LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

y'',

\1

"^v

v^
Z-Jj^cL
//^/""i^*'<^-

i^s--]

DRAMATIC CRITICISM

DRAMATIC
CRITICISM
THREE LECTURES DELIVERED
AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
FEBRUARY 1903

-4
A^

B.

BY

WALKLEY

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1903

-n

CONTENTS
PART

I
PAGE

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

PART

11

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

PART
OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

47

III
87

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

DHAMATIC CRITICISM

It

not to be gainsaid that the word

is

" criticism " has gradually acquired a certain

connotation of contempt.

Indeed, one

is

sometimes tempted to wish that " criticism" and " critic " could be expunged from
the dictionary, so lamentably misused as

they

Every one who expresses

are.

in print calls himself a

however imbecile,
**

gi-eater

"

The

critic."

opinions,

greater the ignoramus, the

likelihood of his posing as

the

The

title

has become as vulgar as

" Professor," which

Matthew Arnold mod-

critic."

estly

declined

Pepper.

sometimes
popularity.

But
It

" critic "

share

vulgarity,

very

bulary of daily

word

to

is

as

different

Professor

we know,
thing

is

from

significant that the voca-

life

as

with

has never adopted the

a term of endearment.

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

10

From
it

the people

whom

the

critic criticises

would be unreasonable to expect sym-

When

pathy.

the rowdy baronet in Mr.

play

Pinero's

particularly

felt

he

lively

always broke a valuable piece of porcelain,

and

it

health

is

in

something

an

infallible

a popular actor
sarcastic

There

critics.

is

about

when he

says

dramatic

the

a story in Bret Harte

or

of a youthful convalescent

in

Mark Twain

in

San Francisco about

quirers

sign of exuberant

whom

anxious in-

were reassured by the information

that " he was quite peart-like, heavin rocks

What

the Chinamen

at the

Chinamen."

were to

this interesting invalid, the

critics

are

humani

generis the

any more handy

critics

popular

to the

mark

missile.

fellow-playgoers

wet blanket, a

what they

actor
for

or

rocks,

him as a
They " know

as the phrase goes,

and

man

one

of whose functions

like.

hastes

The dramatic

therefore they look askance at the

that they do not

regard

spoil-sport.

like,"

dramatic

it

is

to persuade

them

know what they ought

to

This attitude has been illustrated in

a question seriously debated

by a club of

THE CRITIC CONTEMNED

playgoers
?

use

"Are

But

"

Dramatic

11

of any

Critics

have been most sorely

critics

stricken in the house of their friends, that

is

to

by authors and other

say,

critics.

You have Dryden in the dedication of his

" Examen Poeticum " declaring that " the
corruption of a poet
critic

"

though

the generation of a

is

here the whirligig of time

has brought in his revenges, for

himself

is

rarely read

less

criticism than for

another

to-day for his

You

his poetry.

Addison,

critic,

Dryden

whole

filling

have

Spectator paper with sarcasms against the

dramatic

Dr.

You

critics.

Johnson,

have a third

devoting

two

critic.

papers

in

the Idler to the satirical picture of the

dramatic
that

critic

Dick Minim, and remarking

" Criticism

is

a study by which

grow important and formidable

small expense."
cal,
is

theory,

that the

Coleridge

people
torians,

The

we

at a very

favourite, the classi-

however, of literary

persons

an

manque.

critic

said

is

reviewers

author

were

who would have been

biographers,

if

" Usually
poets, his-

they could

they

have tried their talents at one or the other

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

12

and have

failed

Shelley said
thief-taker

As

they turn

a bankrupt

critics."

thief turns

an unsuccessful

so

despair,

in

author turns

tlierefore

"

Landor, in an Ima-

critic."

made Porson
who have failed

Conversation,

ginary

Southey:
writers

"Those

turn

Balzac

reviewers."

tell

as

greatly

vexed Saint-Beuve by saying of an unsucthat

"il

passa

critique

cessful

sculptor

comme

tous les impuissants qui mentent a

In the same strain you have

leurs debuts."

Lord
"

Beaconsfield's epigram in " Lothair,"

Who

are the critics

failed in literature

Well,

all this is

recover a

and

Those who have

art."

very depressing, and, to

tone,

little

the

critic

naturally

adopts the attitude of Shylock in the speech

wherein he demonstrated to the Christians

man and

that he was a

people forget

cism

we

are

What

that in this matter of

is

all

a brother.

tarred with the

criti-

same brush.

Just as one solid body cannot collide with

another without the manifestation of a form

of energy which

we

call heat, so

one mind

cannot impinge upon another without the

manifestation of that form of energy which

";

WHERE
we

Criticism

call criticism.

whereby

art

THE CRITIC?

IS

13

the means

is

becomes conscious of

its exist-

Survey the playhouse and take a

ence.

The

rapid poll of the audience.

aire in the stage

box

yawn behind

kid-glove

stalls

his

is

politely stifling a

Miss in the

Mamma

whispering to her

is

million-

that

Toby Belch seems very tipsy, and that

anyhow it isn't half so funny as Charleys
The pit are shuffling their feet,
Aunt.
Sir

and the gallery-boy

They

are all

shouting

is

" undulant

Montaigne would

say,

and

dramatic

all

known

critics

of

without knowing

there

is,

a right

criticism,

of

taste

and

criticism

criticism

all

producing

and a wrong

knowledge and good

according

cism of the simples^ to use

duce,

if

we

and

criticism

to

neither

the criticism of the habiles and the

classification.

Jour-

it.

course,

criticism according to

they

the species

As M.

dain spoke prose, so they are

Still

diverse," as

common

as " impressionist."

criticism,

boo

and yet the whole

audience have one thing in

are

"

La

criti-

Bruyere's

must be our task to

re-

can, this chaos of opinion

to

It

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

14

something

like order,

and to put our finger

on the best opinion, the opinion

of what

we may

It

this

art

call

the ideal spectator.

drama

are not concerned

here with the

as merchandise, for that,

destination

tator that the

it

drama

Aristotle, the earliest

of dramatic

to this ideal spec-

is

as

an

and

made

critics,

art

is

addressed.

the greatest

still

a great point of

You

this ideal spectator.

no doubt,

a very dif-

often finds itself addressed to

ferent

to

drama, as an

ideal spectator that the

we

is

will

remember

was Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the

auctioneer in " Middlemarch," who con-

that

it

jectured that " the old masters were prob-

ably so called because they

two more than the young

or

remark

is

the

saniio,

As

in

true

certainly

the oldest master,

"

master

ethics,"

(6

(f)povifj,o9)

the
^

to

appreciation

" Aristotle's Theory

209.

'uns."

This

about Aristotle,

of

those

M'^ho

says Professor

man

whose
of

a thing

maesti^o di color che

il

" Aristotle assumes a

p.

knew

know.

Butcher,^

of moral insight

trained

ethical

judgment

questions

is

of Poetry and Fine Art/' 2nd ed.,

AN EXAMPLE FROM HAZLITT

submitted, and who,

becomes
right,

the

'

so too

the

in

man

fine art a

aesthetic interests

(6

assumed,

is

'^(^apieLs:)

appeal

final

Now

made."

is

need for playgoers to

rise

spuer" this ideal spectator

need none of us be

law

of

who

him the

there

up and

'

of sound

the standard of taste, and to

is

resort,

last

standard and the

in

15

no

is

" con-

We

x^pcei<i.

any hurry to hate

in

him and abuse him as though he had

robbed a church. For the fact is, he does
not

geometry,
call

He

exist.

an

him the

listener, just

is

like

a point in pure

We

conception.

abstract

ideal spectator, or reader, or

because he

is

not

But

real.

he furnishes a convenient standard by which

we

can classify the tastes of real spectators,

or readers, or listeners, and the nearest ap-

proximation to him will furnish us with

our best opinion.

To

fix

your

ideas, to

give yourselves an instance of an

approximation
totle's

%aptei9,

anything

to
I

much

the

think

you cannot choose

better than

scription of his friend Joseph

"

We

actual

character of Aris-

Hazlitt's

de-

Fawcett:

find people of a decided

and

origi-

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

16
nal,

and

more general and

others of a

versatile, taste.

have sometimes thought

that the most acute and original-minded

men made bad critics. They see everything

too much through a particular medium.
What does not fall in with their own bias
and mode of composition

commonplace and

strikes

factitious.

them as
The
.

extreme force of their original impressions

compared with the feebleness of those they

receive at second-hand from others, oversets

the balance and just

Men who

their minds.

resources,

proportion

have fewer native

and are obliged to apply oftener

to the general

by habit a

stock, acquire

greater aptitude in appreciating

owe

of

Their taste

to others.

sacrifice to

soil

not

of their minds with

continual accessions of borrowed

and beauty.

made

and vanity, and

their egotism

they enrich the

is

what they

might take

this

strength

opportunity

of observing, that the person of the most

refined

and

knew was
friend of

least

contracted taste

the late Joseph

my

first literary

youth.

He

acquaintance

ever

Fawcett, the

was almost the

ever made, and

JOSEPH FAWCETT
I

17

think the most candid and unsophisticated.

He

had a masterly perception of

all styles

and of every kind and degree of excellence,

sublime or beautiful, from Milton's 'Paradise

Lost to Shenstone's

from Butler's

Analogy

'

Pastoral Ballad,'

'

'

down

'

to

'

Hum-

you had a favourite

author, he had read him too, and knew all
phrey Clinker.'

If

the best morsels, the subtle

touches.

be

sure,'

the capital

traits,

Do

you like Sterne ?

Yes, to
he would say.
I should deserve
'

'

'

'

to be hanged

if

some

'

parts of

I didn't

Comus

His repeating

'

with his

fine,

deep,

mellow-toned voice, particularly the

lines,

'

'I have heard

my

Sirens

&c.,

mother Circe with the

and the enthusiastic

comments he made

afterwards, were a feast

three,'

to the ear and to the soul.

He

read the

poetry of Milton with the same fervour and

spirit

of devotion that I have since heard

others read their own.

'

delicious feeling of

all,'

exclaim,

what

'to

matter whose
practised

capable

like
it

is.'

That

In

the most

have heard him

is

excellent,

no

respect he

this

what he preached.
of

is

He

was

in-

harbouring a sinister motive.


THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

18

and judged only from what he

was no flaw or mist

He

mind.

his

open to impressions

as

in

maintaining them.

did not care a rush whether a writer

was old or new,

'

in the clear mirror of

was strenuous

as he

He

was

There

felt.

What

he wanted,' he

make him

to

are to

in

me

prose or in verse

was something
Most men's minds

said,

think.'

like musical

'

instruments out of

Touch a particular key, and it jars

and makes harsh discord with your own.
They like Gil Bias,' but can see nothing

tune.

'

to laugh at in

'

Don

Quixote

'

they adore

Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding.

to

Fawcett had a

all these.

He

accommodated

taste

was not exceptions.

gave a cordial welcome to

all

He

sorts, pro-

vided that they were the best in their kind.

He

was not fond of counterfeits or dupliHis character was frank and

cates.
.

ingenuous in the extreme. ...

friend

honester

or

critic

heartier

never

coped

withal."

There you have the Aristotelian

the library
art.

He

the

is

ideal

xP^'? in

consumer of

literary

" not exceptions " but catholic,

MISTAKEN IDEALS
with " a masterly perception of

19

all styles

and

of every kind and degree of excellence." His

mind

He is open

" a clear mirror."

is

to im-

pressions, and strenuous in maintaining them

we

lively receptivity, as

enthusiasm "wax
to retain."

Where

and a strong

to receive and

And now

precisely

say,

marble

the question

arises,

such a one, or the closest

is

approximation to such a one, to be found in

the playhouse
this question

Very

have been given by more or

interested

less

familiar,

sought

kitchen.

According to

parties.

though apocryphal

popular

impersonator

ought to be

infallible

has identified

street.

Moliere

xjO''f'?

The only

opinion he respects

in the

actor-

Gillette,

who

as

Holmes

at detective work,

with the

critic,
is

in his

resided

Sherlock

of

American

^(apiei?

manager, Mr. William

the

story,

consumer of drama

his ideal

For him

cook.

diverse answers to

man

in the

he says, whose

the average spectator.

For Tolstoy, on the other hand, the ideal

consumer of art is the moujik " a respected,

wise, educated country labourer," he says

(in

his

"What

is

Art?") "one,

for

in-

';

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

20

of those wise and truly religious

stance,

men whom
And,

you

again,

Birrell

Mr.

have

Augustine

"I have had some experience

authors, and have always found them
:

better pleased

with the

'

men

verdicts of educated
in

the peasants."

urging the claim of the cultivated

amateur
of

know among

unprofessional

actively engaged

the work of the world than ever they

were with the laboured praise of the

called

'

people

who maintain

sumer of any
that

There

expert.' "

the

art

proper

yet

other

that the ideal con-

the producer of

is

is

drama

of

critic

dramatist, of acting

are

so-

the actor.

is

it

the

think

these various suggestions pretty well ex-

haust our possible range of choice, and

will

perhaps

examine them
First of

all,

spectator, the

up our

clear

ideas

if

it

we

in turn.

then, there

man

is

the average

in the pit, representing

the typical mind and taste of the crowd.

The crowd must always be mentioned

honoris causa, in

first,

any discussion touching

the drama, because

it

crowd that the drama

is
is

to an assembled
addressed.

That

THE CROWD
is

21

the peculiarity which makes drama what

it is

and not something

else,

not a novel or

an essay or a meditation or a fragment of

history or an exercise in

And we must

pm'e

dialectic.

deal respectfully with the

playhouse crowd, because

it is

than the British nation,

or,

nothing
to speak

less

by

the card, that respectable minority of the

British nation

which goes to the

play.

must beware of committing what

Green

said

was Froude's great

in a history of

A^''e

J.

fault,

R.
that

England he had omitted the

English people.

At

the same time, the English crowd

crowd, and

moment

we have

is

to consider for the

the mind of the crowd in general,

of the crowd as a crowd.

about the crowd

by

The

which

great point

mean any

body of men and women assembled together

for a

common

purpose

is

that

it

has a

mind and character of its own which differ

the mind and character of its in-

from

dividual members.
as the phrase

seriously
inquirers.

Collective psychology,

goes, has only of late years

engaged the attention of

little

scientific

band of Frenchmen,

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

22

headed by Professor Tarde of Paris, have

taken up this

study, with

though they

interesting

results which,

are,

it

would be

here out of place to describe at length.

And

so

must

enough to take
forms

character of

its

made

bination

The

own

that

it

differs

composing

it

just as

unlike

The

of a

crowd

which

which

course,

men

the

acter, the

cancelled,

they

have

by contact.

are intensified

differ

conscious

fruit

of

is,

perhaps,

from one another

appear, are mutually

in

com-

which the members

qualities in
differ

our

separate ingredients.

its

reason, very roughly stated,

this.

from

which they

up, or just as a chemical

is

qualities

crowd

mind and

are unlike the cells of

bodies
are

with

entity,

the individuals

you to be good

for granted that a

it

new

ask

are

dis-

while the

in

common

The

qualities

principally,

of

elements of char-

education, of varying

hereditary conditions, and the intelligence.

