psychology? Character-drawing is the presentment of human nature in its
commonly-recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as
it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto
unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension
Have we not here, then, the distinction between character-drawing and
psychology? Character-drawing is the presentment of human nature in its
commonly-recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as
it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto
unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension.
In other words, character-drawing is synthetic, psychology analytic.
This does not mean that the one is necessarily inferior to the other.
Some of the greatest masterpieces of creative art have been achieved by
the synthesis of known elements. Falstaff, for example--there is no more
brilliant or more living character in all fiction; yet it is impossible
to say that Shakespeare has here taken us into previously unplumbed
depths of human nature, as he has in Hamlet, or in Lear. No doubt it is
often very hard to decide whether a given personage is a mere projection
of the known or a divination of the unknown. What are we to say, for
example, of Cleopatra, or of Shylock, or of Macbeth? Richard II, on the
other hand, is as clearly a piece of psychology as the Nurse in _Romeo
and Juliet_ is a piece of character-drawing. The comedy of types
necessarily tends to keep within the limits of the known, and
Moliere--in spite of Alceste and Don Juan--is characteristically a
character-drawer, as Racine is characteristically a psychologist. Ibsen
is a psychologist or he is nothing. Earl Skule and Bishop Nicholas,
Hedda Gabler and John Gabriel Borkman are daring explorations of
hitherto uncharted regions of the human soul. But Ibsen, too, was a
character-drawer when it suited him. One is tempted to say that there is
no psychology in Brand--he is a mere incarnation of intransigent
idealism--while Peer Gynt is as brilliant a psychological inspiration as
Don Quixote. Dr. Stockmann is a vigorously-projected character, Hialmar
Ekdal a piece of searching psychology. Finally, my point could scarcely
be better illustrated than by a comparison--cruel but instructive
--between Rebecca in _Rosmersholm_ and the heroine in _Bella
Donna_. Each is, in effect, a murderess, though it was a moral, not a
mineral, poison that Rebecca employed. But while we know nothing
whatever of Mrs. Armine"s mental processes, Rebecca"s temptations,
struggles, sophistries, hesitations, resolves, and revulsions of feeling
are all laid bare to us, so that we feel her to be no monster, but a
living woman, comprehensible to our intelligence, and, however
blameworthy, not wholly beyond the range of our sympathies. There are
few greater achievements of psychology.
