There is not even the conflict, if so it can
be called, which nominally brings so many hundreds of plays under the
Brunetiere canon--the conflict between an eager lover and a more or less
reluctant maid. Or take, again, Ibsen's _Ghosts_--in what valid sense
can it be said that that tragedy shows us will struggling against
obstacles? Oswald, doubtless, wishes to live, and his mother desires
that he should live; but this mere will for life cannot be the
differentia that makes of _Ghosts_ a drama. If the reluctant descent of
the "downward path to death" constituted drama, then Tolstoy's _Death of
Ivan Ilytch_ would be one of the greatest dramas ever written--which it
certainly is not. Yet again, if we want to see will struggling against
obstacles, the classic to turn to is not _Hamlet_, not _Lear_, but
_Robinson Crusoe_; yet no one, except a pantomime librettist, ever saw a
drama in Defoe's narrative. In a Platonic dialogue, in _Paradise Lost_,
in _John Gilpin_, there is a struggle of will against obstacles; there
is none in _Hannele_, which, nevertheless, is a deeply-moving drama.
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