Interest of Character.

OF the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for consideration: and we are to view it under the three aspects of unity, complexity, and movement. The application of the idea unity to the idea character suggests at once our interest in single personages. This interest 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: from the most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a unity of conception which we call a character. Interpretation of the nature of an hypothesis.Interpretation when scientifically handled must be, we have seen, of the nature of an hypothesis, the value of which depends upon the degree in 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 cases Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising various and even conflicting elements.

Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles governing careful Interpretation. It must be Exhaustive.One of these principles is that it must take into consideration all that is presented of a personage. 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. It must take in indirect evidence;Again: Interpretation must look for indirect evidence of character, such as the impression a 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 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. and the degree to which the character is displayed.As a third principle, it is perhaps too obvious to be worth formulating that Interpretation must allow for the degree to which the character is displayed by the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral of CÆsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public demeanour. Interpretation reacting on the details.It is a less obvious principle that the very details which are to be unified into a conception of character 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.

The second element underlying all dramatic effect was complexity; when complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast. Character-Foils.In its lowest degree this appears in the form of Character-Foils: by the side of some prominent character is placed another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or perhaps moulded by the influence of its principal, just as by the side of a lofty mountain are often to be seen smaller hills of the same formation. Thus beside Portia is placed Nerissa, beside Bassanio Gratiano, beside Shylock Tubal; Richard's villainy stands out by comparison with Buckingham, Hastings, Tyrrel, Catesby, any one of whom would have given blackness enough to an ordinary drama. It is quite possible that minute examination may find differences between such companion figures: but the general effect of the combination is that the lesser serves as foil to throw up the scale on which the other is framed. The more pronounced effects of Character-Contrast depend upon differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree. Character-Contrast.In this form it is clear how Character-Contrast is only an extension of Character-Interpretation: it implies that some single conception explains, that is, gives unity to, the actions of more than one person. A whole chapter has been devoted to bringing out such contrast in the case of Lord and Lady Macbeth: to accept these as types of the practical and inner life, cast in such an age and involved in such an undertaking, furnishes a conception sufficient to make clear and intelligible all that the two say and do in the scenes of the drama. Duplication.Character-Contrast is especially common amongst the minor effects in a Shakespearean drama. In the case of personages demanded by the necessities of the story rather than introduced for their own sake Shakespeare has a tendency to double the number of such personages for the sake of getting effects of contrast. We have two unsuccessful suitors in The Merchant of Venice bringing out, the one the unconscious pride of royal birth, the other the pride of intense self-consciousness; two wicked daughters of Lear, Goneril with no shading in her harshness, Regan who is in reality a degree more calculating in her cruelty than her sister, but conceals it under a charm of manner, 'eyes that comfort and not burn.' iii. i.Of the two princes in Richard III the one has a gravity beyond his years, while York overflows with not ungraceful pertness. Especially interesting are the two murderers in that play. i. iv, from 84.The first is a dull, 'strong-framed' man, without any better nature. The second has had culture, and been accustomed to reflect; his better nature has been vanquished by love of greed, and now asserts itself to prevent his sinning with equanimity. 110.It is the second murderer whose conscience is set in activity by the word 'judgment'; and he discourses on conscience, deeply, 124-157.yet not without humour, as he recognises the power of the expected reward over the oft-vanquished compunctions. 167.He catches, as a thoughtful man, the irony of the duke's cry for wine when they are about to drown him in the butt of malmsey. 165.Again, instead of hurrying to the deed while Clarence is waking he cannot resist the temptation to argue with him, and so, as a man open to argument, 263.he feels the force of Clarence's unexpected suggestion:

Thus he exhibits the weakness of all thinking men in a moment of action, the capacity to see two sides of a question; and, trying at the critical moment to alter his course, 284.he ends by losing the reward of crime without escaping the guilt.

Character-Contrast is carried forward into Character-Grouping when the field is still further enlarged, and a single conception is found to give unity to more than two personages of a drama. A chapter has been devoted to showing how the same antithesis of outer and inner life which made the conception of Macbeth and his wife intelligible would serve, when adapted to the widely different world of Roman political life, to explain the characters of the leading conspirators in Julius CÆsar, of their victim and of his avenger: while, over and above the satisfaction of Interpretation, the Grouping of these four figures, so colossal and so impressive, round a single idea is an interest in itself. Dramatic Colouring. The effect is carried a stage further still when some single phase of human interest tends, in a greater or less degree, to give a common feature to all the personages of a play; the whole dramatic field is coloured by some idea, though of course the interpretative significance of such an idea is weakened in proportion to the area over which it is distributed. The five plays to which our attention is confined do not afford the best examples of Dramatic Colouring. It is a point, however, of common remark 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 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.

There are, then, three different effects that arise when complexity enters into Character-Interest. The complexity is one never separable from the unity which binds it together: in the first effect the diversity is stronger than the unity, and the whole manifests itself as Character-Contrast; in Character-Grouping the contrast of the separate figures is an equal element with the unity which binds them all into a group; in the third case the diversity is lost in the unity, and a uniformity of colouring is seized by the dramatic sense as an effect apart from the individual varieties without which such colouring would not be remarkable.

When to Character-Interpretation, the formation of a single conception out of a multitude of concrete details, the further idea of growth and progress is added, we get the third variety of Character-Interest—Character-Development. In the preceding chapters this has received only negative notice, its absence being a salient feature in the portraiture of Richard. For a positive illustration no better example could be desired than the character of Macbeth. Three features, we have seen, stand out clear in the general conception of Macbeth. There is his eminently practical nature, which is the key to the whole. And the absence in him of the inner life adds two special features: one is his helplessness under suspense, the other is the activity of his imagination with its susceptibility to supernatural terrors. Now, if we fix our attention on these three points they become three threads of development as we trace Macbeth through the stages of his career. His practical power developes as capacity for crime. Macbeth undertook his first crime only after a protracted and terrible struggle; the murder of the grooms was a crime of impulse; the murder of Banquo appears a thing of contrivance, in which Macbeth is a deliberate planner directing the agency of others, iii. ii. 40, &c.while his dark hints to his wife suggest the beginning of a relish for such deeds. This capacity for crime continues to grow, until slaughter becomes an end in itself: