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THE NEWER TENDENCIES

"The only subject-matter of the art of the future will be either feelings drawing men towards union, or such as already unite them; and the forms of art will be such as will be open to every one. And therefore, the ideal of

excellence in the future will not be the exclusiveness of feeling, accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its universality."-LYOF TOLSTOY.

As we view in perspective the drama to-day in Europe, in Great Britain, and in the United States, we shall not miss the significance of the moment in describing it as the moment of experimentalism. We have witnessed the rise and decline of naturalism, the persistence of realism and its final triumphant domination of the drama as of all other forms of literature, the first groping tentatives of symbolism and mysticism. The period through which we have passed and the period through which we are now passing are distinguished by two remarkable traits. Modern literature is distinguished by evolution in form, revolution in spirit. The motto of the revolution may be found in Ibsen's defiant challenge: "My book is poetry; and if it is not it will be." The con

temporary dramatist boldly affirms that the conception of drama shall be widened, broadened, deepened-shall be made to conform to the practice of modern creative art.

An axiom of dramatic criticism which has remained barren of creative result in the past is the axiom that the drama is the culminating synthesis of all the arts, the esthetic integration of literature, music, painting, and sculpture. The true explanation of the sterility of this axiom is found in the neglect of the dramatist to recognize in the sister arts anything more than auxiliary, ancillary aids in the fortification of emotive, decorative, and plastic effects. In a strictly economic sense, architecture throughout all history has exercised a despotic tyranny over creative individual genius. Investigation now persistently directed toward the drama as a form of art dependent in some measure upon the physical exigencies of the theater is a characteristic feature of contemporary dramatic criticism.

No longer does the dramatic critic venture to consider the drama solely as a branch of literature. Modern research and the spirit of contemporary experimentalism compel the recognition of the drama as, in the mathematical sense, a function of the theater. The fertile germs of the modern spirit are found in the subtle analysis of Lodovico Castelvetro, the Italian critic of the

Renascence, who maintained that both the form and content of the drama were conditioned and molded by the architectural environment and the immediate data of representation. The conclusions which he drew therefrom were imperfect and erroneous; but he anticipated contemporary dramatic criticism in recognition of the drama as a form of art in some measure dependent upon the cardinal fact that it is a social transaction, to be presented in public before a representative audience in a given environment and within a specified interval of time. To-day, another great Italian critic, Benedetto Croce, has illuminated with rare clarity the true function of all criticism. In the light of his esthetic, we cannot parry the conclusion that theatric representation of the drama is perhaps the most complex and difficult mode of criticism the arts can supply.

According to Croce, art is pure intuition. The transition from pure intuition to creative achievement is seen in four successive steps. First the artist receives certain impressions, as the result of which he forms a certain spiritual esthetic synthesis; with this expression goes a certain hedonistic accompaniment; and the final step is taken in the translation of the esthetic fact into a physical phenomenon. Criticism is the process inverse to creation. The critic must retrace in inverse order the steps of the creative artist in the creation of

a work of art. From the work of art, the critic receives a certain stimulus; this stimulus expresses itself in the form of perception of the physical facts of the art work, with its essential hedonistic accompaniment. These in turn re-create in the mind of the critic the original spiritual esthetic synthesis; the re-translation of this into descriptive analysis constitutes literary criticism.

In the light of Croce's theories, I should like to stress the fact that in the presentation of a drama, we have the most intricate and complex form of critical reproduction. For in the process of criticism, not one but many factors are involved. And these factors are interrelated in the

most intimate ways. The esthetic fact is the drama itself as conceived by the genius of the creative artist. The hedonistic accompaniment or pleasure of the beautiful must be re-created in the mind of the critical interpreter and translated into a physical, mimetic, oral reproduction of the dramatic creation.

It is just at this point that emerge the supreme complexities of the problem. The critical interpreter here is not the individual critic, but a group of interpreters, the actors. The hedonistic accompaniment is constituted by means of scenery, the human voice, all the aids of esthetic expression, emotive, decorative, plastic. The physical reproduction of the drama is limited and