The

qualities,

on the other hand,

in

which

they resemble one another are principally

the unconscious or subconscious qualities,
the primary instincts, feelings, and passions

THE CROWD

THE THEATRE

IN

It follows that to bring people

of the race.

together in a crowd
intellectual

is

diminish

to

so

when Thackeray

" that great baby, the public," he

touching a

their

and to increase their emotional

And

energy.

23

scientific truth.

talked of

was

really

The crowd

has

the credulity, the absence of judicial faculty,

feeling of

the uncontrolled violence of

knew

Shakespeare

child.

when he

this

drew the crowd in Julius Ccesai^ ; Ibsen

also, when he drew the crowd in A?i Enemy
of Society ; yes, and in another way, Mr.

knew

Gilbert

crowd of

little

true

" in

truth

is

it

theatrical

cannot

must take

not philo-

is

view

" sympathetic

of the

is

crowd

Hence the

sides.

theatrical

faculty,

this general

adopt a detached, im-

disinterested

personal,

The

And

his

men and

Twelve good

Trial by Jury.

The

vention

"

true in particular of the theatrical

crowd.
sophic

when he drew

too,

it

of

accustomed

stage

it

con-

personage."

crowd has not the

not

life

to

judicial
sift

evi-

Hence
The long arm of

dence or to estimate probabilities.

the

convention

coincidence,"

of

"

and another convention

at

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

24

as old as Sophocles

least

may

wildest improbability,

When

any, the

be taken for the

starting-point

the

postulate,

that

(Edipus the King

of a play.

comes on the

stage he has been married for twelve years

to his

own mother, and throughout

all

that

time she has never had a talk with him on

the past which gives him any suspicion of

who

she

is

own

his

or of the fact that he has slain

father.

crowd as a crowd

virtuous and generous

we

for

are all

is

on

Hear the
melodrama hiss

our best behaviour in public.

gallery

theatre

of

Yet it is fairly long odds

some of them have robbed their

the villain
that

at
!

employers, and that others will go

to beat their wives.

upon
It

And

home

the crowd insists

a strict separation of virtue and vice.

wants

its

personages

all

of a piece.

The

composite characters, the strange blend of

good and

evil in

Hence

recognise.

" hero "

heroine

and
"

all

and

of us,

" viperine

refuses

convention

the

" traitor,"

it

of

'*

to

of

immaculate

adventuress,"

of

" poetic justice," and of " living happy ever

afterwards."

MAN

PRIMITIVE

You

PLAYGOER

AS

conclude that by the mere fact of

forming part of an organised crowd a

descends

several

citizen,

Berserker

placid

be a harm-

vestryman

British

he " throws back

Note the

ancestors.

" It

only the

is

of

and

truly

theatre.

bygone

of

life

to his early

says

violence,"

perceived by nearly

is

writers

"

on the

effect

life

"the

Maeterlinck,
that

may

of

crowd he becomes a barbarian, a

in

man

rungs in the ladder

Isolated, he

civilisation.
less

25

all

our tragic

may

one

days,

say

that

anachronism dominates the stage, and that

dramatic art
as

the

tragic

art

dates

of

author

back

many years
... To the

as

sculpture.
it

is

only the violence

of

And

he

the anecdote that

appeals.

imagines,

that

in

forsooth,

witnessing

the

we

very

delight

shall

same

acts

that

brought joy to the hearts of the barbarians,

with

whom

murder, outrage, and treachery

Where-

were matters of daily occurrence.

as, it

cry,

is

and

far

away from bloodshed,

sword-thrust

that

the

battle-

lives

of

most of us flow on, and men's tears are

silent to-day, and invisible
and almost

"

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

26

spiritual.

when

Indeed,

go to a

theatre I feel as though I were spending

my

a few hours with

ceived

life

as

theirs scarcely

con-

but this conception of

even lingers in

my

memory,

it

is

not one that I can share.

am shown

deceived

and surely
I

who

something that was primitive,

and brutal

arid,

ancestors,

his wife, a

woman

husband

killing

poisoning her lover, a

son avenging his father, a father slaughtering

children,

his

imprisoned citizens

in a

the sublimity of tradition, but,

superficial
tears,

and material

and death

All

this, T

their

murdered kings, ravished

father to death,
virgins,

putting

children

word,
alas,

all

how

Blood, surface-

think you will admit, takes

us very far from

o x)0'^'f-

The

collective

mind of the crowd, approximates rather to the mind of primitive

man.
mind, the

Further,
inattentive

of the
*

Mrs.

1902.

it

is

mind.

peculiarly

apt to be an

contributor to one

monthly reviews' has maintained

Aria in the Nineteenth Century and After, July

THE CROWD SELF-CONSCIOUS

27

"half the people in the theatre do

that

not listen to the play

the

theatre

that

for

they do not go to

purpose,

and

it

is

almost impossible to persuade them to do

They go

so.

some extraneous

there for

reason far removed from a desire to follow

what

is

proceeding on the stage, and they

give their attention either not at

in the

most perfunctory

Allowing

for a slight

touch of exaggeraought, from the

considerations I have been

succeed

you, to

in

or

fashion."

we

tion in the statement,

all,

submitting to

accounting for what

remains of truth in

it.

an individuality of

its

crowd, having

own, cannot but

be interested in that individuality, apart

from

reference to the cause which has

all

brought
self

it

of

conscious,

attention
its

formation

its

it

own

difficult feat.

is

becomes

To

self-assertive.

that

absorb

to say, to inake

existence

-is

an

in the

it

the
selfits

for-

extremely

How many platform

how many speakers

mons, how many

finds it-

From

an interesting spectacle.

moment

get

The crowd

together.

orators,

House of Com-

preachers,

how many

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

28

generation

knows

Le

do

can

actors,

this

In

names.

Naturel

Fils

in

any

in

generation
preface

his

with

this respect

" Like the church,"

to

Dumas

younger

the

compared the theatre

he

said,

dramatists address ourselves to

men

the church.

"we

few

whole

the

that

their

So

assembled together, and you cannot gain

the ear of the multitude for any length

way

of time or in any efficacious

name

the

save in

The

of their higher interests."

" inattention," then, of the crowd

proof

is

of the independence and the potency of

its

existence.

on

It

contrary

the

keenest, but

it is

is

not really inattentive

attention

its

directed to

the perpetual difficulty of

like

the art of

the

because

it

itself.

the

Hence

involve the

The crowd
interested

is

of

arts which,

all

theatre,

presence of a crowd.

sembled

is

particular art, but, once assembled,

has asin
it

the
finds

another subject of interest and a danger-

ous rival to the

artistic

subject

namely,

itself.

We

might perhaps

find

an

additional

reason for the inattention of the theatrical

WOMEN

INFLUENCE OF

29

crowd in the temperament of the typical

playgoer.
is

your typical playgoer

Clearly,

not a reading man, a cloistered student,

a " solitary," as our forefathers used to say.

He

belongs,

ea; hypotJicsi,

to the class which

is

" fond of

if

he could, imitate Macaulay by reading

company

"

he would not, even

Plato with his feet on the fender

have bustle, the sense of

he must

human

kinship

brought home to him by

sitting

elbow with

he desires to see

and be

of a

is

neighbour

The

seen.

attention

ment

his

in such a

tempera-

as this.

Moreover, the large majority

modern

theatrical audience consists of

it is

attentive

sex.

women

than of their boys.

where the
stalls,

is

us that

The proof

it

is

of this in

that the parts of the house

women outnumber

boxes, and circle

less attentive

who have

the attention of their girls

fix

the theatre

tell

afraid, if

are the less

Schoolmasters

taken "mixed classes"

harder to

am

accurate, I

ungallant, to say that

the

elbow to

faculty of intellectual

seldom high

women and

the

the

men

are notoriously

than the pit and gallery, where

men outnumber

the women.

Nor must

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

30

we

forget that ladies in public have some-

thing else to do than merely to attend.

They
in

show

are on parade, they constitute a

themselves

very often a more charming

show than anything

offered

on the other

You must frequently

side of the footlights.

have been seated behind a matinee hat which

was better worth looking at than the play

of which

allowed an occasional glimpse.

it

The argument,
that

all

then,

comes to

this

first,

crowds, because they are crowds,

more properly speaking,

self-attentive a fact which constitutes a
are inattentive

formidable

or,

for

difficulty

depend upon the crowd

theatrical

because

crowd

it is

is

And you

secondly, that the

peculiarly

drawn from the

power of attention
perceive

is

of the crowd,

The mental

how

classes

that

we

are

whose
.

getting

xapii<i.

have fixed the attention

does that attention work

state of the theatrical audience,

as Coleridge

has pointed out, closely re-

sembles that of a

dream you

inattentive,

naturally low.

further and further from 6

But when you

which

arts

all

live

man

in a dream.

an imaginary

life as

In a

though

THEATRICAL ILLUSION
it

were

and yet

real,

the time you have

all

a sub-consciousness that

know vaguely

all

temporary

it is

not

you

real,

the time that you are

So, says Coleridge, " Stage-

only dreaming.

are

presentations

31

produce

to

of

sort

which the spectator

half-faith,

encourages in himself and supports by a

because he knows that

his

power to

Thus the

it is

own

his

part,

at all times in

see the thing as

it

really

is.

true stage-illusion as to a forest

scene consists

not

judgment that

it

state, in

judging

in the mind's

to be a forest, but in

mental

on

contribution

voluntary

is

fact,

its

it

remission of the

The

not a forest."

half-way between

is

two extremes, absolute

non-illusion

and

complete delusion.

Of

the

first

you may

of these extremes

take an illustration from Tolstoy's account

of a visit to Siegfried.

'*

When

I arrived,"

he says, " an actor sat on the stage

decorations

and which,

amid

intended to represent a cave,

as

is

always the case, produced

the less illusion the better they were constructed.

He was

dressed in

woven

tights,

with a cloak of skins, wore a wig and an

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

32

genteel

and

beard,

artificial

hands

(his

with

white,

weak,

easy movements, and

stomach and

especially the shape of his

his

lack of muscle, revealed the actor) beat an

impossible sword with an unnatural

hammer

way in which no one ever uses a

hammer and at the same time opening his
mouth in a strange way, he sang somein

There you have

thing incomprehensible."

non

absolute

illusion

an unsympathetic

detachment of the spectator's mind.

And

now, for the other extreme state of mind,

some

consider

from

passages

account of Sir Roger de

Addison's

Coverley's

be-

haviour at a performance of The THsti^est

"

Mother,

Upon

the entering of Pyrrhus,

the Knight told me," says Addison, " that

he did not believe the King of France

himself had a better strut.

very attentive to
because

my

was indeed

old friend's remarks,

looked upon them as a piece of

natural criticism, and was well pleased to

hear him at the conclusion of almost every

scene telling

how

me

that he could not imagine

the play would end.

appeared

much concerned

One
for

while he

Andromache,

ROGER AT THE PLAY

SIR
and a

mione

much

while after as

little

Her-

for

and was extremely puzzled to think

what would become of Pyrrhus.

"

33

When

Roger saw Andromache's

Sir

obstinate refusal

her

to

me

he whisper 'd

tunities,

impor-

Lover's

in the Ear, that

he was sure she would never have him

which

to

added, with a more

he

ordinary vehemence,
Sir,

what

'tis

'

You

can't

to have to do with a

Upon Pyrrhus

than

imagine,

Widow.'

threatening afterwards

his

to leave her, the Knight shook his

Head,

and muttered to himself,

if

This part dwelt so

can.'

'

Ay, do

much upon my

imagination, that at

friend's

you

the

close

of

the Third Act, as I was thinking of something

widows.
in the
of!

he whispered in

else,

Ear,

'

These

the most perverse Creatures

Sir, are

World.'

my

Upon Hermione's

going

with a Menace to Pyrrhus, the Audience

gave a loud Clap

added,

'

Baggage
lusion

On my
"

!
'

to

which Sir Roger

word, a notable

young

There you have complete de-

wholly sympathetic absorption of

the spectator's mind.

The mind

of the crowd, of the average

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

34

spectator,

is,

as

we have

seen,

between these two extremes.

is

of

x^P^^^^

state,

There

is

that you

is

It

of

state

ideal spectator,

a rather

is

double

a French

compHcated

consciousness.

which

proverb

says

cannot at once join in a pro-

and look out of the window.

Yet

a feat of that kind which the

ideal

cession
it

mind of the

the state of

somewhere
Now what

theatrical spectator has to accomplish, for

remember that he

not only taking in

is

pleasure with a complete self-surrender, he

is

also

commanding himself

so as to esti-

mate the quality of his pleasure while it

He must have a mental
is coming in.
detachment as absolute as Tolstoy's at
Siegfried

but,

unlike

be sympathetic detachment

pathy

The

as

must
with a sym-

Tolstoy's,

it

whole-hearted as Sir Roger's at

lyistrest

Mother.

This by no means

easy mental process requires not only an

of the

effort

training and

will,

special

a special
aptitude.

motive, but
It

is

out

of the question to look for this from the

crowd.
'O

yaplei^,

then, the ideal spectator at the

THE AMATEUR OF CULTURE

play

not the crowd,

is

spectator,

is

35

not the average

whether Moliere's cook

even

though Mohere's cook was that superior

French cook

article a

or Tolstoy's Russian

man who

the

peasant,

or

dramatic

critics are

naively asks

if

of any use.

After the crowd, the average or uncultivated amateur, let us turn to Mr. Birrell's

candidate for the critical post

affairs or

arts

Mr.

of the world

in other words, the

Birrell

this class.

who

the

man

of

dabbles in the

amateur of culture.

puts in a very artful plea for

He

says the authors like them,

preferring their "verdicts of approval" to

the " laboured praise of the so-called

pert.' "

Here, however,

'

ex-

we must be on our

guard against the rhetorical device of the

professional advocate

the

familiar

of comparing one thing at

its

another thing at

The

the "expert"

And you
the

men

is

its

worst.

praise of

will observe that the authors like

of the world

when they

What

deliver

the authors

when they deliver

disapproval we are not

think of this class

of

best with

not necessarily "laboured."

" verdicts of approval."

dicts

device

vertold.

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

36

However,

admit there

I willingly

is

some-

thing very seductive in the idea of every

cultivated gentleman being his

though
"

there

Every man

Birrell,

is

which

his

own

much

as for the expert,

called

some

with

from that point of

like the

said to be as

is

critic

lawyer," which Mr.

regards

Criticism

very

treatise

little

expect,

suspicion.

view

is

own

good

game

of golf

for the duffer

and especially good

the middle-aged and even elderly.

It

notion which particularly recommends

to

us

English

who

That, in

amateurs.

are

of the British Constitution.

then, that

we

is

itself

governed

fact, is part

for

by

and parcel

Small wonder,

should take as quite a natural

thing the obiter dicta of the amateur in the

comparatively humble region of the

But here
would be

think

we must

arts.

distinguish.

It

inaccurate, as well as impertinent,

to label the critical writings or discourses of

such

men as Mr.

