The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-30
PLOT AND CHARACTER.
SOME INTERESTING REMARKS
 BY ANDREW LANG.
Freezes That Rutird the Tranquil
 Waters of Literature.

l waters OA AliefNtuNes
 There has lately blown, perhaps there
 is blowing still, one of those breezes
 rufle the tranquil waters of literature
 The atmospheric conditions which gen
 erated the breeze, the tempest in the lit-
 erary teapot, were the dramatic tri-
 umphs of Stephen Phillips. As is usual 1 ly the case, these were not equally
 pleasing to all minds, but opposition would perhaps have been less acrl- monous if the authors favorable crit l ics could have curbed their generous eN-
 Xesses, Such exeesses were natural ln themselves, for it is not every day that
 new writer arises who is certainly d poet, and whose plays can also be acted with success. The combination df a calmer mind may venture to hazard an
 opinion) carried some critics off their feet" as the conversation of Burns car-
 ried the Duchess of Gordon. In the old
 Scots phrase the reviewers were ear
 ried," were excited, and admiration
 yerged on engouement, So, at least, l
 am inclined to think, after reading
 little green backed florilegium, or Cen
 tury of Prayse," put forth by the poets
 publisher. Not only was he compared
 if my memory is correct-to him who
 sleeps by Avon" but 10 Racine,
 Sophocles, Milton and the author of
 The Three Musketeers." Something of
 this kind appears to have iritated the
 critics of "The Saturday Review, "The
 Athenaeum" and "The Quarterly Re
 view" These censors were so much of the same bumor that they textually re- peated some of each others remarks in the three periodicals, as MT. Sidney Col vim has demonstrated, a circumstance full of interest to the psychologist. The sublimnal selves of the three critics ap- pear to have been in a mystic rapport
 with each other. One of the three as serted that character is the main thing in the drama, against which Churton Collins quoted Aristotle, who declares that in play the plot Is the thing-plot and incident and action. Hereon ven tured to hint that Aristotle need not be always in the right, that he has long ceased to be a dictator in literature or science, and that we canot regard plot and character, which really interpene- tTdle tdfN OiIitlt d0 IL illNS NNhAN '~ held totally distinct and apart.
 Looking at novels Ca genre of which knew nothing), we find critics usually regarding character as much more essential than plot. Dickens, Thackeray and Scott live by the merits of their characters. Nobody can say that the mere plots of Rob Rob "Pendennis," or David Coppertield' are of great merit; they are not even ineligible The machinery is old fashioned and haclrneyed; the frauds of Rashleigh Mr. MicaWber always on the watch (of which he was incapable) | the higamies of Colonel Altamont, in fact, the whole set of fcelles, are out worn and unimportant, They are mere In the same way Creek | tragedy has her stock incidents, described by Aristotle. The reeog- | milton" was one of them:
 Have you strawberry mark on | your left arm?"
 "I havel"
 Then you are, you are, my long lost lnclel"
 That was the kind of thing rendered | 'easible by the old folklore trick of ex- posing a child about whom there was a isa greeable prophecy. The "recogni- l ion" was as common in Greek tragic llots as the "hroWf, tree" in the iana- ,cape painting of the eighteenth cen ury. "Where do you get in your brown ree?" asked the critic And the ques- ion was, in Greece. How do you pop n your recognition?" Now the plot SO is a mechanical thing, mere
 it may be well done, as in Tom Jones" and "Oediphus Tyran- lus," or as absurdly i'll done as in 'Cymbeline," or the conclusion of
 Hamlet" or in Shakespeare's careless, happy endings; or in Rob Rob" or "Waverly." The great writers Iave been casual in the matter of plots, 1T even where they have been careful { is not for the plot but for the char
 cters that they are esteemed Who iOes not smile at the plot of "Jane 1yre?' Yet if there were no such plots ow could the character of Jane herself r of Dana Vernon develop itself? The cry peculiar and i'll invented crcum- tances in which the plot places these heroines enable them to ex- ibit the qualities which make them im- 1ortal. Take Imogen or Hermone in The Winters Tale" It is their cir umstances-quite out of nature and orrowed from novels, which, again. tere borrowed from folk tales-that i've the herolnes their opportunities, 'hese characters are the delight of man ind; but the conditions in which they isplay their qualities, the incidents, he plot. are things out of nature The lot is a mere convention in many clas- teal works of the first quality, ancient r modern, Homer borrowed the plot { the "Odyssey' fom three or four old reek nursery tales and from the MT. Phillips legitimately orrowed the plot of his Ulysses" 10 known man invented that plot, hich, again, with notifications Ca lady we in place of a wifeN is the plot of Tvan1oe," Where the poet shines is { l making a noble character, an appro- l riate character the hero of the ] ncient, nay, the primitive, sequence of l vents; in developing the human and z lssible elements of the world old myth. I here can be no better plot than that of ! le odyssey" granting the machinery, le gods Hades, Cyclops, and so forth, Z l