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7
Energy of a System
CHAPTER OUTLINE

7.1 Systems and Environments


7.2 Work Done by a Constant Force
7.3 The Scalar Product of Two Vectors
7.4 Work Done by a Varying Force
7.5 Kinetic Energy and the Work-Kinetic Energy Theorem
7.6 Potential Energy of a System
7.7 Conservative and Nonconservative Forces
7.8 Relationship Between Conservative Forces and Potential Energy
7.9 Energy Diagrams and Equilibrium of a System

* An asterisk indicates a question or problem new to this edition.

ANSWERS TO OBJECTIVE QUESTIONS

OQ7.1 Answer (c). Assuming that the cabinet has negligible speed during the
operation, all of the work Alex does is used in increasing the
gravitational potential energy of the cabinet-Earth system. However, in
addition to increasing the gravitational potential energy of the cabinet-
Earth system by the same amount as Alex did, John must do work
overcoming the friction between the cabinet and ramp. This means
that the total work done by John is greater than that done by Alex.
OQ7.2 Answer (d). The work–energy theorem states that Wnet = ΔK = K f − K i .
1 2 1 2
Thus, if Wnet = 0, then K f − K i or
mv f − mvi , which leads to the
2 2
conclusion that the speed is unchanged (vf = vi). The velocity of the
particle involves both magnitude (speed) and direction. The work–
energy theorem shows that the magnitude or speed is unchanged

333
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
334 Energy of a System

when Wnet = 0, but makes no statement about the direction of the


velocity.
OQ7.3 Answer (a). The work done on the wheelbarrow by the worker is
W = (F cos θ )Δx = (50 N)(5.0 m) = +250 J
OQ7.4 Answer (c). The system consisting of the cart’s fixed, initial kinetic
energy is the mechanical energy that can be transformed due to friction
from the surface. Therefore, the loss of mechanical energy is
ΔEmech = − f k d = − ( 6 N )( 0.06 m ) = 0.36 J. This product must remain the
same in all cases. For the cart rolling through gravel, −(9 N)(d) = 0.36 J
tells us d = 4 cm.
OQ7.5 The answer is a > b = e > d > c. Each dot product has magnitude
(1)·(1)·cos θ, where θ is the angle between the two factors. Thus for (a)
we have cos 0 = 1. For (b) and (e), cos 45º = 0.707. For (c), cos 180º = −1.
For (d), cos 90º = 0.
OQ7.6 Answer (c). The net work needed to accelerate the object from v = 0 to
v is
1 1 1
W1 = KE1 f − KE1i = mv 2 − m(0)2 = mv 2
2 2 2
The work required to accelerate the object from speed v to speed 2v is
1 1
W2 = KE2 f − KE2i = m(2v)2 − mv 2
2 2
1 ⎛1 ⎞
= m ( 4v 2 − v 2 ) = 3 ⎜ mv 2 ⎟ = 3W1
2 ⎝2 ⎠
OQ7.7 Answer (e). As the block falls freely, only the conservative
gravitational force acts on it. Therefore, mechanical energy is
conserved, or KEf + PEf = KEi + PEi. Assuming that the block is released
from rest (KEi = 0), and taking y = 0 at ground level (PEf = 0), we have
that

1 v 2f
KEf = PEi or mv 2f = mgy and yi =
2 2g
Thus, to double the final speed, it is necessary to increase the initial
height by a factor of four.
OQ7.8 (i) Answer (b). Tension is perpendicular to the motion. (ii) Answer (c).
Air resistance is opposite to the motion.
OQ7.9 Answer (e). Kinetic energy is proportional to mass.

