diff options
Diffstat (limited to '16746-h/16746-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 16746-h/16746-h.htm | 6414 |
1 files changed, 6414 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/16746-h/16746-h.htm b/16746-h/16746-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb04d6c --- /dev/null +++ b/16746-h/16746-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6414 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Inquiries And Opinions, by Brander Matthews. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inquiries and Opinions, by Brander Matthews + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Inquiries and Opinions + +Author: Brander Matthews + +Release Date: September 25, 2005 [EBook #16746] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INQUIRIES AND OPINIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Janet Blenkinship +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p><a name="Page_-5" id="Page_-5"></a></p> + + + + +<p><a name="Page_-4" id="Page_-4"></a></p> +<h1>INQUIRIES AND OPINIONS<br /><br /></h1> + +<p class='center'> +Copyright, 1907, by<br /> +<span class="smcap">Brander Matthews</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Published September, 1907</i><br /><br /><br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Page_-3" id="Page_-3"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<p class='center'> +TO MY FRIEND AND FELLOW CRAFTSMAN<br /> +HENRY ARTHUR JONES<br /><br /> +</p> +<p><a name="Page_-2" id="Page_-2"></a></p><p><a name="Page_-1" id="Page_-1"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="TABLE OF CONTENTS"> +<tr><td align='right'> </td><td align='left'><b>CONTENTS</b></td><td align='right'><b>PAGE</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'><i>Literature in the New Century</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'><i>The Supreme Leaders</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_27'><b>27</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'><i>An Apology for Technic</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_49'><b>49</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'><i>Old Friends with New Faces</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_73'><b>73</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'><i>Invention and Imagination</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_95'><b>95</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'><i>Poe and the Detective-story</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_111'><b>111</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VII</td><td align='left'><i>Mark Twain</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_137'><b>137</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td><td align='left'><i>A Note on Maupassant</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_167'><b>167</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IX</td><td align='left'><i>The Modern Novel and the Modern Play</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_179'><b>179</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>X</td><td align='left'><i>The Literary Merit of our Latter-day Drama</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_205'><b>205</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XI</td><td align='left'><i>Ibsen the Playwright</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_227'><b>227</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XII</td><td align='left'><i>The Art of the Stage-manager</i></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_281'><b>281</b></a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_0" id="Page_0"></a></p><p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></p> +<h2>LITERATURE IN THE NEW CENTURY<br /><br /></h2> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>[This paper was read on September 24th, 1904, in the section of<a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a> +Belles-lettres of the International Congress of the Arts and Sciences, +held at St. Louis.]</p></div> + + +<p>There is no disguising the difficulty of any attempt to survey the whole +field of literature as it is disclosed before us now at the opening of a +new century; and there is no denying the danger of any effort to declare +the outlook in the actual present and the prospect in the immediate +future. How is it possible to project our vision, to foresee whither the +current is bearing us, to anticipate the rocks ahead and the shallows +whereon our bark may be beached?</p> + +<p>But one reflection is as obvious as it is helpful. The problems of +literature are not often merely I literary; and, in so far as literature +is an honest attempt to express life,—as it always has been at the +moments of highest achievement,—the problems of literature must have an +intimate relation to the problems which confront us insistently in life. +If we turn from the disputations of the schools and look out on the +world, we may discover forces at work in society which are exerting also +a potent influence upon the future of literature.</p> + +<p>Now that the century in which we were born and bred is receding swiftly<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a> +into the past, we can perceive in the perspective more clearly than ever +before its larger movements and its main endeavor. We are at last +beginning to be able to estimate the heritage it has left us, and to see +for ourselves what our portion is, what our possessions are, and what +our obligations. While it is for us to make the twentieth century, no +doubt, we need to remember that it was the nineteenth century which made +us; and we do not know ourselves if we fail to understand the years in +which we were molded to the work that lies before us. It is for us to +single out the salient characteristics of the nineteenth century. It is +for us to seize the significance of the striking advance in scientific +method, for example, and of the wide-spread acceptance of the scientific +attitude. It is for us, again, to recognize the meaning of that +extension of the democratic movement, which is the most obvious +characteristic of the past sixscore years. It is for us, once more, to +weigh the importance of the intensifying of national spirit and of the +sharpening of racial pride. And, finally, it is for us to take account +also of the growth of what must be called "cosmopolitanism," that +breaking down of the hostile barriers keeping one people apart from the +others, ignorant of them, and often contemptuous.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>Here, then, are four legacies from the nineteenth century to the +twentieth:—first, the scientific spirit; second, the spread of +democracy; third, the assertion of nationality; and, fourth, that +stepping across the confines of language and race, for which we have no +more accurate name than "cosmopolitanism."</p> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>"The scientific spirit," so an acute American critic defined it recently +in an essay on Carlyle,—who was devoid of it and detested it,—"the +scientific spirit signifies poise between hypothesis and verification, +between statement and proof, between appearance and reality. It is +inspired by the impulse of investigation, tempered with distrust and +edged with curiosity. It is at once avid of certainty and skeptical of +seeming. It is enthusiastically patient, nobly literal, candid, +tolerant, hospitable." This is the statement of a man of letters, who +had found in science "a tonic force" stimulating to all the arts.</p> + +<p>By the side of this, it may be well to set also the statement of a man +of science. In his address delivered in St. Louis in December, 1903, the +President of the American Association for the Advancement of +Science,—who is also the president of one of the foremost of American +univer<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>sities,—declared that "the fundamental characteristic of the +scientific method is honesty.... The sole object is to learn the truth +and to be guided by the truth. Absolute accuracy, absolute fidelity, +absolute honesty are the prime conditions of scientific progress." And +then Dr. Remsen went on to make the significant assertion that "the +constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress +upon him who uses it. A life spent in accord with scientific teaching +would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings +of the highest type of religion."</p> + +<p>This "use of the scientific method" is as remote as may be from that +barren adoption of scientific phrases and that sterile application of +scientific formulas, which may be dismissed as an aspect of "science +falsely so called." It is of deeper import also than any mere +utilization by art of the discoveries of science, however helpful this +may be. The painter has been aided by science to perceive more precisely +the effect of the vibrations of light and to analize more sharply the +successive stages of animal movement; and the poet also has found his +profit in the wider knowledge brought to us by later investigations. +Longfellow, for example, drew upon astronomy for the figure with which +he once made plain his moral:</p> + +<p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Were a star quenched on high,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For ages would its light,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Still travelling downward from the sky,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shine on our mortal sight.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So, when a great man dies,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For years beyond our ken</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The light he leaves behind him lies</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Upon the paths of men.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Wordsworth, a hundred years ago, warmly welcomed "the remotest +discoveries of the chemist, the botanist and mineralogist," as "proper +objects of the poet's art," declaring that "if the time should ever come +when what is now called 'science,' thus familiarized to men, shall be +ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will +lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the +being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of +man."</p> + +<p>Again, the "use of the scientific method" is not equivalent to the +application in the arts of scientific theories, altho here once more the +man of letters is free to take these for his own and to bend them to his +purpose. Ibsen has found in the doctrine of heredity a modern analog of +the ancient Greek idea of fate; and altho he may not "see life steadily +and see it whole," he has been enabled to invest his somber 'Ghosts' +with not a little of the inerrable inevitability which we<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a> feel to be so +appalling in the master work of Sophocles. Criticism, no less than +creation, has been stimulated by scientific hypothesis; and for one +thing, the conception of literary history has been wholly transformed +since the theory of evolution was declared. To M. Brunetière we owe the +application of this doctrine to the development of the drama in his own +language. He has shown us most convincingly how the several literary +forms,—the lyric, the oration, the epic, with its illegitimate +descendant, the modern novel in prose,—may cross-fertilize each other +from time to time, and also how the casual hybrids that result are ever +struggling to revert each to its own species.</p> + +<p>Science is thus seen to be stimulating to art; but the "use of the +scientific method" would seem to be more than stimulation only. It leads +the practitioners of the several arts to set up an ideal of +disinterestedness, inspired by a lofty curiosity, which shall scorn +nothing as insignificant, and which is ever eager after knowledge +ascertained for its own sake. As it abhors the abnormal and the +freakish, the superficial and the extravagant, it helps the creative +artist to strive for a more classic directness and simplicity; and it +guides the critic toward passionless proportion and moderation. Altho it +tends toward intellectual freedom, it forces us always to recognize the +<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>reign of law. It establishes the strength of the social bond, and +thereby, for example, it aids us to see that, altho romance is ever +young and ever true, what is known as "neo-romanticism," with its +reckless assertion of individual whim, is anti-social, and therefore +probably immoral.</p> + +<p>The "use of the scientific method" will surely strengthen the conscience +of the novelist and of the dramatist; and it will train them to a +sterner veracity in dealing with human character. It will inhibit that +pitiful tendency toward a falsification of the facts of life, which +asserts the reform of a character in the twinkling of an eye just before +the final fall of the curtain. It will lead to a renunciation of the +feeble and summary psychology which permits a man of indurated habits of +weakness or of wickedness to transform himself by a single and sudden +effort of will. And, on the other hand, it may tempt certain students of +life, subtler than their fellow-craftsmen and more inquisitive, to dwell +unduly on the mere machinery of human motive and to aim not at a rich +portrayal of the actions of men and women, but at an arid analysis of +the mechanism of their impulses. More than one novelist of the twentieth +century has already yielded to this tendency. No doubt, this is only the +negative defect accompanying a positive quality,—yet it indicates an +imperfect appreciation of the artist's duty. "In <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>every art," so Taine +reminded us, "it is necessary to linger long over the true in order to +attain the beautiful. The eye, fixing itself on an object, begins by +noting details with an excess of precision and fulness; it is only +later, when the inventory is complete, that the mind, master of its +wealth, rises higher, in order to take or to neglect what suits it."</p> + +<p>The attitude of the literary critic will be modified by the constant use +of the scientific method, quite as much as the attitude of the literary +creator. He will seek to relate a work of art, whether it is an epic or +a tragedy, a novel or a play, to its environment, weighing all the +circumstances of its creation. He will strive to estimate it as it is, +of course, but also as a contribution to the evolution of its species +made by a given people at a given period. He will endeavor to keep +himself free from lip-service and from ancestor-worship, holding himself +derelict to his duty if he should fail to admit frankly that in every +masterpiece of the past, however transcendent its merits, there must +needs be much that is temporary admixt with more that is +permanent,—many things which pleased its author's countrymen in his own +time and which do not appeal to us, even tho we can perceive also what +is eternal and universal, even tho we read into every masterpiece much +that the author's con<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>temporaries had not our eyes to perceive. All the +works of Shakspere and of Molière are not of equal value,—and even the +finest of them is not impeccable; and a literary critic who has a +scientific sincerity will not gloss over the minor defects, whatever his +desire to concentrate attention on the nobler qualities by which +Shakspere and Molière achieved their mighty fame. Indeed, the scientific +spirit will make it plain that an unwavering admiration for all the +works of a great writer, unequal as these must be of necessity, is proof +in itself of an obvious inability to perceive wherein lies his real +greatness.</p> + +<p>Whatever the service the scientific spirit is likely to render in the +future, we need to be on our guard against the obsession of science +itself. There is danger that an exclusive devotion to science may starve +out all interest in the arts, to the impoverishment of the soul. Already +there are examples of men who hold science to be all-sufficient and who +insist that it has superseded art. Already is it necessary to recall +Lowell's setting off of "art, whose concern is with the ideal and the +potential, from science which is limited by the actual and the +positive." Science bids us go so far and no farther, despite the fact +that man longs to peer beyond the confines. Vistas closed to science are +opened for us by art; and science fails us if we ask too much; for it +<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>can provide no satisfactory explanation of the enigmas of existence. +Above all, it tempts us to a hard and fast acceptance of its own +formulas, an acceptance as deadening to progress as it is false to the +scientific spirit itself. "History warns us," so Huxley declared, "that +it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies, and to end +as superstitions."</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The growth of the scientific spirit is not more evident in the +nineteenth century than the spread of the democratic movement. Democracy +in its inner essence means not only the slow broadening down of +government until it rests upon the assured foundation of the people as a +whole, it signifies also the final disappearance of the feudal +organization, of the system of caste, of the privileges which are not +founded on justice, of the belief in any superiority conferred by the +accident of birth. It starts with the assertion of the equality of all +men before the law; and it ends with the right of every man to do his +own thinking. Accepting the dignity of human nature, the democratic +spirit, in its finer manifestations, is free from intolerance and rich +in sympathy, rejoicing to learn how the other half lives. It is +increasingly interested in human personality, in spite of the <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>fact that +humanity no longer bulks as big in the universe as it did before +scientific discovery shattered the ancient assumption that the world had +been made for man alone.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, indeed, it is the perception of our own insignificance which is +making us cling together more closely and seek to understand each other +at least, even if we must ever fail to grasp the full import of the +cosmic scheme. Whatever the reason, there is no gainsaying the growth of +fellow-feeling and of a curiosity founded on friendly interest,—both of +which are revealed far more abundantly in our later literatures than in +the earlier classics. In the austere masterpieces of the Greek drama, +for example, we may discover a lack of this warmth of sympathy; and we +can not but suspect a certain aloofness, which is akin to callousness. +The cultivated citizens of Athens were supported by slave-labor; but +their great dramatic poets cast little light on the life of the slaves +or on the sad conditions of their servitude. Something of this narrow +chilliness is to be detected also in the literature of the court of +Louis XIV; Corneille and Racine prefer to ignore not only the peasant +but also the burgher; and it is partly because Molière's outlook on life +is broader that the master of comedy appears to us now so much greater +than his tragic contemporaries. Even of late the Latin races have seemed +perhaps <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>a little less susceptible to this appeal than the Teutonic or +the Slavonic, and the impassive contempt of Flaubert and of Maupassant +toward the creatures of their imaginative observation is more +characteristic of the French attitude than the genial compassion of +Daudet. In Hawthorne and in George Eliot there is no aristocratic +remoteness; and Turgenieff and Tolstoi are innocent of haughty +condescension. Everywhere now in the new century can we perceive the +working of the democratic spirit, making literature more clear-sighted, +more tolerant, more pitying.</p> + +<p>In his uplifting discussion of democracy, Lowell sought to encourage the +timid souls who dreaded the danger that it might "reduce all mankind to +a dead level of mediocrity" and that it might "lessen the respect due to +eminence whether in station, virtue, or genius;" and he explained that, +in fact, democracy meant a career open to talent, an opportunity equal +to all, and therefore in reality a larger likelihood that genius would +be set free. Here in America we have discovered by more than a century +of experience that democracy levels up and not down; and that it is not +jealous of a commanding personality even in public life, revealing a +swift shrewdness of its own in gaging character, and showing both +respect and regard for the independent leaders strong enough to +withstand what may seem at the moment to be the popular will.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>Nor is democracy hostile to original genius, or slow to recognize it. +The people as a whole may throw careless and liberal rewards to the +jesters and to the sycophants who are seeking its favor, as their +forerunners sought to gain the ear of the monarch of old, but the +authors of substantial popularity are never those who abase themselves +or who scheme to cajole. At the beginning of the twentieth century there +were only two writers whose new books appeared simultaneously in half a +dozen different tongues; and what man has ever been so foolish as to +call Ibsen and Tolstoi flatterers of humanity? The sturdy independence +of these masters, their sincerity, their obstinate reiteration each of +his own message,—these are main reasons for the esteem in which they +are held. And in our own language, the two writers of widest renown are +Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, known wherever English is spoken, in +every remote corner of the seven seas, one an American of the Americans +and the other the spokesman of the British Empire. They are not only +conscientious craftsmen, each in his own way, but moralists also and +even preachers; and they go forward in the path they have marked out, +each for himself, with no swervings aside to curry favor or to avoid +unpopularity.</p> + +<p>The fear has been exprest freely that the position of literature is made +more precarious by the recent immense increase in the reading public, +<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>deficient in standards of taste and anxious to be amused. It is in the +hope of hitting the fancy of this motley body that there is now a +tumultuous multiplication of books of every degree of merit; and amid +all this din there must be redoubled difficulty of choice. Yet the +selection gets itself made somehow, and not unsatisfactorily. Unworthy +books may have vogue for a while, and even adulation; but their fame is +fleeting. The books which the last generation transmitted to us were, +after all, the books best worth our consideration; and we may be +confident that the books we shall pass along to the next generation will +be as wisely selected. Out of the wasteful overproduction only those +works emerge which have in them something that the world will not +willingly let die.</p> + +<p>Those books that survive are always chosen from out the books that have +been popular, and never from those that failed to catch the ear of their +contemporaries. The poet who scorns the men of his own time and who +retires into an ivory tower to inlay rimes for the sole enjoyment of his +fellow mandarins, the poet who writes for posterity, will wait in vain +for his audience. Never has posterity reversed the unfavorable verdict +of an artist's own century. As Cicero said—and Cicero was both an +aristocrat and an artist in letters,—"given time and opportunity, the +recog<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>nition of the many is as necessary a test of excellence in an +artist as that of the few." Verse, however exquisite, is almost +valueless if its appeal is merely technical or merely academic, if it +pleases only the sophisticated palate of the dilettant, if it fails to +touch the heart of the plain people. That which vauntingly styles itself +the <i>écriture artiste</i> must reap its reward promptly in praise from the +<i>précieuses ridicules</i> of the hour. It may please those who pretend to +culture without possessing even education; but this aristocratic +affectation has no roots and it is doomed to wither swiftly, as one fad +is ever fading away before another, as Asianism, euphuism, and Gongorism +have withered in the past.</p> + +<p>Fictitious reputations may be inflated for a little space; but all the +while the public is slowly making up its mind; and the judgment of the +main body is as trustworthy as it is enduring. 'Robinson Crusoe' and +'Pilgrim's Progress' hold their own generation after generation, altho +the cultivated class did not discover their merits until long after the +plain people had taken them to heart. Cervantes and Shakspere were +widely popular from the start; and appreciative criticism limped lamely +after the approval of the mob. Whatever blunders in belauding, the plain +people may make now and again, in time they come unfailingly to a hearty +appreciation of work that is honest, gen<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>uine, and broad in its appeal; +and when once they have laid hold of the real thing they hold fast with +abiding loyalty.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>As significant as the spread of democracy in the nineteenth century is +the success with which the abstract idea of nationality has exprest +itself in concrete form. Within less than twoscore years Italy has +ceased to be only a geographical expression; and Germany has given +itself boundaries more sharply defined than those claimed for the +fatherland by the martial lyric of a century ago. Hungary has asserted +itself against the Austrians, and Norway against the Swedes; and each by +the stiffening of racial pride has insisted on the recognition of its +national integrity. This is but the accomplishment of an ideal toward +which the western world has been tending since it emerged from the Dark +Ages into the Renascence and since it began to suspect that the Holy +Roman Empire was only the empty shadow of a disestablished realm. In the +long centuries the heptarchy in England had been followed by a monarchy +with London for its capital; and in like manner the seven kingdoms of +Spain had been united under monarchs who dwelt in Madrid. Normandy and +Gascony, Burgundy and Provence had been in<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>corporated finally with the +France of which the chief city was Paris.</p> + +<p>Latin had been the tongue of every man who was entitled to claim benefit +of clergy; but slowly the modern languages compacted themselves out of +the warring dialects when race after race came to a consciousness of its +unity and when the speech of a capital was set up at last as the +standard to which all were expected to conform. In Latin Dante discust +the vulgar tongue, tho he wrote the 'Divine Comedy' in his provincial +Tuscan; yet Petrarch, who came after, was afraid that his poems in +Italian were, by that fact, fated to be transitory. Chaucer made choice +of the dialect of London, performing for it the service Dante had +rendered to the speech of the Florentines; yet Bacon and Newton went +back to Latin as the language still common to men of science. Milton +practised his pen in Latin verse, but never hesitated to compose his +epic in English. Latin served Descartes and Spinoza, men of science +again; and it was not until the nineteenth century that the invading +vernaculars finally ousted the language of the learned which had once +been in universal use. And even now Latin is retained by the church +which still styles itself Catholic.</p> + +<p>It was as fortunate as it was necessary that the single language of the +learned should give way before the vulgar tongues, the speech of the +<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>people, each in its own region best fitted to phrase the feelings and +the aspirations of races dissimilar in their characteristics and in +their ideals. No one tongue could voice the opposite desires of the +northern peoples and of the southern; and we see the several modern +languages revealing by their structure as well as by their vocabularies +the essential qualities of the races that fashioned them, each for its +own use. Indeed, these racial characteristics are so distinct and so +evident to us now that we fancy we can detect them even tho they are +disguised in the language of Rome; and we find significance in the fact +that Seneca, the grandiloquent rhetorician, was by birth a Spaniard, and +that Petronius, the robust realist, was probably born in what is now +France.</p> + +<p>The segregation of nationality has been accompanied by an increasing +interest in the several states out of which the nation has made itself, +and sometimes even by an effort to raise the dialects of these provinces +up to the literary standard of the national language. In this there is +no disloyalty to the national ideal,—rather is it to be taken as a +tribute to the nation, since it seeks to call attention again to the +several strands twined in the single bond. In literature this tendency +is reflected in a wider liking for local color and in an intenser relish +for the flavor of the soil. We find Verga painting the violent passions +of the<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a> Sicilians, and Reuter depicting the calmer joys of the +Platt-Deutsch. We see Maupassant etching the canny and cautious Normans, +while Daudet brushed in broadly the expansive exuberance of the +Provençals. We delight alike in the Wessex-folk of Mr. Hardy and in the +humorous Scots of Mr. Barrie. We extend an equal welcome to the patient +figures of New England spinsterhood as drawn by Miss Jewett and Miss +Wilkins, and to the virile Westerners set boldly on their feet by Mr. +Wister and Mr. Garland.</p> + +<p>What we wish to have explored for us are not only the nooks and corners +of our own nation; those of other races appeal also to our sympathetic +curiosity. These inquiries help us to understand the larger peoples, of +whom the smaller communities are constituent elements. They serve to +sharpen our insight into the differences which divide one race from +another; and the contrast of Daudet and Maupassant on the one hand with +Mark Twain and Kipling on the other brings out the width of the gap that +yawns between the Latins (with their solidarity of the family and their +reliance on the social instinct) and the Teutons (with their energetic +independence and their aggressive individuality). With increase of +knowledge there is less likelihood of mutual misunderstandings; and here +literature performs a most useful service to the cause of civilization.<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a> +As Tennyson once said: "It is the authors, more than the diplomats, who +make nations love one another." Fortunately, no high tariff can keep out +the masterpieces of foreign literature which freely cross the frontier, +bearing messages of good-will and broadening our understanding of our +fellowmen.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in the +representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an +increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the barriers +of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago, Goethe said that +even then national literature was "rather an unmeaning term" as "the +epoch of world-literature was at hand." With all his wisdom Goethe +failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism is a sorry thing when it is not +the final expression of patriotism. An artist without a country and with +no roots in the soil of his nativity is not likely to bring forth flower +and fruit. As an American critic aptly put it, "a true cosmopolitan is +at home,—even in his own country." A Russian novelist set forth the +same thought; and it was the wisest character in Turgenieff's 'Dimitri +Roudine' who asserted that the great misfortune of the hero was his +ignorance of his <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>native land:—"Russia can get along without any of us, +but we cannot do without Russia. Wo betide him who does not understand +her, and still more him who really forgets the manners and the ideas of +his fatherland! Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a zero,—less than a +zero; outside of nationality, there is no art, no truth, no life +possible."</p> + +<p>Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenieff and +Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing century +is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of literature, +while it is the national spirit which supplies the essential inspiration +that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the 'Demi-monde' of +Dumas, the 'Pillars of Society' of Ibsen, the 'Magda' of Sudermann, the +'Grand Galeoto' of Echegaray, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray' of Pinero, the +'Gioconda' of d'Annunzio are all of them cast in the same dramatic mold; +but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is made was smelted +in the native land of its author. Similar as they are in structure, in +their artistic formula, they are radically dissimilar in their essence, +in the motives that move the characters and in their outlook on life; +and this dissimilarity is due not alone to the individuality of the +several authors,—it is to be credited chiefly to the nationality of +each.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable to the +arts,—not merely the taking over of raw material, but the more +stimulating absorption of methods and processes and even of artistic +ideals. The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Attic Isocrates; and +the style of the Athenian was imitated by the Roman Cicero, thus helping +to sustain the standard of oratory in every modern language. The 'Matron +of Ephesus' of Petronius was the great-grandmother of the 'Yvette' of +Maupassant; and the dialogs of Herondas and of Theocritus serve as +models for many a vignette of modern life. The 'Golden Ass' went before +'Gil Blas' and made a path for him; and 'Gil Blas' pointed the way for +'Huckleberry Finn.' It is easy to detect the influence of Richardson on +Rousseau, of Rousseau on George Sand, of George Sand on Turgenieff, of +Turgenieff on Mr. Henry James, of Mr. James on M. Paul Bourget, of M. +Bourget on Signor d'Annunzio; and yet there is no denying that +Richardson is radically English, that Turgenieff is thoroly Russian, and +that d'Annunzio is unquestionably Italian.</p> + +<p>In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity—but only in so +far as the external form is concerned—discoverable in those +short-stories which are as abundant as they are important in every +modern literature; and yet much <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>of our delight in these brief studies +from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether they +were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach or by Daudet, +by Barrie or by Bret Harte. "All can grow the flower now, for all have +got the seed"; but the blossoms are rich with the strength of the soil +in which each of them is rooted.</p> + +<p>This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard +against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against +cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our cosmopolitanism +may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our century may come to be +like the age of the Antonines, when a "cloud of critics, of compilers, +of commentators darkened the face of learning," so Gibbon tells us, and +"the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste." It +is the spirit of nationality which will help to supply needful idealism. +It will allow a man of letters to frequent the past without becoming +archaic and to travel abroad without becoming exotic, because it will +supply him always with a good reason for remaining a citizen of his own +country.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1904.) </p></div><p><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a></p><p><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a></p><p><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a></p> +<h2>THE SUPREME LEADERS</h2> + + +<p>In the fading annals of French Romanticism it is recorded that at the +first performance of an early play of the elder Dumas at the Odéon, a +band of enthusiasts, as misguided as they were youthful, were so +completely carried away that they formed a ring and danced in derision +around a bust of Racine which adorned that theater, declaring +boisterously that the elder dramatist was disgraced and disestablished: +<i>'Enfoncé Racine!'</i></p> + +<p>This puerile exploit took place not fourscore years ago, and already has +this play of Dumas disappeared beneath the wave of oblivion, its very +name being recalled only by special students of the history of the +French stage, while the Comédie-Française continues, year in and year +out, to act the best of Racine's tragedies, now nearly two centuries and +a half since they were first performed.</p> + +<p>Again, in the records of the British theater of the eighteenth century, +we find mention of a countryman of John Home, who attended the first +performance of the reverend author's 'Doug<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>las.' The play so worked upon +the feelings of this perfervid Scot that he was forced to cry out +triumphantly: "Whaur's your Wully Shakspere noo?"</p> + +<p>And yet this Scottish masterpiece failed to establish itself finally on +the stage; and it has long since past out of men's memories, leaving +behind it only a quotation or two and a speech for boys to spout. So in +every age the disinterested observer can take note of the rise and fall +of some unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly +proclaimed as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own +generation. He may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry +scintillations, like a rocket, only at last to come down like the stick, +empty and unnoticed.</p> + +<p>The echoes of the old battle of the Ancients and Moderns have not died +away, even yet; and there is never a time when some ardent disciple is +not insisting that his immediate master must be admitted as one of the +immortals, and when some shrill youth is not ready to make room for the +new-comer by ousting any number of the consecrated chiefs of art. Now +and again, of course, the claim is allowed; the late arrival is made +welcome in the Pantheon; and there is a new planet on high. But most of +those who are urged for this celestial promotion prove to <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>be mere +shooting-stars at best, vanishing into space before there is opportunity +to examine their spectrum and to compare it with that of the older orbs +which have made the sky glorious thru the long centuries.</p> + +<p>It is only by comparison with these fixt stars that we can measure the +light of any new luminary which aspires to their lofty elevation. It is +only by keeping our gaze full upon them that we may hope to come to an +understanding of their immeasurable preëminence. Taine has told us that +"there are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted above +all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another +race—namely, Dante, Shakspere, Beethoven, and Michelangelo. No profound +knowledge, no full possession of all the resources of art, no fertility +of imagination, no originality of intellect, sufficed to secure them +this position, for these they all had. These, moreover, are of secondary +importance; that which elevated them to this rank is their soul."</p> + +<p>Here we have four great lights for us to steer by when we are +storm-driven on the changing sea of contemporary opinion and +contemporary prejudice; and by their aid we may hope to win safety in a +harbor of refuge.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is a praiseworthy striving for a permanent standard of value +which accounts for the <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>many attempts to draw up lists of the Hundred +Best Books and of the Hundred Best Pictures. It may be admitted at once +that these lists, however inadequate they must be, and however +unsatisfactory in themselves, may have a humble utility of their own as +a first aid to the ignorant. At least, they may serve to remind a man +lost in a maze amid the clatter and the clutter of our own time, that +after all this century of ours is the heir of the ages, and that it is +for us to profit by the best that the past has bequeathed to us. Even +the most expertly selected list could do little more than this.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless these attempts, after all, cannot fail to be more or less +misleading, since the best books and the best pictures do not number +exactly a hundred. Nor can there be any assured certainty in the +selection, since no two of those most competent to make the choice would +be likely to agree on more than half of the masterpieces they would +include.</p> + +<p>The final and fatal defect in all these lists is that they seek to +single out an arbitrary number of works of the highest distinction, +instead of trying to find out the few men of supreme genius who were +actually the makers of acknowledged masterpieces. It is of no +consequence whether we hold that 'Hamlet' or 'Macbeth' is the most +splendid example of Shakspere's surpassing en<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>dowment, or whether we +consider the 'Fourth Symphony' or the 'Seventh' the completest +expression of Beethoven's mastery of music. What it is of consequence +for us to recognize and to grasp effectually is that Shakspere and +Beethoven are two of the indisputable chiefs, each in his own sphere. +What it imports us to realize is that there is in every art a little +group of supreme leaders; they may be two or three only; they may be +half a dozen, or, at the most, half a score; but they stand in the +forefront, and their supremacy is inexpugnable for all time.</p> + +<p>Every one recognizes to-day that "certain poets like Dante and +Shakspere, certain composers like Beethoven and Mozart, hold the +foremost place in their art." So Taine insisted, adding that this +foremost place is also "accorded to Goethe, among the writers of our +century; to Rembrandt among the Dutch painters; to Titian among the +Venetians." And then Taine asserted also that "three artists of the +Italian renascence, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, rise, +by unanimous consent, far above all others."</p> + +<p>No doubt this list of supreme leaders in the arts is unduly scanted; but +there is wisdom in Taine's parsimony of praise. The great names he has +here selected for signal eulogy are those whose appeal is universal and +whose fame far transcends the boundaries of any single race.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>It may have been from Sainte-Beuve that Taine inherited his catholicity +of taste and his elevation of judgment; and it was due to the influence +of Sainte-Beuve also that Matthew Arnold attained to a breadth of vision +denied to most other British critics. Arnold invited us to "conceive of +the whole group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and +spiritual purposes, one great confederation whose members have a due +knowledge both of the past out of which they all proceed, and of one +another." He went on to suggest that for any artist or poet "to be +recognized by the verdict of such a confederation as a master is indeed +glory, a glory which it would be difficult to rate too highly. For what +could be more beneficent, more salutary? The world is forwarded by +having its attention fixt on the best things; and here is a tribunal, +free from all suspicion of national and provincial partiality, putting a +stamp on the best things and recommending them for general honor and +acceptance." Then he added the shrewd suggestion that there would be +direct advantage to each race in seeing which of its own great men had +been promoted to the little group of supreme leaders, since "a nation is +furthered by recognition of its real gifts and successes; it is +encouraged to develop them further."</p> + +<p>Who, then, are the supreme leaders in the <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>several departments of human +endeavor? By common consent of mankind who are the supreme soldiers, the +supreme painters, the supreme poets? To attempt to name them is as +difficult as it is dangerous; but the effort itself may be profitable, +even if the ultimate result is not wholly satisfactory. To undertake +this is not to revive the puerile debate as to whether Washington or +Napoleon was the greater man; rather it is a frank admission that both +were preëminent, with the further inquiry as to those others who may +have achieved a supremacy commensurate with theirs. To seek out these +indisputable masters is not to imitate the vain desire of the pedagog to +give marks to the several geniuses, and to grade the greatest of men as +if they were school-boys. There is no pedantry in striving to ascertain +the list of the lonely few whom the assembled nations are all willing +now to greet as the assured masters of the several arts.</p> + +<p>The selection made by a single race or by a single century is not likely +to be widely or permanently acceptable. Long years ago the Italians were +wont to speak of the Four Poets, <i>quattro poete</i>, meaning thereby Dante, +Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso. But this was a choice far too local and +far too narrow. Of these four Italian poets perhaps only the severe +Florentine has won his way outside of the boundaries of the language he +<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>did so much to ennoble,—altho it may be admitted that the gentle +Petrarch had also for a century a wide influence on the lyrists of other +tongues.</p> + +<p>Lowell had a more cosmopolitan outlook on literature, when he discust +'The Five Indispensable Authors'—Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakspere, +and Goethe. "Their universal and perennial application to our +consciousness and our experience accounts for their permanence and +insures their immortality." We may admit that all five of the authors +designated by Lowell are truly indispensable, just as we must accept +also the incomparable position of the four leaders in the several arts +whom Taine set apart in lonely elevation. But both Taine's list and +Lowell's we feel to be too brief. The French critic had ranged thru +every realm of art to discover finally that the incontestable masters +were four and four only. The American critic, altho he limited himself +to the single art of literature, dealt with it at large, not +distinguishing between the poets and the masters of prose.</p> + +<p>If we strike out of Lowell's list the single name of Cervantes, who was +a poet only in a special and arbitrary sense, we shall have left the +names of the four poets whose fame is world-wide—Homer, Dante, +Shakspere, Goethe—the only poets whose supremacy is admitted thruout +our modern civilization.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>To these Matthew Arnold insisted on adjoining a fifth, Milton; and we +who speak the same tongue would gladly enroll the blind singer with the +other four. Indeed, we might even hold Milton to be securer in this +place than Goethe, who has not yet been a hundred years in his grave. +But if we ask the verdict of "the whole group of civilized nations," +which Matthew Arnold himself impaneled as "free from all suspicion of +national and provincial partiality," we are met with the doubt whether +Milton has established himself among the races that inherit the Latin +tradition as securely as Dante has been accepted by the peoples of +Teutonic stock. However high our own appreciation of Milton may be, the +cosmopolitan verdict might not include him among the supreme poets. +Indeed, we may doubt whether Vergil might not have more votes than +Milton, when the struck jury is polled.