Unity (drama)

“ 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. ”

“ Unity, harmony and proportion, are as necessary in politicks, as in the drama, musick or architecture. A tragicomical government, a Corinthian capital over a Dorick column, jarring dissonances mingled with soft notes, an aristocratiek democracy or a monarchick aristocracy, destroy sympathies, proportions and melody. It is consistency which produces perfection in arts and sciences. ”

“ Neither one nor the other should ever forget that the one and only fundamental unity in drama, past, present and to come, is unity of idea, and the unity of action which gathers about that idea as surely as iron filings around the magnetized center. The unities of time and place are conditional upon the kind of drama aimed at, and the temporal and physical characteristic of the theater ”

“ When in the modern drama we are introduced to the hero of a play first as a child and then as a full-grown man, and are forced meanwhile to keep our attention on his acts in the interval as important to the dramatic evolution, there is a gross violation of æsthetical unity. About the unity of action all critics are agreed. It is the same as unity of interest, or unity of subject, the interest and the subject of a play being its action. A good tragedy must have but one action, just as a good epic or a good poem [Pg 196] of any sort must have but one subject ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ See Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter VIII, and also Poe's criticism, The American Drama.
(a) Unity of Hero is not Unity of Action. One of the great errors into which the novice is likely to fall, is to believe that because he makes every event which happens happen to the hero, he is observing the rule of unity. Nothing could be farther from the truth—nothing is so detrimental to successful plot construction. ”

“ Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing. ”

“ The facts of art are diverse, but the essence of artistic effect is unity. Monarchy, Anarchy, and Republicanism may contend for the government of nations; but a theatre should be in the power of a cultured despot. There may be division of labour, but there must be no division of mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And whether we gaze at the actors on the stage or at the figures in the metope, whether we study a lyric or listen to a dialogue, we are in communion with the same genius, the same legend. The thing which moves and delights us is a unity. ”

“ The satisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brute diversity becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts itself in its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and intellectual and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is commoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an emotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and romantic affection are full of examples. ”

“ To combine and carry on together various distinct lines of thought, and various individual members of character, so that each shall constantly remember and respect the others, and this through a manifold, diversified, and intricate course of action; to keep all the parts true to the terms and relations of organic unity, each coming in and stopping just where it ought, each doing its share, and no more than its share, in the common plan, so as not to hinder the life or interfere with the rights of the others ”

“ 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. ”

“ So men have said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. ”

“ When the last notes of the solemn chant had died away, and [Pg 37] once more left a silence in the vast church, the multitude still kept together. A common instinct of unity seemed to have come on them, as on a besieged city, or on a ship in a storm.
Not to one, here and there, uncertainly, as death came; but to all! Suddenly, and this year, the one great event was to come, which was to unite them all and to divide them all for ever!
Not that this message and this terror were altogether new to them. ”

“ In this era of good-will and reconciliation, when the old boys in blue and gray are meeting in comradeship on the scenes of their former struggle, why cannot someone write a trustworthy and impartial history of the great drama—the greatest of our national life—which our boys and girls may read and learn the truth? ”

“ For there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of a monarch or a book or a city the self-sufficient ruler of human life and human thought, came unity through the ballot; through freedom of thought—always loyal only to a real unity and in being thus loyal also always tolerant; and through all sorts of like means to individuality. The "universal individual" died, and there arose, as it were, out of his grave the living unity of manifold individuals, each one different, yet each quite essential. ”

“ 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." ”

“ When the inspired poet comes to us with a request to be admitted into our state, we will reply in courteous words—We also are tragedians and your rivals; and the drama which we enact is the best and noblest, being the imitation of the truest and noblest life, with a view to which our state is ordered. And we cannot allow you to pitch your stage in the agora, and make your voices to be heard above ours, or suffer you to address our women and children and the common people on opposite principles to our own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unity of action is, then, of first importance in story.
There is, however, another kind of unity which has not been enough considered,—what may, perhaps, be called artistic unity. Why is it that a play which begins seriously and for most of its course so develops, only to end farcically, or which begins lightly only to become tragic, leaves us dissatisfied? Because the audience finds it difficult to readjust its mood as swiftly as does the author. The Climbers33 and The Girl With the Green Eyes34 of Clyde Fitch are examples in point. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The secret, in the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce community something of his own personality. To inform against, in the energetic slang dialect, is called: "to eat the bit." ”

“ It need not of necessity awaken fanatic chauvinism, but only a spirit of fraternal solidarity among all the men of one nation. Let each individual realize the links binding him to the community, and may his life become richer from his knowledge of the lives that have been and are to be. ”

“ But, then, we are indeed living in a totalitarian world, a world of totality, of spiritual unity and collective responsibility, before which all sovereignties have to abdicate. Unity is the word of the historic hour. The world wants to become one, all the way, into practical reality, down to economic matters. ”

“ But the French Revolution and the cognate romantic revival in the arts unsettled this conservative belief, and made men wonder whether society, after all, did not exist solely for the sake of the individual. Early eighteenth century literature is a polite and polished exaltation of society, and preaches that the majority is always right; early nineteenth century literature is a clamorous paean of individualism, and preaches that the majority is always wrong. Considering the modern social drama as a phase of history, we see at once that it is based upon the struggle between these two beliefs. ”

“ It might be urged against us that reality means barely non-appearance, and that unity is the naked denial of plurality. And in the same way individuality might be taken as the barren absence of discord and of dissipation. Perfection, again, would but deny that we are compelled to go further, or might signify merely the failure of unrest and of pain. ”

“ With respect to the Unity of Place, we may in general observe that it is often very unsatisfactorily observed, even in comedy, by the French poets, as well as by all who follow the same system of rules. The scene is not, it is true, changed, but things which do not usually happen in the same place are made to follow each other. What can be more improbable than that people should confide their secrets to one another in a place where they know their enemies are close at hand? or that plots against a sovereign should be hatched in his own antechamber? ”

“ 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. ”