Point of View in Modern Drama

POINT OF VIEW IN MODERN DRAMA 1. THE TENDENCY TOWARD SUBJECTIVE DRAMA CRITICS OF FICITON generally agree that the most significant development in the modern novel has been the move away from the comfortable method of narrating a story whereby the author sees all, knows all, and tells all-frequently by nudging the reader with his elbow or by leading him ceremoniously into a room full of strange people. Perhaps the needs for greater psychological authenticity and dramatic immediacy finally prompted the novelist to step out of the scene. The extremely varied narrative methods which have been developed to satisfy these needs include the simple dramatic narrator of, let us say, Huckleberry Finn, the central consciousness of Henry James' later novels, the complex multiple narrators of Conrad, the stream of consciousness technique of James Joyce,and the poetic interior monologues of Virginia Woolf. All of these methods have at least one purpose in common: the desire to establish a point of view which is limited and, therefore, more dramatically convincing than that furnished by the omniscient author. But novelists since Henry James have certainly been aware that in achieving a measure of dramatic objectivity they often sacrifice some of their freedom to explore the psychological subtleties of character or to develop the rich philosophical implications of human experience. To strike a balance, they have sought-in the words of Joseph Warren Beach-a "subjective drama" in which the point of view is restricted to the consciousness of a character who is able to participate dramatically in the events of the story and at the same time reflect upon them, interpret them, within the boundaries of his own limited understanding and experience. This method has the advantage of expressing dramatic immediacy without depriving the form of its flexibility. The play form is much less flexible. Because it is by nature more or less objective, it has been committed to the "acting out" of a story, to narrating by means of speech, gestures, and pantomimic movements. The playwright cannot avail himself of the novelist's extended scenic descriptions in order to suggest an appropriate mood or atmosphere. He cannot permit himself to engage in long philosophical digressions to "universalize" the significance of a particular scene. Nor can he reveal as directly as the novelist the complex thought processes of his 268 1959 POINT OF VIEW IN MODERN DRAMA 269 characters. It is aesthetically ironic that this seemingly inherent objectivity which brings to the play form its cardinal virtue-the dramatic immediacy of the moment-should deprive it of the subtlety and richness of the novel. Must we conclude, then, that the playwright is irremediably shackled to the objectivity of his medium? Joseph Warren Beach believes emphatically that he is: There are, to be sure, distinct limits to what can be done through objective means, and that is what makes the play, generally speaking, so much thinner and cruder a medium for the thoughtful delineation of life. . . . After all has been said in favor of the drama, it remains true that it is a comparatively thin medium by the mere fact of its complete and inveterate objectivity.1 And Percy Lubbock in his excellent book, The Craft of Fiction, makes essentially the same judgment: From the point of view of the reader, the spectator of the show, the dramatic scene is vivid and compact; but it is narrow, it can have no great depth, and the color of the atmosphere can hardly tell within the space.... It amounts to this, that the play-formand with it fiction that is purely dramatic in method-is hampered in its power to express the outlying associations of its scene.2 "Vivid and compact," but "narrow" and without "great depth"-a harsh judgment for those who love the playform to accept. But, fortunately, not the last word, and perhaps it need not be accepted at all. For as the novelist has moved toward the dramatic form to achieve the vividness and compactness Mr. Lubbock admires, so the dramatist has sought methods which are not purely objective to approximate the scope and depth of the novel. Even such conventions as the Elizabethan soliloquy and the Greek chorus expand...