19. Chapter XIX: Some Observations On The Drama Amongst Democratic
Nations
When the revolution which subverts the social and political
state of an aristocratic people begins to penetrate into
literature, it generally first manifests itself in the drama, and
it always remains conspicuous there. The spectator of a dramatic
piece is, to a certain extent, taken by surprise by the
impression it conveys. He has no time to refer to his memory, or
to consult those more able to judge than himself. It does not
occur to him to resist the new literary tendencies which begin to
be felt by him; he yields to them before he knows what they are.
Authors are very prompt in discovering which way the taste of the
public is thus secretly inclined. They shape their productions
accordingly; and the literature of the stage, after having served
to indicate the approaching literary revolution, speedily
completes its accomplishment. If you would judge beforehand of
the literature of a people which is lapsing into democracy, study
its dramatic productions.
The literature of the stage, moreover, even amongst
aristocratic nations, constitutes the most democratic part of
their literature. No kind of literary gratification is so much
within the reach of the multitude as that which is derived from
theatrical representations. Neither preparation nor study is
required to enjoy them: they lay hold on you in the midst of your
prejudices and your ignorance. When the yet untutored love of
the pleasures of the mind begins to affect a class of the
community, it instantly draws them to the stage. The theatres of
aristocratic nations have always been filled with spectators not
belonging to the aristocracy. At the theatre alone the higher
ranks mix with the middle and the lower classes; there alone do
the former consent to listen to the opinion of the latter, or at
least to allow them to give an opinion at all. At the theatre,
men of cultivation and of literary attainments have always had
more difficulty than elsewhere in making their taste prevail over
that of the people, and in preventing themselves from being
carried away by the latter. The pit has frequently made laws for
the boxes.
If it be difficult for an aristocracy to prevent the people
from getting the upper hand in the theatre, it will readily be
understood that the people will be supreme there when democratic
principles have crept into the laws and manners -when ranks are
intermixed -when minds, as well as fortunes, are brought more
nearly together -and when the upper class has lost, with its
hereditary wealth, its power, its precedents, and its leisure.
The tastes and propensities natural to democratic nations, in
respect to literature, will therefore first be discernible in the
drama, and it may be foreseen that they will break out there with
vehemence. In written productions, the literary canons of
aristocracy will be gently, gradually, and, so to speak, legally
modified; at the theatre they will be riotously overthrown.
The drama brings out most of the good qualities, and almost
all the defects, inherent in democratic literature. Democratic
peoples hold erudition very cheap, and care but little for what
occurred at Rome and Athens; they want to hear something which
concerns themselves, and the delineation of the present age is
what they demand.
When the heroes and the manners of antiquity are frequently
brought upon the stage, and dramatic authors faithfully observe
the rules of antiquated precedent, that is enough to warrant a
conclusion that the democratic classes have not yet got the upper
hand of the theatres. Racine makes a very humble apology in the
preface to the "Britannicus" for having disposed of Junia amongst
the Vestals, who, according to Aulus Gellius, he says, "admitted
no one below six years of age nor above ten." We may be sure that
he would neither have accused himself of the offence, nor
defended himself from censure, if he had written for our
contemporaries. A fact of this kind not only illustrates the
state of literature at the time when it occurred, but also that
of society itself. A democratic stage does not prove that the
nation is in a state of democracy, for, as we have just seen,
even in aristocracies it may happen that democratic tastes affect
the drama; but when the spirit of aristocracy reigns exclusively
on the stage, the fact irrefragably demonstrates that the whole
of society is aristocratic; and it may be boldly inferred that
the same lettered and learned class which sways the dramatic
writers commands the people and governs the country.
The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing of an
aristocracy will rarely fail to lead it, when it manages the
stage, to make a kind of selection in human nature. Some of the
conditions of society claim its chief interest; and the scenes
which delineate their manners are preferred upon the stage.
Certain virtues, and even certain vices, are thought more
particularly to deserve to figure there; and they are applauded
whilst all others are excluded. Upon the stage, as well as
elsewhere, an aristocratic audience will only meet personages of
quality, and share the emotions of kings. The same thing applies
to style: an aristocracy is apt to impose upon dramatic authors
certain modes of expression which give the key in which
everything is to be delivered. By these means the stage
frequently comes to delineate only one side of man, or sometimes
even to represent what is not to be met with in human nature at
all -to rise above nature and to go beyond it.
In democratic communities the spectators have no such
partialities, and they rarely display any such antipathies: they
like to see upon the stage that medley of conditions, of
feelings, and of opinions, which occurs before their eyes. The
drama becomes more striking, more common, and more true.
