On the modern
stage a few only of the elements capable of expressing the image
of the poet's conception are employed at once. We have tragedy
without music and dancing; and music and dancing without the highest
impersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both
without religion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed
been usually banished from the stage. Our system of divesting the
actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriated
to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent
and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and
inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where
all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal
mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy,
though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly
an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be
as in KING LEAR, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the
intervention of this principle which determines the balance in
favour of KING LEAR against the OEDIPUS TYRANNUS or the AGAMEMNON,
or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless
the intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the
latter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. KING
LEAR, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the
most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world;
in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected
by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed
in modern Europe.
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