The word "development" might be
very aptly used in the photographic sense. A drama ought to bring out
character as the photographer's chemicals "bring out" the forms latent
in the negative. But this is quite a different thing from development in
the sense of growth or radical change. In all modern drama, there is
perhaps no character who "develops," in the ordinary sense of the word,
so startlingly as Ibsen's Nora; and we cannot but feel that the poet has
compressed into a week an evolution which, in fact, would have demanded
many months.
The complaint that a character preserves the same attitude throughout
means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a
mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully
displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating
themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be
produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of
"humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character
should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at all)
capable of classification under this type or that.
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