Gladstone or Mr. Balfour or

Lord Rosebery names which at once occur

to everybody's mind in this connection as
Whatever else they were or
amateurish.

are, these

men were

or are

men

of letters,

BIAS OF INDIVIDUAL

AND MODE

serious students of their subject.

we

refer to the

37

When

amateur of culture, we are

thinking of a class opposed to the literary

class,

mundane

the

people, a class which

has not the patience or the leisure or the

aptitude for serious study of the arts, their
laws, their logic, a class to

history, their

which the

arts are a pastime,

Now

but a pastime.

mundane people
to, just as is

For

street.

any

is

and nothing

the criticism of these

always worth listening

the criticism of the

it

rate, free

man

in the

a criticism which

is

from the

at

is,

literary bias,

from

the cant of criticism, from the smell of the

lamp.

It

seldom

to give us a fresh

fails

But does

suggestive view of the subject.

give us the right view

For though

it is

professional bias,

which

is

free
it

and

am

from the

it

afraid not.
literary,

has a bias of

its

the

own

either the bias of the individual or

the bias of the mode.

As

for the bias of

men of
their own

the individual, you get that in the

autocratic

temper who

subjective

opinions

universal

truth.

for

take

This bias

by Lord Foppington

in

measure

the
is

of

illustrated

The Relapse, who

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

38

preferred the " natural sprouts " of his

brain to the " forced products

own

of another

"

by the
opinions of George II. on " bainting and
boetry," of George III. on "that sad stuff,
Shakespeare," of Frederick the Great on
This bias

rnan's.

also illustrated

is

epic poetry, which, he declared, reached its

highest pinnacle in Voltaire's " Henriade,"

and by the opinions of an

cessor of Frederick's
sun.

It

is

illustrious suc-

on every

art

under the

perhaps permissible to suggest

that the artistic views of that illustrious

monarch, interesting and instructive as they

are

and the student of

to the historian

character, are not exactly the opinions of

the Aristotelian
bias

Then

x/^'^'?-

rules

fashion,

the

mundane

the

most
and

able thing

the world.

the

in

at

paintings of

Lawrence.

another

is

he

Domenichino

To

the

most

place, the least reason-

mundane amateur

marbles,"

amateur

changeable,

relative to time

the

knows how

of the mode, everybody

fashion

to

as

At one
all for "
is

all

or Sir

time

Grecian
for

the

Thomas

be sure fashion sometimes

makes a good shot

Garrick became the

THE SERIOUS INTELLECTS

fashion

The

ard.

it

who made

made

haphaz-

at

is

mundane

fashionable people, the

amateurs,
also

But

once.

at

39

the vogue of Kean,

vogue of Master Betty.

the

There are no settled principles of judgment

here.

And

there

another

is

mundane

the cultivated amateur, not the

but the intellectual sort

sort,

the sort which

which

is

Mr.

quite

Birrell

as

of

subdivision

no

lias

unfitted

doubt

mind

in

to

run

successful candidate for the post of ideal

"

spectator.

the late

said

Probably there

is

nothing,"

Mr. Grant Allen, "which

much as an intellectual treat

To be made to sit out a
performance at the Francais or the Lyceum
would be to a great many of us an unmitihate so

serious intellects
!

gated
high

bore.
class

believe

plays,

high

high-class
-

class

music,

novels

are

produced mainly for people of moderate or

medium

intelligence

people whose brains

and bodies are systematically underworked.

Men who

have done a good day's

toil

with

head or hands don't care for Faust: they

want a

Gaiety

burlesque.

The

silliest

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

40

most

song, the

rollicking fun, of the Cafe

Chantants in the Champs Elysees or of

London

the

men

Pavilion,

to

is

many

intelligent

a far greater relaxation than the best-

mounted

piece of Shakespeare's or Victor

Hugo's.

Or

rather, the

one

is

and the other a nuisance."

all

a relaxation

we can

Well,

understand that point of view, and, in

certain moods, sympathise with

we can

the same time

all

it

see that

but at

it is

not

the point of view of the ideal spectator, of

6 ^apieig at

the play.

And now we

have done with the amateur,

whether

whether of the

street or of the salon,

intellectual or

mundane, and must look

for

our ideal spectator in quite another quarter.

It

often said that the ideal consumer of

is

drama, or of any other

of

The proper

it.

art, is

the producer

judges, that

is,

of pic-

tures are painters, of novels are novelists,

of plays are playwrights, and of acting are

actors.
" Let such teach others

And

censure others

says

Pope

This

is

in

his

"

who themselves excel,

who have written well,"

Essay on Criticism."

a very plausible contention, which

CRITICISM NOT DIDACTIC

many worthy

has hoodwinked

we have

here, also,

the English

by our

mode

spirit

by

trial

jury,

judgment

criticism

if

were a

of technical instruction, a piece of

didactic, the contention

would, no doubt,

be a perfectly sound one.

and

For

people.

a notion which reflects

And

peers.

41

whenever we say that

insist that,

or that play
ill-painted,

bad, this

is

or that

this

orchestrated,

go further

I will

this

that picture

or

symphony poorly

we ought always

to bear in

mind the difficulties of the artist's task and

to remember that these things which he
has failed to do well we, very likely, can-

not do at

all.

tion, a salutary

may prompt

it

aff*ect

is

a chastening reflec-

moral exercise
us to charity,

it

our ultimate verdict.

effectively

"

That

but though

ought not to

John Dennis

answered Pope that

his precept

denied by matter of fact, and by the

is

experience of above two thousand years."

On

this point, as

get something

on so many

decisive

from

others,

the

common-sense of Samuel Johnson.

^

" Reflections upon

Criticism

a late Rhapsody call'dj

by Mr. Dennis."

we

strong

Boswell

An Essay upon

;;

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

42

had collaborated with two other friends

writing a pamphlet
"

tures

in

entitled " Critical Stric-

against Mallet's tragedy of Elvira

but one of the friends had misgivings, and

"

said,

We

tragedy

this

have hardly a right to abuse

:

for

bad

as

it

is,

how

vain

should either of us be to write one not

Then Johnson broke

near so good."

in,

"Why, no, sir; this is not just reasoning.

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter
who

made you a bad

you cannot make a table.
trade to make tables."^
has

So

it is

make
plays.

not the dramatic

It

is

is

not your

trade to

critic's

plays, or to teach the

It

though

table,

way

to

make

the function of criticism not to

inculcate methods, but to appraise results

to examine the thing done, not the

do

it.

It

is,

mind

'

and to receive these

we must have

a perfectly open

mirror, as

Hazlitt said of

clear

Joseph Fawcett.
so-called

to

in short, the evaluation of plea-

surable impressions
impressions,

way

Now

" creative,"

your actual, your

artist

is

too

Dr. Birbeck Hill's edition of Boswell, vol.

i.

narrow
p.

409.

POETS ON A POET
and too intense

43

The very

for that.

force

within

him which gives the impulse

creation

is

to

His

fatal to catholicity of taste.

" personal equation," as the astronomers call

it,

not permit him to be an accurate

will

observer.

Every

critical

presses

really

is

As

himself.

preference he ex-

veiled

Stendhal

justification

said,

every eulogy

between confrere and confrere

Of

of resemblance.

ficate

an amusing instance

find

is

certi-

you will
Aubrey de

this

in

Tennyson

Vere's Reminiscences of

of

in early

days
"
'

Read the

exquisite songs

Tennyson exclaimed.

them has the

perfection of the berry, in

light the radiance

forget for

its

of Burns,'

In shape, each of

'

of the dew-drop

you

sake those stupid things, his

The same day," continues

Aubrey de Vere, " I met Wordsworth and
named Burns to hivi. Wordsworth praised
him even more vehemently than Tennyson
serious pieces.'

had done
to his

but added,

serious

efforts;

amatory songs of
I told

the tale to

his

Of

course

refer

those foolish

little

'

one has to

forget.'

Henry Taylor the same

";

THE IDEAL SPECTATOR

44

evening, and his answer was

quisite songs

me

and Burns' serious

but when they don't

'

ex-

efforts are to

reading.'

when they praise,

You know what

authors

are

Burns

and disagreeable

alike tedious

These

'

Corneille thought of Racine

what Richard-

son thought of Fielding and what Fielding

of Richardson

two very

what Borrow and Peacock,

different authors, agreed in think-

ing about a third author, Walter Scott

what Macready
thought of Charles Kean and Charles Kean
of Macready; what Beaconsfield said of
Thackeray, and Charlotte Bronte of Jane
what Byron

Keats

said of

Austen.

And

then there

the trite but inevi-

is

table remark, that the nature

and

combines

the

called " creative " artist

though

which invents

faculty

is

of

the

so-

widely different

hope to persuade you

later that

from the
nature which enjoys and analysesthe

it is

by no means

totally different

criti-

cal faculty.

But there

to argue the point.

and

for

all,

Aristotle, in

by the

Book

It

is

really

was

no need

settled,

once

excellent, the invaluable

III. ch.

ii.

of his " Poli-

ARISTOTLF/S "POLITICS"
tics,"

where you may read

"

45

Thus

not the builder alone whose function

to

criticise

person
is

who

the merits of a
uses

it,

is

is

it

is

the

to wit, the householder,

actually a better judge

pilot

house

it

and, similarly, a

a better judge of a helm than a

carpenter;

or

one of the company of a

dinner than the cook."

II

THE DRAMATIC

CRITIC

II

The way

ought now to be clear

sideration of the

expert playgoer, the so-

called dramatic critic.

that

we

for a con-

have pointed out

are all critics in a sense

criticism

being the reaction of mind against mind,

opinion of

the

work of
him and

which

art
I

consumer about the

the

producer

the

have postulated,

and indeed not only

totle,

offers

Aris-

after

after Aristotle,

but in accordance with common-sense and

the nature of things, an ideal consumer,
the

man

opinion,

of the peifect taste and the right

whom

Aristotle calls

have examined how

the

several

drama

classes

and

far

There

imposed by the

peculiar to crowds.

what way

is

of

the

the representa-

marked

mental

There
49

standard,

this

tive of the crowd, with the

tions

in

We

among consumers

diverged from

ideal consumer.

o ;^ap/ei9.

is

limita-

conditions

the cultivated
j3

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

50

mundane

amateur, whether

or intellectual,

with his limitations, which, for the mun-

dane amateur, are the caprice of fashion

in

and the

artistic taste,

him only

for

that art

fact

a pastime, just as

it is

is

only a

pastime, a rest from brain-fag, for a certain

sort

of intellectual

We

amateur.

have

scrutinised the claims of the producer himself,

the playwright or the actor, to be the

nearest approximation to
ill

X'^p'^^^'i

the theatre, and

the Aristotelian

we have

rejected

the claims of the producer because his

special artistic individuality

is

so

own

of necessity

strong as to colour his general ideas,

and to disqualify him from forming a broad

and balanced judgment.

Still,

They

are all critics in their way.

voce

critics

and

they

these classes

are

are viva

irresponsible

caring not a rush for antiquity or

critics,

or

posterity,

moment.

pleasure of the

beyond

anything

for

their

And remember

that this floating mass of irresponsible

voce criticism

the

is

producers

another,

it

their hash.

is

vhm

enormously important to
of

art

for,

one

the criticism which

way

or

settles

Authors complain of the

se-

AN ARTIST

or even malice, of

verity or captiousness,

what

them by the

written about

is

sponsible

" official "

only heard what

critics

the irresponsible viva voce

We
critics
all

come now,

they

if

by

critics

then, to the

properly so called,

these other

but

re-

about them

said

is

51

who

classes in that

diffisr
it

of

class

is

from
their

business not only, like the others, to enjoy,

but to appraise and to justify their enjoy-

And

ment.

appraising

this

made

cation have to be

justifi-

systematic and to

be presented in literary form.

critics

and

Hence the

proper are in the peculiar position

of being at once consumers and producers

they are consumers of one

art,

the art of

drama, and producers of another

has something

mate

as

spectator

art,

In other words, the

art of criticism.

more

closely

to

though

critic

do than to approxi-

may

as

the

that

be to the ideal
to

be sure

is

very important, perhaps the fundamental,

part of his task
that, to

cism to

be an
be

an

he

has, over

This claim of

artist.

art

jealousy by other

and above

is

criti-

viewed with some

artists,

who

are fond of

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

52

making the

distinction that their arts

poem, the novel, the play

arts,

whereas criticism

This

distinction,

but

lamentably

we must apply
ary

art,

to

it

all

or

producers of

They

critics.

creators,

and what they

feeling.

And

all

" creation,"
liter-

whether they be poets or novelists

or playwrights

they

no such

is

only change, transmu-

But accepting the word

tation.

think,

unscientific.

Science teaches us that there

thing as creation

the

" creative "

not " creation."

is

cannot

and

shallow

is

are

all

create

all

aesthetic

the raw material out of which

create

themselves.

this

is

the same, namely,

Criticism, like

whatever

is

are

else it

may

be

any other

is

mode

M. Anatole France

self-expression.

art

of

has

given a famous description of criticism as

"

The adventures

pieces,"

and he has added

be frank, the

men,

am

among

of a soul

critic

ought to say

about to speak

master-

" In order
;

to

Gentle-

of myself a

p?^opos of Shakespeare, or Racine, or Pascal,

or

Goethe

tunity."

by

no means a bad oppor-

Let us have done, then, with

this false old

criterion of " creation " as a

DRYDEN'S ESSAY
name

pretext for giving the

Adventures

Robinson

of

53

of art to the

Crusoe

Harry Richmond, and withholding

or

of

from

it

among Master-

the Adventures of a Soul

pieces.

To
is,

see

what nonsense

this criterion really

you need only take the case of Dry-

Are we seriously to be told that

while Dryden in his Wild Gallant, or in
den.

All for Love, or in his Spanish Friar

was doing creative work, he was not, for-

his

work

sooth, doing creative

Dramatic Poesy

Why,

Essay of
the very scheme
in his

of this beautiful piece, the contrast of a

pure

setting,

that

gem

classic

in

is,

the

memorable day,

Dutch

" It

a creation.

itself,

of the late war,

romantic

against a rich

in the first

was

summer

when our navy engaged

two most

a day wherein the

fleets

which any

age had ever seen, disputed the

command

mighty and best appointed

of the greater half of the globe, the com-

merce of nations, and the riches of the

universe.

