महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

lxxiii] Early Plays : Mālatī-Mādhava
been inserted later into the M. M. But we must remember that much
of the talk of love and grief in the M. M. is purely conventional, and it
need not surprise us if the stanza after all did originally belong to it.
Compare in this connexion M. M. act i, stanza 34ᶜ, where the hero talks of
the moon, when it is full day.
35. Technique of the Mālatī-Mādhava.—From the preceding analysis
of the plot it is clear that in sheer inventiveness of incidents Bhavabhūti
has now attained considerable power, although he does not quite realize
that a mere string of incidents, however exciting or dramatic, does not
necessarily lead to a climax nor give a real unity of plot. Secondly,
the poet recognizes the value of suspense, but it is the sort of suspense
which results from an incipient fatalism. Neither in the situation, nor in
the characters, nor again in the background on which they are thrown in
the early part of the play, is there a foreshadowing of the final dénouement
as a thing inevitable or even antecedently probable.
In defence it may be urged that, after all, chances do occur in the world
as it is constituted, and that the dramatist has really no right to rule
chance entirely out of his creation and make the latter a rational system
conformable to the demands of his own philosophy. Consider, for instance,
Shakespeare's Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. It is not antecedently necessary
for the dénouement of these plays that Ophelia should die, or that Friar
John be ‘stay'd by accident’ and not deliver the letter. Laertes might
just as well have avenged the death of his father without Ophelia's
drowning, and the Capulets and the Montagues might just as well have
been induced to join hands and merge old feuds at the wedding of their
children as at their funeral. But these irrational accidents came to
Shakespeare as parts of the story proper, and the audience was willing
to accept the dramatist’s statement, just as we should accept that of
a traveller, provided it did not overtax our credulity.
More important it is to inquire if there is any dramatic justification
for these accidents: any attempt, in other words, to place us in that
frame of mind in which we instinctively seem to scent dangers long
before they come—scent dangers that do not come. Bhavabhūti has
done something of the kind. Compare, for instance, passages like iv. 4ᵇ,
iv. 7; v. 27³, v. 28; viii. 10, viii. 14; ix. 8ᵈ, ix. 39, ix. 49; x. 13; &c. Here
the poet seems to be purposely dwelling on the fickleness of Fortune, the
instability of all mundane existence. This gives us the necessary mood.
Stanza viii. 10 is particularly significant in this connexion.
36. Mālatī-Mādhava : its advance over the Mahāvīra-charita.—We
found (see § 31) the Mahāvīra-charita weak in characterization. In the
k [H.O.S. 21]