Unities (drama)

“ But it is not the existence of the key or the character of the plot, but the existence of the drama of modern European politics, that is the first feature of our sketch: the existence of the powers by whom the drama is played and between whom the balance is maintained. Medieval history may, it is true, be read as a drama, but it is not one in which the plot is obvious; it is rather more a series of dramas which may be combined, like Greek trilogies, but have unities and plots of their own. The history of each great nation is a drama by itself ”

“ Within very elastic limits, the unities are a convention of the drama, but they are not a convention of fiction, long or short. The art of the stage and the art of the story differ radically; the advantage given the play by the conciseness of its spectacle is compensated by the advantage given the story by its more inclusive character and greater flexibility. ”

“ In a drama, however, the harmony of the whole results from its component contraries being co-ordinated in the unity of action, while, in universal Reason, it is from unity that the struggle of contraries arises. ”

“ This is the law which requires that a dramatic action should be one—that it should possess unity. What in the subject of a drama is merely an approximate or supposititious, must in its action be an actual unity; and it is indeed this requirement which constitutes the most arduous part of the task of transforming subject into action. There is of course no actual unity in any group of events in human life which we may choose to call by a single collective name—a war, a revolution, a conspiracy, an intrigue, an imbroglio. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of a vital unity, like that of a tree, the work has but a sort of aggregative unity, like a heap of sand.
Which may in some fair measure explain what I mean by dramatic composition. For a drama, regarded as a work of art, should be in the strictest sense of the term a society; that is, not merely a numerical collection or juxtaposition, but a living contexture, of persons and events. For men's natures do not, neither can they, unfold themselves severally and individually; their development proceeds from, through, and by each other. ”

“ The hundred and one springs of local and sectional life must have time to furrow their common channel into the seething sea of life at large, and social questions and problems make themselves felt, if not crystallized, before the throbbing pulse of the big national heart can find its reflex in a great literature—and specifically in the drama—of a social character. ”

“ The pathetic interest of the drama deepens with every new expression, but at least you can learn from it that your parents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing the sense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs of unsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unity became only a reminiscence. ”

“ We see how quickly the arbitrary distinction between the species of poetry vanishes before common sense and taste. No less easily one might demolish the alleged rule of the two unities. We say two and not three unities, because unity of plot or of ensemble, the only true and well-founded one, was long ago removed from the sphere of discussion. ”

“ Classic, Spanish, and French drama.
It is the unity of the action which constitutes the good play, and it may be obtained by different methods. A dramatist may obtain unity by means of the passion or by the working out of a single situation. Of the great Greek dramatists I cannot speak with expert authority, but as far as they are visible in translations as in a glass darkly, they appear to have achieved unity in this way to the full. ”

“ The drama of a nation, he persistently contended, was a faithful mirror of its people. Where the tone of the drama was base the people would be found degraded either through their own acts or the superior force of others. Where the mission of the national drama was the inculcation of high moral lessons, patriotism, and love, there the people were thrice blessed. ”

“ In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in America—though in a lesser degree—the drama is the vehicle which is really making history, king history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to be reached. ”

“ The Modern Drama, as all modern literature, mirrors the complex struggle of life,—the struggle which, whatever its individual or topical expression, ever has its roots in the depth of human nature and social environment, and hence is, to that extent, universal. Such literature, such drama, is at once the reflex and the inspiration of mankind in its eternal seeking for things higher and better. ”

“ In Renaissance construction, however, with its independent parts and coordinated accents, unity of action is not really possible. The structure of incidents does not implicitly contain the total meaning of the play. Character and thought have degrees of autonomy. They are not subordinate but coordinate with the plot. Therefore, the plot is not the sole source of unity. Instead, unity must arise from the dynamic interaction of the various parts of the drama: story, character, and language. ”

“ In such a case what room could there be for that contrast and collision which the very plot of a drama requires?—They have their weaknesses, errors, and even crimes, but the manners are always elevated above reality, and every person is invested with as high a portion of dignity as was compatible with his part in the action. But this is not all. The ideality of the representation chiefly consisted in the elevation of every thing in it to a higher sphere. ”

“ Had the trilogy terminated with the death of the brothers such a catastrophe would have violated an essential canon of classical dramatic art, which requires the final reconciliation of the principles brought into collision during the action of the play. These principles, in the drama before us, are—duty to the family, and duty to the State; the harmonious action of which is necessary to the well-being of society. ”

“ For the sake of the prescribed Unity of Time the French poets must fain renounce all those artistic effects which proceed from the gradually accelerated growth of any object in the mind, or in the external world, through the march of time, while of all that in a drama is calculated to fascinate the eye they were through their wretched arrangement of stage- scenery deprived in a great measure by the Unity of Place. Accidental circumstances might in truth enforce a closer observance of this rule, or even render it indispensable. ”

“ He wanted a dramatic form in which to tell the story of the fall of Julius Cæsar, and the story of English history. He had to discard the old unities of time and place. The only Aristotelian unity that remains in our English literature is that of subject. The subject of a dramatic action, or an epic story, must have unity. There must be one action having a beginning, a middle, and an end; and there must be a constant, regular, orderly, striking, impressive advance from the beginning to the end. ”

