Dramatic instinct

“ It is a common blunder to consider dramatic instinct as concerned only with a speaker. Nearly every one regards it as the ability to “act a character,” to imitate the action or the speech of some particular individual. But this conception is far too narrow. The dramatic instinct is primarily concerned with insight into character, with problems of imagination, and with sympathy. By it we realize another’s point of view or attitude of mind towards a truth or situation, and identify ourselves sympathetically with character. ”

“ The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with dramatic instinct, and which he had come to despise during the past year, returned with the easy conformity of an undesirable acquaintance—that reportorial sentence-making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to the soul of man. ”

“ It is not; it is merely a process of relieving superfluous nervous tension in acting, by which obstructions are removed so that real sympathetic emotions can be stronger and fuller, and perceptions keener. Those who get no farther than emotional vibrations of the nerves in acting, know nothing whatever of the greatness or power of true dramatic instinct. ”

“ They are these characters with such abandon and with such intense pleasure that the on-looker must believe that nature intended that they should give play to this dramatic instinct, not so much formally, with all the trappings of the man-made stage, but spontaneously and naturally, as they talk and read. ”

“ The dramatic instinct brings out a number of traits of very great value. It develops initiative and ingenuity and resourcefulness. It helps make18 clear the difference between the imaginary and the real. It helps one to acquire unconsciousness of self, grace of demeanor and the correct use of the voice. It develops the power of action in groups and of ready and unselfish cooperation. ”

“ That instinct, keen, never sleeping, is one of the unpleasant traits in the [Pg 135] make-up of a great actor; for there is no situation in life too sacred, no emotion even of his own heart too tender not to be "used" if it seems dramatic. ”

“ Your germ idea you express in a single short sentence which you consider as the problem of your playlet, to be solved logically, clearly and conclusively. Instinct for the dramatic leads you to lift out from life's flowing stream of events the separate incidents you require and to dovetail them into a plot which tells the story simply by means of characters and dialogue skillfully blended into an indivisible whole, flashing with revealing meaning and ending with complete satisfaction. ”

“ Of what the rest may be, she might have said, because the full expression of the dramatic instinct has often inspired a child with courage to enter the entire circle of his possibilities.
Like all human instincts, the dramatic instinct may be misused. It must not be confused with dramatic talent, which is a special gift bestowed upon only a few. The dramatic impulse in children, as Joseph Lee says, is “not the impulse toward19 dramatics in the grown-up sense—toward representing to other people what is passing in the actor’s mind. ”

“ It is easy to understand that the mediumistic person, finding this wonderful dramatic and creative faculty within himself or herself, is sometimes tempted to turn it to personal advantage; and succumbs to the temptation. The dramatic habit catches hold of the waking self, and renders the person tricky and unreliable. [71] But below it all is creation, and the instinct of creation—the power that gives to airy nothing a local habitation, the 147 genius of the dramatist, of the artist, of the inventor, and the very source of the visible and tangible world. ”

“ Consider the potential for creating drama, alone! Every word ever read or spoken, every emotion ever conveyed, every gesture of anger, love, jealousy, pain, pleasure—all this raw material glittering brightly, ready to pour out in new conflicts, dramatic situations, sharp pungent dialogue—"
He made me sense his enthusiasm, but I couldn't quite feel it. Would such a tremendous ability necessarily be good? ”

“ These lights and shades (as the poet finely calls the intermixture of many passions, which, with the leading or principal one, form the human character) must be blended together in every picture of dramatic manners; because the avowed business of the drama is to image real life. Yet the draught of the leading passion must be as general as this strife in nature permits, in order to express the intended character more perfectly. ”

“ Here is an instinct which perceives the kinetic values of things; which seizes unerringly upon the stuff of drama, and, contemplating a character, an event or a situation, feels it start into life under the touch and sees it move forward and rush to a crisis before the eyes. ”

“ In the past few years, however, the drama of mental states and the drama which has revealed emotional significance in seeming or real inaction, has been proving that “nothing human is foreign” to the drama. A dramatist may see in the so-called undramatic material emotional values. If so, he will develop a technique which will create in his public a satisfaction equal to that which the so-called undramatic story, character, or idea could give in story form. ”

“ Why, as to dramatic genius, sir, the fact is this—to give a true picture of life, a man should enter into all its scenes,—should follow nature, sir—but modern authors plunder from one another—the mere shades of shadows.—Now, sir, for my part, I dive into the world—I search the heart of man;—'tis true I'm called a rake—but, upon my soul, I only game, drink, and intrigue, that I may be better able to dramatize each particular scene. ”

“ It is only thanks to such a low, trivial understanding of the significance of the drama that there appears among us that infinite quantity of dramatic works describing men's actions, positions, characters, and frames of mind, not only void of any spiritual substance, but often of any human sense. ”

“ If physical action in and of itself is so often dramatic, is all physical action dramatic? That is, does it always create emotion in an onlooker? No. It goes for naught unless it rouses his interest. Of itself, or because of the presentation given it by the dramatist, it must rouse in the onlooker an emotional response. ”

“ In other words, our characters become living people who are endowed with human traits of which their every action is the natural outcome.
Good taste in the selection and treatment of theme brings us back again to the same admonition of exercising the simple quality of being well-bred. Just as we would not think of startling a drawing-room assembly by forcing our personal bias upon it, so we must select our dramatic matter in a serious, humane and delicate manner. ”

