The Persistence and Integrity of Plots

GOETHE told Schiller that Gozzi the Venetian had said that only thirty-six dramatic situations are possible. Schiller declared that he could think of but fourteen, and those of us who are most conversant with dramatic literature will find on curious consideration that even fourteen are difficult to compass. The preciousness, then, of these dramatic situations, or essential plots, is proportioned to their fewness; for these plots may be supposed to cover the whole of life, and to serve as groundplans for the human imagination.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible, of course, to be original. Originality consists in perceiving the permanent behind the ephemeral, the old behind the new, in tracing the ever-living spring of human motive from its latest modern faucet deep down and back to its hidden source in consciousness and will. These immemorial situations or plots or ground-plans, therefore, belong to the imagination proper, while the superstructure and ornamentation belong rather to the fancy. Some minds and some peoples are remarkably fertile in fancy, and noticeably simple in plot; while others again are more complex in plot, and far less expressive and exuberant in fancy. The Arabian Nights, for instance,—not the many-volumed and laborious anatomy of good Sir Richard, but the delight of our childhood, that black-clothed, eminently respectable octavo which, barring its title, was the very twin of Porteus’s Sermons, — The Arabian Nights, with all its fretwork of fancy, with such a richness and ingenuity of detail that the sense fairly aches in the tracing of it, has no more than three or four simple plots. While the Merchant of Venice, in its degree Shakespeare’s most varied play, has three distinct plots marvelously interwoven: the friendship-plot, Antonio and Bassanio; the love-plot, Bassanio and Portia; and the thwarted-vengeance plot, Portia and Shylock.

The friendship-plot, with the Damon and Pythias story as its most famous example,—the plot in which one friend sacrifices himself in some sort for the other, or does him some favor or service out of which all complications spring,— commends itself to all.

It is a friendship-plot that lies back of the noble story of Ruth and Naomi, in which the younger woman follows the fortunes of her mother-in-law with loving devotion. Probably the friendship-plot is the oldest of which we have any record in tale or history, and it antedates undoubtedly in time and interest the romantic love-plot, which comes nearer to being a development within historic times. Romantic love, as we now call it, was neither unknown nor unfelt in very early days, but it was used and regarded with such a difference as concerns life in general, that comparisons are difficult. Jacob and Rachel is a love-story with a genuine love-plot; and Euripides forestalls his own later and harsher judgment of women in the noble story of Alcestis and her wifely sacrifice. Psychologically, perhaps, the love-plot may be reckoned as the simplest, since it concerns the Eternal Two, always in a kind of Garden of which, for the time being, and to all intents and purposes, they are the sole occupants and lords. This primitive and simple love-plot has become in our day the most varied in superstructure and ornamentation of all plots, and universal in its interest and appeal ‘All men love a lover’ now, but they did not always so, for time was when love was not conceived of as it is now, when it was looked upon as rather more a part of man’s weakness than of his strength.

Then there is the triangular loveplot, dear to ‘our sweet enemy France,’ as Sidney calls her, underlying so much of her delightful literature; an outcome, in some sort, of feudal times and customs and nice questions of lese majeste, a remainder and reminder of chivalry, and as lasting as Gothic arch or stained-glass window saint, present, present, and evermore present, from the Lais of Marie de France, down to the last fine novel of Henry Bordeaux, La Croisee des Chemins. Because of this triangular plot, perhaps, we are a little prone to use France as a reflector for our Anglo-Saxon virtue; but on its social side, the plot is indeed a survival of early days, when a woman had but little if any choice in the disposal of her hand, and when her heart as an integral part of life was but little thought of, even when thus obliquely recognized though not lawfully represented. This great triangular plot or situation underlies the story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Launcelot, and has been nobly treated in English verse.

From homogeneity to heterogeneity, from the mass to the individual, and then consciously, through love and service, back again from the individual to the mass, — this would seem to be the swing of life’s pendulum. And as showing the emergence of the individual, the readjustment of relations, and the slow development of civilization, there is a plot a thousand years old and more, which might be called the quadrangular plot. It belongs to the north of Europe, not to the south; to the Norse and Teutonic families, not to the Latin branch. This quadrangular plot is a curious interweaving of the friendship and the love-plots — for they here do not blend — and it represents woman as both active and passive, as both victim and avenger. It is as a necessary quantity in the equation of life that woman here first comes forward, and that some dim sense of justice is shown with regard to her. In its oldest and crudest versions the story no longer fully appeals, and yet in a modified form it lasts down to our own day, and appears, faint indeed and yet traceable, in Kennedy’s latest drama, The Winterfeast. It is as difficult a plot as any dramatist, whether he have talents or genius, can adventure upon, just because it has in a great measure lost this general appeal; nevertheless Ibsen, in the Vikings at Helgeland, has come finely off in a drama of distinctive power and beauty.

In the Elder Eddas, those lays and fragments of lays which reveal the rock-ribbed, verdureless imagination of our Norse ancestors, there are four closely related lays, of Brynhild, Sigurd, Gunnar, and Gudrun. The stories cross and recross, here simple, there more involved; here misty, there clearer and more definite, until the latent tragedy culminates in the overthrow and death of the chief two, if not of all concerned. In detail the stories differ; they are by no means self-consistent or sequential; sometimes they are almost contradictory as we catch the reflection of the different minds and times that have worked upon them; but the plot or ground-plan is evident and unchanging. A friendship-plot and a loveplot, essentially antagonistic from the first, doomed in the nature of things — that is, because of consciousness and will or character — to end tragically, — this is the ground plan. The story shows an invincible warrior, insensible to fear, wise of thought and word as he is daring in deed, who has for friend a man of quieter mould, something of the poet or skald. The warrior rescues from a hapless fate a ‘hard-souled’ or proud maiden, a woman who may be taken but who cannot give herself, and in the rescue the love of each for the other is necessarily implicated. In the oldest lays supernatural and demiurgic powers, sorcery and witchcraft, so dear to the Norse heart, come into play, and the lovers are parted. Here the story shifts and varies, and there are different versions; but in all a lovetoken, ring or bracelet, — fateful as Desdemona’s handkerchief, — is given by the hard-souled maiden to her rescuer. After they are parted, more complications arise, sorcery again enters in, and the proud maiden finds herself married to the enamoured poet-friend who has worn for this purpose the warrior’s guise; while the warrior, his memory made blank by witchcraft, marries another. But the four mismated ones cannot escape each other, and sooner or later, the truth, through over-boasting, comes to light, with the fatal lovetoken as proof. It is the warrior and the hard-souled maiden who are by rights the Eternal Two, and their sorcery-crossed destiny is to blame. The hard-souled one takes sure vengeance for the wrong done her, and her fury involves in ruin and ultimate death, not only the original four, but also many others.

The Lays are naive and simple enough, the stories somewhat vague and misty, but the core of great dramatic possibilities lies in the character of the fire-ringed, hard-souled woman, and he would be but a poor dramatic Sigurd or Siegfried who should not try again and again to set her free. For these fundamental plots, more a matter of intuition than of reason, are common property of the imagination, and he may take who sees. But let him beware how he takes, for it is always all or nothing. The plot must be held inviolate, though the superstructure and ornamentation may be altered at will.

So Ibsen, in the Vikings at Helgeland, holds rigidly to the dramatic situation, while greatly modifying the story in order to bring it well within modern sympathy, possibility, and taste. Sorcery and the supernatural are discarded, and by a skillful blending of character and circumstance are wrought the deeds which will make or mar. Sigurd the warrior and Gunnar the skald, with their deep and true friendship, remain unchanged, while the hard-souled Brynhild is called Hiordis, and for the vindictive Gudrun is substituted a gentler, more effectively contrasting woman, Dagny. In her maiden pride, instead of fire-protection, Hiordis’s bower is guarded by a ferocious white bear, stronger than forty men, and she will and can love him only who shall conquer the brute. When Gunnar and Sigurd visit her foster-father, she can talk easily with Gunnar, being essentially indifferent toward him; but with Sigurd — alas for love’s mischances — she is haughty and tongue-tied. Gunnar loves her to distraction, while Sigurd, misconstruing the maiden’s behavior, thinks himself unthought of, and so makes no effort to disclose his love. Gunnar wishes to win her, but knows he cannot overcome the bear, so in darkness and night, Sigurd disguised as Gunnar, calling himself by his friend’s name, gives mortal combat, slays the bear, and enters the bower. Seated together, with the drawn sword between, Hiordis gives the warrior her bracelet in token of submission, and he leaves her, still not understanding. When day comes, it is easy to carry on the deception, Sigurd thinking all the while that she really loves Gunnar; and so the Vikings sail away, each with his respective bride, for in emptiness of heart Sigurd takes Dagny. From now on it is plain dramatic sailing, the greatest difficulties of this old plot have been overcome, and Ibsen can thenceforth hold closely to the original in the mode of discovery, climax, and tragic end. The point is that Ibsen, with true dramatic instinct, preserves inviolate the plot; what he works in and modifies are the superstructure and accessories.

In the Winterfeast, however, fine as it is, Mr. Kennedy commits the mistake — or is it sacrilege? — of tampering with the plot. He takes the immemorial four, Bjorn the warrior, Valbrand the skald, Herdisa the proudsouled, who secretly loves Bjorn, and is loved by both Bjorn and Valbrand, — and an Indian woman who, later, becomes the wife of Bjorn, but who does not appear in the play. Bjorn, perceiving Valbrand’s consuming passion for Herdisa, conceals his own love, thus sacrificing love to friendship, something to the old plot inconceivable. Then Bjorn determines to accompany Thorkel, Valbrand’s father, to Vineland in order to put distance between himself and Herdisa, and to give Valbrand a clear field. But Herdisa, just before they sail, throws reserve to the winds, and openly shows her love and preference for Bjorn. Still he makes no sign, but sails away with Thorkel, who naturally desires his son’s happiness before all else. Then when in Vineland, before the homeward voyage, Bjorn gives Thorkel a love-token and a message to be delivered to Herdisa. Thorkel suppresses both, and lies, giving Herdisa to understand that she is the woman scorned. In the rush of hurt pride and disappointment, she marries Valbrand. After a lapse of twenty years, Bjorn reappears with a son, Olaf, the child of the Indian mother. Herdisa, still vindictive, still deceived regarding Bjorn’s true feeling, sets her husband and Bjorn at odds. Urged to desperation by his wife, Valbrand rushes off to engage his loved friend in deadly combat, and we are led to suppose that Valbrand falls. Then, thirsting to taste vengeance to the full, Herdisa determines to make Olaf instrumental in killing his own father, and swears the unsuspecting youth, who loves her daughter Svanhild at first sight, to avenge these wrongs and insults upon the, to him, unknown foe. But on learning the truth, the youth evades his vow by committing suicide. Then Valbrand enters unharmed, it is Bjorn who has fallen, or has allowed himself to be slain; and Herdisa, in the bloody havoc wrought by Thorkel’s early lie and her own savage pride, and with the heart-break of her gentle daughter Svanhild before her eyes, in remorse and horror, dies.

Surely it is Websterian in unrelieved tragedy, and such is the ground-plan or dramatic situation as Mr. Kennedy has modified it. The result is confusion of thought. Motive is utterly incommensurate with circumstance, and character is anything but clear and convincing. Bjorn cuts but a sorry figure in sacrificing his love and lady to his friend, and in putting the maiden thereby to open shame; and his excuse on his reappearance is something in the nature of adding insult to injury. Fine and effective as the play is in parts, it is as a whole impossible. For the first law of dramatic construction would seem to be: never tamper with the plot; hold it sacred, for it has its being in the deeps of human nature, in the essence of human relationships. One might as well expect to dispense with one or more of the four constitutive elements of mind, categories of the finite understanding, as expect to discard in these plots that which in reality pertains to the integrity of the imagination. The plot is alive and indestructible, indicative of human nature; the superstructure and ornamentation pertain to manners and customs, and may be, must be, varied and modified accordingly. ‘Shakespeare never invented’ — or discovered, rather — ‘a plot’; it was no part of his genius so to do, nor did he ever violate one. He disclosed human nature in using the plots time-honored and immemorial. But if only the supersubtle Venetian Gozzi had left us a record of those thirty-six dramatic situations, what a purple joy it would have been to all of us who love that delicate, most lifelike, most evanescent of all the arts, the art of acting, and care most in literature for that most life-like form, the drama!