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

lxxv] Early Plays: Mālatī-Mādhava
in a play proper.¹ Taken as a whole the play may unhesitatingly be
pronounced to be, both in substance and in form, a decided advance over
the Mahāvīra-charita. It was written with the distinct purpose of avoiding
some of the faults of his earlier work (see M. M. i. 8), and its technique is
much more conscious and deliberate.
37. Defects of the Mālatī-Mādhava.—We have already commented
upon the defects in the structure of the plot. In a word the play
may be said to give us a particularly vivid form of story-telling, with
a number of conscious critical approaches to dramatic technique. What
the poet needs now is practice and, as a natural result of it, a toning down
of the youthful exuberances that still mar the play. Thus we find here
a constant tendency to exaggerate, to over-emphasize so as to drive a thing
home, and this cannot have been wholly the result of the dullness, the tardy
responsiveness, of his audience; a part of it at least must be charged to the
poet's lack of restraint. He gives us dozens of long descriptions, full of
lengthy compounds and mouth-filling phrases, where his delight in words
as words is quite evident. It may be that his audience also shared his
delight, and if only the passage as a whole conveyed an emotional mood and
if that mood was adequately interpreted in suitable action, they did not
care what the passage really meant. We may also note that the compounds
though long are not usually involved, so that on the whole it is fairly
smooth sailing.
Another characteristic defect of the play is its sentimentality. In the
first act, for instance, Mādhava's love seems to be a purely intellectual
affair. He loves being in love and talking about his love; and throughout
the play he seems to be intent on showing how ‘we that are true lovers’²
love and run into risks and get separated and weep and even commit
suicide à la mode de Kāma-śāstra or some other Śāstra. The long Prākrit
descriptions (iii. 12⁸⁻⁴³, vii. 0⁷⁹⁻⁹¹, vii. 1²⁰⁻⁴⁷, and elsewhere) might just as well
have been, like the love-scene in act viii, taken bodily over from some
ancient treatise;³ and it is quite conceivable, seeing that the descriptions
are in the vernacular, that they were expressly meant for the ‘groundlings’
who perhaps had a special relish for such topics; and in that case the long

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¹ We must, however, remember that such
descriptions have a value and a purpose,
especially if the stage-properties be
meagre. To me Hamlet's '’Tis now the
very witching time of night' (iii. 2. 406 ff.)
is more blood-curdling than all the stage-
effects that electricity and modern science
can produce. For a detailed statement
as to the stage-conditions in Ancient
India, see appendix 11.
² As You Like It, ii. 4. 55.
³ Such as that of Aṅgiras which Bhavabhūti
quotes in M. M. ii. 2¹⁵. Vātsyāyana’s
Kāma-sūtra gives the quoted passage as
an anonymous view in iii. 1 (Durgāpra-
sāda's ed., p. 194). We have already
(§ 31) commented upon the poet’s fond-
ness for displaying his learning.