Sometimes, however, those who write for the stage in democracies
also transgress the bounds of human nature -but it is on a
different side from their predecessors. By seeking to represent
in minute detail the little singularities of the moment and the
peculiar characteristics of certain personages, they forget to
portray the general features of the race.
When the democratic classes rule the stage, they introduce
as much license in the manner of treating subjects as in the
choice of them. As the love of the drama is, of all literary
tastes, that which is most natural to democratic nations, the
number of authors and of spectators, as well as of theatrical
representations, is constantly increasing amongst these
communities. A multitude composed of elements so different, and
scattered in so many different places, cannot acknowledge the
same rules or submit to the same laws. No concurrence is
possible amongst judges so numerous, who know not when they may
meet again; and therefore each pronounces his own sentence on the
piece. If the effect of democracy is generally to question the
authority of all literary rules and conventions, on the stage it
abolishes them altogether, and puts in their place nothing but
the whim of each author and of each public.
The drama also displays in an especial manner the truth of
what I have said before in speaking more generally of style and
art in democratic literature. In reading the criticisms which
were occasioned by the dramatic productions of the age of Louis
XIV, one is surprised to remark the great stress which the public
laid on the probability of the plot, and the importance which was
attached to the perfect consistency of the characters, and to
their doing nothing which could not be easily explained and
understood. The value which was set upon the forms of language at
that period, and the paltry strife about words with which
dramatic authors were assailed, are no less surprising. It would
seem that the men of the age of Louis XIV attached very
exaggerated importance to those details, which may be perceived
in the study, but which escape attention on the stage. For,
after all, the principal object of a dramatic piece is to be
performed, and its chief merit is to affect the audience. But
the audience and the readers in that age were the same: on
quitting the theatre they called up the author for judgment to
their own firesides. In democracies, dramatic pieces are
listened to, but not read. Most of those who frequent the
amusements of the stage do not go there to seek the pleasures of
the mind, but the keen emotions of the heart. They do not expect
to hear a fine literary work, but to see a play; and provided the
author writes the language of his country correctly enough to be
understood, and that his characters excite curiosity and awaken
sympathy, the audience are satisfied. They ask no more of
fiction, and immediately return to real life. Accuracy of style
is therefore less required, because the attentive observance of
its rules is less perceptible on the stage. As for the
probability of the plot, it is incompatible with perpetual
novelty, surprise, and rapidity of invention. It is therefore
neglected, and the public excuses the neglect. You may be sure
that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence
of something that affects them, they will not care by what road
you brought them there; and they will never reproach you for
having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
The Americans very broadly display all the different
propensities which I have here described when they go to the
theatres; but it must be acknowledged that as yet a very small
number of them go to theatres at all. Although playgoers and
plays have prodigiously increased in the United States in the
last forty years, the population indulges in this kind of
amusement with the greatest reserve. This is attributable to
peculiar causes, which the reader is already acquainted with, and
of which a few words will suffice to remind him. The Puritans
who founded the American republics were not only enemies to
amusements, but they professed an especial abhorrence for the
stage. They considered it as an abominable pastime; and as long
as their principles prevailed with undivided sway, scenic
performances were wholly unknown amongst them. These opinions of
the first fathers of the colony have left very deep marks on the
minds of their descendants. The extreme regularity of habits and
the great strictness of manners which are observable in the
United States, have as yet opposed additional obstacles to the
growth of dramatic art. There are no dramatic subjects in a
country which has witnessed no great political catastrophes, and
in which love invariably leads by a straight and easy road to
matrimony. People who spend every day in the week in making
money, and the Sunday in going to church, have nothing to invite
the muse of Comedy.
A single fact suffices to show that the stage is not very
popular in the United States. The Americans, whose laws allow of
the utmost freedom and even license of language in all other
respects, have nevertheless subjected their dramatic authors to a
sort of censorship. Theatrical performances can only take place
by permission of the municipal authorities. This may serve to
show how much communities are like individuals; they surrender
themselves unscrupulously to their ruling passions, and
afterwards take the greatest care not to yield too much to the
vehemence of tastes which they do not possess.
No portion of literature is connected by closer or more
numerous ties with the present condition of society than the
drama. The drama of one period can never be suited to the
following age, if in the interval an important revolution has
changed the manners and the laws of the nation. The great
authors of a preceding age may be read; but pieces written for a
different public will not be followed. The dramatic authors of
the past live only in books. The traditional taste of certain
individuals, vanity, fashion, or the genius of an actor may
sustain or resuscitate for a time the aristocratic drama amongst
a democracy; but it will speedily fall away of itself -not
overthrown, but abandoned.