Voild, je vous Tavoue, un abominable homme !
Je n'en puis revenir, et tout ceci m'assomme.
This is surely a fine " recoil " or peripeteia,
but it is neither sudden nor startling, for
we have long known that Tartuffe is making
love to Elmire, and have watched the rather
elaborate preparation made by her for the
enlightenment of Orgon. And enlightened
he certainly is ; the " illumination " we
spoke of is provided in full measure.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that many
comedies have catastrophes no less complete
than those of the greatest tragedies. Even
Aristophanes has at least one good example.
In The Frogs, Dionysus, who has descended
into Hades with the purpose of fetching
Euripides back to life as the greatest tra-
gedian, suddenly announces that he will take
iEschylus instead ; this peripeteia is techni-
cally akin to those of tragedy. That exquis-
OF DRAMA 185
ite artist, Terence, has created a beautiful
catastrophe in The Brothers : it is not any
revelation about the love affairs, but Demea's
change of front, caused by his own reflec-
tions on the rival theories of education and
social amenity held by his brother and him-
self. Similarly, in the Phormio, the bigamy
of Chremes is revealed to much purpose
by the resourceful sycophant. Sheridan's
School for Scandal provides by means of
the celebrated screen a perfect peripeteia.
Synge's Playboy of the Western World (though
its fame depends upon superb dialogue,
compared with which the plot is of small
interest) contains an excellent peripeteia in
the sudden appearance of the " murdered "
father.
It is, on the other side, equally obvious
that tragedies not infrequently exhibit catas-
trophes such as we have shown to be often
present in comedy. That of Othello is
gradual, conviction being pressed upon the
hero more and more effectually in several
scenes ; but it ends in a convulsion startling
and (as it seems to Othello) illuminating.
That of ^schylus' Persce — ^the appalling
announcement to the Persians of the utter
overthrow at Salamis — is not illuminating
186 THE NATURE AND METHODS
until reinforced by the admonitions and
prophecies uttered by the ghost of Darius.
In short, every drama has a peripeteia,
whether more elaborate or less. There is
always a reversal of the situation, a climax
of tension which alters fundamentally the
original posture of affairs. If any alleged
drama contains no such feature, it is not a
play at all. This dictum will cease to appear
wantonly pedantic when we reflect that
such works (for instance, Mr. Shaw's Getting
Married) are felt on all hands to be un-
satisfactory, and that we are only assigning
a precise reason for this dissatisfaction.
Before we leave this part of our theme,
sometliing must be said concerning the
preparation for the peripeteia. In the
greatest plays we saw that the illumination
provided comes suddenly. But however
startled we may be when it arrives, we shall
certainly be puzzled or antagonized unless
the way has been paved for it. The catas-
trophe must be " led up to," in such a way
that we accept it as reasonable without,
however, having foreseen it. This applies
to the most consummate tragedies. In
others, and more frequently in comedy, we
have observed preparations so elaborate and
OF DRAMA 187
obvious that, illuminating as the climax is,
and sudden as it often is, it is in these
plays not startling. But the method of
preparation for a perfect peripeteia needs
examination. Frequently it takes the form
of a whole scene, inserted (so to put it) for
this purpose only. In The Merchant of
Venice occurs a brief interview between
Antonio, when in chains, and Shylock.
Short as it is, this passage is highly valuable
to the plot. First, it brings home to us the
realization of the Jew's purpose : it is the
complement to the earlier interview in which
the bargain was struck. Further, we obtain
artistic pleasure from the reversal of posi-
tions : he who before was the fawning in-
ferior stands forth as the arrogant master ;
he who lorded it with easy pride now begs
indulgence. But- — most important of all —
we are quietly prepared for the approaching
swing-round of sympathy. If we are to
feel during the trial scene as the poet wishes
us to feel, we must have rid ourselves of that
irritation against Antonio, that sympathy
with Shylock, which the early part of the
drama has naturally awakened. Shake-
speare has set this scene, at first sight so
trifling, just in this place for just this
188 THE NATURE AND METHODS
purpose ; he means to obliterate a great
deal of the emotion aroused by that un-
answerable outburst beginning
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft,
In the Rialto, you have rated me
About my monies, and my usances.
Another, and far finer, example is afforded
by Macbeth. The early scenes are wrought
with such astounding skill that although
Macbeth meditates the crime of murder
itself upon one who is his sovereign, his
guest, his benefactor, a virtuous man aged
; and asleep, we yet hold our breath in fear
I lest he should not accomplish his design.
We are all on Macbeth's side, and look with
cold hostility upon the good m_en and true
who hold him in suspicion after the crime is
discovered. This is a miracle of craftsman-
ship, but its success makes it all the harder
to secure our hearty applause for the de-
struction of the usurper at the end. To
meet the need, Shakespeare gives us a brief
scene, most unwisely omitted in some modern
representations — ^the butchery of Macduff's
wife and splendid little son. This concen-
tration of pathos, horror, shame, and vil-
lainy brings mercilessly before us the mean-
ing to Scotland of Macbeth's dominion ; it
OF DRAMA 189
is forced violently upon our gaze, and we
sicken. In a companion scene this is brought
to bear — the announcement to Macduff and
his friends. One notes in passing how the
two passages are stuck deep into our minds
by what can only be called the ferocious
quaintness of the language — " What, you
egg ! Young fry of treachery ! " and
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop ? —
words that even amid the gorgeous language
of the whole tragedy cannot be forgotten.
So it is that when Macduff, not Malcolm
(for we have not actually witnessed the
murder of Duncan, his father), at length
faces the tyrant, all our sympathy is
found to have deserted Macbeth for his
adversary.
Equal skill is put forth by ^schylus in
Agamemnon, or, more exactly, in the tri-
logy of which that drama is the first
part. Throughout most of Agamemnon the
playwright wishes us to see events from
Clytsemnestra's point of view, although she
treacherously murders her husband, on his
triumphant return from Troy, in order to
be free for ^Egisthus and to share Agamem-
non's throne with him. Therefore not only is
190 THE NATURE AND METHODS
her husband represented as cold, arrogant,
shallow ; the outrage he inflicted years ago
upon his wife by slaying their daughter
Iphigeneia is time and again mentioned,
above all in an unspeakably beautiful and
pathetic lyrical narrative. Again, although
the Queen has a lover, through all the
terrible scenes of her own plotting and
crime she stands alone, while Agamemnon's
unwilling concubine Cassandra is exhibited
by him with careless brutality to his wife
and to the whole city. Thus everything is
done to secure our sympathy for Clytsem-
nestra. But when this tragedy is over, we
are to pass at once to The Libation-Bearers^
wherein Orestes avenges his royal father by
slaying the murderess, his own mother, and
retains our sympathy even while so acting.
If this sympathy is to be possible every
available device is clearly needed. Accord-
ingly we find Orestes impelled to his frightful
task, not only by desire to avenge his father
and seize the usurped sceptre, but by the
unmistakable fiat of the Most High and by
appalling threats in the event of disobedience.
But the special point we have now in mind
is this. Just as we are about to enter upon
The Libation-Bearers^ at the close of Agamem-
OF DRAMA 191
non, we are prepared for the necessary
swing-round of sympathy by the entrance
of ^gisthus, Clytsemnestra's paramour, who
sums up in his own person all the evil of
which the Queen is guilty, everything which
can rouse our hostility against her. Had he
appeared in the earlier scenes, the atmos-
phere and tone which iEschylus there needed
would have been impossible. The poet
introduces him not too soon, and just in
time.
Each of these three great phases, com-
plication, catastrophe, and denouement, is
exposed to a peculiar and special danger.
It is enough here to remind the reader of
that which threatens the second phase.
We have already shown that those catas-
trophes are bad which are obtruded on us
with no warning at all — ^the deiis ex machina,
or " Uncle Peter " as we called him.
The commonest weakness of complication-
scenes (" First Acts ") is an over-developed
medley of incidents and minor characters,
which offer a number of false trails and
prevent us from seeing as early as we
should what the problem or question is.
Ancient drama, by its very nature as
" classical " work, contains no instance of
192 THE NATURE AND METHODS
this ; but for the analogous reason it is
fairly common in modern drama. Such a
bushy beginning is to be found in M. Henri
Lavedan's Viveurs. This is an admirably
vigorous picture of many people whose
interests clash or entwine themselves to-
gether, but all is detailed and minor ; only
late in the play do we fully realize that it
is Mme. Blandin's emotional experience and
development which provide the structure.
But it is significant that spectators of the
presentation found far less difficulty, since
the role of Mme. Blandin was played by one
of the most celebrated actresses in the world,
Mme. Rejane. A similar vagueness, but
sooner dispelled, marks the opening of Mr.
Granville Barker's The Madras House : Hux-
table's daughters are so numerous and so
talkative that, while one admires the dread-
ful verisimilitude of the household, one
wonders (as the phrase goes) " what it is all
about." This quality is often to be re-
marked in Russian drama, not excluding
Tchekof's celebrated Cherry Orchard. Or
we may go much further and assert that the
Russian playwrights tend to employ this
" bushiness " from beginning to end of a
play ; construction melts into atmosphere.
