Oh, those unities, crampin' our style...

In his “Conjectures on Original Composition,” Edward Young suggests that the most brilliant of authors must flaunt rules in order to create original works. “All eminence, and distinction, lies out of the beaten road; excursion, and deviation, are necessary to find it” (341), as he puts it…. Which is not to say that all antiquity is to be tossed aside, but to prompt authors to look beyond old prescriptions, to trust in their own abilities and ideas, “For by the bounty of nature we are as strong as our predecessors” (Young 341). Rules might prove “like crutches […] a needful aim to the lame” (342), but their “rigid bounds” (341) must be broken if authors are to find “that liberty, to which genius often owes its supreme glory” (341). It is only with room to roam and liberty to explore that the author may create an original piece.

This matter of long-held forms arose in the realm (yes, it was a veritable realm) of the theatre as artists ran headlong into the omnipresent matter of those pesky unities. Passed down by Aristotle, restrains of time, place, and action stamped their assertion and demanded adherence. French neoclassicists had fairly thoroughly embraced the unities—or what they held to be close enough to the unities—and the mania had bled its way onto the English stage. These were the rules, these were the ancient rules, and surely, they must hold.

To hold up for a moment, I ought to note that this is itself a bit of an exaggeration, though perhaps not too much of one. Time, place, and action could be and were churned through a variety of definitions, some looser than others; as Eric Rothstein points out in his study of Farquhar, even those—English and French alike—who supported the rules were ready to bend them. Yet if the standards weren’t always exact, they certainly loomed in existence, to be grappled with in plays and pieces of dramatic criticism (or what may now be shuffled under the heading “dramatic criticism”).

Many with an eye to the theatre were quick to question this tyranny of the ancients. Why ought authors bow to such restrictions? In his “Discourse upon Comedy,” George Farquhar urges, “lay aside your superstitious veneration for antiquity and the usual expressions on that score: that the present age is illiterate or their taste is vitiated, that we live in the decay of time and the dotage of the world is fallen to our share. ’Tis a mistake, sir. The world was never more active or youthful” (376). The sentiment seems a precursor to Young’s, suggesting that the world at hand has much to offer for any author willing to look to the world. What is the good of burrowing deep into ancient rules, when so much present life waits to be explored? The world, Farquhar notes, is as apt a source for creation as ever, and offers more pressing instruction than any rusted-over rules can share.

Though not himself a playwright, Samuel Butler (the 17th-century author of Hudibras) bemoans the fact that plays must

[B]e sentenced by the arbitrary

Proceedings of a witless plagiary,

That forges old records and ordinances

Against the right and property of fancies. (Butler 339)

Here, the rules of the ancients seem chains employed arbitrarily, without thought or reason. It is the insistence on these rules, Butler moves on to suggest, that “make them [tragedies or playwrights] henceforth keep the beaten roads” (340); here, we might recall Young’s note that “[a]ll eminence, and distinction, lies out of the beaten road” (341). To adhere strictly to the rules of the ancients, then, is to refrain from venturing beyond well-trodden ideas and stories. There is to be no growth, no exploration and no originality, where single-minded worship of the unities reigns. Thus, at least, stands a possible suggestion.

Interesting, too, that Butler should speak of “property” in relation to dramatic creation. Here again he suggests a sentiment that will appear in Young (note that like Farquhar, Butler was writing over fifty years before Young published his letter), for Young notes of an author who has shaken the bonds on antiquity, “His works will stand distinguished; his the sole property of them; which property alone can confer the noble title of an author” (346). In both Butler and Young, it seems that the old, oft-chanted rules bar the playwright from achieving his rightful property. If he cannot (to perhaps mutilate Locke, hrm) freely go about his labor, if his route of production is blocked by stodgy rules, the genius author will not be able to fully realize an original work, perhaps the most valuable product of artistic creation.

All of this, again, as a quick and dirty glance in a narrow scope. The pieces references contained many a nuance not here noted, and the debates over the unities quickly tangle into complex debates only just hinted here. Still, something to think about, further questions of authorship, originality, and property floating in the brain, how the unities ties into the mess (and how, indeed, they were attacked from quite different angles)… Always those questions.

WORKS REFERENCED

Butler, Samuel. “Upon Critics Who Judge of Modern Plays Precisely by the Rules of the Ancients.” 1678. Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Ed. Bernard F. Dukore. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974. 339-41.

Dukore, Bernard F. “Restoration and Eighteenth-Century England.” Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Ed. Bernard F. Dukore. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974. 315-6.

Farquhar, George. “A Discourse upon Comedy in Reference to the English Stage.” 1702. Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Ed. Bernard F. Dukore. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974. 376-85.

Rothstein, Eric. George Farquhar. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967.

Young, Edward. “Conjectures on Original Composition.” Pub. 1759. Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. Wadsworth Publishing, 1992. 338-347.