methods of study. One form of simpler comparison might note, in a general way, the historical, technical, and theoretical relations.

In the present volume, the individual novel is supposed to be the central subject of inquiry, and abstract theory to be subordinate to acquaintance with an actual concrete work. The study could be made most specific by comparison of an individual novel with an individual work in each of the other arts.

190. The Drama. - The drama is essentially a composite art, based on the coöperation of play-writing, dramaturgy, and histrionics. Its text, considered purely as poetry, may be compared with the novel in the same general manner as was suggested for the epic in the preceding chapter.

Any analysis of the relations of the drama proper and the novel may be modified for the various forms of music drama. The recent development of a new form of "melodrama," offers some very interesting points to the student of any type of plot-literature.

The historical relations of the drama and the novel have been intimate throughout Europe. In many respects the two arts have aided one another, and have satisfied much the same emotional cravings, in both the artist and his public. The sources of a dramatic text have very commonly been found in other forms of literature; and since the Renaissance, the novel has been one of the favorite forms. To some extent, however, as is the case with the novel and the epic, the novel and the drama may be considered as rivals.

Among the famous novelists who have done drama, are Goethe, Manzoni, Hugo, and Tolstoi. larly interesting example. Considered by some greatest of English novelists, he is also one of the English dramatic history of his century.

notable work in the Fielding is a particucritics as the very chief figures in the

The list of well-known novels which have been dramatized would

be very extensive. Scott and Dickens have had abundant representation upon the stage, and Rousseau, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Zola have been honored in like manner, if not in like degree.

Señora Pardo Bazan gives the great vogue of the drama in Spain as an important cause of the retardation of the novel in that country. Professor Raleigh mentions more than one historical situation, in England, in which the one art has thrived at the expense of the other.

The criticism of the novel, in general and in many details, has been based upon the previously developed criticism of the drama. Many technical terms and analyses familiar in the criticism of fiction have been borrowed from the other field. A glance at the list of types in the appendix will indicate the great extent to which the classification of fiction illustrates this fact. Hostility to the novel on æsthetic grounds has not always implied hostility to the drama, but in general ethical attacks upon art, the two forms have frequently been condemned for substantially the same reasons.

The technical differences between the novel and the drama have often been reviewed in recent criticism. In exactness of structure and finish of detail, the drama has obvious advantages. It is marked by immediacy—in its costumes, scenery, and stage properties; its spoken language, its living human bodies. The actor shares with the orator the privilege and the responsibility of using his own body as in a strict sense his primary artistic material. The effects, at least upon the unimaginative mind, are for these reasons likely to be very sharply defined; but there may be danger of emphasizing the material at the expense of the moral.

Again, every stage presentation of a dramatic text gives it a new interpretation, and produces almost an independent work of art. This interpretation introduces a group

of artists between the writer and the audience, whereas the novelist comes into one's presence unaided — and unhindered. There is one Shylock in Shakespeare's poem, another for the individual reader of the play, and another for the playgoer who sees Sir Henry Irving's “creation" of the character.

The novel is much more free than the drama in the treatment of vague settings, physiognomy, gesture, and speech; in flexible transitions in time, place, incident, and rate of movement; in the introduction of animal and child life, and the supernatural; in thematic discussion, and direct interpretation of the author.

The "dramatic" element may be found in painting, music, and sculpture, though drama is the art in which it is most adequately presented. An idea of the dramatic is gained by combining such ideas as intensity, activity, causal series, struggle, and physical presence. It is interesting to select and study the chief dramatic qualities of a great novel, and to note to what degree and in what manner it is a potential drama. The scènes à faire (see the glossary) of a novel are not necessarily those of a drama following the same general plan.

Among the most dramatic situations of Silas Marner, are the drawing of the lots, the quarrel of the brothers, Eppie at the New Year's party, and the visit of Nancy and Godfrey to Silas. Analyze the dramatic quality of these and other scenes according to the suggestions just given. Among situations which a dramatist might very possibly have inserted are meetings between Molly (living) and Godfrey, and Molly and Nancy.

An attempt to dramatize this novel brings into prominence such difficulties as these: - the child life of Eppie; the considerable amount of author's comment; the reveries of characters, hardly capable of being expressed in dramatic language; the animal life; the long intervals and other irregularities in time perspective.

191. Painting. In painting, the value of pure form may be the chief interest for many artists and many critics; but to the mind of the average man, the subject-matter, the power of painting to express substantial ideas, emotions, and incidents, are at least of equal importance. If a painting is considered for its purely formal value, the comparison with the short story is closer than that with the novel. The external material of painting is less significant than that of any other art.

Schasler gives this suggestive, though perhaps somewhat theoretical, parallelism between painting and poetry1 :—

This tabulation suggests the old questions of the legitimacy of literary painting, and of pictorial literature; and touches that general comparison of plastic art and literature considered in Lessing's Laokoon.

Both painting and the novel may represent individuals and groups, animals, inanimate objects, landscapes, interiors, historical or fictitious incidents, etc. Painting must describe all these subjects through the medium of concrete and condensed visible imagery, without outside comment. This fact may lead to an emphasis on the typical, and a tendency toward the symbolical. The two arts differ in subject-matter in this respect: the novel is always centered in humanity, whereas a painting may be devoted to nature, either animate or inanimate. Details such as tapestry, architectural ruins, animal groups, etc., which must be entirely episodic in the novel, may be the subject of whole compositions in the other art. Many phases of social life

1 System der Künste.

-martial, domestic, ecclesiastical are treated in such kindred manner in the two arts as to invite a comparative study. Any romance of chivalry, pastoral romance, or novel of domestic life may be compared with individual paintings concerned with the same subjects. The battlefield, to cite one specific theme, has been represented in art principally by fiction and by painting.

Even the single painting, but in a clearer manner, a series of paintings, such as Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode, may introduce a decided narrative element, and approximate the interest of plot proper. Painting has frequently taken its subjects from fictitious literature, and interesting studies may be made by comparison of literary narratives with series of paintings illustrating them. For example, compare Abbey's Holy Grail pictures in the Boston Public Library with Tennyson's epic.

In theory, the novel and painting both introduce the question of artistic illusion, its purpose and the methods of attaining it; the question of form versus expression of subject; and the relation of art to morals. (See the quotation from Henry James in the notes on novelistic criticism, in the appendix.) While classicism and romanticism may both be examined comparatively in the two arts, it is in connection with realism and impressionism that recent criticism has made the most fruitful comparisons.

While no novel could be adequately represented by a single painting, every novel contains many details which could be given with equal force, often with more adequacy, through the other art.

In Silas Marner, outline a single painting which would be the best possible pictorial representation of the entire composition. Suggest any probable changes of emphasis upon persons, incidents, landscapes, interiors, etc., if the novelist had also been a painter.

Among small details which have a certain purely pictorial quality, notice the tankards and the smoky atmosphere at the Rainbow; the gleam of the fire upon Eppie's hair; the mist in which Dunstan ap