CH. XVI. monising with the circumscribed area and duration of a magician's power. In the case of The Tempest, as is usual with classical plays, the observation of these unities carries with it Unity Devices, such as the presentation of Prospero's story, and other important incidents anterior to the opening of the play, by means of narrative, or narrative dialogue. Constructive Unity. But the interest of Mechanical Construction which stands out from all others is where the dramatist suggests to our sense of analysis a grasp of the unity which binds together his work into a single whole. That a play should impress itself upon our minds as a unity is only another way of saying that it is a work of art: it is a different thing when this impression of unity seems to be analysable, and can be, Dramatic wholly or partially, formulated in words. The term Dramatic Colouring. Colouring may be used where some unity of impression compare iv. iii. 26, and iv. ii. Į-22. extends to so large a proportion of the whole mass of matter in a play as to give it a distinctive and recognisable individuality. It has been argued above that The Tempest is thus coloured with enchantment; and the passion of Jealousy has a similar prominence in Othello. It has been often remarked how the play of Macbeth is coloured by the superstition and violence of the Dark Ages. The world of this drama seems given over to the powers of darkness who can read, if not mould, destiny; witchcraft appears as an instrument of crime and ghostly agency of punishment. We have rebellion without any suggestion of cause to ennoble it, terminated by executions without the pomp of justice; we have a long reign of terror in which massacre is a measure of daily administration and murder is a profession. With all this there is a total absence of relief in any picture of settled life there is no rallying-point for order and purity. The very agent of retribution gets the impulse to his task in a reaction from a shock of bereavement that has come down upon him as a natural punishment for an act of indecisive folly. Such Dramatic Colouring is, however, a thing of general CH. XVI. impression; there is a constructive unity going beyond this Central in the Central Idea, which will bear the test of the fullest Ideas. analysis as to its connection with the whole matter of a drama, characterisation, passion, and plot being all duly related to it. I am chiefly concerned to maintain that the theory of Central Ideas is a matter which admits of accurate examination, and to urge that the term should not be lightly used. A Central Idea, to be worthy of the name, should be shown to embrace all the details of the play, it must be sufficiently distinctive to exclude other plays, while the distribution of the separate parts of the play should appear to agree with their direct or indirect bearing on this central and fundamental notion. I have in previous chapters suggested, with detailed justification, such Central Ideas for The Tempest and for Love's Labour's Lost. It is obvious that these last two topics, Dramatic Colouring and Central Ideas, are closely connected with one another. Their mutual relation is well illustrated by the fact, noted above, that the Central Idea claimed for Love's Labour's Lost -namely, the conflict of humour with the conventionalis also found to colour large parts of As You Like It, in the central scenes of which the traditional conventionality of Pastoral Life is being played upon by three different types of humour in succession. Mechanical Construction Reduction of Difficulties: especially, Rationalisation Constructive Economy: utilisation of mechanical Constructive Processes: Dramatic Background, Dra- Constructive Conventionalities: especially, the Scenic Constructive Unity: Dramatic Colouring, Central CH. XVII. XVII. INTEREST OF CHARACTER. F the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for consideration: and we are to view it OF Unity ap under the three aspects of unity, complexity, and movement. Character tation. terest becomes more defined when we take into account the medium through which the personages are presented to us: characters in Drama are not brought out by abstract discussion or description, but are presented to us concretely, self-pourtrayed by their own actions without the assistance of comments from the author. Accordingly, the leading interest of character is Interpretation, the mental process of turning from the concrete to the abstract: out of the most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a unity of conception Interpre- which we call a character. Interpretation when scientation of tifically handled must be, we have seen, of the nature of an of an hypo- hypothesis, the value of which depends upon the degree in the nature thesis. which it explains whatever details have any bearing upon the character. Such an hypothesis may be a simple idea and we have seen at length how the whole portraiture of Richard precipitates into the notion of Ideal Villainy, ideal on the subjective side in an artist who follows crime for its own sake, and on the objective side in a success that works by fascination. But the student must beware of the temptation to grasp at epigrammatic labels as sufficient solutions of character. In the great majority of CH. XVII. cases Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising various and even conflicting elements; and a practical illustration of this principle has been given above in an elaborate discussion of the difficult character of Jaques in As You Like It. tation. Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles govern- Canons of ing careful Interpretation. One of these principles is that it Interpremust take into consideration all that is presented of a per- It must be exhaustive. sonage. It is unscientific on the face of it to say (as is repeatedly said) that Shakespeare is 'inconsistent' in ascribing deep musical sympathies to so thin a character as Lorenzo. Such allegation of inconsistency means that the process of Interpretation is unfinished; it can be paralleled only by the astronomer who should complain of eclipses as 'inconsistent' with his view of the moon's movements. In the particular case we found no difficulty in harmonising the apparent conflict: the details of Lorenzo's portraiture fit in well with the not uncommon type of nature that is so deeply touched by art sensibilities as to have a languid interest in life outside art. Again: Interpretation must look for indirect evidence of character, such as the impression a It must take personage seems to have made on other personages in the story, or the effect of action outside the field of view. It is impatient induction to pronounce Bassanio unworthy of Portia merely from comparison of the parts played by the two in the drama itself. It happens from the nature of the story that the incidents actually represented in the drama are such as always display Bassanio in an exceptional and dependent position; but we have an opportunity of getting to the other side of our hero's character by observing the attitude held to him by others in the play, an attitude founded not on the incidents of the drama alone, but upon the sum total of his life and behaviour in the Venetian world. This gives a very different impression; and when we in indirect evidence; which the 332 INTEREST OF CHARACTER. CH. XVII. take into consideration the force with which his personality sways all who approach him, from the strong Antonio and the intellectual Lorenzo to giddy Gratiano and the rough common sense of Launcelot, then the character comes out in its proper scale. As a third principle, it is perhaps too and the de- obvious to be worth formulating that Interpretation must gree to allow for the degree to which the character is displayed by character is the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral of displayed. Cæsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public Interpre demeanour. It is a less obvious principle that the very tation re- details which are to be unified into a conception of chaacting on the details. racter may have a different complexion given to them when they are looked at in the light of the whole. It has been noticed how Richard seems to manifest in some scenes a slovenliness of intrigue that might be a stumbling-block to the general impression of his character. But when in our view of him as a whole we see what a large part is played by the invincibility that is stamped on his very demeanour, it becomes clear how this slovenliness can be interpreted by the analyst, and represented by the actor, not as a defect of power, but as a trick of bearing which measures his own sense of his irresistibility. Principles like these flow naturally from the fundamental idea of character and its unity. Their practical use however will be mainly that of tests for suggested interpretations: to the actual reading of character in Drama, as in real life, the safest guide is sympathetic insight. ア Complexity The second element underlying all dramatic effect was applied to Character, Complexity; when complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast. In its lowest degree this appears in Character the form of Character-Foils: by the side of some prominent Foils. character is placed another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or perhaps moulded by the influence of |