THE Essence of the Drama is-as the name implies-action, the presentment of the image of events themselves; action, not narrative, which is essentially undramatic, unless when made skilfully subservient to the essential quality; the action of mind in conflict with itself; of mind urging and influencing mind; of mind struggling with the power of circumstance-with the power of Fate, according to the favourite phrase of certain critics-a questionable term, that may be avoided with advantage to this subject, and no great detriment to any other. Every finished Drama, therefore, involves an action-a struggle regarding interests more or less dignified-waged with every form and degree of talent and determination, and finally resulting in truce, triumph, or defeat; in every case, the unity of the principle by which our sympathy is engaged, is clear, whether we are spectators of Tragedy or of Comedy, we look earnestly into a glass that reflects the toils and the resources of our nature; in the Shaksperian Drama the unity receives its highest assertion by a combination of elements that, co-existent in nature, are not violently divorced in nature's perfect reflex.

A closer analysis of the characteristics of the chief forms of the Drama, will be an appropriate preliminary to an exposition of the enhancement of effect derived from this combination.

The Drama may be classified by the feelings it excites, into Tragedy and Comedy-severally attended by their anti-types of Melodrama and Farce. Of Farce or Vaudeville, of which the "being's end and aim" is most obviously the excitation of laughter-we will first speak, not only that we may first dismiss it, but because its dramatic features have a coarse breadth that favours demonstration.

Every instance of the Laughable will be found to comprise-objectively a blunder of false apprehension or practical awkwardness; subjectively, a sudden recognition of the error, and a degree of pleasure in the discovery, which has various sources; arising partly from the gratification of mere excitement, the simple surprise; partly from the general association of pleasure with the sense of detecting a fallacy; and partly from admiration of the ingenuity of the wag who constructed it-who set the trap-or of our own superiority to others (or even as Hobbes said, to ourselves at some former time) who are misled and mystified. A certain degree of triviality is essential to the ludicrousness of an error; if it be one of those that involve danger and mischief, it is clearly-no joke, though it may pass for such with the percipient who, from defective information or callous sympathies, laughs at the serious, as an ill-constituted mind admires the sordid and the vile.

VOL. I.

F

The errors, therefore, which generate the action-the ludicrous struggle of Farce, derive from the fund of small defects, peccadillos, and perversities; they are the embarrassments encountered from paltry but provoking annoyances-flies buzzing rouni Hercules in the dog-days-from the tyranny of crotchets, the restricted habits of mind, the passions and the prejudices that man contracts in a limited range of action and ideas, and that hamper and gall him as soon as he extends his sphere, or as soon as he is forced to repel the invasion of intermeddling circumstance; thus, he is exhibited, kept in lively excitement, by the ever-urgent necessity to fortify his weak side against assailants that have him ever at advantage, to repair the damages and disasters that he is ever pulling about his ears by his ill-disciplined habits and appetites.

There would be some danger that this exhibition of the possessor of the God-like faculty of reason, or some passable rudiment of it, beset by little perplexities, might be fatiguing, with whatever diversity and ingenuity set forth, that its very minuteness, however curious and surprising, would soon weary; but against this imminent danger the Farce is secured by the providential resource of a love adventure

"There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,

And keeps watch for the life of poor Jack.”

Of this it is the happy peculiarity, to interest all the world; interest at least, if not importance, is at once conferred by it on the most microscopical impediment to its gay course; it is the very oxygen of the world of Vaudeville, the true supporter of farcical combustion, yielding magic warmth and illumination to the entire microcosm. Implicated with this, petty embarrassmenis at once become objects of attention, a lively contrast is produced by the proofs of their influence, notwithstanding their paliriness, and so the action goes sparkling on, now in the light of the flirtation, and now in the shade of the contretemps, to satisfactory conclusion of all that is gay; and yet, lively and brilliant as it is, such is the relation of man to the amusing sex, that it may, without serious damage to its liveliness and brilliancy, be retained with ease at that distance from the serious that is indispensable for the keeping of the Farcical.