</p> + +<p>Here, perhaps, we may find our profit in applying a test suggested by +Lowell—the test of imitability. "No poet of the first class has ever +left a school, because his imagination is incommunicable," whereas "the +secondary intellect seeks for excitement in expression, and stimulates +itself into mannerism." The greater geniuses may have influenced those +who came after them by their thoughts, by what they have contributed to +the sum of human knowledge; but "they have not infected contemporaries +or followers with <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>mannerism." Then Lowell points out that "Dante, +Shakspere, and Goethe, left no heirs either to the form or mode of their +expression."</p> + +<p>It was in his lecture on Emerson that Matthew Arnold asked: "Who are the +great men of letters?"—meaning thereby the masters of prose. "They are +men like Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire—writers with, in +the first place, a genius and instinct for style, writers whose prose is +by a kind of native necessity true and sound." The British critic added +that: "It is a curious thing, that quality of style, which marks the +great writer, the born man of letters. It resides in the whole tissue of +his work, and of his work regarded as a composition for literary +purposes." The six masters of prose whom Arnold chose have all of them +this quality of style; and their prose is true and sound. Altho this +list of six was selected by an Englishman, and altho it contains the +names of two Englishmen, it would be acceptable, one may venture to +believe, to the cosmopolitan tribunal, to the heirs of the Latin +tradition and to the peoples of the Teutonic stock. It may lack the +completeness and the finality of the limitation of the supreme poets to +four; but it must be taken as a not unsuccessful attempt to select the +supreme prose-writers.</p> + +<p>Arnold excluded Emerson from the class of "great men of letters" because +the American <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>philosopher had not the instinct for style, and because +his prose was not always true and sound. Lowell, in a letter to a +friend, protested against this, suggesting that the Oxford critic was +like Renan in that he was apt to think "the <i>super</i>fine as good as the +fine, or better even than that." Yet we may agree with the lecturer in +holding that Emerson was rather to be ranked with Marcus Aurelius as +"the friend of those who would live in the spirit," than to be classed +with Cicero and with Swift, obviously inferior in elevation and in aim, +but both of them born men of letters.</p> + +<p>In like manner we must strike out the name of Burke from among the great +orators. A political philosopher he was of keenest insight and of +unfailing eloquence; but he was a poor speaker, and he did not often +rivet the attention of the audiences he addrest. This is why he cannot +establish a claim to inclusion among the supreme orators. Perhaps such a +claim could be made good before the cosmopolitan tribunal by two +speakers only, both belonging far back in the history of our +civilization—Demosthenes and Cicero. Both revealed the needful double +qualifications of the real orator, who shall hold his hearers in the +hollow of his hand while he is speaking, bending them to his will and +swaying them to the course he advocates, while the <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>words he spoke then +must survive now for our delight in their style and in their substance, +a delight independent of the occasion of their utterance.</p> + +<p>Others there are, no doubt, who were also possest of this double gift. +The French, for instance, might well urge the claim of Bossuet to be +raised to the same pinnacle; but the English and the Germans have not +yielded to the spell of his majestic periods. Perhaps we here in the +United States should not be extravagant if we set up also a claim for +Daniel Webster; but, however firm our faith, and however solid our +justification, we should be met with a silent stare from the French and +the Italians and the Spaniards, who might fail even to recognize +Webster's name. Demosthenes and Cicero alone would be hailed as the +supreme orators thruout the whole group of civilized nations.</p> + +<p>There is close kinship between oratory and history; and as the supreme +orators are only two, one a Greek and the other a Roman, so the supreme +historians, however tightly we may restrict the selection, will include +a Greek, Thucydides, and a Roman, Tacitus. With them, and not inferior, +stands Gibbon; and perhaps these three, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon, +are all about whom there would be nowhere any dispute. But there is need +to note that Taine held<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a> Macaulay to be in no wise inferior to Gibbon. +Again, it may be well to mention also that an American authority insists +on elevating Voltaire also, as the earliest of the modern masters of +history.</p> + +<p>So we find that the supreme historians are three at the least, and at +most four or five, just as the supreme poets are four, the supreme +masters of prose are perhaps six, and the supreme orators are only two. +And if we apply the same standards, if we disregard personal and +provincial and national predilections and preferences, if we try to take +the verdict of the cosmopolitan tribunal, we should find that the +supreme dramatists are but three—Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière. +These three only were at once playwrights of contemporary popularity, +masters of dramaturgic craftsmanship, creators of character independent +of their own personality, makers of plays which deal with themes of an +import at once permanent and universal, and poets also, each with his +own philosophy of life.</p> + +<p>Others there are who unite some of these qualifications, but none who +can make good a right to be ranked with the mighty three. It is true +that the power of Æschylus is as undeniable as the pathos of Euripides; +but it is always the clear-eyed Sophocles whom Aristotle accepted as the +master of all who strive for distinction in the <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>theater. And +Aristophanes, with all his exuberance of humor and all his lyric +elevation, is, after all, too local and too temporary to be ranked with +the broad-minded Molière. So also Calderon, whom the polemic Schlegel +wisht to promote to an equality with the very greatest of dramatic +poets, is too careless of form and too medieval in spirit. Promotion +must also be denied, for one reason or another, to Ben Jonson, to +Corneille and Racine, to Schiller, to Alfieri, and to Victor Hugo. +However ardently their claims may be urged by their compatriots, the +international tribunal would refuse to admit any one of them to an +equality with Sophocles, Shakspere, and Molière, the greatest of the +Greeks, the greatest of the English, the greatest of the French, the +three races that have excelled in the arts of the theater.</p> + +<p>Even tho no German can sustain a claim to supremacy in the drama, it is +to the Germans that the consent of the whole world now awards the +incontestable supremacy in the sister art of music. To the race that +gave birth to Bach and Beethoven, to Mozart and Schubert and Wagner, it +matters little whether the chiefs of music number two only, or whether +they may be so many as four or five. Indeed, it may be admitted at once +that the list would need to be widely extended before it would include +the name of any composer who was not a scion of the Teutonic stock.</p> + +<p>There is a certain significance, also, in the <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>probability that the +outsider who could best justify a claim for inclusion would be a Russian +rather than an Italian or a Frenchman. And this estimate, it may be well +to confess, is not personal to the present writer, who has no skill in +music and scant acquaintance with its intricacies; it is the outcome of +a disinterested endeavor to discover the consensus of expert opinion, +free from any racial bias.</p> + +<p>But the northern races who excel in the art of the musician seem to be +inferior to the southern in the arts of the painter and of the +sculptor,—more particularly in the latter. The supreme sculptors are +apparently two or three: Phidias and Michelangelo, beyond all question, +and with them probably we ought also to place Donatello. Of Praxiteles +we know too little. Of most other artists in marble and in bronze we +know too much, however fine their occasional achievements,—Verrocchio's +'Colleoni,' for example. They do not sustain themselves at the lofty +level on which Michelangelo moves with certainty and ease—"the greatest +of known artists," so Mr. Lafarge has ventured to acclaim him; and just +as Shakspere is unsurpassed as a poet and also as a playwright, just as +Cicero takes a foremost place as an orator and also as a writer of +prose, so Michelangelo is mighty as a sculptor, as an architect, and as +a painter.</p> + +<p>As a painter he has more rivals than as a <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>sculptor. We may limit the +supreme masters of the plastic art to two, or to three at the most; but +the supreme masters of the pictorial art are twice three, at the very +least. By the side of Michelangelo there is Raphael, also an Italian; +and has any one really a right to exclude Titian from their fellowship? +Then there are Velasquez, the Spaniard, and Dürer, the German. And +farther north in the Netherlands, there are Rembrandt and Rubens; and +ought not Vandyke to be allowed to stand aloft with them? Six, at the +lowest count, and eight by the more liberal estimate, are the men who +have gone to the forefront in the art of the brush, half of them from +the north and half of them from the south; and among them all not one +who had English for his native speech, and not one whose mother-tongue +was French. Indeed, at least one German, Holbein, and two or three more +Italians would be admitted within the sacred enclosure before any +Frenchman or any Englishman could have free entry.</p> + +<p>Those who speak French and those who speak English fare no better when +we turn from the arts of peace to the art of war. Every race takes pride +in the renown of the far-sighted and swift-striking commanders who have +led it to victory, and every race is prone to over-estimate the military +genius of its own successful soldiers. Here <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>in the United States we +seek to set up Washington and Grant and Lee as the rivals of the most +gifted warriors that the old world has to show in all the long centuries +of its incessant warfare; and in Great Britain our kin across the sea +are led by local loyalty to do the same disservice to Marlborough and +Wellington. But if we were to search the countless treatises on battles +and campaigns written in every modern language, we should soon be forced +to record that there were five men, and only five, whom the experts of +every race united in singling out. In any list of the ten greatest +soldiers, prepared in any country in the world, these five names would +surely appear, even tho the other names on the several lists might be +those of merely national heroes. The five international masters of war +are Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon.</p> + +<p>Napoleon, altho he rose to be Emperor of the French, was a Corsican by +birth and an Italian by descent. The French have ever battled bravely +for military glory; but they have not brought forth one of the supreme +soldiers. The race that speaks English has done its full share of +fighting on land and on sea, but it is on the blue water that it can +give the best account of itself. The supreme leaders in war at sea +worthy to be set by the side of the five supreme leaders in war on land +are two at the very utmost; and probably <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>an international tribunal +would hold that Nelson alone was to be classed with Alexander, Hannibal, +Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon. But it is the opinion of the foremost +living expert on sea-power that Farragut deserves to be placed not far +distant from Nelson, and that the gap which separates the American +sailor from the British is smaller than that which stretches between +Farragut and the third claimant, whoever he may be and of whatever +nationality.</p> + +<p>Turning from the art of war and from the arts of peace to the sciences +whereon all the arts are based, we find that the English and the French +are richly represented. The supreme leaders in science, the men whose +discoveries have been fecundating and fundamental, seem to be at least +seven—Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier, and +Darwin. This list might well be larger; it could not be less; and no +matter how it might be extended it would include these seven. None of +them was merely an inventor of specific devices; all of them were +discoverers of essential principles, and thereby contributors to the +advancement of civilization and to man's mastery of knowledge.</p> + +<p>It would be interesting, as it would be instructive, if we could also +enumerate the supreme leaders in religion; but this is a field in which +prejudice is too violent ever to permit a serene <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>view, and there is no +hoping for an international verdict. Nor would it be possible to find +any agreement as to the supreme statesmen, leaders of men and makers of +nations. That Washington could not be excluded from any choice, however +limited, we may rest assured; but who or how many might really deserve +to be set beside him, we can only guess. National pride is as potent as +religious feeling, and there is no likelihood that rival patriotisms can +ever be reconciled.</p> + +<p>A comparison of the several lists will serve to show the field in which +each of the great races of the world has revealed its native qualities; +and, as Matthew Arnold suggested, this is most useful, since a nation is +benefitted "by recognition of its real gifts and successes; it is +encouraged to develop them further."</p> + +<p>And a consideration also of the character of each of the men whose names +have here been set on high as the supreme leaders of humanity will make +clear once more what is often clouded and obscured—the fact that the +true genius is never an erratic creature, irregular and irresponsible, +clamoring for indulgence and appealing for pity. He is always strong and +sane and wholesome. Clear-eyed and broad-minded, he has self-control and +common-sense.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1905.) </p></div> + +<p><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a></p><p><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a></p> +<h2>AN APOLOGY FOR TECHNIC</h2> + + +<p>If the chief end of all art is delight, there is small blame to be +attached to most of us in that we are glad to take our pleasure +carelessly and to give little thought to the means whereby we have been +moved. Properly enough, the enjoyment of most of us is unthinking; and +in the appreciation of the masterpieces of the several arts few of us +are wont to consider curiously the craftsmanship of the men who wrought +these marvels, their skill of hand, their familiarity with the mechanics +of their art, their consummate knowledge of technic. Our regard is +centered rather on the larger aspects of the masterwork, on its meaning +and on its veracity, on its intellectual elevation, and on its moral +appeal. No doubt this is best, for it is only by its possession of these +nobler qualities that a work of art endures. On the other hand, these +nobler qualities by themselves will not suffice to confer immortality, +unless they are sustained by the devices of the adroit craftsman. As +Massinger asserted long ago:</p> + +<p><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a></p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">No fair colors</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can fortify a building faintly joined.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Technic is most successful when its existence is least suspected, and +this is one reason why it is often overlooked and neglected in the very +achievements which owe to its aid their vitality. Perhaps this happens +the more frequently because it is the affectation of many an artist to +hurry his tools out of sight as swiftly as he can, and to sweep up the +chips of his workshop as soon as may be, so that the result of his +effort shall seem almost as if it were the sudden effect of the +inspiration that is believed to visit a genius now and again. He may +have toiled at it unceasingly for months, joying in the labor and +finding keen pleasure in every workmanlike artifice he had used to +attain his end; and yet he refrains from confessing his many struggles +with his rebellious material, wisely preferring to let what he has done +speak for itself, simply and without commentary. But the artists know +that the pathway to achievement is never along the line of least +resistance; and they smile when they hear Mascarille, in Molière's +little comedy, tell the affected young ladies whom he is seeking to +impress that all he did "was done without effort." By this the artists +at once perceive the fellow to be a pretender, who had never +accomplished anything and who never would. They <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>know, as no others can +know, that there is no cable-road to the tops of the twin-peaks of +Parnassus, and that he who would climb to these remote heights must +trudge afoot,—even if he is lucky enough now and again to get a lift on +Pegasus.</p> + +<p>What the artists do not care to parade, it is the duty of the +commentators to point out; and an understanding of the technic of any +art, of its possibilities and of its limitations, is as necessary for +the critics as for the creators. Perhaps it is not pedantic to suggest +that the critic who seeks to be of service ought to be able to see in +every masterpiece the result of the combined action of three forces, +without any one of which that work of art could not have come into +being. First, there is the temperament of the artist himself, his native +endowment for the practise of that special art, his gift of +story-telling or of play-making, as the case may be. Second, there is +the training of the artist, his preparation for his work, his slowly +acquired mastery of the processes of his craft, his technical +accomplishments. And, thirdly, there is the man's own character, his +intelligence, and energy, and determination, his moral sense, his +attitude toward life and its insistent problems. Now, of these three +necessary factors—first, his native gift; second, his technic; and, +third, his character—<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>only the second is improvable by taking thought. +The native gift must remain ever what it is, neither more nor less; and +it cannot be enlarged by any effort of will. So also the character, +which is conditioned by much that is beyond a man's control,—which can +be bettered, perhaps, but only as the man himself climbs upward.</p> + +<p>Technic, however, can be had for the asking. Any man can acquire it if +he will but pay the price,—the needful study and experiment. Any man +can make himself a master of his craft, if he will but serve his +apprenticeship loyally. The beginner in painting, for example, can go +into the studio of an older practitioner to get grounded in the grammar +of his art, and to learn slowly how to speak its language, not +eloquently at first, but so as to make his meaning clear. In that +workshop he soon awakens to the fact that permanent success is never won +by any audacity of ignorance, and that the most famous artists are those +who acquainted themselves with every artifice of their craft and with +every trick of their trade. They went to school to certain of their +elders to acquire that tradition of technic, past along from hand to +hand, enriched by the devices of one after another of the strong men who +had practised the art, following each in the other's footsteps and +broadening the trail blazed by those who went first.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Every generation is privileged to stand on the shoulders of its +predecessors, and it is taller by what they accomplished. The art of +fiction, for example, is a finer art to-day than it was yesterday; and +so is every other art, even tho the artists themselves are no greater +now than then, and even tho genius is no more frequent than it was +formerly. Ghirlandajo and Marlowe and Cervantes were men of genius; but +their technic is seen to-day to be as primitive as their native talent +is indisputable. We can perceive them doubtfully feeling for a formula, +fumbling in the dark, for want of the model which they themselves were +to aid in establishing and which every novice nowadays has ready to his +hand, even tho he may lack the temperament to profit by what is set +before him.</p> + +<p>It is significant that not a few of the masters, in the days when they +were but novices, found so much satisfaction in this mere acquiring of +the secrets of the craft, that they chose to linger in the +apprentice-stage longer than might seem necessary. In their earlier work +they were content modestly to put in practise the technical principles +they had just been acquiring; and for a little while they sought +scarcely more than mere technical adroitness. Consider the firstlings of +Shakspere's art and of Molière's; and observe how they reveal these +prentice playwrights at <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>work, each seeking to display his cleverness +and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,' +Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and +ingenuity of device, just as Molière in the 'Étourdi' is enjoying his +own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of +importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he +should want to say something. Neither in the English comedy nor in the +French is there any purpose other than the desire to please by the +devices of the theater.</p> + +<p>There is so little hint of a deeper meaning in either 'Love's Labor's +Lost' or the 'Étourdi,' of a moral, so to speak, of a message of +ulterior significance, that, if Shakspere and Molière had died after +these plays were produced, nobody would ever have suspected that either +youthful playwright had it in him to develop into a philosophic observer +of the deeper realities of life. Of course, neither of them was long +satisfied with this dexterous display of technical adroitness alone; +and, as they grew in years, we find their plays getting richer in +meaning and dealing more seriously with the larger problems of +existence. But technic was never despised; and, if it was not always the +chief end of the playwright, it remained the means whereby he was +enabled to erect the solid framework of masterpieces like<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a> 'Othello' and +'Tartuffe,' in which the craftsmanship is overshadowed by the nobler +qualities, no doubt, but in which the stark technical skill is really +more abundant than in the earlier and emptier plays.</p> + +<p>As Shakspere and Molière matured mentally and morally, so also did they +grow in facility of accomplishment, in the ease with which they could +handle the ever-present problems of exposition and construction. The +student of dramaturgy notes with increasing delight the ingenuity with +which the first appearance of Tartuffe is prepared; and he finds an +almost equal joy in the bolder beginnings of 'Romeo and Juliet' and of +'Hamlet,' where the difficulty was less, it may be, but where the +interest of the craftsman in the excellence of his device is quite as +obvious. Shakspere was the greatest of dramatic poets and Molière was +the greatest of comic dramatists; and both of them were good workmen, +taking an honest pride in the neatness with which they finished a job. +In his later years, Shakspere seems to have relaxed a little his +interest in technic, and the value of his work is at once seen to +suffer. Altho his mind is as powerful as ever up to the last years of +his stay in London, 'Cymbeline' and 'A Winter's Tale' are far inferior +to 'Hamlet' and to 'Macbeth'; and the cause is apparently little more +than a care<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>lessness of technic, an unwillingness to take the trouble +needful to master his material and to present it in due proportion.</p> + +<p>If Shakspere and Molière ever meet in that other world which was so much +in the mind of the one and so little in the thought of the other, and if +they chance to fall into chat—Shakspere spoke French, pretty certainly, +even if Molière knew no English—we may rest assured that they will not +surprize each other by idle questions about the meaning of this play or +that, its moral purpose or its symbolic significance. We may be +confident that their talk would turn promptly to technic; and, perhaps, +Shakspere would congratulate Molière on his advantage in coming later, +when the half-open, semi-medieval playhouse, with which the English +dramatist had perforce to be contented, had been superseded by a more +modern theater, roofed and lighted and set with scenery. And, in his +turn, Molière might be curious to inquire how the English playwright was +able to produce upon the spectators the effect of a change of scene +when, in fact, there was no actual scenery to change.</p> + +<p>To suggest that these two masters of the dramatic art would probably +confine their conversation to matters of mere technic is not so vain or +adventurous as it may seem, since technic is the one theme the +dramatists from Lope de<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a> Vega to Legouvé have always chosen to discuss, +whenever they have been emboldened to talk about their art in public. +Lope's 'New Art of Writing Plays' is in verse, and it has taken for its +remote model Horace's 'Art of Poetry,' but none the less does it contain +the practical counsels of a practical playwright, advising his +fellow-craftsmen how best to succeed on the stage; and it is just as +technical in its precepts as Mr. Pinero's acute lecture on the probable +success of Robert Louis Stevenson as a dramatist, if only the Scots +romancer had taken the trouble to learn the rules of the game, as it is +played in the theater of to-day.</p> + +<p>In thus centering the interest of their public utterance upon the +necessities of craftsmanship, the dramatists are in accord with the +customs of the practitioners of all the other arts. Consider the +criticism of poetry by the poets themselves, for example,—how narrowly +it is limited to questions of vocabulary or of versification, whether +the poet-critic is Dryden or Wordsworth or Poe. Consider the criticism +of painting by the painters themselves,—how frankly it is concerned +with the processes of the art, whether the painter-critic is Fromentin +or La Farge. It is La Farge who records that Rembrandt was a "workman +following his trade of painting to live by it," and who reminds us that +"these very great artists"—<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>Rembrandt and his fellows—"are primarily +workmen, without any pose or assumption of doing more than a daily +task." What they did was all in the day's work. One of the most +distinguished of American sculptors was once standing before a +photograph of the Panathenaic frieze, and a critical friend by his side +exprest a wonder as to "what those old Greeks were thinking of when they +did work like that?" The professional artist smiled and responded: "I +guess that, like the rest of us, they were thinking how they could pull +it off!"</p> + +<p>The method, the tricks of the trade, the ingenious devices of one kind +or another, these are what artists of all sorts like to discuss with +fellow-practitioners of the art; and it is by this interchange of +experiences that the means of expression are multiplied. The inner +meaning of what they have wrought, its message, its morality, its +subtler spirit, the artists do not care ever to talk over, even with +each other. This is intangible and incommunicable; and it is too +personal, too intimate, to be vulgarized in words; it is to be felt +rather than phrased. Above all, it must speak for itself, for it is +there because it had to be there, and not because the artist put it +there deliberately. If he has not builded better than he knew, then is +the result of his labor limited and narrow. A story is told of +Thor<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>waldsen in his old age, when a friend found him disconsolate before +a finished statue and inquired if he was despondent because he had not +been able to realize his ideal. And the sculptor responded that, on the +contrary, he had realized his ideal, and therefore he was downcast; for +the first time his hand had been able to accomplish all that his mind +had planned.</p> + +<p>"Neither in life, nor even in literature and in art, can we always do +what we intend to do," M. Brunetière once asserted, adding that, "in +compensation, we have not always intended to do all that we have +actually accomplished." Often no one is more astonished than the artist +himself—be he poet or painter—at what the critics sometimes find in +his work; and he is frankly unaware of any intention on his part to do +all the fine things which he is told that he has done. But the critics +may be justified, despite the disclaimer of the artist; and the fine +things are, of a truth, to be discovered even tho they get into the work +by accident, as it were, and even tho they may be the result of an +intention which was either unconscious on the artist's part, or +subconscious.</p> + +<p>We cannot help feeling the sublimity so obvious in the frescos of the +Sistine Chapel; and yet it is equally obvious—if we care to look for +the evidence—that while he was at this work the mind of Michelangelo +was absorbed by the con<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>quest of a host of technical difficulties. Of +course, it would be going too far to assert that the great artist did +not actually intend the sublimity that we admire and wonder at; but we +may be sure that this sublimity is not something deliberately planned +and achieved by him. It is there because the theme evoked it, and +because Michelangelo was himself a man of the noblest character and of +the loftiest imagination. It was inherent and latent in him, and it had +to come out, inevitably and mightily, when he was engaged on a piece of +work that tasked all his powers.</p> + +<p>An ideal, a significance, a moral, that has to be inserted into a work +of art and that might have been omitted, is not likely to be firmly +joined; and it is liable to fall apart sooner or later. Morality, for +example, is not something to be put in or left out, at the caprice of +the creator; it is, as Mr. Henry James once called it, "a part of the +essential richness of inspiration." Therefore the artist need not give +thought to it. If his own soul is as clean as may be, and if his vision +is clear, the moral of his work may be left to take care of itself. +Nearly always when an artist has been over-anxious to charge his work +with a moral message, written so plain that all who run may read, he has +failed to attain either of his ends, the ethical or the esthetic. There +is a purpose plainly exprest in Miss Edge<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>worth's 'Moral Tales' and in +her 'Parent's Assistant'; and the result is that healthy girls and +wholesome boys are revolted. There was no moral intent in her +ever-delightful 'Castle Rackrent'; and yet it has an ethical +significance which few of its readers can have failed to feel.</p> + +<p>Perhaps 'Castle Rackrent' is the finest of Miss Edgeworth's stories, +because it is the only one in which she had set herself a technical +problem of exceeding difficulty. She chose to use the faithful old +retainer to tell the tale of the family's downfall in consequence of its +weakness, its violence, and its vice. Thady has never a word of blame +for any son of the house he has served generation after generation. +Indeed, he is forever praising his succession of masters; but so +artfully does the author utilize the device of transparency that the +reader is put in possession of the damning facts, one by one, and is +soon able to see the truth of the matter which Thady himself has no +thought of revealing,—which, indeed, he would probably deny indignantly +if it was suggested by any one else.</p> + +<p>The chief reason why the novel is still held to be inferior to the drama +is to be found in its looseness of form. The novel is not strictly +limited, as the play must be by the practical necessities of the +theater; and the practitioners of the art of fiction permit themselves a +license <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>of structure which cannot but be enfeebling to the artists +themselves. Few of the novelists have ever gone about a whole winter +with a knot in their foreheads, such as Hawthorne carried there while he +was thinking out the 'Scarlet Letter.' And only by strenuous grappling +with his obstacles was he able to attain the masterly simplicity of that +Puritan tragedy. A resolute wrestling with difficulty is good not only +for the muscles but also for the soul; and it may be because they know +this, that artists are inclined to go afield in search of difficulties +to be overthrown, that they set themselves problems, that they accept +limitations. Herein we may see a cause for the long popularity of the +sonnet, with its restricted scheme of rimes. Herein, again, we may see a +reason for the desire of the novelist to try his fate as a dramatist. +"To work successfully beneath a few grave, rigid laws," so Mr. James +once declared, "is always a strong man's highest ideal of success." The +novelist often fails as a dramatist, because he has the gift of the +story-teller only, and not that of the play-maker, but more often still +because the writing of fiction has provided him with no experience in +working beneath any law other than his own caprice.</p> + +<p>The modern sculptor, by the mere fact that he may now order marble of +any shape and of any <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>size, finds his work far easier and, therefore, +far less invigorating than it was long ago, when the artist needed to +have an alerter imagination to perceive in a given piece of marble the +beautiful figure he had to cut out of that particular block and no +other. Professor Mahaffy has suggested that the decay of genius may be +traced to the enfeebling facilities of our complex civilization. "In +art," he maintained, "it is often the conventional shackles,—the +necessities of rime and meter, the triangle of a gable, the circular top +of a barrel—which has led the poet, the sculptor, or the painter, to +strike out the most original and perfect products of their art. +Obstacles, if they are extrinsic and not intrinsic, only help to feed +the flame." Professor Butcher has declared that genius "wins its most +signal triumphs from the very limitations within which it works." And +this is what Gautier meant when he declared that the greater the +difficulty the more beautiful the work; or, as Mr. Austin Dobson has +paraphrased it:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yes; when the ways oppose—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When the hard means rebel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairer the work outgrows,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">More potent far the spell.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Not only has a useful addition to the accepted devices of the craft been +the guerdon of a victorious grapple with a difficulty, but the +success<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>ful effort to solve a purely technical problem has often led to +an ennobling enlargement of the original suggestion, with which the +artist might have rested content if he had not been forced to the +struggle. From the history of sculpture and of architecture here in the +United States during the last years of the nineteenth century, it is +easy to select two instances of this enrichment of the fundamental idea, +as the direct consequence of an unexpected obstacle which the artist +refused to consider a stumbling-block, preferring to make it a +stepping-stone to a loftier achievement.</p> + +<p>When the city of New York was making ready to welcome the men of the +navy on their return from Manila and Santiago, the Architectural League +offered to design a triumphal arch. The site assigned, in front of +Madison Square, just where Broadway slants across Fifth Avenue, forced +the architect to face a difficulty seemingly unsurmountable. The line of +march was to be along Fifth Avenue, and, therefore, the stately monument +was set astride that street. But the line of approach, for most of the +multitude certain to come to gaze on the temporary addition to civic +beauty, was along Broadway; and the arch built squarely across the +avenue would seem askew to all who first caught sight of it from the +other street. To avoid this unfortunate effect <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>the designer devised a +colonnade, extending north and south, up and down the avenue. Thus he +corrected the apparent slant by emphasizing the fact that it was the +avenue in which the arch was placed and not the more popular highway +that chanced to cut across it. But this colonnade, invented solely to +solve a difficulty, lent itself readily to rich adornment. It became at +once an integral element of the architectural scheme, to which it gave +breadth as well as variety. It was accepted instantly as a welcome +modification of the tradition,—as an amplification not to be wantonly +disregarded by any architect hereafter called upon to design a triumphal +arch.</p> + +<p>To this illustration from architecture may be added another from +sculpture, as suggestive and as useful in showing how a conquest of +technical difficulty is likely ever to increase the resources of the +art. The sculptor of the statue of Lincoln, which ennobles a park of +Chicago, was instructed that the work of his hands was to stand upon a +knoll, visible from all sides, stark against the sky, unprotected by any +background of entablature or canopy. The gaunt figure of Lincoln is not +a thing of beauty to be gazed at from all the points of the compass; and +the stern veracity of the artist would not permit him to disguise the +ill-fitting coat and trousers by any arbitrary draperies, mendaciously +cloaking the <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>clothes which were intensely characteristic of the man to +be modeled. To shield the awkwardness of the effigy when seen from the +rear, a chair was placed behind it; and so the sculptor was led to +present Lincoln as the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, arisen from the +chair of state, to address the people from whom he had received his +authority. And thus, at that late day, at the end of the nineteenth +century, Mr. Saint-Gaudens did a new thing; altho there had been +standing statues and seated statues, no sculptor had ever before +designed a figure just rising from his seat.</p> + +<p>It is by victories like these over technical difficulties that the arts +advance; and it is in combats like these that the true artist finds his +pleasure. The delight of battle is his, as he returns to the attack, +again and again, until at last he wins the day and comes home laden with +the spoil. The true artist hungers after technic for its own sake, well +knowing the nourishment it affords. He even needlessly puts on fetters +now and again, that he may find sharper zest in his effort. This +ravenous appetite for technic leads many an artist to go outside his own +art in search of unforeseen but fascinating difficulties. The painter is +tempted to stretch his muscles by a tussle with the unknown obstacles of +the sculptor; and the sculptor in his turn contends with the limitations +of the painter. Michelangelo called himself a sculptor and pretended to +<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>be no more; but in time he took up the craft of the architect, of the +painter and of the poet. And this interchange of field in search of new +worlds to conquer seems to be characteristic of the great periods of +artistic activity and achievement. In all such periods, the more +accomplished craftsmen have never wearied of technical experiment to the +constant enrichment of the processes of their art.</p> + +<p>It is the uncreative critics, it is never the creative craftsmen, who +dwell on the danger of taking too much interest in technic. The critics +may think that the more attention the artist pays to his manner, the +less he has for his matter, and that he is in peril of sacrificing +content to form. But the craftsmen themselves know better; they know +that no one may surely separate manner and matter, form and content, +Siamese twins often, coming into being at a single birth. Furthermore, +the artist knows that technic is the one quality he can control, every +man for himself, every man improving himself as best he can. His native +gift, his temperament,—this is what it is; and what it is it must be; +and no man can better it by any effort. His character, also, the +personality of the artist, that which gives a large meaning to his +work,—how little can any man control this result of heredity and +environment?</p> + +<p>If an artist has anything to say it will out, <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>sooner or later, however +absorbed he may be in finding the best way of saying it. If he has +nothing to say, if he has no message for the heart of man, he may at +least give some pleasure to his contemporaries by the sheer dexterity of +his craftsmanship. There would have been no more meaning in Poe's verse, +if there had been less melody, if the poet had less devotedly studied +the "book of iambs and pentameters." There would have been no larger +significance in the painted epigrams of Gérôme, if that master of line +had cared less for draftsmanship. There would have been no more solid +value in the often amusing plays of Sardou, if he had not delighted in +the ingenuity of his dramaturgical devices. At bottom, Sardou, Gérôme, +and Poe, had little or nothing to say; that is their misfortune, no +doubt; but it is not their fault, for, apparently, each one of them made +the best of his native gift.</p> + +<p>In his time Milton was the most careful and conscientious of artists in +verse-making, and so, in his turn, was Pope, whose ideals were +different, but whose skill was no less in its kind. So, again, was +Tennyson untiring in seeking to attain ultimate perfection of phrase, +consciously employing every artifice of alliteration, assonance and +rime. But, if Milton's verse seems to us now noble and lofty, while +Pope's appears to us as rather petty and merely clever, surely this is +be<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>cause Milton himself was noble and his native endowment lofty, and +because Pope himself was petty and his gift only cleverness; surely it +is not because they were both of them as much interested in the +mechanics of their art as was Tennyson after them.</p> + +<p>One of the wittiest critics of our modern civilization, the late +Clarence King, remarked, some ten years ago, that the trouble with +American fiction just then lay in the fact that it had the most +elaborate machinery,—and no boiler. But the fault of our fiction at +that time was to be sought in the absence of steam,—and not in the +machinery itself which stood ready to do its work, to the best advantage +and with the utmost economy of effort, just so soon as the power might +be applied.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1904.) </p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a></p> +<h2>OLD FRIENDS WITH NEW FACES</h2> + + +<p>Thackeray was frequent in praise of Fenimore Cooper, hailing +Leatherstocking as better than any of "Scott's lot"; and this laudation +appeared in the 'Roundabout Papers' long after the British novelist had +paid to the American romancer the sincere flattery of borrowing from the +last words of Natty Bumppo the suggestion, at least, of the last words +of Colonel Newcome. Cooper's backwoodsman, hearing an inaudible +roll-call had responded "Here!" a score of years before Thackeray's old +soldier had become again a child to answer "Adsum!" Not less than a +score of years later an old sailor in one of the stories of Sir Walter +Besant made his final exit from this world with a kindred phrase, "Come +on board, sir!" And then, once more, in one of Mr. Kipling's 'Plain +Tales from the Hills,' we find the last dying speech and confession of a +certain McIntosh who had been a scholar and a gentleman in days gone by, +and who had sunk into irredeemable degradation in India. When his hour +came, he rose in bed and <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>said, as loudly as slowly, "Not guilty, my +Lord!" Then he fell back, and the stupor held him till he died.</p> + +<p>There are criticasters not a few who would denounce Thackeray and Besant +and Mr. Kipling as arrant plagiarists; but critics of a more delicate +perception of the principles of art would rather praise these authors +for the ingenuity with which they had successively made use of Cooper's +original device. Indeed, the more delicate the perceptions of the critic +the less likely would he be to assert positively that all four authors +had not hit on the same effect independently. Thackeray may have taken +it over from Cooper, consciously or unconsciously; Besant may have +borrowed it from either his British or his American predecessor; and +Kipling may have been familiar with it in the pages of Cooper, of +Thackeray, and of Besant, and still have found amusement in giving a new +twist to an old trick. But it is perfectly possible that we have here an +instance of purely accidental similarity, such as keen-eyed readers can +discover abundantly in the highways and byways of literary history.</p> + +<p>The theme of M. Paul Bourget's 'André Cornélis' is that of 'Hamlet,' but +in all probability the French novelist was not aware that he was +treading in the footsteps of the English dramatist until his own plot +had taken shape in his mind.<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a> A situation in 'Vanity Fair'—that of +Dobbin in love with the widowed Amelia and yet unwilling to break down +her belief in her dead husband's fidelity—was utilized in the +'Henrietta' of Mr. Bronson Howard, who was characteristically scrupulous +in recording on the playbill his indebtedness to Thackeray's novel; and +this same situation at about the same time had been utilized also in a +little one-act play, 'This Picture and That,' by an author who had never +doubted it to be of his own invention (altho he had read 'Vanity Fair' +more than once), and who did not discover how he had exposed himself to +the accusation of plagiarism until he happened to see the 'Henrietta' +acted, and to perceive the full significance of Mr. Howard's memorandum.</p> + +<p>It deserves to be noted also that when Colonel Esmond broke his sword +before the unworthy prince whom he had served so long and so loyally, he +was only following an example which had been set by the noble Athos, who +had snapt his weapon asunder before Louis XIV because that inhuman +monarch had taken for himself Mlle. de la Vallière, the young lady +beloved by the Vicomte de Bragelonne, the son of Athos. And the same +effect is to be found also in the opera of 'La Favorite.' The book of +Donizetti's opera bears the names of Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz; +but it is said to have <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>been revised by Scribe. It was derived from a +forgotten play called the 'Comte de Comminges,' written by one +Baculard-D'Arnaud, and this in turn had been taken from a novel written +by the notorious Mme. de Tencin, the callous mother of D'Alembert. The +scene of the sword-breaking is not in the novel or the play; and quite +possibly it may have been introduced into the book of the opera by the +fertile and ingenious Scribe. 