The Ablest Man in Bulgaria

On stage, observes Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the ninth installment of his Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767-69), we can only recognize the qualities of people "from their actions. The goodness with which we are to credit them, merely upon the word of another, cannot possibly interest us in them. It leaves us quite indifferent," and unless we observe and experience their goodness, "it even has a bad reflex" on the commentator who expresses the opinion. Therefore, far from being willing to believe that a character is "a most perfect and excellent young man" because other personages say that he is, "we rather begin to suspect the judgment of these persons, if we never see for ourselves anything to justify their favorable opinion." ¹ While this criticism may seem self-evident, lesser dramatists have honored Lessing's belief, to borrow a well-known phrase, more in the breach than in the observance. For this reason, it was necessary for him to have insisted on it more than two centuries ago, and it remains necessary for us today.

Not only is the insight true that character is convincingly demonstrated in the drama in terms of action, rather than merely by statement, but this dictum, as Lessing notes, also has a corollary. When a character evaluates another character, that evaluation is persuasive only after the subject of the evaluation has shown the assessment to have been the case. The valuation then becomes a summary of a conclusion that the audience has already reached, and in the hands of a truly capable dramatist, it states that conclusion better than the audience might have done.

A few examples should suffice to demonstrate the validity of these observations. When Ophelia concludes, "O, what a noble mind is here o'er thrown!" (Hamlet, III.i), audiences concur as to the nobility of Hamlet's mind, however they might define nobility, for he has proven it to them well before her statement. Moments after King Lear dies, at the end of the play, Kent declares, "Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer." Lear's sufferings have been so great, and dramatized so stunningly, that audiences readily agree with Kent. Christy Mahon has earned Pegeen's description of him in her lament, which concludes The Playboy of the Western World, "Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only playboy of the western world." After Shaw's Don Juan heatedly harangues the Devil's friends in a dazzlingly bravura speech that occupies more than half a page and that consists of contrasting what they are "not" with what they "only" are, the Statue accurately states, "Your flow of words is simply amazing, Juan." ² Since the speech is a denigration of what the Devil represents, the Statue's observation of Juan's copious language, while ignoring the substance of his words, is so unexpected that the line is funny, and audiences of Don Juan in Hell laugh in approval. The wit of Shaw's Cæsar is so captivating, his wisdom so evident, that audiences agree when Rufio tells Cleopatra, at the end of Cæsar and Cleopatra, that she is "a bad hand at a bargain [. . .] if [she] will swop Cæsar for Antony" (The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw, II, 292). In short, all of these assessments have been justified by dramatic action. As Lessing points out, unless an assessment is earned, audiences will not accept it.

Lessing's insights, illustrated by these examples, apply to Arms and the Man, particularly to implications about this play in performance. ³ When we hear Bluntschli say, near the end of the third act, "Nicola's the ablest man Ive met in Bulgaria," ⁴ it is not usually apparent that Bluntschli is right, as it is obvious that Ophelia, Kent, Pegeen, and the other characters I have quoted are...