As the Ludicrous is the essence of Farce, the Witty is the proper soul and characteristic of Comedy, of finer nature and higher capabilities; we laugh aloud and outright at Farce, and the loudness is the appropriate measure of the Ludicrousness; not so with Wit; the appreciation of this engages delicate faculties, of which the exercise most naturally disposes to tranquillity of demeanour, can only be disturbed by convulsions that are most inimical to the intent, though cheerful-the unconstrained yet steadfast attention it demands. Wit differs from Farce in being far more intimately and essentially dependant on intelligence; we speak of a laughable accident, but never of a witty one; if the feeling of wit is produced, we do not ascribe the quality to the circumstance, the effect of blind chance; but as in the case of a situation in Comedy, we cast about for a contriver to whom to assign the epithet of witty. Suddenness, momentariness, absolute conclusiveness, characterize the ludicrous; the merriment that "sets the table in a roar" breaks forth in flashes;" it may be successive, but never con

tinuous; it is not a strain, as of music, but a series of explosions, as of a feu de joie.

What then is Wit? Wit objectively, in its most frequent, though by no means exclusive, objective form of verbal expression, is the delicate and terse exhibition of the agreement of things apparently different, or the difference of the apparently agreeing; things of a certain degree of elevated interest, yet not necessarily of so much that the chief pleasure of the excitement may not sometimes be due as much to admiration of the fineness of the intellectual instrument, as appreciation of the value of its immediate exercise. The sense of ease, celerity and spontaneousness, constitutes the perfection of this exercise, and thus the exhibition and resolution of fine discrepancies, which strike us as to be denominated witty, are chiefly those which are prompted and appreciated, less by the mind's cold and studious judgment, than by its intuitive and ready sympathies.

True Comedy, therefore, presents to us the graceful play of refined intellect, the false appreciation, and the correction of the false appreciation of qualities of which the deceptiveness is more elusive. The embarrassments which pass before us are such as derive from flaws of highly cultivated human nature, from the very excess of refinement and cultivation, and the nice aberrations of idiosyncrasy, not so enormous as to be denominated absurdities, nor so essentially and virulently pernicious as to strike as capital and unpardonable vice.

If the representation of the Ludicrous gratifies us by suggesting a triumphing sense of our superiority to a gross blunder, with some mixture of coarse contempt for the ill-starred victim of it, the Witty enchants by the delightful excitement of the most delicate of our faculties of apprehension, the conscious facility of unravelling, through all their intricacies, the most plausible fallacies, of recognizing by the faintest glimpse, the finest indications, the tendencies and mischievousness of the most insidious habits of mind.

Yet every subject of Comedy, it will easily be seen, has a natural proclivity to the farcical; by a touch of exaggeration, by the introduction of an undignified element, the characteristic incongruity of the Comedy, the tine scruple or delicate inaptitude, contracts a colour of absurdity, and is resolved into the farcical: but it is only the most accomplished artist who can safely venture on such combinations. Wit must, indeed, be sterling, that shines with only enhanced lustre through the distracting medium of first-rate and unquestionable Fun; no wit but the most seaworthy can possibly live through a storm of laughter. Who but Shakspere could have preserved the spirituality of Comedy in juxta position with the very fattest belly and the reddest. nose that ever figured in fiction? Who but Aristophanes could have hoped to gain attention to an exhibition of the demoralising influ ences of sophistical education, after exhibiting his type of the sophistical character suspended among the clouds in a basket? A foreigner who should hear for the first time of the bulk of Falstaff, and the nose of Bardolph, might, in truth, very excusably infer, that two of Shakspere's most perfect comic creations owed their popularity solely to the vulgarest resources of stage buffoonery.

Love-its compounds and derivatives-although for obvious rea

sons less indispensable for the salvation of Comedy than of Farce, is still, for reasons equally obvious, the jewel and the rose of comic themes. It is "the last infirmity of noble minds" that brings them inevitably within the range of Comedy, and thus renders available for its contrasts and piquancies, acquirements and qualities that otherwise must have remained incurably heroic.

It is true that Aristophanes, as in the play just cited, sustains a high tone of Comedy, entirely apart from a feminine interest; but the circumstances of the time, admitting the limitless introduction of politics on the stage, afforded him an interest that went far to supply the defect to an Athenian audience; who, to do them justice, certainly seem to have cared a great deal less for their wives than for public occupations. Still the defect is real, and I suspect may partly account for the fact, that "The Clouds," with all its unrivalled wit, and justly esteemed as it was by its author as one of his very best productions, failed to obtain the prize.

If our analysis is so far satisfactory, we may venture, under guidance of the foregoing analogies, to approach the consideration of the essential qualities of the tragic.