'La Favorite' was produced in 1840, when +Thackeray was in Paris preparing the 'Paris Sketch Book.' It was in 1850 +that Dumas published the 'Vicomte de Bragelonne'; and it was in 1852 +that Thackeray put forth 'Henry Esmond.' But it was back in 1829 that +the commandant Hulot in Balzac's 'Chouans' had broken his sword across +his knee rather than carry out an order that seemed to him unworthy. +This is not quite the same effect that we find in 'La Favorite'; but +none the less Scribe may have been indebted to Balzac for the +suggestion.</p> + +<p>There is no denying that the striking situation which Thackeray used +with so much skill in his novel had already been utilized in the +stirring romance of Durras and in the pathetic libretto of Royer, Vaëz, +and Scribe. Did Thackeray borrow it from the romance or from the +libretto? Or did he reinvent it for himself, forgetting that it had +already served? He was in Paris when<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a> Donizetti's tuneful music was +first heard; and he was going to the opera as often as he could. He was +fond of Dumas's interminable tales of adventure; and he had a special +liking for Athos. It is in one of the 'Roundabout Papers'—'On a Peal of +Bells'—that he declared his preference. "Of your heroic heroes, I think +our friend, Monseigneur Athos, Comte de la Fère, is my favorite." Is +this a case of conveyance, such as is often carelessly called +plagiarism? or is it a case of unconscious reminiscence? That Dumas knew +what he was doing when he lifted the situation out of 'La Favorite' is +very likely, for it was not his custom to be overscrupulous in taking +what he could make his own. But Thackeray had been careful to credit the +suggestion of one or two of his earlier French sketches to the Parisian +story-tellers he had put under contribution. Besides he was a man of +transparent honesty; and it is therefore highly probable that he had no +consciousness that the scene was not original with him.</p> + +<p>In one of his conversations with Eckermann, Goethe declared that Byron +had not known how to meet the charge of levying on the earlier poets. +The German sage asserted that the English bard should have been far +bolder in his own defence, and far franker also. Byron should have said: +"What is there, is mine; and whether I got <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>it from a book or from life, +is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have made a right use +of it." And then Goethe added that in one of the Waverley novels Scott +had appropriated a scene from 'Egmont'; "and he had a right to do so; +and because he did it well, he deserves praise." Goethe seemed to think +that the privilege of using again what had been invented by another was +justified only when the later author improved on the earlier, or at +least attained to an equal level. He noted that Scott had taken Mignon +in 'Wilhelm Meister' as the model of Fenella in 'Peveril of the +Peak'—"but whether with equal judgment is another question."</p> + +<p>Goethe was wise enough to know that human invention is finite and that +the number of possible effects is limited. He once told Eckermann and +Soret that the Italian playwright, Gozzi, had asserted the existence of +only thirty-six possible tragic situations, and that Schiller had taken +much trouble in trying to prove that there were more, only in the end to +find himself unable to gather even so many as Gozzi had collected. "It +is almost impossible, in the present day," commented Goethe, "to find a +situation which is thoroly new. Only the manner of looking at it can be +new, and the art of treating it and representing it."</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, we have not Gozzi's list of the <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>three dozen situations, +nor Schiller's smaller catalog to compare with it. Gérard de +Nerval—that strangest figure of a strange period—considered the matter +anew in the fervid days of French romanticism, and decided that there +were in reality only twenty-four typical situations available for the +theater; but his classification has also failed to come down to us. +However, in the last decade of the nineteenth century an ingenious +Frenchman, M. Georges Polti, accepting the number originally proposed by +Gozzi, examined the plots of several thousand plays, classified the +result of his arduous investigation, and published a little book of two +hundred pages on the '36 Situations Dramatiques.'</p> + +<p>Highly interesting as is M. Polti's book, there is not a little +difficulty in grasping the theory upon which he has assorted his immense +collection into exactly three dozen divisions. The logic of his grouping +is not immediately apparent, as it would have been had he taken the +passions, for instance, as the several foundations. His first situation, +for example, is that which we find in one of the earliest of Greek +plays, the 'Suppliants.' M. Polti entitles it 'To Implore,' and he +indicates varying possible subdivisions: (A1) Fugitives imploring +shelter against their enemies, as in the tragedy of Æschylus, the second +act of Shakspere's 'King John,' and re<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>peatedly in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'; +(B1) the ship-wrecked imploring hospitality, as in more than one ancient +drama. But this first situation of his M. Polti finds to be infrequent +on the modern stage, altho often met with in the Greek theater. His +second situation, which we may call 'To Rescue from Imminent Danger,' +has been widely popular alike with the ancients and the moderns, so we +have in subdivision (A) a condemned person rescued by a hero, as in the +myth of Andromeda, the folk-tale of Bluebeard, and the first act of +'Lohengrin'; and in subdivision (B2) a condemned person rescued by a +guest of the house, as in the 'Alcestis' of Euripides.</p> + +<p>These two situations, however, are far less effective in evoking the +special pleasure proper to the theater than the nineteenth on M. Polti's +list, "To kill unknowingly one of your own blood." The full force of the +theatric effect of this situation is dependent on the spectators' +complete knowledge of the relationship of slayer and slain, unsuspected +by the victims themselves; and the strength of the situation resides not +in the mere killing, which may indeed be averted at the last moment, but +in the steadily gathering dread which ought to accompany the +preparations for the evil deed. This situation in one or another of its +subdivisions we find in 'Nicholas Nickleby,' as well as in 'Œdipus +the King' and <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>in 'Lady Inger of Ostraat'; in Sophocles it is a son who +murders his unknown father, and in Ibsen it is a mother who murders her +unknown son. It is to be found in the 'Semiramis' of Voltaire, in the +'Merope' of Alfieri, in the 'Ion' of Euripides, and again and again in +Victor Hugo's dramas. M. Polti points out that this single situation is +utilized as the culminating point at the very end of four of Hugo's +plays—the 'Burgraves,' 'Marie Tudor,' 'Lucrèce Borgia' and 'Le Roi +s'amuse' (which supplied the plot for the opera of 'Rigoletto') and he +insists further that one or another subdivision of this situation has +been employed by Hugo at least five times in the single drama of +'Lucrèce Borgia.' If there are still any who hold that Hugo as a +dramatist was "of the race and lineage of Shakspere," they may find +instruction in the fact that this highly artificial situation, which the +superb French lyrist was seemingly unable to leave out of his +arbitrarily complicated plots, was not employed even once by the great +English dramatist.</p> + +<p>Probably nothing would have more disagreeably surprized Hugo—who held +himself to be extraordinarily prolific and various, and who indeed had +abundant reason for this belief—than the disclosure of the fact that he +had made use so often of a single situation. And this is evidence, if +any was needed, that the repetition of the <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>same situation by the same +author, or even by a succession of authors down thru the ages, is more +often than not wholly unconscious, and that it is the result, not so +much of any poverty of invention, as of the absolute limitation of the +number of possible situations. The utmost of novelty that any plot-maker +may hope to attain now in the twentieth century is only the result of +his own shuffling of the same pack with which all the plot-makers of the +past have been playing. A new principle he can scarcely hope to invent +for himself; and all that he can safely claim for his most original +sequence of scenes is a patent on the combination.</p> + +<p>M. Polti, indeed, has bravely offered to supply ten thousand new plots, +put together by combining and recombining the manifold subdivisions of +his thirty-six situations, some of which he has ascertained to have been +sadly neglected by the playwrights of our time. One may venture to doubt +whether there would be profit in taking advantage of this generous +offer, for if certain situations essayed in the past have not been +popular of late, there is warrant for wondering whether this neglect is +not due to an instinctive feeling on the part of the playwright of the +present that these situations would fail to excite the interest of the +playgoers of our own time and to evoke an emotional response. To insure +the suc<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>cess of a play, it is not enough that the author should combine +an ingenious sequence of striking scenes; he has always the spectators +to reckon with also, their likes and dislikes. The practical playwright +knows only too well, and often by sad experience, that the audience of +to-day does not relish certain situations which run counter to its +prejudices and its predilections, however pleasing these same situations +may have been to audiences of the past. The duty of personal vengeance, +for example—which was at the center of the tragedy-of-blood, ever +delightful to Tudor theatergoers—has been disestablished by the advance +of civilization; and it is therefore no longer acceptable as the +dominant motive of a drama of modern life.</p> + +<p>There is not a little significance, however, in another of M. Polti's +suggestions—that perhaps a portion of the beauty and power we discern +in the great plays of the Greeks was directly due to the accepted +limitation of the themes which a tragic writer held himself authorized +to treat. The restriction of the number of available legends forced the +successive dramatists of Athens to handle again, each in his turn, the +dark stories already dealt with by his predecessors. The fateful lives +of Œdipus, for example, and of his family, of Agamemnon, and of his +unhappy offspring—these were shown in action in the <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>orchestra of the +theater of Dionysus again and again, by Æschylus, by Sophocles, by +Euripides, and by many another poet-playwright of that splendid epoch +whose works have not descended to us. Of necessity, the dramatist was +nerved to keenest endeavor by the knowledge that his play had to +withstand a comparison with other plays presenting the same characters +in the same situations, and by the certainty that his personal +contribution would stand out sharply. A similar ordeal was undergone by +the great painters of the Italian Renascence, who tried their hands, +almost all of them, on the Madonna with the Holy Child, on the Descent +from the Cross, and on every other of the score of stock subjects then +in favor for the appropriate decoration of altar and alcove and dome. +There is wisdom in M. Brunetière's assertion that "just as obedience is +the apprenticeship of command, so is imitation the novitiate of +originality."</p> + +<p>We may be assured that this narrow limiting of the number of themes +likely to be treated by the painters of Italy and by the playwrights of +Greece at once diminished the demand on them for mere invention and left +them free to put forth the utmost strength of their imagination, so that +the artist could express himself fully and interpret in his own fashion +a subject certain to be handled sooner or later by the chief of his +fellow-crafts-<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>men. And if the descent from the sublime is not too +sudden, attention might here be called to the similar method of +measuring the skill of the individual performer which we perceive in a +later and more scientific development of what was once almost a game of +chance. In "duplicate whist," as it is called, identical hands are +played in turn by a succession of players, who are thus put to the test +sharply, each withstanding comparison with every one of his rivals.</p> + +<p>A strange fascination there is in the wish that it might be possible to +apply to the art of fiction—which is often little more than a game of +chance—the comparative method of duplicate whist. It would be possible +for us to weigh the merits of the novelists far more exactly, if we +could only impose upon all of them, once in a way, the treatment of the +same theme, every successive story-teller making it his own for the +moment, assimilating it, handling it as he pleased, in accordance with +his own instincts and his own principles. It would enable us to note how +adroitly the artist in narrative could deal with a topic which he did +not feel to be sympathetic or stimulating; and on the other hand, it +would show us how much this author or that has been sustained by the +signal good fortune which put into his hands once at least the one +subject best suited to his method and his temperament. In <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>time, it +would train the critical reader in the habit of distinguishing between +theme and treatment; and it would encourage him to face the task of +weighing the merits of each of these separately.</p> + +<p>Altho we cannot insist that the novelists of the twentieth century shall +undergo this ordeal, we may amuse ourselves by guessing at the result if +the test had been applied to the novelists of the centuries that have +gone before. There is no difficulty in picking out a plot familiar to +all of us now and universal in its appeal—a plot which any story-teller +of any age might have chosen to develop in his own fashion. And perhaps +no story is better fitted for this experiment than the heart-rending +tale which Shakspere took from the Italian and transfigured by his +genius into the immortal tragedy of 'Romeo and Juliet.' Quarrels between +rival families have been frequent enough, and young couples there have +always been who loved wilfully in spite of a heritage of hate. There is +a never-fading enchantment in the story of their struggles, whatever the +country where they lived and died, and whatever their station in +society.</p> + +<p>How would this tale have been told in the eighteenth century by the +author of 'Robinson Crusoe'? by the author of 'Clarissa Harlowe'? by the +author of 'Tom Jones'? by the author <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>of 'Tristram Shandy'? How would it +have fared in the nineteenth century if Dickens had been attracted to +it, or Thackeray? How would it be presented now in the twentieth century +if it should be chosen again by Mr. Howells or by Mr. James? We need not +ask what Mark Twain would do with it, because he has shown us in the +Shepardson-Grangerford episode of 'Huckleberry Finn' that he could bring +out its inherent romance, even tho he intrusted the telling to the +humorous realist who was the son of the town drunkard. Nor have we to +inquire how it would have presented itself to Erckmann-Chatrian, because +the Alsatian collaborators made it their own in the somber pages of the +'Rantzau.'</p> + +<p>It is not rash to assume that Defoe would have set up rival shopkeepers, +one with a son and the other with a daughter; and he would have +delighted in accumulating the minutest details of the daily life of the +competing tradesmen. The fathers would have been sturdy Englishmen, both +of them, obstinate and pious; and the preaching of a sound morality +would never have been neglected. The narrative would purport to be +truth; and probably it would be credited to the pen of one of the +partisans, setting down in the first person a conscientious record of +what he had seen with his own eyes. But if Richardson had wisht <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>to make +our ancestors weep at the woes of Romeo and the sad trials of Juliet, he +would have abandoned the autobiographic form characteristic of Defoe's +method of approach, for the epistolary, in which the author of 'Pamela' +felt himself more at ease; and he would have spared us none of the +letters of Romeo to Juliet, and of Juliet to Romeo, and of Romeo to +Mercutio, and of Juliet to her nurse. The tenser the tragic gloom, the +more voluminous these letters would become, the more self-analytical, +and at the same time, the more pathetic. If Fielding had selected this +story as the basis of a prose-epic we should have a masterly structure, +perhaps distorted by an undue insistence upon Romeo's youthful intrigue +with Rosaline. And if Sterne had pretended to play with this tragic +tale, he would have given us the married life of Juliet's parents, with +all the humorous whims of old Capulet; and after unending digressions +the author might die himself before his heroine was fairly out of the +arms of the nurse.</p> + +<p>To declare how Dickens might have presented the same theme is not +difficult. The tragedy would sink to tortuous melodrama, and there would +be much mystery-mongering, with a careful covering up of dark secrets to +be revealed only at an opportune moment. The large simplicity of the +theme would be frittered away, and <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>every opportunity for deliberate +pathos would be insisted upon. Probably Juliet would die in blank verse, +disguised as prose. But Mercutio, altho he would certainly cease to be a +gentleman, would be a most amusing personality whose whimsical behavior +would seem highly laughable; and the nurse might become another Mrs. +Gamp, with a host of peculiarities realized with riotous humor. And it +is possible also to make a guess at the treatment which would have been +accorded to the pitiful tale if Thackeray had undertaken it. The tragedy +would have softened into a tragi-comedy with a happy ending probably, +the loving couple being reprieved somehow in the final chapters just +before the kindly author put his puppets away, after preaching a last +gentle sermon on the vanity of life. The background would be the British +society of the middle of the nineteenth century; and some Lady Kew, +delightfully clever and selfishly arrogant, might be the chief of one +clan, and some Lord Steyne, bitter and masterful, might head the rival +house. And not improbably the narrator would be Mr. Arthur Pendennis +himself.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. March might constitute the chorus, if Mr. Howells +were to lay the scene here in New York, bringing one family from the +West, endowed somehow with a certain elemental largeness of mold, and +importing the <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>other from that New England which could be held +responsible for the sensitiveness of their self-torturing consciences. +There would be no blinking of the minor selfishnesses of humanity; and +neither hero nor heroine would stand forth flawless. Their failures +would be very human; and the author would withhold all comment, leaving +the veracity of the portrayal to speak for itself. There would be +unrolled before the reader the broad panorama of the cosmopolitan +metropolis, infinitely variegated, often harsh in color, but forever +fascinating in the intensity of its vitality. The modern tragedy with +its catastrophe internal rather than external, would be laid before us +in a narrative containing endless miracles of delicate observation and +countless felicities of delicate phrasing.</p> + +<p>Like many another distinguished painter, Mr. Henry James has at least +three manners, following one another in the order of time; and there is +no certainty at which stage of his career he might be tempted to the +telling of this tale. Early in his evolution as a novelist, he might +have seized upon it as the promising foundation for an international +complication, altho even then he would have attenuated the more violent +crudities of the original story. Later, he might have been lured into +essaying the analysis of Juliet's sentiments, as she was swayed by her +growing at<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>tachment for Romeo, and as she was restrained by her +indurated fidelity to the family tradition. More recently still, Mr. +James might have perceived the possibility of puzzling us by letting us +only dimly surmise what had past behind the closed doors that shut in +the ill-fated lovers, and of leaving us in a maze of uncertainty and a +mist of doubt, peering pitifully, and groping blindly for a clew to +tangled and broken motives.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is idle thus to wonder how any one of a dozen novelists of +distinctive talent would have treated this alluring theme had he taken +it for his own. But of this we may be certain, that any novelist of +individuality who had chosen it would have made it his own, and would +have sent it forth stamped with his own image and superscription. +Indeed, the same tale told by Richardson and by Sterne, altho they were +contemporary sentimentalists, would have had so little in common that +the careless reader might fail to see any similarity whatsoever; and +probably even the pettiest of criticasters would feel no call to bring +an accusation of plagiarism against either of them.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1905.) </p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a></p> +<h2>INVENTION AND IMAGINATION</h2> + + +<p>Probably not a few readers of Prof. Barrett Wendell's suggestive +lectures on the 'Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English +Literature' were surprized to be told that a chief peculiarity of the +greatest of dramatic poets "was a somewhat sluggish avoidance of +needless invention. When anyone else had done a popular thing, Shakspere +was pretty sure to imitate him and to do it better. But he hardly ever +did anything first." In other words, Shakspere was seeking, above all +else, to please the contemporary playgoers; and he was prompt to +undertake any special type of piece they had shown a liking for; so we +can see him borrowing, one after another, the outer form of the +chronicle-play from Marlowe, of the tragedy-of-blood from Kyd, of +romantic-comedy from Greene, and of dramatic-romance from Beaumont and +Fletcher. And in like manner Molière was content to return again and +again to the type of play which he had taken over from the Italian +comedy-of-masks.</p> + +<p>This "sluggish avoidance of needless inven<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>tion," which is +characteristic of Shakspere—and of Molière also, altho in a less +degree—is evidenced not only by their eager adoption of an accepted +type of play, an outer form of approved popularity, it is obvious also +in their plots, wherein we find situations, episodes, incidents drawn +from all sorts of sources. In all the twoscore of Shakspere's plays, +comic and tragic and historic, there are very few, indeed, the stories +of which are wholly of his own making. The invention of Molière is not +quite so sluggish; and there are probably three or four of his plays the +plots of which seem to be more or less his own; but even in building up +these scant exceptions he never hesitated to levy on the material +available in the two hundred volumes of uncatalogued French and Spanish +and Italian plays, set down in the inventory of his goods drawn up at +his death. Apparently Shakspere and Molière accepted in advance Goethe's +theory that much time may be lost in mere invention, whereas, "with a +given material all goes easier and better. Facts and characters being +provided, the poet has only the task of animating the whole. He +preserves his own fulness ... since he has only the trouble of +execution."</p> + +<p>It has long been a commonplace of criticism that great poets seldom +invent their myths; and it may in time become a commonplace of +criti<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>cism that they seldom invent their forms. But in default of the +lesser invention, they have the larger imagination; and there is no +pedantry in seeking to emphasize the distinction between these two +qualities, often carelessly confused. Invention is external and +imagination is internal. The poets, by the mere fact that they are +poets, possess the power of imagination, which alone gives vitality and +significance to the ready-made plots they are willing to run into +ready-made molds. Invention can do no more than devise; imagination can +interpret. The details of 'Romeo and Juliet' may be more or less +contained in the tale of the Italian novelist; but the inner meaning of +that ideal tragedy of youthful love is seized and set forth only by the +English dramatist.</p> + +<p>Imagination in its fullest meaning must be held to include invention; +but invention is only one of the less important elements of imagination; +and it is the element which seems to be more or less negligible when the +other elements are amply developed. La Fontaine, one of the most +individual of French poets, devised only a few—and not the best—of the +delightful fables he related with unfailing felicity. Calderon, who was +the most imaginative of the dramatists of Spain, was perhaps the least +inventive of them all, contentedly availing himself of the situations, +and even of the complete plots of his more fertile fellow-<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>playwrights; +and two of his most characteristic dramas, for example, two in which he +has most adequately exprest himself, the 'Alcalde of Zalamea' and the +'Physician of His Own Honor,' are borrowed almost bodily from his fecund +contemporary Lope de Vega. Racine seems to have found a special pleasure +in treating anew the themes Euripides had already dealt with almost a +score of centuries earlier. Tennyson, to take another example, displayed +not a little of this "sluggish avoidance of needless invention," often +preferring to apply his imagination to the transfiguring of what Malory +or Miss Mitford, Froude or Freeman had made ready for his hand. This +eschewing of overt originality fitted him all the more to be spokesman +of his time, and to voice the ideals of his race and of his day. +Tennyson, so Sir Leslie Stephen told us, "could express what occurred to +everybody in language that could be approached by nobody." Browning, on +the other hand, made his own plots, and on the whole made them none too +well, especially in his dramatic poems, in the structure of which he was +entirely neglectful of the accepted forms of the theater of his own +time—accepted forms of which Shakspere and Molière would have availed +themselves instinctively. It was not Browning, but Whitman—and Whitman +in 1855, when the bard of Manhattan had not yet shown the stuff <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>that +was in him—that Lowell had in mind in the letter where he says "when a +man aims at originality he acknowledges himself consciously +unoriginal.... The great fellows have always let the stream of their +activity flow quietly."</p> + +<p>What is true of the poets is true also of the painters; and Lowell, who +did not lose his Yankee shrewdness in the galleries of Italy, saw this +also and phrased it happily in another of his letters. "The great merit, +it seems to me, of the old painters was that they did not try to be +original." The old painters were following in the footsteps of painters +still older, from whom they received the accepted formulas for +representing the subjects most likely to be ordered by customers. These +accepted formulas representing the Annunciation, for instance, the +Disputing in the Temple, the Crucifixion even, were passed down from one +generation of artists to another; and in each successive generation the +greatest painter was generally he who had no strong desire to be +different from his fellows, and who was quite willing to express himself +in the patterns which were then accepted traditions of his craft. To a +student of the work of the generation that went before, there is often +little or no invention in some of the mightiest masterpieces of +painting, however much imagination there may be. The painters who +wrought these masterpieces were <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>only doing what their immediate +predecessors had been doing, the same thing more or less in the same +way—but with infinitely more insight, power, and inspiration. As +Professor Butcher has put it tersely, "the creative art of genius does +not consist in bringing something out of nothing, but in taking +possession of material that exists, in appropriating it, interpreting it +anew."</p> + +<p>In the very ingenious and highly original tale called the 'Murders in +the Rue Morgue,' the earliest of all detective-stories, Poe displayed +his remarkable gift of invention; but he revealed his share of +penetrative imagination far more richly in the simpler story of the +'Fall of the House of Usher.' Wilkie Collins had more invention than +Dickens, as Dickens had more than Thackeray. Indeed, Thackeray, indolent +as he was by temperament, was not infrequently "sluggish in his +avoidance of needless invention." He kept his eye intent on the lurking +inconsistencies of human nature, and did not give his best thought to +the more mechanical element of the novelist's art. Cooper and Dumas were +far more fertile in the invention of situations than was Thackeray; and +even Scott, careless as he was in his easy habit of narration, gave more +of his thought to the constructing of unexpected scenes.</p> + +<p>Three centuries ago Sidney asserted that "it is not riming and versing +that maketh a poet, no <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>more than a long gown maketh an advocate"; and +to-day we know that it is not skill in plot-making or ingenuity in +devising unforeseen situations which proves the story-teller's +possession of imagination. It is scarcely needful now to repeat that +'Called Back' and 'She'—good enough stories, both of them, each in its +kind—did not demand a larger imaginative effort on the part of their +several authors than was required to write the 'Rise of Silas Lapham' or +'Daisy Miller.' More invention there may be in the late Hugh Conway's +tale and in Mr. Haggard's startling narrative of the phenix-female; but +it is invention that we discover in their strange stories rather than +imagination. Indeed, he is an ill-equipt critic who does not recognize +the fact that it calls for less imagination to put together a sequence +of unexpected happenings such as we enjoy in the fictions of the +neo-romanticists than is needed to vitalize and make significant the +less exciting portrayals of character which we find in the finer +narratives of the true realists.</p> + +<p>It was Dr. Johnson who declared, rather ponderously, it is true, but +none the less shrewdly, that "the irregular combinations of fanciful +invention may delight a while by that novelty of which the common +satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden +wonder are soon exhausted and the many can only repose on <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>the stability +of truth." Johnson was speaking here from the point of view of the +reader only; but he might have noted also that the "irregular +combinations of fanciful invention" tend to lose their interest even for +the very writers who have been successful in supplying their readers +with the "pleasures of sudden wonder." For example, in the opening years +of this twentieth century the witty historian of the kingdom of +Zenda—that land of irresponsible adventure which lies seemingly between +the Forest of Arden and the unexplored empire of Weissnichtwo—this +historian, after regaling us with brisk and brilliant chronicles of that +strange country and of the adjacent territory, apparently wearied of +these pleasant inventions of his and wisht to come to a closer grapple +with the realities of life and character. But he soon found that this +task was not so easy as it appeared—not so easy, indeed, as the earlier +writing had been; and 'Quisanté,' for all its cleverness, did not prove +its author's possession of the informing imagination which alone can +give life and meaning to a novel dealing with men and women as they are +in the real world.</p> + +<p>Not unlike is the case of the narrator of the manifold and varied +deductions of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that British reincarnation of Poe's +M. Dupin. There is danger of unfairness in accept<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>ing the authenticity +of words put into a man's mouth by any interviewer, however well +intentioned; and there is, therefore, a possibility that the biographer +of the Brigadier Gerard did not confess his own slight esteem for the +many tales of invented adventure which had given him his wide-spread +popularity. But there is an accent of veracity in the reported assertion +of the author of 'A Duet with an Occasional Chorus' that this is the +book closest to his heart, because it is an honest attempt to deal with +the facts of life as they stare us in the face to-day. And yet 'A Duet' +is unknown to a tithe of the countless readers who have devoured its +writer's other volumes with avidity. And what is more to the point, it +does not—favorite of its author tho it is—it does not deserve to be +known so widely. This is because it is not so good as the other books of +the same writer, not so good in its kind as they are in theirs. The +tales that dealt with Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard and the White +Company are works of invention mainly; and the writer had proved himself +capable of adroit and ingenious invention. 'A Duet,' dealing with the +commonplaces of life, needed not invention, which would indeed almost be +out of place in a humdrum chronicle; it demanded imagination to +interpret the commonplace and to transfigure the humdrum, revealing +their essen<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>tial significance. And this imagination the author had not +at his call, in spite of his command over the more showy invention.</p> + +<p>It may not be without interest to consider how another writer of our +time, not seeking for originality, happened to find it, and how his +acceptance of certain literary patterns, so to call them—patterns +inherited from the remote and shadowy past of our race—led him to an +unforeseen effort of illuminative imagination, which suddenly elevated +what he had done and gave it a significance far wider and far deeper +than the author had foreseen. In the two successive volumes of the +'Jungle Book' (as it was originally published) there are two sets of +stories commingled and yet sharply distinct. One group deals with the +boyhood of Mowgli among the beasts of the forest; and to many of us +these linked tales represent the highest achievement of Mr. Kipling's +genius; they seem as assured of survival as anything which the +nineteenth century has transmitted to the twentieth. The other stories, +the 'White Seal' and the 'Undertakers' and their companions, stand on a +lower level; they are good stories, no doubt,—very good, indeed, one or +two of them. But they have an added importance in that they seem to have +been the needful accompaniment of the Mowgli tales; they may be +considered as the underbrush that at first protected the growth of the +loftier tree.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>They are modern examples of the beast-fable, latter-day amplifications +of the simple tale of animals credited with human cunning, such as +primitive man told to his naked children as they huddled around the +embers in the cave, which was then their only home. The beast-fable is a +literary pattern of an undiscoverable antiquity, as alluring to-day as +ever before, since the child in us fortunately never dies. It is a +pattern which Mr. Kipling has handled with a constant affection and with +a large freedom. His earlier animal tales dealt with wild beasts, or at +least with the creatures of the forests and of the ocean beyond the +influence of man and remote from his haunts. Soon he availed himself of +the same pattern to tell stories of animals domesticated and in close +contact with man; and thus he gave us the 'Walking Delegate' and the +'Maltese Cat.' In time betook a further step and applied to the iron +horse of the railroad the method which had enabled him to set before us +the talk of the polo pony and of the blooded trotter; and thus he was +led to compose '007,' in which we see the pattern of the primitive +beast-fable so stretched as to enable us to overhear the intimate +conversation of humanized locomotives, the steeds of steel that puff and +pant in and out of the roundhouse in an American railroad yard. Yet one +more extension of the pattern enabled him to take a final step; after +having given a human soul to separate <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>engines, he proceeded then to +animate the several parts of a single machine. And thus we have 'How the +Ship Found Herself' and the later 'Below the Mill-dam.' But altho these +are successive stages of the primitive beast-fable as it has been +modified in Mr. Kipling's restless hands, there is little flagrant +originality, even at the end, since 'How the Ship Found Herself' is seen +to be only an up-to-date version of one of the earliest fables, the +'Belly and the Members.'</p> + +<p>Interesting as it may be to clamber up into the spreading family-tree of +fiction, it is not here that we must seek for the stem from which the +Mowgli stories ultimately flowered. These stories are not directly +derived from the beast-fable, altho his mastery of that literary pattern +may have helped the author to find his final form. They are a +development from one of his own tales, 'In the Rukh,' included at first +in 'Many Inventions,' and now transferred to its proper place at the end +of the book in which the adventures of Mowgli are recorded. In that +first tale, which is now the last, we have set before us the impression +Mowgli and his little brothers, the wolves, made upon two white men in +the Indian service; and incidentally we are permitted to snatch a +glimpse or two of Mowgli's youth in the jungle. But the story is told +from the point of view of these white men; and it is small <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>wonder that +when the author came to look again at what he had written he saw how +rich it was in its possibilities. He was moved to go back to narrate the +whole series of Mowgli's adventures from the very beginning, with Mowgli +himself as the center of the narrative and with little obtrusion of the +white man's civilization.</p> + +<p>There was invention in this early story, and imagination also, altho not +so abundant. But as the author brooded over the incidents of Mowgli's +babyhood there in the thick of the forest, in the midst of the beasts, +whose blood-brother he became, suddenly his imagination revealed to him +that the jungle and all its inhabitants must be governed by law, or else +it was a realm of chaos. It is this portrayal of wild life subject to an +immitigable code which gives its sustaining moral to the narrative of +Mowgli's career. As Mr. Kipling said to me once, "When I had found the +Law of the Jungle the rest was easy!" For him it may have been easy, +since his invention is ever fresh and fertile; but the finding of the +Law of the Jungle—that transcended mere invention with all its +multiplied ingenuities—that was a stroke of imagination.</p> + +<p>This distinction between imagination and invention may not be as +important as that between imagination and fancy urged by Wordsworth a +century ago; and no doubt there is always dan<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>ger in any undue +insistence upon catchwords, which are often empty of meaning, and which +are sometimes employed to convey a misleading suggestion. This +distinction has its own importance, however, and it is not empty or +misleading. It needs to be accepted in art as it has been accepted in +science, in which domain a fertile discovery is recognized as possible +only to the imagination, while a specific device is spoken of as an +invention. Newton and Darwin were discoverers by their possession of +imagination; whereas the telegraph and the telephone are to be credited +to humbler inventors, making application of principles already +discovered.</p> + +<p>This opening century of ours is an era of extraordinary dexterity and of +wide-spread cleverness, and we need to be put on our guard against the +risk of mistaking the products of our abundant invention for the rarer +gifts of inspiring imagination. It is well for us to be reminded now and +again that the great masters, painters and poets alike, novelists and +dramatists, have often displayed "a sluggish avoidance of needless +invention" at the very minute when their robust imagination was putting +forth its full strength.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1904.) </p></div> + +<p><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a></p><p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a></p> +<h2>POE AND THE DETECTIVE-STORY</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>In one of those essays which were often as speculative and suggestive as +he claimed, the late John Addington Symonds called attention to three +successive phases of criticism, pointing out that the critics had first +set up as judges, delivering opinions from the bench and never +hesitating to put on the black cap; that then they had changed into +showmen, dwelling chiefly on the beauties of the masterpieces they were +exhibiting; and that finally, and only very recently, they had become +natural historians, studying "each object in relation to its antecedents +and its consequences" and making themselves acquainted "with the +conditions under which the artist grew, the habits of his race, the +opinions of his age, his physiological and psychological peculiarities." +And Symonds might have added that it is only in this latest phase, when +the critics have availed themselves of the methods of the comparative +biologists, that they are concerned <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>with the interesting problems +connected with the origin of the several literary species.</p> + +<p>All over the world to-day devoted students are working at the hidden +history of the lyric, for example, and of certain subdivisions of this +species, such as the elegy, as it flowered long ago in Greece and as it +has flourished in most of the literatures of modern Europe. To the +"natural historian" of literary art, these subdivisions of a species are +becoming more and more interesting, as he perceives more clearly how +prone the poets have always been to work in accord with the pattern +popular in their own time and to express themselves freely in the form +they found ready to their hands. The student of the English drama is +delighted when he can seize firmly the rise and fall of the +tragedy-of-blood for one example, of the comedy-of-humors for another, +and of sentimental-comedy for a third; just as the investigator into the +annals of fiction is pleased to be able to trace the transformations of +the pastoral, of the picaresque romance, and of the later short-story.</p> + +<p>The beginnings of a species, or of a subspecies, are obscure more often +than not; and they are rarely to be declared with certainty. "Nothing is +more difficult than to discover who have been in literature the first +inventors" of a new form, so M. Jules Lemaître once asserted, adding +that <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>innovations have generally been attempted by writers of no great +value, and not infrequently by those who failed in those first efforts, +unable to profit by their own originality. And it is natural enough that +a good many sighting shots should be wasted on a new target before even +an accomplished marksman could plump his bullet in the bull's-eye. The +historical novel as we know it now must be credited to Scott, who +preluded by the rather feeble 'Waverley,' before attaining the more +boldly planned 'Rob Roy' and 'Guy Mannering.' The sea-tale is to be +ascribed to Cooper, whose wavering faith in its successful +accomplishment is reflected in the shifting of the successive episodes +of the 'Pilot' from land to water and back again to land; and it was +only when he came to write the 'Red Rover' that Cooper displayed full +confidence in the form he had been the first to experiment with. But the +history of the detective-story begins with the publication of the +'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' a masterpiece of its kind, which even its +author was unable to surpass; and Poe, unlike most other originators, +rang the bell the very first time he took aim.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The detective-story which Poe invented sharply differentiates itself +from the earlier tales <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>of mystery, and also from the later narratives +in which actual detectives figure incidentally. Perhaps the first of +these tales of mystery is Walpole's 'Castle of Otranto,' which appears +to us now clumsy enough, with its puerile attempts to excite terror. The +romances of Mrs. Radcliffe are scarcely more solidly built—indeed, the +fatigue of the sophisticated reader of to-day when he undertakes the +perusal of these old-fashioned and long-winded chronicles may be +ascribed partly to the flimsiness of the foundation which is supposed to +support the awe-inspiring super-structure. Godwin's 'Caleb Williams' is +far more firmly put together; and its artful planning called for +imagination as well as mere invention. In the 'Edgar Huntley' of Charles +Brockden Brown the veil of doubt skilfully shrouds the unsuspected and +the unsuspecting murderer who did the evil deed in his +sleep—anticipating the somnambulist hero of Wilkie Collins's +'Moonstone.'</p> + +<p>The disadvantages of this mystery-mongering have been pointed out by Poe +with his wonted acuteness in his criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge.' After +retelling the plot of Dickens's contorted narrative, and after putting +the successive episodes into their true sequence, Poe asserted that "the +thesis of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity," and +he declared that "every <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>point is so arranged as to perplex the reader +and whet his desire for elucidation." He insisted "that the secret be +well kept is obviously necessary," because if it leaks out "against the +author's will, his purposes are immediately at odds and ends." Then he +remarked that altho "there can be no question that ... many points ... +which would have been comparatively insipid even if given in full detail +in a natural sequence, are endued with the interest of mystery; but +neither can it be denied that a vast many more points are at the same +time deprived of all effect, and become null, through the impossibility +of comprehending them without the key." In other words, the novelist has +chosen to sacrifice to the fleeting interest which is evoked only by +wonder the more abiding interest which is aroused by the clear +perception of the inter-play of character and motive. Poe suggested that +even 'Barnaby Rudge'—in spite of its author's efforts to keep secret +the real springs of action which controlled the characters—if taken up +a second time by a reader put into possession of all that had been +concealed, would be found to possess quadruple brilliance, "a brilliance +unprofitably sacrificed at the shrine of the keenest interest of mere +mystery."