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THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, AUG. 1846]

MACAULAY says that the object of the drama is the painting of the human heart; and, as that is portrayed by the events of a whole life, he concludes that it is by poets representing in a short space a long series of actions, that the end of dramatic composition is most likely to be attained. "The mixture," says he, "of tragedy and comedy, and the length and extent of the action, which the French consider as defects, is the chief cause of the excellence of our older dramatists. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of the world, in which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually jostling each other, in which every event has its serious and ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with characters with which we could not possibly become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect, the works of Shakspeare in particular are miracles of art. In a piece which may be read aloud in three hours, we see a character gradually unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The petulant youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours at length into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and self-command, sinks under a conflict between love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes step by step to the excesses of human depravity. We trace his progress step by step, from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition, to the cynical melan

choly of his impenitent remorse. Yet in these pieces there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted; nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the dervise in the Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his head under water."

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In this admirable passage, the principle on which the romantic drama rests is clearly and manfully stated; and it is on the possibility of effecting the object which is here so well described, that the whole question between it and the Greek unities depends. As we have decidedly embraced the opposite opinion, and regard, after much consideration, the adherence to the variety and license of the romantic drama as the main cause of the present degraded condition of our national theatre, we have prefaced our observations with a defence of the romantic drama by its ablest advocate, and shall now state the reasons which appear to us to be conclusive in favour of a different opinion.

The drama is part, and but a part, of the great effort of mankind for the representation of human character, passion, and event. Other sister arts-history, the historical romance, the epic poem — also aim in some degree, by different methods, at the same object; and it is by considering their different principles and necessary limitations, that the real rules of the drama will best be understood.

HISTORY, as all the world knows, embraces the widest range of human events. Confined to no time, restricted to no locality, it professes, in a comparatively short space, to portray the most extensive and important of human transactions. Centuries, even thousands of years, are sometimes, by its greatest masters, embraced within its mighty arms. The majestic series of Roman victories may occupy the genius of one writer: the fifteen centuries of its decline and fall be spanned by the powers of another. The vast annals of Mahommedan conquest, the long sway of the Papal dominion, present yet untrodden fields to future historical

* MACAULAY'S Miscellaneous Essays. Article Dryden.

effort. But it is this very greatness and magnitude of his subject which presents the chief difficulty with which the historian has to contend. With the exception of a very few instances, such lengthened annals are necessarily occupied by a vast variety of characters, actions, states, and events, having little or no connexion with each other, scarcely any common object of union, and no thread by which the interest of the reader is to be kept up throughout. Thence it is that works of history are so generally complained of as dull; that, though they are more numerous than any other class of literary compositions, the numbers of them which are generally read is so extremely small. Enter any public library, you will see tens of thousands of historical works reposing in respectable dignity on the shelves. How many of them are generally studied, or have taken root by common consent in the minds of men? Not ten. Romance numbers its readers by hundreds, poetry by fifties, where history can with difficulty master one. This amazing difference is not owing to any deficiency of ability turned to the subject, or interest in the materials of which it is formed. It can never be supposed that men will be indifferent to the annals of their own fame, or that the groundwork of all human invention-real event-can be wanting in the means of moving the heart. It is the extraordinary difficulty of this branch of composition, owing to its magnitude and complication, which is the sole cause of the difference. The world will, perhaps, see another Homer before another Tacitus; a second Dante before a second Gibbon.

The HISTORICAL ROMANCE is founded on history, but it differs from it in the most essential particulars, and is relieved from the principal difficulties with which the annalist of actual occurrences has to contend. It selects a particular period out of past time, and introduces the characters and events most remarkable for their interest, or the deep impress they have left on the minds of men. This is an immense advantage; for it relieves the writer from the great difficulty with which the general historian has to contend, and which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,

* Ranke's History of the Popes is a most valuable addition to historical knowledge; but no one will assign it a place beside Livy or Gibbon. The difference between the work itself, and Macaulay's essay upon it, sufficiently proves what a vast addition genius may yet make to the labours of the German annalist.

proves fatal to his success. Unity in the midst of confusion is given to his subject. Room is afforded for graphic painting, space for forcible delineations of character. It becomes possible to awaken interest, by following out the steps of individual adventure. Though the name of historical romance is not to be found in antiquity, the thing itself was far from being unknown. Its most charming biographies are little better than historical romances; at least they possess their charm, because they exhibit their unity. The Cyropædia of Xenophon, the Lives of Plutarch, many of the heart-stirring Legends of Livy, of the profound Sketches of the Emperors in Tacitus, are in truth historical romances under the name of histories or biography. The lives of eminent men owe their chief charm to the unity of the subject, and the possibility of strongly exciting the feelings, by strictly adhering to the delineation of individual achievement. So great is the weight of the load, crushing to the historian, which is thus taken from the biographer or writer of historical romance, that second-rate genius can effect triumphs in that department, to which the very highest mind alone is equal in general historical composition. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch with that of Tacitus; but, nevertheless, the Lives of the former will, to the end of the world, prove more generally attractive than the Annals of the latter. Boswell's mind was immeasurably inferior to that of Hume; but for one reader of the History of England, will be found ten of the Life of Johnson. Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon does not prove that he was qualified to take a place among the great English historians; but, to the end of the world, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth will stand forth from his canvass more clearly than either from the rhetoric of Hume or the eloquence of Robertson.

The EPIC POEM confines within still narrower limits the narration of human events. As it borrows the language and is clothed with the colours of poetry, so it is capable of rousing the feelings more powerfully than either biography or romance, and, when crowned with success, attains a fame and takes a hold of the hearts of men to which nothing in prose composition can be compared. Elevation of thought, fervour of language, powerful delineation of character, are

its essential qualities. But all these would prove unavailing if the one thing needful, unity of subject, is awanting. It is that which is its essential quality, for it alone lets in all the others. All the great Epic poems which have appeared in the world are not only devoted to one interest, but are generally restricted, in point of space and time, within limits not materially wider than those of the Greek drama. The Iliad not only relates exclusively the latter stages of the siege of Troy, but the whole period of its action is fortyeight days of its absorbing interest, (the time from the storming of the Greek lines by Hector to his death by the heaven-defended Achilles,) thirty-six hours. The Paradise Lost adheres strictly to unity both of subject and time : the previous battles of the angels is the subject of narrative by the angel Raphael; but the time that elapsed from the convocation of the devils in Pandemonium to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is only three days. The Jerusalem Delivered has the one absorbing interest arising from the efforts of the Christians for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; and its time is limited to a few weeks. Virgil was so enamoured of his great predecessor that he endeavoured to imitate, in one poem, both his great works. The Eneid is an Iliad and Odyssey in one. But every

one must feel that it is on the episode with Dido that the interest of the poem really rests; and that all the magic of his exquisite pencil can scarcely sustain the interest after the pious Eneas has taken his departure from the shores of Carthage. The Lusiad of Camoens, in which the perilous voyage of Vasco di Gama is narrated, necessarily from its subject embraced wider limits; but the one interest of the poem is as single and sustained as that of the discovery of the New World by Columbus. If any of these writers had professed in rhyme to give a history of a more extensive or protracted subject, the interest would have been so much diffused as to be lost. The genius of Homer would have sunk under the effort to make an epic poem of the conquests of Alexander; that of Milton broken down had he attempted in blank verse to narrate the campaigns of Napoleon. The confusion of ideas and incidents so painfully felt by all the readers of Orlando Furioso, and which the boundless fancy of Ariosto was unable to prevent, proves that epic poetry

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