The

noise

of the

from both navies reached our

the City, so that

all

men

cannons

ears

about

being alarmed

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

54

with

it,

and

in a dreadful suspense of the

event which

we knew was then

deciding,

every one went following the sound as his

fancy led him

...

seeking the noise in

all

the depths of silence."

gentlemen

in

so four

And what

under

of their ears and,

Greenwich,

towards

gently.

waters

rush of

the

order the watermen to let

more

And

and waited to begin

London Bridge was out

getting

long perruques, magnificent

creatures, took a barge

talking until

they

could

fall their

oars

could these courtly

gentlemen find better to talk about than

What

drama is,
and was, and may some day be, and what
are the Three Unities, and whether rhyme
dramatic criticism

or

blank verse

is

the

better for tragedy, and

whether the Ancients surpass the Moderns

and the French the English, and what

is

to be thought of Terence his plots and of

Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher

and Ben Jonson.

the plot of this

And,

critical

the scenic background,

then,

drama
so

how
is

artfully

related to

that the very

swallows which skim the water ahead of

the barge are pressed into service to give

A KINEMATOGRAPH

55

some

a simile for the literary points of

poet under

discussion

And

by-and-by

the watermen are bidden to turn the barge

and row

softly,

that the party

may

take

the cool of the evening in their return

and the talk flows on,

as

abundant and

as richly laden as the river itself,

boom

and the

Dutch guns has now given

place to the serene wisdom of Aristotle
the thought of whom among those periof the

wigs suggests a Grecian marble over against

a Sir Peter Lely.

gentlemen

in

And

their

so rapt

were these

discourse that

it

was

not until they had been twice or thrice

called

to,

that they saw the

barge had

stopped, and they were back at the foot

of Somerset
choice

stairs.

little

final

And

then there

kinematograph

is

the

" The

company stood a-while looking back on

the water, which the moonbeams played
upon, and made it appear like floating
quick-silver at last they went up through
;

a crowd of French people,

who were

dancing in the open

and nothing con-

air,

merrily

cerned for the noise of guns which had

alarmed the town that afternoon."


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

56

an exquisite blend of frank " im-

What

pressionism" and academic theory, of the

moment and the eterPepysian London and the

circumstance of the
nal verities, of

Athens of the greater Peripatetic

It

is

because of the special quality of this blend,

its

peculiar " thrill"

to speak, of a
resist

the

Hellenisation, so

London day

that

cannot

the temptation of setting beside this

Essay of Dryden's a passage from one of

Edward FitzGerald's Letters, where he describes to a friend a jaunt he

had

town

in

with James Spedding, the learned editor

of

Bacon

"The most
had of
"

my

was the

pleasurable

remembrance

stay in town," writes FitzGerald,

last

day

spent there, having a

long ramble in the streets with Spedding,

looking at books and pictures

then a walk

with him and Carlyle across the Park to

where we

Chelsea,

Day Prophet

at his

dropped that
house

Latter

then, getting

upon a steamer, smoked down to Westdined at a chop-house by the

minster
;

Bridge,

and then went to Astley's

old

Spedding being quite as wise about the

THE

Horsemanship

Garden

and

this

midnight in Covent-

whole pleasant day has

my

on

a taste

57

about Bacon and Shake-

as

We parted at

speare.

left

DIFFERENTIA

CRITIC'S

palate

one

like

of

and more picturesque

Plato's lighter, easier,

dialogues."
It

when we come

is

the critic
that

we

the

in

himself an

is

see

the

Dramatic
as

cation

of

ideas

and
It

the producer

the

with

the

meant

of

popular

interesting."

the

of

use

between

mode by which

his

views of

This

language

Just as you

out his

shares

art

consumer.

in

fatuity

emotions

is

soul -states,

his

is

way,

"

man and man.

moods,

of

extent

What

his

in

The use of any

channel for the communi-

Criticism

is

art

recognise that

artist,

full

"

question,

to

life,

what

is

is

" being

by

may have an

in-

teresting novel or an interesting play, so

you may have an "

criticism.

Well,

And
the

that

interesting "
is

peculiar

dramatic

the use of
position,

it.

the

dif-

ferentia, of the critic proper results from

the

fact

that

he

has

to

be

not

only

consumer but producer, not only observer

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

58

but

It

artist.

him

tinguishes

whom we
man

the

and the

from

the

have passed
in

the

rest

of

tagious

from

the connoisseur,
a word, from

in

that his attitude, merely

We

as theirs.

critics

review

an observer, a consumer,

same

chiefly dis-

other

in

street,

them

Not

the pubhc.
as

that which

is

influence

quite the

is

have noted the conthe

of

crowd and

its

results.

Now,

just

as

manager

is

he

who

allows for that con-

tagious

influence,

when he can
critic

whose business
sit

it

is

kind

on

in the

fire,

soul.

to react against the

tight," as the phrase goes,

judgment, the captaincy of

He

of

literary

which sway the mundane

his

which

fashion

amateur, and,

on the other hand, against

bias

his

has to be on his guard, too,

against those caprices

sional

so

theatre

and to preserve the independence of

personal

of

watching

always

man

theatre-

the crowd

the one

is

crowd, to "

set

able

indeed

is

incendiary,

professional

the

the

that

influences

the

profes-

actual

producer of drama, be he playwright or

player.

But,

as

say,

the

main

dif-

AND PUBLIC

CRITIC
pubHc

the

the

between

ference

consequence

the

is

the pecuhar position of the

of

being himself an

to

is

as

critic

artist.

This disagreement between

public

and

proper

critic

large

at

59

nobody seems

subject which

be in danger

ever an instance of

When-

forgetting.

of

occurs the

it

and

critics

critics'

good-natured friends they have many at

sedulously improve the
such moments

" Well,

occasion.

wrong

in

'

slating

you

So-and-so's piece

'

advertisements already announce

Or,

dredth night."

were

you

see

"What

its

the

hun-

on earth did

you mean by praising that rubbish at the

Why, it didn't run a week!"
Frivolity?

The

genial implication

that

the

either

been an

has

critic

in

ass

case
for

is

his

But any one who has ever thought

the matter over knows that talk of this
pains.

kind
for

is

an

nothing to the
historic

ment between

instance,

critics

eighteenth century.

Take,

purpose.

the

and pubHc

disagreein

While English

midcritics

of the Chesterfield type were learning to

praise

French "

regularity," a

French

critic


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

60
like

Diderot could

the

" irregular,

wax

over

enthusiastic

rugged, and wild

air

of

the English genius."

But there was no

mutual

concession of

this

part of

the

two

publics.

critical

and

the

public

tinction

"

on the

Between the
Mrs.

attitude

her preface to

Loves Con-

had already made a

practical dis-

Centlivre
trivance)

kind

(in

The

most about decorums,

and cry up Aristotle's rules, as the most
critics cavil

essential

part of the

are in the right of

play.

it

own they

yet I dare venture

never persuade the town to be of

they'll

their opinion."

The
who is

truth

plain

inerely

the playgoer

that

is

seeking

who

his

the

playgoer

pleasure

has to appraise and to

some-

justify his pleasure of necessity take

what
is

different

views.

there

other

but

coupled

For the one there

Am

the sole question,

the

and

is

with

that

another

For

question

too,

pleased

question

question which, by the way, was one of

Matthew Arnold's many borrowings from

Sainte-Beuve

Am

right to be pleased

CRITICAL DIFFICULTIES
Stendhal's

tu

ris,"

" Interroge-toi

precept,

play as

and that
be

to

the

is

less

it

why

The wound

bad play than

kept

is

"

copy

play that presents

no

"

that

for

is

the

the

critic,

"purchase."

And, to go a

say,

A
type

of

variation

whom

to

to

critic.

be interesting enough in

vexes

open.

remembered that good

unworkable material

may

they are bored,

which rightly please the public,

make bad

often

The

they can.

charitable to a

has to be

plays, plays

forget

a bore, so that they are sure

public.

Then

and

bored,"

quickly as

have to say

critics

it is

Or the pubhc

critic.

"we were

say,

the

quand

nothing to the pubHc, but

is

everything to the

may

61

itself,

but

offers

it

no

further

little

into technical particulars, there are certain

classes

and

of play

farces

for

which

example, melodramas

always come out worse

The

on paper than on the boards.

is

generally tempted to describe

by the

and

ironic

method

which

melodrama

is

a perfidy

to narrate the plot of a farce

the best, to decant champagne.

a kindred reason that the "

critic

It

drama of

is,

is

at
for

ideas

"

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

62
is

apt to be overpraised in print

is

good medium

do justice

the

to

but

In

ideas.

brief,

being a form of literature, can

criticism,

drama

for

which

elements

Uterary

drama there

in

other elements, and criticism

are

in

many

often at

is

fault with these, because of a purely technical difficulty, the difficulty of transposing

the

of one art into the

effiscts

Hamlet

idea of

fair

Francesca, of

or Paolo

Le Demi- Monde

House, of his or

or

can give only an inadequate

of

the

pleasure

L' Enfant Pi'odigue.

or Charleys

And we

"

Aunt

critic, like

in Goldsmith's

it

or

La

is

Mid-

Locandiera

With Box mid

can do nothing.
It

is

the piece of furniture

poem, has

because he

JDoU's

account

have seen the reason why.

because the

pay

by

afforded

summer Nighfs Dream

Cox

and

IVie Admii^ablc Crichton.

It

or

of

Criticism can give the reader a

another.

very

effiscts

" a double debt to

at once

consumer and

producer, at once parasite and independent,

substantive
scribing

artist.

and

In the very act of de-

appraising

the

methods of

another art he has to follow the methods,

CRITICAL DEVICES

63

the very different methods, of his own.

criticism

is

a picture with

own

its

laws of

perspective and composition and " values,"

and the play which furnishes the subject

picture has

this

be "

humoured

"

squeezed there,
design.

The

of the play

more often than not to

a little, stretched here and
in

order to

doubt, the good

The

two

critic

his leading

the

not suit the salient points

he

critic is

though, no

who most

often

sets into perfect coincidence.

must have

his

"general idea,"

theme, which gives

unity, something

its

into

fit

salient points in the pattern

may

in the pattern of the criticism

gets the

for

hold

to

his criticism
it

together.

This general idea, however legitimately

may

have

been

criticised, will

will

derived

the play

very likely get exaggerated,

assume a much more important part

in the criticism

play itself

than

Or the

significant phrase or
as

from

it

a " refrain

"

it

actually did in the

critic

may

take some

catchword of the play

for his article,

or he

may

perform a fantasia on some leading theme

of the play (for example, the " nose
in

Cyrano de Bergei^ac),

"

theme

until he has ex-

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

64

hausted

all

its

permutations and

possible

These are devices permis-

combinations.

sible in criticism,

because criticism

an art intended to

ture,

in

pleasui'e,

to give

interest,

but their effect

itself;

warp the genuine

is litera-

may
own

tends to systematise what

criticism

not be systematic, to follow out

and

logic

Thus

proportions.

its

to

expand

own

its

to

impression of

first-hand

the play, to alter

is

its

formulas,

rather than to conform strictly to the out-

and proportions of the thing

line

That

because, in a sense,

is so,

criticised.

all art is

not

only a transformation but a deformation of

subject-matter.

its

It

is

the old difficulty

The

of the portrait painter.

" Is

it

like

"

the connoisseur, " Is

piece of painting?"

asks,

sitter
it

good

There are whole

ele-

ments of a play which are ignored by the

critic, for

the simple reason that thej" will

not work into his scheme.

heard of cases where the

One
name

has even
of

some

meritorious actor has been passed over in

silence,

because mention of

the hang of the

is

immoral.

critic's

it

would

sentence

spoil

but that

FIRST NIGHT CRITICISM

One must not be
the secrets of the

lured into betraying

craft.

Enough

show why the

said, perhaps, to

65
all

has been

critic

and

the public differ in their opinions of the

same

widened

difference

this

widened

opinions.

his

further

still

It

the

interval

of time which elapses between the

and

objection

often

is

raised

critic's

it.

The

against

" first

record

his

often

is

by what may seem

a purely mechanical accident

impression

is

by which the

in the very process

records

critic

why

and

thing,

of

it is bound to be
more or less of an improvisation.
Apart from the fact that
newspaper readers, in any case, insist upon

night

" criticism,

that

hasty, undigested,

having

it,

mind

The
is

critic's

full

it is

on the whole

most advantageous to

the criticism
play.

that

I believe

the

sensations are vivid, his

of his subject, he

has the

still

proportions and details of the play in his

eye.

to

Writing

remember

after

an interval, he

is

apt

his general impression of the

play rather than the play

itself,

and

his

impression has lost in truth by the fading

of minor detail, to the consequent exaggera-

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

66

of a few prominent features

tioii

may

which

a process

the most conscientious

lead

unconscious caricature.

critic to

Now I

showing you

trust I have not been

work without at
the same time suggesting to you his professional drawbacks, his besetting sins. For
a

ghmpse

of the critic at

one thing,

have said that he has often to

an appearance of system to subject-

give

matter which
so he

not really systematic.

is

And

apt to become what Joe Gargery

is

would caU too

"architectooralooral.''

Then

again, having to deal perpetually in formulas,

he

He

is

"

indulge

apt to

character
ting

danger of becoming their dupe.

in

is

in

Dickens

what another

in
calls

" poll-parrot-

to repeat mechanically cant phrases

"objective"

and "subjective," "classic"

and "romantic," "organism" and "environment,"

These

"development"
are

the

and

things which

Stephen, with his

"reaction."
Sir

Leslie

wonted manliness and

homeliness of sense, brands as "the mere

banalities

of criticism.

them," he

says, "

can never hear

without a suspicion that

a professor of ^Esthetics

is

trying to hood-

THEORIES "IN THE AIR"

me by

wink

The

67

a bit of technical platitude.

cant phrases which have been used so

often
their

by panegyrists, too lazy to define

terms, have become almost as meanas the

ingless

And

society."
letters

is

that

just

is

it

the

man

of

here showing the same weakness

man

as the

complimentary formula? of

For there are

of the world.

fashions in

the library just as there are

fashions

the salon; and the desire for

in

imitation for imitation's sake,

to

all

common

humanity.

And
the

is

then the

air,"

critic is

apt to theorise " in

because of the constant tendency

towards divorce between literature and

life.

Walter Bagehot makes some characteristic

remarks on this point

"

The

reason

so few good books are written,

know

people that can write

general an author

is

why

that few

anything.

In

has always lived in a

room, has read books, has cultivated science,

is

acquainted with the style and sentiments

of the best authors, but

of employing his

own

out of the

is

ears

and

eyes.

way

He

has nothing to hear and nothing to see.

His

life is

a vacuum.

He

sits

beside a

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

68

library-fire,

with nice white paper, a good

pen, a capital style, every

means of saying

everything, and nothing to say.

dull

it is

to stay

to

make

it

in

room

and then to have nothing to

the dramatic

How

your business to write,

by yourself

thing like that

write,

to

say."

Some-

very often the fate of

is

For there

critic.

many

are

plays which are absolutely null and void.

The
quite

comfortably by

them.

and

playgoer

general

The

the matter

settles

falling

asleep

over

has to say something,

critic

in reality there

is

nothing to be

said.

So much by way of confession of critical

There remain two charges constantly
sins.
brought against
mitted to the

critics

full,

may

which

be ad-

but which, instead of

being to their discredit, are really the best

evidence of their good faith and their good

work.

These two charges are

first,

lack

disagree with one

of unanimitythe
another and, second, lack of consistency
critics

the

critic

Critics,

it

will often disagree

is

said,

with himself.

not being unanimous,

cannot be representative of public opinion.

As though

public opinion about a play was

CRITICISM MULTANIMOUS
ever unanimous
a

We must not be fooled by

" Public

noun of multitude.

it

" is

does not denote one thing.

spoke in

my

69

know

lecture of the

first

one word

crowd

as

a whole, and sketched the general aspects

But the

of the collective mind.

of

course,

is

extraordinarily

its

parts.

