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.