CHAP. XX. Movement Plot. WE XX. INTEREST OF PLOT: DYNAMICS. E now reach the Dynamics of Plot: the important department of dramatic interest which comprehends applied to the effects dependent upon the actual progress of the story, as distinguished from those which imply the selection and comparison of its various parts. This interest of Movement falls under two heads--Motive Form and Motive Force. The first is made by a succession of incidents acting upon our sense of design. But motion implies force: and the second type of interest is in watching the underlying causes or principles which the current of incidents reveals. The first addresses itself to our sense of symmetry, the second to our sense of economy. They will be considered separately. Motive Motive Form is the impression of design left by the succession of incidents in the order in which they actually Simple stand. The succession of incidents may suggest progress to Movement: the Line of a goal, as in the Caskets Story. This is Simple1 Movement: Action a the Line of Action becomes a straight line. We get the straight line. Complicated Move Line of next step by the variation that is made when a curved line is substituted for a straight line: in other words, when the ment: the succession of incidents reaches its goal, but only after a diversion. This in its most prominent form is what is known as Complication and Resolution. A train of events is obstructed and diverted from what appears its natural course, which gives the interest of Complication: after a time the nation is removed and the natural course is restored, Action a curve. which is the Resolution of the action: the Complication, like CHAP. XX. a musical discord, having existed only for the sake of being resolved. No clearer example could be desired than that of Antonio, whose career when we are introduced to it appears to be that of leading the money-market of Venice and extending patronage and protection all around; by the entanglement of the bond this career is checked and Antonio turned into a prisoner and bankrupt; then Portia cuts the knot and Antonio becomes all he has been before. Or again, the affianced intercourse of Portia and Bassanio begins with iii. ii. 173. an exchange of rings; by the cross circumstances connected with Antonio's trial one of them parts with this token, and iv. ii. the result is a comic interruption to the smoothness of lovers' life, until by Portia's confession of the ruse the old footing is v. i. 266. restored. Movement sion-Move Complicated Movement as so stated belongs to the Action Actionside of dramatic effect. It rests upon design and the inter- distinworking of details; its interest lies in obstacles interposed to guished be removed, doing for the sake of undoing, entanglement for from Pasits own sake; in its total effect it ministers to a sense of ment. intellectual satisfaction, like that belonging to a musical fugue, in which every opening suggested has been sufficiently followed up. We get a movement which is at once different, and yet a counterpart, when the sense of design is inseparable from effects of passion, and the movement is, as it were, traced in our emotional nature. In this case a growing strain is put upon our sympathy which is not unlike Complication. But no Resolution follows: the rise is made to end in fall, the progress leads to ruin; in place of the satisfaction that comes from restoring and unloosing is substituted a fresh appeal to our emotional nature, and from agitation we pass only to the calmer emotions of pity and awe. There is thus a Passion-Movement distinct from Action-Movement; and. analogous to the Complication and Resolution of the The Line CHAP. XX. Line of Passion has its various forms. A chapter has been devoted to illustrating one form of Passion-Movement, which of Passion may be called the Regular Arch-if we may found a techa Regular nical term on the happy illustration of Gervinus. The Arch, example was taken from the play of Julius Cæsar, the emotional effect in which was shown to pass from calm interest to greater and greater degree of agitation, until after culminating in the centre it softens down and yields to the different calmness of pity and acquiescence. The movement an Inclined of Richard III, Othello, and many other dramas more rePlane sembles the form of an Inclined Plane, the turn in the emoiv. ii. 46. tion occurring long past the centre of the play. Or again, or a Wave there is the Wave Line of emotional distribution, made by Line. For repeated alternations of strain and relief. This is a form of Passion-Movement that nearly approaches Action-Movement, and readily goes with it in the same play; in The Merchant of Venice the union of the two stories gives such alternate Strain and Relief, and the Episode of the Rings comes as final Relief to the final Strain