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 335

OQ7.10 (i) Answers (c) and (e). The force of block on spring is equal in
magnitude and opposite to the force of spring on block.
(ii) Answers (c) and (e). The spring tension exerts equal-magnitude
forces toward the center of the spring on objects at both ends.
OQ7.11 Answer (a). Kinetic energy is proportional to squared speed. Doubling
the speed makes an object’s kinetic energy four times larger.
OQ7.12 Answer (b). Since the rollers on the ramp used by David were
frictionless, he did not do any work overcoming nonconservative
forces as he slid the block up the ramp. Neglecting any change in
kinetic energy of the block (either because the speed was constant or
was essentially zero during the lifting process), the work done by
either Mark or David equals the increase in the gravitational potential
energy of the block-Earth system as the block is lifted from the ground
to the truck bed. Because they lift identical blocks through the same
vertical distance, they do equal amounts of work.
OQ7.13 (i) Answer: a = b = c = d. The gravitational acceleration is quite
precisely constant at locations separated by much less than the radius
of the planet.
(ii) Answer: c = d > a = b. The mass but not the elevation affects the
gravitational force.
(iii) Answer: c > b = d > a. Gravitational potential energy of the object-
Earth system is proportional to mass times height.
1
OQ7.14 Answer (d). 4.00 J = k(0.100 m)2 . Therefore, k = 800 N/m and to
2
stretch the spring to 0.200 m requires extra work
1
ΔW = (800)(0.200)2 − 4.00 J = 12.0 J
2
OQ7.15 Answer (a). The system consisting of the cart’s fixed, initial kinetic
energy is the mechanical energy that can be transformed due to friction
from the surface. Therefore, the loss of mechanical energy is
ΔEmech = − f k d = − ( 6 N )( 0.06 m ) = 0.36 J. This product must remain the
same in all cases. For the cart rolling through gravel,
−(fk)(0.18 m) = 0.36 J tells us fk = 2 N.
OQ7.16 Answer (c). The ice cube is in neutral equilibrium. Its zero acceleration
is evidence for equilibrium.

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
336 Energy of a System

ANSWERS TO CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS

CQ7.1 Yes. The floor of a rising elevator does work on a passenger. A normal
force exerted by a stationary solid surface does no work.
CQ7.2 Yes. Object 1 exerts some forward force on object 2 as they move
through the same displacement. By Newton’s third law, object 2 exerts
an equal-size force in the opposite direction on object 1. In
W = FΔr cosθ , the factors F and Δr are the same, and θ differs by 180º,
so object 2 does −15.0 J of work on object 1. The energy transfer is
15 J from object 1 to object 2, which can be counted as a change in
energy of −15 J for object 1 and a change in energy of +15 J for object 2.
CQ7.3 It is sometimes true. If the object is a particle initially at rest, the net
work done on the object is equal to its final kinetic energy. If the object
is not a particle, the work could go into (or come out of) some other
form of energy. If the object is initially moving, its initial kinetic energy
must be added to the total work to find the final kinetic energy.
CQ7.4 The scalar product of two vectors is positive if the angle between them
is between 0° and 90°, including 0°. The scalar product is negative
when 90° < θ ≤ 180°.
CQ7.5 No. Kinetic energy is always positive. Mass and squared speed are
both positive.
CQ7.6 Work is only done in accelerating the ball from rest. The work is done
over the effective length of the pitcher’s arm—the distance his hand
moves through windup and until release. He extends this distance by
taking a step forward.
CQ7.7 (a) Positive work is done by the chicken on the dirt.
(b) The person does no work on anything in the environment.
Perhaps some extra chemical energy goes through being energy
transmitted electrically and is converted into internal energy in his
brain; but it would be very hard to quantify “extra.”
(c) Positive work is done on the bucket.
(d) Negative work is done on the bucket.
(e) Negative work is done on the person’s torso.
CQ7.8 (a) Not necessarily. It does if it makes the object’s speed change, but
not if it only makes the direction of the velocity change.
(b) Yes, according to Newton’s second law.
CQ7.9 The gravitational energy of the key-Earth system is lowest when the
key is on the floor letter-side-down. The average height of particles in

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 337

the key is lowest in that configuration. As described by F = −dU/dx, a


force pushes the key downhill in potential energy toward the bottom
of a graph of potential energy versus orientation angle. Friction
removes mechanical energy from the key-Earth system, tending to
leave the key in its minimum-potential energy configuration.
CQ7.10 There is no violation. Choose the book as the system. You did positive
work (average force and displacement are in same direction) and the
Earth did negative work (average force and displacement are in
opposite directions) on the book. The average force you exerted just
counterbalanced the weight of the book. The total work on the book is
zero, and is equal to its overall change in kinetic energy.
CQ7.11 k′ = 2k. Think of the original spring as being composed of two half-
springs. The same force F that stretches the whole spring by x stretches
each of the half-springs by x/2; therefore, the spring constant for each
of the half-springs is k′ = [F/(x/2)] = 2(F/x) = 2k.
CQ7.12 A graph of potential energy versus position is a straight horizontal line
for a particle in neutral equilibrium. The graph represents a constant
function.
CQ7.13 Yes. As you ride an express subway train, a backpack at your feet has
no kinetic energy as measured by you since, according to you, the
backpack is not moving. In the frame of reference of someone on the
side of the tracks as the train rolls by, the backpack is moving and has
mass, and thus has kinetic energy.
CQ7.14 Force of tension on a ball moving in a circle on the end of a string.
Normal force and gravitational force on an object at rest or moving
across a level floor.

SOLUTIONS TO END-OF-CHAPTER PROBLEMS

Section 7.2 Work Done by a Constant Force  


P7.1 (a) The 35-N force applied by the shopper makes a 25° angle with the
displacement of the cart (horizontal). The work done on the cart
by the shopper is then
Wshopper = ( F cosθ ) Δx = ( 35.0 N )( 50.0 m ) cos 25.0°

= 1.59 × 103 J

(b) The force exerted by the shopper is now completely horizontal


and will be equal to the friction force, since the cart stays at a
constant velocity. In part (a), the shopper’s force had a downward
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
338 Energy of a System

vertical component, increasing the normal force on the cart, and


thereby the friction force. Because there is no vertical component
here, the friction force will be less, and the the force is smaller
than before.
(c) Since the horizontal component of the force is less in part (b), the
work performed by the shopper on the cart over the same 50.0-m
distance is the same as in part (b).
P7.2 (a) The work done on the raindrop by the gravitational force is given
by

W = mgh = ( 3.35 × 10−5 kg ) ( 9.80 m/s 2 ) ( 100 m ) = 3.28 × 10−2 J

(b) Since the raindrop is falling at constant velocity, all forces acting
on the drop must be in balance, and R = mg, so

Wair resistance = −3.28 × 10−2 J

P7.3 (a) The work done by a constant force is given by


W = Fd cos θ
where θ is the angle between the force and the displacement of
the object. In this case, F = –mg and θ = 180°, giving
W = (281.5 kg)(9.80 m/s2)[(17.1 cm)(1 m/102 cm)] = 472 J

(b) If the object moved upward at constant speed, the net force acting
on it was zero. Therefore, the magnitude of the upward force
applied by the lifter must have been equal to the weight of the
object:
F = mg = (281.5 kg)(9.80 m/s2) = 2.76 × 103 N = 2.76 kN

P7.4 Assuming the mass is lifted at constant velocity, the total upward force
exerted by the two men equals the weight of the mass: Ftotal = mg =
(653.2 kg)(9.80 m/s2) = 6.40 × 103 N. They exert this upward force
through a total upward displacement of 96 inches (4 inches per lift for
each of 24 lifts). The total work would then be

Wtotal = (6.40 × 103 N)[(96 in)(0.025 4 m/1 in)] = 1.56 × 10 4 J

P7.5 We apply the definition of work by a constant force in the first three
parts, but then in the fourth part we add up the answers. The total
(net) work is the sum of the amounts of work done by the individual
forces, and is the work done by the total (net) force. This identification
is not represented by an equation in the chapter text, but is something

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 339

you know by thinking about it, without relying on an equation in a list.


The definition of work by a constant force is W = FΔr cosθ .
(a) The applied force does work given by
W = FΔr cosθ = ( 16.0 N )( 2.20 m ) cos 25.0° = 31.9 J

(b), (c) The normal force and the weight are both at 90° to the
displacement in any time interval. Both do 0 work.

(d) ∑ W = 31.9 J + 0 + 0 = 31.9 J


P7.6 METHOD ONE
Let φ represent the instantaneous angle the rope
makes with the vertical as it is swinging up from
φi = 0 to φf = 60º. In an incremental bit of motion
from angle φ to φ + dφ, the definition of radian
measure implies that Δr = ( 12.0 m ) dφ . The angle
θ between the incremental displacement and the ANS. FIG. P7.6
force of gravity is θ = 90º + φ. Then
cos θ = cos (90º + φ) = –sin φ
The work done by the gravitational force on Spiderman is
f φ =60°
W = ∫ F cosθ dr = ∫ mg(− sin φ )(12.0 m)dφ
i φ =0
60°
= −mg(12.0 m) ∫ sin φ dφ
0

= (−80.0 kg) ( 9.80 m/s 2 ) (12 m)(− cosφ ) 0


60°

= (−784 N)(12.0 m)(− cos60° + 1) = −4.70 × 103 J

METHOD TWO
The force of gravity on Spiderman is mg = (80 kg)(9.8 m/s2) = 784 N
down. Only his vertical displacement contributes to the work gravity
does. His original y coordinate below the tree limb is –12 m. His final y
coordinate is (–12.0 m) cos 60.0º = –6.00 m. His change in elevation is
–6.00 m – (–12.0 m). The work done by gravity is
W = FΔr cosθ = ( 784 N ) ( 6.00 m ) cos180° = −4.70 kJ

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
340 Energy of a System

Section 7.3 The Scalar Product of Two Vectors  


 
P7.7 ( )(
A ⋅ B = Ax î + Ay ĵ + Az k̂ ⋅ Bx î + By ĵ + Bz k̂ )
 
( ) ( ) ( )
A ⋅ B = Ax Bx î ⋅ î + Ax By î ⋅ ĵ + Ax Bz î ⋅ k̂

+ A B ( ĵ ⋅ î ) + A B ( ĵ ⋅ ĵ) + A B ( ĵ ⋅ k̂ )
y x y y y z

+ A B ( k̂ ⋅ î ) + A B ( k̂ ⋅ ĵ) + A B ( k̂ ⋅ k̂ )
z x z y z z

And since î ⋅ î = ĵ ⋅ ĵ = k̂ ⋅ k̂ = 1 and î ⋅ ĵ = î ⋅ k̂ = ĵ ⋅ k̂ = 0,


 
A ⋅ B = Ax Bx + Ay By + Az Bz

P7.8 A = 5.00; B = 9.00; θ = 50.0º


 
A ⋅ B = ABcos θ = (5.00)(9.00)cos 50.0° = 28.9
 
P7.9 ( ) (
A − B = 3.00î + ĵ − k̂ − − î + 2.00 ĵ + 5.00k̂ = 4.00î − ĵ − 6.00k̂ )
  
( ) ( )(
C ⋅ A − B = 2.00 ĵ − 3.00k̂ ⋅ 4.00î − ĵ − 6.00k̂ = 0 + (−2.00) + (+18.0) )
= 16.0

P7.10 We must first find the angle between the two


vectors. It is
θ = (360º – 132º) – (118º + 90.0º)
= 20.0º
Then
 
F ⋅ r = Fr cosθ
= (32.8 N)(0.173 m)cos 20.0° ANS. FIG. P7.10
 
or F ⋅ r = 5.33 N ⋅ m = 5.33 J

P7.11 (a) We use the mathematical representation of the definition of work.


 
W = F ⋅ Δr = Fx x + Fy y = (6.00)(3.00) N ⋅ m + (−2.00)(1.00) N ⋅ m
= 16.0 J
 
⎛ F ⋅ Δr ⎞
−1
(b) θ = cos ⎜
⎝ FΔr ⎟⎠
16 N ⋅ m
= cos −1
(6.00 N) + (−2.00 N)2 ⋅ (3.00 m)2 + (1.00 m)2
2

= 36.9°

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 341


P7.12 (a) A = 3.00î − 2.00 ĵ

B = 4.00î − 4.00 ĵ
 

−1 A ⋅ B
⎞ −1 ⎛ 12.0 + 8.00 ⎞
θ = cos ⎜ = cos ⎜⎝ ⎟ = 11.3°
⎝ AB ⎟⎠ 13.0 ⋅ 32.0 ⎠

(b) A = −2.00î + 4.00 ĵ

B = 3.00î − 4.00 ĵ + 2.00k̂
 
⎛ A ⋅ B⎞ −6.00 − 16.0
cos θ = ⎜ ⎟ = → θ = 156º
⎝ AB ⎠ 20.0 ⋅ 29.0

(c) A = î − 2.00 ĵ + 2.00k̂

B = 3.00 ĵ + 4.00k̂
 

−1 A ⋅ B
⎞ ⎛ −6.00 + 8.00 ⎞
θ = cos ⎜ = cos −1 ⎜ = 82.3°
⎝ AB ⎠ ⎟ ⎝ 9.00 ⋅ 25.0 ⎟⎠
 
P7.13 Let θ represent the angle between A and B . Turning by 25.0º makes
 
the dot product larger, so the angle between C and B must be smaller.
We call it θ − 25.0º. Then we have
5A cos θ = 30 and 5A cos (θ − 25.0º) = 35
Then
A cos θ = 6 and A (cos θ cos 25.0º + sin θ sin 25.0º) = 7
Dividing,
cos 25.0º + tan θ sin 25.0º = 7/6
or tan θ = (7/6 − cos 25.0º)/sin 25.0º = 0.616
Which gives θ = 31.6º. Then the direction angle of A is
60.0º − 31.6º = 28.4º
Substituting back,

