Dryden’s “An Essay of
Dramatic Poesy” is a major critical document and significant landmark in the
history of English Literary criticism. It has been presented through dialogue
among four persons – Crites standing for the ancient drama, Eugenius for the
modern drama, Lisideius for the French drama and Neander for the English drama.
Like Crites and Eugenius, Lisidieus holds that the classical rules for the
imitation of nature are indeed the fundamentals of correct dramatic creation.
He finds faults with the contemporary English drama that the perfect
realization of the rules is not to be found in the English drama, but in the
French.
The first fault with English drama in the eye of Lisidius is the tragi-comedy.
He says that according to Aristotle, the end of tragedy is “to beget
admiration, compassion, or concernment”. But mirth and compassion are opposite
to each other. And these opposite things are mingled in the English tragic-comedy.
Lisideius treats it as a folly which spoils the very purpose of tragedy. He
says, “There is no theatre in the world has anything as absurd as the English tragic-comedy.”
Moreover, he compares tragic-comedy
with ‘Bedlam’. Because, we find “here a course of mirth, there another of
sadness and passion, and a third of honour and a duel: thus in two hours and a
half, we run through all the fits of Bedlam”.
To refute Lisideius’s view
and defend the English tragic-comedy, we can agree with Neander’s view.
First, he disagrees with Lisideius’s
view that after a scene of great passion and concernment one can not speedily
recollect oneself and pass on to another scene of mirth and humour with relish.
According to him, the eye can pass in a second from an unpleasant object to a
pleasant one: similarly the soul can also pass from the one to the another in a
trice, for the soul is not slower than the senses.
Second, the contraries when placed
together set off each other.
Third, a scene of mirth introduced
in a tragedy refreshes and provides relief. Neander as well as Dryden himself
opines, “A scene of mirth mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which
our music has betwixt the acts.”
Fourth, compassion and mirth do not
destroy each other; they are found in nature also. Therefore, tragic-comedy
best represents nature.
Fifth, the English “have invented,
increased and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than was
ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragic-comedy.”
Another charge against the
English drama is that there is no just representation
of nature, but a drawing of her in miniature. For example, Shakespeare
cramps the business of thirty years into two to three hours. This instead of
making a play delightful makes it ridiculous.
Lisideius finds another
fault with the English drama about the multiplicity
of plot. He says that the English dramatists “multiply adventures; which,
not being produced from one another, constitute many actions in the drama and
consequently make it many plays.” As a result, there is not enough time to
represent one passion well and fully, because of its being hurried from one to
another.
Neander admits that the
English dramas, “besides the main design have underplots or by concernments, of
less considerable persons and intrigues.” But they are carried forward along
with the main action so skillfully that it is wrong to suppose that such sub
plots hinder the main action the unity of action. Rather they form one organic
whole. Thus the variety and copiousness of the English creates “a greater
pleasure to the audience.”
Lisideius is also against
the English drama’s representation of “duels, battles and the like of
bloodshed, violence, tumult which should be off the stage by maintaining a
skillful ‘narration’ technique.
Neander also agrees with Lisideius
that death should not perform on the stage. The great Ben Johnson himself has
avoided representing death in his tragedies, ‘Sejanus’ and ‘Catilline’.
Lisideius mentions some
other inferiorities of the English to the French. Unnatural, unjustified and
sudden conversions or changes of character are frequent in English plays as in
“The Scornful Lady”. The English are not so skillful in that the exit of a
character in one scene should prepare as for his entrance in the next. The
English like the French, also use rhyme, but generally their rhymed plays are
badly written.
Finally we can say that the
faults of English drama as found by Lisideius actually exposes the novelty,
variety and copiousness of the English. They have been able to come out from
the restrictions of rules and narrowness of imagination, but the French have
not. If we regard “novelty is better than repetition”, as a ground of
criticism, we must say that the English are the best inventors or innovators
while the French are the best imitators or repeaters.
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