It is a little
surprising to find Sarcey, so recently as 1889, laying it down that "a
character is a master faculty or passion, which absorbs all the rest....
To study and paint a character is, therefore, by placing a man in a
certain number of situations, to show how this principal motive force in
his nature annihilates or directs all those which, if he had been
another man, would probably have come into action." This dogma of the
"ruling passion" belongs rather to the eighteenth century than to the
close of the nineteenth.
* * * * *
We come now to the second of the questions above propounded, which I
will state more definitely in this form: Is "psychology" simply a more
pedantic term for "character-drawing"? Or can we establish a distinction
between the two ideas? I do not think that, as a matter of fact, any
difference is generally and clearly recognized; but I suggest that it is
possible to draw a distinction which might, if accepted, prove
serviceable both to critics and to playwrights.
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