NINTH LECTURE.

(EXTRACT.)

ON THE DRAMATIC UNITIES.

Aristotle. Examination of the three Unities. What is the Unity of Action? Unity of Time. Did the Greeks observe it? Unity of Place connected with it.

THE question concerning the Dramatic Regularity for which the French critics contend, may in a considerable measure be carried back to the so-called Three Unities of Aristotle. We will investigate what is the doctrine of the Greek philosopher on this subject; and how far the Greek tragedians knew and observed these rules.

These famous Three Unities, which have given rise to a whole Iliad of battles among the critics, are Unity of Action, of Time, and of Place.

The validity of the first is unanimously acknowledged; but then its meaning is the point in debate, and, I add, it is in fact no easy matter to come to an understanding on the subject.

Some consider the Unities of Place and Time quite a subordinate matter, while others lay the greatest stress upon them, and maintain that out of the pale of these Unities there is no salvation for the dramatic poet. In France, this zeal is not merely confined to the learned world, it seems to be a universal concernment of the nation. Every Frenchman, who has sucked in his Boileau with his mother's milk, holds himself a born champion of the Dramatic Unities, in the same way as the Kings of England, since Henry VIII., bear the title defensor fidei.

It is pleasant enough that Aristotle has been enlisted, without ceremony, to lend his name to these three Unities, considering that it is only of the Unity of Action that he speaks at any length, while he merely throws out a vague hint about the Unity of Time, and of the Unity of Place says not a syllable.

I do not here find myself in a polemic relation to Aristotle, for I by no means contest the Unity of Action, properly understood. I only vindicate a greater latitude in respect of time and place in many species of the Drama, nay, hold it essential to them. In order, however, that we may be able to view the matter in its proper light, I must premise a few words on the Poetics of Aristotle, those few pages which have given rise to such voluminous commentaries.

It has been clearly proved that this treatise is only a fragment; for there are many important matters it does not even touch upon. Some of the learned have even thought it not to be a fragment of the true original, but of an abridgment which some person composed for his own information. On this point all philological critics are agreed, that the text is very much corrupted, and they have attempted to restore it by conjectural emendations. Of its great obscurity the critics complain either in express terms, or substantiate it in point of fact by rejecting the expositions of their predecessors, while they are alike unable to approve their own to those who come after them.

With Aristotle's "Rhetoric" the case is quite otherwise. It is undoubtedly genuine, complete, and easy to understand. But in what way does he there consider the art of oratory? As a sister of the dialectic art: for as this produces conviction by its syllogisms, so does rhetoric, in a kindred manner, produce persuasion. This is just such a way of considering the matter, as if one should treat of architecture as merely the art of building strongly and conveniently. This indeed is a pre-requisite, but here is not enough to constitute a fine art: what we require of architecture is, that it should combine those indispensable purposes of an edifice with beautiful arrangement, harmonious proportions, and mutual correspondency of impression from the whole. Now when we see how Aristotle has viewed even rhetoric on that side only which is accessible to the understanding, without imagination and feeling, and as subservient to an exterior design; can it surprise us that he should have fathomed even much less of the mystery of Poetry, an art which is absolved from every other aim than its own unconditional one of creating the beautiful by free invention, and investing it in language? I have had the audacity to maintain

this, and have hitherto found no ground for retracting it. Lessing was of a different opinion. But what if Lessing himself, with his acutely analytical criticism, went astray in the very same paths? This kind of criticism is completely victorious, where it exposes the contradictions, in regard of the understanding, in works composed merely with the understanding; but it could scarcely elevate itself to the idea of a work of art created by true genius.

The ancients have done but little towards forming into a distinct science the philosophical theory of the fine arts collectively; though of technical manuals on the several arts individually, that is, treating merely of the instrumental means, they had no lack. But were I to choose for myself a guide in this matter from among the ancient philosophers, it should doubtless be Plato, who apprehended the idea of the beautiful, not by dissection, which never can yield it, but by the intuition of an inspired soul, and in whose works the germs of a genuine Philosophy of Art are everywhere abundantly scattered.

Let us hear what Aristotle says about the Unity of Action. "We affirm that Tragedy is the imitation of a perfect and entire action having a certain magnitude (for there may be a whole without magnitude). Now a whole is what has a beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which is not necessarily subsequent to something else, but which, from its nature, has something after it or arising from it. An end, on the contrary, is that, which from its nature is subsequent to something else, either necessarily or most commonly, but without any thing after it. A middle is that which both follows and is followed by something else. Of course, well-formed fables must not begin just where it may happen, nor end in the same chance-fashion, but must be subject to the above-mentioned forms."

