Not an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a Shaw, or a Masefield play, where the
influence and ravages of these 'ideas' are certainly perceptible, but
merely a Shakespeare play, one of those works of true poetic genius
which can only be produced by a mind strong enough to resist every
attempt at invasion by the 'idea'-bacillus.
In considering a Shakespeare play the word 'idea' had best be kept out
of the argument altogether; but there are two senses in which it might
be intelligibly used. You might call the dramatic skeleton Shakespeare's
idea of the play. It is the half-mechanical, half-organic factor in the
work of poetic creation--the necessary means by which a poet can
conveniently explicate and express his manifold aesthetic intuitions.
This dramatic skeleton is governed by laws of its own, which were first
and most brilliantly formulated by Aristotle in terms that, in
essentials, hold good for all time. You may investigate this skeleton,
seize, if you can, upon the peculiarity by which it is differentiated
from all other skeletons; you may say, for instance, that _Othello_ is a
tragedy of jealousy, or _Hamlet_ of the inhibition of self-consciousness.
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