He
may have been right, so far as The Awkward Age is concerned; the
behaviour of the people in the story is certainly packed with many
meanings, and perhaps it is vivid enough to enact the general
character of their lives and ways, as well as their situation in the
foreground; perhaps the charmed circle of Mrs. Brookenham and her
wonderful crew is given all the effect that is needed. But the
question brings me to a clear limitation of drama on the whole, and
that is why I raise it. Here is a difficulty to which the dramatic
method, in its full severity, is not specially accommodated, one that
is not in the line of its strength. To many of the difficulties of
fiction, as we have seen, it brings precisely the right instrument; it
gives validity, gives direct force to a story, and to do so is its
particular property. For placing and establishing a piece of action
it is paramount. But where it is not only a matter of placing the
action in view, but of relating it to its surroundings, strict drama
is at once at a disadvantage. The seeing eye of the author, which can
sweep broadly and generalize the sense of what it sees, will meet this
difficulty more naturally. Drama reinforcing and intensifying picture
we have already seen again and again; and now the process is reversed.
From the point of view of the reader, the spectator of the show, the
dramatic scene is vivid and compact; but it is narrow, it can have no
great depth, and the colour of the atmosphere can hardly tell within
the space.
Pages:
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208