omances
and other stories come under it with ease. Where, for instance, is the
struggle in the _Agamemnon_? There is no more struggle between
Clytemnestra and Agamemnon than there is between the spider and the fly
who walks into his net. There is not even a struggle in Clytemnestra's
mind. Agamemnon's doom is sealed from the outset, and she merely carries
out a pre-arranged plot. There is contest indeed in the succeeding plays
of the trilogy; but it will scarcely be argued that the _Agamemnon_,
taken alone, is not a great drama. Even the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles,
though it may at first sight seem a typical instance of a struggle
against Destiny, does not really come under the definition. Oedipus, in
fact, does not struggle at all. His struggles, in so far as that word
can be applied to his misguided efforts to escape from the toils of
fate, are all things of the past; in the actual course of the tragedy he
simply writhes under one revelation after another of bygone error and
unwitting crime. It would be a mere play upon words to recognize as a
dramatic "struggle" the writhing of a worm on a hook. And does not this
description apply very closely to the part played by another great
protagonist--Othello to wit? There is no struggle, no conflict, between
him and Iago. It is Iago alone who exerts any will; neither Othello nor
Desdemona makes the smallest fight. From the moment when Iago sets his
machination to work, they are like people sliding down an ice-slope to
an inevitable abyss. Where is the conflict in _As You Like It_? No one,
surely, will pretend that any part of the interest or charm of the play
arises from the struggle between the banished Duke and the Usurper, or
between Orlando and Oliver. There is not even the conflict, if so it can
be called, which nominally brings so many hundreds of plays under the
Brunetiere canon--the conflict between an eager lover and a more or less
reluctant maid. Or take, again, Ibsen's _Ghosts_--in what valid sense
can it be said that that tragedy shows us will struggling against
obstacles? Oswald, doubtless, wishes to live, and his mother desires
that he should live; but this mere will for life cannot be the
differentia that makes of _Ghosts_ a drama. If the reluctant descent of
the "downward path to death" constituted drama, then Tolstoy's _Death of
Ivan Ilytch_ would be one of the greatest dramas ever written--which it
certainly is not. Yet again, if we want to see will struggling aga