394 arc as true to dramatic probability as are the pranks of Oberon s fairies. In other words, it is in the consistency of the action with the characters, and of the characters with, themselves, that this dramatic probability lies. The dramatist has to represent characters affected by the pro gress of an action in a particular way, and contributing to it in a particular way, because, if consistent with themselves, they must be so affected, and must so act. aracter- Upon the invention and conduct of his characters the tion. dramatist must therefore expend a great proportion of his labour. His treatment of them will, in at least as high a degree as his choice of subject, conception of action, and method of construction, determine the effect which his work vance of produces. And while there are aspects of the dramatic > drama art under which its earlier history already exhibits an un- ilus surpassed degree of perfection, there is none under which its advance is more perceptible than this. Many causes have contributed to this result ; the chief is to be sought in the multiplication of the opportunities for mankind s study of man. The theories of the Indian critics on the sub ject of dramatic character are a scaffolding more elaborate than the edifice it surrounds. Aristotle s remarks on the subject are scanty ; and it may be unhesitatingly asserted that the strength of the dramatic literature from whose examples he abstracted his maxims is not to be sought in the fulness or variety of its characterization. This relative deficiency the outward conditions of the Greek theatre the remoteness of actor from spectator, and the consequent necessity for the use of masks, and for the raising and therefore conventionalizing of the tones of the voice - undoubtedly helped to occasion. Later Greek and Roman comedy, with a persistency furnishing a remarkable illus tration of the force of habit, limited their range of charac ters to an accepted gallery of types. Nor is it easy to ignore the fact that these examples, and the influence of national tendencies of mind and temperament, have inclined the dramatists of the Romance nations to attach less import ance to characterization of a closer and more varied kind than to interest of action and effectiveness of construction. The Italian and the Spanish drama more especially, and the French during a great part of its history, have in general shown a disposition to present their characters, as it were, ready made whether in the case of tragic heroes and heroines, or in that of comic types, often moulded accord ing to a long-lived system of local or national selection. It is in the Germanic drama, and in its master Shakespeare above all, that the individualization of characters has been carried to its furthest point, and that their significance has been allowed to work itself out in closest connection with the progress of the dramatic action to which they belong, quisites But, however the method and scope of characterization
- ha- may vary under the influence of different historical epochs
and different tendencies or tastes of races or nations, the laws of this branch of the dramatic art are everywhere based on the same essential requirements. What interests us in a man or woman in real life, or in the impressions we form of historical personages, is that which seerns to us to individualize them. A dramatic character must therefore, whatever its part in the action, be sufficiently marked in its distinctive features to interest the imagination ; with these its subsequent conduct must be consistent, and to these its participation in the action must correspond. In order that such should be the result, the dramatist must first have distinctly conceived the character, whatever may have suggested it to him. If, for instance, he has taken it, as the phrase is, from history or from contemporary life, he must transform it, just as he must transform the subject of the action into the action itself. His task is not to paint a copy of any particular man, but to conceive a kind of man of which a particular individual may have occurred to him as a suggestive illustration under the operation of particular circumstances. His conception, growing and modifying itself with the progress of that of the action, will determine the totality of the character lie creates. The likeness which the result bears to an actual or histori cal personage may very probably, from secondary points of view, concern the success of his creation ; upon its dramatic effect this likeness can have no influence whatever. In a different sense from that in which Shakespeare used the words, it should be possible to say of every dramatic char acter which it is cought to identify with an actual personage, " This is not the man." The mirror of the drama is not a photographic apparatus. Distinctiveness, as the primary requisite in dramatic .Distinct characterization, is to be demanded in the case of all per- ness - sonages introduced into a dramatic action, but not in all cases in an equal degree. Schiller, in adding to the dramatis persona; of his Fiesco superscriptions of their chief characteristics, labels Sacco as " an ordinary person," and this suffices for Sacco. Between Bassanio s two unsuccess ful rivals in the trial of the caskets there is difference enough for the dramatic purpose of their existence. But with the great masters of characterization a few touches, of which the true actor s art knows how to avail itself, distinguish even their lesser characters from one another ; and every man is in his humour down to the third citizen. Elaboration is necessarily reserved for characters who are the more important contributors to the action, and the fulness of elaboration for its heroes. Many expedients may lend their aid to the higher degrees of distinctiveness. In characters designed to influence the whole of the action it must be marked early, in others in due relation to their con tribution towards the course of the plot. Much is gained by a significant introduction of hero or heroine, so Antigone is dragged in by the watchman, Gloucester enters alone upon the scene, Volpone is discovered in adoration of his golden saint. Nothing marks character more clearly than the use of contrast as of Othello with lago, of Octavio with Max Piccolomini, of Joseph with Charles Surface. Nor is direct antithesis the only effective kind of contrast ; Cassius is a foil to Brutus, and Leonora to her namesake the Princess. But besides impressing the imagination as Self-cor a conception distinct in itself, each character must maintain sistency a consistency between its conduct in the action and the features it has established as its own. This consistency does not imply uniformity ; for, as Aristotle observes, there are characters which, to be represented with uniformity, must be presented as uniformly un-uniform. Of such consistently complex characters the great critic cites no instances, nor indeed are they of frequent occurrence in Greek tragedy ; in the modern drama Hamlet is their unrivalled exemplar; and Weislingen in Goethe s Gotz, and Alceste in the Misanthrope, may be mentioned as other illustrations in dramas widely different from one another. Tt should be added that those dramatic lite ratures which freely admit of a mixture of the serious with the comic element thereby enormously increase the opportunities of varied characterization. The difficulty of the task at the same time enhances the effect resulting from its satisfactory solution ; and if the conception of a character is found to bear a variety of tests resembling that which experience shows life to have at hand for every man, its naturalness, as we term it, becomes in ore obvious to the imagination. Naturalness is only another word for what Aristotle terms propriety ; the artificial rules by which usage has at times sought to define particular species of cha racter are in their origin only a convenience of the theatre, though they have largely helped to conventionalize dramatic characterization. Lastly, a character should be directly Effect; vi
effective with regard to the dramatic action in which it Iiess -