Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846

These considerations are fitted to cast a serious doubt on the question, how far the true principles of the drama are those which have been embraced by the English school, and may lead us to consider whether the acknowledged inferiority of our tragic writers, since the time of Shakspeare, is not in reality to be ascribed to his transcendent genius having led them astray from the true principles of the art. It will be considered in the sequel, to what cause his acknowledged success has been owing, and whether his finest dramas, those which chiefly retain their popularity, are not in reality constructed on the Grecian model. But, in the mean time, let it be considered what in reality the drama can do, and what limits are imposed upon it, not by the arbitrary rules of critics, but by the lasting nature of things.

The drama is restricted by the well known limits of human patience to a representation of three hours. Experience has every where proved that the greatest genius, both in the poet and performer, cannot keep alive interest, or avert weariness, beyond that period. The spectators sit still in their places the whole time. Whatever changes of scene, or external objects to look at are introduced, the audience itself is motionless. It is to persons thus situated, and within this time, that theatrical representations are addressed. They expect, and with reason, to be amused and interested in comedy, moved and melted in tragedy. It is for this they go to the theatre, for this they pay their money. Writers and actors are equally aware that this is the case. Then what course do the Greek and the Romantic school respectively follow to attain this object?

Both in some respects follow the same course, or rather both make use, for the main part, of the same materials. It is universally acknowledged, that it is essential to the success of the drama, in all its branches, that the plot be interesting, the characters forcible, the ideas natural, the attention constantly kept up. In tragedy, by far its noblest department, it is indispensable, in addition, that the feelings should be vehemently excited in the spectators, and the human heart laid bare, by the most violent passions, in the characters on the stage. Aristotle expressly says, that it is the delineation of passions which is the object of tragedy. In order to achieve this object, all are agreed, that some permanent characters must be selected, generally from those known to history, to whom striking and tragic events have occurred; and it is in the delineation of the passions which those events excite, and the interest they awaken in the breast of the spectators, that the art of the writer consists. So far both parties are agreed; but they differ widely in the methods which they respectively take to attain this object.

The Romantic dramatist, overstepping the bounds of time and place, professes in three hours to portray the principal events of years – it may be of a whole lifetime. He selects the prominent events of his hero's or heroine's career, the salient angles, as it were, of human existence, and brings them forward in different scenes of his brief representation. Years often intervene between the commencement of his piece and its termination; the spectator is transported hundreds, it may be thousands of miles by a mere mechanical sleight of hand in the scene-shifter, or between the acts. The drama constructed on these principles does not represent a short period, into which the crisis, as it were, of a whole lifetime is concentrated, but it gives sketches of the whole life itself, from the commencement of its eventful period to its termination. The poet chooses the most exciting scenes out of the three volumes of the historical novel, and brings these scenes on the stage in a few hours. As the drama, constructed on this principle, professes to portray the changes of real life, so it admits, it is thought, of that intermixture of the serious and the comic, which the actual world exhibits; and willingly transports the spectator from the most highly wrought scenes of passion, the deepest accents of woe, to the burlesque of extravagant characters, or the picture of vulgar life. This is deemed admissible, because it is natural; and certainly no one can have gone from the drawing-room, or the library, to the stage-coach or the steam-boat, without seeing that it exhibits at least a true picture of the varied phantasmagoria which existence presents.

The Greek dramatists, and their successors in modern Europe, proceed upon an entirely different principle. Having made their selection of the characters and the events on which their piece is to be constructed, they pitch upon that period in their progress in which matters were brought to a crisis, and, for good or for evil, their destiny was accomplished. Having done this, they portray the minutest incidents of that brief period with the utmost care, and exert all their strength on the graphic painting on which every artist knows the awakening of interest is almost entirely dependent. The previous history of the principal personages is described in dialogue at the commencement of the piece, so as to make the spectators aware both of the great lives of the characters which are brought before them, and of the antecedent events which had brought matters to their present crisis. Having carried them to this point, the crisis itself is portrayed at full length, and with all the power and pathos of which the artist is capable. The poet does not pretend to narrate the campaign from its commencement to its termination: he begins his piece with the commencement of the last battle, and exerts all his strength on painting the decisive charge. He does not give the voyage from its commencement to its termination, with its long periods of monotonous weariness; he confines himself to the brief and terrible scene of the ship-wreck. As the crisis and catastrophe of life is thus alone represented, and every thing depends on the interest excited by its development, so nothing is admitted which can disturb the unity of the emotion, or interrupt the flow of the sympathy which it is the great object of the piece from first to last to awaken.

If it were possible to create the same interest, or delineate character and passion as completely, by brief and consequently imperfect sketches of a whole lifetime, as it is by a minute and glowing representation of its most eventful period, much might be advanced with justice in favour of the Romantic school of the drama. Our objection is, that this is impossible; and that the failure of the English theatre, since the time of Shakspeare, is entirely to be ascribed to this impossibility. And the impossibility is owing to the length of time which it requires, by narrative or representation, to kindle that warm and glowing image, or awaken those ardent feelings in the mind of another, upon which the emotion of taste and the success of all the Fine Arts depend.

In the arts which address themselves to the eye, and through it to the heart, it is possible to produce a very strong impression almost instantaneously. A beautiful woman has only to be seen to be admired; a charming landscape bursts upon the sight with immediate and almost magical force. The impression produced by the finest objects in Europe, – the sun setting on the Jungfrawhorn, the interior of St Peter's, the fall of Schaffhausen, the view on the Acropolis of Athens, Constantinople from the Seraglio point, the Bay of Naples, for example, – is such, that though seen only for a few minutes, it may almost be said seconds, an impression is made, a picture is painted, on the mind's retina, which can never be effaced. Painting, as it imitates external nature, so it shares in the rapidity and, in the hands of great masters, durability of its impressions. Sculpture and architecture have the same advantage. Yet even in these arts, the productions of which require only to be seen to be admired, it is well known that the impression, strong as it is at first, is, with all persons of a cultivated mind, greatly increased by repeated inspections. The common observation, that a fine painting or statue grows upon you the oftener you see it, and that "Time but the impression deeper wears," sufficiently proves that it is not at once, even in those arts which speak at once to the eye, that the soul of the artist is transferred to that of the spectator.

But the case is entirely different with those arts – such as history, romance, epic poetry, or the drama – which do not at once produce a visible object to the mind, but give descriptions or dialogues by which the reader or spectator is required to form a mental object or awaken a mental interest of his own creation, though from the materials furnished, and under the guidance of the genius of the artist. It is not instantaneously that this can be done: on the contrary, it is by very slow degrees and many successive efforts that the inward picture is created in the mind, the absorbing interest awakened in the heart, which gives the pleasure or rouses the sympathy which is the object of the writer to communicate. A very little reflection will be sufficient to show that this observation is well founded, in all the arts of narrative or description. And nothing, we apprehend, can be clearer than that the Romantic Drama has failed because it professes, within limits and by means which render the attempt hopeless, to excite this interest.

Notwithstanding the well-known and proverbial dulness of history, there are many historical works which do succeed in awakening a durable and sometimes absorbing interest in the mind of the reader. Probably few works professedly addressed to the imagination have awakened in many breasts so deep and lasting an interest as the narrative of Livy, the biography of Tacitus, the pictured page of Gibbon. Such works are almost always complained of as dull at first: but the interest gradually waxes warmer as the narrative proceeds; the feelings become roused on one side, or in favour of one hero or another, in the great drama of the world; and not unfrequently in the end the most attractive works of imagination are laid aside for the annals of real events. But how is it that this interest is awakened? By the study of months, sometimes of years: by an interest produced by the reading of a whole winter by the fireside. Let any man try, in a narrative of long continued historical events, to excite a deep interest in a space which can be read in three hours, and the powers of Tacitus or Gibbon would at once fail in the attempt. It is quite possible in that brief period to awaken the deepest interest in a single or closely connected series of events, as a battle, a siege, a revolt, a ship-wreck: but wholly impossible to do so with incidents scattered over a long course of years.

The interest so generally felt in epic poetry and romance is excited in the same way, though in a much shorter period. As the colours of these species of composition are more brilliant, the feelings more chastened, the events more select, the characters more prominent, the catastrophe more rapidly brought about, than in real life, so the artist has the means, in a much shorter period, of awakening the interest upon the growth of which the success of his work is chiefly dependent. But nevertheless, even there, it is by comparatively slow degrees, and by reading for a very considerable period, that the interest is created. It is wholly impossible to produce it, or make the story or the characters intelligible, in a few hours. Every scholar recollects the delight with which his mind grew, as it were, under the fire of Homer's conceptions, his taste matured under the charm of Virgil's feelings: but no one will pretend that the intense delight he felt could be awakened, if he had read extracts from their most brilliant passages in a few hours; this pleasure was the feast, this interest the growth, of weeks and months. No reader of Tasso, Milton, or Klopstock, for the first time, would think he could acquire an interest in the Jerusalem Delivered, the Paradise Lost, or the Messiah, between tea and supper. Many of their finest passages might be read in that brief space, and their beauty as pieces of poetry fully appreciated; but it would be wholly impossible in so short a time to awaken an interest in the whole story, or the fate of the principal characters. – Nevertheless it would be quite possible, in that period to excite the deepest sympathy with some of their most striking events or episodes taken singly; as the parting of Hector and Andromache, or the death of the Trojan hero, in the Iliad; the love of Dido for Æneas, or the catastrophe of Nisus and Euryalus, in the Æneid; the death of Clorinda, or the flight of Erminia, in the Jerusalem Delivered. The reason is, that it is possible in a short space to point a single catastrophe with such force and minuteness as to excite the warmest sympathy, but wholly impossible to effect that object within such limits, with a long series of consecutive events.

Again, look at the historical romance or the common novel. No one needs to be told how deep and universal is the interest which the masterpieces in that department awaken. Whatever may be said to the decline of the public taste for the drama, most certainly there is no symptom of any abatement in the general interest awakened by works of fiction; but that interest is of comparatively slow growth. It would be impossible to produce it in a few hours. It is excited by the reading of three evenings by the fireside. No one would deem it possible to awaken the interest, or make the characters intelligible, in three hours.

It is true that to the aid of six or eight chapters culled out of three volumes, the Romantic dramatist brings the auxiliaries of acting, scenery, and stage effect; but that adds little to the power of exciting deep sympathy or powerful emotion. Such feelings cannot be awakened without minute painting, and continuity of action, and they are excluded by the very nature of the Romantic drama. That species of composition proposes to give a picture of the principal events of a long period, as the peristrephic panorama does of the chief scenes of a great space, as the whole course of the Rhine or the Danube. Every one knows how inferior the interest it excites is to those in which the whole skill of the artist and outlay of the proprietor have been exerted on a single picture, as the original round one of Barker and Burford. The art of panoramic painting has signally receded, since the moving panorama has been substituted for the fixed one. A series of galloping lithographic sketches of Italy, however highly coloured or skilfully drawn, will never paint that lovely peninsula like a single sunset of Claude in the bay of Naples. Claude himself could not do so in his varied sketches, graphic and masterly as they are. The Romantic drama is the Liber Veritatis; the Greek drama is the finished Claude in the Doria Palace, or the National Gallery. Few persons will hesitate to say which excites the strongest admiration, which they would rather possess.

Performers on the stage are very naturally led to form an erroneous opinion on this subject. Many of the most captivating qualities they possess are seen at once. Physical beauty, elegance of manner, a noble air, a majestic carriage, a lovely figure, a bewitching smile, produce their effect instantaneously. No one needs to be told how quickly and powerfully they speak to the heart, how warmly they kindle the imagination. But that admiration is personal to the artist; it does not extend to the piece, nor can it overcome its imperfections. It gives pleasure often of the very highest kind; but it is a pleasure very different from the true interest of dramatic representation, and cannot be relied on to sustain the interest of an audience for a long period. It is where these powers of the performer are exerted on a drama constructed on its true principles, that the full delight of the theatre is felt. No talents in the performer can sustain a faulty piece. We cannot sit three hours merely to admire the most beautiful and gifted actress that ever trod the boards. Mental sympathy, the rousing of the feelings, is required, and that is mainly the work of the poet.

We are the more confirmed in the opinion that these are the true principles of dramatic composition, from observing how generally they are applicable to the historical novel; how clearly they are illustrated by the decided verdict of public opinion pronounced on the works of the most popular writers in that species of composition. The two novels of Sir Walter Scott that are most admired, are Ivanhoe and The Bride of Lammermoor. Well, these romances have the interest concentrated within the narrowest limits. The Bride of Lammermoor is a Greek drama in prose. It has its simplicity of story, unity of emotion, and terrible concluding catastrophe. Lucia di Lammermoor, performed with signal success in every opera of Europe, is a proof how easily it was dramatised. It is the only one of Sir Walter's novels that, out of Scotland, where local feelings warp the judgment, has been durably successful on the stage. The principal events in Ivanhoe are contracted within three days; the characters which interest are only two or three in number. Look at Cooper. The great secret of his success is the minuteness and fidelity of his painting, and the graphic power with which heart-stirring events occurring within a very short period are painted. In the most admired of all his novels, The Deerslayer, the whole scene is laid on the borders of a single lake, and the interest arises from the adventures of two girls on its watery bosom. Events in The Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie, are nearly as concentrated in point of time and characters, though, as the story depends in each on the adventures of a party on a journey, a considerable transference of place is of course introduced. The Promessi Sposi of Manzoni has acquired a European reputation, and every reader of it knows how entirely its interest is dependent on the unity of interest and extraordinary fidelity and skill with which, within narrow limits, the characters, events, and still life, are portrayed. It is the same in history. The success of Alison's History of Europe has been mainly owing to the fortunate unity of the subject, and the dramatic character of the events which, within the space of twenty years, were thus crowded into the theatre of human affairs.