A cos 31.6º = 6 so A = 7.05 m at 28.4°

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
342 Energy of a System

Section 7.4 Work Done by a Varying Force  


f
P7.14 W = ∫ Fdx = area under curve from xi to xf
i

(a) xi = 0 and xf = 800 m


W0→8 = area of triangle ABC

⎛ 1⎞
= ⎜ ⎟ AC × height
⎝ 2⎠
ANS. FIG. P7.14
⎛ 1⎞
W0→8 = ⎜ ⎟ × 8.00 m × 6.00 N
⎝ 2⎠
= 24.0 J

(b) xi = 8.00 m and xf = 10.0 m

⎛ 1⎞
W8→10 = area of ΔCDE = ⎜ ⎟ CE × height,
⎝ 2⎠

⎛ 1⎞
W8→10 = ⎜ ⎟ × (2.00 m) × (−3.00 N) = −3.00 J
⎝ 2⎠

(c) W0→10 = W0→8 + W0→10 = 24.0 + ( −3.00 ) = 21.0 J

P7.15 We use the graphical representation of the


definition of work. W equals the area under the
force-displacement curve. This definition is still
written W = ∫ Fx dx but it is computed
geometrically by identifying triangles and
rectangles on the graph.
(a) For the region 0 ≤ x ≤ 5.00 m, ANS. FIG. P7.15

(3.00 N)(5.00 m)
W= = 7.50 J
2
(b) For the region 5.00 ≤ x ≤ 10.0, W = ( 3.00 N ) ( 5.00 m ) = 15.0 J

(3.00 N)(5.00 m)
(c) For the region 10.00 ≤ x ≤ 15.0, W = = 7.50 J
2
(d) For the region 0 ≤ x ≤ 15.0, W = (7.50 + 7.50 + 15.0) J = 30.0 J

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 343

P7.16 ∑ Fx = max : kx = ma
ma
k=
x
(4.70 × 10−3 kg) (0.800) (9.80 m/s 2 )
=
0.500 × 10−2 m
ANS. FIG. P7.16
= 7.37 N/m

P7.17 When the load of mass M = 4.00 kg is hanging on the spring in


equilibrium, the upward force exerted by the spring on the load is
equal in magnitude to the downward force that the Earth exerts on the
load, given by w = Mg. Then we can write Hooke’s law as Mg = +kx.
The spring constant, force constant, stiffness constant, or Hooke’s-law
constant of the spring is given by
F Mg (4.00 kg)(9.80 m/s 2 )
k= = = −2
= 1.57 × 103 N/m
y y 2.50 × 10 m
(a) For the 1.50-kg mass,
mg (1.50 kg)(9.80 m/s 2 )
y= = = 0.009 38 m = 0.938 cm
k 1.57 × 103 N/m
1 2 1
ky = ( 1.57 × 103 N m ) ( 4.00 × 10−2 m ) = 1.25 J
2
(b) Work =
2 2
P7.18 In F = –kx, F refers to the size of the force that the spring exerts on each
end. It pulls down on the doorframe in part (a) in just as real a sense as
it pulls on the second person in part (b).
(a) Consider the upward force exerted by the bottom end of the
spring, which undergoes a downward displacement that we
count as negative:
k = –F/x = – (7.50 kg)(9.80 m/s2)/(–0.415 m + 0.350 m)
= –73.5 N/(–0.065 m) = 1.13 kN/m

(b) Consider the end of the spring on the right, which exerts a force
to the left:
x = – F/k = –(–190 N)/(1130 N/m) = 0.168 m
The length of the spring is then
0.350 m + 0.168 m = 0.518 m = 51.8 cm

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
344 Energy of a System

P7.19 (a) Spring constant is given by F = kx:


F 230 N
k= = = 575 N/m
x 0.400 m
⎛ 230 N − 0 ⎞
(b) Work = Favg x = ⎜ ⎟⎠ (0.400 m) = 46.0 J
⎝ 2
P7.20 The same force makes both light springs stretch.
(a) The hanging mass moves down by
mg mg ⎛ 1 1⎞
x = x1 + x2 = + = mg ⎜ + ⎟
k1 k2 ⎝ k1 k 2 ⎠
⎛ 1 1 ⎞
= ( 1.5 kg ) ( 9.8 m/s 2 ) ⎜ +
⎝ 1 200 N/m 1 800 N/m ⎟⎠
= 2.04 × 10−2 m

