Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/276

Rh 2(5(5 splendid poems the dramatist places himself in the imagined situation, or at most he places there some typical concep tion of universal humanity. There is not in all Cdderon any such display of dramatic imagination as we get in that wonderful speech of Priam s in the last book of the Iliad to which we have before alluded. There is not in the Cenci such a display of dramatic imagination as we get in the sudden burst of anger from the spoilt child of gods and men, Achilles (anger which alarms the hero him self as much as it alarms Priam), when the prattle of the old man has carried him too far. It may seem bold to say that the drama of Goethe is informed by egoistie imagination only, assuredly the prison-scene in Faust is unsurpassed in the literatures of the world. Yet, perhaps, it could be shown of the passion and the pathos of Gretchen throughout the entire play that it betrays a female character general and typical rather than individual and particular. The nature of this absolute vision or true dramatic imagination is easily seen if we compare the dramatic work of writers without absolute vision, such as Cal- deron, Goethe, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, and others, with the dramatic work of ^Eschylus and of Shakespeare. While of the former group it may be said that each poet skilfully works his imagination, of ^Eschylus and Shake speare it must be said that each in his highest dramatic mood does not work, but is worked by his imagination. Note, for instance, how the character of Clytaemnestra grows and glows under the hand of yEschylus. The poet of the Odyssey had distinctly said that ^Egisthus, her paramour, had struck the blow, but the dramatist, having imagined the greatest tragic female in all poetry, finds it impossible to let a man like yEgisthus assist such a woman in a homicide so daring and so momentous. And when in that terrible speech of hers she justifies her crime (ostensibly to the outer world, but really to her own conscience), the way in which, by the sheer magnetism of irresistible personality, she draws our sympathy to her self and her crime is unrivalled out of Shakespeare and not surpassed even there. In the Great Drama, in the Atjamemnon, in Othello, in Hamlet, in Macbeth, there is an imagination at work whose laws are inexorable, are inevitable, as the laws by the operation of which the planets move around the sun. But in this essay our business with drama is confined entirely to its relations to epic. Epic and Considering how large and on the whole how good is drama the body of modern criticism upon drama, it is surprising ^ ow P oor * s ^ e moclern criticism upon epic. Aristotle, comparing tragedy with epic, gives the palm to tragedy as being the more perfect art, and nothing can be more ingenious than the way in which he has marshalled his reasons. He tells us that tragedy as well as epic is capable of producing its effect even without action ; we can judge of it perfectly, says he, by reading. He goes so far as to say that, even in reading as well as in representation, tragedy has an advantage over the epic, the advantage of greater clearness and distinctness of impression. And in some measure this was perhaps true of Greek tragedy, for as Miiller in his Dissertations on the Eumenides has well said, the ancients always remained and wished to remain conscious that the whole was a Dionysian entertainment ; the quest of a common-place avarr) came afterwards. And even of Romantic Drama it may be said that in the time of Shakespeare, and indeed down through the 18th century, it never lost entirely its character of a recitation as well as a drama. It was not till melodrama began to be recog nized as a legitimate form of dramatic art that the dialogue had to be struck from the dramatic action &quot;at full speed&quot; struck like sparks from the roadster s shoes. The pared truth is, however, that it was idle for Aristotle to inquire which is the more important branch of poetry, epic or tragedy. Equally idle would it be for the modern critic to inquire how much romantic drama gained and how much it lost by abandoning the chorus. Much has been said as to the scope and the limits of epic and dramatic poetry. If in epic the poet has the power to take the imagination of his audience away from the dramatic centre and show what is going on at the other end of the great web of the world, lie can do the same thing in drama by the chorus, and also by the introduction into the dramatic circle of messengers and others from the outside world. But, as regards epic poetry, is it right that we should hear, as we sometimes do hear, the voice of the poet him self as chorus bidding us contrast the present picture with other pictures afar off, in order to enforce its teaching and illustrate its pathos? This is a favourite method with modern poets and a still more favourite one with prose narrators. Does it not give an air of self-consciousness to poetry? Does it not disturb the intensity of the poetic vision? Yet it has the sanction of Homer; and who shall dare to challenge the methods of the great father of epic ? An instance occurs in Iliad v. 158, where, in the midst of all the stress of fight, the poet leaves the dramatic action to tell us what became of the inheritance of Phaenops, after his two sons had been slain by Diomedes. Another instance occurs in iii. 243-4, where the poet, after Helen s pathetic mention of her brothers, comments on the causes of their absence, &quot;criticizes life&quot; in the approved modern way, generalizes upon the impotence of human intelligence the impotence even of human love to pierce the darkness in which the web of human fate is woven. Thus she spoke (the poet tells us); but the life-giving earth already possessed them, there in Lacediemon, in their dear native land : His &amp;lt;$&amp;gt;dro robs 5 tfSri KaTfx lf &amp;lt;f&amp;gt;v&amp;lt;rioos aTa v Aa.Kf$ai/j.ovL avOi, &amp;lt;t&amp;gt;iri tv TrarpiSi yairj. This of course is &quot;beautiful exceedingly,&quot; but, inasmuch as the imagination at work is egoistic or lyrical, not dra matic, inasmuch as the vision is relative not absolute, it does not represent that epic strength at its very highest which we call specially &quot; Homeric,&quot; unless indeed we remember that with Homer the Muses are omniscient: this certainly may give the passage a deep dramatic value it otherwise seems to lack. The deepest of all the distinctions between dramatic and epic methods has relation, however, to the nature of the dialogue. Aristotle failed to point it out, and this is remarkable until we remember that his work is but a frag ment of a great system of criticism. In epic poetry, and in all poetry that narrates, whether the poet be Homer, Chaucer, Thomas the Pthymer, Gottfried von Strasburg, or Turoldus, the action, of course, moves by aid partly of narrative and partly by aid of dialogue, but in drama the dialogue has a quality of suggestiveness and subtle inference which we do not expect to find in any other poetic form save perhaps that of the purely dramatic ballad. In ancient drama this quality of suggestiveness and subtle inference is seen not only in the dialogue, but in the choral odes. The third ode of the Ayamemnon is an extreme case in point, where, by a kind of double entendre, the relations of Clytaemnestra and yEgisthus are darkly alluded to under cover of allusions to Paris and Helen. Of this dramatic subtlety Sophocles is perhaps the greatest master ; and certain critics have been led to speak as though irony were heart-thought of Sophoclean drama. But the suggestive- ness of Sophocles is pathetic (as Prof. Lewis Campbell has well pointed out) not ironical. This is one reason why drama more than epic seems to satisfy the mere intel-