OF DRAMA 193
foreground merges into background. This
applies to some English work influenced
by the Russian vogue ; for example, Mr.
Shaw's Heartbreak House, which formally
claims to be "a Fantasia in the Russian
manner on English themes," is certainly
justified of its pretensions. It does indeed
possess a plot which can be stated, but the
plot is well-nigh overgrown by a jungle of
little happenings, minor exits and entrances,
and unrelated controversies which exist only
to convey atmosphere.
Much more needs to be said about denoue-
ment ; and before we discuss its besetting
danger, let us point to a feature which is
fairly common in our time and which has
been mistakenly censured. This feature has
often been described by the remark : " The
curtain descends upon a note of interroga-
tion." It may seem clear that, if the con-
cluding phase should provide a " solution,"
nothing could well be worse than to end with
a question, a difficulty unsettled. But here
is a misunderstanding. The " last act "
must solve the original complication, but
it may itself, without any breach whatso-
ever of artistic perfection, contain a question
or actually consist of one. The reader will
194 THE NATURE AND METHODS
recall a familiar joke. " Is it true that you
Americans always answer one question with
another ? " '' Do we ? " Take the finale
of A DolVs House, It matters nothing that
we end with a breach between husband and
wife which may or may not be closed and
the possibility of closing which is actually
mooted by them. That breach, however
important, is no flaw in the dramatic
structure ; nay, it is necessary to the
solution. The denouement demanded by the
earlier scenes is certainly not a new modus
Vivendi arranged by the illuminated Torvald
and Nora. Neither is yet competent to
suggest any really satisfying and sound
basis of married life ; indeed Nora's spiritual
immaturity is again and again pressed upon
us — it is this which involves her with
Krogstad, this which alone justifies the
tarantella dance and the macaroons. No ;
the poet has carefully and justly restricted
the denouement to this, that Nora's eyes
are completely opened to the conditions of
her married life, and that she insists on
understanding things better than she does
before continviing to live with her husband ;
the " question " is an integral and vital
part of the solution. Again, in the Rhesus
OF DRAMA 195
attributed to Euripides, it is not clear, from
the play itself, whether the Trojans, when
they arm at the close, are going forth to
victory or disaster ; but that does not
imply any futility at all in the dramatic
form, since the question set by the tragedy
is only this : What will result from the
unexpected arrival of Rhesus to succour
Troy ? It has been objected against Mr.
Barker's play. The Voysey Inheritance, that
we cannot tell, when the curtain falls,
whether young Edward Voysey will be
exposed and ruined or not. This, again,
matters nothing to the plot, which is con-
cerned, not with his social repute or wealth,
but only with the question : How will he
face the strange responsibility fixed upon
him by his father ? He accepts it with all
its consequences ; what the danger actually
brings to him is not the point, and Mr.
Barker has shown admirable artistic bold-
I ness in leaving unanswered an irrelevant
i question— to answer it would have been to
blur the issue.
The danger which does beset the solution-
stage of the play is utterly different ; it is
an irrational simplicity, or rather simplifica-
tion, the adoption of improper short cuts
i
196 THE NATURE AND METHODS ;
in order to end matters quickly, neatly, '
completely. The reason for this seems to i
be that the playwright has misconceived the i
nature of a dramatic ending ; he inclines j
to confuse climax, catastrophe, peripeteia, j
with conclusion, denouement, solution. As ^
we have seen, the catastrophe does not \
properly solve the problem, but provides j
a method of, or means to, a solution ; j
thereafter follows, or should follow, a phase '
equally needed, the working-out of the
solution. CEdipus Tyr annus affords an ex-
cellent example of this difference, but there
are naturally many such masterpieces. In
Man and Superman Mr. Shaw produces a
fine catastrophe in Ann's avowal of her love
to John Tanner ; but how he will meet this
crisis is a new question, and (in view of the \
character and opinions which he has re- |
vealed) a question fraught with deep in- \
t crest. In The Brothers, by Terence, the
climax (we saw) is Demea's decision to
change his manners. This forms anything
but a conclusion or solution : we look with
excited amusement to see how this resolve
will affect the two young men and the
elderly Micio whom Demea has at length
decided to beat at his own game. Juliust
I
OF DRAMA 197
Ccesar contains a very long elaborate denoue-
ment which no one could conceivably confuse
with the peripeteia. In Moliere's Le Misan-
thrope the peripeteia is of course the scene
where the coquette Celimene is at length
" brought to book " by the production of her
hopelessly damaging letter in the presence
of her various suitors. But no reader or
spectator can tell whether this will or will
not throw her finally into the arms of
Alceste ; in fact the conclusion is probably
felt by most as a shock.
But instances need not be multiplied ;
any good play distinguishes climax and
conclusion. Only bad writers entirely con-
fuse them ; nevertheless, competent play-
wrights do at times incline towards such
confusion. But we must beware of bringing
under this head plays with a denouement
which is brief, or less interesting than the
climax or perhaps than any of the earlier
scenes, as in many light comedies, such as
Mr. Arnold Bennett's' T^^ Honeymoon, The
fault we have in view is the idea that after
the peripeteia there is nothing to do save to
" pick up the pieces " — the audience knows
and understands everything ; let us simply
square things up and ring down the curtain.
198 THE NATURE AND METHODS
So it comes to pass that the characters
forget their own natures, drop the purposes
which have sustained them hitherto, reveal
ludicrously casual forgetfulness or generosity,
in order to put everything " straight." Thus
at the close of Cymbeline, so as to get rid
of the war with Rome which might disturb
the spectators amid the joy caused by all
the personal reconciliations, the King glibly
utters this incredible announcement : —
And, Caius Lucius,
Although the victor, we submit to Caesar,
And to the Roman empire, promising
To pay our wonted tribute, from the which
We were dissuaded by our wicked queen :
Whom heavens, in justice, both on her and hers.
Have laid most heavy hand.
This calm assumption, conceived by a British
king, that Heaven willed the subjection of
Britain to Rome so definitely as to make
patriotism a species of impiety — an assump-
tion which would be out of the question in
the body of any play, whether composed by
Shakespeare or by the completest dunce —
is a first-rate example of what we may term
the " huddled " ending. It would be difficult
to find elsewhere quite such perfect rubbish,
but the lapse in technique is common.
Euripides' Alcestis provides at the close
OF DRAMA 199
not only no account of the manner in which
Heracles rescued the Queen from the Death-
fiend (an omission which may well have a
vital bearing on the whole plot), but no
conversation or real contact between Ad-
metus and his restored wife. In Monsieur
Piegois, by M. Alfred Capus, Piegois not
only relinquishes his career as director of
the casino, but gives the whole concern
over to the town, for no discoverable reason
save to create an amiable sensation in the
theatre. St. John Hankin, too, sinned
grievously in The Two Mr, Wetherbys. The
whole point of Richard Wetherby is his
humorous but adamantine resolve not to
come back to his wife. The plot is built
on this, but at the last moment, though
no new factor has appeared, he collapses,
simply for the sake of a good "curtain" —
to produce a neat tableau of two couples
instead of one couple plus two isolated
persons ; it is the cheapest theatricality,
and a most curious phenomenon in this
author, who expressed himself later very
strongly against the mechanical " happy
ending," and in such an admirable drama
as The Last of the de Mullins achieved a
capital solution. "Huddled" scenes are in-
200 THE NATURE AND METHODS
deed usually employed to secure a '' happy
ending," as in the numberless Elizabethan
plays where incongruous and unsuspecting
minor persons are hastily betrothed by an
unscrupulous dramatist. The Duke in
Twelfth Night at the last minute turns
unaccountably to Viola from Olivia ; at
the end of A Winter^s Tale, Camillo and
Paulina become affianced without having
shown any hint of such interest in one
another — simply because it is the end of
A Winter's Tale, not the beginning ; Isa-
bella's acceptance of the Duke in Measure
for Measure is still worse. These absurd
nuptials, and a hundred more, are poverty-
stricken devices to secure that crispness of
action which should depend on sanely-
developed psychology, not on a feverish
hustle less appropriate to a clear-headed
artist than to a traveller who wildly packs
a portmanteau just in time for his train.
Oscar Wilde's cynical attitude towards the
stage was never revealed more pungently
than when at the close of The Importance of
Being Earnest he bade Miss Prism and the
Canon fall into one another's arms without
the shadow of excuse or warning. The
conclusion of The Merchant of Venice is in
OF DRAMA 201
this respect highly curious. The peripeteia
is, of course, the sudden ruUng that Shylock
must take no more and no less than exactly
one pound of flesh. The denouement (properly
so called) is not the whole of what follows,
namely part of the Fourth, and the whole of
the Fifth, Act; that portion of the drama
contains the genuine denouement and more.
