Shakespeare As a Dramatic Artist

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1888. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... XVI. Interest Of Plot. Ch. XVI. now come to the third great division of Dramatic, --7 V V Criticism--Plot, or the purely intellectual side of Idea of Plot as the action. Action itself has been treated above as the mutual application connection and interweaving of all the details in a work of of design to . human life. art so as to unite in an impression of unity. But we nave found it impossible to discuss Character and Passion entirely apart from such action and interworking: the details of human interest become dramatic by being permeated with action-force. When however this mutual relation of all the parts is looked at by itself, as an abstract interest of design, the human life being no more than the material to which this design is applied, then we get the interest of Plot. So defined, I hope Plot is sufficiently removed from the vulgar conception of it as sensational mystery, which has done so much to lower this element of dramatic effect in the eyes of literary students. If Plot be understood as the extension of design to the sphere of human life, threads of experience being woven into a symmetrical pattern as truly as varicoloured threads of wool are woven into a piece of woolwork, then the conception of it will come out in its true dignity. What else is such reduction to order than the meeting-point of science and art? Science is engaged in tracing rhythmic movements in the beautiful confusion of the heavenly bodies, or reducing the bewildering variety of external nature to regular species and nice gradations of life. Similarly, art continues the work of creation in calling ideal order out of the chaos of things as they are. And so the Ch. XVI. tangle of life, with its jumble of conflicting aspirations, its crossing and twisting of contrary motives, it...