Lyric drama

“ But should there arise a man who combines highly-developed dramatic faculty with great lyric genius, it is quite possible that he may give us the new poetic drama for which our idealists are sighing. He will choose his themes, I take it, from legend, or from the domain of pure fantasy--themes which can be steeped from first to last in an atmosphere of poetry, as Tristan und Isolde is steeped in an atmosphere of music. ”

“ In the larger fields of epic and drama, the poet turns more directly to ourselves: he bids us approach, he confers with us, he interprets for our hearing some great truth of humanity, or some wise and searching judgment of life. But the lyric poet stands apart, careless of our presence, oblivious of our attention, pouring out his heart in a transport of purely personal joy or sorrow, singing because he must, and not because there are any to listen. ”

“ Legendary material in drama requires the aid of music. Music indeed has a most important part to play in poetic and rustic drama. L'Arlésienne is the finest example. We may say that music has not yet received the treatment in our drama which it deserves. The poets have dispensed with it, partly through sheer ignorance, and partly through fear and jealousy. Music and poetry are two wings of the lyric drama. He who neglects either, can fly only with great difficulty. ”

“ Tragedy, comedy, the epopee, the novel, satire, the madrigal, epigram—or again, lyric drama, comic opera, oratorio, the cantata, song—these correspond to so many aspects under which things can be regarded, painted, or sung, or to so many natural modes of feeling, natural aspirations of the human soul. ”

“ It is through the choral refrains, in fact, that the student of lyric poetry is chiefly fascinated as he reads the ballads. Students of epic and drama find them peculiarly suggestive in their handling of narrative and dramatic material, while to students of folklore and of primitive society they are inexhaustible treasures. The mingling of dance-motives and song-motives with the pure story-element may long remain obscure, but the popular ballad reinforces, perhaps more persuasively than any type of poetry, the conviction that the lyrical impulse is universal and inevitable. ”

“ In lyric poetry we are conscious of emotion, reflection, the personal interest, and yearning. The drama converts the ideal claim of human action into an objective presence. The presentation of epic poetry, on the other hand, moves, as it were, within the element itself of essentially necessary existence. ”

“ Yet when we go back a few centuries and enter the great periods of drama, character grows less and sometimes disappears, and there is much lyric feeling, and at times a lyric measure will be wrought into the dialogue, a flowing measure that had well-befitted music, or that more lumbering one of the sonnet. ”

“ The drama, in contrast to this, requires a more strenuous conjunction, albeit, even in the drama, we find that romantic poetry permits the introduction of a type of variety in the nature of episode and an elaborate analysis of characteristic traits in its presentation of soul-life no less than that of external fact. Lyric poetry, as it changes conformably to the fluctuation of its types, adapts itself to a mode of presentment of the greatest variety: at one time it is bare narration ”

“ It expresses the singer's personal emotions, feelings, desires; and for these reasons I select this phrase "lyric" to express all subjective or personal utterances in art.
The drama, on the other hand, is a photograph of life; of live men and women acting themselves out freely and individually. The dramatic writer ought to disappear in his drama; if he does not do so he is not a dramatic writer, but a lyrist in disguise. ”

“ But the difficulty of uniting song to declamation in modern languages explains how it is that the intervention of music has given to the lyric poem a character quite different from that of tragedy or comedy, and made it a third species of drama, having its particular rules. The differences alluded to cannot be determined without a perfect knowledge of music, of the means of identifying it with words, and of its natural relations to the human heart—details which belong less to the artist than to the philosopher. ”

“ Here, in point of evolution, is the human basis of poetry, the foundation courses of the pyramid."
2. Lyrical Element in Drama
We cannot here attempt to trace, even in outline, the course of this historic evolution of genres. But in contemporary types of both dramatic and narrative poetry, there may still be discovered the influence of lyric form and mood. We have already noted how the dramatist, for all of his supposed objectivity, cannot refrain from coloring certain persons and situations with the hues of his own fancy. ”

“ The next and middle step is occupied by the poetry of sentiment and feeling—that music of the soul or poesy of song in which the calm deep longings and the wild tearing passions of the moment, once plunged and glorified in that immortal element, become eternal. But the height of perfection in the organic development of poetry is marked by the drama. This third and highest form of poetical art has for its subject-matter the whole struggle of human life, which in its vivid representations it aims to realize, and, as it were, to bring bodily before our eyes. ”

“ Of course, dramatic and lyrical poetry both deal with the expression of human feeling, and the boundary line between them is often invisible. Still, it is probably correct to say that the drama takes for its principle of organic structure the action of men and women upon one another, while the lyrical poem expresses the feelings of men and women in themselves. ”

“ When words come, there is no reason why they should not be in verse, for only in verse can we render what is deepest in humanity of the utmost beauty. Nothing but beauty should exist on the stage. Visible beauty comes with the ballet, an abstract thing; gesture adds pantomime, with which drama begins; and then words bring in the speech by which life tries to tell its secret. Because poetry, speaking its natural language of verse, can let out more of that secret than prose, the great drama of the past has been mainly drama in verse. ”

“ In lesser compass than the epic, a narrative poem, like the ballads [4] or the more conscious poetical romances and tales, [5] may range over the whole wide domain of men's adventures and fortunes, finding nothing human foreign to it.
Narrative thus stories forth the doings of others; the lyric rises out of oneself. And here again the scope is limitless. A lyric may phrase emotion in its purest essence: it is then the absolute lyric or song. The emotion, gathering about a simple little scene in nature, may utter itself briefly and beautifully in an idyl ”

