1.3 Dramatic or not
The critic Ferdinand Brunetière said: “The theatre in general, is nothing but the place for the development of the human will, attacking the obstacles opposed to it by destiny, fortune, or circumstances.” And again: “Drama is a representation of the will of man in conflict with the mysterious powers or natural forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, the malevolence of those who surround him.” (Etudes Critiques, vol. vii, pp. 153 and 207) This definition describes the matter of many dramas, but it does not lay down any characteristic common to all drama, and possessed by no other form of fiction.
It seems to be true that conflict is one of the most dramatic elements in life, and that many dramas - perhaps most - do turn upon strife of one sort or another. But it is clearly an error to make conflict indispensable to drama, and especially to insist - as some of Brunetière’s followers do - that the conflict must be between will and will. A stand-up fight between will and will — such fights occur in the “Hippolytus” of Euripides, Racine’s “Andromaque”, Molière’s “Tartufe”, Ibsen’s “Pretenders’, Dumas’s “Françillon”, Sudermann’s “Heimat’, Sir Arthur Pinero’s “Gay Lord Quex”, Mr. Shaw’s “Candida”, or Mr. Galsworthy’s “Strife”. Such stand-up fights are no doubt one of the most intense forms of drama. But it is comparatively rare as the formula of a whole play. The point of some other very dramatic scenes
is not a clash, but an ecstatic concordance of wills, for example in the
death scene of Cleopatra, the Banquet scene in “Macbeth” or the Balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet”.
The essence of human personality is found in the will, and dramatic art shows human personality raised to its highest power. A simple psychological observation would be that human nature loves a fight, whether it be with clubs or with swords, with tongues or with brains. One of the earliest forms of mediaeval drama was the “estrif” or “flyting”- the scolding match between husband and wife, or between two rustic gossips. Certainly there is nothing more gripping in drama than a piece of “cut-and-thrust” dialogue after the fashion of the ancient “stichomythia. But a scene is not less dramatic merely because it has no room for a clash of warring wills.
Though far from being universally valid, the “No obstacle, no drama” theory has a certain practical usefulness, and is worth mentioning. Many a play would have remained unwritten if the author had asked himself, “Is there a sufficient obstacle between my two lovers?” or, in more general terms, “between my characters and the realization of their will?” There is nothing more futile than a play in which we feel that there is no real obstacle to the inevitable happy ending, and that the curtain might just as well fall in the middle of the first act as at the end of the third. The author might often do well ask himself whether he could not strengthen his obstacle, and so accentuate the struggle which forms the matter of his play.
Conflict may not be essential to drama, but when you set out to portray a struggle, you may as well make it as real and intense as possible. In William Vaughn Moody’s drama, “The Great Divide”, an inadequate obstacle portrayed causes the play to be not strong enough and thus it turned out to be less lasting. If there would have been a real disharmony of character to overcome, in addition to the sordid misadventure of a violent drunken husband, which is the sole barrier between them, the play would have been much stronger.