Strictly speaking, it is contradictory to say that a whole, which is supposed to have parts, can be without magnitude. But Aristotle immediately explains his meaning; by magnitude, as a requisition of the beautiful, he means certain dimensions, which are neither so small that we cannot distinguish the parts, nor so large that we cannot take in the whole at one view. This, therefore, is merely an empirical, extrinsic definition of the beautiful, and rests only upon the constitution of our senses

and of our powers of comprehension. His application of it, however, to the dramatic fable, is remarkable. "It must have an extension, but such as can be easily taken in by the memory. The definition of this extent, according to the circumstances of the theatrical exhibition, and the senses of the spectators, does not come within the province of Art. As regards the essence of the matter, the greater the extent, provided always it be perspicuous, the more beautiful it is." This expression will be very favourable to the compositions of Shakspeare and other romantic dramatists, who have taken into a single picture a more comprehensive sphere of life, characters, and events, than are to be found in the simple Greek tragedy, provided it shall appear that they have given it the requisite unity and perspicuity; which we do not scruple to affirm they have.

In another place, Aristotle demands of the epic poet the same unity of action as he does of the dramatist; he repeats his former definitions, and says, the poet must not be like the historian, who relates contemporary events, although they had no bearing at all upon each other. Here the requirement of connexion between the exhibited events as causes and effects, which requirement was already implied in his explanation of the parts of a whole, is stated yet more explicitly. He admits, however, that the epic poet is at liberty to expatiate upon a greater multiplicity of events tending to one main action, because the narrative form enables him to describe many things as proceeding at the same time; whereas, the dramatic poet cannot exhibit a plurality of things taking place simultaneously, but only so much as takes place upon the stage, and the part which the persons of the drama take in one action. But what if the dramatist has since found out a way, by means of a different construction of the stage and a more skilful theatrical perspective, to develope properly and without confusion a fable resembling that of the epos in compass, though more limited in extent? What further objection could be made to this, if the only reason for the veto lay in the supposed impossibility?

This is pretty nearly all that occurs in Aristotle's Poetics on the Unity of Action. A brief examination will make it plainly appear, how far from adequate to the essential demands of poetry are rules coined out of conceptions so merely anatomical.

Its

Unity of Action is required. What is action? Most critics. pass over this, as if it were self-evident. In the higher proper sense, Action is a procedure dependent on the will of man. Unity will consist in the tendency towards a single end; to its completeness belongs all that is intermediate between the first resolve and the execution of the deed.

This conception of Action applies to many tragedies of the ancients, (for instance, Orestes' murder of his mother, Edipus' resolution to discover and punish the murderer of Laius;) but by no means to all, much less to the modern tragedies, at least not if the action be sought for in the principal persons. What comes to pass through them, and takes place with them, has often as little to do with a resolution of the free will, as has the striking of a ship upon a rock in a storm. But, moreover, in the sense of the ancients, we must reckon as part of the action the resolution to bear the consequences of the deed with heroic magnanimity; and the execution of this determination will form part of the completeness of the action. Antigone's pious resolution to perform in person the last duties to her unburied brother is soon effected and without difficulty; but the genuineness of the resolution, which alone stamps it a fit subject for Tragedy, is then proved and then only, when without repentance, without relapsing into weakness, she suffers death for it. And, to give an example from quite a different sphere, is not Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar, as far as concerns the action, constructed upon the same principle? Brutus is the hero of the piece; the accomplishment of his great resolve consists not in the mere assassination of Cæsar, (an act in itself equivocal, the impulses to which might be ambition and jealousy,) but in his approving himself, even to the calm sacrifice of his amiable existence, the pure champion of Roman freedom.

Still further without opposition, no complication of the plot would be possible; and this results mostly from contrariety of purposes and views in the acting persons. If, therefore, we restrict the notion of an action to resolution and deed, then in most cases two or more actions will appear in the tragedy. Now which is the main action? Each person thinks his own the most important, for each is the central point to himself. Creon's resolution to maintain his sovereign authority by inflicting death on the burier of Polynices is equally stedfast with Antigone's