</p> + +<p>Dickens was not the last novelist of note to be <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>tempted and to fall +into this snare. In the 'Disciple,' and again in 'André Cornélis' M. +Paul Bourget was lured from the path of psychologic analysis into the +maze of mystery-mongering; but he had the tact to employ his secrets to +excite interest only in the beginning of what were, after all, studies +from life, each of them setting forth the struggle of a man with the +memory of his crime. In the 'Wreckers' Stevenson and his young +collaborator attempted that "form of police novel or mystery-story which +consisted in beginning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and +finishing it anywhere but at the end." They were attracted by its +"peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar difficulties that attend +its execution." They were "repelled by that appearance of insincerity +and shallowness of tone which seems its inevitable drawback," because +"the mind of the reader always bent to pick up clews receives no +impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate +mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a +game of chess, not a work of human art." They hoped to find a new way of +handling the old tale of mystery, so that they might get the profit +without paying the price. But already in his criticism of 'Barnaby +Rudge' had Poe showed why disappointment was unavoidable, because the +more artfully the <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>dark intimations of horror are held out, the more +certain it is that the anticipation must surpass the reality. No matter +how terrific the circumstances may be which shall appear to have +occasioned the mystery, "still they will not be able to satisfy the mind +of the reader. He will surely be disappointed."</p> + +<p>Even Balzac, with all his mastery of the novelist's art, lost more than +he gained when he strove to arouse the interest of his readers by an +appeal to their curiosity. His mystery-mongering is sometimes perilously +close to blatant sensationalism and overt charlatanry; and he seems to +be seeking the bald effect for its own sake. In the 'Chouans,' and again +in the 'Ténébreuse Affaire,' he has complicated plots and counterplots +entangled almost to confusion, but the reader "receives no impression of +reality or life" even if these novels cannot be dismist as empty +examples of "airless, elaborate mechanism."</p> + +<p>The members of the secret police appearing in these stories have all a +vague likeness to Vidocq, whose alleged memoirs were published in 1828, +a few years before the author of the 'Human Comedy' began to deal with +the scheming of the underworld. Balzac's spies and his detectives are +not convincing, despite his utmost effort; and we do not believe in +their preternatural acuteness. Even in the conduct of their intrigues +<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>we are lost in a murky mistiness. Balzac is at his best when he is +arousing the emotions of recognition; and he is at his worst when he +sinks to evoking the emotions of surprize.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In the true detective-story as Poe conceived it in the 'Murders of the +Rue Morgue,' it is not in the mystery itself that the author seeks to +interest the reader, but rather in the successive steps whereby his +analytic observer is enabled to solve a problem that might well be +dismist as beyond human elucidation. Attention is centered on the +unraveling of the tangled skein rather than on the knot itself. The +emotion aroused is not mere surprize, it is recognition of the +unsuspected capabilities of the human brain; it is not a wondering +curiosity as to an airless mechanism, but a heightening admiration for +the analytic acumen capable of working out an acceptable answer to the +puzzle propounded. In other words, Poe, while he availed himself of the +obvious advantages of keeping a secret from his readers and of leaving +them guessing as long as he pleased, shifted the point of attack and +succeeded in giving a human interest to his tale of wonder.</p> + +<p>And by this shift Poe transported the detective-<a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>story from the group of +tales of adventure into the group of portrayals of character. By +bestowing upon it a human interest, he raised it in the literary scale. +There is no need now to exaggerate the merits of this feat or to suggest +that Poe himself was not capable of loftier efforts. Of course the 'Fall +of the House of Usher,' which is of imagination all compact, is more +valid evidence of his genius than the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' which +is the product rather of his invention, supremely ingenious as it is. +Even tho the detective-story as Poe produced it is elevated far above +the barren tale of mystery which preceded it and which has been revived +in our own day, it is not one of the loftiest of literary forms, and its +possibilities are severely limited. It suffers to-day from the fact that +in the half century and more since Poe set the pattern it has been +vulgarized, debased, degraded by a swarm of imitators who lacked his +certainty of touch, his instinctive tact, his intellectual +individuality. In their hands it has been bereft of its distinction and +despoiled of its atmosphere.</p> + +<p>Even at its best, in the simple perfection of form that Poe bestowed on +it, there is no denying that it demanded from its creator no depth of +sentiment, no warmth of emotion, and no large understanding of human +desire. There are those who would dismiss it carelessly, as making an +<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>appeal not far removed from that of the riddle and of the conundrum. +There are those again who would liken it rather to the adroit trick of a +clever conjurer. No doubt, it gratifies in us chiefly that delight in +difficulty conquered, which is a part of the primitive play-impulse +potent in us all, but tending to die out as we grow older, as we lessen +in energy, and as we feel more deeply the tragi-comedy of existence. But +inexpensive as it may seem to those of us who look to literature for +enlightenment, for solace in the hour of need, for stimulus to stiffen +the will in the never-ending struggle of life, the detective tale, as +Poe contrived it, has merits of its own as distinct and as undeniable, +as those of the historical novel, for example, or of the sea-tale. It +may please the young rather than the old, but the pleasure it can give +is ever innocent; and the young are always in the majority.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>In so far as Poe had any predecessor in the composing of a narrative, +the interest of which should reside in the application of human +intelligence to the solution of a mystery, this was not Balzac,—altho +the American romancer was sufficiently familiar with the 'Human Comedy'<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a> +to venture quotation from it. Nor was this predecessor Cooper, whom +Balzac admired and even imitated, altho Leatherstocking in tracking his +redskin enemies revealed the tense observation and the faculty of +deduction with which Poe was to endow his Dupin. The only predecessor +with a good claim to be considered a progenitor is Voltaire, in whose +'Zadig' we can find the method which Poe was to apply more elaborately. +The Goncourts perceived this descent of Poe from Voltaire when they +recorded in their 'Journal' that the strange tales of the American poet +seemed to them to belong to "a new literature, the literature of the +twentieth century, scientifically miraculous story-telling by A + B, a +literature at once monomaniac and mathematical, Zadig as +district-attorney, Cyrano de Bergerac as a pupil of Arago."</p> + +<p>Voltaire tells us that Zadig by study gained "a sagacity which +discovered to him a thousand differences where other men saw only +uniformity"; and he describes a misadventure which befell Zadig when he +was living in the kingdom of Babylon. One day the chief eunuch asked if +he had seen the queen's dog. "It's a female, isn't it?" returned Zadig; +"a spaniel, and very small; she littered not long ago; she is lame of +the left forefoot; and she has very long ears." "So you have seen her?" +cried the eunuch.<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a> "No," Zadig answered; "I have never seen her; and I +never even knew that the queen had a dog."</p> + +<p>About the same time the handsomest horse in the king's stables escaped; +and the chief huntsman, meeting Zadig, inquired if he had not seen the +animal. And Zadig responded: "It is the horse that gallops the best; he +is five feet high; his shoe is very small; his tail is three and a half +feet long; the knobs of his bit are of twenty-three-carat gold; and he +is shod with eleven-penny silver." And the chief huntsman asked, "Which +way did he go?" To which Zadig replied: "I have not seen him; and I have +never heard anything about him."</p> + +<p>The chief eunuch and the chief huntsman naturally believed that Zadig +had stolen the queen's dog and the king's horse; so they had him +arrested and condemned, first to the knout, and afterward to exile for +life in Siberia. And then both the missing animals were recovered; so +Zadig was allowed to plead his case. He swore that he had never seen +either the dog of the queen or the horse of the king. This is what had +happened: He had been walking toward a little wood and he had seen on +the sand the track of an animal, and he judged that it had been a dog. +Little furrows scratched in the low hillocks of sand between the +footprints showed him that it was a female whose teats were pendent, and +<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>who therefore must have littered recently. As the sand was less deeply +marked by one foot than by the three others, he had perceived the +queen's dog to be lame.</p> + +<p>As for the larger quadruped, Zadig, while walking in a narrow path in +the wood, had seen the prints of a horse's shoes, all at an equal +distance; and he had said to himself that here was a steed with a +perfect stride. The path was narrow, being only seven feet wide, and +here and there the dust had been flicked from the trees on either hand, +and so Zadig had made sure that the horse had a tail three and a half +feet long. The branches crossed over the path at the height of five +feet, and as leaves had been broken off, the observer had decided that +the horse was just five feet high. As to the bit, this must be of gold, +since the horse had rubbed it against a stone, which Zadig had +recognized as a touchstone and on which he had assayed the trace of +precious metal. And from the marks left by the horse's shoes on another +kind of stone Zadig had felt certain that they were made of eleven-penny +silver.</p> + +<p>Huxley has pointed out that the method of Zadig is the method which has +made possible the incessant scientific discovery of the last century. It +is the method of Wellington at Assaye, assuming that there must be a +ford at a <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>certain place on the river, because there was a village on +each side. It is the method of Grant at Vicksburg, examining the +knapsacks of the Confederate soldiers slain in a sortie to see if these +contained rations, which would show that the garrison was seeking to +break out because the place was untenable. It is also the method of Poe +in the 'Gold-Bug' and in the 'Murders of the Rue Morgue.' In all +probability Poe borrowed it directly from Voltaire, who had taken it +over from Oriental folklore.</p> + +<p>In his application of this method, not casually, playfully, and with +satiric intent, as Voltaire had applied it, but seriously and taking it +as the mainspring of his story, Poe added an ingenious improvement of +his own devising. Upon the preternaturally acute observer who was to +control the machinery of the tale, the American poet bestowed a +companion of only an average alertness and keenness; and to this +commonplace companion the romancer confided the telling of the story. By +this seemingly simple device Poe doubled the effectiveness of his work, +because this unobservant and unimaginative narrator of the unraveling of +a tangled skein by an observant and imaginative analyst naturally +recorded his own admiration and astonishment as the wonder was wrought +before his eyes, so that the admiration and astonishment were +transmitted <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>directly and suggestively, to the readers of the narrative.</p> + +<p>In the 'Gold-Bug' the wonder-worker is Legrand, and in both the 'Murders +in the Rue Morgue' and the 'Purloined Letter' he is M. Dupin; and in all +three tales the telling of the story is entrusted to an anonymous +narrator, serving not only as a sort of Greek chorus to hint to the +spectators the emotions they ought to feel, but also as the describer of +the personality and peculiarities of Legrand and Dupin, who are thus +individualized, humanized, and related to the real world. If they had +not been accepted by the narrator as actual beings of flesh and blood, +they might otherwise retain the thinness and the dryness of disembodied +intelligences working in a vacuum.</p> + +<p>This device of the transmitting narrator is indisputably valuable; and, +properly enough, it reappears in the one series of detective tales which +may be thought by some to rival Poe's. The alluring record of the +investigations of Mr. Sherlock Holmes is the work of a certain Dr. +Watson, a human being but little more clearly characterized than the +anonymous narrators who have preserved for us the memory of Legrand and +Dupin. But Poe here again exhibited a more artistic reserve than any of +his imitators, in so far as he refrained from the undue laudation of the +strange intellectual feats which are the central interest of <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>these +three tales. In the 'Gold-Bug' he even heightens his suspense by +allowing the narrator to suggest that Legrand might be of unsound mind; +and in the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' the narrator, altho lost in +astonishment at the acuteness of Dupin, never permits his admiration to +become fulsome; he holds himself in, as tho fearing that overpraise +might provoke a denial. Moreover, Poe refrained from all exhibitions of +Dupin's skill merely for its own sake—exhibitions only dazzling the +spectators and not furthering his immediate purpose.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be franker than Sir Conan Doyle's acknowledgment of his +indebtedness. "Edgar Allen Poe, who, in his carelessly prodigal fashion, +threw out the seeds from which so many of our present forms of +literature have sprung, was the father of the detective tale, and +covered its limits so completely that I fail to see how his followers +can find any fresh ground which they can confidently call their own. For +the secret of the thinness and also of the intensity of the +detective-story is that the writer is left with only one quality, that +of intellectual acuteness, with which to endow his hero. Everything else +is outside the picture and weakens the effect. The problem and its +solution must form the theme, and the character drawing is limited and +subordinate. On this narrow path the writer must walk, and <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>he sees the +footmarks of Poe always in front of him. He is happy if he ever finds +the means of breaking away and striking out on some little side-track of +his own."</p> + +<p>The deviser of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes hit on a happy phrase +when he declared that "the problem and its solution must form the +theme." This principle was violated by Dumas, in the 'Vicomte de +Bragelonne,' giving us the solution before the problem, when he showed +how d'Artagnan used the method of Zadig to deduce all the details of the +duel on horseback, after the author had himself described to us the +incidents of that fight. But when he was thus discounting his effect +Dumas probably had in mind, not Poe, but Cooper, whose observant +redskins he mightily admired and whom he frankly imitated in the +'Mohicans of Paris.'</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>Altho Poe tells these three stories in the first person, as if he was +himself only the recorder of the marvelous deeds of another, both +Legrand and Dupin are projections of his own personality; they are +characters created by him to be endowed with certain of his own +qualifications and peculiarities. They were called into being to be +<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>possest of the inventive and analytical powers of Poe himself. "To be +an artist, first and always, requires a turn for induction and +analysis"—so Mr. Stedman has aptly put it; and this turn for induction +and analysis Poe had far more obviously than most artists. When he was a +student he excelled in mathematics; in all his other tales he displays +the same power of logical construction; and he delighted in the exercise +of his own acumen, vaunting his ability to translate any cipher that +might be sent to him and succeeding in making good his boast. In the +criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge,' and again in the explanation of the +Maelzel chess-player, Poe used for himself the same faculty of +divination, the same power of seizing the one clue needful, however +tangled amid other threads, which he had bestowed upon Legrand and +Dupin.</p> + +<p>If we may exclude the 'Marie Roget' narrative in which Poe was working +over an actual case of murder, we find him only three times undertaking +the "tale of ratiocination," to use his own term; and in all three +stories he was singularly happy in the problem he invented for solution. +For each of the three he found a fit theme, wholly different from that +employed in either of the others. He adroitly adjusted the proper +accessories, and he created an appropriate atmosphere. With no sense of +strain, and no <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>awkwardness of manner, he dealt with episodes strange +indeed, but so simply treated as to seem natural, at least for the +moment. There is no violence of intrigue or conjecture; indeed Poe +strives to suggest a background of the commonplace against which his +marvels may seem the more marvelous. In none of his stories is Poe's +consummate mastery of the narrative art, his ultimate craftsmanship, his +certain control of all the devices of the most accomplished +story-teller, more evident than in these three.</p> + +<p>And yet they are but detective-stories, after all; and Poe himself, +never prone to underestimate what he had written, spoke of them lightly +and even hinted that they had been overpraised. Probably they were easy +writing—for him—and therefore they were not so close to his heart as +certain other of his tales over which he had toiled long and +laboriously. Probably also he felt the detective-story to be an inferior +form. However superior his stories in this kind might be, he knew them +to be unworthy of comparison with his more imaginative tales, which he +had filled with a thrilling weirdness and which attained a soaring +elevation far above any height to be achieved by ingenious narratives +setting forth the solving of a puzzle.</p> + +<p>It is in a letter to Philip Pendleton Cooke, written in 1846, that Poe +disparaged his detective-<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>stories and declared that they "owe most of +their popularity to being something in a new key. I do not mean to say +that they are not ingenious—but people think them more ingenious than +they are—on account of their method and <i>air</i> of method. In the +'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' for instance, where is the ingenuity of +unraveling a web which you yourself (the author) have woven for the +express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the +ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the +story." Here, surely, Poe is over-modest; at least he over-states the +case against himself. The ingenuity of the author obviously lies in his +invention of a web which seemingly cannot be unraveled and which +nevertheless one of the characters of the tale, Legrand or Dupin, +succeeds in unraveling at last. This ingenuity may be, in one way, less +than that required to solve an actual problem in real life; but it is +also, in another way, more, for it had to invent its own puzzle and to +put this together so that the secret seemed to be absolutely hidden, +altho all the facts needed to solve it were plainly presented to the +reader.</p> + +<p>In the same letter to Cooke, Poe remarked on the "wide diversity and +variety" of his tales when contrasted one with another; and he asserted +that he did not consider any one better <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>than another. "There is a vast +variety of kinds, and in degree of value these kinds vary—but each tale +is equally good <i>of its kind</i>." He added that "the loftiest kind is that +of the highest imagination." For this reason only he considered that +'Ligeia' might be called the best of his stories. Now, after a lapse of +threescore years, the 'Fall of the House of Usher,' with its "serene and +somber beauty," would seem to deserve the first place of all. And among +the detective-stories, standing on a lower plane as they do, because +they were wrought by invention rather than by the interpreting +imagination, the foremost position may be given to the 'Murders in the +Rue Morgue.' In this tale Poe's invention is most ingenious and his +subject is selected with the fullest understanding of the utmost +possibilities of the detective-story. At the core of it is a strange, +mysterious, monstrous crime; and M. Anatole France was never wiser than +when he declared the unfailing interest of mankind in a gigantic misdeed +"because we find in all crimes that fund of hunger and desire on which +we all live, the good as well as the bad." Before a crime such as this +we seem to find ourselves peering into the contorted visage of primitive +man, obeying no law but his own caprice.</p> + +<p>The superiority of the poet who wrote the first detective-story over all +those who have striven to <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>tread in the trail he blazed is obvious +enough. It resides not only in his finer workmanship, his more delicate +art, his surer certainty of execution, his more absolute knowledge of +what it was best to do and of the way best to do this; it is to be seen +not only in his command of verisimilitude, in his plausibility, in his +faculty of enwrapping the figures of his narrative in the atmosphere +most fit for them; it is not in any of these things or in all of them +that Poe's supremacy is founded. The reason of that supremacy must be +sought in the fact that, after all, Poe was a poet, and that he had the +informing imagination of a poet, even tho it was only the more prosaic +side of the faculty divine which he chose to employ in these tales of +ratiocination.</p> + +<p>It is by their possession of poetry, however slight their portion might +be, that Fitzjames O'Brien and M. Jean Richepin and Mr. Rudyard Kipling +were kept from frank failure when they followed in Poe's footsteps and +sought to imitate, or at least to emulate his more largely imaginative +tales in the 'Diamond Lens' of the Irish-American, in the 'Morts +Bizarres' of the Frenchman, and in half a dozen tales of the +Anglo-Indian. But what tincture of poesy, what sweep of vision, what +magic of style, is there in the attempts of the most of the others who +have taken pattern by Poe's detective-stories? None, and less than +<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>none. Ingenuity of a kind there is in Gaboriau's longer fictions, and +in those of Fortuné du Boisgobey, and in those of Wilkie Collins; but +this ingenuity is never so simply employed, and it is often artificial +and violent and mechanical. It exists for its own sake, with little +relation to the admitted characteristics of our common humanity. It +stands alone, and it is never accompanied by the apparent ease which +adds charm to Poe's handling of his puzzles.</p> + +<p>Consider how often Gaboriau puts us off with a broken-backed narrative, +taking up his curtain on a promising problem, presenting it to us in +aspects of increasing difficulty, only at last to confess his impotence +by starting afresh and slowly detailing the explanatory episodes which +happened before the curtain rose. Consider how frequently Fortuné du +Boisgobey failed to play fair. Consider how juiceless was the +documentary method of Wilkie Collins, how mechanical and how arid, how +futilely complicated, how prolonged, and how fatiguing. Consider all the +minor members of the sorry brood hatched out of the same egg, how cheap +and how childish the most of them are. Consider all these; and we are +forced to the conclusion that if the writing of a good detective-story +is so rare and so difficult, if only one of Poe's imitators has been +able really to rival his achievement, if this single <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>success has been +the result of an acceptance of Poe's formula and of a close adherence to +Poe's practise, then, what Poe wrought is really unique; and we must +give him the guerdon of praise due to an artist who has accomplished the +first time of trying that which others have failed to achieve even after +he had shown them how.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1904.) </p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a></p> +<h2>MARK TWAIN</h2> + +<p><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>[This biographical criticism was written to serve as an introduction to +the complete edition of Mark Twain's Works.]</p> + + + +<p>It is a common delusion of those who discuss contemporary literature +that there is such an entity as the "reading public," possest of a +certain uniformity of taste. There is not one public; there are many +publics,—as many in fact as there are different kinds of taste; and the +extent of an author's popularity is in proportion to the number of these +separate publics he may chance to please. Scott, for example, appealed +not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement, but also +to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy characters. +Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youths who are insidiously flattered +by his tacit compliments to their knowledge of the world, by the +disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses of society, and +by the less sophisticated in whom sentiment has not gone to seed in +sentimentality. Dickens in his own day bid for the approval of those who +liked broad caricature (and were, therefore, pleased with Stiggins and +Chadband), of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a> (and were, +therefore, delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul Dombey and +Little Nell) and also of those who asked for unexpected adventure (and +were, therefore, glad to disentangle the melodramatic intrigues of Ralph +Nickleby).</p> + +<p>In like manner the American author who has chosen to call himself Mark +Twain has attained to an immense popularity because the qualities he +possesses in a high degree appeal to so many and so widely varied +publics,—first of all, no doubt, to the public that revels in hearty +and robust fun, but also to the public which is glad to be swept along +by the full current of adventure, which is sincerely touched by manly +pathos, which is satisfied by vigorous and exact portrayal of character, +which respects shrewdness and wisdom and sanity and which appreciates a +healthy hatred of pretense and affectation and sham. Perhaps no one book +of Mark Twain's—with the possible exception of 'Huckleberry Finn'—is +equally a favorite with all his readers; and perhaps some of his best +characteristics are absent from his earlier books or but doubtfully +latent in them. Mark Twain is many-sided; and he has ripened in +knowledge and in power since he first attracted attention as a wild +Western funny man. As he has grown older he has reflected more; he has +both broadened and deepened. The writer of<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a> "comic copy" for a +mining-camp newspaper has developed into a liberal humorist, handling +life seriously and making his readers think as he makes them laugh, +until to-day Mark Twain has perhaps the largest audience of any author +now using the English language. To trace the stages of this evolution +and to count the steps whereby the sage-brush reporter has risen to the +rank of a writer of world-wide celebrity, is as interesting as it is +instructive.</p> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835, at +Florida, Missouri. His father was a merchant who had come from Tennessee +and who removed soon after his son's birth to Hannibal, a little town on +the Mississippi. What Hannibal was like and what were the circumstances +of Mr. Clemens's boyhood we can see for ourselves in the convincing +pages of 'Tom Sawyer.' Mr. Howells has called Hannibal "a loafing, +out-at-elbows, down-at-the-heels, slave-holding Mississippi town"; and +the elder Clemens was himself a slave-owner, who silently abhorred +slavery.</p> + +<p>When the future author was but twelve his father died, and the son had +to get his education as best he could. Of actual schooling he got little +and of book-learning still less; but life <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>itself is not a bad teacher +for a boy who wants to study, and young Clemens did not waste his +chances. He spent three years in the printing office of the little local +paper,—for, like not a few others on the list of American authors that +stretches from Benjamin Franklin to William Dean Howells, he began his +connection with literature by setting type. As a journeyman printer the +lad wandered from town to town and rambled even as far east as New York.</p> + +<p>When he was seventeen he went back to the home of his boyhood resolved +to become a pilot on the Mississippi. How he learnt the river he has +told us in 'Life on the Mississippi,' wherein his adventures, his +experiences, and his impressions while he was a cub-pilot are recorded +with a combination of precise veracity and abundant humor which makes +the earlier chapters of that marvelous book a most masterly fragment of +autobiography. The life of a pilot was full of interest and excitement +and opportunity, and what young Clemens saw and heard and divined during +the years when he was going up and down the mighty river we may read in +the pages of 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Pudd'nhead Wilson.' But toward the +end of the fifties the railroads began to rob the river of its supremacy +as a carrier; and in the beginning of the sixties the Civil War broke +out and the Mississippi no <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>longer went unvext to the sea. The skill, +slowly and laboriously acquired, was suddenly rendered useless, and at +twenty-five the young man found himself bereft of his calling. As a +border state, Missouri was sending her sons into the armies of the Union +and into the armies of the Confederacy, while many a man stood doubting, +not knowing which way to turn. The ex-pilot has given us the record of +his very brief and inglorious service as a soldier of the South. When +this escapade was swiftly ended, he went to the northwest with his +brother, who had been appointed lieutenant-governor of Nevada. Thus the +man who had been born on the borderland of North and South, who had gone +East as a jour printer, who had been again and again up and down the +Mississippi, now went West while he was still plastic and +impressionable; and he had thus another chance to increase that intimate +knowledge of American life and American character which is one of the +most precious of his possessions.</p> + +<p>While still on the river he had written a satiric letter or two signed +"Mark Twain"—taking the name from a call of the man who heaves the lead +and who cries "By the mark, three," "Mark twain," and so on. In Nevada +he went to the mines and lived the life he has described in 'Roughing +It,' but when he failed to "strike <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>it rich," he naturally drifted into +journalism and back into a newspaper office again. The 'Virginia City +Enterprise' was not overmanned, and the new-comer did all sorts of odd +jobs, finding time now and then to write a sketch which seemed important +enough to permit of his signature. The name of Mark Twain soon began to +be known to those who were curious in newspaper humor. After a while he +was drawn across the mountains to San Francisco, where he found casual +employment on the 'Morning Call,' and where he joined himself to a +little group of aspiring literators which included Bret Harte, Noah +Brooks, Charles Henry Webb, and Mr. Charles Warren Stoddart.</p> + +<p>It was in 1867 that Webb published Mark Twain's first book, the +'Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras'; and it was in 1867 that the +proprietors of the 'Alta California' supplied him with the funds +necessary to enable him to become one of the passengers on the steamer +<i>Quaker City</i>, which had been chartered to take a select party on what +is now known as the Mediterranean trip. The weekly letters, in which he +set forth what befell him on this journey, were printed in the 'Alta' +Sunday after Sunday, and were copied freely by the other Californian +papers. These letters served as the foundation of a book published in +1869 and called the 'Inno<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>cents Abroad,' a book which instantly brought +to the author celebrity and cash.</p> + +<p>Both of these valuable aids to ambition were increased by his next step, +his appearance on the lecture platform. Noah Brooks, who was present at +his first attempt, has recorded that Mark Twain's "method as a lecturer +was distinctly unique and novel. His slow, deliberate drawl, the anxious +and perturbed expression of his visage, the apparently painful effort +with which he framed his sentences, the surprize that spread over his +face when the audience roared with delight or rapturously applauded the +finer passages of his word-painting, were unlike anything of the kind +they had ever known." In the many years since that first appearance the +method has not changed, altho it has probably matured. Mark Twain is one +of the most effective of platform-speakers and one of the most artistic, +with an art of his own which is very individual and very elaborate in +spite of its seeming simplicity.</p> + +<p>Altho he succeeded abundantly as a lecturer, and altho he was the author +of the most widely-circulated book of the decade, Mark Twain still +thought of himself only as a journalist; and when he gave up the West +for the East, he became an editor of the 'Buffalo Express,' in which he +had bought an interest. In 1870 he married; <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>and it is perhaps not +indiscreet to remark that his was another of those happy unions of which +there have been so many in the annals of American authorship. In 1871 he +removed to Hartford, which was to be his home for thirty years; and at +the same time he gave up newspaper work.</p> + +<p>In 1872 he wrote 'Roughing It,' and in the following year came his first +sustained attempt at fiction, the 'Gilded Age,' written in collaboration +with Charles Dudley Warner. The character of Colonel Mulberry Sellers +Mark Twain soon took out of this book to make it the central figure of a +play, which the late John T. Raymond acted hundreds of times thruout the +United States, the playgoing public pardoning the inexpertness of the +dramatist in favor of the delicious humor and the compelling veracity +with which the chief character was presented. So universal was this type +and so broadly recognizable its traits that there were many towns in +which someone accosted the actor who impersonated the ever-hopeful +schemer with the declaration: "I'm the original of <i>Sellers</i>! Didn't +Mark ever tell you? Well, he took the <i>Colonel</i> from me!"</p> + +<p>Encouraged by the welcome accorded to this first attempt at fiction, +Mark Twain turned to the days of his boyhood and wrote 'Tom Sawyer,' +published in 1875. He also collected his sketches, scattered here and +there in newspapers <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>and magazines. Toward the end of the seventies he +went to Europe again with his family; and the result of this journey is +recorded in 'A Tramp Abroad,' published in 1880. Another volume of +sketches, the 'Stolen White Elephant,' was put forth in 1882; and in the +same year Mark Twain first came forward as a historical novelist—if the +'Prince and the Pauper' can fairly be called a historical novel. The +year after he sent forth the volume describing his 'Life on the +Mississippi'; and in 1884 he followed this with the story in which that +life has been crystallized forever, 'Huckleberry Finn,' the finest of +his books, the deepest in its insight, and the widest in its appeal.</p> + +<p>This Odyssey of the Mississippi was published by a new firm, in which +the author was a chief partner, just as Sir Walter Scott had been an +associate of Ballantyne and Constable. There was at first a period of +prosperity in which the house issued the 'Personal Memoirs' of Grant, +giving his widow checks for $350,000 in 1886, and in which Mark Twain +himself published 'A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court,' a +volume of 'Merry Tales,' and a story called the 'American Claimant,' +wherein Colonel Sellers reappears. Then there came a succession of hard +years; and at last the publishing-house in which Mark Twain was a +partner failed, as the publishing-house in which Walter Scott was a +partner <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>had formerly failed. The author of 'Huckleberry Finn' was past +sixty when he found himself suddenly saddled with a load of debt, just +as the author of 'Waverley' had been burdened full threescore years +earlier; and Mark Twain stood up stoutly under it as Scott had done +before him. More fortunate than the Scotchman, the American lived to pay +the debt in full.</p> + +<p>Since the disheartening crash came, he has given to the public a third +Mississippi River tale, 'Pudd'nhead Wilson,' issued in 1894; and a third +historical novel, 'Joan of Arc,' a reverent and sympathetic study of the +bravest figure in all French history, printed anonymously in 'Harper's +Magazine' and then in a volume acknowledged by the author in 1896. As +one of the results of a lecturing tour around the world he prepared +another volume of travels, 'Following the Equator,' published toward the +end of 1897. Mention must also be made of a fantastic tale called 'Tom +Sawyer Abroad,' sent forth in 1894, of a volume of sketches, the +'Million Pound Bank-Note,' assembled in 1893, and also of a collection +of literary essays, 'How to Tell a Story,' published in 1897.</p> + +<p>This is but the barest outline of Mark Twain's life,—such a brief +summary as we must have before us if we wish to consider the conditions +under which the author has developed and the <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>stages of his growth. It +will serve, however, to show how various have been his forms of +activity,—printer, pilot, miner, journalist, traveler, lecturer, +novelist, publisher,—and to suggest the width of his experience of +life.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>A humorist is often without honor in his own country. Perhaps +this is partly because humor is likely to be familiar, and familiarity +breeds contempt. Perhaps it is partly because (for some strange reason) +we tend to despise those who make us laugh, while we respect those who +make us weep—forgetting that there are formulas for forcing tears quite +as facile as the formulas for forcing smiles. Whatever the reason, the +fact is indisputable that the humorist must pay the penalty of his +humor, he must run the risk of being tolerated as a mere fun-maker, not +to be taken seriously, and not worthy of critical consideration. This +penalty has been paid by Mark Twain. In many of the discussions of +American literature he has been dismist as tho he were only a competitor +of his predecessors, Artemus Ward and John Phœnix, instead of being, +what he is really, a writer who is to be classed—at whatever interval +only time may decide—rather with Cervantes and Molière.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>Like the heroines of the problem-plays of the modern theater, Mark +Twain has had to live down his past. His earlier writing gave but little +promise of the enduring qualities obvious enough in his later works. +Noah Brooks has told us how he was advised if he wisht to "see genuine +specimens of American humor, frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious," to +look up the sketches which the then almost unknown Mark Twain was +printing in a Nevada newspaper. The humor of Mark Twain is still +American, still frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious; but it is riper +now and richer, and it has taken unto itself other qualities existing +only in germ in these firstlings of his muse. The sketches in the +'Jumping Frog' and the letters which made up the 'Innocents Abroad' are +"comic copy," as the phrase is in newspaper offices—comic copy not +altogether unlike what John Phœnix had written and Artemus +Ward,—better indeed than the work of these newspaper humorists (for +Mark Twain had it in him to develop as they did not), but not +essentially dissimilar.</p> + +<p>And in the eyes of many who do not think for themselves, Mark Twain was +only the author of these genuine specimens of American humor. For when +the public has once made up its mind about any man's work, it does not +relish any attempt to force it to unmake this opinion and to <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>remake it. +Like other juries, it does not like to be ordered to reconsider its +verdict as contrary to the facts of the case. It is always sluggish in +beginning the necessary readjustment, and not only sluggish, but +somewhat grudging. Naturally it cannot help seeing the later works of a +popular writer from the point of view it had to take to enjoy his +earlier writings. And thus the author of 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Joan of +Arc' was forced to pay a high price for the early and abundant +popularity of the 'Innocents Abroad.'</p> + +<p>No doubt, a few of his earlier sketches were inexpensive in their +elements; made of materials worn threadbare by generations of earlier +funny men, they were sometimes cut in the pattern of his predecessors. +No doubt, some of the earliest of all were crude and highly colored, and +may even be called forced, not to say violent. No doubt, also, they did +not suggest the seriousness and the melancholy which always must +underlie the deepest humor, as we find it in Cervantes and Molière, in +Swift and in Lowell. But even a careless reader, skipping thru the book +in idle amusement, ought to have been able to see in the 'Innocents +Abroad,' that the writer of this liveliest of books of travel was no +mere merry-andrew, grinning thru a horse-collar to make sport for the +groundlings; but a sincere observer of life, seeing thru his own eyes +and setting down <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>what he saw with abundant humor, of course, but also +with profound respect for the eternal verities.</p> + +<p>George Eliot in one of her essays calls those who parody lofty themes +"debasers of the moral currency." Mark Twain is always an advocate of +the sterling ethical standard. He is ready to overwhelm an affectation +with irresistible laughter, but he never lacks reverence for the things +that really deserve reverence. It is not at the Old Masters that he +scoffs in Italy, but rather at those who pay lip-service to things which +they neither enjoy nor understand. For a ruin or a painting or a legend +that does not seem to him to deserve the appreciation in which it is +held he refuses to affect an admiration he does not feel; he cannot help +being honest—he was born so. For meanness of all kinds he has a burning +contempt; and on Abelard he pours out the vials of his wrath. He has a +quick eye for all humbugs and a scorching scorn for them; but there is +no attempt at being funny in the manner of the cockney comedians when he +stands in the awful presence of the Sphinx. He is not taken in by the +glamor of Palestine; he does not lose his head there; he keeps his feet; +but he knows that he is standing on holy ground; and there is never a +hint of irreverence in his attitude.</p> + +<p>'A Tramp Abroad' is a better book than the 'In<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>nocents Abroad'; it is +quite as laughter-provoking, and its manner is far more restrained. Mark +Twain was then master of his method, sure of himself, secure of his +popularity; and he could do his best and spare no pains to be certain +that it was his best. Perhaps there is a slight falling off in +'Following the Equator'; a trace of fatigue, of weariness, of +disenchantment. But the last book of travels has passages as broadly +humorous as any of the first; and it proves the author's possession of a +pithy shrewdness not to be suspected from a perusal of its earliest +predecessor. The first book was the work of a young fellow rejoicing in +his own fun and resolved to make his readers laugh with him or at him; +the latest book is the work of an older man, who has found that life is +not all laughter, but whose eye is as clear as ever and whose tongue is +as plain-spoken.</p> + +<p>These three books of travel are like all other books of travel in that +they relate in the first person what the author went forth to see. +Autobiographic also are 'Roughing It' and 'Life on the Mississippi,' and +they have always seemed to me better books than the more widely +circulated travels. They are better because they are the result of a +more intimate knowledge of the material dealt with. Every traveler is of +necessity but a bird of passage; he is a mere carpet-<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>bagger; his +acquaintance with the countries he visits is external only; and this +acquaintanceship is made only when he is a full-grown man. But Mark +Twain's knowledge of the Mississippi was acquired in his youth; it was +not purchased with a price; it was his birthright; and it was internal +and complete. And his knowledge of the mining-camp was achieved in early +manhood when the mind is open and sensitive to every new impression. +There is in both these books a fidelity to the inner truth, a certainty +of touch, a sweep of vision, not to be found in the three books of +travels. For my own part I have long thought that Mark Twain could +securely rest his right to survive as an author on those opening +chapters in 'Life on the Mississippi' in which he makes clear the +difficulties, the seeming impossibilities, that fronted those who wisht +to learn the river. These chapters are bold and brilliant; and they +picture for us forever a period and a set of conditions, singularly +interesting and splendidly varied, that otherwise would have had to +forego all adequate record.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>It is highly probable that when an author reveals the power of evoking +views of places and <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>of calling up portraits of people such as Mark +Twain showed in 'Life on the Mississippi,' and when he has the masculine +grasp of reality Mark Twain made evident in 'Roughing It,' he must needs +sooner or later turn from mere fact to avowed fiction and become a +story-teller. The long stories which Mark Twain has written fall into +two divisions,—first, those of which the scene is laid in the present, +in reality, and mostly in the Mississippi Valley, and second, those of +which the scene is laid in the past, in fantasy mostly, and in Europe.</p> + +<p>As my own liking is a little less for the latter group, there is no need +for me now to linger over them. In writing these tales of the past Mark +Twain was making up stories in his head; personally I prefer the tales +of his in which he has his foot firm on reality. The 'Prince and the +Pauper' has the essence of boyhood in it; it has variety and vigor; it +has abundant humor and plentiful pathos; and yet I for one would give +the whole of it for the single chapter in which Tom Sawyer lets the +contract for white-washing his aunt's fence.</p> + +<p>Mr. Howells has declared that there are two kinds of fiction he likes +almost equally well,—"a real novel and a pure romance"; and he joyfully +accepts 'A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court' as "one of the +greatest romances ever <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>imagined." It is a humorous romance overflowing +with stalwart fun; and it is not irreverent but iconoclastic, in that it +breaks not a few disestablished idols. It is intensely American and +intensely nineteenth century and intensely democratic—in the best sense +of that abused adjective. The British critics were greatly displeased +with the book:—and we are reminded of the fact that the Spanish still +somewhat resent 'Don Quixote' because it brings out too truthfully the +fatal gap in the Spanish character between the ideal and the real. So +much of the feudal still survives in British society that Mark Twain's +merry and elucidating assault on the past seemed to some almost an +insult to the present.</p> + +<p>But no critic, British or American, has ventured to discover any +irreverence in 'Joan of Arc,' wherein indeed the tone is almost devout +and the humor almost too much subdued. Perhaps it is my own distrust of +the so-called historical novel, my own disbelief that it can ever be +anything but an inferior form of art, which makes me care less for this +worthy effort to honor a noble figure. And elevated and dignified as is +the 'Joan of Arc,' I do not think that it shows us Mark Twain at his +best; altho it has many a passage that only he could have written, it is +perhaps the least characteristic of his works. Yet it may well be that +the certain measure of success he has achieved <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>in handling a subject so +lofty and so serious, helped to open the eyes of the public to see the +solid merits of his other stories, in which his humor has fuller play +and in which his natural gifts are more abundantly displayed.</p> + +<p>Of these other stories three are "real novels," to use Mr. Howells's +phrase; they are novels as real as any in any literature. 'Tom Sawyer' +and 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Pudd'nhead Wilson' are invaluable +contributions to American literature—for American literature is nothing +if it is not a true picture of American life and if it does not help us +to understand ourselves. 'Huckleberry Finn' is a very amusing volume, +and a generation has read its pages and laughed over it immoderately; +but it is very much more than a funny book; it is a marvelously accurate +portrayal of a whole civilization. Mr. Ormsby, in an essay which +accompanies his translation of 'Don Quixote,' has pointed out that for a +full century after its publication that greatest of novels was enjoyed +chiefly as a tale of humorous misadventure, and that three generations +had laughed over it before anybody suspected that it was more than a +mere funny book. It is perhaps rather with the picaresque romances of +Spain that 'Huckleberry Finn' is to be compared than with the +masterpiece of Cervantes; but I do not think that it will be a century +or that it will take three generations before <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>we Americans generally +discover how great a book 'Huckleberry Finn' really is, how keen its +vision of character, how close its observation of life, how sound its +philosophy, and how it records for us once and for all certain phases of +southwestern society which it is most important for us to perceive and +to understand. The influence of slavery, the prevalence of feuds, the +conditions and the circumstances that make lynching possible—all these +things are set before us clearly and without comment. It is for us to +draw our own moral, each for himself, as we do when we see Shakspere +acted.</p> + +<p>'Huckleberry Finn,' in its art, for one thing, and also in its broader +range, is superior to 'Tom Sawyer' and to 'Pudd'nhead Wilson,' fine as +both these are in their several ways. In no book in our language, to my +mind, has the boy, simply as a boy, been better realized than in 'Tom +Sawyer.' In some respects 'Pudd'nhead Wilson' is the most dramatic of +Mark Twain's longer stories, and also the most ingenious; like 'Tom +Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn,' it has the full flavor of the +Mississippi River, on which its author spent his own boyhood, and from +contact with the soil of which he has always risen reinvigorated.</p> + +<p>It is by these three stories, and especially by 'Huckleberry Finn,' that +Mark Twain is likely to <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>live longest. Nowhere else is the life of the +Mississippi Valley so truthfully recorded. Nowhere else can we find a +gallery of southwestern characters as varied and as veracious as those +Huck Finn met in his wanderings. The histories of literature all praise +the 'Gil Blas' of Le Sage for its amusing adventures, its natural +characters, its pleasant humor, and its insight into human frailty; and +the praise is deserved. But in every one of these qualities 'Huckleberry +Finn' is superior to 'Gil Blas.' Le Sage set the model of the picaresque +novel, and Mark Twain followed his example; but the American book is +richer than the French—deeper, finer, stronger. It would be hard to +find in any language better specimens of pure narrative, better examples +of the power of telling a story and of calling up action so that the +reader cannot help but see it, than Mark Twain's account of the +Shepardson-Grangerford feud, and his description of the shooting of +Boggs by Sherbourn and of the foiled attempt to lynch Sherbourn +afterward.</p> + +<p>These scenes, fine as they are, vivid, powerful, and most artistic in +their restraint, can be matched in the two other books. In 'Tom Sawyer' +they can be paralleled by the chapter in which the boy and the girl are +lost in the cave, and Tom, seeing a gleam of light in the distance, +discovers that it is a candle carried by Indian Joe, <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>the one enemy he +has in the world. In 'Pudd'nhead Wilson' the great passages of +'Huckleberry Finn' are rivaled by that most pathetic account of the weak +son willing to sell his own mother as a slave "down the river." Altho no +one of the books is sustained thruout on this high level, and altho, in +truth, there are in each of them passages here and there that we could +wish away (because they are not worthy of the association in which we +find them), I have no hesitation in expressing here my own conviction +that the man who has given us four scenes like these is to be compared +with the masters of literature; and that he can abide the comparison +with equanimity.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Perhaps I myself prefer these three Mississippi Valley books above all +Mark Twain's other writings (altho with no lack of affection for those +also) partly because these have the most of the flavor of the soil about +them. After veracity and the sense of the universal, what I best relish +in literature is this native aroma, pungent, homely, and abiding. Yet I +feel sure that I should not rate him so high if he were the author of +these three books only. They are the best of him, but the others are +good also, and <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>good in a different way. Other writers have given us +this local color more or less artistically, more or less convincingly: +one New England and another New York, a third Virginia, and a fourth +Georgia, and a fifth Wisconsin; but who so well as Mark Twain has given +us the full spectrum of the Union? With all his exactness in reproducing +the Mississippi Valley, Mark Twain is not sectional in his outlook; he +is national always. He is not narrow; he is not western or eastern; he +is American with a certain largeness and boldness and freedom and +certainty that we like to think of as befitting a country so vast as +ours and a people so independent.</p> + +<p>In Mark Twain we have "the national spirit as seen with our own eyes," +declared Mr. Howells; and, from more points of view than one, Mark Twain +seems to me to be the very embodiment of Americanism. Self-educated in +the hard school of life, he has gone on broadening his outlook as he has +grown older. Spending many years abroad, he has come to understand other +nationalities, without enfeebling his own native faith. Combining a +mastery of the commonplace with an imaginative faculty, he is a +practical idealist. No respecter of persons, he has a tender regard for +his fellowman. Irreverent toward all outworn superstitions, he has ever +<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>revealed the deepest respect for all things truly worthy of reverence. +Unwilling to take pay in words, he is impatient always to get at the +root of the matter, to pierce to the center, to see the thing as it is. +He has a habit of standing upright, of thinking for himself, and of +hitting hard at whatsoever seems to him hateful and mean; but at the +core of him there is genuine gentleness and honest sympathy, brave +humanity and sweet kindliness. Perhaps it is boastful for us to think +that these characteristics which we see in Mark Twain are +characteristics also of the American people as a whole; but it is +pleasant to think so.</p> + +<p>Mark Twain has the very marrow of Americanism. He is as intensely and as +typically American as Franklin or Emerson or Hawthorne. He has not a +little of the shrewd common-sense and the homely and unliterary +directness of Franklin. He is not without a share of the aspiration and +the elevation of Emerson; and he has a philosophy of his own as +optimistic as Emerson's. He possesses also somewhat of Hawthorne's +interest in ethical problems, with something of the same power of +getting at the heart of them; he, too, has written his parables and +apologs wherein the moral is obvious and unobtruded. He is +uncompromisingly honest; and his conscience is as rugged as his style +sometimes is.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>No American author has to-day at his command a style more nervous, more +varied, more flexible, or more direct than Mark Twain's. His colloquial +ease should not hide from us his mastery of all the devices of rhetoric. +He may seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always +obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has something to say; +and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness of epithet and an +individuality of phrase always accurate, however unacademic. His +vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his +language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He +rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. His instinct +for the exact word is not always assured, and now and again he has +failed to exercise it; but we do not find in his prose the flatting and +sharping he censured in Fenimore Cooper's. His style has none of the +cold perfection of an antique statue; it is too modern and too American +for that, and too completely the expression of the man himself, sincere +and straightforward. It is not free from slang, altho this is far less +frequent than one might expect; but it does its work swiftly and +cleanly. And it is capable of immense variety. Consider the tale of the +Blue Jay in 'A Tramp Abroad,' wherein the humor is sustained by unstated +pathos; what could be <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>better told than this, with every word the right +word and in the right place? And take Huck Finn's description of the +storm when he was alone on the island, which is in dialect, which will +not parse, which bristles with double negatives, but which none the less +is one of the finest passages of descriptive prose in all American +literature.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>After all, it is as a humorist pure and simple that Mark Twain is best +known and best beloved. In the preceding pages I have tried to point out +the several ways in which he transcends humor, as the word is commonly +restricted, and to show that he is no mere fun-maker. But he is a +fun-maker beyond all question, and he has made millions laugh as no +other man of our century has done. The laughter he has aroused is +wholesome and self-respecting; it clears the atmosphere. For this we +cannot but be grateful. As Lowell said, "let us not be ashamed to +confess that, if we find the tragedy a bore, we take the profoundest +satisfaction in the farce. It is a mark of sanity." There is no laughter +in Don Quixote, the noble enthusiast whose wits are unsettled; and there +is little on the lips of <i>Alceste</i>, the misanthrope of Molière; but for +both of them life would have been easier had they known how <a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>to laugh. +Cervantes himself, and Molière also, found relief in laughter for their +melancholy; and it was the sense of humor which kept them tolerantly +interested in the spectacle of humanity, altho life had prest hardly on +them both. On Mark Twain also life has left its scars; but he has bound +up his wounds and battled forward with a stout heart, as Cervantes did, +and Molière. It was Molière who declared that it was a strange business +to undertake to make people laugh; but even now, after two centuries, +when the best of Molière's plays are acted, mirth breaks out again and +laughter overflows.</p> + +<p>It would be doing Mark Twain a disservice to compare him to Molière, the +greatest comic dramatist of all time; and yet there is more than one +point of similarity. Just as Mark Twain began by writing comic copy +which contained no prophesy of a masterpiece like 'Huckleberry Finn,' so +Molière was at first the author only of semi-acrobatic farces on the +Italian model in no wise presaging 'Tartuffe' and the 'Misanthrope.' +Just as Molière succeeded first of all in pleasing the broad public that +likes robust fun, and then slowly and step by step developed into a +dramatist who set on the stage enduring figures plucked out of the +abounding life about him, so also has Mark Twain grown, ascending from +the 'Jumping Frog' to 'Huckleberry Finn,' as comic as its <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>elder brother +and as laughter-provoking, but charged also with meaning and with +philosophy. And like Molière again, Mark Twain has kept solid hold of +the material world; his doctrine is not of the earth earthy, but it is +never sublimated into sentimentality. He sympathizes with the spiritual +side of humanity, while never ignoring the sensual. Like Molière, Mark +Twain takes his stand on common-sense and thinks scorn of affectation of +every sort. He understands sinners and strugglers and weaklings; and he +is not harsh with them, reserving his scorching hatred for hypocrites +and pretenders and frauds.</p> + +<p>At how long an interval Mark Twain shall be rated after Molière and +Cervantes it is for the future to declare. All that we can see clearly +now is that it is with them that he is to be classed,—with Molière and +Cervantes, with Chaucer and Fielding, humorists all of them, and all of +them manly men.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1898.) </p></div> + +<p><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a></p><p><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a></p> +<h2>A NOTE ON MAUPASSANT</h2> + + +<p>A student of the literature of our own time who has only recently +completed his first half century of life cannot help feeling suddenly +aged and almost antiquated when he awakes to the fact that he has been +privileged to see the completed literary career of two such accomplished +craftsmen as Robert Louis Stevenson and Guy de Maupassant. In youth they +were full of promise, and in maturity they were rich in performance; and +all too soon the lives of both came to an end, when their powers were +still growing, when their outlook on life was still broadening, and when +they bid fair, both of them, to bring forth many another book riper and +wiser than any they had already given us.</p> + +<p>The points of contrast between the two men thus untimely taken away are +as striking as the points of similarity. Both were artists ardently in +love with the technic of their craft, delighting in their own skill, and +ever on the alert to find new occasion for the display of their mastery +of the methods of fiction. Stevenson was a Scotch<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>man; and his +pseudo-friend has told us that there was in him something of "the +shorter catechist." Maupassant was a Norman, and he had never given a +thought to the glorifying of God. The man who wrote in English found the +theme of his minor masterpieces in the conflict of which the +battle-ground is the human heart. The man who wrote in French began by +caring little or nothing for the heart or the soul or the mind, and by +concentrating all his skill upon a record of the deeds of the human +body. The one has left us 'Markheim' and the 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll +and Mr. Hyde,' while the other made his first bid for fame with 'Boule +de suif.'</p> + +<p>In the preface of 'Pierre et Jean,' Maupassant has recorded how he +acquired from Louis Bouilhet the belief that a single lyric, a scant +hundred lines, would give immortality to a poet if only the work were +fine enough, and that for the author who sought to escape oblivion there +was only one course to pursue—to learn his trade thoroly, to master +every secret of the craft, to do his best always, in the hope that some +fortunate day the Muse would reward his unfailing devotion. And from +Flaubert, the author of that merciless masterpiece 'Madame Bovary,' the +young man learned the importance of individuality, of originality, of +the personal note which <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>should be all his own, and which should never +suggest or recall any one else's. Flaubert was kindly and encouraging, +but he was a desperately severe taskmaster. At Flaubert's dictation +Maupassant gave up verse for prose; and for seven years he wrote +incessantly and published nothing. The stories and tales and verses and +dramas of those seven years of apprenticeship were ruthlessly criticized +by the author of 'Salammbô,' and then they were destroyed unprinted. In +all the long history of literature there is no record of any other +author who served so severe a novitiate.</p> + +<p>Douglas Jerrold once said of a certain British author who had begun to +publish very young that "he had taken down the shutters before he had +anything to put up in the shop window." From being transfixt by such a +jibe Maupassant was preserved by Flaubert. When he was thirty he +contributed that masterpiece of ironic humor 'Boule de suif,' to the +'Soirées de Médan,' a volume of short-stories put forth by the late +Émile Zola, with the collaboration of a little group of his friends and +followers. On this first appearance in the arena of letters Maupassant +stept at once to a foremost place. That was in 1880; and in 1892 his +mind gave way and he was taken to the asylum, where he soon died. In +those twelve years he had published a dozen <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>volumes of short-stories +and half a dozen novels. Of the novel he might have made himself master +in time; of the short-story he proved himself a master with the very +earliest of all his tales.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted at once that many of Maupassant's earlier +short-stories have to do with the lower aspects of man's merely animal +activity. Maupassant had an abundance of what the French themselves +called "Gallic salt." His humor was not squeamish; it delighted in +dealing with themes that our Anglo-Saxon prudery prefers not to touch. +But even at the beginning this liking of his for the sort of thing that +we who speak English prefer to avoid in print never led him to put dirt +where dirt was not a necessary element of his narrative. Dirty many of +these tales were, no doubt; but many of them were perfectly clean. He +never went out of his way to offend, as not a few of his compatriots +seem to enjoy doing. He handled whatever subject he took with the same +absolute understanding of its value, of the precise treatment best +suited to it. If it was a dirty theme he had chosen—and he had no +prejudice against such a theme—he did whatever was needful to get the +most out of his subject. If it was not a dirty theme, then there was +never any touch of the tar-brush. Whenever the subject itself was +inoffensive his treatment was also immaculate. There is never any +difficulty in <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>making a choice out of his hundred or two brief tales; +and it is easy to pick out a dozen or a score of his short-stories +needing absolutely no expurgation, because they are wholly free from any +phrase or any suggestion likely to bring the blush of shame to the cheek +of innocence. In matters of taste, as we Anglo-Saxons regard them, +Maupassant was a man without prejudices. But he was a man also of +immitigable veracity in his dealing with the material of his art, in his +handling of life itself. He told the truth as it was given to him to see +the truth; not the whole truth, of course, for it is given to no man to +see that. His artistic standard was lofty; and he did his best not to +lie about life. And in some ways this veracity of his may be accepted, +if not as an equivalent for morality, at least as a not wholly unworthy +substitute.</p> + +<p>The most of Maupassant's earlier tales were not a little hard and stern +and unsympathetic; and here again Maupassant was the disciple of +Flaubert. His manner was not only unemotional at first, it was icily +impassive. These first stories of his were cold and they were +contemptuous;—at least they made the reader feel that the author +heartily despised the pitiable and pitiful creatures he was depicting. +They dealt mainly with the externals of life,—with outward actions; and +the internal motives of the several actors were <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>not always adequately +implied. But in time the mind came to interest Maupassant as much as the +body. In the beginning he seems to have considered solely what his +characters did, and he cared little to tell us what they felt and what +they thought; probably he did not know himself and did not try to know.</p> + +<p>The inquirers who should read his stories in the strict sequence of +their production could not fail to be struck with the first awakening of +his curiosity about human feeling; and they might easily trace the +steady growth of his interest in psychologic states. Telling us at first +bluntly and barely what his characters did, he came in time to find his +chief pleasure in suggesting to us not only what they felt, but +especially what they vaguely feared. Toward the end of his brief career +the thought of death and the dread of mental disease seemed to possess +him more and more with a haunting horror that kept recurring with a +pathetic persistence. He came to have a close terror of death, almost an +obsession of the grave; and to find a parallel to this we should have to +go back four hundred years, to Villon, also a realist and a humorist +with a profound relish for the outward appearances of life. But +Maupassant went far beyond the earlier poet, and he even developed a +fondness for the morbid and the abnormal. This is revealed in 'Le +Horla,'<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a> the appalling story in which he took for his own Fitzjames +O'Brien's uncanny monster, invisible, and yet tangible. In the hands of +the clever Irish-American this tale had been gruesome enough; but the +Frenchman was able to give it an added touch of terror by making the +unfortunate victim discover that the creature he feared had a stronger +will than his own and that he was being hypnotized to his doom by a +being whom he could not see, but whose presence he could feel. There is +more than one of these later tales in which we seem to perceive the +premonition of the madness which came upon Maupassant before his death.</p> + +<p>At first he was an observer only, a recorder of the outward facts of +average humanity. He had no theories about life, or even about art. He +had no ideas of his own, no general ideas, no interest in ideas. He did +not care to talk about technic or even about his own writings. He put on +paper what he had seen, the peasants of Normandy, the episodes of the +war, the nether-world of the newspaper. He cared nothing for morality, +but he was unfailingly veracious, never falsifying the facts of +existence as he had seen it himself. Then, at the end, it is not what +his characters do that most interested him, not what they are, not what +they think, but what they feel, and, above all, what they fear.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>In every work of art there are at least four elements, which we may +separate if we wish to consider each of them in turn. First of all, +there is the technic of the author, his craftsmanship, his mastery of +the tools of his trade; and by almost universal consent Maupassant is +held to be one of the master craftsmen of the short-story. Second, there +is the amount of observation of life which the author reveals; and here +again Maupassant takes rank among the leaders, altho the sphere in which +he observed had its marked limitations and its obvious exclusions. +Thirdly, there is the underlying and informing imagination which invents +and relates and sustains; and there is no disputing the vigor of +Maupassant's imagination, altho it was not lofty and altho it lacked +variety. Finally, there is always to be taken into account what one may +term the author's philosophy of life, his attitude toward the common +problems of humanity; and here it is that Maupassant is most +lacking,—for his opinions are negligible and his attempts at +intellectual speculation are of slight value.</p> + +<p>Technic can be acquired; and Maupassant had studied at the feet of that +master technician Flaubert. Observation can be trained; and Maupassant +had deliberately developed his power of vision. Imagination may be +stimulated by constant endeavor to a higher achievement; and<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a> +Maupassant's ambitions were ever tending upward. Philosophy, however, is +dependent upon the sum total of a man's faculties, upon his training, +upon his temperament, upon the essential elements of his character; and +Maupassant was not a sound thinker, and his attitude toward life is not +that by which he can best withstand the adverse criticism of posterity. +Primarily, he was not a thinker any more than Hugo was a thinker, or +Dickens. He was only an artist—an artist in fiction; and an artist is +not called upon to be a thinker, altho the supreme artists seem nearly +all of them to have been men of real intellectual force.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1902.) </p></div> + +<p><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a></p> + + +<p><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a></p><p><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a></p> +<h2>THE MODERN NOVEL AND THE MODERN PLAY</h2> + + +<p>As we glance down the long history of literature, we cannot but remark +that certain literary forms, the novel at one time and the drama at +another, have achieved a sweeping popularity, seemingly out of all +proportion to their actual merit at the moment when they were +flourishing most luxuriantly. In these periods of undue expansion, the +prevalent form absorbed many talents not naturally attracted toward it. +In the beginning of the sixteenth century in England, for instance, the +drama was more profitable, and, therefore, more alluring, than any other +field of literary endeavor; and so it was that many a young fellow of +poetic temperament adventured himself in the rude theater of those +spacious days, even tho his native gift was only doubtfully dramatic. No +reader of Peele's plays and of Greene's can fail to feel that these two +gentle poets were, neither of them, born play-makers called to the stage +by irresistible vocation. Two hundred years later, after Steele and +Addison had set the pattern of the eighteenth-century <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>essay, the drama +was comparatively neglected, and every man of letters was found striving +for the unattainable ease and charm of the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator.' +Even the elephantine Johnson, congenitally incapable of airy nothings +and prone always to "make little fishes talk like whales," disported +ponderously in the 'Idler' and the 'Rambler.' The vogue of the essay was +fleeting also; and a century later it was followed by the vogue of the +novel,—a vogue which has already endured longer than that of the essay, +and which has not yet shown any signs of abating. Yet the history of +literature reminds us that the literary form most in favor in one +century is very likely to drop out of fashion in the next; and we are +justified in asking ourselves whether the novel is to be supreme in the +twentieth century as it was in the nineteenth, or whether its popularity +must surely wane like that of the essay.</p> + +<p>Altho the art of fiction must be almost as old as mankind itself, the +prose novel, as we know it now, is a thing of yesterday only. It is not +yet a hundred years since it established itself and claimed equality +with the other forms of literature. Novelists there had been, no doubt, +and of the highest rank; but it was not until after 'Waverley' and its +successors swept across Europe triumphant and overwhelming that a +fiction in prose was admitted to full citizenship <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>in the republic of +letters. Nowadays, we are so accustomed to the novel and so familiar +with its luxuriance in every modern language that we often forget its +comparative youth. Yet we know that no one of the muses of old was +assigned to the fostering of prose-fiction, a form of literary endeavor +which the elder Greeks did not foresee. If we accept Fielding's +contention that the history of 'Tom Jones' must be considered as a +prose-epic, we are justified in the belief that the muse of the +epic-poetry is not now without fit occupation.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the modern novel is not only the heir of the epic, it has also +despoiled the drama, the lyric and the oration of part of their +inheritance. The 'Scarlet Letter,' for example, has not a little of the +lofty largeness and of the stately movement of true tragedy; 'Paul and +Virginia,' again, abounds in a passionate self-revelation which is +essentially lyric; and many a novel-with-a-purpose, needless to name +here, displays its author's readiness to avail himself of all the +devices of the orator. In fact, the novel is now so various and so +many-sided that its hospitality is limitless. It welcomes alike the +exotic eroticism of M. Pierre Loti and the cryptic cleverness of Mr. +Henry James, the accumulated adventure of Dumas and the inexorable +veracity of Tolstoi. It has tempted many a man who had no native +endowment for <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>it; Motley and Parkman and Froude risked themselves in +imaginative fiction, as well as in the sterner history which was their +real birthright. And so did Brougham, far more unfitted for +prose-fiction than Johnson was for the graceful eighteenth-century essay +or than Peele and Greene were for the acted drama. Perhaps it is a +consequence of this variety of method, which lets prose-fiction proffer +itself to every passer-by, that we recognize in the Victorian novel the +plasticity of form and the laxity of structure which we have discovered +to be characteristic of the Elizabethan drama.</p> + +<p>In her encroaching on the domain of the other muses, the prose-epic has +annexed far more from her comic and tragic sisters than from any of the +other six. An opportunity for a most interesting inquiry awaits the +alert scholar who shall undertake to tell the rivalry of the novel and +the play, tracing their influence on each other and making a catalog of +their mutual borrowings. Altho the record has no special significance, +it may be noted that they have never hesitated to filch plots from each +other, the playwrights appropriating the inventions of the novelists and +the novelists levying on the works of the playwrights,—Shakspere, the +dramatist, finding the action of his 'As You Like It' ready to his hand +in a tale of Lodge's, and Le Sage, the story-teller, in <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>his 'Gil Blas' +availing himself of scenes from Spanish comedies.</p> + +<p>Far deeper, however, than any purloining of material are other +interrelations of the novel and the play, which have been continually +influencing one another, even when there was no hint of any plagiarism +of subject-matter. The older of the two, the drama, long served as the +model of prose-fiction; and not a few of the earlier practitioners of +the later art began their literary careers as writers for the +theater,—Le Sage for one, and, for another, Fielding. It is not to be +wondered at that they were inclined to approach the novel a little as +tho it were a play, and to set their characters in motion with only a +bare and summary indication of the appropriate environment. They were +inclined to follow the swift methods proper enough on the stage, if not +absolutely necessary there, instead of developing for themselves the +more leisurely movement appropriate to prose-fiction. Both Fielding and +Le Sage, it may be well to note, had profited greatly by their careful +study of Molière and of his logical method of presenting character. In +the 'Princess of Cleves,'—perhaps the first effort at feminine +psychology in fiction,—we discover the obvious impress of both +Corneille and Racine on Madame de Lafayette,—the stiffening of the will +to resolute self-sacrifice of the elder dramatist and the subtler +<a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>analysis of motive dexterously attempted by the younger and more tender +tragic poet.</p> + +<p>Just as Beaumarchais in the eighteenth century found his profit in a +study of Le Sage's satiric attitude, so Augier in the nineteenth +century, and still more, Dumas <i>fils</i>, responded to the sharp stimulus +of Balzac. The richer and far more complicated presentation of character +which delights and amazes us in the 'Human Comedy' was most suggestive +to the younger generation of French dramatists; and no one can fail to +see the reflection of Balzac in the 'Maître Guérin' of Augier and in the +'Ami des femmes' of Dumas. And, in their turn, these plays and their +fellows supplied a pattern to the novelist—to Daudet especially. A +certain lack of largeness, a certain artificiality of action in Daudet's +'Fromont jeune et Risler aîné,' is probably to be ascribed to the fact +that the story was first conceived in the form of a play, altho it was +actually written as a novel.</p> + +<p>The British novelist with whom this French novelist is often compared, +and with whom he had much in common, was also impressed profoundly by +the theater of his own time and of his own country. But Dickens was less +fortunate than Daudet, in that the contemporary English stage did not +afford a model as worthy of imitation as the contemporary French stage. +Of course, the native genius of Dickens is indisputable, but <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>his +artistic ideals are painfully unsatisfactory. His letters show him +forever straining after effects for their own sake only, and striving to +put just so much humor and just so much pathos into each one of the +successive monthly parts into which his stories were chopped up. Very +fond of the theater from his early youth, Dickens had come near going on +the stage as an actor; and, in his search for effects, he borrowed +inexpensive mysteries from contemporary melodrama, and he took from it +the implacable and inexplicable villain ever involved in dark plottings. +It is significant that 'No Thoroughfare,' the one play of his invention +which was actually produced, was performed at the Adelphi, and was +discovered then not to differ widely from the other robust and +high-colored melodramas ordinarily acted at that hopelessly unliterary +playhouse. Daudet, altho he was not gifted with the splendid creative +force of Dickens, inherited the Latin tradition of restraint and harmony +and proportion; and he had before his eyes on the French stage the +adroitly contrived comedies of Augier and of Dumas <i>fils</i>, models far +more profitable to a novelist than the violent crudities of the Adelphi.</p> + +<p>Perhaps there is more than a hint of ingratitude in Daudet's later +disgust with the inherent limitations of the drama,—a disgust more +forcibly phrased by his friends, Zola and Goncourt and<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a> Flaubert, +realists all of them, eager to capture the theater also and to rule it +in their own way. In their hands, the novel was an invading conqueror; +and they had the arrogance that comes from an unforeseen success. They +were all eager to take possession of the playhouse, and to repeat in +that new field of art the profitable victories they had gained in the +library. But they declined to admit that the drama was a special art, +with a method of its own. They resented bitterly the failures that +followed when they refused to accept the conditions of the actual +theater; and they protested shrilly against these conditions when they +vainly essayed to fulfil them. "What a horrible manner of writing is +that which suits the stage!" Flaubert complained to George Sand. "The +ellipses, the suspensions, the interrogations must be lavished, if one +wishes to have liveliness; and all these things, in themselves, are very +ugly." In other words, Flaubert was concerned with the rhetoric of the +written word, and he had no relish for the rhythm of spoken dialog.</p> + +<p>These French novelists refused to perceive that the drama is, of +necessity, the most democratic of the arts, since it depends, and has +always depended, and must ever depend, absolutely upon the public as a +whole. The strength of the drama, its immense advantage over other forms +of liter<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ature, lies in this, that it must appeal to the mass of men, +not to the intelligent more than to the unintelligent, not to the +educated more than to the uneducated, not to any sect or clique, or +cotery, but to men as men. The laws of the drama may be deduced, all of +them, from this principle, that in the theater the play-maker has to +interest a gathering of his own contemporaries, all sorts and conditions +of men. If he cannot hold their attention, move them, sway them, control +them, then he has failed frankly to do what he set out to do. And he can +do this, he can make them laugh, and make them weep, make them feel, and +make them think, only by accepting the conditions of the theater itself. +Daudet and Zola had more of the needful understanding of their fellow +creatures than Flaubert and Goncourt, more of the necessary sympathy; +but they had all of them not a little of the conceit of the self-made +man and they assumed the egotistic attitude of the cultivated +aristocrat. It would have been well if they could have taken to heart +what George Sand once wrote to Flaubert: "It seems to me that your +school does not consider enough the substance of things, and that it +lingers too much on the surface. By dint of seeking for form, it lets go +of the fact. It addresses itself to men of cultivation. But there are, +strictly speaking, no men of cultivation, for we are, first of all, +men."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>Because the drama was popular, these artistic aristocrats despised it. +Altho they pined to succeed as play-makers, they scorned the trouble of +mastering the methods of the theater. Because the drama, at its highest, +attained to the loftier levels of literature, they assumed that a man of +letters had no need to spy out the secrets of the stage. If they could +not apply in the play the methods they had been applying skilfully and +successfully in the novel, so much the worse for the play. Evidently, +the drama was not literature, and the theater was no place for a +literary man. The fault was not in them; it could not be, since they had +regenerated the novel. It must be in the stage itself, and in the +stupidity of the public.</p> + +<p>In one of his most vigorous essays, Brunetière joined issue with this +little group of French novelists, and told them sharply that they had +better consider anew the theatrical practises and prejudices which +seemed to them absurdly out-worn, and which they disdained as born of +mere chance and surviving only by tradition. He bade them ask themselves +if these tricks of the trade, so to style them, were not due to the fact +that the dramatist's art is a special art, having its own laws, its own +conditions, its own conventions, inherent in the nature of the art +itself. When they exprest their conviction that the method <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>of the novel +ought to be applicable to the play, Brunetière retorted that, if the +novel was the play and if the play was the novel, then in all accuracy +there would be neither novel nor play, but only a single and undivided +form; and he insisted that, if as a matter of fact this single form did +not actually exist, if it had divided itself, if there was such a thing +as a novel and such a thing as a play, then that could be only because +we go to the theater to get a specific pleasure which we cannot get in +the library. The practical critic gave them the sound advice that, if +they sought to succeed in the theater as they had succeeded in the +library, they should study the art of the playwright, endeavoring to +perceive wherein it differs from the art of the story-teller.</p> + +<p>The points of agreement between the novel and the play are so obvious +that there is some excuse for overlooking the fact that the points of +disagreement are almost as numerous. It is true that, in the play as in +the novel, a story is developed by means of characters whose +conversation is reproduced. So the game of golf is like the game of +lawn-tennis, in so far as there are in both of them balls to be placed +by the aid of certain implements. But as the balls are different and as +the implements are different, the two games are really not at all alike; +and it is when they are played most skilfully and most strictly +<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>according to the rules that they are most unlike.</p> + +<p>The play is least dramatic when it most closely resembles the novel, as +it did in the days of Peele and Greene, whose dramas are little more +than narratives presented in dialog. In the three centuries since Peele +and Greene, the play and the novel have been getting further and further +away from each other. Each has been steadily specializing, seeking its +true self, casting out the extraneous elements proved to be useless. The +novel in its highest development is now a single narrative, no longer +distended and delayed by intercalated tales, such as we find in 'Don +Quixote' and 'Tom Jones,' in 'Wilhelm Meister' and in 'Pickwick,' +inserted for no artistic reason, but merely because the author happened +to have them on hand. The play in its highest development is now a +single action, swiftly presented, and kept free from lyrical and +oratorical digressions existing for their own sake and not aiding in the +main purpose of the drama.</p> + +<p>The practitioners of each art conceive their stories in accordance with +the necessities of that art, the novelist thinking in terms of the +printed page and the dramatist thinking in terms of the actual theater, +with its actors and with its spectators. Here, indeed, is a chief reason +why the perspective of the play is different from the <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>perspective of +the novel, in that the playwright must perforce take account of his +audience, of its likes and its dislikes, of its traditions and its +desires. The novelist need not give a thought to his readers, assured +that those in sympathy with his attitude and his mood will find him out +sooner or later. To the story-teller, readers may come singly and at +intervals; but the play-maker has to attract his audience in a mass. +Much of the merely literary merit of a drama may be enjoyed by a lone +reader under the library lamp; but its essential dramatic quality is +completely and satisfactorily revealed only in front of the footlights +when the theater is filled with spectators.</p> + +<p>It is this consciousness that his appeal is not to any individual man, +but to man in the mass, that makes the dramatist what he is. To +scattered readers, each sitting alone, an author may whisper many things +which he would not dare blurt out before a crowd. The playwright knows +that he can never whisper slyly; he must always speak out boldly so that +all may hear him; and he must phrase what he has to say so as to please +the boys in the gallery without insulting the women in the stage-boxes. +To the silent pressure of these unrelated spectators he responds by +seeking the broadest basis for his play, by appealing to elemental human +sympathy, by attempting <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>themes with more or less of universality. It is +because the drama is the most democratic of the arts that the dramatist +cannot narrow himself as the novelist may, if he chooses; and it is +because this breadth of appeal is inherent in the acted play that +Aristotle held the drama to be a nobler form than the epic. "The +dramatic poem," said Mr. Henry James some thirty years ago, when he was +dealing with Tennyson's 'Queen Mary,' "seems to me of all literary forms +the very noblest.... More than any other work of literary art, it needs +a masterly structure."</p> + +<p>Whether nobler or not, the dramatic form has always had a powerful +fascination for the novelists, who are forever casting longing eyes on +the stage. Mr. James himself has tried it, and Mr. Howells and Mark +Twain also. Balzac believed that he was destined to make his fortune in +the theater; and one of Thackeray's stories was made over out of a +comedy, acted only by amateurs. Charles Reade called himself a dramatist +forced to be a novelist by bad laws. Flaubert and the Goncourts, Zola +and Daudet wrote original plays, without ever achieving the success +which befell their efforts in prose-fiction. And now, in the opening +years of the twentieth century, we see Mr. Barrie in London and M. +Hervieu in Paris abandoning the novel in which they have triumphed for +the far more precarious <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>drama. Mr. Thomas Hardy also appears to have +wearied of the novel and to be seeking relief, if not in real drama, at +least in a form borrowed from it, a sort of epic in dialog. Nor is it +without significance that the professional playwrights seem to feel +little or no temptation to turn story-tellers. Apparently the dramatic +form is the more attractive and the more satisfactory, in spite of its +greater difficulty and its greater danger.