Bentley Discusses Appeal of Melodrama

Eric Bentley tried to break down the current "prejudice against melodrama" as he resumed his Charles Eliot Norton lectures last night.

Though melodrama is accused of exaggerating emotions, he said, it is really the "naturalism of the dream world" "We are all ham actors in our dreams, and melodrama is not an exaggeration of dreams, but an imitation of them."

Attacking modern critics who favor an ironic tone, he said that "ours is the most thin-lipped, thin blooded culture of the century. Dry irony has risen to the point where a minor writer like Laforgue is favored over Victor Hugo."

Nonetheless, "there is not one innovator in drama of the 20th century who is not trying to get away from naturalism and move toward melodrama."

Bentley saw two major emotional appeals of melodrama--"pity of the hero and fear of the villain."

Since people identify themselves with a hero, he said, pity is really "feeling sorry for oneself." Accordingly, he entitled one section of his speech "In praise of Self-Pity." "We don't lament in English," he said, and the phrase "O woe is me" is eliminated from translations of Greek dramas. 'But if we have dismissed self-pity from daily life, it remains in our night life. We still weep in our dreams."

Fear Is Stronger Appeal

Pity is the "weaker side" of the appeal of melodrama, Bentley said; the stronger side is fear. Melodrama plays up irrational fear, which includes superstition, religion, and neurosis, more than "common sense fear--the fear of slipping on the ice or falling off a cliff."

Fear aroused by melodrama is "paranoid." It is the feeling that "all things living and dead are combining to persecute us." "Victorian melodramatic novelists made use of bad weather, but to heighten the audience's fear the playwright must substitute outrageous coincidence."

The audience will allow a playwright just enough "outrageous coincidence" to "sharpen the outline" of a play, Bentley said. They will permit him to exaggerate "about 10 per cent--after all, he is an artist."

Melodrama's appeal to fear, however, is essentially "childish," Bentley concluded. "The melodramatic vision is good up to a point," he said, "and that point is childhood." Nor can melodrama be separated entirely from tragedy. "There is melodrama in every tragedy, just as there is a child in every man."