And the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we approach to reality. In
the days when tragedy and comedy were cast in fixed, conventional
moulds, the playwright's task was much simpler. It was thoroughly
understood that a tragedy ended with one or more deaths, a comedy with
one or more marriages; so that the question of a strong or a weak ending
did not arise. The end might be strongly or weakly led up to, but, in
itself, it was fore-ordained. Now that these moulds are broken, and both
marriage and death may be said to have lost their prestige as the be-all
and end-all of drama, the playwright's range of choice is unlimited, and
the difficulty of choosing has become infinitely greater. Our comedies
are much more apt to begin than to end with marriage, and death has come
to be regarded as a rather cheap and conventional expedient for cutting
the knots of life.
From the fact that "the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we
approach to reality," it further follows that the higher the form of
drama, the more probable is it that the demands of truth and the
requirements of dramatic effect may be found to clash.
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