His failure to
point forward is no doubt partly due to his having nothing very
satisfactory to point forward to. But it is only in retrospect that this
becomes apparent. What we feel while the act is in progress is simply
the lack of any finger-post to afford us an inkling of the end towards
which we are proceeding. Through scene after scene we appear to be
making no progress, but going round and round in a depressing circle.
The tension, in a word, is fatally relaxed. It may perhaps be suggested
as a maxim that when an author finds a difficulty in placing the
requisite finger-posts, as he nears the end of his play, he will do well
to suspect that the end he has in view is defective, and to try if he
cannot amend it.
In the ancient, and in the modern romantic, drama, oracles, portents,
prophecies, horoscopes and such-like intromissions of the supernatural
afforded a very convenient aid to the placing of the requisite
finger-posts--"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been
said that _Macbeth_ approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's
tragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblance
clearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinny
fingers into the fated future.
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