“ To our civilization applies the charge inscribed upon the opening page, raising the drama into the sphere of universal humanity: "This play has not been written to condemn a single nation, but to condemn Europe." ”

“ The social antitheses, which make of every human community an unstable organization, give to history, especially when it is seen and examined rapidly and in its main features, the character of a drama. This drama in all its relations is repeated from community to community, from nation to nation, from state to state, because the inner inequalities concurring with the external differentiations, have produced and produce the whole movement of wars, conquests, treaties, colonizations, etc. ”

“ In body and soul she represented that spirit of individualism set in an epoch of intrigue, sensation, change, uncertainty, wide and violent contrast, in days of large treasons and international piracy, of high feeding and large ideas, of scented gloves, masks, doublets, and ill-managed kitchen heaps, of plot and counter-plot, of Court splendour and national drama. ”

“ Above all, the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart, is the strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. ”

“ Taken in combination, these three conditions explain the appearance of a drama fitted to express the very life and soul of a puissant nation, with the temper of the times impressed upon it, but with a truth and breadth that renders it the heritage of every race and age. A national drama is the image created for itself in art by a people which has arrived at knowledge of its power, at the enjoyment of its faculties, after a period of successful action. ”

“ Our readers are beginning to become so accustomed to the spiced dishes of Continental Problem drama,—reaction against which has set in there long ago,—that fears may well be entertained that the rude simple fare of the Historic Drama will be rejected with scorn. ”

“ Yet, as in the artistic drama there must be a beginning and an end, although the action can only be ideally severed from what has preceded and what is to follow in actual life, so a limited space in the collective history of a people may be legitimately set apart for concentrated study. But as in the case of the drama, such a period should possess a certain unity and intensity of moral interest. ”

“ But of all diversions the theatre is undoubtedly the most entertaining. Here we may see others act even when we cannot act to any great purpose ourselves. The highest object of human activity is man, and in the drama we see men, measuring their powers with each other, as intellectual and moral beings, either as friends or foes, influencing each other by their opinions, sentiments, and passions, and decisively determining their reciprocal relations and circumstances. ”

“ True relation of the drama to national life.—We are not to suppose, however, that it could be the business of tragedy to become the direct exponent of the national consciousness, and to teach or preach political and social truth. ”

“ No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the [181] drama was the possession of the people. ”

“ The drama is the division, death, and resurrection, in an eternal circle, of the powers of man and of the powers in whose midst he fights and struggles. Of this incommensurable action we are told only in broken hints, as of a chorus crying outside doors where deeds are being done in darkness. Images pass before us, make their gesture, and are gone ”

“ But when the time came to return to my first draft of a play, the tale of love was the only thing to consider, and being now on the point of producing the drama in England, America, and elsewhere, and requested to prepare an edition of my story for the use of the audiences at the theatre, I have thought myself justified in eliminating the politics and religion from my book, leaving nothing but the human interests with which alone the drama is allowed to deal. ”

“ The repetition of dramatic forms in the Globe plays shows that there is a structural foundation for the concept of multiple unity, that unity can be found not in compression of action but in its extension. ”

“ Thus the silent drama may become vibrant with emotional music and resonant with tongues that need no interpreter, for all nations understand the universal language of the heart. The most sublime characters and valiant deeds, ravishing color and mellifluous voices, are in our soul; sublime sympathy is in our world-old heart; profound understanding is in our God-given reason, and this multi-glorious human marvel is gratified to the utmost in having its humanity called into active being. ”

“ And universal art, by uniting the most different people in one common feeling, by destroying separation, will educate people to union, will show them, not by reason, but by life itself, the joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by life. ”

“ Therefore, America could not so far produce its own social drama. But in proportion as the crystallization progresses, and sectional and national questions become clarified as fundamentally social problems, the drama develops. ”

“ One I call ‘The Vision’—this is a Brotherhood of Man play—the other I call ‘Peace,’ and it’s a dramatization of the Universal Peace idea.”
“Why don’t you write something human? Nobody wants dramatized movements. The public wants people, personalities, things we all know and feel. You can’t get much thrill out of Universal Peace.” ”

“ In both epic and drama men are seen, not in their subjective moods, but in their objective struggles; not in the detachment of the life of speculation and imagination, but in vital association and relation with society in its order and institutions. With many differences, both of spirit and form, the epic and the drama are at one in portraying men in that ultimate and decisive stage which determines individual character and gives history its direction and significance. ”

“ But while outward Dramatic harmonies between cause and effect, and the proportionate agencies which characters introduced in the Drama bring to bear upon event and catastrophe, are carefully shunned,—as real life does for the most part shun them,—yet there is a latent coherence in all that, by influencing the mind, do, though indirectly, shape out the fate and guide the actions. ”

“ English and American plays have a hearing on the Continent. For two generations the drama has been fighting to take for its motto "Nihil mihi alienum." It has won that right. Sensitive, responsive, eagerly welcomed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature, by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men. ”