action. action: the course of events in a drama not ceasing to obey CH. XIII. natural causes, but becoming, by the addition of the super- Illuminatnatural agency, endowed with a new art-beauty. The great ing human example of this is the Oracular Action. This important The Oraelement of dramatic effect-how it consists in the working cular Action. out of Destiny from mystery to clearness, and the different forms it assumes-has been discussed at length in a former chapter. The question here is, how far do we find such. superhuman knowledge used as a force in the movement of events? As Shakespeare handles oracular machinery, the conditions of natural working in the course of events are not in the least degree altered by the revelation of the future. The actor's belief (or disbelief) in the oracle may be one of the circumstances which have influenced his actionas it would have done in the real life of the age—but to the spectator, to whom the Drama is to reveal the real governing forces of the world, the oracular action is presented not as a force but as a light. It gives to a course of events the illumination that can be in actual fact given to it by History, the office of which is to make each detail of a story interesting in the light of the explanation that comes when all the details are complete. Only it uses the supernatural agency to project this illumination into the midst of the events themselves, which History cannot give till they are concluded; and also it carries the art-effect of such illumination a stage further than History could carry it, by making it progressive in intelligibility, and making this progress keep pace with the progress of the events themselves. Fate will allow none but Macduff to be the slayer of Macbeth. True but Macduff (who moreover knows nothing of his destiny) is the most deeply injured of Macbeth's subjects, and as a fact we find it needs the news of his injury to rouse him to his task; as iv. iii. he approaches the battle he feels that the ghosts of his wife v. vii. 15. and children will haunt him if he allows any other to be the tyrant's executioner. Thus far the interpretation of History CH. XIII. might go: but the oracular machinery introduced points dimly to Macduff before the first breath of the King's suspicion has assailed him, and the suggestiveness becomes clearer and clearer as the convergence of events carries the action to its climax. The natural working of human events has been undisturbed: only the spectator's mind has been endowed with a special illumination for receiving them. natural as Background. The SuperIn another and very different way we have supernatural Dramatic agency called in to throw a peculiar illumination over human events. In dealing with the movement of Julius Cæsar I have described at length the Supernatural Background of storm, tempest, and portent, which assist the emotional agitation throughout the second stage of the action. These are clearly supernatural in that they are made to suggest a mystic sympathy with, and indeed prescience of, mutations in human life. Yet their function is simply that of illumination: they cast a glow of emotion over the spectator as he watches the train of events, though all the while the action of these events remains within the sphere of natural causes. In narrative and lyric poetry this endowment of nature with human sympathies becomes the commonest of poetic devices, personification; and here it never suggests anything supernatural because it is so clearly recognised as belonging to expression. But 'expression' in the Drama extends beyond language, and takes in presentation; and it is only a device in presentation that tumult in nature and tumult in history, each perfectly natural by itself, are made to have a suggestion of the supernatural by their coincidence in time. After all there is no real meaning in storm any more than in calm weather, only that contemplative observers have transferred their own emotions to particular phases of nature it would seem, then, a very slight and natural reversal of the process to call in this humanised nature to assist the emotions which have created it. In these various forms Shakespeare introduces super natural agency into his dramas. In my discussion of them CH. XIII. it will be understood that I am not in the least endeavouring to explain away the reality of their supernatural character. My purpose is to show for how small a proportion of his total effect Shakespeare draws on the supernatural, allowing it to carry further or to illustrate, but not to mould or determine a course of events. It will readily be granted that he brings effect enough out of a supernatural incident to justify the use of it to our rational sense of economy. CH. XIV. XIV. INTEREST OF PLOT. WE now come to, or the purely intellectual side of E now come to the third great division of Dramatic Idea of Action itself has been treated above as the mutual application connection and interweaving of all the details in a work of of design to human life. art so as to unite in an impression of unity. But we have found it impossible to discuss Character and Passion entirely apart from such action and interworking: the details of human interest become dramatic by being permeated with action-force. When however this mutual relation of all the parts is looked at by itself, as an abstract interest of design, the human life being no more than the material to which this design is applied, then we get the interest of Plot. So defined, I hope Plot is sufficiently removed from the vulgar conception of it as sensational mystery, which has done so much to lower this element of dramatic effect in the eyes of literary students. If Plot be understood as the extension of design to the sphere of human life, threads of experience being woven into a symmetrical pattern as truly as varicoloured threads of wool are woven into a piece of woolwork, then the conception of it will come out in its true dignity. What else is such reduction to order than the meeting-point of science and art? Science is engaged in tracing rhythmic movements in the beautiful confusion of the heavenly bodies, or reducing the bewildering variety of external nature to regular species and nice gradations of life. Similarly, art continues the work of creation in calling ideal order out of the chaos of things as they are. And so the CH. XIV. tangle of life, with its jumble of conflicting aspirations, its crossing and twisting of contrary motives, its struggle and partnership of the whole human race, in which no two individuals are perfectly alike and no one is wholly independent of the rest-this has gradually in the course of ages been laboriously traced by the scientific historian into some such harmonious plan as evolution. But he finds himself long ago anticipated by the dramatic artist, who has touched crime and seen it link itself with nemesis, who has transformed passion into pathos, who has received the shapeless facts of reality and returned them as an ordered economy of design. This application of form to human life is Plot: and Shakespeare has had no higher task to accomplish than in his revolutionising our ideas of Plot, until the old critical conceptions of it completely broke down when applied to his dramas. The appreciation of Shakespeare will not be complete until he is seen to be as subtle a weaver of plots as he is a deep reader of the human heart. Plot. Action. We have to consider Plot in its three aspects of unity, Unity apcomplexity, and development. The simplest element of plied to Plot is the Single Action, which may be defined as any train The Single of incidents in a drama which can be conceived as a separate whole. Thus a series of details bringing out the idea of a crime and its nemesis will constitute a Nemesis Action, an oracle and its fulfilment will make up an Oracular Action, a problem and its solution a Problem Action. Throughout the treatment of Plot the root idea of pattern should be steadily kept in mind: in the case of these Single Actions-the units of Plot-we have as it metrical design, made up of their line is made up of separate points. action--the shape of the line, so which gives the train of incidents nemesis, the oracle, the problem. An action may get its were the lines of a geo- Action. |