Welsh Journals

portrait of an actress or an alderman, ask Keats to describe a nightingale's song, Rodin to carve some trifle for the garden of the Tuilleries. In every case you receive more than you asked for-not the ware of a tradesman, but the touch of an unseen hand, the utterance of a voice hitherto unheard. Therefore, if realism (however realistic) be a form of art, it is not the mere portrayal of isolated facts. If it were, how would a picture be better than a photograph, a lyric more moving than a newspaper report ? The simple truth is, that while transcen- dental literature works at two removes from the lowest plane of reality, realistic literature is still one remove therefrom. The diviner art works more inevitably in general truths the essences of emotion are its very drink it speaks as if the daily isolated things were half-forgotten upon the dark earth. The other form of art works in generalities too, that it may more illuminatingly expound the common experiences which confront it. One artist ascends the mountain that he may dwell nearer Heaven the other, that he may more clearly discern his path across the earth- but he does not stand upon the plain so long as the artistic impulse is upon him. These general remarks, in their application to drama, mean that the maker even of a realistic play uses the so-called facts of life merely as raw material. Mr. Galsworthy, as surely as M. Maeterlinck, must select, alter, and combine, so that his work may be an organised artistic whole. His drama will not be a mere reflex of actual events, in which endless inter- ruptions and irrelevancies obscure the lesson which he seeks to inculcate. It will now be clear what is meant when the name realist is given to Shaw, Barker, Galsworthy, and Hankin. There are three great processes of com- position which we may distinguish in the work of any dramatist. The distinction is logical only, and is not a matter of progress in time or visible stratification, for the playwright carries on all three acts of creation simultaneously. These three are to be found in a realist writer quite as certainly as in any other there is no omission of features vital to art. The great and only difference between the transcenden- talist and the realist lies in the relative importance attached by them to each of the processes. First, there is a series of scenes from life, events and conversations which may actually have happened. Secondly, this subject-matter is kneaded and shaped and carved irrelevant things are left out the signifi- cant events are made to grow out of one another in a significant manner people are set in circumstances which throw just the right illumination upon their characters-by these and a score of other devices the main threads of life are laid bare. Thirdly, the artist, as a master of language, adds the charm of directness and wit to his dialogue. This last is by no means superficial polish only. No writer but the merely clever persifleur, like Wilde, garnishes a bald situa- tion with blazing but imported epigrams. For the supremely great author every word is a part of the plot. Examples of this skill are naturally innumerable. Let me take a few instances almost at random. On the first page of Mr. Thomas Hardy's most dramatic novel, we are told that the clergyman jestingly nicknamed an old peasant Sir John.' This tiny joke, like the breath of wind which despatches an avalanche upon its career, is the starting- point of all that tragedy of love and bloodshed which is called Tess of the avUrbervilles. Shakespeare gives an amazingly skilful instance in that scene of The Merchant of Venice where Shylock entraps Antonio. The loan has been proposed the Jew may gain a revenge by the financial cripplement of his enemy, but he seeks his life. His life must be in the bond, but how insert it without arousing fatal suspicions ? The usurer, to defend his usury, quotes the story of Jacob and Laban's flocks. This puts the notion of Hebrews and flesh and usury into Antonio's head. Mark his own words When did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend ? Thus when the terms are mentioned, the shock of surprise, which would have wrecked the whole plot, is not felt. An equally vital case is to be found in The Wild Duck, where Gregers Werle directly causes the death of the little Hedwig by his choice of a metaphor. All these three processes or features, which one may briefly call photography, construction and wit, are to be found as I said, in the English Ibsenists. It only needs to be added that there is an exaggeration of mere photography in most of their work. Whatever their vices, however, they form at the moment our only genuine dramatic school. St. John Hankin produced seven plays The Two Mr. Wetherbys (1902), The Return of the Prodigal (1904), The Charity that began at Home (1905), The Cassilis Engagement (1905), The Last of the de Mullins (1907), and two one-act pieces, The Burglar who failed (1908) and The Constant Lover (1908). I take this writer first because, though his work is chrono- logically more recent than that of the others, it is artistically earlier. Hankin is, indeed, an interesting