In the reaction from the murder of Banquo the supernatural CHAP. XII. appearance—which no eye sees but his own-appears more iii. iv. real to him than the real life around him. And from this point he seeks the supernatural, forces it to disclose its iv. i. 48. terrors, and thrusts himself into an agonised vision of generations that are to witness the triumph of his foes. CH. XIII. PASSION. Unity applied to Passion. Incident. H XIII. INTEREST OF PASSION. UMAN Interest includes not only varieties of human nature, or Character, but also items of human experience, or Passion. Passion is the second great topic of Dramatic Criticism. It is concerned with the life that is lived through the scenes of the story, as distinguished from the personages who live it; not treating this with the abstract treatment that belongs to Plot, but reviewing it in the light of its human interest; it embraces conduct still alive with the motives which have actuated it-fate in the process of forging. The word 'passion' signifies primarily what is suffered of good or bad; secondarily the emotions generated by suffering, whether in the sufferer or in bystanders. Its use as a dramatic term thus suggests how in Drama an experience can be grasped by us through our emotional nature, through our sympathy, our antagonism, and all the varieties of emotional interest that lie between. To this Passion we have to apply the threefold division of unity, complexity, and movement. When unity is applied to Passion we get a series of details bound together into a singleness of impression as an Incident, a Situation, or an Effect. The distinction of the three rests largely on their different degrees of fragmentariness. Incidents are groups of continuous details forming a complete interest in themselves as ministering to our sense of story. The suit of Shylock against Antonio in the course of which fate swings right round; the murder of Clarence with its long-drawn agony; Richard and Buckingham with the Lord Mayor and Citizens exhibiting a picture of political CH. XIII. manipulation in the fifteenth century; the startling sight of a Lady Anne wooed beside the bier of her murdered husband's murdered father, by a murderer who rests his suit on the murders themselves; Banquo's Ghost appearing at the feast at which Banquo's presence had been so vehemently called for; Lear's faithful Gloucester so brutally blinded and so instantly avenged:-all these are complete stories presented in a single view, and suggest how Shakespeare's dramas are constructed out of materials which are themselves dramas in miniature. In Situation, on the other hand, Situation. a series of details cohere into a single impression without losing the sense of incompleteness. The two central personages of The Merchant of Venice, around whom brightness and gloom have been revolving in such contrast, at last brought to face one another from the judgment-seat and the dock; Lorenzo and Jessica wrapped in moonlight and music, with the rest of the universe for the hour blotted out into a background for their love; Margaret like an apparition of the sleeping Nemesis of Lancaster flashed into the midst of the Yorkist courtiers while they are bickering through very wantonness of victory; Shylock pitted against Tubal, Jew against Jew, the nature not too narrow to mix affection with avarice, mocked from passion to passion by the nature only wide enough to take in greed; Richard waking on Bosworth morning, and miserably piecing together the wreck of his invincible will which a sleeping vision has shattered; Macbeth's moment of rapture in following the airy dagger, while the very night holds its breath, to break out again presently into voices of doom; the panic mist of universal suspicion amidst which Malcolm blasts his own character to feel after the fidelity of Macduff; Edgar from his ambush of outcast idiocy watching the sad marvel of his father's love restored to him:-all these brilliant Situations are fragments of dramatic continuity in which the fragmentari CH. XIII. ness is a part of the interest. Just as the sense of sculpture might seek to arrest and perpetuate a casual moment in the evolutions of a dance, so in Dramatic Situation the mind is conscious of isolating something from what precedes and what follows so as to extract out of it an additional impression; the morsel has its purpose in ministering to a complete process of digestion, but it gets a sensation of its own by momentary delay in contact with the palate. Effect. Irony as Of a still more fragmentary nature is Dramatic EffectEffect strictly so called, and as distinguished from the looser use of the term for dramatic impressions in general. Such Effect seems to attach itself to single momentary details, though in reality these details owe their impressiveness to their connection with others: the final detail has completed an electric circle and a shock is given. No element of the Drama is of so miscellaneous a character and so defies analysis all that can be done here is to notice three special Dramatic Effects. Dramatic Irony is a sudden appearance of an Effect. double-dealing in surrounding events: a_dramatic situation accidentally starts up and produces a shock by its bearing upon conflicting states of affairs, both known to the audience, but one of them hidden from some of the parties to the scene. This is the special contribution to dramatic effect of Greek tragedy. The ancient stage was tied down in its subjectmatter to stories perfectly familiar to the audience as sacred legends, and so almost excluding the effect of surprise: in Irony it found some compensation. The ancient tragedies harp upon human blindness to the future, and delight to exhibit a hero speculating about, or struggling with, or perhaps in careless talk stumbling upon, the final issue of events which the audience know so well-Edipus, for example, through great part of a play moving heaven and earth to pierce the mystery of the judgment that has come upon his city, while according to the familiar sacred story the offender can be none other than himself. Shakespeare has used to almost as great an extent as the Greek dramatists this effect CH. XIII. of Irony. His most characteristic handling of it belongs to the lighter plays; yet in the group of dramas dealt with in this work it is prominent amongst his effects. It has been pointed out how Macbeth and Richard III are saturated with it. There are casual illustrations in Julius Cæsar, as when the dictator bids his intended murderer Be near me, that I may remember you; or in Lear, when Edmund, intriguing guiltily with Goneril, in a chance expression of tenderness unconsciously paints the final issue of that intrigue: Yours in the ranks of death! ii. ii. 123. iv. ii. 25. A comic variety of Irony occurs in the Trial Scene of The Catesby. 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, 73. an Effect. iii. 45. Nemesis, though usually extending to the general movement Nemesis as of a drama, and so considered below, may sometimes be only an effect of detail-a sign connecting very closely retribution with_sin or reaction with triumph. Such a Nemesis may be seen where Cassius in the act of falling on his sword recog- v. nises the weapon as the same with which he stabbed Cæsar. Another special variety of effect is Dramatic Foreshadow- Dramatic Foreing-mysterious details pointing to an explanation in the sequel, a realisation in action of the saying that coming shadowing. |