In those romances again, and they are many, in which great latitude in the unities has been taken, it is very rarely that the skill of the artist has succeeded in preventing a painful break in the interest, or cessation in the sympathy, where any considerable transposition of place or overleaping of time occurs. It is very frequent in James's novels to see this done; but we believe he never yet had a reader in whom it did not excite a feeling of regret. When a chapter begins – "We must now transport the reader to a distant part of the country" – or "Many years after the events detailed in the last chapter had occurred, two persons met in an hostelry on the side of a forest," &c., we may rely upon it that, not only is the scene changed, but the interest, for the time at least, is lost. The pictures formed in the mind, the interest awakened in the events, the admiration felt for the characters, are alike at an end. The chain of sympathy is broken with the rupture of the continuity of events. The reader's mind sets out as it were on a new track, in which the sails must be spread, and the oars worked afresh. Everything must be done over again; fresh pictures conjured up in the mind, new interests awakened in the breast from the last starting-point. But it is seldom that such new interests can supply the want of those which have been lost, or that, where such a system is adopted, even a sustained sympathy can be maintained throughout. We do not say that the first love is exclusive of any other; but only that the interest is not to be transferred from one to the other, until a considerable time has elapsed, and no small pains have been taken. Several such dislocations of place, or violations of time, will prove fatal to a novel, though written with the utmost ability, and managed in other respects with the most consummate skill. Every reader of Mr James's romances, which in many respects possess high merits, must be sensible of the truth of this observation; and all the richness of colouring, and fidelity in drawing, in Sir L. Bulwer's splendid historical romance of Rienzi, cannot take away the painful impression produced by the long interval which elapses between the commencement of the story, where the characters first appear, its middle, where the real interest is developed, and its termination, where the catastrophe occurs.

In the historical romance, however, such diffusion of the events over a long period, though extremely difficult to be managed in consistence with the preservation of interest in the story, is adverse to no principle; because it is the very object of that species of mingled truth and fiction to narrate a lengthened course of events as they affected the history of individual men; and the only unity to which the author is restricted by the principles of his art is the unity of interest. But the curious thing is, that in the Romantic drama this difficulty is voluntarily undertaken when no necessity exists for its introduction; nay, when the principles of the art, as evinced in the works of its greatest masters, forbid its adoption. What would the historian give to be able to dwell only on the brilliant episodes of his period – to be permitted to throw aside the long intervening years of monotony or prose, and dwell only on those where the poetry of existence is brought forth? On what scenes does the romance writer dwell with transport – where does he paint with force and minuteness but in those incidents, generally few and far between in his volumes, which form the fit subject of dramatic composition? The stage alone is relieved from the necessity of portraying the prosaic adjunct to poetic interest; the dramatist only is permitted to select the decisive crisis – the burning incident of life – and present it with all the additions of poetry, music, scenery, and personation. Strange that, when thus relieved of the fetters which so grievously restrain the other species of human narrative, he should voluntarily choose to wear them; that when at liberty to soar on the eagle's wing, he should gratuitously assume the camel's load.

In truth, the adoption of the Romantic style in theatrical composition, and the tenacity with which, despite centuries of failure, it is still adhered to by dramatic poets, is mainly to be ascribed to a secret sense of inability to work up the simpler old drama of Greece with the requisite force and effect. Men distrust their own powers in awaking a continued interest for hours from one incident, or the portraying of a single catastrophe. They are fain to borrow the adventitious aid to be derived, as they think, from frequent changes of time and place. They rail at the drama of Athens, as many modern artists do at the paintings of Claude Lorraine, because they feel themselves unable to imitate them. They crowd their canvass with objects, from a secret sense of inability to finish any one with perfect force and fidelity. In that way they flatter themselves that the defects of their composition will be less strongly felt, and the audience will experience something like the enjoyment of foreign travelling without any great trouble on the part of their conductor, on the brilliant succession of pictures which is presented to their intellectual vision. They forget only one thing, but it generally proves fatal to their whole undertaking. Foreign travelling is delightful; but it is only so when sufficient time is allowed to see the objects properly, and take in the impression. Without this, it is little more than a grievous fatigue, relieved by one or two splendid but fleeting pictures painted on the mind. The drama being limited to a three hours' representation, must portray the events of years, if it attempts it, at railway speed. Thence it is, that no greater pleasure is in general felt from its representations than from seeing the tops of villages or the steeples of churches fleeting past when travelling fifty miles an hour on the Great Western. If we would really enjoy nature, we must stop short and sketch one of them, and then we shall feel pleasure indeed.