“ Everything becomes the subject of a drama. Existence appears like a scene in a theatre. The regular, quiet life of every-day routine is transformed by the hysterical woman into a series of grave events, adapted to all sorts of dramatic developments. The hysterical sufferers continually play with an equal success at tragedy and comedy amid the flat scenes of reality. They can not comprehend simplicity in life, but make life a complication. ”

“ And it is the singular peculiar characteristic of the drama-- the face to face confrontation of forces--which furnishes these conditions. As we might have foreseen, the peculiar Katharsis, or pleasurable disappearance or alleviation of emotion in tragedy, is based on just those elements in which the drama differs from other forms of art. Confrontation, and not action, as the dramatic principle, is the important deduction from our theory;--is, indeed, but the objective aspect of it. ”

“ They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. ”

“ As plot is the science of structure, so dramatics is the art of treatment. Plot is a matter of selection; drama one of application of the selected material. We take it for granted that all plot material is inherently—tho crudely, perhaps—dramatic. We hint at both plot and treatment when we state that drama is a supreme human experience interpreted by characters in terms of emotion with piercing effect. ”

“ He can so identify himself with the character as to give genial and hearty laughter, and thus indicate dramatically the sudden arrival of ideas. To reveal the awakening of an idea is the very soul of spontaneous expression, and such awakening is nearly always dramatic. ”

“ Whether or not we agree with the ancient rules of the unities regarding place, time, and action as laws of the drama, every one must recognize the fact that all three conceptions are in some sense necessary to an illusion. A dramatic action or position implies not only character, but specific location and circumstance. The situation helps to reveal the character and shows its relation to human life. ”

“ What is dramatic, is not what falls out as things ordinarily occur in life's flow of seemingly disconnected happenings; it is what occurs with precision and purpose, and with results which are eventually recognizable as being far beyond the forces that show upon its face. In an illuminating flash that reveals character, we comprehend what led up to that instant and what will follow. It is the revealing flash that is dramatic. Drama is a series of revealing flashes. ”

“ Moreover, its dramatic character gives an imaginative satisfaction, which must suffice to initiate such pantomime again and again. Amongst ourselves many people are prone to dramatise every situation of their lives; to act in imagination their loves, their revenges, their opportunities of self-display, and to derive satisfaction from such imaginations even to the weakening of their will—satisfaction without effort or danger. ”

“ Because it is the easiest expression of emotion to understand, physical action, which without illuminating characterization and dialogue can express only a part of the world of emotion, has been too often accepted as expressing all the emotion the stage can present. Thirdly, it should be clear that a statement one meets too frequently in books on the drama, that certain stories or characters, above all certain well-known books, are essentially undramatic material is at least dubious. ”

“ Thus, whether expressing in natural action one's own thoughts and feelings, or those excited by his conception of others, the relation of thought and feeling to action, is, in both the same. Consequently, every outacting of one's own mental states, becomes when natural and in earnest, dramatic. ”

“ Provided a writer can convey to his audience the excited mental state of one or more of his characters, then this mental activity is thoroughly dramatic. That is, neither physical nor mental activity is in itself dramatic; all depends on whether it naturally arouses, or can be made by the author to arouse, emotion in an audience. Just as we had to add to physical action which arouses emotional response of itself, physical action which is made 41 to arouse response because it develops the story or illustrates character, we must now add action which is not physical, but mental. ”

“ This grouping of drama, action, and passion as the qualities of great poetry is significant. Bald narrative can never realize character or situation as can the dramatic form, either in narrative or for the stage, when the whole action takes place before the mind's eye instead of being told. ”

“ The content of the drama is made up of the conflict of passions, activities, pathos, actions, and the accomplishment of the thing willed by the soul, a content which does not, as in the case of the epic, take the form of a narrative of past events, but the dramatic poet places the individuals themselves before our eyes and makes them unfold their emotions personally in an objective form, and their actions as taking place in the present: his mediate position between ourselves and the objects represented therefore ceases. ”

“ Then forget everything except the spirit of creation. Where dramatists in training waste their nervous energy and often stultify their best desires is in keeping critical tab upon themselves as they create. ”

“ Inevitably, as the plot thickens and the climax approaches—inevitably, wherever an impression is to be emphasized and driven home—narration gives place to enactment, the train of events to the particular episode, the broad picture to the dramatic scene. But the limitation of drama is as obvious as its peculiar power. It is clear that if we wish to see an abundance and multitude of life we shall find it more readily and more summarily by looking for an hour into a memory, a consciousness, than [119] by merely watching the present events of an hour, however crowded. ”

“ The visible care with which he has assigned a motive for every thing, invites to a closer examination, in which we are little likely to be interrupted by any of the magical illusions of imagination: and in such examination the want of internal connectedness cannot escape detection, however much of thought and reflection the outward structure of a drama may display. ”

“ Though the term dramatic faculty means the power by which one personates others, yet when analyzed, we find it identical with that by which we express our own thoughts and emotions. We are all when natural, and thoroughly in earnest, dramatic. One can personate others only so far, as he by his conception, passes into their life, making their sentiments and emotions, as well as their words his own, and, as such, expressing them. ”