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, indeed, we may discover in this difficulty and danger one +reason why the drama is more interesting than prose-fiction. A true +artist cannot but tire of a form that is too facile; and he is ever +yearning for a grapple with stubborn resistance. He delights in technic +for its own sake, girding himself joyfully to vanquish its necessities. +He is aware that an art which does not demand a severe apprenticeship +for the slow mastery of its secrets will fail to call forth his full +strength. He knows that it is bad for the art and unwholesome for the +artist himself, when the conditions are so relaxed that he can take it +carelessly.</p> + +<p>It was a saying of the old bard of Brittany that "he who will not answer +to the rudder must answer to the rocks"; and not a few writers of +prose-fiction have made shipwreck because they gave no heed to this +warning. Many a <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>novelist is a sloven in the telling of his tale, +beginning it anywhere and ending it somehow, distracting attention on +characters of slight importance, huddling his incidents, confusing his +narrative, simply because he has never troubled himself with the +principles of construction and proportion with which every playwright +must needs make himself familiar. Just as the architectural students at +the Beaux Arts in Paris are required to develop at the same time the +elevation and the ground-plan and the cross-section of the edifice they +are designing, so the playwright, while he is working out his plot, must +be continually solving problems of exposition and of construction, of +contrast and of climax. These are questions with which the ordinary +novelist feels no need to concern himself, for the reading public makes +no demand on him and there is nothing urging him to attain a high +standard. It is worthy of remark that the newspaper reviewers of current +fiction very rarely comment on the construction of the novels they are +considering.</p> + +<p>In other words, the novel is too easy to be wholly satisfactory to an +artist in literature. It is a loose form of hybrid ancestry; it may be +of any length; and it may be told in any manner,—in letters, as an +autobiography or as a narrative. It may win praise by its possession of +the mere externals of literature, by sheer style. It may <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>seek to please +by description of scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty +of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in +its license of digression,—as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It +may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it +is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost +effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is a true artist's +never-failing tonic.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the drama is a rigid form, limited to the two hours' +traffic of the stage. Just as the decorative artist has to fill the +space assigned to him and must respect the dispositions of the +architect, so the playwright must work his will within the requirements +of the theater, turning to advantage the restrictions which he should +not evade. He must always appeal to the eye as well as to the ear, never +forgetting that the drama, while it is in one aspect a department of +literature, in another is a branch of the show-business. He must devise +stage-settings at once novel, ingenious and plausible; and he must +invent reasons for bringing together naturally the personages of his +play in the single place where each of his acts passes. He must set his +characters firm on their feet, each speaking for himself and revealing +himself as he speaks; for they need to have internal vitality as they +cannot be <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>painted from the outside. He must see his creatures as well +as hear them; and he must know always what they are doing and how they +are looking when they are speaking. He cannot comment on them or explain +them, or palliate their misdeeds. He must project them outside of +himself; and he cannot be his own lecturer to point out their motives. +He must get on without any attempt to point out the morality of his +work, which remains implicit altho it ought to be obvious. He must work +easily within many bonds, seeming always to be free and unhampered; and +he must turn to account these restrictions and find his profit in them, +for they are the very qualities which differentiate the drama and make +it what it is.</p> + +<p>This essential unlikeness of the drama to the novel is so keenly +appreciated by every novelist who happens also to be a dramatist, that +he is rarely tempted to treat the same theme in both forms, feeling +instinctively that it belongs either to the stage or to the library. +Often, of course, he writes a novel rather than a play, because he knows +that a certain theme, adequate as it may be for a novel, lacks that +essential struggle, that naked assertion of the human will, that clash +of contending desires, which must be visible in a play if this is to +sustain the interest of an audience. Many a tale, pleasing to thousands +of readers be<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>cause it abounds in brisk adventure, will not lend itself +to successful dramatization because its many episodes are not related to +a single straight-forward conflict of forces.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Gillette undertook to make a play out of the Sherlock Holmes +stories, which were not really dramatic, however ingeniously packed with +thrilling surprizes, he seized at once on the sinister figure of +Professor Moriarty, glimpsed only for a moment in a single tale, and he +set this portentous villain up against his hero,—thereby displaying his +mastery of a major principle of play-making. Many a novel has seemed +vulgarized on the stage, because the adapter had to wrench its structure +in seeking a struggle strong enough to sustain the framework of a play. +Many a story has been cheapened pitifully by the theatrical adapter, +simply because he was incapable of seeing in it more than a series of +striking scenes which could be hewn into dialog for rough and ready +representation on the stage, and because he had seized only his raw +material, the bare skeleton of intrigue, without possessing the skill or +the taste needed to convey across the footlights the subtle psychology +which vitalized the original tale, or the evanescent atmosphere which +enveloped it in charm. Mr. Bliss Perry phrased it most felicitously when +he asserted that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>a +bird is from a fish," and that "the attempt to transform one into the +other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between +thing."</p> + +<p>We all know that the ultimate value of certain accepted works of fiction +is to be found, not in the story itself or even in the characters, but +rather in the interpretative comment with which the novelist has +encompassed people and happenings commonplace enough; and we all can see +that, when one of these stories is set on the stage, the comment must be +stript off, the incidents and the characters standing naked in their +triteness. But this betrayal is not to be charged against dramatic form, +for all that the dramatization did was to uncover brutally an inherent +weakness which the novelist had hoped to hide.</p> + +<p>The novelist has privileges denied to the playwright; and, chief among +them, of course, is the right to explain his characters, to analize +their motives, to set forth every fleeting phase of emotion to which +they are subject. Sidney Lanier asserted that the novel was a finer form +than the drama because there were subtleties of feeling which Shakspere +could not make plain and George Eliot could. Unfortunately for Lanier, +his admiration for George Eliot is felt now to be excessive; and few of +us are ready to accept Gwendolen Harleth as a more successful attempt at +portraiture than any one of half a score of Shak<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>spere's heroines, so +convincingly feminine. But there is truth, no doubt, in the contention +that the novel is freer, more fluid, more flexible than the play; and +that there are themes and subjects unsuited to the stage and wholly +within the compass of the story-teller. To say this is but to repeat +again that the drama is not prose-fiction and prose-fiction is not the +drama,—just as painting is not sculpture and sculpture not painting.</p> + +<p>But to emphasize this distinction is not to confess that the drama +cannot do at all certain things which the novel does with unconscious +ease. Is there no rich variety of self-analysis in 'Macbeth,' one may +ask, and in 'Hamlet'? Did any novelist of the seventeenth century lay +bare the palpitations of the female heart more delicately than Racine? +Did any novelist of the eighteenth century reveal a subtler insight into +the hidden recesses of feminine psychology than Marivaux? It may be true +enough that, in the nineteenth century, prose-fiction has been more +fortunate than the drama and that the novelists have achieved triumphs +of insight and of subtlety denied to the dramatists. But who shall say +that this immediate inferiority of the play to the novel is inherent in +the form itself? Who will deny that it may be merely the defect of the +playwrights of our time? Who will assert that a more accomplished +dramatist may not come for<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>ward in the twentieth century to prove that +the drama is a fit instrument for emotional dissection?</p> + +<p>No one has more clearly indicated the limitations of the dramatic medium +than Mr. A.B. Walkley, who once declared that the future career of the +drama "is likely to be hampered by its inability to tell cultivated and +curious people of to-day a tithe of the things they want to know. What +the drama can tell, it can tell more emphatically than any other art. +The novel, for instance, is but a report; the drama makes you an +eyewitness of the thing in the doing. But then there is a whole world of +things which cannot be done, of thoughts and moods and subconscious +states which cannot be exprest on the stage and which can be exprest in +the novel. In earlier ages, which could do with a narrow range of vivid +sensations, the drama sufficed; it will not suffice for an age which +wants an illimitable range of sensations, and, being quick in the +uptake, can dispense with vividness." And then the brilliant critic of +the London <i>Times</i> dwelt on the meagerness of Ibsen's 'Master-Builder' +when contrasted with "the extraordinarily complicated texture of subtle +thoughts and minute sensations" in Mr. James's 'Wings of the Dove.'</p> + +<p>It may as well be confest frankly that, even in the twenty-first +century, the playhouse is unlikely to be hospitable to an +"extraordinarily compli<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>cated texture of subtle thoughts and minute +sensations"; but we may ask also if the playhouse will really be very +much poorer by this inhospitality. Even tho a small subdivision of the +public shall find a keen pleasure in them, there are other things in +life than subtle thoughts and minute sensations; there are larger +aspects of existence than those we find registered either in the 'Wings +of the Dove' or in the 'Master-Builder.' The texture of Mr. James's book +may be more complicated than that of Ibsen's play; but this is not +entirely because one is a novel and the other a drama. Both works fail +in breadth of appeal; they are narrow in their outlook on life, however +skilful in craftsmanship they may be, each in its own way; they are +devised for the dilettants, for the men of cultivation, and for these +mainly; and that way danger lies. Taine dwelt on the disintegration +impending when artists tended to appeal to the expert rather than to the +public as a whole. "The sculptor," so he declared, "no longer addresses +himself to a religious, civic community, but to a group of isolated +lovers of the art." In the future as in the past, the appeal of the +playwright must be to the main body of his contemporaries, even tho this +may be at the risk of not fully satisfying one group or another.</p> + +<p>The art of the dramatist is not yet at its richest; but it bristles with +obstacles such as a <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>strong man joys in overcoming. In this sharper +difficulty is its most obvious advantage over the art of the novelist; +and here is its chief attraction for the story-teller, weary of a method +almost too easy to be worth while. Here is a reason why one may venture +a doubt whether the novel, which has been dominant, not to say +domineering, in the second half of the nineteenth century, may not have +to face a more acute rivalry of the drama in the first half of the +twentieth century. The vogue of the novel is not likely to wane +speedily; but its supremacy may be challenged by the drama more swiftly +than now seems likely.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1904.) </p></div> + + +<p><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a></p><p><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a></p> +<h2>THE LITERARY MERIT OF OUR LATTER-DAY DRAMA</h2> + + +<p>In trying to present our own opinions upon a question at issue, we can +often find an advantage in getting first of all a clear statement of the +other side. This must serve as an excuse for here quoting a paragraph +(from a British magazine) which chanced to get itself copied in an +American newspaper:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The truth is, our dramatists have long since forgotten that the +English language is still the medium of the English drama, and that +no branch of literary art is worth a word of praise that wantonly +divorces itself from literature. The foolish dramatist who was once +loquacious concerning what he was pleased to call "the literary +drama" condemned his own craft in a single phrase. No doubt, +prosperity being essential, the audience of our theaters must share +the blame with their favorites. Too idle to listen to exquisite +prose or splendid verse, they prefer the quick antics of comedians, +and in their ear, as in Mr. Pinero's, "theatrical," has a far more +splendid sound than "dramatic." To sum the matter up, that poets +have failed upon the stage is no compliment to the professional +playwrights, who believe themselves the vessels of an esoteric +inspiration. It merely means that literature and the drama travel +by different roads, and they will continue to travel by those roads +so long as the actor is master of the dramatist, so </p></div><p><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>long as the merits of a drama are judged by the standard of +material prosperity. After all, to get your puppets on and off the +stage is not the sole end of drama, and modesty might suggest that +it is better to fail with Tennyson than to succeed with the gifted +author who is at this moment engaged in whitewashing Julia. </p></div> + +<p>Inexpensive in wit as this paragraph is, it serves the purpose of +showing us that there are still those who believe the drama of our own +time to be a thing of naught. Brief as this quotation is, it is long +enough to reveal that the writer of it had the arrogance of ignorance, +and that he was expressing what he conceived to be opinions, without +taking the trouble to learn anything about the history of the theater or +about the principles of the dramatic art.</p> + +<p>The full measure of his ignorance it would be a waste of time to point +out, but it can be estimated by his two remarks, that it was better to +fail with Tennyson than to succeed with Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, and that +there is likely to be no change for the better so long as the merits of +a drama are judged by "the standard of material prosperity." Taking +these assertions in turn, we may note, first, that Tennyson ardently +longed to write a play which should please the playgoers of his own +time; second, that he desired to be judged by these very standards of +material prosperity,—just as Mr. Jones does.<a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a> Mr. Jones has more than +once succeeded in pleasing the playgoers of his own time, and Tennyson +failed to achieve the particular kind of success he was aiming at. His +failure may have been due to his lack of the native dramatic faculty; it +may have been due to his following of outworn models no longer adjusted +to the conditions of the modern theater; but whatever the reason, there +is no doubt as to the fact itself. He did not attain the goal he was +striving for any more than Browning was able to do so; and it is not for +their eulogists now to say that their goal was unworthy. The test of +"material prosperity" was the very test by which the poets wisht to be +tried, and by this test they both failed—and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones +more than once has succeeded. Tennyson and Mr. Jones were aiming at the +same target—popular success in the theater. Even if Mr. Jones has not +always made a bull's-eye, he has often put his bullet on the target—the +very target which Tennyson mist completely, even if his ball happened to +make a hit on another.</p> + +<p>Tennyson desired to meet the conditions which all the great dramatists +have ever been willing to meet. He did not follow their example and +study carefully the circumstances of theatrical representation as they +had done, nor did he make himself master of the secrets of the +drama<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>turgic art. And this is a chief reason why he was unable to +produce any impression upon the drama of his day; while the dramatic +poets of the past, the masters whom he respected—Sophocles and +Shakspere and Molière—each of them, accepting the formula of the +theater as this had been elaborated by his immediate predecessors, +enlarged this formula, modified it, made it over to suit his own ampler +outlook on life, and thus stamped his own individuality upon the drama +of succeeding generations.</p> + +<p>Shakspere and Molière are accepted by us now as the greatest of dramatic +poets; but to their own contemporaries they were known rather as +ingenious playwrights up to every trick of the trade, finding their +profit in every new device of their fellow-craftsmen, and emerging +triumphant from a judgment by "the standard of material prosperity." And +by this same standard, unworthy as it may seem to some, Lope de Vega and +Calderon were judged in their own day. Corneille and Racine also, +Beaumarchais and Sheridan, Hugo and Augier and Rostand. The standard of +material prosperity is not the only test,—indeed, it is not the final +test,—but it is the first and the most imperative, because a dramatist +who fails to please the play-going public of his own time will never +have another chance. There is no known instance of a poet <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>unsuccessful +on the stage in his own country and winning recognition in the theater +after his death. Posterity never reverses the unfavorable verdict of an +author's contemporaries; it has no time to waste on this, for it is too +busy reversing the favorable verdicts which seem to it to be in +disaccord with the real merits of the case.</p> + +<p>It was Mark Twain who pithily summed up a prevailing opinion when he +said that "the classics are the books everybody praises—and nobody +reads." Let us hope that this is an overstatement and not the exact +truth; but whatever the proportion of verity in Mark Twain's saying, +there is no doubt that we are running no great risk if we reverse it and +say that when they were first produced the classics were books that +everybody read—and that nobody praised. Shakspere to-day is the prey of +the commentators and of the criticasters, but in his own time Shakspere +was the most popular of the Elizabethan playwrights—so popular that his +name was tagged to plays he had not written, in order that the public +might be tempted to take them into favor. Yet it was years before the +discovery was made that this popular playwright was also the greatest +poet and the profoundest psychologist of all time. Cervantes lived long +enough to be pleased by the widespread enjoyment of his careless +masterpiece; but it was a century at least before <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>the first suspicion +arose that 'Don Quixote' was more than a "funny book." Molière was very +lucky in filling his theater when his own pieces were performed; but +contemporary opinion held that his plays owed their attraction not so +much to their literary merit as to the humorous force of his own acting. +Molière was acknowledged to be the foremost of comic actors, but only +Boileau was sure of his genius as a dramatist; and Boileau's colleagues +in the French Academy never recognized Molière's superiority over all +his immediate rivals.</p> + +<p>The very fact that Molière and Shakspere were pleasing the plain people, +that they were able to attract the main body of the unlearned populace, +that they sought frankly to be judged by "the standard of material +prosperity"—this very fact seems to have prevented their contemporaries +from perceiving the literary merit of their plays. Indeed, it is not +unfair to suggest that the cultivated critics of the past—like some +cultivated critics of our own time—are predisposed to deny literary +merit to anything which is broadly popular. They think of literary merit +as something upon which they alone are competent to decide, as something +to be tried by the touchstones they keep in their studies, under lock +and key. The scholarly contemporaries of Shakspere saw that he did not +conform to the classic traditions they <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>revered, and they could not +guess he was establishing a classic tradition of his own. They were so +full of the past that they could not see the present right before their +eyes. They mist in Shakspere's work what they had been trained to +consider as the chief essential of dramatic art; and they were not acute +enough to inquire whether there were not good reasons why he was so +attractive to the vulgar mob whom they despised.</p> + +<p>To most critics of the drama "literary merit" is something external, +something added to the play, something adjusted to the structure. They +blame modern playwrights for not putting it in. They take an attitude +toward the drama of their own day like that of the New England farmer, +when he was asked who had been the architect of his house. "Oh, I built +that house myself," was the answer; "but there's a man coming down from +Boston next week to put the architecture on." To this New England +farmer, architecture was not in the planning and the proportion and the +structure; to him it seemed to mean only some sort of jig-saw fretwork +added as an afterthought. To most of those who amuse themselves by +writing about the drama, "literary merit" is chiefly a matter of pretty +speeches, of phrase-making, of simile and metaphor—in short, of +rhetoric.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>It seems absurd that at this late day it should be needful to repeat +once more that literature is not a matter of rhetoric; that it is not +external and detachable, but internal and essential. It has to do with +motive and character, with form and philosophy; it is a criticism of +life itself, or else it is mere vanity and vexation. If literature is no +more than a stringing of flowers of speech, then is 'Lucile' a greater +book than 'Robinson Crusoe,' or then is the 'Forest Lovers' a finer book +than 'Huckleberry Finn'; then is Pater a better writer than Benjamin +Franklin or Abraham Lincoln. Books are not made by style alone. Even +lyric poetry is estimated by its fervor and by its sincerity rather than +by the dulcet phrases in which the lyrist has voiced his emotion of the +moment. If verbal felicity alone is all that the poet needs, if he is to +be judged only by the compelling melody of the words he has chosen to +set in array, then is Poe the foremost of lyrists. Even the essay, the +most narrowly literary of all prose-forms, is valued for its wisdom +rather than for its phrasing. The essays of Stevenson, for example, will +survive not because of their style alone, polished as that is and +unexpectedly happy in its phrasing, but because the man who wrote them, +artist as he was in words, had something to say—something which was his +own, the result of his own observation of life from his own angle <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>of +vision. Style is the great antiseptic, no doubt; but style cannot bestow +life on the still-born.</p> + +<p>Not only do such critics as the anonymous writer from whom quotation has +been made, persist in thinking of the literary merit of the drama as +"exquisite prose" and "splendid verse,"—in other words as an added +grace, applied externally,—but they also seem to believe that all plays +possessing what they would regard as "literary merit" stand in a class +apart. They are looking for a literary drama which shall be different +from the popular drama. Apparently they expect to be able to recognize a +literary play at first sight—and probably by its excess of applied +ornament. And this attitude is quite as absurd as the other. In no one +of the greater periods of the poetic drama have the plays which we now +revere as masterpieces differed in form from the mass of the other plays +of that epoch. They were better, no doubt, excelling in power, in +elevation, in insight, in skill. But they bore a striking resemblance in +structure and in intent to the host of contemporary plays which we now +perceive to be hopelessly inferior to them.</p> + +<p>So far as their outward appearance goes the great plays of Sophocles, of +Shakspere, and of Molière are closely akin to the plays of their +undistinguished contemporaries. It is in their content that they are +immeasurably superior. They <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>differ in degree only, never in kind. +Shakspere early availed himself of the framework of the tragedy-of-blood +that Kyd had made popular; and later he borrowed from Beaumont and +Fletcher the flexible formula of the dramatic-romance. His genius +towered above theirs, but he was content to appropriate their patterns. +Molière modeled many of his earlier plays upon the loosely-knit +comedy-of-masks of the Italian comedians, and the difference between his +work and theirs is not external but internal; it is the difference +between adroitness and cleverness on their part, and supreme comic +genius on his. Probably it was this apparent similarity of Shakspere's +work and Molière's to the uninspired efforts of their competitors which +prevented their contemporaries from discovering their preëminence—the +preëminence which is so obvious to us now that the plays of their +fellow-craftsmen have fallen out of memory.</p> + +<p>The blindness of the contemporary critic of Shakspere and of Molière, +inexplicable as it may appear nowadays, has its parallel in the +blindness of the contemporary critic in regard to 'Don Quixote' and 'Gil +Blas,' 'Robinson Crusoe' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He had not the +insight to see in these comparatively commonplace narratives the +essential truth of the enduring masterpiece. He was seeking an outward +and visible <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>sign; he saw nothing unusual, abnormal, eccentric, in these +books, nothing novel, nothing that cried aloud for recognition; and so +he past by on the other side. These books seemed to him in nowise raised +above the common; they were to be enjoyed in some measure, but they +evoked no high commendation; and the contemporary critic never suspected +that these unpretending volumes, unlike the most of their competitors in +public favor, contained the vital spark which alone bestows enduring +life. He failed wholly to guess that these books had in them the +elements of the universal and the permanent—just as he was unable to +perceive that the more obviously literary, rhetorical, academic works he +was ready enough to commend highly, lacked these elements and therefore +were doomed soon to sink into deserved oblivion.</p> + +<p>This is precisely the attitude of many a critic of our own time. He is +looking for a literary drama which shall be different in kind from the +popular play; and as he fails to find this to-day—as he would have +failed to find it in every period of the theater's most splendid +achievement—he asserts that the literary drama is nowadays nonexistent. +He does not care to inquire into the genuine qualities of the plays that +happen to be able to attain "the standard of material prosperity." He is +quick to perceive the attempt to <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>be literary in the plays of Mr. +Stephen Phillips, because this promising dramatic poet has so far tended +rather to construct his decoration than to decorate his construction: +and, therefore, the literary merit in Mr. Phillips's acted pieces seems +sometimes to be somewhat external, so to speak, or at least more +ostentatiously paraded. He is forced to credit 'Quality Street' with a +certain literary merit, because Mr. Barrie has published novels which +have an undeniable literary flavor.</p> + +<p>Considering literary merit as something applied on the outside, too +obvious to be mistaken, the critic of this type disdains to give to +certain of the plays of Mr. Pinero the discussion they deserve. In the +'Benefit of the Doubt,' in the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' in 'Iris,' Mr. +Pinero has used all his mastery of stage-craft, not for its own sake, +but as the instrument of his searching analysis of life as he sees it. +All three plays bring out the eternal truth of George Eliot's saying +that "Consequences are unpitying." In all three plays the inevitable and +inexorable catastrophe is brought about, not by "the long arm of +coincidence," but rather by the finger of fate itself. In 'Iris' more +particularly we have put before us the figure of a gentle and kindly +creature of compelling personal charm, but weak of will and moving thru +life along the line of least resistance—a feminine counterpart of the +Tito<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a> Melema etched with such appalling veracity in 'Romola.' And Mr. +Pinero has the same sincerity in his portrayal of the gradual +disintegration of character under the stress of recurring temptation, +until the woman is driven forth at last stript of all things that she +held desirable, and bare of the last shred of self-respect. The play may +be unpleasant, but it is profoundly moral. It is not spoon-meat for +babes, but it is poignant and vital. The picture of human character +betrayed by its own weakness is so true, so transparently sincere, that +the spectator, however quick he may be to discuss the theme, remains +unconscious of the art by which the wonder has been wrought; he gives +scarcely a thought to the logic of the construction, and to the honesty +with which character is presented—literary merits both of them, if +literature is in fact a criticism of life.</p> + +<p>The shrewd remark of M. Jules Lemaître must ever be borne in mind,—that +criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism, it is only +conversation. Yet there is sufficient self-revelation in the fact that +those who have been ready enough to praise the 'Lady of Lyons,' with its +tawdry rhetoric and its shabby morality, have not seen the superiority +of Mr. Pinero over Lord Lytton even as a stylist, as a master of +English, tense, nervous, and flexible, adjusting itself to the <a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>thought, +never protruding itself on our vision, and yet withstanding verbal +criticism when we take time afterward to subject it to that test also.</p> + +<p>Just as the Elizabethan critics thought little of Shakespeare because he +failed to follow in the footsteps of the great Greeks, so some modern +critics care naught for the best work of the dramatists of our own time, +because this is not cast in the Shakespearean mold. The Elizabethan +critics could not know the difference between the theater of Dionysius +in Athens and the bare cockpit of the Globe in London; and there are +their kin to-day who cannot perceive the difference between the +half-roofed playhouse for which Shakespeare wrote and the +electric-lighted place of amusement to which we are now accustomed. +These latter-day critics do not see why the haphazard structure which +was good enough for Tudor times is not good enough for us; and they have +so little sense of form that they are unaware how the change in the +circumstances of performance has forced a more compact presentation of +the theme than was necessary in the days of "Eliza and our James."</p> + +<p>As Mr. John Morley has pointed out, "the prodigy of such amazing results +from such glorious carelessness as Shakespeare's has plunged hundreds of +men of talent into a carelessness most inglorious." The history of +English literature is <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>strewed with wrecked tragedies, lofty enough in +aspiration, but pitifully lacking in inspiration. The same tragedies, +slovenly as they might be in structure and empty of dramatic energy, +were cased in the traditional trappings; they were divided into five +acts and they were bedecked with blank verse; and contemporary critics +made haste to credit them with the literary merit these same critics do +not even look for in 'Iris' and in the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' +tragedies, both of them, of a purifying pathos that Aristotle would have +understood. In fact, there would be no great difficulty in showing how +near Aristotle came to an explicit assertion that in the drama "literary +merit" is almost a by-product—valuable, no doubt, like many another +by-product, but not the chief thing to be sought.</p> + +<p>Mr. Pinero has discust Robert Louis Stevenson as a dramatist, and his +lecture contained passages which every man of letters should ponder. He +showed that Stevenson had in him the true dramatic stuff, but that he +refused to serve the severe apprenticeship to play-making that he gladly +gave to novel-writing. Mr. Pinero made plain the further fact that +Stevenson, who was ever a sedulous ape of the masters he admired, had +here set himself a bad pattern to copy. This was not the loose and +rambling Elizabethan model which had led Tennyson and Browning astray; +<a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>it was the model of the cheap melodrama of the early years of the +nineteenth century. "Stevenson with all his genius failed to realize +that the art of drama is not stationary, but progressive," said Mr. +Pinero. "By this I do not mean that it is always improving; what I do +mean is that its conditions are always changing and that every dramatist +whose ambition it is to produce live plays is absolutely bound to study +carefully ... the conditions that hold good for its own age and +generation."</p> + +<p>This is what every great dramatist has done; it is what Shakespeare did +and Molière also; it is what Stevenson did not care to do, because he +did not understand the necessity of it. He did not borrow the formula of +the most successful of the plays which chanced to be pleasing the public +just then. If he had done this, he could have put into this formula all +the fine writing he so much enjoyed; he might have given to his plays +the utmost polish of style. Instead of trying to write dramas externally +like those popular in the theater of his own time, and making them +internally whatsoever he chose, he went back half a century and tried to +revive a poor formula already defunct. The game was lost before the +cards were dealt. He had refused to consider the conditions of the +problem he was handling—"the problem of how to tell a dramatic story +truly, <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>convincingly, and effectively, on the modern stage"; as Mr. +Pinero described it, "the problem of disclosing the workings of the +human heart by methods which shall not destroy the illusion which a +modern audience expects to enjoy in the modern theater."</p> + +<p>Stevenson was here making the mistake which so many men of letters make +when they turn to the theater. He was going upon the theory that the +drama is made literary, not from within, by observation and imagination +and sincerity, but from without, by the application of fine speeches. +His speeches were fine, no doubt, even tho they were not in keeping with +that special kind of play when it had been alive. But as it happened, +that kind of play was dead and gone, and no injection of oratory would +bring it to life again. And here the Scotch story-teller failed to +profit by the example of the French poet whose romances he had so +sympathetically studied. Hugo had also a gift for oratory and a talent +for fine speeches; but when he yearned for theatrical success he went to +the most popular playhouses where the plain people gathered, and he +adopted as his own the formula of play-making which was proving its +value in these boulevard theaters. This was not in itself much better +than the formula Stevenson borrowed and did not trouble to +understand—indeed, the two are <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>not unlike. But Hugo had made his +choice half a century before Stevenson; and when he made it he was +taking possession of the very latest fashion.</p> + +<p>Hugo's formula is now fallen out of mode, yet his plays have +accomplished their threescore years and ten. It was Hugo who declared +that there are three classes of theater-goers whom the playwright must +please: the crowd that demands action, the women who wish for emotion, +and the thinkers who seek for character. And it was Hugo's early rival +as a play-maker, the elder Dumas, who asserted that the only rules he +knew for success upon the stage were to make the first act clear, the +last act short, and all the acts interesting. A dramatist who shall +accept the formula which has been found satisfactory by his immediate +contemporaries, and who shall succeed in making all the acts of his play +interesting alike to the crowd, to the women, and to the thinkers, will +be very likely to achieve literary merit without striving for it +specifically.</p> + +<p>For we cannot repeat too often that in the drama "literary merit" is a +by-product,—as it is in oratory also. And we cannot assert too +emphatically that the drama has an independent existence—that it does +not lie wholly within the domain of literature. "The art of the drama," +so M. Emile Faguet has assured us, "touches all <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>the other arts and +includes them." The drama is not intended primarily to be read in the +study; it is devised to be performed on the stage by actors before +spectators. It has a right, therefore, to avail itself of the aid of all +other arts and to enlist them all in its service. This is one of the +reasons why those who have studied the secrets of this art are inclined +to esteem it as the noblest and most powerful of them all. As M. Faguet +has declared, with that sympathetic understanding of the essential +principles of the drama which is common enough in France and only too +rare elsewhere—"it is not contradictory to the definition of dramatic +art that it can synthesize in space like painting, that it can +synthesize in time like poetry, that it can synthesize outside of time +and space like music, that it can unite all the arts without forcing +them to interfere the one with the other, and, therefore, without taking +from any one aught of its force or aught of its dignity; that it can +unite them all in a vast, powerful, and harmonious synthesis embracing +the whole of life and the whole of art."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1903.) </p></div> + + + +<p><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a></p><p><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a></p><p><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a></p> +<h2>IBSEN THE PLAYWRIGHT</h2> + +<p>I</p> + + +<p>One indisputable service has Ibsen rendered to the drama: he has +revealed again that it may be an incomparable instrument in the hands of +a poet-philosopher who wishes to make people think, to awaken them from +an ethical lethargy, to shock them into asking questions for which the +complacent morality of the moment can provide no adequate answer. In the +final decades of the nineteenth century,—when the novel was despotic in +its overwhelming triumph over all the other forms of literary +expression, and when arrogant writers of fiction like Edmond de Goncourt +did not hesitate to declare that the drama was outworn at last, that it +was unfitted to convey the ideas interesting to the modern world, and +that it had fallen to be no more than a toy to amuse the idle after +dinner,—Ibsen brought forth a succession of social dramas as tho to +prove that the playhouse of our own time could supply a platform whereon +a man might free his soul and boldly deliver his message, if only he +<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>had first mastered the special conditions of the playwright's art. Of +course, Ibsen has solved none of the problems he has propounded; nor was +it his business as a dramatist to provide solutions of the strange +enigmas of life, but rather to force us to exert ourselves to find each +of us the best answer we could.</p> + +<p>No one who has followed the history of the theater for the past quarter +of a century can fail to acknowledge that these social plays of Ibsen +have exerted a direct, an immediate and a powerful influence on the +development of the contemporary drama. It is easy to dislike them; +indeed, it is not hard even to detest them; but it is impossible to deny +that they have been a stimulus to the dramatists of every modern +language—and not least to playwrights of various nationalities wholly +out of sympathy with Ibsen's own philosophy. The fascination of these +social dramas may be charmless, as Mr. Henry James once asserted; but +there is no gainsaying the fascination itself. As M. Maeterlinck has +declared, Ibsen is "perhaps the only writer for the stage who has caught +sight of and set in motion, a new, tho still disagreeable, poetry, which +he has succeeded in investing with a kind of savage, gloomy beauty"; and +M. Maeterlinck then questions whether this beauty is not too savage and +too gloomy to become general or definitive. But, <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>none the less, it is +at least beauty, a quality long banished from the stage, when Ibsen +showed how it might be made to bloom there again.</p> + +<p>Nor is there any dispute as to the variety and the veracity of the +characters that people these studies from life. Indeed, as Mr. Archer +once pointed out, "habitually and instinctively men pay to Ibsen the +compliment (so often paid to Shakspere) of discussing certain of his +female characters as tho they were real women, living lives apart from +the poet's creative intelligence." And in yet another way is Ibsen +treated like Shakspere, in that there is superabundant discussion not +only of his characters, male and female, but also of his moral aim, of +his sociological intention, of his philosophy of life, while very little +attention is paid to his dramaturgic craftsmanship, to his command of +structural beauty, to his surpassing skill in the difficult art of the +play-maker. Yet Shakspere and Ibsen are professional playwrights, both +of them, each making plays adjusted exactly to the conditions of the +theater of his own time; and if the author of 'Othello' can prove +himself (when the spirit moves him) to be a master-technician, so also +can the author of 'Ghosts.'</p> + +<p>There is ample recognition of Ibsen as the ardent reformer seeking to +blow away the mists of <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>sentimentality, and of Ibsen, the symbolist, +suggesting dimly a host of things unseen and strangely beautiful; but +there is little consideration of Ibsen's solid workmanship, of his sure +knowledge of all the secrets of the stage, of his marvelous dexterity of +exposition, construction and climax. No doubt, it is as a poet, in the +largest meaning of the word, that Ibsen is most interesting; but he is a +playwright also,—indeed, he is a playwright, first and foremost; and in +that aspect also he is unfailingly interesting. For those who insist +that a poet must be a philosopher, Ibsen is to be ranked with Browning +as affording endless themes for debate; but for those who demand that a +dramatic poet shall be a playwright, Ibsen is a rival of Scribe and of +the younger Dumas and of all the school of accomplished craftsmen in +France who have made Paris the capital of the dramatic art. Ibsen's +skill as a playwright is so consummate that his art is never obtruded. +In fact, it was so adroitly hidden that when he first loomed on the +horizon, careless theatrical critics were tempted rather to deny its +existence. He is such a master of all the tricks of the trade that he +can improve upon them or do without them, as occasion serves; and +perhaps it is only those thoroly familiar with the practises of the +accomplished French playwrights of the nineteenth century who perceive +clearly the su<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>periority of Ibsen in the mere mechanism of the +dramaturgical art.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>Altho it is possible to consider his stage-technic apart from his +teaching, it needs to be noted at the outset that Ibsen the playwright +owes a large portion of his power and effectiveness to Ibsen the +poet-philosopher. As it happens, the doctrine of individual +responsibility, which is the core of Ibsen's code, is a doctrine most +helpful to the dramatist. The drama, indeed, differentiates itself from +all other literary forms in that it must deal with a struggle, with a +clash of contending desires, with the naked assertion of the human will. +This is the mainspring of that action without which a drama is a thing +of naught; and perhaps the most obvious backbone for a play is the tense +contest of two human beings, each knowing clearly what he wants and each +straining to attain it, at whatever cost to his adversary, to all +others, and even to himself. Rivals fighting to the death, a hero at war +with the world, a single soul striving to wrench itself free from the +fell clutch of fate,—such is the stuff out of which the serious drama +must be compounded.</p> + +<p>Now, as it happens, no philosopher has ever <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>reiterated more often than +Ibsen his abhorrence of smug and complacent compromise, his belief in +the unimpeded independence of the individual, his conviction that every +creature here below owes it as a duty to himself to live his own life in +his own way. Just as <i>Brand</i> stiffens himself once more and makes the +implacable declaration:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beggar or rich,—with all my soul</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I <i>will</i>; and that one thing's the whole!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>So <i>Dr. Stockman</i> announces his discovery that "the strongest man upon +earth is he who stands most alone"; and in every play we find characters +animated by this unhesitating determination and this unfaltering energy. +Even Ibsen's women, so subtly feminine in so many ways, are forever +revealing themselves virile in their self-assertion, in their claim to +self-ownership. His plays move us strangely in the performance, they +grip at the outset and firmly hold us to the relentless end, because his +dramaturgic skill is exerted upon themes essentially dramatic in that +they deal with this stark exhibition of the human will and with the +bitter struggle that must ensue when the human will is in revolt against +the course of nature or against the social bond.