of the trial. The distinction between Action-Movement and PassionComedy, Movement is of special importance in Shakespeare-Criticism, 'Tragedy,' substitute, inasmuch as it is the real basis of distinction between the in the case two main classes of Shakespearean dramas. Every one of Shake speare, feels that the terms Comedy and Tragedy are inadequate, and indeed absurd, when applied to Shakespeare. The distinction these terms express is one of Tone, and they were quite in place in the Ancient Drama, in which the comic and tragic tones were kept rigidly distinct and were not allowed to mingle in the same play. Applied to a branch of Drama of which the leading characteristic is the complete Mixture of Tones the terms necessarily break down, and the so-called 'Comedies' of The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure contain some of the most tragic effects in The true distinction between the two kinds of Venice the leading interest is in the complication of An- CHAP. XX. tonio's fortunes and its resolution by the device of Portia. In all such cases, however perplexing the entanglement of the complication may have become, the ultimate effect of the whole lies in the resolution of this complication; and this is an intellectual effect of satisfaction. In the plays called Tragedies there is no such return from distraction to recovery: our sympathy having been worked up to the emotion of agitation is relieved only by the emotion of pathos or despair. Thus in these two kinds of dramas the impression which to the spectator overpowers all other impressions, and gives individuality to the particular play, is this sense of intellectual or of emotional unity in the movement: is, in other words, Action-Movement or Passion-Movement. The two ‘ActionDrama,' may be united, as remarked above in the case of The Mer- 'Passionchant of Venice; but one or the other will be predominant Drama.' and will give to the play its unity of impression. The distinction, then, which the terms Comedy and Tragedy fail to mark would be accurately brought out by substituting for them the terms Action-Drama and PassionDrama. Movement. With complexity of action comes complexity of movement. Compound Compound Movement takes in the idea of the relative motion amongst the different actions into which a plot can be analysed. A play of Shakespeare may present a system of wheels within wheels, like a solar system in motion as a whole while the separate members of it have their own orbits to follow. The nature of Compound Movement can be most Its three Modes of simply brought out by describing its three leading Modes of Motion: Motion. In Similar Motion the actions of a system are Similar moving in the same form. The plot of Richard III, for Motion, example, is a general rise and fall of Nemesis made up of elements which are themselves rising and falling Nemeses. Such Similar Motion is only Parallelism looked at from the -374 CHAP. XX. of one action is distributed amongst the rest: the main action of Julius Cæsar is a Nemesis Action, the two subactions are the separate interests of Cæsar and Antony, which put together amount to Nemesis. Contrary Of Contrary Motion the simplest form is Counter-Action : where (as in The Tempest) an intrigue which serves as the original Complicating Action of the play has pitted against it a Resolving Action which undoes it. The difference between Contrary and Similar Motion is well illustrated in this play1. Its scheme involves three systems of Actions: a Main Plot, an Underplot, and a crowd of Mechanical Personages, who faintly reflect the general movement of the play. These three systems move in Similar Motion, all being included in a common complication and resolution. But the separate Actions of which each system is made up move in directions contrary from one another. The Complicating Action of the Main Plot has for Sub-Action an intrigue which is met by a like Sub-Action attached to the Resolving Action: these two Sub-Actions counteract one another. The Resolving Action of the Main Plot has two Sub-Actions, outside the scenic unity, and serving as preparation for the main moveOne of them is Prospero's judgment on Caliban, which prepares for that amount of further complication which is usually the task of a Resolving Action before it proceeds to resolve; the other, the work of mercy done to Ariel, prepares for the resolving side of Prospero's task: thus this pair of Sub-Actions also move in opposition to one another as Judgment and Mercy. Again, of the two Link Actions which constitute the Underplot one, the story of Ferdinand and Miranda, moves in the direction of their ultimate union; the other, the conspiracy of Caliban and the sailors, tends towards their ultimate separation, Caliban awaking in the universal restoration to the deception under which he has ment. |