It

comprises

public,

disparate in

the people

applaud a play, the people

who

hiss

who

it,

the

who slumber through it, the people

who don't know what to think about it, the
people who like it because dear Angelina
does, the people who dislike it because they
people

had to forgo
order to see

after-dinner

their

it,

coffee in

and the people who would

away from it if they were not paid

So that when criticism is unanimous,
go.

stay
to

then, and only then, shall

confidently that

it

we be

not

is

able to say

representative.

But fortunately that time that monotonous

will never be.
time
For in that time

there will

have to be absolute rules for

judging works of
in

the same

way

art,
;

applied

all

the same principles,

intellectual education,

by everybody

critics

taste,

will

possess

temperament,

moral standard, and

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

70

experience of

man

a being as

present
it

no

"

as

two

Meanwhile, " with such

life.

in

such a world as the

Bishop Butler used to phrase

who

critics

are thinking

and

feeling for themselves can be in complete

We

agreement.

might

as well

that their faces are not alike

no

doubt,

unanimity

often

complain

There

is,

a certain appearance of

among

who

critics

are

not

thinking for themselves but are trying to

what they suppose they ought to

think or what they guess other people to

think

be thinking, so as to shout, on Mr. Pickwick's principle, with

the

largest crowd.

who have mistaken

So that when Mr. Sydney
their vocation.
"
Grundy asks, When critics fall out, who
shall decide ?
and when Sir Henry Irving
But these

are

critics

*'

refers

which

to
is

" the

rapture

of

disagreement

served up by the dramatic critics,"

they ought in reality to have been gratified

by the lack of unanimity which they deplore.

It

is

evidence that the plays of the

one and the acting of the other are stimulating

enough to

force

thinking for themselves.

the

critics

into

OTHER VARIATIONS

We
its

have seen that while criticism as to

substance

art.

apparatus

another

opinion, as to

is

No two

because no

no

71

has the same perceptive

eye,
man.

ear,

Is

two people

it is

can be the same,

opinions

man

form

its

it

will

nerves,

not

brain

as

notorious that

agree in describing

the simplest fact, the pace of an omnibus,

the

number of

cats in the

back garden

But while criticism is bound to vary, as

mere record of fact, its variation is enormously increased because it is an art. Did
you ever see two identical pictures of the
same subject by different hands ? Did you
ever hear two pianists play the same sonata
in the same way ?
Of course not, and yet
there are people

who seem

ferent souls to have the

among

the

to expect dif-

same adventures

And

masterpieces.

were the same, there would

if

still

they

remain

the variations of ability to describe them.

The

critic's real difficulty is

does describe

that he never

them adequately.

To

adjust

language with exactness to one's thoughts

and

impressions

critics, like

is

an

impossible

feat

other writers, spend their lives


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

72

in practising

it,

bring the feat

As
that

and, like other writers, never

off.

to the critic's

want of

self-consistency,

him

apt in this country to bring

is

into sad trouble.

In 1902 a provincial jury

mulcted a newspaper in the sum of 100

and

costs for a certain theatrical " notice,"

and two of the jurors wrote to the newspapers to say that the main ground of their
verdict

was the consideration that the notice

was inconsistent with a former notice of

the same play in the same quarter.

If

these gentlemen had been philosophers

instead of

jurymen

gratulated this

they would

inconsistent

plain proof that he

recording

within him.

on the

barometer

a dead thing, but a

being with the

life

critic

was not a mechanical

instrument

pair of scales

have con-

principle

of

or

human

groAvth and

They would have

recog-

nised, with a pure natural joy, that the soul

never has the same adventures twice over.

Nothing

to

literary

example

humble
could be more

take perhaps a

'nothing

less

interesting than to note the mental develop-

ment of the well-known Danish

critic,

Dr.

NO FINALITY
George Brandes,

pmi

Ibsen

He
at

73

in studying the

passu with

production.

their

says himself, after noting

different

critic

Ibsen

work was not

But neither was his

"

He

the same.

quite

how

of his

stages

same Ibsen

the

works of

had

the

in

meantime gone through a great deal, and

had consequently acquired a larger outlook
upon life, and a more flexible emotional
nature.

He

had dropped

all

the doctrines

that were due to education and tradition.

He

understood the poet better now."

great historical instance of development in

the reverse direction

that of Voltaire in

is

Voltaire began by

regard to Shakespeare.
blessing

Shakespeare

(with

reservations),

and ended by (quite unreservedly) cursing

him.

That was by no means because he

understood the poet better

extraneous
reasons

to

his

but for reasons

critical

development,

connected with his objections to

the course

which

he

found

drama was taking without

the moral of that
critic

little

the French

his leave.

affair

is

that the

should remain content to be an

and not

set

up

And

for a literary dictator.

artist,


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

74

And

note this about the changes in the

mental experience

critic's

produce

in the individual

they only

been happening in the race

they are the

life-history, in miniature, of the

For example,

of criticism.

re-

what has always

it

whole body
has been a

persistent cry of criticism throughout the

ages that the present age

decline of drama.

witnessing the

is

M. Sarcey gave a long

^

of theatrical pamphlets

list

collector's sale,

few

titles

from which

and dates

bought at a

I select

only a

1768. Causes de la decadence du theatre.

1771.

Du

theatre et des causes de sa decadence.

1807. Les causes de la decadence du theatre.

1828. Considerations sur

les

causes de la decad-

ence du theatre,

1841. Recherches sur

du
1842.

1849.

De
De

causes de la decadence

quelles causes attribuer la decadence de

tragedie en France

la

1860.

les

theatre.

la

decadence de Tart dramatique.

la

decadence des theatres.

1866. Rapport an Senat sur la decadence de Tart

dramatique.
1871.

De

la

1876. Cri

decadence des theatres,

d'alarme

sur

situation

la

de

Tart

dramatique.
1880,
^

Du

Quara7ite

theatre a sauver.

Ans

de Theatre,

v.

i.

p.

185 (Paris, 1902),


NEW

CRITICAL DEMANDS

Our English
have

numerous,

monotonous.

been

The

culled, almost at

Lowe's

wailings,

critical

not

75

if

less

whit

less

following specimens are

random, from Mr. R.

" Bibliographical

Theatrical Literature "

W.

Account of English
^

1819.

1826.

A nostrum for theatrical insipidity.

A New Drama or we faint
Decline

Letter on the decay and degradation of

English theatrical literature.

1853.

the
1885.

The

Drama

truth about the stage;

rotten in the,

Of

of

"something

etc.'"

course the perpetual cry of the drama

in decline

is

but the other side of a per-

petual change in the theatrical consumer's

taste, and, in fact,

among

the

new

oldest

things

Throughout the ages there

tist

of

them

moment
a

demands

critical

in
is

the

are

world.

not a drama-

but has recognised, at the

all

of writing, a

demand which was

new
to

critical

demand,

be humoured, or

derided, or temporised with, or even attri-

buted to
as

his

own

prescience and invention,

the case might be.

Is

there not the

leading instance of Shakespeare, speaking

1

London, 1888.


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

76

through the Chorus

was

his appeal to the

recognition of the

by Sidney

in his

What

audience for the freer

imagination but a tacit

of their

exercise

Heni^y V.

in

new demand

"Apologie

expressed

Poetry"

for

Sidney was one of our earhest dramatic

critics

the

demand

tude of the scene

Webster,
age

that

demand

And

in his preface to

openly deride the

his

for a closer verisimili-

new

John

did not

The White Devil,

demand

critical

novelty which

is

of

a critical

"I have noted,"

" most of the people that come to
of every age

says he,

the playhouse resemble those ignorant asses

who,

visiting stationers' shops, their use

not to inquire for good books, but

So

books."

new

Corneille, in his preface to

Cid, temporised with the

is

Le

new critical demand

of his time for historical fidelity, by faking

up documentary evidence
story

while

Racine,

Berenice, defended
critical

demand

for

liis

in

in favour of his

his

preface

evasion of the

to

new

an ingeniously invented

by

citing the simple fables of

Greek

tragedy.

In our later times Victor

Hugo

discusses

the

plot,

new

critical

demand

of the

ART AND PLEASURE

77

romantic movement, the demand for the

beautiful-ugly and
in

his

new

Le

Fils

demand
the drama

critical

of pressing

Dumas

CromtveU ;

preface to

in his preface to

the sublime-grotesque,

Natwel,

in

fils^

defers to"

vaunting

aim

his

into the service of

great social reforms and the great hopes of

humanity

Shaw, who

and to-day there

at once

is

Mr. Bernard

is

and a producer

a critic

of drama, professedly writing plays to meet

a

new

demand

critical

outlook upon

life shall

for a

drama whose

be that of a " genu-

inely scientific natural history."

Now

what

the

is

explanation

perpetual variation of the critical

The explanation is

pleasure.

And

all

an

art,

is

which

is

the

to give
it

must

in the first instance

whatever higher forms

art, shares

this pleasure of art,

be borne in mind,

long run

demand ?

to be found in the simple

fact that the drama, being

primary aim of

of this

it

may

take in the

pleasure of the senses.

It

is

not the intellectual pleasure of solving a

proposition of Euclid, nor

is

it

the moral

pleasure of letting a good deed shine in a

naughty world.

picture,

whatever

else

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

78
it

must

does,

whatever

else

And

ear.

first

please the eye

does,

it

must

first

please the

pleasure of the senses

the important point

music,

this

is

only to be had at

is

the price of perpetual change

for

it

is

an

elementary physiological law that the mere

same stimulus

repetition of the

will not be

followed by the same pleasurable reaction.

Contrast

art,

in

this

respect,

with pure

Pure

science or With fundamental morals.

science does not change, and cannot, so long

man

as

not

we know him. Have

two and two always made four, two
remains as

sides of a triangle always

the

one

attracted

square

And,
as

two

third,

of

the

bodies

it,

man

the

bour.

first
:

as

between

the

them

remains in society
principles of con-

Thou shalt

not

kill,

bear false witness against thy neigh-

No

so with art.

becomes sharpened by

more exacting.
same

always

space

inversely

distance

duct cannot change

steal,

in

another

so long as

we know

been greater than

thrill

intensify

we

Our

pleasure-sense

more

use,

subtle,

In order to procure the

are driven to vary

the exciting cause

or,

and to
as

Mr.

THE LAW OF CHANGE

79

pithily expressed

Arthur Balfour has

it

in

one of those amiable digressions with which

he has enlivened
lief"

he

Foundations of Be-

actually speaking of music, but

is

may

statement

the

his "

be

generalised

" A

steady level of aesthetic sensation can only

by

maintained

be

increasing

So true

aesthetic stimulant."

doses

of

this of the

is

sum

theatre that, to provide the same

of

pleasure for the spectator, dramatic interest

has to go on multiplying

its

intensity, in

the course of time, by something like a

geometrical progression.

Menander

plays of

and M.

make one

of his own,

Brunetiere computes that there are

two of Terence's
to

to

Terence took two

make

in

a play of

one of Moliere's, while

Dumas

or Augier

you

have to add one of Moliere's to one of

Diderot's or Sedaine's.

But,

it

may

be objected,

if art is

always

transforming

itself

mand

change of pleasure-stimulus,

for

in response to this de-

what about those works of

call

classics

permanent

very greatest

art

which we

Are they not stable and

we not call the

Indeed, do
classics

immortal

And

the


THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

80
reply
lies

is,

that in the existence of the classics

For the

the very proof of the point.

virtue of a classic, the quality which gives

it

that rank,

is

the property of self-renewal,

the property of responding in different ages

to different

demands

Every

for pleasure.

generation refashions the classics for

extracting an entirely

them, so that

new

itself,

pleasure out of

to take only one example

you have Aristophanes praising Homer

moralist, as a teacher of

good

life,

as a

and the

Homer

seventeenth century admiring

for

his " correctness," the " nice conduct of his

fable," while the twentieth century enjoys

Homer

for

fairy tale

The

primitive

his

romance, and his

is,

variations.

must

But

to

not our present

long

list

be,

compile

affair.

At

of projected works

never begun

which

and

of

than any other

less

and

his

barbaric yaup."

history of all criticism then

dramatic criticism no
species

simplicity,

'*

of

history

history

is

the head of a

projected

Johnson gave to

but
his

Langton and I^angton presented to

Cxcorge III. (who must have been highly

friend

edified),

stands a

"

History of

Criticism,

ARISTOTLE'S MODERNITY
as

of authors, from

to judging

relates

it

81

An

Aristotle to the present age.

account

of the rise and improvements of that art

of

the different opinions of authors, ancient and

modern."

As

insufficient

Johnson's whole

that adventure,

for

hope to stand excused

for not

proved

life

one

may

attempting

a history of dramatic criticism in a brief

Enough

course of lectures.
possible within our
this Aristotle,

if it

be found

narrow limits to glance

with

whom

at

Johnson would,

duty bound, have begun, and to trace

as in

the vicissitudes through the ages of one or

two

JVIany of those

of his leading ideas.

ideas have kept steadily travelling in the

world up to this

we

moment

though

think

shall find that, as Voltaire said of

some-

thing

else,

they have become

For

changees en route.

diablement

cannot help sus-

pecting a certain spice of exaggeration in

much

current talk about the "modernity"

of Aristotle.

You

have, for example, Mr.

Herbert Paul, an accomplished scholar and

a

most sagacious

that "Aristotle

is

modern," and that

critic,

roundly declaring

of

Greeks the most

all

his Poetics are " intensely

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

82

But what

modern."

that an old author

is

meant by saying
modern " ? Surely,

is

"

that the " whirligig of time

full circle,

"

has turned

that the author's opportunity has

come up again, through some quality of

his mind or temper which makes him pecuThus a
liarly at home in our own day.
good deal of Montaigne may justly be called
" modern " in this age of introspection and
Bashkirtseffism.
In the same way some of
the

little

intimate passages

seem strangely " modern "

" naturalistic " literature.

Euripide.s

in

age of

in this

But that

is

not

the sense in which you can apply the word

"

modern "

to Aristotle

we

think

shall

by-and-by encounter another Greek

who,

critic

was very much more

Those things in Aristotle which

in that sense,

" modern."
are valid

and fresh to-day are not more valid

than they were in the day of Elizabeth, or

than they were in the day of Louis
It

is,

XIV.

for such things, a case of the eternal

verities,

not the

case

Coverley's coat, which

of

Sir

had been

out of the fashion a dozen times.

true to-day, but he

is

Roger de
in

and

Euclid

is

not accurately to

ARISTOTLE'S SEMPITERNITY

83

And

be described as " intensely modern."

mention of Euclid

mistake

recalls the other

which has been persistently made

in dealing

with Aristotle: the reverencing of

leading

ideas

as

they were even

though

something more than eternal

verities,

his "

was

Hamburg Dramaturgy

Lessing said

" I do not hesitate to confess

these enlightened times

out of countenance for

be

Poetics to

And

Lessing's

time,

not

am

it)

(even

Bible against Aristotle

before

objected

some one who had ventured to

"

Ele-

Euclid's

had

Dacier

in

to be laughed

very long

so

if

that I hold the

as

infallible

ments."

In

as true as Euclid.
"

as

Thus

though they were holy sacraments.

to Lessing he

his

all

As

set
if

to

up the

Divinity

and the Holy Scriptures could ever be contrary to the sentiments of Nature

Aristotle founds his

judgment

"
!

on which
This was

only giving another form to Roger Bacon's

observation that "Aristotle hath the same
authority in philosophy as the Apostle Paul

hath in divinity."
not so very

much

when Racine

in

So

that, after

all, it

was

of a farcical exaggeration

Les Plaidenrs made an

THE DRAMATIC CRITIC

84

advocate attempt to browbeat the bench

with the authority of Aristotle in a case of

Why,

fowl-steahng.

one of the liveHest

in

Hterary controversies of 1902, Mr. Churton

CoUins, another scholarly

critic,

singled out

some criterion of Aristotle's, and

must apply it "to all drama of

Now

quality."

this

Aristotle himself.

we

said

classical

flying in the face of

is

For

Aristotle, through-

out the Poetics^ was professedly examining

a particular species of tragedy at a certain

stage of

his preface to

in

his

Mattliew Arnold, in

growth.

its

own

Merope, brings out

this point

easy way.

delightful,

"The

laws of Greek tragic art," says Arnold, " are

not exclusive
art

other

they are for Greek dramatic

but

itself,

they

do

modes of dramatic

pronounce

not

art unlawful.

'Tragedy,' says Aristotle, in a remarkable

passage,

'

after

got the nature which suited

stopped.

Whether

tragedy are

many

going through

or

it,

no

yet exhausted,'

and then

the

now

kinds

it

of

he presently

adds, 'tragedy being considered

itself,

changes,

either

in

or in respect to the stage, I shall not

inquire.'

Travelling in a certain path.

THE
the

spirit

of

man

"POETICS'^
arrived at

85

Greek tragedy
it

may

man

has,

travelling in other paths,

arrive at

other kinds of tragedy."

Well, the

spirit

of

in

fact,

arrived at other kinds of tragedy, so that

we must now
torical

resign ourselves to the his-

view of Aristotle's Poetics.

It will

be our business, then, to consider some of

his leading ideas as relative to the condi-

tions of his time,

downs of

and to trace the ups-and-

their course

through the shifting

conditions of later times.

we ought

to get at any

By

this

rate a

means

bird's-eye

view of what dramatic criticism has been

in the past,

and we

may

thus hope to be in

a better position to ask

stands at the present day.

how

precisely

it

Ill

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

Ill

First, then,

mood

whole

the

view,

general

Aristotle's

point of

which

in

he

approached art was, in an important

spect,

mighty

intellect

let his intellect

man

For

quite unlike ours.

though

Aristotle,

his was, could

He

play in vacuo.

re-

not

was a

of his time, and his time was not, like

ours, a time wherein a clear distinction

seen between nature and

practical

and the

aesthetic

mood and

hauer to

tell

aesthetic.

between the

To-day the

the practical

We

very different.

art,

is

mood

are

have had a Schopen-

us that art marks off for us

the world as idea from the world as will

it

is

life

aesthetic

purged of the will -to -live.

mood

is

The

a disinterested mood, and

the feelings excited by a work of art

so far as art

is

directly concerned

in themselves, enjoyed for their

are ends
own

sake,

without the sequel of action, their natural

89


OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

90

sequel in real

In one of the Goncourt

life.

Mcmette Sulomon

novels

there

the in-

is

room

cident of a model, posing before a

of art-students for what Trilby called

full

who was suddenly

" the altogether,"

covered

with confusion by the sight of a stranger

The students
the model, who knew that

peeping in at the window.

were nothing to

they were in the

ested

"

mood, just

copying a statue
ever,

would be

of real

who

aesthetic,

life.

treat

as

the " disinter-

though they were

Tom, howvery different mood

the Peeping

in the

Even to-day
art just

as

there are people

they treat

reality,

because they are incapable of the aesthetic

Thomas Love Peacock in

mood.
Castle

"

alludes to

case of a

" Crotchet

what was then the recent

cheesemonger who had broken

the plaster-cast of a ^^enus over the head of

its

itinerant vendor.

What was

more, the

There

Justice of the Peace sided with him.

are

some remote

novels, are

still

circles

where novels,

accounted wicked because

they speak of things untrue, that

have not actually happened.

something

all

like this,

is,

Now

which

this,

was the common

or

atti-

THE "MORALISTIC" GREEK

tude of Greek
art really

was second nature

because a copied, a

He

To

criticism.

applied

the Greek

an

inferior,

second-hand

nature.

the same

differently to art

and

moral
real

criteria

object.

from

tinge, differed strangely

is

so

actor

many

manager, how

moralistic

Solon

ours.

Plato

were

" stories

the

nursery

was

the

stories,
"

sense,

in

that the

fibs.

is,

of

sense,

times

There

thought

modern reader

Why,

constantly feeling depayse.

tell

people.

at

still

is

that

same confusion
so

could

so

what

in

he

many
our own

before

lies

For

Aristotle,

criticism,

have asked Thespis, that very

said to

early

in-

the image

life,

Hence Greek
being always coloured by this
and the

91

in
is

he asks

must the hero of a tragedy be

neither very good nor very bad ?
Why
must his fate be determined by error and
Why ought the
not by wickedness ?

himself,

culminating fatality of a tragedy to be the

work of ignorance, and

its

true nature only

to

be discovered afterwards

we

to

make

between

What

are

of such a distinction as this

tragedy

and

comedy

that

the

92

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

latter

aims at representing worse people,

and the former better people, than those

of present reality

It

attitude, the absence

aesthetic
ries.

the moralistic

is

of the disinterested

mood, which explains these myste-

Aristotle

would have ruled out not

only lago and Richard III.

but Cordelia

and Desdemona.
This was what came of identifying art

with practical

got so far from

certain

an

Nowadays we have

life.

this point of

view

moods, to consider practical

cesthetic

spectacle,

kind of art than art

in

life

as

more intense
Thus Burke

as

as,

itself.

says a playhouse where the best tragedy

was being acted would

emptied

at once be

by the news that a state-execution was

about to take place

And Renan
spectacle

talks of all
" This

which the Deity

carry

out

Choregus

in the adjoining square.

the

life

universe
offers

as

an

is

aesthetic

spectacle

Himself;

intentions

in contributing to

of

let

the

make

us

great

the spec-

tacle as brilliant, as varied as possible."

These ideas of Aristotle,

us moderns very strange.

say,

seem to

And they seemed

A CORNELIAN GLOSS
strange, but not so strange,

93

when tragedy

was "hatched again," and "hatched different," as Mrs. Poyser would put it, in France.

They seemed

who

strange to Corneille,

dis-

At

cussed the Poetics with great acumen.

time

that

and

been

have

Aristotle

that place

in

impious to assert

was wrong

would

it

that

flatly

that people could

all

venture to contend was that his meaning-

had been wrongly interpreted.

Did

not

say that every generation re-fashions the

And

classics for itself?

you have Cor-

so

troubled by the Aristotelian dictuin

neille,

that the morals of the tragic hero

must

be good, unable to hide the fact that

many

of his

own

tragic heroes

fringed this law

new

By

and heroines

you have Corneille giving

interpretation to the

word

" good."

" good morals," he says, Aristotle

have meant

in-

" the brilliant

and

must

lofty char-

acter of a virtuous or vicious nature, accord-

ing as that nature

to the personage."

is

proper and suitable

In other words, " good

meant any appropriate

as it

was marked by

will see that this

character, so

tragic dignity.

was to empty

"

long

You

Aristotle's

"

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

94

law of

all its

In

moral content.

manner

like

Corneille sought to turn Aristotle's position

must not be entirely

good, that people must not be made to
suffer on the stage through no fault of
that the tragic hero

own.

their

But

here

something

is

to

show the persistency of Aristotelian ideas

nearly a century after Corneille you have
Lessing protesting against his attempt to

warp the meaning of

and

Aristotle,

reassert-

ing that the spectacle of an entirely good

character brought to
called

totle

you want a
you have

it

it
still

woe was what

iiiapov,

shocking.

Aris-

And

if

later instance of this view,

in the case of the old Sheriff*

of Dumbarton known to Louis Stevenson,

who could not bear even to read Othello.
"

That noble gentleman

lady

too painful for

me

that

noble

more vigorous

offshoot from this ethi-

cal criticism of the

Greeks was the notion

that

drama ought

cating a moral.

to

aim

at directly incul-

This notion permeated

all

eighteenth-century commentary and a good

deal of eighteenth-century practice.

Thus

Johnson praised Timon of Athens because

:;

JOHNSON AND DIDEROT

95

"the catastrophe

affords a very

warning

ostentatious

Hberahty

dispraise of

As You Like

against

and he hinted some

powerful
"

It because " by hastening to the end of the

work, Shakespeare suppressed the dialogue

between the usurper and the hermit, and

an opportunity of exhibiting a moral

lost

lesson, in

which he might have found matter

worthy of

his highest powers."'

Lear

preferred Tate's

happy ending

"the

final

also

Shakespeare's

to

may remember, gave

Tate, you
story a

Johnson

because

Cordelia's
it

showed

triumph of persecuted

virtue."

But the great champion of the didactic, or

hortatory, drama was Diderot, who wrote
"It

is

that a

always virtue and virtuous people

man ought

all

when he

Oh, what good would men gain

wi-ites.
if

to have in view

the arts of imitation possessed one

common

object,

and were one day to unite

with the laws in making us love virtue and

hate vice

"
!

And

so in his

Ph^e de Famille

Diderot introduces a father

his

daughter thus

ter, is

who

" Marriage,

addresses

my

daugh-

a vocation imposed by heaven.

If marriage exposes

us to

cruel pain,

it

"

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

96

also the source of the sweetest pleasures.

is
.

sacred bond,

whole soul

is

if I

think of thee,

warmed and

from

"

But
Mr. John

elevated."

these virtuous ejaculations," says

Morley

my

whose volume on Diderot

have borrowed

whose comment

and upon

this quotation,

would be presumptuous
" these
in me to attempt any improvement
virtuous ejaculations do not warm and
elevate us.
In such a case words count
for nothing.

It

it

is

beautiful character,

actual presentation of

and not talk about

that touches the spectator.

It

it,

the asso-

is

ciation of interesting action with character

that

moves and

may be
like many
as

inspires such better

within our compass.

moods

Diderot,

other people before and since,

sought to make the stage the great moral

teacher.

That

it

may become

so

is

possible.

Mr. Morley, " by

It will not be," concludes

imitating the methods of that colossal type

of

histrionic

failure,

the

church-pulpit

Allusion to the church pulpit reminds one

that the Rev.

View

Jeremy

Collier, in his "

Short

of the Immorality and Profaneness of

the English Stage," laid

it

down

that " the

JEREMY COLLIER AND OTHERS

business of plays

and discountenance

recommend

to

is

vice."

97

virtue

This moralistic

position need not surprise us in a clergy-

But what

man.

hke

is

Vanbrugh, in

should have

that a

is

reply to

his

It

"

all

"What

deny your

that he could find to say w^as

have done

as

never occurred to

to say, with FalstafF, " I

major

man

Collier,

accepted this position

matter of course.

him

surprising

in general a dis-

is

couragement to vice and

that I intended

it,

and

folly

hope

am

sure

have per-

So you see that Lamb's defence

of the Restoration drama on the ground
that it was unreal, a sort of fairy tale, someformed

it."

thing to which the ethical criteria of actual

life

were

irrelevant, could never

have oc-

curred to the Restoration dramatists themselves.

With Lamb you have

reached

the

very

opposite

pole

moralistic criticism of Aristotle.

at

least

to

the

You

have

reached un-moralistic criticism.

For a

still

more

striking piece of evidence

modern thought cannot get away from

Aristotle that criticism may be with him
or may be against him but cannot ignore
G

that


OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

98

him

take

the Aristotehan dictum about

the relative importance of character and

There was a great to-do over

plot.

the

summer

of 1902.

The

this in

trouble began

with a statement of a Quai'terly reviewer

"

The

is

that

about the essential thing in drama.

essential thing in drama," said he, "

the drama should be based on character,

made by the
characters."
This remark "drew" several
scholastic critics, who sought to floor the
should be

that the actions

reviewer with the Poetics, as Johnson

is

have knocked down Osborne the

said to

with

bookseller

Here

folio.

is

the

Aristotelian text:

"Tragedy

an imitation, not of men,

is

but of an action and of

action, therefore,

is

life.

Dramatic

not with a view to the

representation of character

character comes

Hence the

in as subsidiary to the action.

incidents

and the plot are the end of a

tragedy

and the end

of

all.

Again, without action there cannot

be

tragedy

character.
first

principle,

there

The

and,

as

is

the chief thing

may
plot,
it

be

without

then,

were,

is

the

the soul

PLOT AND CHARACTER

of a tragedy

99

character holds the second

place."

Now

the scholastic critics I have alluded

to one and

all

argued as though

this passage

meant that character-development was

artistically important, less interesting,

plot-weaving

they were
to

and

wrong.

all

you a very

humbly

there, I
I

less

than

think,

venture to submit

different interpretation of this

passage, a sense in which Aristotle's words

are absolutely valid for

time.

It

is

all

drama

in all

that Aristotle here was not

attempting an

appreciation at

artistic

all,

but making a scientific classification. He

was marking off the special province of
drama in the general region of art. The
differentia of drama, what makes it itself

and not something

If

it

else,

he shows,

is

action.

were not action but character, then the

" Caracteres

"

of

La Bruyere would

be

drama, and the description of the Club in

the opening numbers of the Sjpectator would

be drama, and Elia's sketch of George Dyer

would be drama.
forces,

these

But

characters are isolated

forces in vacuo.

forces

must come

To make drama
into

collision


OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

100

mathematically speaking, drama

partment

not of

of kinetics,

other words, Aristotle

M.

is

And

de-

In

only anticipating

Brunetiere's consideration of

the struggle of a will

is

statics.

against

drama

as

obstacles.

you
cannot have drama without action, though
you may without character. Melodrama
the proof, says Aristotle,

that

mechanical

is,

without

action

not

are

contend
ter

presents

And

there

dullards

who

would

the

opposite

case,

charac-

that

for

are

action

that

wanting

of Ibsen.

who

tragedy

character.

without action,

plays

is

illustrated

is

These
ever

are

talking

by some

the

people

as

though

must be something external and

strepitous

they are not

the

satisfied unless

hero smashes the furniture or the heroine

pushes her

husband down a

But

well.

these people were answered long ago, once

and

for

critic

all,

by Dryden, a very great dramatic

in some

respects, I almost think, the

greatest since Aristotle

and

am

not

for-

getting Lessing, for while Dryden's erudition equalled Lessing's, his criticism
robust,

more mundane,

less

is

academic.

more
.

INTERNAL ACTION
I wish I could

101

have dwelt upon Dryden,

not merely upon that wonderful thing of

which

have already spoken, the Essay

of Dramatic
little

dialectic,

its

its

tions,

exquisite
its spirited

noble liberality of taste, but

upon those

also

with

Poesy,

" impressionist " vignettes,

defences, dedica-

critical

parallels, accompanying
and now so much more valuable

discourses,

his plays,

to us than, with scarce an exception, the

plays themselves.

my

But

prescribed limits

I could not,
it

came

within

to a choice

between Aristotle and Dryden, and about

that choice there could be no hesitation.