</p> + +<p>When the poet-philosopher has suggested to the playwright one of these +essentially dramatic themes, Ibsen handles it with a directness which +<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>intensifies its force and which is in itself evidence of his poetic +power. As Professor Butcher has pointed out, "we are perhaps inclined to +rate too low the genius which is displayed in the general structure of +an artistic work; we set it down merely as the hard-won result of labor, +and we find inspiration only in isolated splendors, in the +lightning-flash of passion, in the revealing power of poetic imagery." +In these last gifts Ibsen may seem to many, if not deficient, at least, +less abundant than some other dramatic poets; but he can attain "the +supreme result which Greek thought and imagination achieve by their +harmonious coöperation"; he can present "the organic union of parts." He +has the sense of form which we feel to be the final guerdon of Greek +endeavor.</p> + +<p>A play of Ibsen's is always compact and symmetrical. It has a beginning, +a middle, and an end; it never straggles, but ever moves straightforward +to its conclusion. It has unity; and often it conforms even to the +pseudo-unities proclaimed by the superingenious critics of the Italian +renascence. Sometimes a play of Ibsen's has another likeness to a +tragedy of the Greeks, in that it presents in action before the +assembled spectators only the culminating scenes of the story. 'Ghosts' +recalls Œdipus the King,' not only in the horror at the heart of it +and the <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>poignancy of the emotion it evokes, but also in its being a +fifth act only, the culmination of a long and complex concatenation of +events, which took place before the point at which Sophocles and Ibsen +saw fit to begin their plays. In the Greek tragedy, as in the +Scandinavian social drama, the poet has chosen to deal with the result +of the action, rather than with the visible struggle itself; it is not +the present doings of the characters, but their past deeds, which +determine their fate.</p> + +<p>Altho no other play of Ibsen's attains the extraordinary compactness and +swiftness of 'Ghosts,' several of them approach closely to this +standard, the 'Master-Builder,' for example, 'Little Eyolf' and more +especially 'Rosmersholm,'—in which the author did not display on the +stage itself more than a half of the strong series of situations he had +devised to sustain the interest of the spectator and to elucidate his +underlying thesis. But Ibsen does not hold himself restricted to any one +formula; and sometimes he prefers, as in the 'Enemy of the People,' to +let the whole story unroll itself before the audience. Only slowly did +Ibsen come to a mastery of his own methods; and he had begun, in the +'League of Youth' and in the 'Pillars of Society' by doing what every +great dramatist had done before him,—by accepting the form worked out +by his im<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>mediate predecessors and adjusted to the actual theater of his +own time. Just as Shakspere followed the patterns set by Kyd and +Marlowe, by Lyly and Greene, just as Molière copied the model ready to +his hand in the Italian comedy-of-masks, so Ibsen began by assimilating +the formulas which had approved themselves in France, the land where the +drama was flourishing most luxuriantly in the middle of the nineteenth +century, formulas devised by Scribe and only a little modified by Augier +and the younger Dumas.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>For threescore years, at least, Scribe was the salient figure in the +French theater; and his influence endured more than twoscore years after +his death. He can be considered from discordant standpoints; to the men +of letters Scribe seems wholly unimportant, since his merits were in +great measure outside of literature; to the men of the theater Scribe is +a personality of abiding interest, since he put his mark on the drama of +his own day in almost every one of its departments. In the course of his +active career as a playwright he made over farce, first of all, then the +comedy-of-intrigue, and finally the comedy-of-manners; he tried his hand +at the historical play; and he was the chief librettist of the leading +French com<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>posers of opera, both grand and comic. He might lack style; +he might be barren of poetry; he might be void of philosophy; his +psychology might be pitifully inadequate; his outlook on life might be +petty;—but he was pastmaster of the theater, and from him were hidden +none of the secrets of that special art.</p> + +<p>It was in Scribe's hands that there was worked out the formula of the +"well-made play,—" <i>la pièce bien faite</i>,—in which the exposition was +leisurely and careful, in which the interest of expectancy was aroused +early and sustained to the end, in which the vital scenes of the +essential struggle,—the <i>scènes à faire</i>,—were shown on the stage at +the very moment of the story when they would be most effective, and in +which a logical conclusion dimly foreseen, but ardently desired, was +happily brought about by devices of unexpected ingenuity. In perfecting +the formula of the "well-made play" Scribe may have taken hints from +Beaumarchais, especially from the final act of the 'Marriage of Figaro'; +and he had found his profit also in a study of the methods of the +melodrama, which had been elaborated in the theaters of the Parisian +boulevards at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which had +been imitated already by Hugo and the elder Dumas. At its best, the +"well-made play" was an amusing piece of mechanism, a clockwork toy +<a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>which had a mere semblance of life, but which did precisely what its +maker had constructed it to do.</p> + +<p>The piece put together according to this formula was sufficient to +itself, with its wheels within wheels; and its maker had no need of +style or of poetry, of psychology or of philosophy. So long as the +playwright was content to be a playwright only and did not aspire to be +a dramatist with his own views of life, the formula was satisfactory +enough; but when the younger Dumas and Augier came on the stage they +wanted to put a broader humanity into their plays, and they could make +room for this only by simplifying the machinery. Yet, while they were +delivering each his own message, they accepted the model of the +"well-made play"; and it is to this that we may ascribe the +artificiality we begin to discern even in such masterpieces of +dramaturgic craftsmanship as the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' and the +'Demi-monde.'</p> + +<p>Upon Ibsen also the influence of Scribe is as obvious as it is upon +Augier and Dumas <i>fils</i>. The earliest of his social dramas, the 'League +of Youth' and the 'Pillars of Society' are composed according to the +formula of the "well-made play," with its leisurely exposition, its +intricate complications of recoiling intrigue, its ingeniously contrived +conclusion. If we compare the<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a> 'League of Youth' with Scribe's 'Bertrand +et Raton,' or with Sardou's 'Rabagas'; if we compare the 'Pillars of +Society' with Dumas's 'Étrangère,' or Augier's 'Effrontés' we cannot +fail to find a striking similarity of structure. Set even 'A Doll's +House' by the side of any one of a dozen contemporary French comedies, +and it is easy to understand why Sarcey declared that play to be +Parisian in its construction,—up to the moment of <i>Nora's</i> revolt and +self-assertion, so contrary to the social instinct of the French. And +this explains also why it was that Ibsen, as Herr Lindau has told us, +made little or no impression on the German dramatists until after the +appearance of 'Ghosts,' altho the preceding plays had been acted +frequently in the German theaters. The scenes of these early plays are +laid in Norway, it is true, and the characters are all Norwegian, and +altho it is easy enough for us, to-day, with our knowledge of what Ibsen +has become, to find in them the personal equation of the author, still +he was then frankly continuing the French tradition of stage-craft, with +a willing acceptance of the formula of the "well-made play" and with no +effort after novelty in his dramaturgic method. Not until he brought +forth the 'Ghosts' is there any overt assertion of his stalwart and +aggressive personality.</p> + +<p>In the beginning Ibsen was no innovator. So <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>far at least as its +external form is concerned, the kind of play he proffered at first was +very much what actors and audiences alike had been accustomed to,—a +kind of play perfectly adjusted to the existing customs of the stage. +What he did was to take over the theater as a going concern, holding +himself free to modify the accepted formula only after he had mastered +it satisfactorily. Considering Ibsen's inexperience as a writer of +prose-plays dealing with contemporary life, the 'League of Youth' is +really very remarkable as a first attempt. Indeed, its defects are those +of its models; and it errs chiefly in its excess of ingenuity and in the +manufactured symmetry of the contrivance whereby the tables are turned +on <i>Stensgard</i>, and whereby he loses all three of the women he has +approached.</p> + +<p>As Lowell has said: "It is of less consequence where a man buys his +tools than what use he makes of them"; but it so happened that Ibsen +acquired his stage-craft in the place where it is most easily attained, +in the place where Shakspere and Molière had acquired it,—in the +theater itself. In 1851, when he was only twenty-three, he had been +appointed "theater-poet" to the newly opened playhouse in Bergen; and +after five years there he had gone to Christiania to be director of a +new theater, where he was to remain yet another five years. In this +decade of his im<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>pressionable and plastic youth Ibsen had taken part in +the production of several score plays, some of them his own, others also +original in his native tongue by Holberg and Öhlenschläger, and many +more translated from Scribe, from Scribe's collaborators and from +Scribe's contemporaries. In his vacation travels, to Copenhagen and to +Dresden, he had opportunity to observe a wider variety of plays; but +even in these larger cities the influence of Scribe was dominant, as it +was all over the civilized world in the mid-years of the century.</p> + +<p>As Fenimore Cooper, when he determined to tell the fresh story of the +backwoods and the prairies, found a pattern ready to his hand in the +Waverley novels, so Ibsen availed himself of the "well-made play" of +Scribe when he wrote the 'League of Youth,' which is his earliest piece +in prose presenting contemporary life and character in Norway. There is +obvious significance in the fact that of all Ibsen's dramas, those which +have won widest popularity in the theater itself are those which most +frankly accept the Gallic framework,—the 'Pillars of Society,' the +'Doll's House,' and 'Hedda Gabler.' Yet it is significant, also, that +even in the least individual of Ibsen's earlier pieces, the action is +expressive of character; and we cannot fail to see that Ibsen's +personages control the plot; whereas, in the <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>dramas of Scribe, the +situations may be said almost to create the characters, which, indeed, +exist only for the purposes of that particular story.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>In spite of Ibsen's ten years of apprenticeship in two theaters, in +daily contact with the practical business of the stage, it was not with +prose-dramas of contemporary life that he first came forward as a +dramatist. In fact, his juvenile 'Katilina' (1850) was written when he +was but just of age, before he was attached to the theater +professionally, before he had read any dramatists except Holberg and +Öhlenschläger, and before he had had the chance to see much real acting +on the stage itself. It was while he was engaged in producing the plays +of others that he brought out also his own 'Mistress Inger at Ostraat' +(1855), and the 'Vikings at Helgeland' (1858), both of them actable and +often acted. They are romanticist in temper, suggesting now Schiller and +now Hugo.</p> + +<p>'Mistress Inger' is a historical melodrama, with a gloomy castle, +spectral pictures and secret passages, with shifting conspiracies, +constant mystery-mongering and contorted characters. The inexpert +playwright uses soliloquy not merely <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>to unveil the soul of the speaker +(its eternally legitimate use), but also to convey information to the +audience as to the facts of the intrigue (an outworn expedient Ibsen +never condescended to use in the later social dramas). The plot of +'Mistress Inger' is not veracious or convincing or even plausible; and +the play lacks the broad simplicity of story to be found in the later +'Vikings,' a saga-like drama, a tale of blood and fate, which recalls +Wagnerian opera in its primitive massiveness, in the vigor of its +legend, in its tragic pathos, and in its full-blooded characters larger +than life and yet pitifully human. Power again there is in a third drama +dealing with the historic past of Norway, the 'Pretenders' (1864), which +has a savage nobility of spirit. It is true that the masterful figure of +<i>Bishop Nicholas</i> is enigmatic enough to have stalked out of one of +Hugo's lyrical melodramas, but to counterbalance this there is a pithy +wisdom in the talk of the <i>Skald</i> which one would seek in vain in the +French romanticist drama.</p> + +<p>Nowadays many of us are inclined to regard the historical drama as a +bastard form and to agree with Maeterlinck in dismissing even the most +meritorious attempts as "artificial poems that arise from the impossible +marriage of past and present." Already between the 'Vikings' and the +'Pretenders' had Ibsen undertaken a play <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>dealing with contemporary +social usages. 'Love's Comedy' (1862) made its way on the stage; and it +has found an English translator. But in this rendering it reveals itself +as an attempt to commingle romance and satire; it appears to us as +hopelessly unfunny; and there is an artistic inconsistency between a +stern realism seeking to handle actual life with rigorous tensity and a +soaring idealism which keeps obtruding itself.</p> + +<p>'Love's Comedy' is in verse, irregular and rimed, well-nigh impossible +to render satisfactorily into another tongue. Ibsen never again +undertook to use rime or even meter in handling the manners of his own +time. "I cannot believe that meter will be employed to any considerable +extent in the drama of the near future, for the poetic intentions of the +future cannot be reconciled with it," so Ibsen declared in 1883, thus +passing judgment on 'Love's Comedy.' And he added that he had written +scarcely any verse for years but "had exclusively cultivated the +incomparably more difficult art of writing in the even, beautiful idiom +of real life."</p> + +<p>It was in 1857 that Björnson had put forth 'Synnöve Solbakken,' a mere +novelet, it is true, but still the firstling of a native Norwegian +literature, reproducing the very accent of the soil; and here we have +once more an example of the way in which the novel is now continually +af<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>fecting the development of the drama, as the play has in the past +influenced the evolution of prose-fiction. For more than ten years Ibsen +failed to see how much it would profit him to follow Björnson's lead. +Between 'Love's Comedy' and the 'League of Youth' he put forth his two +great dramatic poems, 'Brand' (1866) and 'Peer Gynt' (1867); and even +after the 'League of Youth' (1869) had opened the series of modern +social dramas, he published 'Emperor and Galilean' (1873) before +resuming his incisive study of the life that lay around him.</p> + +<p>The career of Julian the Apostate is sketched in what must be termed a +chronicle-play, in two parts and in ten acts, a broadly brushed panorama +of antique life, displaying Ibsen's abundant invention, his ability to +handle boldly a large theme, his gift of putting characters erect on +their feet with a few swift strokes. Altho 'Emperor and Galilean,' like +'Brand' and like 'Peer Gynt' was intended for the closet only, and not +for the stage itself, it proves its author to be a true dramatist, +centering the interest of his story on an essential struggle and keeping +in view always the pictorial aspects of his action.</p> + +<p>In this chronicle-play, as in his two greater dramatic poems, Ibsen +reveals his perfect understanding of the practical necessities of the +playhouse, even tho he did not choose always to con<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>form to them. Then +he turned his back on antiquity and faced the present in the series of +prose-plays by which he is most widely known to actual playgoers. He +found his characters and his themes in modern life and in his native +land; and the social dramas followed one another in steady +succession,—'Pillars of Society' (1877), 'A Doll's House' (1879), +'Ghosts' (1881), 'An Enemy of the People' (1882), the 'Wild Duck' +(1884), 'Rosmersholm' (1886), the 'Lady from the Sea' (1888), 'Hedda +Gabler' (1890), the 'Master-Builder' (1892), 'Little Eyolf' (1894), +'John Gabriel Borkman' (1896) and 'When We Dead Awaken' (1899).</p> + +<p>As we look down this list, we see that it is perhaps unfair to class all +the later plays as social dramas. Some of them, more especially the +latest of them all, 'When We Dead Awaken,' seem to be symbolical rather +than social, allegorical in intent even if they remain realistic in +treatment. Brandes long ago declared that Ibsen had had a Pegasus killed +under him; but when we consider the 'Lady from the Sea' and 'When We +Dead Awaken' and perhaps one or two other of their later companions, we +may well believe that the winged steed was not actually slain. Wounded +it may have been, only to recover its strength again and to proffer its +back once more for the poet to bestride.</p> + +<h3><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>V</h3> + +<p>These more poetic of Ibsen's plays in prose seem at times almost +surcharged with a meaning which is nevertheless often so mockingly +intangible and evasive, that we dare to wonder at last whether the +secret they persist in hiding in this tantalizing fashion would really +reward our efforts to grasp it; and we find comfort in Lowell's apt +saying that "to be misty is not to be mystic." Ibsen is mystic, no +doubt, but on occasion he can be misty also. And not only the plays that +are merely misty but even those that are truly mystic, are less likely +than the plainer-spoken social dramas to hold our attention in the +theater itself, where the appeal is to the assembled multitude, and +where all things need to be clearly defined so that the spectators can +follow understandingly every phase of the changing action.</p> + +<p>In the most of his social dramas Ibsen makes his meaning transparently +clear; and there is never any undue strain on the attention of the +average playgoer. Especially is he a master of the difficult art of +exposition. It is the plain duty of the playwright to acquaint the +audience with the antecedent circumstances upon which the plot is +based,—to inform the spectators fully as to that part of the story +which has gone before and which is not to be displayed in action on the +stage,—to explain <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>the relation of the several characters to each +other,—and to arouse interest in what is about to happen. Scribe, than +whom no one ever had a wider knowledge of the necessities of the +theater, held the exposition to be so important that he often sacrificed +to it the whole of his first act, introducing his characters one by one, +setting forth clearly what had happened before the play, and sometimes +postponing the actual beginning of the action to the end of the first +act, if not to the earlier scenes of the second. Scribe seems to have +believed that it did not matter much how dull the first act might be, +since the spectators had paid their money and would not abandon hope +until they had seen at least the second act, in which he sought always +to grip their interest.</p> + +<p>In the 'League of Youth,' the earliest of his social dramas, Ibsen +follows in Scribe's footsteps; and the first act is little more than a +preparatory prolog. In this play the whole story is set forth in action +in the play itself; but in the following dramas, 'Pillars of Society' +and 'A Doll's House' Ibsen reveals his tendency to deal with the results +of deeds which took place before he begins the play itself. In other +words, he suppresses his prolog, preferring to plunge at once into his +action; and this forces him to modify Scribe's leisurely method. He does +not mass his explanations all in the earlier scenes; he scatters them +<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>thruout the first act, and sometimes he even postpones them to the +later acts. But he is careful to supply information before it is needed, +adroitly letting out in the first scene what is required for the +understanding of the second scene, and artfully revealing in the second +scene what must be known before the third scene can be appreciated.</p> + +<p>This method is less simple than Scribe's; it is not only more difficult, +it may be dangerous; but when it is managed successfully it lends to the +drama a swift directness delightful to all who relish a mastery of form. +In 'Ghosts,' for example, the play which is acted before us is little +more than a long fifth act, in three tense scenes; and the knowledge of +what had happened in the past is ingeniously communicated to the +audience at the very moment when the information is felt to be most +significant. But in 'Rosmersholm,' strong as the drama is and fine as +its technic is, Ibsen's method seems to be at fault in that we learn too +late what it would have interested us greatly to know earlier. It is +only at the end almost that we are allowed to perceive what were +<i>Rebecca West's</i> real intentions in coming to Rosmersholm and how the +influence of the house itself has transformed her. When the curtain +rises she is presented to us already a changed woman; and we are at a +loss to understand her motives for the evil deeds she has wrought, until +<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>we are told at last that she once was far different from what she now +is. Here Ibsen loses more than he gains by abandoning the simpler method +of massing his exposition in the earlier scenes of the play. Anything +which confuses the spectator, which leaves him in doubt, which keeps him +guessing, is contrary to Spencer's principle of "economy of attention," +as important in the other arts as it is in rhetoric.</p> + +<p>Altho he is ever seeking to awaken curiosity, to arouse the interest of +expectancy, and to excite in the spectators a desire to see the thing +through, Ibsen refrains from any mere mystery-mongering for its own +sake. He wishes his audience to give attention not so much to the bare +happenings of his story, however startling they may be in themselves, as +to the effect which these happenings are certain to have on the +characters. He is abundant in inventive ingenuity and in devising +effective situations; and the complications of the plot of the 'Pillars +of Society' would probably have hugely pleased Scribe. But he has also +the larger imagination which can people situation with character and +which can make situation significant as an opportunity for character to +express itself. Ingenious as he is in plot-building, with him character +always dominates situation. To Ibsen character is destiny, and the +persons of his plays seem to have created, by their own <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>natural +proceeding, the predicaments in which they are immeshed.</p> + +<p>Ibsen is particularly happy in the subordinate devices by which he +reveals character,—for example, <i>Maia's</i> taking off the green shade +when the <i>Master-Builder</i> enters the room. And another device, that of +the catchword, which he took over from Scribe and the younger Dumas, and +which, even in his hands, remains a mere trick in the early 'League of +Youth,' is so delicately utilized in certain of the later +plays—witness, the "vine-leaves in his hair" of 'Hedda Gabler' and the +"white horses" in 'Rosmersholm'—that these recurrent phrases are +transformed into a prose equivalent of Wagner's leading-motives. So, +too, Ibsen does without the <i>raisonneur</i> of Dumas and Augier, that +condensation of the Greek chorus into a single person, who is only the +mouthpiece of the author himself and who exists chiefly to point the +moral, even tho he may sometimes also adorn the tale. Ibsen so handles +his story that it points its own moral; his theme is so powerfully +presented in action that it speaks for itself.</p> + +<p>It must also be noted that Ibsen, like all born playwrights, like Scribe +and Dumas and Augier, like Sophocles and Shakspere and Molière, is well +aware of the double aspect of the theater, in that the stage can rise to +the loftiest heights of <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>philosophic poetry and that it can fall also to +the lowest depths of the show-business. An audience has ears, but the +spectators who compose it have eyes also; and the born playwright never +fails to provide the picturesqueness and the visible movement which +satisfy the senses, whatever may be the more serious appeal to the mind. +In the modern theater the stage is withdrawn behind a picture-frame; and +it is the duty of the dramatist to satisfy our demand for a +stage-setting pictorially adequate. The sets of Ibsen's plays have +evidently been sharply visualized by him; they are elaborately +described; and they lend themselves effectively to the art of the +scene-painter. Sometimes they are beautiful in themselves, novel and +suggestive; always are they characteristic of the persons and of the +underlying idea of the play.</p> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>When we examine carefully the earlier of his social dramas we discover +Ibsen to be a playwright of surpassing technical dexterity, whose work +is sustained and stiffened and made more valuable and more vital by the +coöperation of the philosopher that Ibsen also is, a philosopher who is +a poet as well and who helps the playwright to find the stuff he +handles, the raw material of his <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>art, in the naked human soul, in its +doubts and its perplexities, in its blind gropings and in its +ineffectual strivings. But in considering the later plays we are forced +to wonder whether the philosopher has not gained the upper hand and +reduced the playwright to slavery.</p> + +<p>It was of Ibsen, no doubt, that M. Maeterlinck was thinking when he +asserted that "the first thing which strikes us in the drama of the day +is the decay, one might almost say, the creeping paralysis, of external +action. Next, we note a very pronounced desire to penetrate deeper into +human consciousness, and to place moral problems on a high pedestal." +And there is no denying that Ibsen's interest in moral problems has +grown steadily in intensity, and that he has sought to penetrate deeper +and deeper into human consciousness. His latest play, 'When We Dead +Awaken,' altho adjusted to the conditions of the modern theater and +altho perfectly actable, seems to be intended rather more for the reader +than for the spectator. Essentially dramatic as it is, its theatric +realization is less satisfactory—as tho Ibsen was chafing against the +restraints of the actual theater, restraints which are an integral +element of its power as a form of expression.</p> + +<p>In the same suggestive essay, M. Maeterlinck remarked on the steady +decline of the taste for <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>bald theatrical anecdotes,—the taste which +Scribe and Sardou were content to gratify; and he declared that "mere +adventures fail to interest us because they no longer correspond to a +living and actual reality." And yet no one has more sharply proclaimed +the sovran law of the stage than the Belgian critic-poet; no one has +more sympathetically asserted that "its essential demand will always be +<i>action</i>. With the rise of the curtain, the high intellectual desire +within us undergoes transformation; and in place of the thinker, +psychologist, mystic, or moralist, there stands the mere instinctive +spectator, the man electrified negatively by the crowd, the man whose +one desire is to see something happen." In his later and more poetic +plays Ibsen seems to be appealing more especially to the mystic and the +moralist; whereas in the earlier social dramas he was able to grip the +attention of the mere instinctive spectator, while also satisfying the +unexprest desires of the thinker.</p> + +<p>The sheer symbolism of the poet-philosopher is powerfully suggestive, +and these later plays have an interest of their own, no doubt; but it is +in the earlier social dramas that Ibsen most clearly reveals his +dramaturgic genius,—in the 'Pillars of Society,' and the 'Doll's +House,' in 'Ghosts' and in 'Hedda Gabler.' Dennery might envy the +ingenuity with which <i>Consul Bernick</i> is tempted to <a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>insist on the fatal +order that seems for a season to be the death-sentence of his own son; +and Sardou would appreciate the irony of <i>Nora's</i> frantic dance at the +very moment when she was tortured by deadly fear. But these theatric +devices, in Dennery's hands or in Sardou's, would have existed for their +own sake solely; but in Ibsen's, effective as they are, they have a +deeper significance. He is able to avail himself of the complicated +machinery of the "well-made play," to flash a piercing light into the +darker recesses of human nature. However clever he may be in his +handling of these scenes, his cleverness is a means only; it is not an +end in itself. He never gives over "his habit of dealing essentially +with the individual caught in the fact,"—to borrow an apt phrase from +Mr. Henry James. The mechanism may be almost as elaborate as it is in a +play of Scribe's, wherein there is ultimately nothing but ingenuity of +invention and adroitness of construction; but it is never allowed to +crush or to keep out human nature.</p> + +<p><i>Consul Bernick</i> is one of Ibsen's most veracious characters, with his +cloaking morality, his unconscious egotism, and his unfaltering +selfishness, disclosed so naïvely and so naturally. Less boldly drawn +but not the less truthful is <i>Helmer</i>, that inexpugnable prig, with his +shallow selfishness, his complacent conceit, and his morality <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>for +external use only. Ibsen is never happier, and never is his scalpel more +skilful, than when he is laying bare the hollowness of shams like these. +Never is his touch more delicate or more caressing than when he is +delineating a character like <i>Bernick's</i> sister <i>Martha</i>, with her +tender devotion and her self-effacing simplicity. Not even <i>Helmer's</i> +wife, <i>Nora</i>, is more truthfully conceived. <i>Nora</i> is veraciously +feminine in never fathoming <i>Dr. Rank's</i> love for her, or at least in +her refusal to formulate it, content to take his friendship and ask +herself no questions. Truly womanly again is her attitude when he speaks +out at last and thrusts upon her the knowledge of his passion,—her +shrinking withdrawal, her instant ordering in of the lights, and her +firm refusal then, in her hour of need, to profit by the affection he +has just declared.</p> + +<p>It must be regretted that Ibsen does not dismiss either <i>Nora</i> or +<i>Bernick</i> with the final fidelity that might have been expected. +<i>Bernick's</i> unexpected proclamation of his change of heart, so contrary +to his habits, is a little too like one of those fantastic wrenchings of +veracity of which Dickens was so often guilty in the finishing chapters +of his stories. Character is never made over in the twinkling of an eye; +and this is why the end of the 'Doll's House' seems unconvincing. +<i>Nora</i>, the morally irresponsible, is suddenly endowed <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>with clearness +of vision and directness of speech. The squirrel who munches macaroons, +the song-bird who is happy in her cage, all at once becomes a raging +lioness. And this is not so much an awakening or a revelation, as it is +a transformation; and the <i>Nora</i> of the final scenes of the final act is +not the <i>Nora</i> of the beginning of the play. The swift unexpectedness of +this substitution is theatrically effective, no doubt; but we may doubt +if it is dramatically sound. Ibsen has rooted <i>Nora's</i> fascination, felt +by every spectator, in her essential femininity, only at the end to send +her forth from her home, because she seemed to be deficient in the most +permanent and most overpowering of woman's characteristics—the maternal +instinct. It may be that she did right in leaving her children; it may +even be that she would have left them; but up to the moment when she +declared her intention to go, nothing in the play has prepared the +spectator for this strange move. Ibsen has failed to make us feel when +the unexpected happened that this, however unforeseen, was exactly what +we ought to have expected.</p> + +<p>No fault of this kind can be found with 'Ghosts,' that drastic tragedy +of a house built on the quicksands of falsehood, that appalling modern +play with the overwhelming austerity of an ancient tragic drama, that +extraordinarily <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>compact and moving piece, in which the Norwegian +playwright accomplished his avowed purpose of evoking "the sensation of +having lived thru a passage of actual life." A few years only before +Ibsen brought forth his 'Ghosts,' Lowell had asserted that "That Fate +which the Greeks made to operate from without, we recognize at work +within, in some vice of character or hereditary disposition"; and Greek +this play of Ibsen's is in its massive simplicity, in the economy of its +bare structure with five characters only, with no change of scene, with +no lapse of time, and with an action that rolls forward irresistibly +with inevitable inexorability. As there was something Æschylean in +'Brand' so there is something Sophoclean in 'Ghosts'; altho Ibsen lacks +the serenity of the great Greek and Sophocles had a loftier aim than +that of evoking "the sensation of having lived thru a passage of actual +life." There is no echo in 'Œdipus' of the cry of revolt which rings +thru 'Ghosts,' and yet there was a strange similarity in the impression +made on at least one spectator of the actual performances of these +tragedies, the ancient and the modern, the one after the other, at a few +days' interval here in New York,—an impression of deepening horror that +graspt the throat and gript the heart with fingers of ice.</p> + +<p>The most obvious resemblance between the<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a> Greek tragedy and the +Scandinavian social drama is in their technic, in that the two austere +playwrights have set before us the consequences of an action, rather +than the action itself. Here Ibsen has thrown aside the formula of the +"well-made play," using the skill acquired by the study of Scribe in +achieving a finer form than the French playwright was capable of, a form +seemingly simple but very solidly put together. The structure of +'Ghosts' recalls Voltaire's criticism of one of Molière's plays that it +seemed to be in action, altho it was almost altogether in narrative. +Ibsen has here shown a skill like Molière's in making narrative vitally +dramatic. Ibsen has none of Molière's breadth of humor, none of his +large laughter, none of his robust fun; indeed, Ibsen's humor is rarely +genial; grim and almost grotesque, it is scarcely ever playful; and +there is sadly little laughter released by his satiric portrayals of +character. But the Scandinavian playwright has not a little of the great +Frenchman's feeling for reality, and even more of his detestation of +affectation and his hatred of sham. The creator of <i>Tartuffe</i> would have +appreciated <i>Pastor Manders</i>, an incomparable prig, with self-esteem +seven times heated, engrossed with appearances only and ingrained with +parochial hypocrisy.</p> + +<p>But we may be assured that Molière, governed by the social instinct as +he was, would never <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>have shared Ibsen's sympathy for the combatant hero +of his next play, that 'Enemy of the People,' with the chief figure of +which the dramatist has seemed willing for once to be identified. We may +even incline to the belief that Molière would have dismist <i>Dr. +Stockman</i> as lacking in common-sense, and in the sense of humor, and +also as a creature both conceited and self-righteous, pitiably +impractical and painfully intolerant. And we are quite at a loss even to +guess what the French playwright-psychologist, who has left us the +unforgetable figure of <i>Célimène</i> would have thought of <i>Hedda Gabler</i>, +that strangest creation of the end of the century, anatomically +virtuous, but empty of heart and avid of sensation.</p> + +<p>In 'Hedda Gabler' as in the 'Enemy of the People' Ibsen gives up the +Sophoclean form which was exactly appropriate for the theme of 'Ghosts.' +With admirable artistic instinct the playwright returns to the framework +of the "well-made play" or at least to that modification of the Scribe +formula which Augier and Dumas <i>fils</i> had devised for their own use. The +action has not happened before the curtain rises on the first act; it +takes place in the play itself, in front of the spectators, just as it +does in the 'Demi-monde.' The exposition is contained in the first act, +clearly and completely; the char<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>acters are all set in motion before us, +<i>Hedda</i> and her husband, <i>Mrs. Elvsted</i> and <i>Eilert</i>, and the sinister +figure of <i>Inspector Brack</i> in the background. This first act, even to +its note of interrogation hung in the air at the end, might have been +constructed by Augier,—just as the scene in the second act between +<i>Hedda</i> and <i>Brack</i> recalls the manner of the younger Dumas, even in its +lightness and its wit. Yet we may doubt whether any of the modern French +playwrights could have lent the same curt significance to this +commonplace interview between a married <i>demi-vierge</i> and an +<i>homme-à-femmes</i>;—of their own accord these French terms come to the +end of the pen to describe these French types.</p> + +<p>Interesting as 'Hedda Gabler' is on the stage and in the study, +suggestive as it is, it cannot be called one of Ibsen's best-built +plays. Technically considered it falls below his higher level; it does +not sustain itself even at the elevation of the 'Demi-monde' or of the +'Effrontés.' It does not compel us to accept its characters and its +situations without question. It leaves us inquiring, and, if not +actually protesting, at least unconvinced. We might accept the heroine +herself as an incarnate spirit of cruel curiosity, inflicting +purposeless pain, and to be explained, even if not to be justified, only +by her impending maternity,—which she recoils from and is unworthy <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>of. +But I, for one, cannot help finding <i>Hedda</i> inconsistent artistically, +as tho she was a composite photograph of irreconcilable figures. For +example, she shrinks from scandal, yet she burns <i>Eilert's</i> manuscript, +she gives him one of her pistols, and finally she commits suicide +herself, than which nothing could more certainly provoke talk. The +pistols themselves seem lugged in solely because the playwright needed +to have them handy for two suicides,—just as <i>Brack</i> walks into +<i>Hedda's</i> house in the early morning, not of his own volition, but +because the playwright insisted on it. So at the end <i>Mrs. Elvsted</i> +could not have had with her all the notes of <i>Eilert's</i> bulky book, tho +she might have had a rough draft; and she would never have sat down +calmly to look over these notes instead of rushing madly to the hospital +to <i>Eilert's</i> bedside. Again, <i>Inspector Brack</i>, when he hears of +<i>Eilert's</i> death, has really little or no warrant in jumping to the +conclusion that <i>Hedda</i> is an accessory before the fact; and even if she +was, this would not give him the hold on her which she admits too +easily. More than once, we find a summary swiftness in the motives +alleged, for things done before the spectators have time to grasp the +reasons for these deeds, which therefore appear to be arbitrary. There +is a hectic flush of romanticism in this play, not discernible in any +other of Ibsen's <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>social dramas, a perfervidness, an artificiality, +which may not interfere with the interest of the story but which must +detract from its plausibility at least and from its ultimate value.</p> + + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>Whatever inconsistencies may be detected now and again by a minute +analysis of motive,—and after all these inconsistencies are slight and +infrequent,—the characters that Ibsen has brought upon the stage have +one unfailing characteristic: they are intensely interesting. They are +not mere puppets moved here and there by the visible hand of the +playwright; they are human beings, alive in every nerve, and obeying +their own volition. The breath of life has been breathed into them; they +may be foolish or morbid, headstrong or perverse, illogical or fanatic, +none the less are they real, vital, actual. And this is the reason why +actors are ever eager for the chance to act them. Where Scribe and +Sardou and the manufacturers of the "well-made play" give the performers +only effective parts, to be presented as skilfully as might be, Ibsen +has proffered to them genuine characters to get inside of as best they +could,—characters not easy to personate, indeed, often obscure and +dangerous. Because of this danger <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>and this doubt, they are all the more +tempting to the true artist, who is ever on the alert for a tussle with +technical difficulty. The men and women who people Ibsen's plays are +never what the slang of the stage terms "straight parts"; they are never +the traditional "leading man" and "leading woman"; in a sense they are +all of them, male and female, young and old, "character parts," complex, +illusive, alluring. They are not readily mastered, for they keep on +revealing fresh possibilities the more searchingly they are studied; and +this is why the reward is rich, when the actor has been able at last to +get inside of them.</p> + +<p>Even when he has done this, when he has put himself into "the skin of +the personage" (to borrow the illuminating French phrase), the actor +cannot be certain that his personation is finally right. No one of +Ibsen's characters is presented in profile only, imposing its sole +interpretation on the baffled performer. Every one of them is rounded +and various, like a man in real life, to be seen from contradictory +angles and to be approached from all sides. No one is a silhouette; and +every one is a chameleon, changing color even while we are looking at +it. Every part is a problem to the actors who undertake it, a problem +with many a solution, no one of which can be proved, however assured the +performer may be that he has <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>hit on the right one. To the actor the +privilege of an artistic adventure like this comes but rarely; and it is +prized accordingly. Not often does he find under his hand material at +once fresh and solid. He feels the fascination of this chance and he +lays hold of it firmly, even tho he has a haunting fear of failure, +absent from the easy, daily exercise of his professional skill. He +relishes the opportunity to speak Ibsen's wonderful prose, that dialog +which seems to the mere reader direct and nervous, and which impresses +the actual auditor in the theater as incomparable in its veracity, its +vivacity, its flexibility, its subtlety, and its certainty; but which +only the actor who delivers it on the stage can praise adequately, since +he alone is aware of its full force, of its surcharged meaning, and of +its carrying power.</p> + +<p>To act Ibsen is worth while, so the actors themselves think; and it is +significant that it is to the actors, rather than to the regular +managers, that we owe the most of our chances for seeing his plays +presented on the stage. That Ibsen offers opportunities not provided in +the pieces of any other modern dramatist is the belief of many an actor +and of many an actress longing for a chance to rival the great +performers who have gone before, leaving only their fame behind them. So +it is that the 'Pillars of Society' is set <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>up in our theaters now and +<i>again</i>, and that 'Ghosts' may revisit our stage from time to time. So +it is that the ambitious leading lady, abandoning the <i>Camille</i> and the +<i>Pauline</i> of a generation or two ago, yearns now to show what she can do +as <i>Nora</i> and as <i>Hedda Gabler</i>, unable to resist the temptation to try +her luck also in impersonating these women of the North, essentially +feminine even when they are fatally enigmatic.</p> + + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<p>The actors and actresses do get their chance now and again to appear in +an Ibsen part, in spite of the reluctance of the regular managers to +risk the production of Ibsen's plays in their theaters. This reluctance +is not caused solely by an inability to appreciate his real merits; it +is magnified by a healthy distrust for the cranks and the freaks who are +most vociferous and least intelligent in praise of him,—for Ibsen, like +Browning and like Maeterlinck, has suffered severely from the fulsome +adulation of the short-haired women and the long-haired men, who are +ever exuberantly uncritical. Perhaps the unwillingness of managers to +venture their money in staging these Scandinavian social dramas is due +also to a well-founded belief that "there is no money in them,"—that +they are not likely to attract American <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>playgoers in remunerative +multitudes,—that they cannot be forced to the long runs to which the +theater is now unfortunately committed.</p> + +<p>Ibsen is like all other great dramatists in that he has intended his +plays to be performed in the theater, by actors, before an audience; +and, therefore has he adjusted them most adroitly to the picture-frame +stage of the modern playhouse and filled them with characters amply +rewarding the utmost endeavor of ambitious players. But the influence of +the actor and of the circumstances of the theater is only upon the +outward form of the play, while the influence of the spectator is upon +its content solely. This influence has been potent upon every true +dramatist, who has had ever in mind the special audience for whom his +plays were intended, and at whom they were aimed. Sophocles composed his +stately tragedies for the cultivated citizens of Athens, seated on the +curving hillside under the shadow of the Acropolis; Shakspere prepared +his histories and his comedies to hold the interest of the turbulent +throng which stood about the jutting platform in the yard of the +half-roofed Tudor theater; and Molière, even when he was writing to +order for Louis XIV, never forgot the likings of the fun-loving burghers +of Paris. No one of the three ever lookt beyond his own time or wasted a +thought upon any other than the contemporary <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>audience in his own city. +Even tho their plays have proved to possess universality and permanence, +they were in the beginning frankly local in their appeal.