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OUP-2272 19.H-79-I0,000
OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Call No.SOSr S/ Accession No
Auth"r
Tltle
This bookshould be returned on or before thedatelast
marked below.
FORM AND MEANING
DRAMA
IN
FORM AND MEANING
DRAMA
IN
A Study of Six Greek Plays and of Hamlet
KITTO
H. D. F.
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36EssexStreet, Strand, London WC2
First published in 1956
Catalogue No. 5858/U
Printed in Great Britain
by*
Robert Cunningham < Sons Ltd.,
Longbank Works, Alva
Preface
HAS not been easy to choose a legitimate title for this book,
which discusses, in detail, three plays by Aeschylus, three by
IT
Sophocles, and one of Shakespeare's. The reason for the
choice ofthe six Greek plays is that I wished to expand, amend
or destroy what I had written about them before. The reason
why my earlier criticism seemed unsatisfactory was always the
same: it did nothonestlyorcompletely account forthe form and
style in which the dramatist had cast the play. I have come to
believe more firmly, and I hope to follow more consistently, as
a principle of criticism, the idea that in a great work of art,
whether a play, a picture, or a piece of music, the connexion
between the form and the content is so vital that the two may
be said to be ultimately identical.
If this is true, it follows that it is quite meaningless to con-
sider one of them without constant referenc xto the otner. It
seems thatwhen acritic approaches aplayinthe grand manner,
as a philosopher, a historian ofideas, or ofliterature, he can say
almost anything about it, according to his own sympathies and
prepossessions. But there is a simple control: we can look at the
structure ofthe play, in all its details. Ifthe interpretationthat
we advance implies that the play is imperfectly designed, then
either the dramatist has not done his job very well, or the critic
has failed in his. The presumption with Aeschylus, Sophocles
and Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet, is that the dramatist
was competent. If the dramatist had something to say, and if
he was a competent artist, the presumption is that he has said
it, and that we, by looking at the form which he created, can
find out what it is.
At this point two important questions arise: what does a
dramatist 'say'? and how does he say it?
The art of drama does not consist simply of language lan-
$
guage is only one though the most important ofits means of
sayingthings. Others, obviously, are the dramaticjuxtaposition
of situations and persons, the 'timing* of events, gesture, tone,
PREFACE
vi
visual effects, many other such things. In a highly integrated
workofdramaticart,these arenotadventitiousornaments5they
are among the means which the dramatist uses forsayingwhat
he means. Some of them, evidently, can be realised only in
performance, where they are conjecturally restored by the pro-
ducer and the actors who may be wrong. Nevertheless, some
ofthe mostimportant thosewhichmaybeclassedasbelonging
to structure and style are available tothe reasonablysensitive
critic, and ifhe does not use them, but conscientiously 'sticks to
the text7, he is neglecting part of his evidence, and that is not
scientific or scholarly procedure. In the plays under discussion
there are several instances where the dramatist 'says' things of
the utmost importance without using a single word. After all,
if he could not do this he would not be much of a dramatist.
Secondly, what does a dramatist 'say'? It is one theory and
Ithinkthatitcommandsrespect that aworkofart meansonly
itself; that if for example we are asked what the Antigone
means, the only answer is that it means the Antigone. Never-
theless, ifa musician should declarethat one difference between
Beethoven and Cherubini is that Beethoven had something to
say, and Cherubim hadn't, we should understand what he
meant, even though it is only in a general and tentative way
that we can distinguish what a composer 'says' from the sounds
and patterns that he creates. In this respect drama is different
from music, as Paradise Lost is different from a breath-taking
lyric5 especially is classical drama different. There are some
kinds of drama impressionistic drama, light comedy, farce
which, like music, do not 'say' anything that we can translate
into prose$ theyexist fortheirownsake, and are none the worse
for that. But classical drama, especially tragedy, deals seriously
and consciouslywith serious things, so that it is possible, up to a
point, to state in logical terms what the dramatist 'means', and
to do it in some detail. It was not out of childlike nal'vete that
the Greeks asserted that the artist was a teacher. They might
equally have saidthatthe teacherwas an artist the reasonwhy
5
they did not was that up to the fifth century they had had no
teachers who were not artists: the fact was too obvious to need
pointing out. In our own times Aeschylus, for example, has
always, and rightly, been regarded as a profound and serious
thinkerj and I am bold enough to say that the only reason why
Description:the profundity of Sophocles' thought has not always been ap- preciated in its place: the Antigone, after all, was written by Sophocles, English drama, I 1 1 append Thomson's isometric renderings: 'With unclean hands before.