(b) We define the effective spring constant as


−1
F mg ⎛ 1 1⎞
k= = =⎜ + ⎟
x mg ( 1 k1 + 1 k2 ) ⎝ k1 k2 ⎠
−1
⎛ 1 1 ⎞
=⎜ + = 720 N/m
⎝ 1 200 N/m 1 800 N/m ⎟⎠
P7.21 (a) The force mg is the tension in each of the springs. The bottom of
the upper (first) spring moves down by distance
x1 = |F|/k1 = mg/k1. The top of the second spring moves down
by this distance, and the second spring also stretches by
x2 = mg/k2. The bottom of the lower spring then moves down by
distance

mg mg ⎛ 1 1⎞
xtotal = x1 + x2 = + = mg ⎜ + ⎟
k1 k2 ⎝ k1 k 2 ⎠

(b) From the last equation we have

x1 + x2
mg =
1 1
+
k1 k 2
This is of the form
⎛ 1 ⎞
|F|= ⎜ ⎟ (x1 + x2 )
⎝ 1/ k1 + 1/ k2 ⎠

© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 7 345

The downward displacement is opposite in direction to the


upward force the springs exert on the load, so we may write
F = –keff xtotal, with the effective spring constant for the pair of
springs given by
1
keff =
1/ k1 + 1/ k2

F ⎤ N kg ⋅ m/s 2 kg
P7.22 [ k ] = ⎡⎢ ⎥ = = = 2
⎣x⎦ m m s

P7.23 (a) If the weight of the first tray stretches all four springs
by a distance equal to the thickness of the tray, then the
proportionality expressed by Hooke’s law guarantees
that each additional tray will have the same effect, so
that the top surface of the top tray can always have the
same elevation above the floor if springs with the right
spring constant are used.

(b) The weight of a tray is (0.580 kg)(9.8 m/s2) = 5.68 N. The force
1
(5.68 N) = 1.42 N should stretch one spring by 0.450 cm, so its
4
spring constant is
Fs 1.42 N
k= = = 316 N/m
x 0.004 5 m

(c) We did not need to know the length or width of the tray.

P7.24 The spring exerts on each block an outward force of


magnitude
Fs = kx = (3.85 N/m)(0.08 m) = 0.308 N

Take the +x direction to the right. For the light block on ANS. FIG.
the left, the vertical forces are given by P7.24
Fg = mg = (0.250 kg)(9.80 m/s2) = 2.45 N
and ∑ Fy = 0
so n − 2.45 N = 0 → n = 2.45 N
Similarly, for the heavier block,
n = Fg = (0.500 kg)(9.80 m/s2) = 4.90 N

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346 Energy of a System

(a) For the block on the left,


∑ Fx = max : –0.308 N = (0.250 kg)a

a = −1.23 m/s 2

For the heavier block,


+0.308 N = (0.500 kg)a

a = 0.616 m/s 2

(b) For the block on the left, fk = µkn = 0.100(2.45 N) = 0.245 N.

∑ Fx = max
–0.308 N + 0.245 N = (0.250 kg)a
a = −0.252 m/s 2 if the force of static friction is not too large .

For the block on the right, fk = µkn = 0.490 N. The maximum force
of static friction would be larger, so no motion would begin and
the acceleration is zero .
(c) Left block: fk = 0.462(2.45 N) = 1.13 N. The maximum static friction
force would be larger, so the spring force would produce no
motion of this block or of the right-hand block, which could feel
even more friction force. For both, a = 0 .
P7.25 (a) The radius to the object makes angle θ
with the horizontal. Taking the x axis in
the direction of motion tangent to the
cylinder, the object’s weight makes an
angle θ with the –x axis. Then,
∑ Fx = max ANS. FIG. P7.25
F − mg cos θ = 0
F = mg cos θ

 f
(b) W = ∫ F ⋅ dr
i

We use radian measure to express the next bit of displacement as


dr = R dθ in terms of the next bit of angle moved through:
π 2
π 2
W = ∫ mg cos θ R dθ = mgR sin θ 0 = mgR(1 − 0) = mgR
0

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Chapter 7 347

P7.26 The force is given by Fx = (8x – 16) N.


(a) See ANS. FIG. P7.26 to the right.
−(2.00 m)(16.0 N) (1.00 m)(8.00 N)
(b) Wnet = +
2 2
= −12.0 J

ANS. FIG. P7.26

P7.27 (a)

F (N) L (mm) F (N) L (mm)

0.00 0.00 12.0 98.0

2.00 15.0 14.0 112

4.00 32.0 16.0 126

6.00 49.0 18.0 149

8.00 64.0 20.0 175

10.0 79.0 22.0 190

ANS FIG. P7.27(a)


(b) By least-squares fitting, its slope is 0.116 N/mm = 116 N/m .