</p> + +<p>But who are the spectators that Ibsen saw in his mind's eye when he +imagined his plays bodied forth in the actual theater? He was not a +citizen of a great state, as Molière was, and Shakspere; he did not +dwell in a great city, exercising his art in close contact with the +abounding life of a metropolis. He was a native of a small country, not +even independent, and without large towns; he was born in a petty +village and there he grew to manhood; in his maturity he wandered abroad +and for years abode in exile, an alien, if not a recluse.</p> + +<p>Are not the memories of youth abiding? and can any one of us free +himself wholly from the bonds of early environment? The audience that +Ibsen has ever had in view when he was making his most searching +tragedies of modern life, the audience he has always wisht to move and +to rouse, morally and intellectually, was such a group of spectators as +might gather in the tiny and isolated village where he had spent his +boyhood. Ibsen himself may not have been conscious that this was the +audience he was seeking to stimulate; indeed, he may never have +suspected it; and he might even deny it in good <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>faith. But the fact +remains, nevertheless, obvious and indisputable; and it helps to explain +not a little that might otherwise remain obscure. It enables us to +suggest a reason for a certain closeness of atmosphere sometimes felt in +this play or that, and for a certain lack of largeness of outlook, in +spite of the depth of insight. It makes us more tolerant toward a +certain narrowness, which is often provincial and sometimes almost +parochial.</p> + +<p>It is not merely that Ibsen's social dramas are all of them intensely +Norwegian, peopled solely with natives and having the fiords ever +present in the background. It is not merely that he has shrunk from all +international contrasts, and from all cosmopolitanism;—and here, no +doubt, he has chosen the better part. It is not that he himself has not +shaken off the pettiness of the little village where he received his +first impression of his fellow-man. It is that altho he has seen the +world outside and altho he is thereby enabled to measure the smallness +of what he left behind, he cannot forget the inhabitants of Grimstad, +individually and collectively. They supply the constituent elements of +the audience which he is ever addressing, consciously or unconsciously. +It is their limited horizon he wants to enlarge; and it is their +lethargy he is longing to shatter.</p> + +<h3><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>IX</h3> + +<p>Perhaps there is no injustice in holding that much of Ibsen's arrogant +and aggressive individualism and self-assertion, is the result of his +own youthful solitude and struggle in the little village where the +druggist's ambitious apprentice who wrote poetry and who had opinions of +his own, soon managed to get on a war-footing with most of his +neighbors,—as the late Professor Boyesen recorded from his own +observations at the time, explaining that "a small town, where everybody +is interested in what his neighbor has for dinner, is invariably more +intolerant of dissent, more tyrannical toward social rebels, than a city +of metropolitan rank." And even when Ibsen removed to Christiania he did +not get out of this atmosphere of pettiness. As Professor Boyesen +remarked, again from personal experience, "One hundred thousand village +souls do not make a city." And the same compatriot of the dramatist, in +dealing with the 'Enemy of the People' declared that "each trait bears +the indelible mark of a small society, which stunts and cripples the +sons of men, making them crabbed and crooked, when in a richer soil many +of them might have shot boldly up in the sunlight."</p> + +<p>Norway seems to be a land of villages, with a people not yet enlarged +and awakened from <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>stifling bigotry. Its social organization still +presses painfully on those who wish to do their own thinking; and half a +century ago in Ibsen's impressionable youth, the pressure must have been +tragic. There is no call for wonder that he should have reacted +violently against these fettering restrictions. There is no need to +speculate on the reasons why he has failed to feel the extraordinary +delicacy of the problem of the equilibrium between the opposing forces, +which have a cramping socialism on the one side and an exuberant anarchy +on the other. His choice was swift and he exerted his strength +unhesitatingly against the chains which had clanked on his limbs in his +early manhood. He knew only too well and by bitter experience the +hardness of the crust that encased the Norwegian community and he felt +the need of blows still harder to break thru and let in a little light. +And this is why he is so emphatic in his individualism; this is why he +is so fiercely violent in his assertion of the right of every man to own +himself and to obey his own will, contemptuous of the social bond which +alone holds civilization together.</p> + +<p>It is Boyesen, a fellow Norwegian and an ardent admirer of Ibsen's, who +has most clearly stated Ibsen's position: "He seems to be in ill humor +with humanity and the plan of creation in general (if, indeed, he +recognized such a plan), and he <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>devotes himself, with ruthless +satisfaction, to showing what a paltry contemptible lot men are, and how +aimless, futile, and irrational their existence is on this earth, with +its chaotic strivings and bewildered endeavors." ... "Furthermore, he +utterly undervalues what we call civilization, which he regards +primarily as an ignominious compromise—a surrender and curtailment of +our natural rights and liberties, in return for a paltry security for +life and limb." ... "He has apparently no appreciation of the tremendous +struggle, the immense suffering, the deluge of blood and tears, it has +cost to redeem the world from that predatory liberty which he admires, +and to build up gradually the safeguards of organized society which he +so detests."</p> + +<p>In other words, Ibsen is not what is called "an advanced thinker"; he is +really the most extreme of reactionaries, because he wants to go back to +the beginnings of civilization. He is willing to give up the chronometer +and to return to the sun-dial.</p> + +<p>It would be unfair, of course, to sustain what is here alleged by +quoting speeches from his plays, since Ibsen is too completely a +dramatist to use any one character merely as a mask thru the mouth of +which he might voice his private opinion. But when we consider the whole +group of the social dramas and when we disengage the philosophy +underlying them and sustaining them, we <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>may venture to deduce the +private opinion of the author. And in his letters to Georg Brandes we +find this opinion fearlessly exprest: "I have really never had any +strong feeling of solidarity; in fact, I have only in a way accepted it +as a traditional tenet of faith,—and if one had the courage to leave it +out of consideration altogether, one would perhaps be rid of the worst +ballast with which one's personality is burdened." In another letter he +wrote: "I may as well say the one thing I love in freedom is the +struggle for its attainment. Its possession does not greatly concern +me."</p> + +<p>As Brandes points out, this attitude of Ibsen's is partly a reminiscence +of romanticism; and in Ibsen as in Balzac the romanticist is forever +wrestling with the realist. There is in Ibsen's writing an echo of that +note of revolt, which rings thruout all the romanticist clamor, a tocsin +of anarchy, and which justified the remark of Thiers that the +Romanticists of 1830 were the forerunners of the Communists of 1871. And +the Communists were only putting into practise what Ibsen was preaching +almost simultaneously in his correspondence with Brandes: "The state +must be abolished.... Undermine the idea of the commonwealth; set up +spontaneity and spiritual kinship as the sole determining points in a +union; and there will be attained the beginning of a free<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>dom that is of +some value." This sounds very like a return to Rousseau, almost a +century after the futility of Rousseau's theories had been made manifest +to all.</p> + +<p>There is no denying, however, that Ibsen's doctrine is most appealing to +a dramatist, whose business it is to set on the stage the strivings of +the individual. Perhaps the drama would be the one surviving art if +anarchy should come,—just as it would be certain to die slowly if +socialism should succeed. The self-subordination of socialism would be +as deadening as the self-surrender of fatalism to that will-power which +must ever be the mainspring of a play to move the multitude. Altho it +cannot formulate what it feels, the multitude has no relish for extreme +measures; it may be making up its mind to turn toward either anarchy or +socialism; but it means to move very slowly and it refuses to be +hurried.</p> + +<p>Here is a reason why Ibsen's plays are never likely to be broadly +popular in the theater. The anarchistic element they contain helps to +make them more dramatic, no doubt, more vigorous and more vital; but it +is dimly perceived by the plain people who form the crowd of +theater-goers, and by them it is dumbly resented. The excessive +individualism which gives to Ibsen's best plays their tensity of +interest is also the cause of their inacceptability to the multitude +shrinking <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>from any surrender of the hard won conquests of civilization. +There is significance in the fact that Ibsen's plays have totally failed +to establish themselves permanently in France, where the esthetic +appreciation of his mastery of his art has been keenest and most +competent, but where also the value of the social compact is most +clearly understood. Not only in France, but in all other countries +governed by the Latin tradition of solidarity, Ibsen's doctrine was +certain to be unwelcome—even if it might be wholesome. Outside of +Scandinavia it is only in Germany that Ibsen has succeeded in winning +acceptance as a popular dramatist, perhaps because it was there that the +doctrine of individualism was most needed. In Great Britain, and in the +United States, where the individual has his rights, altho with no +relaxing of the social bond, the performances of Ibsen's plays have been +surprisingly infrequent when we consider their delightful craftsmanship, +their indisputable power and their unfailing interest.</p> + + +<h3>X</h3> + +<p>After all, it is not as a philosopher that Ibsen demands attention, but +as a dramatist, as a playwright who is also a poet. If it is his +weakness that his theory of life is overstrenuous, one-sided and out of +date, it is his strength that he has <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>opinions of his own and that he is +willing to face the problems that insistently confront us to-day. As Mr. +Archer has put it tersely and conclusively, Ibsen is "not pessimist or +optimist or primarily a moralist, tho he keeps thinking about morals. He +is simply a dramatist, looking with piercing eyes at the world of men +and women, and translating into poetry this episode and that from the +inexhaustible pageant."</p> + +<p>A moralist he must be, if his work is to have any far-reaching +significance, any final value. Morality is not something a poet can put +into his work deliberately; but it can be left out only at the poet's +peril, since few works of art are likely to be worth while if they are +ethically empty. Ibsen's inspiration is too rich for it to be void of +moral purport, even tho the playwright may not have intended all that we +read into his work. There is a moral in 'Ghosts' as there is in +'Œdipus,' in the 'Scarlet Letter,' and in 'Anna Karénina,'—a moral, +austere and dispassionate. It contains much that is unpleasant and even +painful, but—to quote Arnold's praise of 'Anna Karénina'—nothing "of a +nature to trouble the senses or to please those who wish their senses +troubled." Ibsen's play, like the tragedy of Sophocles, like the severe +stories of Hawthorne and Tolstoi, is not spoon-meat for babes; it is not +for young men and maidens; but as Goethe <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>asked nearly a century ago, +"What business have our young girls at the theater? They do not belong +to it;—they belong to the convent; and the theater is only for men and +women who know something of human affairs." It is for these men and +these women that Ibsen, with stern self-control, has written his social +dramas, that he may force them to look into matters they are willing +enough to ignore and to front the facts of life, ugly as these may be.</p> + +<p>More than once in the course of this essay has there been occasion to +evoke the names of Sophocles, of Shakspere and of Molière, the supreme +masters of the dramatic art. To venture upon any comparison with them is +to measure Ibsen by the loftiest standard. In his technic alone can he +withstand the comparison, for he is the latest and he has profited by +all the experiments and achievements of the strong men who came before +him; in mere craftsmanship he is beyond question the foremost of all the +moderns. It must be said also that in his intellectual honesty, in his +respect for the immitigable laws of character, he rarely falls short. He +lacks the clear serenity of Sophocles, the depth and the breadth of the +myriad-minded Shakspere, the humorous toleration of Molière. The great +Greek, the great Englishman, and the great Frenchman, are, all of them, +liberal and sane and wholesome, what<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>ever their subject-matter may be; +and here it is that the Scandinavian is felt to be inferior. There are +few of his social dramas in which we cannot find more than a hint of +abnormal eccentricity or of morbid perversity; and this is the reason +why the most of them fail to attain the dignity of true and lofty +tragedy.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is with Wagner that Ibsen should be grouped, rather than with +Sophocles and Shakspere and Molière. They are the two master-spirits of +the stage in the nineteenth century. They are both of them consummate +craftsmen, having assimilated every profitable device of their +predecessors and having made themselves chiefs, each in his own art. And +yet with all their witchery and all their power, we may doubt whether +their work will resist the criticism of the twentieth century, because +there is at the core of it an exaggeration or disproportion which the +future is likely to perceive more and more clearly in the receding +perspective of time.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1905.) </p></div> + + + +<p><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a></p><p><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a></p><p><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a></p> +<h2>THE ART OF THE STAGE-MANAGER</h2> + + +<p>As civilization becomes more and more complex, we can find more frequent +instances of "specialization of function," as the scientists term it. +Only a few years ago, engineering succeeded in getting itself recognized +as one of the professions; and it has already split up into half a dozen +branches, at least, and there are now not only civil engineers and +mechanical engineers and mining engineers, but also electrical +engineers—and even chemical engineers. The invention of the steel-frame +building has brought into existence a special class of artizans known as +"housesmiths," a word probably unintelligible to our British cousins. +Sir Leslie Stephen, in his delightful 'Studies of a Biographer,' has a +scholarly yet playful paper on the 'Evolution of the Editor'; and Mr. +W.J. Henderson, in his interesting book on the 'Orchestra and Orchestral +Music,' traces the development of the conductor—the musician whose +duties are as important as they are novel, and who is not now expected +to be able himself to play upon any particular instrument.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>"It is impossible to tell when the conductor made his appearance in +music," Mr. Henderson asserts. "At the beginning of the seventeenth +century, the conductor was at first nothing more than a leader; he was +one of the performers whom the rest followed." An inscription in verse +on an engraving of a conductor, published in Nuremberg, early in the +eighteenth century, declares that "silent myself, I cause the music I +control." In the nineteenth century, the conductor had won full +recognition as an instrumentalist of a new type, who, without any +instrument of his own, played on the whole body of musicians under his +command. Of late, he has become so prominent in the eyes of the public, +and his personality has been so insisted upon, that there is danger +often lest he may distract attention from the music to himself. As Mr. +Henderson records calmly: "We have beheld the curious spectacle of +people going, to hear not Beethoven or Wagner, but Nikisch or Seidl."</p> + +<p>What the conductor is to a performance of orchestral music, the +stage-manager is to the performance of a play in the theater. (And in +this paper the term "stage-manager" is to be understood as meaning the +"producer" of a drama.) His art is as special, as necessary, as novel, +and as difficult; and, if it is as yet scarcely recognized and rarely +appreciated, this is due in part to the <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>conditions under which his work +must be done. The conductor is not only visible but conspicuous; the +audience is likely to watch him rather than any one of the musicians he +is guiding; whereas the stage-manager must ever be invisible, and is, +indeed, most successful if his existence is unsuspected. When the +conductor brings a concert to a close, he bows to the applause and then +lays down his wand; and all is over. The stage-manager has wrought his +wonders, and his labors are practically concluded, before the curtain +rises on the first act at the first performance. In this respect, he is +like the trainer of a college-crew, who cannot go into the boat with +them when the pistol is fired for the race to begin. But everybody is +now well aware what it is that the trainer has done for the crew; his +portrait appears with theirs in the newspapers and he shares in their +glory.</p> + +<p>Only the expert ever thinks of giving due meed of praise to the hidden +stage-manager who is responsible for a more arduous victory in the +theater than any ever won on the river. His face is not familiar on the +posters; and his name is not in large type on the playbill. All the +credit he gets is contained in the single line which records that the +play has been "produced" by him. Yet he has been responsible for the +entire performance—for the acting and for the costumes, for <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>the +scenery and for the properties, for the lighting and for the incidental +music; not so much indeed for any one of these things as for the harmony +of the whole. If there has been a perfect coördination of all these +elements, if there have been no jarring notes, if the spirit of the play +has been brought out completely, if everything has gone right from +beginning to end, if the whole performance has moved so smoothly as to +seem spontaneous, the stage-manager deserves the highest praise for what +he has wrought unseen. Yet his sole reward is his own consciousness of +work well done, and the chance appreciation of the scanty few who may be +competent to estimate the worth of his achievement.</p> + +<p>The "producer" of the play, the person who assumes the responsibility +for the performance in all its details, may be the dramatist himself; M. +Sardou and Mr. Belasco have shown surpassing skill in bringing forth all +that lies latent in the inert manuscripts of their plays. He may be the +actual manager of the theater; the late Augustin Daly was a +stage-manager of striking individuality. He may be the actor of the +chief part in the play; Mr. Willard and Mr. Sothern have revealed +another aspect of their talent by the artistic manner in which they have +staged both new plays and old. He may be at once author and actor and +manager, like Mr. Gillette, a past-master of this new <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>and difficult +art. Or he may be simply a stage-manager and nothing else, a craftsman +of a new calling, not author, not actor, yet able on occasion to give +hints to playwright and to player. Here, again, is another resemblance +to the conductor, who can impose his own will on the orchestra, altho he +may not be able to play one of the instruments in it, and altho he may +be quite incapable of composing.</p> + +<p>That the task of the stage-manager is more difficult than that of the +conductor is due to the fact that the composer has prescribed exactly +what share each instrument shall take, the conductor having this full +score in his possession; whereas the stage-manager receives from the +author only the spoken words of the play, with but summary indications +as to the gestures, the movements, the scenery, and so forth. He has not +a full score, but only a sequence of themes incompletely orchestrated, +and with the missing passages to be supplied at his own discretion. And +as the richness of the harmony depends largely upon his ability to +amplify properly the hints of the author, the stage-manager is, in fact, +almost a collaborator of the playwright; he is forced into a more +intimate relation with the dramatist than that which the conductor bears +toward the composer. To a collaboration of this sort, ordinary playgoers +never give a thought, content to take <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>the performance as they see it, +and ready often to credit the actor, not only with the inventions of the +stage-manager, but even with those of the author also. They accept the +play as it is presented to them, just as tho it had happened, with no +suspicion of the forethought by which the performance has been made +possible.</p> + +<p>George Henry Lewes, in his stimulating essays, 'On Actors and the Art of +Acting,' has told us that audiences are inclined to overestimate the +genius of an actor and to underestimate his trained skill. We are prone +to accept the fallacy of the "inspiration of the moment," and to give +little credit to the careful preliminary rehearsing which is at once a +humble substitute for inspiration, should this fail to appear, and its +solid support, should it happen to present itself. For the thoroness of +this preliminary preparation the stage-manager is responsible; and it is +at rehearsal that he seeks to bring about the perfect "team-play" which +is absolutely necessary,—the subordination of individual display to the +larger advantage of the whole performance. The reason why the so-called +"all-star revivals" of old plays are often sadly disappointing, is to be +found in the absence of this team-play, in the exaggerated +self-assertion of the individual actors, whom the stage-manager has been +unable to control. Few members of an "all-star" com<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>pany can be relied +upon for the "sacrifice-hits," which the best team-play may now and then +demand. And this is why a wise dramatist, if he were put to the choice, +would prefer to have his piece performed by a company of average merit +directed by a stage-manager of skill and authority, than by far better +actors under lax and inefficient stage-management. One of the varied +qualifications needed by stage-managers is the insight to estimate the +personality of the actors, so that the play may profit by what each of +them can do best, while the exuberance of an aggressive individuality is +restrained from interfering with the due proportion of the performance.</p> + +<p>While it is the duty of the stage-manager to handle all the elements in +his control so as to make the performance as perfect as possible, his +most important function is to direct the actors themselves, to see that +they read their lines intelligently, with just the emphasis requisite at +that given moment in the unfolding of the story of the play, and to +advise them as to the gestures and movements which should tell this +story almost as plainly as the words themselves. Some actors scarcely +ever need a hint at rehearsal, reading their speeches naturally the +first time and finding for themselves the appropriate +byplay,—"business," as technical phrase terms it. Other actors, in no +wise inferior in power of per<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>sonation, need to be guided and stimulated +by advice; even if not inventive themselves, they may be swift to take a +hint and to wring from it all its effectiveness. Rachel, probably the +greatest actress of the last century, felt herself lost without the +tuition of Samson, a comic actor himself, but a teacher of force, +originality and taste. Mrs. Siddons, again, owed some of her most +striking effects to her brother, John Philip Kemble. It was Kemble who +devised for her, and for himself, the new reading and the business now +traditional in the trial scene of 'Henry VIII,' where the <i>Queen</i> at bay +lashes <i>Wolsey</i> with the lines beginning:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Lord Cardinal, to you I speak—</p></div> + +<p>Kemble suggested that the <i>Queen</i> should pause, after the first two +words, as tho making up her mind what she should say. While she +hesitates, the other cardinal, <i>Campeius</i>, thinking himself addrest by a +lady, steps forward. The <i>Queen</i>, seeing this, waves him aside with an +imperious gesture, which sweeps forward to <i>Wolsey</i>, at whom she hurls +the next words,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>To <i>you</i> I speak! </p></div> + +<p>and then the rest of the fiery speech pours forth like scorching lava.</p> + +<p>If the older plays, either tragedies or comedies, <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>seem to us sometimes +richer in detail than the more modern pieces, we shall do well to +remember that these earlier dramas have profited by the accretions of +business and of unexpected readings due to the unceasing endeavor of +several generations of actors and of stage-managers. The plays of +Shakspere that are most frequently performed, the comedies of Molière +also, have accumulated a mass of traditions, of one kind or another, +some of these being of hoary antiquity. In 'Hamlet,' for example, in the +graveyard scene, it was the habit of the <i>Second Grave-digger</i> to take +off his coat before beginning his work, and then to proceed to divest +himself of an indeterminate number of waistcoats, to the increasing +disgust of the <i>First Grave-digger</i>. Oddly enough, this same business is +traditional in the 'Précieuses Ridicules,' the less important of the two +comedians going through exactly the same mirth-provoking disrobing. +Probably the business was elaborated for some medieval farce long before +Molière was born, or Shakspere either. Of late, it has been omitted from +'Hamlet,' but it is still religiously preserved in the performances of +the 'Précieuses' by the Comédie-Française, the company of actors that +Molière founded.</p> + +<p>Many another tradition is also cherished at the Français, the origin of +which is lost in the mists of antiquity. In the 'Malade Imaginaire,' for +ex<a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>ample, <i>Thomas Diafoirius</i> is always provided with an absurdly high +child's chair, apparently the property of <i>Louison</i>; and in the 'Avare,' +after the miser has blown out a candle twice and finally pocketed it, +the custom is for his servant to sneak behind him and to light the +candle once again as it sticks out of his coat. Regnier, the cultivated +and brilliant comedian (whose pupil M. Coquelin was in his +'prentice-days), published a text of Molière's most powerful play, which +he called 'Le Tartuffe des Comédiens' because he had recorded in it all +this traditional business. M. Coquelin has told me that he hopes to be +able some day to edit other of Molière's masterpieces on this principle. +And it is greatly to be wisht that some stage-manager of scholarly +tastes would provide us with a record of the customary effects to be +obtained in the performance of most of Shakspere's plays, as these have +been accumulated in the theater itself. Perhaps this book might be able +to tell us why it is that tradition warrants the same rather trivial +practical joke in the performance of the 'Merchant of Venice,' and in +the performance of 'Romeo and Juliet,'—the business of embarrassing a +servant by repeated bows of mock courtesy and protracted farewell.</p> + +<p>In preparing for a revival of one of the masterpieces of Shakspere, the +accomplished stage-manager of to-day considers all these traditions +<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>inherited from the past, discarding some of them and selecting those +which appear to him worthy of preservation, and which will accommodate +themselves to the general scheme of the whole performance as he has +conceived it in his mind's eye. He makes such arrangements as he deems +necessary, devising wholly new effects to fit the more modern methods of +presentation, which are less purely rhetorical than they were in the +eighteenth century, and more pictorial. When Herr Barnay impersonated +<i>Mark Antony</i> in the Meiningen revival of 'Julius Cæsar,' the novel +stage-management gave freshness to the Forum scene and greatly increased +its force. As <i>Mark Antony</i> ascended the rostrum, after <i>Brutus</i> had +asked the mob to listen to him, the crowd was too highly wrought up over +the speech they had just heard to pay heed to the next speaker. They +gathered in knots praising <i>Brutus</i>; and the murmur of their chatter was +all the greeting that <i>Mark Antony</i> received. Herr Barnay stood for a +moment silent and then he began his appeal for their attention: +"Friends—Romans—countrymen—!" but scarcely a citizen listened to him.</p> + +<p>"Lend me your <i>ears</i>," he begged, "I come to bury Cæsar not to praise +him!"</p> + +<p>And then the nearest group or two grudgingly turned toward the rostrum; +and to these the adroit speaker addrest himself, coaxing, cajoling, +<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>flattering,—making frequent pauses, in every one of which the audience +could see another band of citizens drawn under the spell of his +eloquence. When he had them all attentive, he played on their feelings +and aroused their enthusiasm; then, after a swift and piercing glance +around to see if they were ripe for it, he brought forth <i>Cæsar's</i> will; +and after that <i>Brutus</i> was forgotten, and <i>Mark Antony</i> held the mob in +the hollow of his hand to sway it at his will. It matters little whether +the credit of this most ingenious rearrangement was due to Herr Barnay +himself, or to the unseen stage-manager; the spectator could not but +recognize that a great play had received new illumination by it, and +that a certain richness of texture had been disclosed which had hitherto +lain concealed and unsuspected.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, it must be confest, this craving after pictorial novelty +overreaches itself. Perhaps the allowable limit was not overstept when +Sir Henry Irving gave <i>Ophelia</i> a fan of peacock-feathers, in order that +<i>Hamlet</i> might play with it and have it in his hand when he has to say, +"Ay, a very peacock!"</p> + +<p>But it may be doubted whether the boundary of the justifiable was not +crost, when the same stage-manager had the duel-scene of 'Romeo and +Juliet' take place in an open square, with its <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>raised fountain not far +from the porch of the cathedral, so that <i>Mercutio</i> might be able to +point right and left when he declared that his wound would serve, altho +it was not "as deep as a well or as wide as a church-door." Pretty as +this is and clever, it seems a little petty. To suggest that <i>Mercutio</i> +was in need of visible promptings for his fancy, is to diminish the +quick-wittedness of Shakspere's wittiest character.</p> + +<p>Yet, either of these instances will serve to show the searching +thoroness with which the stage-manager seeks to project the whole +performance in all its minor details, having combined in advance the +gestures of the several actors, the movements of each in relation to +those of the others, the properties they make use of, and the scenery in +the midst of which they play their parts. Altho the scenery, the +properties and the costumes are designed by different artists, it is the +duty of the stage-manager to control them all, to see that they are +harmonious with each other, and that they are subdued to the atmosphere +of the "production" as a whole. He subordinates now one and now another, +that he may attain the more fitting contrast. Mr. Bronson Howard was one +of the authors of 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New Amsterdam,' and to +his skilful direction the "production" of the play was <a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>committed. The +first act took place in a Dutch garden ablaze with autumn sunshine; and, +therefore, all the costumes seen in that act were grays and greens and +drabs of a proper Dutch sobriety. The second act presented the +New-Year's reception at night in the <i>Governor's</i> house, and then the +costumes were rich and varied, so that they might stand out against the +somber oak of the spacious hall.</p> + +<p>To the first rehearsal of a play, new or old, the stage-manager +sometimes comes with all the salient details of the future performance +visualized in advance, knowing just where every character ought to place +himself at every moment of the action, and having decided where every +piece of furniture shall stand, and how the actors will avail themselves +of its assistance. One accomplished stage-manager of my acquaintance, an +actor himself, works out with a set of chess-men the intricate problem +of moving his characters naturally about the stage. Another, a +playwright this one, has a toy theater in which to manœuver the +personages of the play into exactly the most effective positions. In one +of M. Sardou's pieces, the manuscript of which I once had occasion to +study, the chairs stand at the beginning of the first act in very +different positions from those in which they are required to be at the +end of the act; and the manuscript contained <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>full directions indicating +just when and exactly how one or another of the characters should seem +accidentally to push a chair into the needed position.</p> + +<p>Since modern science has revealed the influence of environment on +character, and since modern fiction, following the example set by +Balzac, has brought out the significance of the background before which +an individual lives, moves and has his being, the stage-manager has a +more difficult duty than ever before. He has to see to it that the +scenery and all the fittings of the set are congruous, and that they are +significant, not merely of the place itself, but of the people also. The +late John Clayton showed me the model for the scene of the first act of +'Margery's Lovers,' remarking with a smile of satisfaction that, when +the curtain should go up, and before a word had been uttered, everybody +in the house would know that the story was laid in Southern France. When +the late James A. Herne brought out a play in which husband and wife +took opposite sides on the slavery question, the curiously stiff and +old-fashioned furniture used in the first act seemed to strike the +key-note of the drama; the spectators could not but feel that those who +lived amid such surroundings were precisely the persons who would behave +in that way.</p> + +<p>The stage-manager is encouraged to try for <a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>these pictorial effects, +because the stage is now withdrawn behind a picture-frame in which the +curtain rises and falls. It is no longer thrust out into the midst of +the spectators, as it was in Shakspere's time; nor does it now project +beyond the line of the curtain, curving out alongside the stage-boxes, +as it did until the third quarter of the nineteenth century. It is now +separated from the audience by the straight row of footlights, within +the lower border of the frame; and the electric light which reaches +every corner of the stage, has put it into the power of the +stage-manager to modify his illumination at will, and to be confident +that no gesture will be lost no matter how he may arrange his groups +against his background. He can darken the whole stage, slowly or +suddenly, as he sees fit. Much of the intense effect attained by Sir +Henry Irving in the trial-scene of the 'Bells' was due to the very +adroit handling of the single ray of light that illumined the haunted +burgomaster, while the persons who peopled his fatal dream were left in +the shadow, indistinct and doubtful. Perhaps the most moving moment in +Mrs. Fiske's production of Paul Heyse's 'Mary of Magdala' was after +night had fallen, and when the betrayer knocked at the door of +<i>Caiaphas</i>, who came forth with a lantern and cast its rays full on the +contorted face of the villain,—that face being the sole object <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>visible +on the darkened stage, as the <i>High Priest</i> hissed forth the single +word, "Judas!"</p> + +<p>The expert playwright of every period when the drama has flourished +abundantly, has always adjusted the structure of his play to conform to +the conditions of the theater of his own time; and the more adroit of +the dramatists of to-day have been swift to perceive the necessity for a +change of method, since the thrust-out platform has been succeeded by +the stage behind the picture-frame. They are relinquishing the +rhetorical devices which were proper enough on the platform-stage, and +which now seem out of place on the picture-stage. They find their profit +in accepting as a principle the old saying that "actions speak louder +than words." They are abandoning the confidential soliloquy, for +example, which was quite in keeping with the position of an actor in +close proximity to the spectators,—in the midst of them, in fact,—and +which strikes us as artificial and unnatural now that the actor is +behind the mystic line of the curtain. They are giving up the +explanatory "aside,"—lines spoken directly to the audience, and +supposed to be unheard by the other characters on the stage.</p> + +<p>In Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's artfully articulated play, 'Mrs. Dane's +Defence,' a most ingenious specimen of story-telling on the stage, the +<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>harassed heroine, left alone at a crucial moment, did not express her +emotion in a soliloquy, as she would have done even fifty years ago. She +revealed her agitation solely by the sudden change of her expression and +by her feverish movements, which not only betrayed her anxiety, but were +really more eloquent than any mere words were likely to be. Even more +remarkable examples of the skill with which significant action may be +substituted for speech, can be found in 'Secret Service'; and Mr. +Gillette has explained that, in the performance of his own plays, he is +"in the habit of resorting largely to the effects of natural pauses, +intervals of silence,—moments when few words are spoken and much mental +struggle is supposed to take place," finding these methods "especially +effective at critical junctures." Perhaps no other modern dramatist +relies so frankly upon sheer pantomime as Mr. Gillette does; and, +certainly, no other has ever made a more skilful use of it. But the +tendency can be observed in all our later playwrights, and it will +surely increase as the possibilities of the picture-stage come to be +better understood.</p> + +<p>What the stage-manager is forever striving to attain, in addition to +these salient effects, is variety of impression. He seeks to achieve a +harmony of tone and to create an intangible atmo<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>sphere, in which the +spirit of the play shall be revealed. To secure this, he often calls in +the aid of music. When Sir Henry Irving produced 'Much Ado about +Nothing,' the note of joyous comedy that echoed and reëchoed thruout the +performance, was sustained by sparkling rhythms, old English +dance-tunes, most of them, that frolicked gaily thru the evening. In Mr. +Belasco's production of the 'Darling of the Gods,' the accompanying +music was almost incessant, but so subdued, so artfully modulated, so +delicately adjusted to the action, that perhaps a majority of the +audience was wholly unconscious of the three Japanese themes which had +been insisted upon again and again. To evoke the atmosphere of Japan as +soon as possible, Mr. Belasco also had a special curtain designed for +the play, which co-operated with the exotic music to bring about a +feeling of vague remoteness and of brooding mystery.</p> + +<p>But all these effects, audible or visible, may be resented as mere +stage-tricks, unless they really belong where they are put, unless they +are intimately related to the main theme of the play, and unless they +are really helpful in evoking and sustaining the current of sympathy. +They are excrescences if they exist for their own sake only; they are +still worse if they interfere with this current of sympathy, if they +distract attention to <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>themselves. The stage-manager must ever be on his +guard against the danger of sacrificing the major to the minor, and of +letting some little effect of slight value in itself interfere with the +true interest of the play as a whole. At the first performance of Mr. +Bronson Howard's 'Shenandoah,' the opening act of which ends with the +firing of the shot on Sumter, there was a wide window at the back of the +set, so that the spectators could see the curving flight of the bomb and +its final explosion above the doomed fort. This scenic marvel had cost +time and money to devise; but it was never visible after the first +performance, because it drew attention to itself, as a mechanical +effect, and so took off the minds of the audience from the Northern +lover and the Southern girl, the Southern lover and the Northern girl, +whose loves were suddenly sundered by the bursting of that fatal shell.</p> + +<p>At the second performance, the spectators did not see the shot, they +only heard the dread report; and they were free to let their sympathy go +forth to the young couples. Here, once more, as so often in the art of +the stage, suggestion was far more potent than any attempt to exhibit +the visible object. The truth of this axiom was shown in the third act +of the same play, during its earlier performances, when the playwright +with the aid of a scant dozen soldiers was able to suggest all <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>the +turmoil and all the hazards of a battle only a little removed. At later +performances, the author allowed the attempt to be made actually to +represent certain phases of a retreat, with horse, foot and artillery on +the stage all at once; and altho the stage-management was excellent in +every way, perhaps the total effect was less than when the far larger +possibilities of a great battle had been merely suggested to the +spectators, their own imaginations evoking the possibilities of war more +completely than any stage-manager could set it before them.</p> + +<p>So in the 'Tosca' of M. Sardou, the torture of the hero, if we were to +see it, might be received with incredulity, but we are far more likely +to accept it as real when we perceive it only thru the sufferings of the +heroine at the sight of it. So again, in the 'Darling of the Gods,' the +destruction of the little band of loyal Samurai is far more effectively +conveyed to us by the faint voices which call and answer once and again +in the Red Bamboo Forest, than it would be by any actual presentation of +combat and carnage. So, in 'L'Aiglon,' the specters on the battle-field +of Wagram are much more impressive, if they are merely imagined by the +poor little prince, and if there is no vain attempt to realize them +concretely. So, in 'Macbeth,' there is a loss of interest if the ghost +of <i>Banquo</i> struts in upon the banquet.<a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a> Our modern incredulity doubts +the existence of returning spirits, altho it is willing enough to accept +the reality of <i>Macbeth's</i> belief in them; but when the play was +originally produced, the superstitious groundlings would have felt +themselves cheated of an alluring spectacle if the sheeted ghost had not +stalked out on the stage to shake his gory locks.</p> + +<p>In the spacious days of Elizabeth, the half-roofed theaters were only a +little less medieval than the pageants of the mysteries had been; and +the task of the stage-manager must have been very simple indeed. There +was no scenery, and the performance took place by daylight, so that all +the producer of a new play had to do was to arrange such elementary +business as was possible on a platform encumbered with an indefinite +number of spectators. Like all stage-managers, then and now, he had of +course to direct the actors themselves; and <i>Hamlet's</i> speech to the +<i>Players</i> gives us good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been +an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts +as an actor. Molière, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in +being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' +he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods of +rehearsing his own company.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>But, altho the playhouse in which Molière performed was roofed and +lighted, and altho he had some scenery, yet there were spectators +sitting on his stage as on Shakspere's, and the conditions were those of +the platform and not of the picture. Oddly enough, the most pictorial of +all the theaters that have preceded our own time is the theater of the +Athenians. Few spectacles can ever have excelled in beauty an outdoor +performance in the theater of Dionysius, when the richly-appareled +chorus circled into the orchestra, to the sound of music, in the spring +sunshine, with the breeze from the Bay of Salamis blowing back their +floating draperies, that could not but fall into lines of unexpected +delight and ineffable grace. Stage-management, which was necessarily +neglected by the great Elizabethans, owing to the rudeness of their +playhouses, was studied as an art by the great Greeks and held by them +in high esteem. The dramatic poet was himself the producer, training the +three actors, arranging the evolutions of the chorus, and accepting full +responsibility for the perfection of the complete work of art. Silent +himself, he caused the music he controlled.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(1903.) </p></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Inquiries and Opinions, by Brander Matthews + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INQUIRIES AND OPINIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 16746-h.htm or 16746-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/7/4/16746/ + +Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Janet Blenkinship +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + |