Tragedy Part 15

CONCLUSION

The questions with which the first chapter began should now have found their answers. The plays considered in our historical sketch have many common characteristics, they do separate themselves from other plays of their periods, they are connected from one period to another in a continuous development. English tragedies const.i.tute a dramatic type, a literary form. This type has, to be sure, permitted many variations,--revenge tragedy, chronicle play, tragicomedy, domestic tragedy, sentimental tragedy, heroic play, or the closet tragedy of the romanticists--but every one of these species has had its connections with others, and in every period the tragedies of varying kinds have been related not only to one another but to those that have gone before. With changing theatrical conditions, with new literary impulses, with new views of the old traditions, with new influences from Spain or France or Germany, the type has taken new characteristics or made new alliances, but has never lost its integrity. At any time during the three centuries it would have been possible to frame a definition of tragedy that would include over nine tenths of the tragedies of the period, and the other tenth would offer only definable variations. However strong the foreign influences, tragedy has maintained the national tradition; however great the innovations, it has never broken with the past. From Marlowe to Sh.e.l.ley there has been an unbroken continuity in themes, stories, types of persons, nature of emotional appeal, structure, and even in the blank verse.

So marked is the integrity and continuity of the type that tragedy lends itself, better perhaps than most other forms, to the biological a.n.a.logy.

The processes which we have been tracing are evolutionary. Whether we consider the main type or its varying forms, we are reminded constantly of the laws governing the origin and development of natural species. The history of the Elizabethan drama in particular affords an example of the origin, development, culmination, and degeneration of a literary species, which might be a.n.a.lyzed closely as Brunetiere has a.n.a.lyzed French tragedy of the seventeenth century. Created from a cross-fertilization of Seneca on the medieval drama, it appears in dubious forms of morality and chronicle, springs into full integrity in Marlowe, reaches its culmination in Shakespeare, and degenerates under the changed environment of the social and theatrical conditions that followed the death of Elizabeth. But the a.n.a.logy is not less applicable to the whole history of tragedy. The slow development of variations and new species under changing environment is found in every period, as in the formation and growth of the revenge play or in the development of the sentimental tragedy of the eighteenth century.

The quick formation of species by mutation also has its parallels, as in the sudden appearance of Marlowe or of the heroic tragedy bred from the Beaumont-Fletcher play and French romance. In the persistence of the stage villain through all forms and periods, we might even discover one of Mendel's unit characters. The reversion to an earlier form appears in the return of Lee or of the Romanticists to the Elizabethans. And the tendency of individual plays to regress to the main type has been a constant and on the whole perhaps the most potent force of the development.

We may find the nature of the literary species determined by constant principles corresponding to environment and heredity in the evolution of natural species. Environment as a factor in literature has long been recognized by criticism, and has been apparent in every play that we have examined. Each period has been distinguished by theatrical, social, and literary conditions peculiar to itself and const.i.tuting the change-producing environment of the drama. Tragedy has at every stage responded to these changing conditions. And the law of heredity is also paralleled. No play has been without its inheritance. The most original, as Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Otway's "Orphan," Lillo's "Barnwell," and Sh.e.l.ley's "Cenci," have shown their indebtedness no less clearly, if less slavishly, than the more commonplace individuals. The cla.s.sical tradition transformed the English breed as the Arabian stock has the racing-horse; the French influence changed the very anatomy of the species. Our study must surely have called attention to the extraordinary force that imitation has exercised in the creation of tragedy. It seems, indeed, the generating power. Men are forever imitating, but they cannot imitate without change.

In these changes, the variations due to environment--personal, theatrical, literary, social--arise the individual peculiarities, the beginnings of new species, the element of growth. The great ma.s.s of tragedies, however, differentiate themselves only feebly or slightly from the type. They are imitations that preserve all the essential characteristics of their originals. Some ideas, some plays, some traditions, have an astonis.h.i.+ng fecundity; other stocks, procreative for a while, soon turn barren. But, destroy the faculty of imitation, and the generation of literary forms would seem wellnigh impossible.