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348 Energy of a System

(c) To draw the straight line we use all the points listed and also the
origin. If the coils of the spring touched each other, a bend or
nonlinearity could show up at the bottom end of the graph. If the
spring were stretched “too far,” a nonlinearity could show up at
the top end. But there is no visible evidence for a bend in the
graph near either end.
(d) In the equation F = kx, the spring constant k is the slope of the
F-versus-x graph.
k = 116 N/m

(e) F = kx = (116 N/m)(0.105 m) = 12.2 N

P7.28 (a) We find the work done by the gas on the bullet by integrating the
function given:
f 

W = ∫ F ⋅ dr
i

0.600 m
W= ∫ (15 000 N + 10 000x N/m − 25 000x 2
N/m 2 )
0

dx cos 0°
3 0.600 m
10 000x 2 25 000x
W = 15 000x + −
2 3 0

W = 9.00 kJ + 1.80 kJ − 1.80 kJ = 9.00 kJ

(b) Similarly,
W = (15.0 kN)(1.00 m)
(10.0 kN/m) ( 1.00 m ) ( 25.0 kN/m ) (1.00 m)
2 2 3

+ −
2 3
W = 11.67 kJ = 11.7 kJ

11.7 kJ − 9.00 kJ
(c) × 100% = 29.6%
9.00 kJ
The work is greater by 29.6%.
f 
P7.29
 5m
(
W = ∫ F ⋅ d r = ∫ 4x î + 3y ĵ N ⋅ dx î
i 0
)
5m
5m
x2
∫ (4 N m)xdx + 0 = (4 N/m) = 50.0 J
0 2 0

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Chapter 7 349

P7.30 We read the coordinates of the two specified points from the graph as
a = (5 cm, –2 N) and b = (25 cm, 8 N)
We can then write u as a function of v by first finding the slope of the
curve:
ub − ua 8 N − ( −2 N )
slope = = = 0.5 N/cm
vb − va 25 cm − 5 cm
The y intercept of the curve can be found from u = mv + b, where
m = 0.5 N/cm is the slope of the curve, and b is the y intercept.
Plugging in point a, we obtain
u = mv + b
−2 N = ( 0.5 N/cm )( 5 cm ) + b
b = −4.5 N
Then,
u = mv + b = ( 0.5 N/cm ) v − 4.5 N
(a) Integrating the function above, suppressing units, gives
b 25 25
∫a udv = ∫5 (0.5v − 4.5)dv = ⎡⎣ 0.5v /2 − 4.5v ⎤⎦ 5
2

= 0.25(625 − 25) − 4.5(25 − 5)


= 150 − 90 = 60 N ⋅ cm = 0.600 J

(b) Reversing the limits of integration just gives us the negative of the
quantity:
a
∫b udv = −0.600 J
(c) This is an entirely different integral. It is larger because all of the
area to be counted up is positive (to the right of v = 0) instead of
partly negative (below u = 0).
b 8 8
∫a v du = ∫−2 (2u + 9)du = ⎡⎣ 2u /2 + 9u ⎤⎦ −2
2

= 64 − (−2)2 + 9(8 + 2)
= 60 + 90 = 150 N ⋅ cm = 1.50 J

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350 Energy of a System

Section 7.5 Kinetic Energy and the


Work-Kinetic Energy Theorem
P7.31

(
v i = 6.00î − 1.00 ĵ m/s 2 )
(a) vi = vix2 + viy2 = 37.0 m/s

1 1
Ki = mvi2 = (3.00 kg) ( 37.0 m 2 /s 2 ) = 55.5 J
2 2

(b) v f = 8.00î + 4.00 ĵ
 
v 2f = v f ⋅ v f = 64.0 + 16.0 = 80.0 m 2 /s 2

ΔK = K f − K i =
1
2
(
m v 2f − vi2 =)3.00
2
(80.0) − 55.5 = 64.5 J

P7.32 (a) Since the applied force is horizontal, it is in the direction of the
displacement, giving θ = 0º. The work done by this force is then
WF0 = ( F0 cosθ ) Δx = F0 ( cos 0 ) Δx = F0 Δx

and
WF0 350 J
F0 = = = 29.2 N
Δx 12.0 m
(b) If the applied force is greater than 29.2 N, the crate would
accelerate in the direction of the force, so its
speed would increase with time.

