Art as Dramatization

Abstract

Dramatise, dramatise! was insistent cry that haunted Henry James's artistic genius.' celebrated novelist knew himself a failure in theatre; his plays were almost all rejected for production, and one of only two produced was roundly booed on London stage. Yet James realized, with brave honesty, that basic principle of drama nonetheless held key to artistic greatness. Distinguishing nicely between terms Theatre-stuff' and Dramastuff'-between concrete stage performance and what he called deeper divine principle of Scenario (equally realizable in novels, films, and television), James turned that essential dramatic principle more consciously to work in composing later works of fiction that crown his great career: The scenic method, he wrote, my absolute, my imperative, my only salvation. That salvation is evident in his posthumous dramatic success, in frequent adaptations of his fiction into TV dramas and films, and even into two operas by Benjamin Britten.2 James's assertion of drama's superiority could have rested on ancient philosophical authority, but it was also not uncommon in his own time, and after. Nietzsche, for example, just a year younger than James, was quick to affirm Richard Wagner's recognition that the greatest influence of all arts could be exercised through theatre.3 Some generations later, James's native countryman and fellow Anglophile, T. S. Eliot, would reaffirm supremacy of drama the ideal medium for poetry. Combining power of meaningful action with beauty of musical order, poetic drama could capture two exquisitely precious and different kinds of aesthetic value not easily synthesized in a single form. And through its theatrical performance, Eliot further argued, drama enabled poet to reach as large and miscellaneous an audience possible.4 Eliot therefore made his own sustained efforts to write for theatre, where, however, he enjoyed only little more initial success than James. (The Broadway hit Cats, though based on Eliot's light verse, is a posthumous dramatization of poetry that he in fact never intended for theatre, let alone musical theatre.) Considered from point of view of practicing artists (rather than that of philosophers), drama's preeminence derives not only from its presumed ability to reach more people and move them more powerfully and completely than other arts (something that may be truer today for cinema than for theatre). There is also (dare I say it an American) charm that a successful theatre play could bring in quickest (if not always, ultimately) greatest income to its author. We know from private correspondence that money was certainly one motive for James's interest in writing for theatre. But presence of this motive in no way falsifies sincerity of his adulation of drama, which he praised the of arts, long before he ever seriously thought of a career in playwriting. James thought drama was noblest because it was most challenging-combining gravest formal demands of masterly structure with highest requirement of significance of subject.'5 In this paper, I want to go beyond these more familiar assertions of drama's preeminent influence and nobility in order to suggest that concept of drama embodies and unites two of deepest, most important conditions of art