It will be demanded, however, what place there is then for a
temporal factor, if the typical dramatic experience depends upon
the great scene? It cannot be denied that the drama is a work
of art developed in time, like music and poetry. It comes to a
climax and a resolution; it evolves its harmonies like the
symphony, in irrevocable order. We cannot afford to neglect,
in such an aesthetic analysis, what is an undoubted element in
dramatic effect, the so-called inevitable march of events. In
answer to this objection we may hold that the temporal factor
is a corollary of the primary demand for confrontation. It is
necessary that the confrontation or conflict should be vividly
imagined, with all possible associative reinforcements--that
it should be brought up to the turn of the screw, as it were.
For this, then, motivation is absolutely necessary. An attitude
is only clearly "realized" when it is made to seem inevitable.
It takes complete possession of our minds only when it inhibits
all other possibilities. At any given scene, the power of a
part to reproduce itself in us is measured by the convincing
quality given it by motivation, and for this there must be a
full body of associations to draw on, to round out and complete
understanding. The villain of the play is, for instance, less
completely "suggested" to us, because our associations are
supposedly less rich for such characters; as a beggar hypnotized
and made to feel himself a king has meagre mental equipment for
the part. Now, this inner possession can come about only
through the compelling force of a long course of preparation.
In providing such an accumulation of impulses, none was greater
than the younger Dumas--and none had to be greater! To make
his audience accept--that is, identify itself with--the action
of the hero in "Denise," or the mother's decision in "Les Idees
de Mms. Aubray," so subversive of general social feeling, and
thereby to experience fully the great dramatic moment in each
play, there had to go the effect of innumerable small impulses.
And to realize some situations is even beyond the scope of a
play's development. It is an acute remark of Mr. G.K.
Chesterton's, that many plays nowadays turn on problems of
marriage: which subject is one for slow years of adjustment,
patience, adaptation, endeavor; while the drama requires quick
decisions, bouleversements, etc., and would do wisely to
confine itself to fields in which such bouleversements can be
made credible. At any rate, motivation is desirable for the
dramatic confrontation, and time--the working-out--is an
essential condition of motivation. To make the dramatic
conflict ever sharper and deeper, until it either melts into
harmony, or ceases through the destruction of one element, is
the whole duty of the development, and makes it necessary.
That development is temporal, is, dramatically, only a device
for damming the flood that it may break at last with greater
force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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