For the problem of the play is ; What will
result from Shylock' s hatred against An-
tonio ? The denouement as usual gives the
answer by aid of the peripeteia : Shylock
is utterly baffled, while Antonio receives
both life and money to compensate his
losses at sea. Therefore the play might
have ended with the close of the Trial
Scene, and assuredly the Fifth Act, delightful
as it is and containing as it does some of the
most marvellous poetry that even Shake-
speare ever penned, strikes us all as a kind
of appendix ; we hardly feel that it is
needed. We should regard it still more
definitely as intrusive had not the playwright
mechanically inserted a few hooks in the
Fourth Act whereon to hang it, notably the
brief scene where the supposed advocate
and clerk coax Bassanio and Gratiano into
surrendering their rings. Further, we are
202 THE NATURE AND METHODS
prepared for the scene of Lorenzo and
Jessica by Antonio's insistence before the
court that Shylock be compelled to provide
for them. All this seems anything but a
huddled ending ; it shows on the contrary a
quite languid development. There is never-
theless a short huddled passage concernedwith
the main plot. Antonio is to be fully restored,
and so Portia suddenly thrusts at him certain
letters — how she came by them we are left to
guess — ^which report that all his supposedly
lost ships are " safely come to land."
A moment ago we used the phrase " main
plot." It might seem from our discussion
of plot that the term is self-contradictory.
But secondary or minor plots of course
abound. Are they legitimate ? This ques-
tion is not so troublesome as might appear.
An "under-plot" is always interesting and
complete in itself (else it would not be a
plot at all) but it may and should support
the main action. Just so an ^Eschylean
play can be read — now, unfortunately, must
as a rule be read — and appreciated in itself ;
but on studying the whole trilogy we per-
ceive that it forms part of a still greater
organism. The by-play of Trinculo and
Stephano is valuable as bringing out the
OF DRAMA 203
nature of Caliban and so strengthening our
appreciation of Prospero. But if the two
plots are essentially separate and are only
tied together by some thin device, for ex-
ample, by the fact that the same character
happens, and merely happens, to take part
in both, then the minor plot is technically
improper. It may be magnificent in itself
— ^the Falstaff scenes of Henry IV,, Part I.,
fall under this category — but it is a flaw
in the whole drama as a drama. We are,
in short, presented with two plays instead
of one. We may say, if we choose, that the
discussion deals purely with technical labels ;
but on the other side let us not deny that
no one can recollect the whole action of
Henry IV., Part I., of A Midsummer Night's
Dream, of Cymbeline, without two entirely
distinct mental processes, exactly as the
reader of Dickens finds it an effort to remem-
ber that Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Ehjah Pogram
appear between the covers of the same
novel.
It may prove useful, before bringing this
essay to an end, to discuss a few among the
many misconceptions which have helped
to confuse popular opinion and even pro-
fessional criticism — misuse of words and
204 THE NATURE AND METHODS
incorrect doctrines. " Dramatic " is a term
often wrongly applied. People think of
drama, not as a certain form of art, but as
what they have been accustomed to see in
a theatre. Now, the majority of successful
plays in our time (to mention no other)
have been less strong in genuine dramatic
art than in theatricality — ^that is, a vivid
picture of bustle, violence, excitement, a
falsetto note of vague momentousness. Play
after play has been presented which is de-
rived, not from life or any direct thought
about life, but from imitation of the last
piece which has won applause. Hence that
artificial heightening and stressing, those
sudden entrances and exits, those French
windows, those " strong curtains," all the
va-et'Vient of alternate emotions with which
every one is so familiar, and which — here is
the deadly point — ^form the only scenic
pabulum available in the vast majority of
provincial towns. Then, what is merely
theatrical is dubbed " dramatic " ; any occa-
sion when one feels that " something is
going to happen " is given this adjective.
An important criminal case is called " drama-
tic " because the black cap lies on the judge's
table, or because a Cabinet Minister is a
OF DRAMA 205
witness — that is, we experience the appetiz-
ing thrill which a pretentious stage-spectacle
affords. The judge's rebuke has even become
a jocular proverb : " This court is not a
theatre." As a fact, a murder case may be
utterly undramatic, and a trial which centres
round a sordid theft may be full of drama,
as Mr. Galsworthy has admirably demon-
strated. Another abused word is " tra-
gedy," incessantly applied by journalists to
any violent death, apparently because in
so many real tragedies the chief person loses
his life. It will naturally be so, since this
is the easiest way to communicate a sense
of solemnity and to strip the disguise from
people and situations. But even if a tragedy
always contained a death (which is not true)
it by no means follows that every death,
even violent death, is tragic. It must
involve not only a human life, but also the
victory, defeat, or rescue of some idea
important to human beings. But in news-
paper jargon, if a pauper dies just before
news of sudden wealth reaches him, or if a
child is killed by an overdose of medicine,
these events are called tragedies. Pitiful
they are, but not (as reported) tragic in the
least ; there is far more of tragedy in the
206 THE NATURE AND METHODS
death of a bird, if it means what Ibsen's
wild duck means. So debased is our use of
words that a few years ago a newspaper
remarked concerning certain deaths from
disease : " Some of these tragedies are
dramatic " ! A third misused term is " catas-
trophe." Critics have been known to apply
it loosely to the conclusion of a drama, thus
mischievously confusing climax or peripeteia
with denouement Far more frequent is the
implication of " disaster," mostly (it is true)
about real and non-dramatic events, such
as a fatal shipwreck, but sometimes of a
disastrous event in the course of a play,
which is not a real catastrophe in the least,
such as Caesar's murder, or the death of
Alcestis.
Few doctrines are more frequently ex-
pressed than this, that tragedy, or even
comedy, shows Man in conflict with Fate,
or Circumstance, as it is sometimes called.
One hears a good deal about " puppets of
Fate," and Mr. Thomas Hardy plainly
imagines himself to have derived from
iEschylus a point of view which, though it
leaves his works unimpaired as magnificent
works of art, does make them at times
grossly unfair pictures of the Divine Govern-
OF DRAMA 207
ment ; namely, his idea that the dice are
always cogged in favour of sorrow, waste,
misunderstanding, that accident is invariably
unhappy accident. Such a doctrine can be
attributed to ^schylus only by a grave
mistake. And as regards the general pro-
position, it is possible to regard drama as
depicting Man's struggle against Fate only
if we dilute " Fate " until all definite mean-
ing vanishes. What a playwright ultimately
believes as a religious or metaphysical fact
is one thing ; what he actually adduces as
the initial point of his play is another.
And he always thus adduces a specific
situation clearly attributable to the circum-
scribed acts, hopes, and fears of people,
not to any arrangement of the Universe ;
even in the Prometheus we are concerned
with a purely personal Zeus.
It is a common theory that dramatists
should present us with "a slice of life."
Two errors are here combined: that drama
imitates life, and that the author cuts off
a portion from a real sequence of events and
stages it without more ado. The latter idea
need not detain us. It is plain that a
dramatist organizes his material, giving to
it structure and lucidity, emphasizing ten-
208 THE NATURE AND METHODS
dencies only latent in actual affairs, and
omitting the irrelevant. But that he imi-
tates life may seem a more attractive theory.
His real task, however, is not to imitate
but to interpret, and the semblance of
actuality is but the beginning of the work.
Constable represented the Glebe Farm accu-
rately, no doubt, but his painting will never
be mistaken for a coloured photograph.
Similarly, the most realistic of playwrights
may vividly present a quarrel or a con-
spiracy, but he is transmuting in the very
moment at which we cry, " How natural ! "
—he gives text and comment in one breath,
which is the method of all art.
Finally, the most famous of all theories
concerning the drama may be dismissed in
few words. It was long claimed that tragedy
should follow the "classical" style and
conform to the Three Unities, of Action, Time,
and Place, because Aristotle in his Poetic
has so ordained. Not only is it possible
to reply that Aristotle's " rules " do not
bind human activity for ever, not only is it
obvious to point out that, in all his "rules,"
he is manifestly doing no more than to
codify the practice of Greek playwrights in
his own and earlier times ; much more than
OF DRAMA 209
all this, it is the bald truth — ^though it is
difficult to believe it, for this celebrated
" rule " has been repeated for centuries and
has cramped French tragedy in the hands
of great masters — it is the truth that Aristotle
never mentions the ''Three Unities." He
insists, naturally, on the importance of
unity in action, and makes one passing
remark that it is advisable to restrict the
events of a drama to one revolution of the
sun, but has not a word on the "Unity of
Place," which is signally violated in the
Eumenides of iEschylus, the Ajax of Soph-
ocles, and in several of Aristophanes'
comedies. The "Three Unities" are the
greatest imposture in the history of criticism.
INDEX OF PLACES
IE. =^schylus, Ar. =Aristoplianes, B. =Barker, E. =Euripides,
G. = Galsworthy, H. =Hankin, I. =Ibsen, M. =Moli6re,
P. =Pmero, S. =Sophocles, Sh. =Shakespeare, W. =Wilde
vEgean Sea, 41
Argos, 17, 41
Athens, 5-6, 38-9, 44, 46
— and Persia, 5-6
Aulis, 16
Belmont, 140
Birmingham, Repertory
theatres in, 107
Birnam Wood, 178
Brighton, 87
Britain, 43, 50, igS
Cathay, 5
Ghristchurch, Oxford, 66
Colchis, 30
Copenhagen, 52
Corinth, 30, 35
Dakota, 31
Dublin, 107
Dunsinane, 141, 178
Eastcheap, 140
England, 1-2, 3, 5, 49, 57,
124 ; in the nineteenth
century, 3
Europe, 4
Fife, 167
Forest of Arden, 141
Gadshill, 117
Gaul, 43
Germany, Ibsen in, 52, 56
Glasgow, 107
Greece, 11, 41
Hades, in Ar. Frogs, 47, 184
Hampton Court, 141
lolchos, 29
Ireland, 4
London, 3, 52, 107-8
Monte Carlo, 66
Mycenae, 24
New South Wales, 164
Nile, 141
Persia, 5-6, 185-6
Phthia, 19
Queensland, 31
Rialto, The, 188
Rome, 124, 188
Salamis, 185
Scandinavia, I.'s plays in, 52
Scotland, 4, 188
Sipylus, 19
Spain, 43
Sparta, and King of Sparta, 40
Stratford-on-Avon, 141
Thebes, 178
Thessaly, 43
Troy, 16, i8, 20, 24, 40, 41-2,
189, 195
Tuileries, 73
Wales, 4
I Waterloo,
181
212
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS
Names of authors in small capitals, of works in italics
Abraham Lincoln, see Drink-
water
Acharnians, The, see Aristo-
phanes
Achilles, in E. /. at A., i6 £f.,
41 ; speech of, trans., 18 ff.
Achurch, Miss Janet, 52
Admetus, 130, 199
Admirable Crichton, The, see
Barrie
^gisthus, in M. A gam., 189-
91 ; in E. Electra, 24, 26 f.
^scHYLUS, 25, 47, 146, 147,
148, 189 ff.
— and Hardy, 206
— in Ar. Frogs, 184
— Agamemnon, 133, 154,
189 ff.
— ChoephorcB, 150, 170
— Eumenides, 209
— Perscs, catastrophe of, 185 f .
— Prometheus Vinctus, 150,
207 ; economy in, 169 ;
peripeteia in, 177
— Supplices, 170
— The Libation - Bearers
{=:Choeph.), 190 ff.
Agamemnon, in M.Ag. , i8g i. ;
in E. Electra, 17 ff., 24 fE.
Agamemnon, see -^Eschylus
Ajax, see Sophocles
Alceste, in M, Le Misanthrope,
150, 176, 197
Alcestis, in E. Ale, 130, 199,
206
Alcestis, see Euripides
Alice in Wonderland, 67
Anatol, see Schnitzler
Andersen, Hans, 140
Andreiev, The Sabine Women,
133
Androcles and the Lion, see
Shaw
Andromache, in E. Andr., 40
Andromache, see Euripides
Antigone, see Sophocles
Antonio, in Sh. M. of V., 75-6,
168, 187-8, 201-2
Antony, Mark, in Sh. /. C,
136, 140 ; his funeral
speech, 156, 182
Antony and Cleopatra, see
Shakespeare
Apollo, in E. Electra, 24
Archer, Mr. William, 52 ;
his Play making, 112 n. ;
(pp. 23-41), 145 n.
Are You a Mason ? 152
Aristophanes, ii, 148
— and Euripides, 45 ff.
— and the " Three Unities,"
209
— his comedy often passes
into farce, 120-1
— Acharyiians, 183
— Birds, 184
— Frogs, 46 ; peripeteia in,
177, 184
— Peace, 184
— Plutus, 183
Aristotle, 162 ; and the
" Three Unities," 208-g ;
on irrational elements in
drama, 130 ; on plot,
144 ; on slaves, 33
Aristotle's canons, 53 ;
desis, 132 ; peripeteia,
175
— rule of plot-construction, 174
Arms and the Man, see Shaw
Artemis, 17, 41, 168
As You Like It, see Shakes-
peare
Athena, in E., 45
Atreus, sons of, in E. /. at A.,
18
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 213
Audrey, in Sh, As You, 170
AuGiER, La Pierre de Touche,
153
Avari^s, Les, see Brieux
BacchcB, see Euripides
Back to Methuselah, see Shaw
Baillie, Joanna, 49
Banquo, 167
Barker, Mr. Granville, 52,
60, 74, 86 ff., 106, 173,
195
Prunella, 86
The Madras House, 86,
90 ff., 154, 192
The Marrying of A nn
Leete, 71, 87-8, 93
The Voysey Inheritance,
88-9, 93, 195-6
Waste, 89-90
Barrie, Sir J. M., 67
Mary Rose, 174
Peter Pan, 67, 163
The Admirable Crichton,
67
Bartholomew Fair, see Jonson
Bassanio, in Sh. M. of V., 168,
201
Belvidera, in Otway's V. Pres.,
181
Bennett, Mr. Arnold, 67 ;
his " sense of the theatre,"
67
Milestones, 67
The Honeymoon, 67 ;
peripeteia in, 197
The Title, 67
Bernadotte, 134
Besier, Mr. Rudolf, 64 ;
Don, 64
Birds, The, see Aristophanes
Blanco Posnet, see Shaw
Blandin, Mme., in Lavedan's
Viveurs, 192
Bloomfield Bonnington, Sir
Ralph, in Shaw, Dr.'s Dil.,
16
Bluntschli, in Shaw, A. and
M., II, 150, 169
Borridge, Ethel, in H. Cass.
Eng., 79
Bottomley, Mr. Gordon, 59
Boucicault, Dion, 49, 160-1
Boy, The, see Pinero
Brack, Judge, in I. H. G., 167
Bracknell, Lord, in W. Import.,
60
Bradley, Professor A. C,
142 ; his Shakespearean
Tragedy, 115 n.
Brassbound, Captain, in Shaw,
26
Brieux, M., 106, 125
Brothers, The, see Terence
Browning, 59
Burglar Who Failed, The, see
Hankin
Burgoyne, General, in Shaw,
Devil's D., 14-5
Caesar, in Sh. Cymb., 198
— in Sh. /. C, 206
CcBsar and Cleopatra, see
Shaw
Caesar, Julius, his landing in
Britain, no
in Shaw, C. and CI., 42,
97-8
Cairn, David, in Mrs. G.'s
Necklace, 152
Caius Lucius, in Sh. Cymb.,
198
Calchas, in E. /. at A., 17, 19
Calderon, George, 60, 71,
104 ff.
Camillo, in Sh. A W.'s T.,
200
Candida, see Shaw
Capulets and Montagues, in
Sh. R. and J., 158
Capus, M. Alfred, M. Piigois,
132, 199
Carlyle, 4
Cassandra, in M. A gam., 190
Cassilis Engagement, The, see
Hankin
— Geoffrey, in H. The C.
Eng., 79
Cassio, in Sh. 0th., 136
Cassius, in Sh. /. C, 136
Caste, see Robertson
Cecily, Lady, in Shaw, Capf.
B., 23
Celimene, in M. Le Misan., t.so,
197
Chantecler, see Rostand
214
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Charity that began at Home,
The, see Hankin
Charmian, in Sh. A. and CI.,
170
Charrington, Mr. Charles, 52
Charteris, in Shaw, Philand.,
lOI
Cherry Orchard, see Tchekof
Chiron, mentioned in E. /. at
A., 18
Chremes, in Terence, Phormio,
185
Cleon, 45, 47
Cleopatra, in Sh. A. and C,
136, 140
Clytaemnestra, 17, 20, 189 ff.
CoNGREVE, 60, 103, 149
Constable, 208
Constant Lover, The, see Han-
kin
Coriolanus, see Shakespeare
Course du Flambeau, see
Hervieu
Courtney, Mr. W. L., 69
Critic, The, see Sheridan
Crusoe, Robinson, see Defoe
Cusins, in Shaw, Maj. B., loi
Cymbeline, see Shakespeare
Dane's Defence, Mrs., 187, see
Jones
Darius, 186
Darlington, Lord, in W. Ly.
W.'s Fan, 61
David Garrick, 49
Davies, Mr. H. H., Mrs.
Gorringe's Necklace, 152
Defoe, Daniel, Robinson
Crusoe, has no plot, 112 ff.
Demea, in Ter. Brothers, 185,
196
Denison, Lady, in H. Charity,
78
Desdemona, 154, 167
Devil's Disciple, The, see Shaw
Dickens, 3, 49, loi
Dionysus, 184
Divine Gift, The, see Jones
Doctor's Dilemma, The, see
Shaw
Doll's House, A, see Ibsen
Don, see Besier
Don Juan in Hell, see Shaw
Doyle, Larry, in Shaw, Jo. B.,
104
Drama and Life, see Walkley
Dramatic Values, see Mon-
tague
Drinkwater, Mr. John,
Abraham Lincoln, 135
Dubedat, Louis, in Shaw, Dr.'s
Dil., 9
Dudgeon, Dick, in Shaw,
Devil's D., 96, 99
— Mrs., in Shaw, Devil's D.,
16
Dumas ^/s, Francillon, 169
Duncan, in Sh. Macb., 167,
175, 181, 189
Eldest Son, The, see Gals-
worthy
Electra, in E. EL, 24 ff.
