VI

THE BATTLE WITH ILLUSIONS.

THE

ANCIENT BONDAGE AND THE NEW FREEDOM

“We wish to know the reason why we have made up our mind, and we find that we have decided without any reason, and perhaps even against every reason. But, in certain cases, that is the best of reasons. For the action

which has been performed does not then express some superficial idea, almost external to ourselves, distinct and easy to account for: it agrees with the whole of our most intimate feelings, thoughts and aspirations, with that particular conception of life which is the equivalent of all our past experience, in a word, with our personal idea of happiness and of honor. Hence it has been a mistake to look for examples in the ordinary and even indifferent circumstances of life in order to prove that man is capable of choosing without a motive. It might easily be shown that these insignificant actions are bound up with some determining reason. It is at the great and solemn crisis, decisive of our reputation with others, and yet more with ourselves, that we choose in defiance of what is conventionally called a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason is the more striking the deeper our freedom goes."-HENRI BERGSON.

One may

THE drama is a living art form. question, therefore, whether it will ever be possible to devise for it categories wholly valid, universally comprehensive, since the drama, as a life form, is subject to the law of evolution. It is a significant illustration of the evolution which is crea

tive as well as progressive, continually enlarging its scope, broadening its domain, through the pressure of the human factor, in this instance the vital urge. Writing to Heinrich Laube in 1880, Ibsen said: "Do you really attach much value to categories? I, for my part, believe that the dramatic categories are elastic, and that they must accommodate themselves to the literary facts -not vice versa." And again, four years later, in a letter to Theodore Caspari, Ibsen remarked: "I gave up universal standards long ago, because I ceased believing in the justice of applying them." In these observations, Ibsen struck a blow for freedom in the domain of dramatic art. Dramatic criticism, forever seeking to formulate comprehensive categories within which to embrace the entire field of dramatic representation, exercises a repressive influence upon the creative genius. One of the most striking facts in the modern dramatic movement is the constructive demonstration of many contemporary dramatic craftsmen that a play may be eminently successful in stage representation, judged by both artistic and commercial standards, and yet be intrinsically "undramatic" when judged by the confining definitions and traditional tenets of dramatic criticism. A continually recurring phenomenon nowadays is the play which attains popular success on the stage, though condemned by the dramatic

critic as not du théâtre, not a drama. The time is ripe for the exhibition of creative criticism as applied to the new forms and the display of a more catholic spirit in judging the original, experimental art work of to-day.

One can illustrate sharply the difference between ancient and modern practice by a comparison of the ideas of Aristotle with the ideas of Hauptmann in regard to the drama. Such a comparison will serve to clarify and elucidate, in some measure, the most significant terms employed in dramatic criticism: character, action, and drama. In one of the most famous passages in all dramatic criticism, Aristotle says: "Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life. . . . Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character; character comes in as subsidiary to the action. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character. The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; character holds the second place." Viewed from any standpoint, whether from that of Aristotle alone or from that of the dramatic critic of to-day, the dictum is so gross and exaggerated a distortion of the truth as to be a virtual falsity. The object of the drama, in

Aristotle's view, is to exhibit character in action; and the two constituent elements of the drama are, therefore, character and action. Is it possible, then, for the dramatist to utilize either to the exclusion of the other? In other words, Aristotle is seeking the indispensable requirement, the absolute differentia or distinguishing characteristic, of the literary species known as the drama. Of the two, he chooses "plot" as the "first principle" of the drama; and he clearly implies the definition that action means "the incidents and the plot." Since Aristotle's day, action has come to mean something vastly deeper and more comprehensive than merely "the incidents and the plot." It appears to be a perfectly true, but perfectly trivial, dictum that a fable is indispensable to the drama. It is a deliberate perversion of the facts to maintain that this fable is synonymous with action. By the same token, a fable is equally indispensable for the novel and the short-story. Yet, in the light of modern dramaturgic practice, even the fable is not an indispensable ingredient of the drama. The drama may exist without a plot; and the contemporary naturalist has again and again demonstrated this dictum by taking down the fourth wall of a room and exhibiting a static picture of human life. Such a play is not a play in the sense understood by Aristotle; it is not essentially narrative, but essentially pic

torial and atmospheric, in its nature. The drama need not embody a story of human experience; it need only be a picture of human existence, real or imagined. In the choice of the dramatist, sublimated by his art, this picture may be so typical, so representative, as in itself to constitute a criticism of life, a judgment of society, or an ideal striving of the human soul.

It has been pointed out that Aristotle is guilty of real confusion in thought in identifying the story with "the incidents and the plot." If Aristotle really meant, as he says, that "without action there cannot be a tragedy," again is he refuted by the practice of contemporary dramatic art. Here we are confronted with the fundamental principle, indeed the very definition, of the drama; and of necessity we must strive anew to arrive at some adequate comprehension of the term action. Through the intermediary of Spitta in his Die Ratten, Hauptmann denies the importance of action in the drama and asserts it to be " a worthless accident, a sop for the groundlings!" Certainly, action in the sense of physical deeds is no longer the obligatory attribute of the drama. Speaking in his own person, Hauptmann has said: "Action upon the stage will, I think, give way to the analysis of character and to the exhaustive consideration of the motives which prompt men to action. Passion does not move at such headlong