Well, Dryden effectually answered

the people who talk as though action must
.

be something external.

"

Every

alteration,"

says one of the interlocutors in his great

Essay

"every

design, every

of

it, is

new-sprung passion, and turn

a part of the action, and

noblest, except

action

alteration or crossing of a

till

we

much

the

conceive nothing to be

the players

come

to blows."

This

spiritual plot, this internal will-conflict, these

soul-adventures, were

AristoteUan " action."

all

comprised in the

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

102

more

If

may

it

light

wanted on

is

again be found in

this subject,

Dryden.

In

some marginal notes

scribbled upon the

blank leaves of a copy of Rymer's " Re-

marks on the Tragedies of the Last Age "

which came into the possession of Gar-

who gave

rick,

" Life of

tions

who

to Johnson,

it

in his

Dryden " published the annotaDryden wrote: "Aristotle places

the fable

first

not quoad dignitatem, sed

quoad fundamentum"

What

that but

is

a pithy confirmation of the view just ad-

vanced that Aristotle,

place to plot,

in giving

the

was not attempting an

first

artistic

appreciation but a scientific classification

had been content with

If Aristotle

scientific classification all

his

would have been

Unfortunately he was not content

well.

he subsequently founded on

it

a piece, a

very queer piece, of technical instruction.

Plot,

it

seemed, had to come

of composition.

"As

for

says,

"whether the poet

made

or constructs

first

sketch

its

in the episodes

it

first in

order

the story," he
takes

for himself,

it

ready

he should

general outline, and then

and amplify

in detail."

fill

He


THESIS PLAYS

103

proceeds to illustrate by the story of the

Now,

Iphigenia.

to-day

think

it

would

be held that the play or the novel

Aristotle's

remarks here cover

originates

and grows up

mind
far

in

in all sorts of ways.

from being the only,

worst, way.

for

all fiction

the author's

Aristotle's
is

way,

probably the

Is not inventing a plot

then finding characters to

fit it

and

rather like

the soldier's recipe for making a cannon

you make a hole and then you pour

gun-metal round it ? Robert Louis Stevenfirst

son, however,
possibility.

seems to have admitted the

He

once told Mr. Balfour, his

biographer, that a novelist might devise a

and

plot

find

characters to

suit

he

or

might reverse the process or, finally, he

might take a certain atmosphere and get
;

both

persons

and

Yes, the novelist

actions

to

express

any one of these three courses, but

is

ence.

Whatto
is

take only one instance

the secret

impression
(or

his

not, I fancy, a matter of indiffer-

choice

what

it.

or dramatistmay select

left

by

of
so

the unsatisfactory

many

so-called problem) plays,

of our thesis
if

it

be not

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

104

the feeling that the playwright has

thought of

his thesis, his subject, his action

would

as Aristotle
his

first

characters to

say,
it

and has then fitted

He has aimed at

proving a case by manufacturing the evidence, and at the same time has spoiled

our illusion by an obviously

tern,

pat-

artificial

something too symmetrical for resem-

what Mr. Henry James calls

"the strange irregular rhythm of life."

blance

to

Why
plot,

as

compared with

point not, I

One may

character,

is

dare say, beyond conjecture.

hazard the speculation that, in

the actual
ventures,

overstated the case for

Aristotle

life

all

of his age,

ad-

incidents,

the raw material of plot,

fell

more frequently within the experience of

even the average

The

man

" revolutions "

than they

fall

now.

and " discoveries " of

Greek tragedy which are now relegated

the long-lost heir, the
to melodrama
" strawberry-mark," and all the rest of it
were not then by any means improbable.

On

the other hand,

human

character can-

not then have been the complex thing

has since become.

Further,

it

is

it

quite

A NEGLECTED POINT OF VIEW

possible

dency

detected

Aristotle

that

105

ten-

tragedy of his day which he

in the

held dangerous to

vitality

its

the

ten-

dency to the merely statuesque, to sheer

immobility.

If so,

over-statement of

his

the case for the other side was nothing

else

than a piece of that practical wisdom

which we

call

the drama of motionless

some men to heresy

it

his

IVI.

very negation of

all

let us

has beguiled

life

Maeterlinck made

ideal in his " Static

And now

Even to-day

opportunism.

Theatre

"

the

drama.
turn to an Aristotelian

point which has quite another kind of interest for us

an

interest arising not

any queer application of

from

but from

it,

curious, its almost total, neglect.

Aristotle

mentions two ways of judging tragedy

itself

and

in

ra Gearpa).

audience

as

relation

By

ra

well

whole "house,"

and behind the

dearpa

as

as

to the

we

the

in

general,

criticism

in

particular,

stage

in

{-Trpog

he means the
" boards

"

the

should say, before

curtain.

criticism

its

and

Now

dramatic

Shakespearian

has been

ously vitiated by the neglect

continu-

to consider

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

106

drama

-Trpog

ra Oearpa, in relation, that

the stage

conditions of

the practical

to

and the audience.

Corneille

is,

complained

of the misrepresentations of Aristotle by

who were

scholars

house

and

been equally

ignorant of the play-

to an adequate inter-

fatal

pretation of dramatic

conspicuous

critic

full recognition

in the past has given

to

important side of

this

Italian Renaissance,

only the

man

is

main points^ were that not

form, but

content of

the

something transacted

before

of the

Lodovico Castelvetro.

drama was conditioned by the

is

Only one

history.

the question, and that

Castelvetro's

ignorance has

particular

this

fact that

motley crowd upon

certain

circum-

are
is

now

with which

conclusions,

need not trouble

ourselves

out of date

it

in a public place

scribed space within a limited time.

drew

the

his

that he had the right

He
we

because they
interest for us

method

the root

On

the other

hand, to this day you will find

critics in-

of the matter was in him.

^ See A
History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance,
by Joel Elias Springarn (New York, 1890), p. 72.

BOOKMEN'S OVERSIGHTS
Shakespeare's

terpreting

and

plays,

them with modern

trasting

any consideration of the

107

con-

plays, without

and the

stage

audience which Shakespeare had to write

for, or

of the difference between the stage

and the audience

They take

they are now.

as

they were then and

as

exclusively

the bookman's view.

Thus you

will find a University Professor

deliberately telling us

by the text

Shakespeare

may

we must

we

it,

"

alone.

be sure," he says, "that

the wit to see

appreciate

if

We

we have

shall find in the text

the key to every problem which the story

may

suggest."

principle

much

to

apply this precious

why

solving the question

of the

what we

Just

Shakespearian text

should

now

call

so

ignores

law

the

of

dramatic economy, does not help on the

action,

but consists of

moral

reflections,

apologues, speeches " improving the occa-

Examples of
which
drama

sion."

old

analysis

is

moralising

called

on

this

in

SidvoioL

element of the
the

Aristotelian

are

drunkenness,

Hamlet's

while

he

is

waiting for the ghost, his lecture on act-

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

108

ing

the

to

Polonius'

players,

Ages

Laertes, and Jacques' Seven

Well,

to

speech.

defy our University Professor or

any one
this

advice

else

why

adequately to explain

element in Shakespeare and the other

Elizabethans

disappeared

has

drama, or to indicate when

it

in

modern

disappeared,

without consideration of a

certain

change

conditions of

in

the stage

the

mechanical

namely,

the gradual disappear-

ance of the

" apron."

the technical

name

public,

it

jutted

The

for

front of the curtain.

theatre

time^

is

the stage-area in

right

among

out
it

This "apron" slowly shrank

his

" apron "

In the Elizabethan

who surrounded

writes that

httle

on three

the

sides.

CoUey Gibber

was shortened by 10
till at last in our day
it

altogether disappeared, and the

feet in
it

has

drama has

withdrawn within the frame of the proscenium. While the apron existed you had
a platform- drama,

rhetorical

recitation

in

costume, instead of the actual representa^

When

Rich altered the structure of Drury Lane in order

Life of Thomas Betterton,

more room for his pit. See

by R. W. Lowe (London^ 1891), p.

to get

27.

THE "APRON"

109

modern picture-drama. The

was like the shagreen skin in

tion of our

" apron "

story

Balzac's

as

shrank,

it

The

end.

its

"apron"

disappearance

of

nearer

the

of

of course not the only cause

is

between

difference

of

life

much

the old rhetoric-drama drew so

to

the

modern drama

important

one.

overlooked

it,

but a cause

Our

and

Elizabethan
"

it

and an

is,

bookmen

"

have

because they cannot be got

to consider the drama, in Aristotle's phrase,

Trpog

ra Oiarpa, in relation to the actual

cir-

cumstances of the theatre.

It

would be easy to multiply examples

of the " bookman's

corrigible

habit

"

of

besetting sin

explaining

his in-

plays

by

play-books or books about plays without

to

reference

There

playhouses

for instance, that

is,

and

playgoers.

famous appeal

to the imagination of the audience in the

" Chorus

the

"

speeches of

"bookmen"

Henry

V.^ in

which

represent Shakespeare as

talking at the " classic

"

critics

of that day,

the strict Unitarians of Place and Time,

whereas we,

I think, looking at the actual

scenic conditions of the Elizabethan stage.

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

110

with

its

unchanging background, and

at the

actual mental condition of the Elizabethan

which

audience,

in

mobility,

detach-

in

ment, was very different from ours

ing,

time,

we

these

at

say,

conditions

lookthe

of

should, I think, find that Shake-

by

speare was not wasting his breath

talk-

ing at anybody, but was trying to mitigate

a very real difficulty, to talk over a very
recalcitrancy

real

again, there

in

Then,

public.

his

the question of the fights,

is

and wrestling - matches, and slaughterings

in Shakespeare's plays

the "

drama which
to

some

in

Elizabethan

bookmen " put down

preference in

deliberate artistic

the playwi'ight

whereas we, I think, look-

ing at the playhouse and

shall

all

its

circumstances,

have to say they were there because

the Elizabethan public insisted upon them,

and

insisted

upon them

reason whatever,

accustomed to
very spot

on

no

for

aesthetic

but just because

it

was

them, sometimes on that

theatrical off-nights

and

at

other times in the playing-fields just outside.

It

would

be

easy,

repeat,

to


LONGINUS

111

multiply examples of commentary running

wild for lack of that controlling principle

mentioned

by

drama

considering the
I

will not

plication

the principle of

Aristotle,

irpog

proceed with any such multifor

it

is

time to have done with

Aristotle and his Poetics.

If I have dwelt

on that masterpiece,

so long

But

ra Oearpa.

it

was that

might bring out the element of permanence

in the history of criticism, the fact that

it

has dealt through the ages with the same

sort
its

mind

though

mind about them.

treat

in

perpetually changing

its

I must,

however, en-

your indulgence for one more

ence to a Greek

refer-

a successor of Aristotle

merely a passing
later

them

of questions, always having

reference,*

because

this

Greek, though he occasionally touched

upon dramatic
drama

diction,

did not deal with

but a reference which

is

obligatory,

because he offers a kind of criticism very

different

from

Aristotle's,

things different in that

priety be

Longinus,

called

and above

it

"modern."

whom Dryden

all

can with proI

calls

refer

to

(in

his

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

112
"

Apology

Aristotle,

after

edly,

among

Heroic Poetry

for

the

an explorer

But Longinus,

critics.

a different

mapped

he had

he was the

critic

His great business was

out the country.

classification

greatest

Aristotle had been

the Greeks."

a pioneer,

" undoubt-

")

of scientific

first

was of
Precisely of what sort

sort.

as

say,

Longinus was you may learn from a note

in Gibbon's Diary for 3rd October 1762
:

" Till

now,"

Gibbon,

says

" 1

was

ac-

quainted only with two ways of criticising

a beautiful passage, the one to show by

an exact anatomy of
of

it

the distinct beauties

and whence they sprang

it,

the other,

an idle exclamation, or general encomium,

which leaves nothing behind

has shown
tells

me

and he

me

his
tells

that there

own

feelings

is

it.

Longinus

a third.

upon reading

Longinus, then,

narrated the adventures of his soul

sions

critics.

he

he was

set

the

down

first

That character

alongside

it

them with such energy that

he communicates them."
masterpieces,

He

of

his

among
impres-

impressionist

at once brings

him

an Anatole France or a Jules

JOHNSON'S CLASSIFICATION
Lemaitre

" modernity."

the thick of

carries us into

it

113

Gibbon, as you have seen, divided

into three classes,

critics

and a great contemporary

them into three.

Johnson told Fanny Burney who records
that "There are three
it in her diary
distinct kinds of judges upon all new
of Gibbon's also divided

authors or productions

who

the

first

are those

know^ no rules, but pronounce entirely

from

their natural taste

and feelings

the

who know, and judge by

third are those who know,

second are those

rules

and the

but are above the

Johnson,

Next

satisfy.

judges

rules.

" are those

last," said

you should wish to

to these

but ever

These

the natural

rate

despise

those

that are formed by the rules."

opinions

Now

I shall

take leave to reduce these three classes to

two for the fii'st class, those people who

knowing no rules are at the mercy of theii'
;

undisciplined taste, do not concern us here

1

For the

Saintsbury's
1902).

" impressionism "

''

of Longiuus see Professor

History of Criticism," vol.

Mr Andrew Lang

ii.

p.

373 (London,
Mr. H. L.

in his Introduction to

Havell's transLition of Longinus on the Sublime (Loudon,

1899) takes a somewhat different view.

"

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

114

they are not

term,

at

critics,

There

all.

On

classes of critics.

our sense of the

in

remain,

then,

two

the one hand, there

who judge hy "the

by a
code of orthodox canons and standards, by

are those

some law of

taste external

and independent of

On

it.

rules,"

to

their

own,

the other hand,

there are those who, while they have in-

formed

and

fortified

and

purified

their

by the preliminary discipline of study

study of the works satisfying orthodox

taste

standards, study of " the rules "

less

form

their opinions

neverthe-

upon no external

laws of taste, but upon the report brought

them

to

sensations

two

by

their

own

taste,

and impressions.

their

own

These are the

the
them the

chief schools of criticism to-day

brunt of the battle

" dogmatic
critics.

" critics

is

between

and the " impressionist

In the process of comparing ^ these

two schools we may perhaps find that there

is not so much difference between them as
they themselves suppose.
1

M.

For some points

Eniile Faguet

20th June 1896.

in

the comparison

am

indebted to

Feuilleton of the Journal des Debuts for

THE DOGMATIST
The

" dogmatic " critic

an " intellectual."
ing,

is

He

his point.

but

by temperament

Understanding, not

his ideas.

does not share his

said

There

the possibility

is

Longinus

of ample pleasure for us in that, but

an

feel-

Gibbon

feelings with us, as

did,

is

115

intellectual pleasure

it is

the pleasure given

by a symmetrical or strictly logical ordering

of ideas, by subtle disquisition, by what
the mathematicians call a " neat

"elegant"

The

demonstration.

for the critic of this sort

or

"

an

pleasure

to classify, and

is

Such-and-such a play belongs

to compare.

dramatic family, or holds

to this or that

a certain rank in the dramatic hierarchy.