A Tragic event-I speak solely with reference to poetic Tragedy— presents the collision of man for life or death with the gross power of circumstance; struggling in the death-grapple with evil, whether plotted or accidental. Tragic embarrassments are, in their nature, most grave and affecting, and arise, like all the sternest difficulties of actual life, from the incongruity of the character of man with his position-the insufficiency of his powers to cope with the temptations or oppressions that encounter him by the course of events, and the characters of the individual minds with which he is brought into relation. When such collisions are displayed with energetic truth-and this wanting, Poetry is none-we necessarily identify ourselves to a considerable extent with the struggling hero, as we recognise, working in him, the very feelings we have ourselves experienced in analogous straits of passion and perplexity. An involuntary and half-unconscious comparison takes place of our own qualities and tendencies with those we contemplate (just as in real life we hear of a dreadful incident, and involuntarily review our own exposure to similar ill), and we are touched with compassion or with awe--with the tenderness that even the most brutal nature cannot help feeling for affliction when entirely abstracted from personal relations, or with the severer sentiment produced by witnessing disaster, to which, as obnoxious to humanity, we as men are exposed, or to as lamentable-the types of the tremendous and irresistible energy of Circumstance, overwhelming Power-Intellect-even Virtue-far superior to aught we ourselves can claim with confidence.

For Awe is the true purifying sentiment which is generated by the contemplation of high Tragedy, and Aristotle has probably been belied by his translators when made to predicate the same of Terror-terror which is an experience purely disorderly and painful-the indispensable title of feelings associated with special and personal apprehension of imminent evil, and thus alien in its nature from the imaginative enjoyments which determine at once on the occupation of the mind by distinct interest of either painful or pleasing anticipation.

For such exhibitions to be gratifying to any, except the devotees of extravagant and unwholesome excitement, it is requisite that a certain degree of remoteness-which however must be of a nature to enhance its impressive power-should be given to the scene by the embellishment of poetic diction, and those adornments of artificial construction that elevate it to an ideal world; and this necessity may be one reason why Kings and Queens are so frequently the heroes of Tragedy-though other causes of interest in the regal, both direct and indirect, are obvious. With this precaution, the mind is not only charmed with the accessary refinements of poetry and scene, but it follows willingly the course of complicated disaster with the pleasure -surely not such a riddle-that ever accompanies the union of lively excitement and generous emotion.

It is in the power of precluding the violent determination of the excitement of carrying the serious interest to its highest intensity without breaking into the purely painful-of displaying the most vivid forms of the affecting and impressive, yet ever soaring clear above the shocking and the revolting, that the art of the Tragedian is most admirably displayed.

But the very delicacy of this distinction necessarily impairs the influence of elaborate Tragedy on minds of coarse sympathies or uncultivated associations. When from defect of sensitiveness to beauty the relieving embellishments which I have described are unappreciated, the Tragedy is at once stripped of its ideality, and degraded to mere disgusting narrative of villany and blood;-such can hardly but be the result of the most brilliant attempt to transfer into another tongue, or form the sublimities of the Orestiad or the Edipæan Trilogy ;such was actually the fate of the most ethereal Tragedy of Shakspere in the uncongenial mind of Voltaire.

On the other hand, an audience, of which the majority would experience a degree of pleasureable excitement in witnessing a veritable execution, finds ideal embellishment an impertinence and a burden, and demands entertainment with the distress and desolation of the domestic drama, that to the refined would be hideous and heartrending.

For it is impossible that in such a tumult of the feelings, the play of the fine machine which a truly sensitive and sympathetic mind constitutes, should proceed harmoniously; that, as in instances where the mean is better preserved between the coolness of indifferent reflection and the heat of personal passion, the mind should be free to follow as instinctively the biases of right and wrong, with corresponding biases of favour and hope, of disapprobation and approval. In pieces of this description, the author fills the part rather of an advocate, an essentially subsidiary and suspicious function, than of the dignified and priest-like office of Tragic Poet; his aim being to move, to stimulate at any risk, the intensest sympathy, he has unscrupulous recourse to the most fallacious artifices, trusting to the force of momentary excitement to keep in abeyance considerations that would interfere with this result; it will thus be found that in such pieces there is usually some notorious flaw of morality—at least of the more refined.

Such compositions are, in the serious drama, the true correlatives of Farce in the comic, and must be assigned a rank of analogous