Electra, see Euripides
Elizabeth, 138
Elmire, in M. Tartuffe, 184
Emilia, in Sh. 0th., 136
Enemy of the People, An, see
Ibsen
Enobarbus, in Sh. A. and C,
136
Erlynne, Mrs., in W. Ly. W.'s
Fan, 180
Ervine, Mr. St. John, 115 n.
Eugene Marchbanks, in Shaw,
Cand., 103
Euripides, 1-48 ^fl55jw, 146 ff.,
158, 170
— in Ar. Frogs, 184
— Alcestis, 34, 197 ; accident
in, 130
— Andromache, 34, 39, 40
• — BacchcB, lo-i (qd. in trans.)
— Electra, 2.^fi.
— Hecuba, economy in, 169
— Helena, 119
— Hippolytus, 34, 168, 190
— Iphigenia at Aulis, 16 ff.,
41-2
— Medea, 29 ff., 31, 123, 135,
150
— Orestes, 118, 170
— Rhesus, 194
Eustace, in H. Prodigal, 81
Every Man out of his Humour,
see JoNSON
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 215
Hamlet, in Sh. H., iii, 115 n.
142 ff., 182
Hamlet, see Shakespeare
Hankin, St. John, 60, 71
76 ff., 81, 105-6
• The Burglar who failed,
76
The Cassilis Engagement,
76, 79
The Charity that began
at Home, 76, 78-9
The Constant Lover, 76
The Last of the de
Mullins, 76, 79-80, 199
The Return of the Pro-
digal, 76 fi., 80
The Two Mr. Wetherhys,
76-7, 199
Hardy, Mr. Thomas, and M.,
206
Tess of the D' Urbervilles,
75
The Return of the Native,
93
Harpagon, in M. L'Avare,
141-2
Hauptmann, 158
Heartbreak House, see Shaw
Hector, 40
Hecuba, see Euripides
Hedda Gabler, see Ibsen
Hedwig, in I. W. Duck, 76
Heine, 183
Helen, mentioned in E. /. at A.,
41
Helena, see Euripides
Helmer, Nora, in I. Doll's H.,
56, 131, 180, 194
— Torvald, in I. Doll's H.,
56, 131, 180, 194
Henry the Fifth, in Sh.
Hy. v., 175
Henry the Fifth, see Shakes-
peare
Henry the Fourth, see Shakes-
peare
Henry the Sixth, see Shakes-
peare
Hepplewhite, 106
Heracles, in M. Prom. V.,
169 ; in E. Ale, 130, 199
Heralds, in M. Supplice.^.
etc., 170
Falstaff, in Sh., 140, 182 ;
in Hy. IV., 117, 140, 168,
203 ; in Sh. M. Wives, 138
Faust, III, 175
Faust, see Goethe
Felicia Hindemarsh, in Jones,
Mrs. D.'s Def., 180
Ferrand, in G. Pigeon, 81
Ferrovius, in Shaw, Andr., 100
Fielding, Henry, 49
Fontenais, Mme., in Hervieu,
La C. du Fl., 151
Fool, in Sh. Lear, 151
Forbes-Robertson, Sir John-
ston, 97
Fountain, The, see Calderon
Francillon, see Dumas
Friar Laurence, in Sh. R. and
J., 128. 158 (qd.)
Friday, Man, in R. Crusoe,
107
Frogs, The, see Aristophanes
Froufrou, see Meilhac-
Hal^vy
Galsworthy, Mr. John, 60,
71, 74, 80 ff., 105, 205
Justice, 84-5, 125
Strife, 154
The Eldest Son, 81
The Pigeon, 81-2 (qd.)
The Silver Box, 82 ff .
The Skin Game, 85
Gamp, Mrs., 203
Garnett, Miss, in Shaw, Can-
dida, 103
Garrick, David, 49
George Dandin, see Moliere
Getting Married, see Shaw
Ghosts, see Ibsen
Gloria, in Shaw, You Never, loi
Goethe, Faust, 122, 147 (qd.)
Gorringe's Necklace, Mrs., see
Davies
Grant, General, iii
Gratiano, in Sh. M. of V., 201
Grieg, 133
Guinea - Hen, in Rostand,
Chantecler, 153
Hal, Prince, in Sh. Hy. IV., 168
Hallam, Sir Howard, in Shaw,
Capt. B.,^i6, 22 ff., 26
216
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Herdsman, in S. (E. Tyr., 178
Hervieu, 158 ; La Course dit
Flambeau (qd.), 151
Hill, Jenny, in Shaw, Maj. B.,
44
Hippolytus, see Euripides
Hobbyhorse, The, 53 ; see
Pinero
Honeymoon, The, see Bennett
Hotspur, in Sh. Hy. IV., 140
HousMAN, Mr, Laurence, 86
How He Lied to her Husband,
see Shaw
Huxtable family, in B. Madras
H., 90, 92, 192
lago, in Sh. 0th., 136-7, 167
Ibsen, 50, 53 ff., 62, 69, 95,
loi, 106-7, 136, 148, 158,
etc. etc.
— chief aim of, 54, 124
— dialogue in, 162
— his influence on English
playwrights, etc., 59, 64,
173
— A Doll's House, 49, 52, 55,
128, 131, 179, 194
— An Enemy of the People, 52,
57, 172-3
— Ghosts, 54, 56 fE,
— Hedda Gabler, 53-4, 58,
136-7, 147, 163, 167-8
— Little Eyolf, 154
— Peer Gynt, 163
— Rosmersholm, 52
• — • The Master Builder, 136
— The Wild Duck, 52, 58, 76,
136, 206
Idea of Tragedy, The, see
Courtney
Importance of Being Earnest,
The, see Wilde
lo, in IE. Prom. V., 169
Iphigenia at Aulis, see Euri-
pides
Isabella, in Sh. Meas. for M.,
200
Jack Straw, see Maugham
Jacob, mentioned in Sh. M. of
v., -75
Jaffier, in Otway, Venice Pres.,
181
Jason, in E. Medea, 28 £f., 36
Jessica, in Sh. M. of V., 202
Jocasta, in S. CE. Tyr., 178
John Bull's Other Island, see
Shaw
Jones, Mr. Henry Arthur,
60, 67-8, 173
Michael and his Lost
Angel, 68
Mrs. Dane's Defence,
180
The Divine Gift, 68
The Liars, 68
The Philistines, 68
Jones, in G. Silver Box, 83
JoNSON, Ben, 149
Jourdain, M., 154
Julia, in Shaw, Philand., loi
Juliet, in Sh. R. and J., 128
Juliet's nurse, in Sh. R. and J.,
171
Julius Caesar, in Sh. /. C, 135,
181
Julius CcBsar, see Shakes-
peare
Justice, see Galsworthy
Keats, 72
Kent, in Sh. Lear, 151
King Lear, see Shakespeare
Krogstad, in I. D.'s Ho., 128,
131, 194
Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, a
good melodrama, 119
Laban, 75
Lady Windermere's Fan, see
Wilde
Laius, in S. (E. Tyr., 178
Lamachus, in Ar. Ach., 183
Land of Promise, The, see
Maugham
La Pierre de Touche, see
AUGIER
La Rochefoucauld, 161
Last of the de Mullins, The,
see Hankin
Lavedan, M. Henri, Viveurs,
192
Lavinia, in Shaw, Andro., 100
Liars, The, see Jones
Libation - Bearers, The, see
iEsCHYLUS
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 217
Linden, Mrs., in I. D.'s Ho.,
128, 131
Little Eyolf, see Ibsen
London Assurance, see Bouci-
CAULT
Longfellow, 104
Lorenzo, in Sh. M. of V., 202
Louka, in Shaw , A . and M . , 169
Love and Mr. Lewisham, see
Wells
Macaulay, 3-4
Macbeth, in Sh. Macb., 113,
115 n., 142, 150, 167, 175,
178, 182, 188-9
— his soHloquies, 156
— Lady, in Sh. Macb., 140,
150
Macbeth, see Shakespeare
MacduiT, 188 f.
Madras, Constantine, in B.
M. House, 90
Madras House, The, see
Barker
Maeterlinck, M., 74 ; dia-
logue in, 155
Magistrate, The, see Pinero
Major Barbara, see Shaw
Mak, in the Secunda Pastorum
" Towneley " Miracle-
Play, 112
Malcolm, in Sh. Macb., 189
Man and Superman, see Shaw
Man in the Stalls, The, see
SUTRO
Man of Destiny, The, see Shaw
Marchbanks, Eugene, in Shaw,
Candida, 103
Marivaux, 121
Marrying of Ann Leete, The,
see Barker
Marston, Westland, 49, 61,
107
Mary Rose, see Barrie
Masefield, Mr. John, 60, 71
Master Builder, The, see
Ibsen
Maugham, Mr. Somerset, 66 ;
Jack Straw, 66 ; The
Land of Promise, 67
Maximes et Reflexions Morales,
of La Rochefoucauld,
161
Measure for Measure, see
Shakespeare
Medea, in E. M., 29 ff., 35 ff.,
I35> 148
Medea, see Euripides
Meilhac-Hal^vy, Froufrou,
154
Menelaus, in E. /. at A., 19
— in E. Androm., 40
Merchant of Venice, The, see
Shakespeare
Mercutio, in Sh. R. and J.,
151 ; his Queen Mab
speech, 156, 158
Merry Wives of Windsor, The,
see Shakespeare
Messengers in Greek tragedy,
156 n.