Thus far, perhaps, the biological a.n.a.logy may be pressed, if we remember that it is only an a.n.a.logy. The evolution of a wagon or a battles.h.i.+p might offer an equally suggestive and an equally unsafe comparison. No one should be deceived by the a.n.a.logy into thinking that what we call environment and heredity in literary species correspond in fact with their namesakes in the physical world. One play does not create another. It, along with countless other things, suggests ideas and impressions which are made into a play by the author. Each tragedy is the child of a mind, whose creative processes have little real resemblance to physical generation. To call the influence of "Hamlet" heredity, and the influence of the author's newspaper reading, or of his family, or his political beliefs, environment, is merely to a.s.sign arbitrary names. Again, art, unlike nature, is careless of the type and careful of the individual. A single play may live longer and have greater generating power than a whole species. "Oth.e.l.lo" during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has, perhaps, had more influence upon English tragedy than all non-Shakespearean tragedies together. Sophocles is still germinating. It is as if we now had the venerable chief of the mastodons, surviving many of the species he had originated, and still creating his offspring to confuse the evolutions of the many other species he had already aided in forming. In literature we are attempting to trace the development of species, of which individuals live forever; to discriminate the agents in a complex creative process which we do not at all understand; to call one play the child of another when it is more truly the kaleidoscopic aggregate of much reading, much observation, much experience shaken into a new form by the author's creative imagination.

Literary criticism may borrow from the natural sciences the evolutionary conception and some of its accompaniments; in particular, the demarcation of literary forms by the persistence of certain characteristics through changing conditions of nation or period, and the recognition of imitation as an important element in the creative process. It would seem, however, that further progress in the cla.s.sification and explanation of literary phenomena is not to be gained by searching for additional a.n.a.logies, but in the study and a.n.a.lysis of the phenomena themselves in the effort to discover the principles and laws of the mental processes peculiar to literature.

We may put the case, then, without further reliance on the evolution of physical species. For three hundred years Englishmen have been writing tragedies, all much alike, all related in origin, nature, and purpose. In our study of their relations.h.i.+ps, the influences governing their creation have been grouped in two main cla.s.ses: first, that of the theatre itself, and second, that which has been called the literary tradition. In the theatre has been included the influence of actors and audience and all pertaining to the theatrical presentation. Changes in the mere stage and its appurtenances have been factors determining the very nature of tragedy.

The scenery and women actors of the Restoration compelled important modifications in the drama; the large theatres of Kemble's day drove tragedy from the stage and encouraged a pantomime hybrid. The influence of theatrical fas.h.i.+ons and traditions, always in part changing and transitory, has been felt in every variation, advance, or retrogression of the acted drama. Yet it is the influence of the theatre that has maintained the integrity of form and has thus been the main force in preserving the species. The literary tradition, even more complex in its elements than that of the theatre, altering and c.u.mulative, composed of cla.s.sical or French as well as English masterpieces, drawn from the novel or other forms as well as the drama, affected by all social movements, pa.s.sing through such transformations as those of the cla.s.sical and the romantic periods, has nevertheless, on the whole, conserved the form and content of tragedy.

During the periods that we have examined, blank verse, ill.u.s.trious persons, the pomp of courts, the great pa.s.sions of revenge, ambition, jealousy, l.u.s.t, love, and hate, hideous crimes, and the conflict of potent wills have been the usual accompaniments of the actions of suffering and ruin. There has been only occasional departure from the Shakespearean conception of tragedy as representation of great personalities engaged in disastrous conflict. Shakespeare, in fact, at least since Dryden's "All for Love," has been a constant and often the dominating element in this complex and variable literary tradition. The two cla.s.ses of influence, theatrical and literary, have thus proved both variable and conserving. The theatre, while crying for novelty, holds tenaciously to its traditions. Literature, while enforcing rules, precedents, prejudices, while clinging to its models and demanding imitation, yet incites to rivalry and originality, to new endeavor, variation, and excellence.

These two main cla.s.ses of influence have rarely if ever run parallel. At times the theatre has attracted literature, as in the Elizabethan era, at times it has repelled literature, as in the early nineteenth century.

