Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/415

395 takes part, that is to say, the influence it exerts upon the progress of the action should correspond to its distinctive features, the conduct of the play should seem to spring from the nature of its characters. Hence even the minor characters should not idly intervene, and, before they intervene significantly, we should be prepared by some previous notion of them. The chief characters, on the other hand, should predominate over or determine the course of the action ; its entire conception should harmonize Ivith their distinctive features ; it is only a Prometheus whom the gods bind fast to a rock, only a Juliet who will venture into a living death for her Romeo. Thus in a sense chance is excluded from dramatic action, or rather, like every other element in it, bends to the dramatic idea. And in view of this predominance of character over action, we may appropriately use such expressions as a tragedy of love or jealousy or ambition, or a comedy of character by which is merely meant one whose preponderating interest lies in the effectiveness with which its conduct impresses upon the mind the conception of its chief character or characters. nierj. The term manners (as employed in a narrower sense than the Aristotelian) applies to that which colours both action and characters, but does not determine the essence of either. As exhibiting human agents under certain conditions of time and place, and of the various relations of community existing or conceivable among men, the action of a drama, together with the char acters engaged in it and the incidents and circumstances belonging to it, must be more or less suited to the external conditions assumed. From the assumption of some such conditions not even those dramatic species which indulge in the most sovereign licence, such as Old Attic comedy or burlesque in general, can wholly emancipate themselves ; and even supernatural characters and actions must adapt themselves to some antecedents. But it depends altogether on the measure in which the nature of an action and the development of its characters are affected by considerations of time and place, or of temporary social systems and the transitory distinctions they produce, whether the imitation of a particular kind of manners becomes a significant ele- r rela- nient in a particular play. What is of vanishing import- signifi- ance in one may be an adjunct of inestimable value in another. The Hindu caste-system is an antecedent of every Hindu drama, and the peculiar organization of Chinese society of nearly every Chinese with which we are acquainted. Greek tragedy itself, though treating subjects derived from no historic age, had established a standard of manners from which in its decline it did not depart with impunity. The imitation of manners of a particular age or country may or may not be of moment in a play. The conjuncture of the Crusades is merely a felicitous choice for the time of action of Nathan the Wise ; but the dramatic conflict of Minna von Barnhelm derives half its life from the background of the Seven Years War. In some dramas, and in some species of drama, time and place are so purely imaginaryand so much a matter of indifference that the adop tion of a purely conventional standard of manners, or at least the exclusion of any definitely fixed one, is here desir able. The ducal reign of Theseus at Athens (when ascer tained) does not date A Midsummer Night s Dream ; nor do the coasts of Bohemia localize the manners of the customers of Autolycus. Where, on the other hand, as more especially in the historic drama, or in that kind of comedy which directs its shafts against the ridiculous vices of a particular age or country, the likeness of the manners represented to what is more or less known possesses significance, there the dramatist will use care in his colour ing. How admirably is the French court specialized in Henry V., how completely are we transplanted among the 395 burghers of Brussels in the opening scenes of Egmont f What a picture of a clique we have in the Precieuses ridicules of Moliere ; what a reproduction of a class in the pot-house politicians of Holberg ! Yet even in such instances the dramatist will only use what suits his dramatic purpose ; he will select, not transfer in mass, his toric features, and discriminate in his use of modern instances. The details of historic fidelity, and the lesser shades distinguishing the varieties of social usage, he will introduce at his choice, or leave to be supplied by the actor. Where the reproduction of manners becomes the primary purpose of a play, its effect can only be of an inferior kind ; and a drama purely of manners is a contra diction in terms. No complete system of dramatic species can be abstracted Species from any one dramatic literature. They are often the tlie tlr;l1 result of particular antecedents, and their growth is often affected by peculiar conditions. Different nations or ages use the same name, and may preserve some of the same rules, for species which in other respects their usage may have materi ally modified from that of their neighbours or predecessors. Who would undertake to define, except in their successive applications, such terms as tragi-comedy or melodrama? Yet this does not imply that all is confusion in the terminology as to the species of the drama. In so far as they are distin guishable according to the effects which their actions, or those which the preponderating parts of their actions, produce, they may primarily be ranged in accordance with the broad difference established by Aristotle between tragedy and comedy. Tragic and comic effects differ in regard to the Tragic a emotions of the mind which they excite ; and a drama is comic, tragic or comic according as such effects are produced by it. The strong or serious emotions are alone capable of exercising upon us that influence which, employing a bold but marvellously happy figure, Aristotle termed purification, and which a Greek comedian, after a more matter-of-fact fashion, thus expressed : &quot; For whensoe er a man observes his fellow Bear wrongs more grievous than himself has known, More easily he hears his own misfortunes ; &quot; i.e., the petty troubles of self which disturb without elevating the mind are driven out by the sympathetic participation in greater griefs, which raises while it excites the mind employed upon contemplating them. It is to these emotions which are and can be no others than pity and terror that actions and characters which we call tragic appeal. Those which we term comic address themselves to the sense of the ridiculous, and their subjects are those vices and moral infirmities, the repre sentation of which is capable of touching the springs of laughter. Where, accordingly, a drama excludes all effects except those of the former class, it may be called a pure tragedy ; when all except those of the latter, a pure comedy. In those dramas where the effects are mixed, it is the nature of the main action and of the main characters (as determined by their distinctive features) which alone enables us to classify such plays as serious or humorous dramas or as tragic or comic, if we choose to preserve the terms. But the classification admits of a variety of transi tions, from pure tragedy to mixed, from mixed tragedy to mixed comedy, and thence to pure comedy and her slighter sister farce. This method of distinction has no concern with the mere question of the termination of a play, according to which Philostratus and other authorities have sought to distinguish between tragic and comic dramas. The serious drama which ends happily (the German Sckauspiel) is not a species co ordinate with tragedy and comedy, but only one subordinate to the former, if, indeed, it be necessary to distinguish it as a species at all. Other