Micawber, 138
Michael and his Lost Angel,
see Jones
Micio, in Terence, Brothers, 196
Midsummer Night's Dream,
see Shakespeare
Milestones, see Bennett
Miranda, in Sh. Tp., 156
Misalliance, see Shaw
Misanthrope, Le, see Moliere
MOLIERE, 121, 148-9
— George Dandin, 116 n.
— [L'Avare], 141-2
— Le Misanthrope, 150, 176,
197
— Tartuffe, 124, 184
M. Piegois, see Capus
Montague, Mr. C. E., Dra-
matic Values, p. 27 qd.,
116 n. ; p. 227 qd., 156 n. ;
pp. 180 et seq. referred to,
180 n.
Montagues and Capulets, in
Sh. R. and J., 158
More 11, Rev. James, in Shaw,
Cand., 12-3, 16, 103-4
Mozart, 133
Mrs. Dane's Defence, 180
— Gorringe's Necklace, see
Davies
— Warren's Profession, see
Shaw
de Mullins, The Last of the,
see Hankin
De Musset, 125,
218
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Nan, The Tragedy of, see
Masefield
Napoleon, 6, 134; in Shaw,
Man ofD., 15-6
Nereus, mentioned in E. /. at
A., 19
Nora Helmer, in I. D.'s H.,
56, 131, 180, 194
Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, The,
see PiNERO
Nym, in Sh., 151
Oberon, in Sh. M. N. Dr., 165
O'Connell, Amy, in B. Waste,
89, 95
CEdipus, in S. OE. Col., 171 ;
in (E. Tyr., 179
CEdipus Coloneus, Rex, Tyran-
nus, see Sophocles
Old Wives' Tale, see Peele
Olivia, in Sh. Tw. N., 200
One of the Best, 138
On ne badine pas avec V amour,
see De Musset
Orestes, in JE., 146-7 ;
Choeph., 190 ; in E. EL,
24-5, 27 ; Or., 148
Orestes, see Euripides
Orgon, in M. Tartuffe, 184
Othello, in Sh. 0th., 167, 182,
185
Othello, see Shakespeare
Otway, Thomas, Venice Pre-
serv'd, 180
Palmerston, 2
Paris, mentioned in 1^. I. at A.,
Patrick Cullen, Sir, in Shaw,
Dr.'s Dil. (qd.), 9
Patterne, Sir Willoughby, 138
Paulina, in Sh. A W.'s T., 200
Peace, The, see Aristophanes
Peele, George, Old Wives'
Tale, 157
Peer Gynt, see Ibsen
Peleus, 19, 21
Pelias, 29
Pericles, 2
PerscB, see ^schylus
Perseus, 137
Persians, in IE. Perscs, 185
Peter Pan, see Barrie
Phaedra, in E. HippoL, 148,
168
Phidre, see Racine
Philanderers, The, see Shaw
Philistines, The, see Jones
Phillips, Stephen, 59
Phormio, see Terence
Pickwick, Samuel, 139
Piigois, M., see Capus
Pierre, in Otway, V. Pres., 181
Pigeon, The, see Galsworthy
PiNERO, Sir Arthur, 53, 55,
60, 68-70, 105, 173
Pistol, in Sh., 151
Plantagenet kings, in Sh., 140
— mother in Robertson, Caste,
62
Plato and women, 34
Playboy of the Western World,
see Synge
Players, in Sh. Hamlet, 142
Playmaking, see Archer
Plutus, see Aristophanes
Pogram, Elijah, in Dickens,
M. Chuz., 203
Polonius, in Sh. H., 115 n.,
143-4
Polydorus, in E. Hecuba, 169
Polyxena, in E. Hecuba, 169
Pompey the Great, see Mase-
field
Portia, in Sh. M. of V., 140,
154, 168, 202
Preserving Mr. Panmure, see
PiNERO
Prince Hal, in Sh. Hy. IV.,
168
Prism, Miss, in W. Import., 200
Private Secretary, The, 12
Professor A. C. Bradley,
Shakespearean Tragedy,
115 n., 142-3
Professor of Greek, in Shaw,
Maj. B., 7
Prometheus, in IE. Prom. V.,
147, 169
Prometheus Bound, see
iEsCHYLUS
— Unbound, see Shelley
— Vinctus, see ^schylus
Prospero, in Sh. Tp.. 128
and n., 141, 165, 203 ; his
narrative, 156
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 219
Prunella, see Barker and
HOUSMAN
Puck, in Sh. M. N. Dr., 165
Punch, 3, 53
Pygmalion, see Shaw
Pylades, 170
Racine, Phedre, 156 n.
Raina, in Shaw, A. and M.,
150, 169
Ramsden, in Shaw, Man and
Sup., 176
Raphael's " School of Athens,"
129
" Recits de Theramene," 156 n.
Rejane, Mme., 192
Renault, in Otway, V. Pres.,
181
Return of the Native, The, see
Hardy
Return of the Prodigal, The,
see Hankin
Rhesus, see Euripides
Robertson, Thomas, 49-50,
53, 61-2, 66, 107
Caste, 49, 53 ; char-
acters in, 62
Robinson Crusoe, 107
Robinson Crusoe, see Defoe
Rochefoucauld, La, see
La R.
Rodin, 73
Roman triumvirs, in Sh., 140
Romeo, in Sh. R. and J., 128,
158, 171, 175
Romeo and Juliet, see Shake-
speare
Rosalind, in Sh. As You,
141
Rosmersholm, see Ibsen
Rostand, M., Chantecler, 153,
156, 163
Sabine, in Hervieu, La C. du F.,
151. 176
Sabine Women, The, see
Andreiev
Saranoff, in Shaw, A. and M.,
12, 16 ff., 169
Sartorius, Blanche, in Shaw,
Wid. Ho., 10 1
Schiller, 48
Schnitzler, Anatol, 174
School for Scandal, screen-
scene in, see Sheridan
" School of Athens," 129
Scott, Sir Walter, 49
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The
see Pinero
Shakespeare, 52, 69, 84, loi,
115 n., 140, 142 ff., 148,
158, 182, 187-8, 198 ; as
comedian, 121 ; his chief
aim, 54, 124
— Antony and Cleopatra, 136
— As You Like It, 1 70
— Coriolanus, hostile collision
in, 150
— Cymbeline (qd.), weak con-
clusion of, 169, 198,
203
— Hamlet, 112 n., 122, 142 ff.;
Ervine on, and peripeteia
in, 115 n. ; supernatural
agency in, 165
— Henry the Fifth, 138, 156,
175
— Henry the Fourth, 150, 168,
203
— Henry the Sixth, a chronicle,
140
— Julius Ccssar, 133, 135-6
(qd.), 196-7; funeral
speech in, 156 ; catas-
trophe in, I 8 1-2
— King Lear, 151
— Macbeth, 53, 112, 167, 175,
188-9 ; double recoil in,
178
— Measure for Measure, 200
— Merchant of Venice, 75-6
(qd.), 150, 165, 170;
preparation for peripeteia
in, 187 ; Fifth Act.
peripeteia, denouement,
and conclusion in, 201
— Merry Wives of Windsor,
138
— Midsummer Night's Dream,
203 ; magic in, 165
— Othello, 117 ff.; a melo-
drama, 124, 137, 150, 167 ;
catastrophe of, 185
— Romeo and Juliet, 128, 172,
175; accident in, 151;
Mab speech in, 156-7
220
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Shakespeare, Tempest, 127,
12811. ; accident in, 130,
151 ; magic in, 165 ; Pros-
pero's narrative in, 156,
203
— Titus Andvonicus, 133
— Twelfth Night, 108, 200
— Winter's Tale, The, 165, 200
Shakespearean Tragedy, see
Bradley
Shaw, Mr. George Bernard,
1-48 passim, 52, 58, 60,
71, 74, 79 ff., 95 ff., 155,
173
Androcles and the Lion,
100
Arms and the Man, 12,
150, 169
— • — Back to Methuselah, 98-9
Blanco Posnet, 99
CcBsar and Cleopatra
(qd.), 42 ff., 97-8
Candida, 10, 12 ff.,
103 (qd.)
Captain Brassbound's
Conversion, 22-3
Devil's Disciple, 14-5,
96 ff.
Doctor's Dilemma, 8
Don Juan in HeU =
Act iii. of Man and Sup.,
102
Getting Married, loi, 174,
186
Heartbreak House, 98, 193
How He Lied to her
Husband, 9
John Bull's Other Island,
32, 104
Major Barbara, 7, 32,
43-4. 99, loi, 179; dia-
logue in, 159
Man and Superman, 39,
150, 176, 196
Man of Destiny, 15-6
Mrs. Warren's Profes-
sion, 32, 39, 122
Pygmalion, 160
The Philanderers, loi
Widowers' Houses, 32
You Never Can Tell, loi
Shelley, 4
— Prometheus Unbound, 147
Sheraton, 106
Sheridan, 50 ; Critic, 49-50 ;
School for Scandal, 185
Shylock, in Sh. M. of V., 75-6,
139, 168, 182, 187-8 (qd.),
201-2
Silver Box, The, see Gals-
worthy
Skin Game, The, see Gals-
worthy
Smith, Sydney, 4
Solness and others, in I.
M. B., 136
Sophocles, 54, 115 n., 121,
125, 146, 148, 172 ;
dialogue in, 155 ; his
chief aim, 54, 124
— Ajax, 171, 209
— Antigone, 149-50, 170
— CEdipus Coloneus, 122, 171
— CEdipus Rex {=Tyr.), 53
— CEdipus Tyrannus, 123, 124,
163, 196; accident in,
127-8; complication, peri-
peteia, solution in, 178
— Philoctetes, 154
Spanish Tragedy, see Kyd
Sphinx, in Shaw, C. and CI., 42
Spintho, in Shaw, Andro., 100
Stangy, in Hervieu, La C. du
F., 176
Stephano, in Sh. Tp., 202
Stephen Phillips, 59
Stockmann, in I. En. Pea.,
57 (qd.). 172
Strife, see Galsworthy, 57
Supplices, see ^schylus
SuTRo, Mr. Alfred, 66-7
Swindon, Major, in Shaw,
Devil's D., 15
Synge, J. M., dialogue in,
155 ; The Playboy of the
Western World, peripeteia
in, 185
Talbot, in Sh. [Hy. VI.], 140
Tanner, John, in Shaw, Man
and Sup., 150, 176, 196
Tanqueray, Mrs., in P. Second
Mrs. T., 69-70
Tartuffe, in M. Tart., 184
Tartuffe, see Moliere
Tchekof, 98, 192
INDEX OF PERSONS AND WORKS 221
Tempest, The, see Shake-
speare
Tennyson, 3-4, 59
Terence, 185 ; dramaturgic
economy of, 169 ;
Phormio, 185 ; The
Brothers, 185 ; climax in,
196
Tess of the D'Urhervilles, see
Hardy
Teucer, in S. Ajax, 171
Thackeray, 49
" Theramene, Recits de,"
156 n.
Thetis, 17, 19
Tims, in G. Pigeon, 81
Title, The, see Bennett
Titus Andronicus, see Spiake-
SPEARE
Tortoise, in Rostand, Chante-
cler, 153
Tragedy of Nan, see Mase-
FIELD
Trebell, Henry, in B. Waste,
52, 89, 94 ff.
Trench, Harry, in Shaw, Wid.
Ho., loi
Trenchard, Voysey, in B.
V. Inherit., 92
Trinculo, in Sh. Tp., 202
Trois Filles de M. Dupont, Les,
see Brieux
Trojans, in E. /. at A., 41 ;
Rhesus, 194; in Homer, i8
Tubal, in Sh. M. of F., 170
Tudor nobles, in Sh., 140
Twelfth Night, see Shake-
speare
Two Mr. Wetherhys, The, see
Hankin
Tybalt, in Sh. R. and J., 151,
175
Types of Tragic Drama, see
Vaughan
" Uncle Peter," as deus ex
machina, 164, 176
Undershaft, in Shaw, Maj. B.
(qd.), 43-4
— Barbara, in Shaw, Maj. B.,
179
— Stephen, in Shaw, Maj. B.
(qd.), 43-4
Valentine, in Shaw, You Never,
lOI
Vanbrugh, 50
Vaughan, Professor C. E.,
Types of Tragic Drama,
115 n.
Venice Preserv'd, see Otway
Victoria, Queen, 5
Viola, in Sh. Tw. N., 200
Viveurs, see Lavedan
Voysey family, in B. V.
Inherit., 88, 91, 93-4, 195
Voysey Inheritance, The, see
Barker
Walkley, Mr. A. B., Drama
and Life, 142 ff., 160 andn.
Professor Bradley's
" Hamlet," 143-4 (<ld.)
— • — on Sh. Hamlet, 157 n.
Walpole, Horace, his saying
on life, 117
— Sir Robert, and stage
censorship, 49
Waste, see Barker
Watchman, in S. Antigone,
170
Watts, the painter, 72
Wells, Mr. H. G., Love and
Mr. Lewisham, 92
Werle, Gregers, in I. Wild
Duck, 76
Wetherby, Richard, in H.
The Two Mr. W.'s, 199-
200
Wetherby s. The Two Mr., see
Hankin
White field, Ann, in Shaw, Man
and Sup., 150, 196
Widowers' Houses, see Shaw
Wild Duck, in I. W. D.,
206
Wild Duck, The, see Ibsen
Wilde, Oscar, 60 £E., 66, 75,
79, 103, 105, 180 andn.
^ dialogue in, 161-2
Lady Windermere's Fan,
61 ; catastrophe and
denouement in, 180
The Importance of Being
Earnest, 12, 60, 119
Windermere, Lady, in W.
Ly. W.'s Fan, 180
222
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Windermere, Lord, in W. Ly.
W.'s Fan, i8o
Winter's Tale, The, see Shake-
speare
Wordsworth, 3
Yorick, in Sh. Hamlet, 142
You Never Can Tell, see
Shaw
Zeus, in IE. Prom. V., 169, 207
GENERAL INDEX
Accident in drama, 126 £E.
Action, Unity of, 208
-^schylean plays, 202 ; scenes
in Goethe's Faust, 147 ;
trilogy, 202
Aim of art, 125-6 ; of dra-
matic art, 123 ff. ; of
Ibsen, Shakespeare, and
Sophocles, 54, 124
Amateur productions, 108
Americans, 4, 194
Anglo-Indian Colonel, in H.
Charity, 78
Apron-stage of Elizabethan
theatre, 157
Architectonic skill, necessary
in drama, 50 ; of Ibsen, 57
Art and Science, 72
Art, object of, 124
Athenian citizen, in Ar.
Acharnians, 183
— decadence, 6 ; democracy,
57 ; dramatists, 57 ;
literature, 6 ; ochlocracy,
57 ; patriotism, 6 ; philo-
sophy, 6 ; politics, 6 ;
women, 33
Audience, Elizabethan, 181 ;
English, 181
Bow of Philoctetes, in S.
Philoc, 154
Burlesque, 121
" Bushiness," in drama, esp.
Russian d., 192-3
" Business," 153-4
Canon, in W. Import., 200
Carpets, in M. A gam., 154
Caskets, in Sh. M. of V., 154
Catastrophe, 175, 196 ; in
tragedy, 185 ; liable to a
special danger, 191 ff. ;
misuse of the word, 206 ;
not " disaster," 206
Catastrophe, in I. A D.'s Ho.,
179-80
— in W. Ly. W.'s Fan, 180
— in Sh. Macb., 179
— in S. CE. Tyr., 179
— in Sh. 0th., 185
— in M. Tartuffe, 184
— in Terence, The Brothers,
185
Censorship Commission, 95
— of stage, 49, 56
Character-drawing of Ibsen,
56
Characterisation in drama,
132 fi.
" Circumstance " in tragedy,
206
Classical and romantic drama,
170
— dialogue in Ibsen, 172-3
" Click," in drama, 151 ff.
Climax, 196, 206
Coincidence in drama, 127
Collision in drama, 145 n.,
150-1
Comedy, 117, 145
— of Manners, 60 ff,, 148
— peripeteia in, 177
— Roman, 123
— what it is, 116 ff.
Complication in drama, 193 ;
in life, 11 1
— in S. CE. Tyr., 178
— liable to a special danger,
191
Conclusion in drama, 196
Contrast in drama, 145 n.
Conventions in drama, 118
Crisis in drama, 145 n., 175
GENERAL INDEX
223
Crutch, in I. Little Eyolf, 154
" Curtain," 152
— " descends on a note of
interrogation," 193
— "effective," 63 ; " strong,"
204
Danger of prose-dialogue, 159
Dangers of catastrophe, com-
phcation, dSnouement, 191
— of various dramatic dia-
logue-forms, 156 ff.
Dark Age of English dramatic
literature (i 779-1 889), 49
Death of hero not a necessary
ingredient in tragedy, 122
Debate in B.'s plays, 94
Delian League, 6
Delphic Oracle, in E. EL,
24, 45 ; in Sh. The W.'s T.,
165
Denouement, 114, 163, 175,
176, 196, 197, 206
— danger to which it is liable,
191
— in Ar. Acharn., 183
— in E. Ale, 130
— in I. AD.'s Ho., 180, 194
— in Otway, Ven. Pres., 180-1
— inSh. /. G., 182, 197
— inSh. M. of v., 201
— in S. Gt. Tyr., 178
— in W. Ly. W.'s Fan, 180
— weaknesses in, 193 ff .
— whence it should arise, 132
Desisy of Aristotle, 132
Deus ex machina, " Uncle
Peter " as, 164 ff., 191
Dialogue, Economy in, 170 fi.
— in Congreve, 150 ; in Han-
kin, 79 ; in Ibsen, 162,
172-3 ; in Maeterlinck,
155 ; in Mohere, 148 ; in
Rostand, 155 ; in Shaw,
155 ; in Sophocles, 155 ;
in Synge, 155, 185 ; in
Wilde, 161-2
— poetical form or prose form,
155
— varieties of, in drama, 154 ff.
Didacticism in drama, 125-6
Difficulty appropriately solved,
in every play, 1 1 1
Double recoil, in Sh. Macb.,
178
Drama of types, 149-50
— Russian, 192
" Drama," The word, no
Drama, what it is, in
Dramatic art. Forms or types
of, 115 ff.
its aim, 125
— collision, 150
— conventions as they affect
the four types, 11 8-9
— intensity, 152
— manner, 144
" Dramatic," The word, 145 ;
wrong use of, 204-5
Dramatic types. Occasional
approximation of, to each
other, 1 16-7
Duke (Orsino), in Sh. Tw. N.,
200
— (Vincentio), in Sh. M. for
M., 200
Economy in dialogue, 170 if.
— in drama, 163
— in management of char-
acter, 166 ff.
— in solution, 166 f .
Education Act, 1870, 2
Elizabethan audiences, 181 ;
plays, 200 ; theatre, 157
Entertainment by drama, 80,
124 ff.
— common aim of all dramas,
124
Exhibition, The Great (1851),
3
Explanatory domestics, 135
External events or happenings,
in drama, 126 ff.
" Falling over," 175
Farce, 116 ff., 128, 152 ; deals
with experiences of par-
ticular persons, 119 ;
good, 118; horseplay in,
118 ; how it differs from
comedy, 119 ; what it is,
116 ff.
Fate in tragedy, 206-7
— puppets of, 206-7
Fool, in Sh. Lear, 151
224
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
French, The, 4
— critics, 53 ; farces, 108 ;
tragedy and the Three
Unities, 208 ; tragic play-
wrights, 121 ; windows
in modern drama, 162, 204
Fundamental characteristics of
E. and Shaw, 7 ff.
Funeral speech, in Sh. /. C,
156; is the peripeteia, 182
Greek comedy and tragedy
parts of religious ritual,
123
— spirit of inquiry, 10
Greeks, 16 &., 20
Greek theatre, 157
Handkerchief, in Sh. 0th., 154
" Happy ending," 56, 77-8,
199
Hebrews, 75
Hero, Conventional stage, and
Shaw, 16
Horseplay in farce, 118
Hostile collision in drama, 150
" Huddled ending," e.g. in
Sh. Cymb., 198
Humours, Drama of, 149
Ibsenism, 64, 105
Ibsenists, English, 71, 76,
105-6
Intensity in drama, 152
Interaction of characters in
drama, 114
Interpretation of life the
task of a dramatist, 207-8
Irishman, The comic, 65
Irrational elements in drama,
Aristotle on these, 130
" Knot, Untying of the," 114
Lady, The, in Shaw, M. of D.,
15
Life-force, in Shaw, 102
" London successes," 108
Magic in drama, 165
" Main plot," 202
Mannequin - scene in B.
Madras H., 154
Manners, Comedy of, 60 ft., 149
Material details, Use of, in pro-
jecting character, 133 f .
Mediaeval plays, 123
Melodrama, 118, 128, 133, 152 ;
and Shaw, 13 ; good, E.'s
Helena one, 119 ; how
distinguished from tra-
gedy, 119; Othello a (?),
117 ; physical action in,
120 ; spectacular element
in, 120 ; theatricality in,
119 ; violence in, 120 ;
what it is, 116 ff.
Messengers' speeches in Greek
tragedy, 156 n.
Methods of drama, 126 ff.
" Middle " of a play, 174 ff.
Miracle-play, 112
Misuse of various words, 203 ft.
Mohammedanism in B. Madras
H., 91
Morality, in I. and Shaw, 58-9
Morality plays, 147
Mufhns, in W. Import., 119
National theatre, 86
Neo-British School, 62,
66 ft., 69, 77
Nurse, in Sh. R. and J., 171
63,
Object of art, 124
Olympian gods, 10
— religion, 25
Opera, 121
Oracle, Delphic, 24, 45, 165
"Overthrow," 175; in Shaw,
Maj. B., 179
Pantomimes, 121
Particular and universal in
drama, 146 ft.
Peloponnesian War, 6
Peripeteia, 175 ft., 196, 206
— in IE. PerscB, 185-6;
Prom, v., 177
— in Ar. Ach., 183; Birds,
184 ; Frogs, 177, 184 ;
Peace, 184 ; Plutus, 183
— in Bennett, Honeymoon, 197
— in 1. D.'s Ho., 179
— in H. A. Jones, Mrs. Dane's
Defence, 180
GENERAL INDEX
225
Peripeteia in M. Misanthrope,
197 ; Tartuffe, 184
— in Otway, Ven. Pres., 180
— in Sh. Hamlet, 115 n.;
/. C, 181-2 ; Mach., 178 ;
M. of v., 201 ; 0th., 185
— in Shaw, Maj. B., 179
— in Sheridan, School for
Sc, 185
— in S. CE. Tyy., 178
— in Synge, Playboy, 185
— in Terence, Brothers, 184-5
— in Wilde, Ly. W.'s Fan, 180
— in comedy, 177, 182—3; in
every drama, 186 ; its
three qualities, 177 ; pre-
paration for, 186 ff.; where
does it occur ? 177
Philistines, and their watch-
word, 126
Physical action in melodrama,
120
Place, Unity of, 208-9
Plot, III ff. ; an organism,
1 1 3-4 ; how is it worked ?
174 if. ; the " soul of the
play," 144 ; the unum
necessarium in drama, 113
Poetic dialogue, 155
" Poetical drama," 59
Post-Ibsenist manner, 71
Postman, in modern drama, 63
Poverty, in Shaw, 32
Pre-lbsenists, 104
Preparation for the peripeteia,
186 ff. ; in Sh. Mach.,
188 ; M.ofV., 187-8
Probability, 166
" Problem-play," 65
Projection of a character, 133 ff.
Propagandist playwrights, 126
Prose dialogue, 155 ; rule
for, 160
Pseudo-Ibsenism, 66 ; Ibsenist
school, 64
Psychological trend of modern
English dramatic criti-
cism, 115 and n.
Psychology in drama, 131 ff.
" Puppets of Fate," 206
Question - and - answer plot,
123
15
Question of a drama, whence
it should arise, 132
— of the play, 177
Realism and reality, 71 ff.
Recitations on the stage, 157-8
" Recits de Theramene,''
156 n.
"Recoil," 175; double r.,
or repeated r., in Sh.
Mach., 178
— in Ar., 183; in M. Tart.,
184 ; in Shaw, Maj. B.,
179 ; and see Peripeteia
" Reinforced reminiscence,"
125
Renaissance of English Drama,
The Present, 49-108
Repertory theatres, 107-8
Revenge, in E. and Shaw, 22
" Reversal," 175 ; in Shaw,
Maj. B., 179 ; and see
Peripeteia
Revues, 121
Roman comedy and tragedy,
123
Russian drama, " bushiness "
in, 192
— influence on English drama,
193
— playwrights, 192
Saint Crispin's Day harangue,
in Sh. Hy. V., 175
Salvation Arm^^ in Shaw,
Maj. B., 179
Science and art, 72
Screen-scene, in Sheridan,
Sch. for Sc, 185
Semi-Ibsenist, 71
Sexes, Relations of the, in
E. and Shaw, 31
Simplicity not the same thing
as economy, in drama, 163
Situations, in Ibsen, 56
Slaves, in Aristotle, and E., 33
" Slice of life," 149, 207-8
Social inequality, in E., 32 ff.
Solonian regime, 33
Solution, in drama, 114, 124,
193, 196 ; in I. D.'s Ho.,
179-80 ; in S. or. Tyr.,
178-9
226
EURIPIDES AND SHAW
Sophists, 6
Spartan confederacy, in Ar.
Ach., 183
Staginess, 52
" Strong curtains," 204 ;
" strong scene," 70
Supernatural in drama, 165
Surprise in drama, 166
Theatricality and drama not
the same, no
— in melodrama, 119
— in modern drama, 204
Three Unities, 208-9
Time, Unity of, 208
Tortoise, in Rostand, Chante-
cler, 153
Tragedy, 118, 145, 205 ; mis-
use of the word, 205 ;
peripeteia in, 177 ;
Roman, 123 ; what it is,
116 ff.
Tragi-comedy, a " mechanical
mixture," 117
Transcendentalists, 73-4
" Truth to life," 159
" Tying," in drama, 132
Tj'^pes, Jonson a dramatist of,
148-9
" Uncle Peter " as deus ex
machina, 164, 191
Underplot, 202 ; in I., 57
Unities, The Three, 208-9
Universal and particular in
drama, 1466:.
" Untying of the knot," 114,
163
Victorian age, 2 ff.
Violence, in melodrama, 120
Watchman, in S. Antigone,
170
Waterloo, Battle of, 181
" Weltvernichtungsidee," 183
Wit, of E. and Shaw, 40
Women, in B., 90 fE. ; in E.,
33 ff . ; in Plato, 34 ; in
Shaw, 31 ff.
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