Usually, what the stage of the day desires and what the literature of the past encourages have been quite different and often irreconcilable. In our study we have consequently had to keep in mind not only two main lines of influence, but two points of view and two standards of judgment. It is the purpose of dramatic art to bring about their reconciliation, to harmonize the technic of the theatre, the necessities of the drama, and the standards of literary excellence. Our history records no attainment of such an ideal; rather the two antinomies seem farther from final unity in the time of Byron than in that of Shakespeare. Yet, through the discarding of temporary fas.h.i.+ons, the growing knowledge of structure, and the multiplication of theatrical means, the material and experience necessary for further progress have at least been acc.u.mulating. Perhaps a survey of the drama of the last century on the continent would result in a more sanguine view of the development of the principles of dramatic art freed from the temporalities of theatrical fas.h.i.+on. There is probability in Professor Brander Matthews's suggestion that in our growing cosmopolitanism national divergencies in content will exist with a growing agreement in form. We may hope that this will be merely an agreement in making quick trial of new ideas, from whatever theatre derived, and that the principles of art established will not, as so often in the past, prove pedantic and hampering. This much seems fairly certain,--literary genius and theatrical experience must unite in order to produce great tragedy. From the theatre the writer must learn dramatic art, the first rule of which is to win his audience; from literature he must learn the elements that will give his work lasting value. Only after an experience with the theatre can he venture on innovations likely to be permanent. Only if he have literary genius will he depart in triumph from literary traditions. The double mastery comes to one only rarely, and then only after a double service.

The relations.h.i.+ps of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an imitation of life, is a plat.i.tude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relations.h.i.+ps in the world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of human pa.s.sion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions.

Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret life. Cla.s.sicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence.

They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of "the tangles of Neaera's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought death into the world," he is attempting a criticism of life. This definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic relations.h.i.+p that connects its many manifestations.

The greatness of tragedy depends upon its allegiance to this meaning of literature. The dramatic form gives opportunity for a close approach to the semblance of actuality. The very subjects of tragedy, suffering and disaster, discourage the seeking of mere amus.e.m.e.nt or a contentment with mere beauty of expression. They require, if not high seriousness or a teleology, at least a concern with the most interesting, inescapable, and dreadful of human facts. This baleful portion of human existence is the field of tragedy's research, where it may find grandeur and violence, malevolence and magnanimity, optimism or pessimism, harmony or anarchy, but where it can only with difficulty escape a serious attempt at the study of character and deed. No other literary form has so n.o.bly responded to this great mission as that adopted by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Calderon, Corneille, and Ibsen. It has constrained drama and literature to their duty of research, interpretation, discovery in the almost impenetrable maze of human fact, by the very nature of its chosen field, by the preeminence of its great examples, and even by the continued endeavor of its humblest servants. As one reads through these forgotten tragedies, as when one scans closely any large field of human effort, the main impression is one of futility. Beauty is not attained, life is not revealed, everything is imitative, feeble, and absurd. Yet, even among those hundreds of eighteenth century tragedies, with their rhyming tags that neatly sum up their authors' generalizations on life, one may find reason for sympathy and interest. They record what had meaning for their day, the heroisms, sentiments, and morals that somehow stirred men's hearts and elevated their resolves. They represent some degree of temporary success in giving relations and significance to their world. The lastingly significant representation of life is found not in the many but in the few, but the mediocrities and the failures continue the effort and maintain the form that make possible the few masterpieces. The very greatest set no impa.s.sable bound, for the ever-widening expanse of tragic fact continually invites new explorers. Progress can come not by resting admiringly on the greatness of the past, but only through a free opportunity for new pioneers and discoverers. Were the achievement of English tragedy far less than it has been, the very expenditure of effort should give it some interest for study. Its history, however, includes in Shakespeare's tragedies a few of the unapproached achievements of the human mind, many other plays that for a while greatly interested and persuaded men, not a few that still have searching meaning for us, and hundreds more that have maintained an unselfish, a social, a moral inquiry into life, and that, while peris.h.i.+ng themselves, have aided others to live. In such a history, even he who runs may read a record of human endeavor not alien to his interest.

Tragedy takes an abiding place among the great courses of continuous human activity dedicated to an inquiry into the meanings of life. Its imaginative and intellectual study of suffering and ruin must continue, however its form may alter, if the theatre is to be a social force of importance, if literature is to offer an intelligent, serious, and comprehensive view of life, if the two are to unite in something better than a trivial and selfish entertainment. Its methods may not commend themselves in an age of physical and mechanical sciences, its aim may not commend itself at a time when splendid discoveries in the physical world blur the importance of an interpretation of moral and social relations. But tragedy has survived many ages and creeds, and seems likely to survive as long as men try to understand other men, to sympathize with their troubles, and to relate these somehow to their own beliefs and ideals. In the future as in the past, when a nation or community is at a period of culminating advance, when society is most mindful of its greatness and its obligations, tragedy should find its most helpful encouragement and its greatest opportunity.