CHAPTER IV

THE INTERMINGLING OF THE COMIC AND THE TRAGIC

Ir was his violation of the unities which constituted the most flagrant of the sins against art which were imputed to Shakespeare. Those who are familiar with the kind of criticism that for the hundred years and more following the Restoration not simply prevailed in England, but vaunted itself exceedingly, will be the least disposed to deny the importance which was then attached to the doctrine. The difficulties which attended its observance were held up as enhancing its merit. It is clear, from the reasons pointed out in the preceding chapter, that conformity to it not only tempted the dramatist to violate that highest art which consists in adherence to nature, but fettered in many ways his genius. One can hardly conceive the expenditure of time and toil that frequently became necessary to secure this artificial product. Yet, under the influence of the belief in this doctrine, men took pride in their chains. Writers for the stage deliberately went about to tie their own hands, and honestly persuaded themselves that the work so done was of an essentially higher grade than that which was accomplished with the hands at liberty. "Art," said Voltaire, "consists in triumphing over difficulties; and difficulties overcome give in every kind of

production pleasure and glory." The greater the difficulty, therefore, the greater the genius of the poet. This is a species of argument which, if carried out everywhere to its legitimate conclusion, would make the man who paints with his toes essentially superior to him who paints with his hands. Shallow as is the view, Voltaire's faith in it never wavered during the whole of his life.

From the period of the Restoration, therefore, the doctrine of the unities began to be accepted as the orthodox gospel to which all right-thinking persons were expected to conform. During the eighteenth century until towards its close it strengthened its hold. Belief in it received in England as well as elsewhere a mighty impetus from the preaching of Voltaire, its most ardent and effective apostle. The editors of

Shakespeare, until Johnson came, assumed without question the correctness of the doctrine. Either by direct assertion or by implication they held the great dramatist censurable for his disregard of it. Most of the believers in it accepted the creed blindly. They rarely ventured to ask for the reason of the faith they professed. Everything had already been settled, it was assumed and asserted, by the wisdom of the ancients; though this, when subjected to close scrutiny, turns out now to be nothing more than the folly of the moderns. The men of the eighteenth century never seem to have had the idea that dramatic art consists in reproducing with fidelity the life we live or are capable of living; not in the observance of certain rules, which, however germane to the special development of the Greek stage,

had no more binding authority upon the stage of later times than the ceremonial rites of the religion of the Jew upon the religion of the Christian.

It was not, however, disregard of the unities that constituted the only charge against Shakespeare. There were other precious things in which he had not attained to the standard the classicists set up. This failure on his part they imputed in a measure to ignorance, but mainly to lack of taste. Of that particular quality he had not a particle. Criticism of this sort began to show itself towards the close of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth the opinion had assumed to many almost the nature of a selfevident truth. It is impossible to overlook the influence of Voltaire in extending in England itself the spread of this view. It did not owe its origin to him. It had been entertained and expressed in that country before he was born. But he gave it renewed vitality; above all, he gave it general currency. Men like Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Hume did not need to be converted to his views; but they were naturally confirmed more strongly in their own, when they found them sustained by the authority of the great literary autocrat of Europe. In fact so generally taken by professional critics was this estimate of the greatest of English playwrights that at one time it required not only independence, but a good deal of hardihood to run counter to a belief so widely accepted. Here, as in the unities, Shakespeare comes before us not only as the representative of the romantic drama but as its champion. It was its

methods which he exemplified; it was by his exemplification that they triumphed over hostile criticism and were carried finally to victory.

There was one thing which the classicists professed to hold especially dear. It constituted in their eyes an essential distinction between their methods and those of what we now call the romantic drama. It can be designated by the somewhat vague general term of propriety. This could be manifested in several ways. When we come to the most generally discussed of its various applications, we find that propriety required that the bounds of tragedy and of comedy should be definitely determined and never transgressed. Accordingly there should be in the same production no mixture of the pathetic and the humorous. The tragedy was to be all tragic; the comedy was to be all comic. We are able therefore to enter into the feelings with which the adherents of the classical school looked upon the practices in which Shakespeare indulged. His comedies contained painful scenes; his tragedies humorous ones. It was bad enough to violate the unities. But that could be explained, even if it could not be pardoned, by the assumed general ignorance of his age, involving as it did his particular ignorance. But no such palliating view could be taken, when the course adopted by him depended, not on the possession or on the lack of knowledge, but upon the presence or absence in his nature of certain qualities. A man of genius is bound in such matters to set an example to his age; not to follow its ill example. This latter Shakespeare had permitted himself to do. His action was explained

variously. The production by him of these mixed pieces was stated, negatively, to be due to nothing but the utter lack of taste; stated positively, to be due to barbarous taste. But whatever the precise cause, there could be no question as to the character of the result. He had been guilty of a gross violation of decorum.

In

Of the two ways in which propriety can be disregarded the introduction of tragic scenes into comedy or of comic scenes into tragedy - it was perhaps impossible to decide which is abstractly the worse. It was the former, however, that was more common. fact it was so very common that in the eyes of many of the classicists custom had shorn it somewhat of its theoretical native hideousness. Tragi-comedy was indeed one of the established forms of composition during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first Stuarts. Its popularity was so wide-spread that even adherents of the classical school were at times disposed to regard it with feelings hardly akin to disfavor. Some there were who accepted it as a kind of concession to human infirmity, very much on the same ground of hardness of heart which suffered the ancient Israelite to divorce a distasteful wife. No such countenance, however, did this mongrel production, as it was termed, meet with from the believers in art pure and undefiled. The gonfalon they marched under was to be absolutely spotless. It was the business of the comic muse to entertain, to delight, to fill our hearts with joy. Not once should the black shadow of care be permitted. to overhang our spirits. Not under any pretext should