BOOKS.
TRAGEDY OLD AND NEW.* TRAGEDY occupies the same place in literature as the symphony in music,—it is the crowning expression of a great art, summing up in itself the most varied and intense of beauties, and demanding for its perfection a combination of the rarest powers. Thus, ever since the days of Aristotle, it hes been a subject which has fascinated critics, and by far the greater number of the discussions and struggles in the history of literature have been waged round the problems of tragic art. It is one of the chief merits of Professor Vaughan's :stays on the "types of tragic drama" that, while they dis- criminate with justice and subtlety between the numerous ideals which have been followed by tragic writers from Aeschylus to Ibsen, they are free from any spirit of narrow partisanship and of that kind of rancorous pugnacity which, among the critics of former days, resembled nothing so much as the fury of mediaeval theologians. It is strange to reflect that, until quite lately, the notion that there might be more than one species of literary excellence was almost unknown to criticism. The result was as absurd as if half the cooks in the world were to declare that all good soup must be thick, and the other half that no soup could possibly be tolerable unless it was clear. Professor Vaughan falls into no such error ; he understands very well that thick soup and clear soup may both be delicious ; and he is able to point out with admirable lucidity the various ingredients which, in one case or the other, delight our taste. His catholicity shows itself nowhere more clearly than in his appreciation of the masters of that school of classical tragedy which, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, came to dominate the theatres of Europe. Here the ordinary English reader, and even, now and then, the English critic, is still apt to find his prejudices too strong for him. The romantic tradition, supported as it is by the stupendous influence of Shakespeare, has seized upon us so firmly that it is only with difficulty and after reflection that we are able to realise the totally different merits of the classical school. An English reader who turns to the tragedies of Racine from those of the great Elizabethans is like a man who comes suddenly into a little drawing-room lighted up by candles, after a walk among forests and mountains illuminated by the Betting sun. It is but natural that he should hastily judge his new surroundings to be tawdry and uninteresting; but let him read Professor Vaughan. The excellent essays on Racine and Alfieri are not only appreciative, they are per- suasive; they leave us with the determination to renew, or to begin, acquaintance with these masters, in the same sympa- thetic spirit which we ourselves should expect to find in a foreigner who attempted to appraise the tragedies of Marlowe or Webster. Professor Vaughan smoothes away our difficulties, and enables us at last to grow accustomed to our strange surroundings; ho shows us that, while the beauty of the sunset and the mountains is beyond dispute, the room we have entered is exquisitely furnished and admirably proportioned, and that the talk there is of the best.
Professor Vaughan's judgments upon individual dramatists are more convincing than his views upon the evolution of dramatic art. His contention that the " general trend " in the development of tragic drama " has been from the classical to the romantic type" seems hardly to be justified by the
• (1) Types of Tragic Drama. By C. E. Vaughan. London : Macmillan and Co. ills. net —(2) Tragedy. By Ashley H. Thorndike. London: A. Cons:able and Co. [65. net
facts. In one sense, no doubt, it is true to say. that the drama of the present day is more romantic than that of the Greeks; it is more romantic in the sense that it concerns itself with a greater variety of subjects, that it comprehends, as Professor Vaughan says, " more of the actual experience of life." But, after all, this is a distinction of degree rather than of kind, and the really essential difference between the classical and the romantic conception of drama must be looked for else- where. For, if we examine the acknowledged masterpieces of the two schools, if we compare Antigone and Cgdipus with Hamlet and Macbeth, what is it that strikes ua at once as the fundamental distinction between the tragedies of Sophocles and those of Shakespeare ? It is, surely, the presence in the earlier plays of a quality which is totally lacking in the later,—the quality of concentration. Every play, to be a play at all, must contain a crisis; but in tEdipus Rex the crisis is the whole of the play; there is nothing outside it, and the drama, not only in construction, but in spirit, is completely dominated by the supreme end of presenting a great action at its culminating point. How different is the dramatic method of the typical Elizabethan tragedy ! Here we are shown the beginnings, the gradual developments, and the far-reaching results of actions, in a succession of scenes which produce the effect of some elaborate panorama unrolled before our gaze. And who- can doubt that, of these two conceptions of drama, it is the classical one which now reigns .upon the stage ? Our modern plays are, almost without exception, plays of crisis ; the narrative style of the great romantics has fallen out of use; or rather, it has passed away from the theatre only to be born again in a more appropriate literary form,—the modern novel.
But when one considers the history of tragedy as it appears in Professor Vaughan's pages, another problem suggests itself,—a problem which is still more obviously raised by Mr. Thorndike's able review of the tragic drama in England. Is tragedy itself a form that has died out? No one would wish to answer this question in the affirmative, but such a con- clusion is difficult to avoid. Nothing can be more depressing to lovers of dramatic art than the spectacle presented by Mr. Thorndike's book of the decay and ruin of the tragic drama in England. The finest tragedies of the nineteenth century--The Cenci, and Death's Jest Book, and Luria–.. seem for all their poetry and their power to be little more than the ghosts of a great tradition. The very fact that critics are beginning to write books on the history of tragedy is a bad sign ; biographies are rarely written until the subjects of them are dead. Nor is it difficult to understand why this melancholy change should have come about. No art can exist which does not reflect a living reality, and the reality which formed the basis of tragedy has become a thing of the past. Life is no longer the gorgeous, rhetorical, and violent thing which it was in the days of Elizabeth. Instead of villains we have criminals ; instead of favourites falling suddenly in horror and in blood, we have Cabinet Ministers who retire quietly after a General Election. Every one has gained from this new state of affairs, except the writers of tragedy, for tragedy, almost alone among the arts, cannot flourish without a little barbarism at its roots. No doubt our modern realistic dramas have to some extent supplied its place. These dramas attempt to concern them- selves with the pains and the problems of civilised society. In this they sometimes succeed. But to call them tragedies would be an error, because they lack two of the most important qualities of tragedy,—its grandeur and its poetry. That grandeur and poetry are elements wholly wanting in modern life it would be rash to assert; but as yet no dramatist has discovered them, or, if he has, he has failed to bring them upon the stage. Ibsen, to whom Professor Vaughan devotes some Inteeesting pages, has, perhaps, of all modern dramatists, come nearest to success in this difficult task. He can occa- sionally produce effects that are akin to the ancient terribilita, and he manages, by means of his symbolism, to supply the place of rhetoric and poetry. But it is impossible not to feel that his work at its best is a brilliant experiment rather than a final revelation, and that the resuscitation of tragic art is yet to come. Will it ever come at all ? And, if it does, what will be the nature of the new tragedy ? Professor Vaughan, at any rate, is too wary to prophesy ; and, if we are wise, we shall follow his example.
Previous page