“ The modern interest in the drama, and the ever-growing desire to see literature once more wedded to the stage, will, it can hardly be doubted, lead to a revival of dramatic poetry. This will not, of course, have any relation to the feeble lycean plays of the hour—spectacular romances enshrined in ambling blank verse—but will, in its form and substance alike, offer entertainment to other organs than the eye. ”

“ They transform themselves for him into music, colour, and shadow; a disembodied music, diaphanous colours, luminous shadow. They serve him with so absolute a self-negation that he can write romances sans paroles, songs almost without words, in which scarcely a sense of the interference of human speech remains. The ideal of lyric poetry, certainly, is to be this passive, flawless medium for the deeper consciousness of things, the mysterious voice of that mystery which lies about us, out of which we have come, and into which we shall return. ”

“ Music is the soul of the drama, for the highest drama is the opera,—the highest possible is the soul, of course; and so the music should be above the other forms, and they the ministers. But most people put the music at the bottom, and think of it last in this drama. If the music be high, all rise to it; and the higher it is, the higher will all rise. So, the dramatic personification passes naturally into that spiritual height, as the forms of those we love, and their fleeting actions fraught with grace, dissolve into our strong perception of the soul we in them love and long for. ”

“ The songs of all the really great lyrical poets are obviously and radiantly singable, and meant to be sung, and in their authors' lifetime they were sung. So far then from the finest lyrical poetry being impaired by association with music, it is only the maimed poetry of decadence that does not admit of such association, one unfailing mark of a lyric of the highest order being that it rises to the true singing quality. ”

“ For, whereas the epic, the dramatic, and the rest can add detail upon detail at great length, and lives by its quantity of good things, the lyric stands or falls at the first blow. Either it transmits to the reader the emotion it seeks to express, or it does not, and if it does not then the longer it continues the greater bore it becomes. For all the forms of objective poetry can get their effect by reproducing objective details in abundance. ”

“ The poet supplies only the words, to which, in a lyrical tragedy, music and rhythmical motion are essential accessories. It follows, then, that if the chorus is deprived of accompaniments appealing so powerfully to the senses, it will appear a superfluity in the economy of the drama—a mere hinderance to the development of the plot—destructive to the illusion of the scene, and wearisome to the spectators. ”

“ That which in this world-around presents itself to our contemplation—and therefore contains meaning for our feelings—as movement, we render by movement. Hence all imitation is in the broadest sense dramatic; drama is presented in the movement of the brush-stroke or the chisel, the melodic curve of the song, the tone of the recitation, the line of poetry, the description, the dance. ”

“ Lyric poetry is the fitting of rhythmic, melodious, colored words to the emotion within, to the point where the very form itself becomes the meaning, and the essence and mystery of the song are in the singing. Beauty is harmony materialized; it is emotion ordered and made visible, audible, tangible. If in the arts of form we seek further a standard of truth, their truth is not found in their relation to any external verity, but is determined by their correspondence with inner experience. ”

“ Then after reflective study of classic ideals we find him making the decisive break with all the conventionalities and traditions of ‘opera,’ thus evolving the music drama in which music, poetry and stage setting should combine in one unified art. Situations in such a drama are no longer created to afford musical opportunities, but text and music are joined in a unity of dramatic utterance of hitherto unattained eloquence. ”

“ Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterized our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as in especial with Shakespeare, the 'purple light of Love' is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection. For the didactic verse of the century, although lyrical in form, yet very rarely rises to the pervading emotion, the golden cadence, proper to the lyric. ”

“ This is especially true of such complex and many-sided questions as this. When it is intended to judge seriously a work of musical drama the first thing necessary is to study the drama by itself. Drama in music is still drama. ”

“ Now that all the fair dreams had been shattered by the selfishness of the courts and the bickerings of politicians, men asked, ‘What is the use?’ Turning inward to examine their own souls, they produced a delicate lyric poetry which contained just what the art-song of the time needed—the intimate and personal. ”

“ If you know these ballads, you will find that they mirror perfectly your every mood. If you are weary and down-hearted, behold, a verse starts to your memory trembling with the very sigh you have heaved. If you are merry, a stanza is dancing to the tune of your own mirth. If you love, be you ever so much a Romeo, here is the finest language for your using. If you hate, here are words which are daggers. If you like battle, here for two hundred years have trumpets been blowing and banners flapping. If you are dying, plentiful are the broken words here which have hovered on failing lips. ”

“ It is this that the choruses supply; the old men or women who take no active part in the drama, the undifferentiated voices who sing like birds in the pauses of the wind; who can comment, or sum up, or allow the poet to speak himself or supply, by contrast, another side to his conception. ”

“ In the dramatic, the action is more made by the personality; in the epic, the personality is more merged in the strong, full stream of events. The lyric is the utterance of one-sided, partial (however deep and earnest) feeling, the which must be linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his actions. The dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic. Out of humanity and human action it extracts the essence. It presents men in their completest form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest feelings. ”

“ But with the departure of the lyrical emotion the narrative impulse ends as well.
(b) While keeping within the limits of the lyric he traverses an immense range of emotion and experience. The feelings he describes are those of the Scottish peasant, but the genius of the poet makes them germane to every member of the human race; he discovers the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Here we have the “passion and apathy, and glory and shame” that are the inspiration of the lyrical poet, and we have them in rich abundance. ”