Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/412

392 392 D E A M A and upon the farce which sums up the follies of an after noon. Such is not, however, the case with certain rules which have at different times been set up for this or that kind of drama, but which have no absolute validity for any kind. The supposed necessity that an action should consist of one event is an erroneous interpretation of the law that it should be, as an action, one. For an event is but an element in an action, though it may be an element of decisive moment. The assassination of Caesar is not the action of a C&sar tragedy ; the loss of his treasure is not the action of The Miser. Again, unity of action does not exclude the intro duction of one or even more subsidiary actions as contri buting to the progress of the main action. The sole in dispensable law is that these should always be treated as what they are subsidiary only ; and herein lies the difficulty, which Shakespeare so successfully overcame, of solving a combination of subjects into the idea of a single action ; herein also lies the danger in the use of that favourite device of the modern drama bye- or wider-plots. On the other hand, a really double or multiple action, logically carried out as such, is inconceivable in a single drama, though there is many a play which is palpably only two plays knotted into one. Every one is familiar with the dramatist who towards the drop of the curtain seems to be counting on his fingers whom he has killed or what couples he has to marry. Thirdly, unity of action need not imply unity of hero for hero (or heroine) is merely a term signifying the principal personage of the action. And inasmuch as an action may consist in the joint contention of more than one will against the same obstacle as in the instance of The Seven against Thebes, or Romeo and Jidiet it is only when the change in the degree of interest excited by different characters in a play results from a change in the conception of the action itself, that the consequent duality (or multiplicity) of heroes recalls a faulty uncertainty in the conception of the action they carry on. Such is the objection applying to the crucial case of Schiller s Don Carlos. Lastly, the entirely arbitrary exactions of unity of time and of place are not, like that of unity of action, absolute dramatic laws. Their object is by representing an action as visibly continuous to render its unity more distinctly or easily perceptible ; but the effect of their observance cannot be to render it more really one. Thus they may in one sense be regarded as devices to avoid the difficulty experienced by the human mind in regarding an action as one when the eye beholds its different parts occurring in what are supposed to be different places, or when the process of its advance from cause to effect extends over what is supposed to be a con siderable period of time. But the imagination is capable of constructing for itself the bridges necessary to preserve to an action, conceived of as such, its character of con- tinuousness. In another sense these rules were convenient usages conducing to a concise and clear treatment as actions of subjects in themselves of a limited nature ; for they were a Greek invention, and the repeated resort to the same group of myths made it expedient for a Greek poet to seek the subject of a single tragedy in a part only of one of the myths opon to him. The observance of unity of place, moreover, was suggested to the Greeks by certain outward conditions of their stage as assuredly as it was adopted by the French in accordance with the construction and usages of theirs, and as the neglect of it by the Elizabethans was in their case encouraged by the established form of the English scene. The palpable artificiality of these laws needs no demonstration, so long as the true meaning of the term action be kept in view. Of the action of Othello part takes place at Venice and part at Cyprus, and yet the whole is one in itself ; while the limits of time over which an action extends cannot be restricted by a revolution of the earth round the sun, or of the moon round the earth. In a drama which presents its action as one, this action Cun&amp;gt;i&amp;gt;ltt&amp;lt; must be complete in itself. This law, like the first, distin- nes. s of guishes the dramatic action from its subject. The former ac may be said to have a real artistic, while the latter has only an imaginary real, completeness. The historian, for instance, aims indeed at a complete exposition of a body of events and transactions, and may even design to show their working to a definite end; but he is aware that this aim can never be more than partially accomplished, since he may present only what he knows, and all human know ledge is partial. But art is limited by no such uncertainty. The dramatist, in treating an action as one, comprehends the whole of it in the form of his work, since to him who has conceived it, all its parts, from cause to effect, are equally clear. Accordingly, every drama should represent in organic sequence the several stages of which a complete action consists, and which are essential to it. This law of completeness therefore lies at the foundation of all systems of dramatic construction. Every action, if conceived of as complete, has its caiises. Systems growth, height, consequences, and close. There is no ? n binding law to prescribe the relative length at which these OI1 t hi s 1 several stages in the action should be treated in a drama, of com- or to enforce a more or less exact correspondence between P the successive presentment of each, and technical divisions, such as acts or scenes, Avhich dramatic practice may find it convenient to adopt. Neither is there any law to assert any obligatory regulation of the treatment of such subsidiary actions as may be introduced in aid of the main plot, or of such more or less directly connected episodes which may at the same time advance and relieve its progress. But expe rience, as the parent of usage, has necessarily from time to time established certain rules of practice, from which the dramatist, working under customary forms, will find it neither easy, nor in most cases advantageous, to swerve too widely; and from the adoption of particular systems of division for particular species of the drama such as that into five acts for a regular tragedy or comedy, which Roman example has caused to be so largely followed has naturally resulted a certain uniformity of relation between the conduct of an action and the outward sections of a play. Essentially, however, there is no difference between the laws regulating the construction of a Sophocleun or Shakespearean tragedy, a comedy of Moliere or Congreve, and a vell-built modern farce. And this, because all exhibit an action complete in itself. The introduction or exposition forms an integral part of Prolog!; the action, and is therefore to be distinguished from the pro- ami epi- locjue in the more ordinary sense of the term, which, like the ?? IK !J , epilogue (or the Greek parabasis), stands outside the action, act j 0)1 and is a mere address to the public from author or actor occasioned by the play. Prologue and epilogue, greatly as they may have at times contributed to the success of a drama, are mere external adjuncts, and have as little to do with the construction of a play as the bill which announces it, or the musical prelude which disposes the mind for its reception. The introduction or exposition belongs to the parts of action itself ; it is, as the Hindu critics called it, the seed the adi&amp;lt; or circumstance from which the business arises. Clearness hitrodm Tit, lion or being its primary requisite, many expedients have been at expOH i ti( various times adopted to secure this feature. Thus, the Euripidean prologue, though spoken by one of the charac ters of the play, takes a narrative form, and places itself half without, half within the action of which it properly is part. The same purpose is served by the separate induc tions in many of our old English plays, and the preludes or prologues, or by whatever name they may call