Hamlet, being a tragedy,

Aristotle

would have

Or you

a comedy.

" periodicity " of

Hamlet

is

said,

than

Much Ado,

be

shown the

will

dramatic

largely a

"nobler," as

is

Oresteia,

how
how

Pair

motives

modern

the Adelijhi of Terence reappears as

of

Spectacles.

sidered,

Or the

belongs

pernicious,

or

to

play, morally con-

wholesome,

frivolous

always a classification this

class.

critic

or
It

a
is

gives you,

a classification to accord with general ideas


OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

116

of art, or sociology, or ethics

He

idea.

is

judging

Second Prize, Class

or " Ploughed "

But

if

^judging, not feeling.

altogether

feelings with distrust.

but

my

You seem

And

it."

class,

my

drown the

To

therefore I

self,

gives

it

must

a mortification

echoes of his

last

human

play to

own

spon-

feelings.

judgments

for judicial

must have the sanction of some-

thing external to the judge

tradition,

me

tell

loudly damns the

reinforce his

decisions

the good man, flushed with the

flesh,

taneous,

to over-

I can't really like

senses,

pride of a victory over

the

his

Evidently then, despite the

bad.

evidence of

regards

general ideas

belongs to a bad
it

hardly

"I like this

am prompted to call it

therefore I

good

can

he

hear him saying to himself

play,

Proxime Accessit

he does chance to have feelings

them

escape

every work

First Prize, Class A

even this temperament

and

of

he sees through his general

this critic sees

call

the "rules."

him an

air

to be broad-based

he

calls

in

This undoubtedly

of authority.

upon the

He

seems

people's will

THE IMPRESSIONIST

117

he comes before us not as himself, but as

the representative of a " thumping majority."

That

is

The

the dogmatic

critic.

" impressionist "

His fundamental principle

are

all,

up within

M.

ourselves.

the champion

principle.

It

those

was

or not, shut

in

answering

has constituted himself

and

a very doughty cham-

dogmatists, that

insisted

upon

" There

who

put something

fundamental

is

objective art, and

themselves that they

flatter

else

this

M. Anatole

no objective criticism

is

any more than there

all

it

who

of the

France

confidence

the fact that

is

whether we know

Brunetiere,

pion

less

and external authority.

in his general ideas

we

has greater

critic

and

interest in his feehngs

than themselves into

work are the dupes of the cheapest

The truth is, we never get out
illusion.
That is one of our greatest
of ourselves.
What would we not give for
miseries.

their

one minute to see heaven and earth with

the facetted eye of

fly,

or to compre-

hend nature with the rude and simple brain

of an orang-outang? But that is denied
to

us.

We

cannot,

like

Tiresias,

be a

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

118

man and

remember we have been

We are shut up in our own
a woman.
person as in some perpetual prison-house.

The
me,

yet

best thing

we can

do,

occurs to

it

to recognise this frightful limitation

is

with a good

and to confess

grace,

that

we are speaking of ourselves whenever

we have not the strength to hold our

Now

tongues."

of course

there

is

or

rather,

some

some misAs M. Brunetiere had no diffishowing, ]M. France has dra^n

exaggeration here
direction.

culty in

the red herring of metaphysics across the

The fact that the external universe

only known through the Ego does not

track.
is

prevent

normally

arriving at a

numerable

much

common judgment

things

it

would

in

it

the same time

fact,

M.
too

all history, all science.

it

proves too

of criticism,

it

little,

for

contribution

leaves

contribution of the ages, the

not ourselves."

proves

in-

not only ob-

covers only our personal

to an act

about

universe.

invalidate

jective criticism, but

At

the

in

argument,

France's

men from

constituted

out the

" something

"

VERACITY

119

self - concentration,

Nevertheless, this

or

introspective habit, of the " impressionist

has the supreme merit of genuineness,

critic

The

of veracity.

called " objective

"

great drawback of socriticism

is its

tendency

to self-deception, to say nothing of hypocrisy.

We

take

judgments on trust instead of

them by our

testing

our pleasures, out of

cheat ourselves of
fear

of

We

actual experience.

some external

prohibition, or else

w^e fool ourselves into thinking

we

like a

when in reality we do not, just because we suppose that according to " the
To this very
rules" we ought to like it.
work,

common
acteristic

mind there is a charby Dickens in one of

attitude of

reference

his letters written to Forster

Dickens says how necessary

"to overcome the

professing

from Venice.

it is

villainous

for a

man

meanness of

what other people have professed

when he knows

(if

he has

capacity

originate an opinion) that his profession

The

untrue.

to
is

intolerable nonsense against

which genteel taste and subserviency are

afraid

to

in

rise,

astounding."

connexion with

(You

are told)

art,

"on

is

pain

""

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

120

of being broke for

want of

go into

appreciation, to

immediately obey, and

He

tells his

ecstasies

tells

miseries."

you

and so

its

frauds

Well, our safeguard against

these frauds and miseries

The

criticism.

his,

the world gets at three-fourths of

and

in

your son to obey.

tell

and he

son,

gentility

is

impressionist

'*

" impressionist "

takes

joy in his

own

sensations,

because they are his own.

He

declines to

pure

natural

He

be " connoisseured out of his senses."

asks himself, "

Whether

it

does

Do

I really

me

then I cannot explain

my

And

if it

unless

temperament."

And

does,

He

Thus

him.

at a

self,

to the

" narrates the

of his soul."

Thereupon there
modesty?

my

so the " impressionist

psychology of the Ego.

against

tell

com-

I explain myself,

committed to an analysis of

adventures

pleasure to others

feelings with such energy that I

municate them

is

work

Gibbon's phrase about Longinus,

in

my

it

this

my great-grandfathers

pleased
please

or not

hke

is

Egoist

Keep

often a shrill outcry

!

Where

yourself

to

is

your

yourself

Congress of Journalists in 1902

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

121

a veteran provincial editor, lecturing the

dramatic

pastime

lar

silence

upon

critics

their duties

sternly

misunderstand
I

absolute

enjoined

about the Ego.

but think that those

a popu-

Well,

who

cannot
cry

this

raise

the very nature of criticism.

waive the point that the real immodesty

lies

not with those

who pretend

to speak

only for themselves, but with those

profess

to speak in the

who

general name.

waive the point that the reader often objects

to " egoism

" in

offends his

own

collision of

the

critic

merely because

egoism, because there

amours

prop?^es.

plea for autobiographic

is

it

waive the

criticism

which

is

included in the plea for autobiography at

large

that

the

one subject upon which the writer

it is,

as Sir Leslie

Stephen

says,

happens to be the highest living authority.

But the fact remains that

to give an account

of your impressions without any account of

the temperament which has been impressed,

is

to withhold from your reader an essential

him to form
The value
his own judgment about them.
of your impressions will depend upon your

piece of evidence for enabling

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

122

approximation to that ideal consumer of

described at the outset of this inquiry,

art,

x^jo^'^'f

of Aristotle

provide your

reader

with

you

for

is

it

the

to

necessary

making up his mind about

you must produce your credentials.

materials for

you

And

your " authority

found

It will not be

"

with the reader

an external

in

laws, traditions, " the rules "

set of

will be in

it

the delicacy, the fineness, the distinction, of

They

your impressions.

are for the reader

He may

to take or to leave.

say

"No,

don't feel like that, but comparison of

my

own

me

feelings with this man's has helped

to realise

may

he

or

my own

vaguely

feel,

say

more

pleasure
" Yes,

that

clearly "

my

invigorated

critic's

the knowledge of this man's

feelings has illuminated, expanded,

and

what

is

" authority

"

own."

the

warmed,

There

is

the

"
interest, the " use

of criticism.

And

now,

after this contrast of the

opposed schools of criticism,

warn you that

it

it

has only been

is

two

time to

made

for

the sake of clearing up our ideas and must

not be taken too seriously.

Unmitigated

TEMPERAMENT

123

dogmatism, absolute impressionism there

Your most hardened
are no such things.
dogmatist

at times

is

when he

times

when

is

an impressionist

driven in upon himself,

classifications,

his

at

references to

his

general principles, break down, and he

left to

speak for himself, to say, "1

am

is

so

constituted that I cannot help liking this or

disliking
Fell,
all,

that" "I do not

But why

it

is

like thee,

cannot

tell."

Dr.

After

his general classifications are subjective,

no two

for the simple reason that

have ever

chosen exactly the

And

is

so

it

impressionist;

France

may

same

set.

with the most independent

he
say

cannot

whatever

isolate

humanity, from the ambient

mass of

critics

himself
air,

M.
from

from the

and dogma and

literary tradition

the code of artistic right and wrong, better

and worse, which is the heritage from our
fathers that begat us.

In either kind of

critic

comes back in the last resort to a

question of temperament whether they be

it

all

impressionists or dogmatists,

it

is

in virtue

of their temperament, the true inwardness

of them, that they please and persuade us.

OLD AND NEW CRITICISM

124

by

their

temperament that we shaU

rank the

men

of either kind, or refuse to

It

is

rank them,

among

the elect of criticism

"the judices natos"

(in his

as

Dryden

Dedication of the iEneid)

calls

them

" souls of

the highest rank and truest understanding.

These," says he, " are few in number

whoever

is

so

happy

magnetism

it,

because they never

Then they have

blindly.

it

in their

but

as to gain their appro-

bation can never lose

give

a certain

judgment, which attracts

Every day they gain

and in time become the

others to their sense.

some new
Church."
ideal of

When we

good

assent to
his

proselyte,

clearly perceive that

criticism,

we can

what Tennyson

deathbed " Good

said,

all I

think

almost on

critics are rarer

than

good authors."

But Tennyson
something

else,

said, at

an

earlier time,

something which points to

a limitation of even the best criticism

and

to an excuse for even the worst authors.

Some one had quoted

to

Jowett's, praying that

we might

selves

as

others

Tennyson, "

see

us.

him

a prayer of

"No,"

see ourreplied

should not pray for that

THE INMOST SELF

others cannot see

much

125

of one's inner

self."

Criticism should always allow for that

cannot pierce to the author's inmost

Life

so obscure a thing that there

is

sense

in

which

impertinent.

criticism

all

Who

futile

is

it

self.
is

and

can plumb the ocean of

thought and feeling of which any man's

written words are but the surface-foam

The

artist

abandons himself, in Goethe's

phrase, to his dcemon

failures,

what may seem to us

incongruities,

are

but

necessary

parts of an inward and spiritual

harmony

of the man, which remains hidden from

And

so, as

M. Paul Bourget

ing of Amiel, " There

is

us.

says in speak-

in every productive

energy something mysterious and sacred,

which

it

behoves us to consider as above

discussion and judgment."

THE END

Printed by Ballantynk,

Hanson df

Edinburgh &^ London

Co.

THE WORKS OF LORD BYRON

Text, Collated with the Original MSS. and Revised
Proofs, which are still in existence, with many hitherto
unpublished additions. This will be the most complete
Edition of Lord Byron's Works, as no other Editors have
had access to the original MSS. With Portraits and Illustrations. To be completed in 13 Vols. Crown 8vo, 6s. each.

A New

POETRY.
Vol.
Vol.
Vol.
Vol.

Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge.

The Early Poems.

I.

Childe Harold.
The Giaour, Bride of Abydos, Corsair, etc.
IV. Prisoner of Chillon, Manfred, Beppo, Mazeppa,
Vision of Judgment, Marino Faliero, etc
V. Sardanapalus, etc.
II.

III.

Vol.
Vol. VI.
Vol. VII.

Don Juan.
Epigrams, Bibliography, Index, etc

[Shortly.

%* Owing to the extent

a large amount of

new

of the Notes to Bjn-on's Works, which contain

information, it has been found impossible to include

the whole in Six Volumes.

Seventh Volume, containing occasional pieces, a bibliography, and a

very

full

index of

all

LETTERS.

Byron's Works,

Edited by

is

in the press.

Rowland E. Prothero, M.V.O.

Vol. IV. 1816 to 1820.
Vol. V. 1820 to 1822.
Vol. VI. 1 822 to 1824.

I. 1788 to 1811.
Vol.
Vol. II. 1811 to 1814.
Vol. III. 1814 to 1816.

With Index.

"The

sixth volume of Byron's prose writings concludes one of the most

attractive collections of letters and journals in the language, and one of the
Dr. R. Garnett in the Bookman.
best edited works our literature possesses."

IS

IT SHAKESPEARE

The

Great Question of

Elizabethan Literature, answered in the Light of New Revelations

and important Contemporary Evidence hitherto unnoticed. By
a Cambridge Graduate. With Facsimiles. Demy 8vo, 12s.
net.

NOVA SOLYMA,
Regained.

The Ideal City ; or, Jerusalem

An Anonymous Romance written in the Time of

1628-1648. Now first drawn from obscurity, and

by internal evidence, to the illustrious John Milton,
With Introduction, Translation,
author of "Paradise Lost."
By the Rev. Walter
Literary Essays, and a Bibliography.
Begley. 2 Vols. Demy 8vo, 21s. net.
Charles

I.,

attributed,

"

One

most astonishing works that has been produced

of the

Daily Telegraph.

for years."

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,

:

W.

OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE. A

Transla-

and Verse from the Old French. Together with

AMABEL AND AMORIS (now given for the first time). By
Laurence Housman. With Ilhistrations by Paul Woodroffe.
Engraved on Wood by Clemence Housman. Crown 8vo, 5s.

tion in Prose

net.

THE

THE

SAILING OF

LONG-SHIPS, and

Other Poems. By Henry Newbolt, Author of "Admirals

All," "The Island Race," &c.
Small crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.
" This volume will be acquired and valued by
and tender verse." Globe.
" Admirable verses
poetry."

all

who

care for vigorous

_

themes of patriotism expressed

in lines of true

St. James's Gazette.

WE ARE

SEVEN.

Half- Hours on the

and Gay. By Hamilton Aide, Author of

World." Crown 8vo, 4s. net.

Stage Grave

"The

Snares of the

TO ALL LOVERS OF MUSIC

MUSICAL SERIES

MR. MURRAY'S
Crown

THE

5s.

With Eight

IS

net each

AND

ORCHESTRA

MUSIC.

WHAT

Svo,

Portraits

ORCHESTRAL

and other

GOOD MUSIC

.?

Illustrations.

Suggestions to Persons

Desiring to Cultivate a Taste in Musical Art, and

HOW^ MUSIC

DEVELOPED. By W. J. Henderson.

MUSIC How
:

Smith.

With

it

Came

to be

What

it Is.

By Hannah

Illustrations.

SONGS AND SONG WRITERS. By Henry

FiNCK.

With Eight

THE OPERA, PAST AND PRESENT. An

torical Sketch.

By William Foster Apthorp. With

CHOIRS AND CHORAL MUSIC.

Mees.

With

HOW TO

His-

Portraits.

By Arthur

Portraits.

LISTEN

TO

MUSIC.

Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art.

Krehbiel.

T.

Portraits.

With Eleven

Hints and
By Henry Edward

Portraits.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

2

//f*
^