(c) If the applied force is less than 29.2 N, the


crate would slow down and come to rest.
1
(0.600 kg) ( 2.00 m/s ) = 1.20 J
2
P7.33 (a) KA =
2
1 2K B (2)(7.50 J)
(b) mvB2 = K B : vB = = = 5.00 m/s
2 m 0.600 kg

1
(c) ∑ W = ΔK = K B − K A = m ( vB2 − vA2 ) = 7.50 J − 1.20 J = 6.30 J
2

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Chapter 7 351

1
P7.34 (a) ΔK = K f − K i = mv 2f − 0 = ∑ W = (area under curve from x = 0 to
2
x = 5.00 m)

2 ( area ) 2 ( 7.50 J )
vf = = = 1.94 m/s
m 4.00 kg
1
(b) ΔK = K f − K i = mv 2f − 0 = ∑ W = (area under curve from x = 0 to
2
x = 10.0 m)
2 ( area ) 2 ( 22.5 J )
vf = = = 3.35 m/s
m 4.00 kg
1
(c) ΔK = K f − K i = mv 2f − 0 = ∑ W = (area under curve from x = 0 to
2
x = 15.0 m)
2 ( area ) 2 ( 30.0 J )
vf = = = 3.87 m/s
m 4.00 kg
P7.35 Consider the work done on the pile driver from the time it starts from
rest until it comes to rest at the end of the fall. Let d = 5.00 m represent
the distance over which the driver falls freely, and h = 0.12 the distance
it moves the piling.
1 1
∑ W = ΔK: Wgravity + Wbeam = mv 2f − mvi2
2 2
so ( )
(mg)(h + d)cos 0° + F (d)cos180° = 0 − 0
Thus,
(mg)(h + d) (2 100 kg) ( 9.80 m/s ) (5.12 m)
2

F= =
d 0.120 m
= 8.78 × 105 N

The force on the pile driver is upward.

P7.36 (a) v f = 0.096 ( 3.00 × 108 m/s ) = 2.88 × 107 m/s


1 1
mv 2f = ( 9.11 × 10−31 kg ) ( 2.88 × 107 m/s ) = 3.78 × 10−16 J
2
Kf =
2 2
(b) K i + W = K f : 0 + FΔr cos θ = K f

F(0.028 m)cos 0° = 3.78 × 10−16 J

F = 1.35 × 10−14 N

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352 Energy of a System

∑ F = 1.35 × 10−14 N = 1.48 × 10+16 m/s 2


(c) ∑ F = ma: a= −31
m 9.11 × 10 kg

(d) vxf = vxi + axt: 2.88 × 107 m/s = 0 + ( 1.48 × 1016 m/s 2 ) t

t = 1.94 × 10−9 s

1
P7.37 (a) Ki + ∑ W = K f = mv 2f
2
1
0 + ∑W = (15.0 × 10−3 kg)(780 m/s)2 = 4.56 kJ
2
(b) As shown in part (a), the net work performed on the bullet is
4.56 kJ.

W 4.56 × 103 J
(c) F= = = 6.34 kN
Δr cos θ (0.720 m)cos 0°

v 2f − vi2 (780 m/s)2 − 0


(d) a= = = 422 km/s 2
2x f 2(0.720 m)

(e) ∑ F = ma = (15 × 10−3 kg)(422 × 103 m/s 2 ) = 6.34 kN


(f) The forces are the same. The two theories agree.

P7.38 (a) As the bullet moves the hero’s hand, work is done on the bullet to
decrease its kinetic energy. The average force is opposite to the
displacement of the bullet:
Wnet = Favg Δx cosθ = −Favg Δx = ΔK

1
ΔK 0−
2
( 7.80 × 10−3 kg ) ( 575 m/s )
2

Favg = =
−Δx −0.055 0 m

Favg = 2.34 × 10 4 N, opposite to the direction of motion

(b) If the average force is constant, the bullet will have a constant
acceleration and its average velocity while stopping is
v = (v f + vi ) / 2 . The time required to stop is then

Δx 2(Δx) 2(5.50 × 10−2 m)


Δt = = = = 1.91 × 10−4 s
v v f + vi 0 + 575 m/s

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
theatrical talent consists in the power of making your characters not only tell a
story by means of dialog but tell it in such skilfully devised form and order as shall,
within the limits of an ordinary theatrical representation, give rise to the greatest
amount of that peculiar kind of emotional effect the production of which is the one
great function of the theater.

This theatrical talent has to be exercised within the limits of the


theater as this exists at the time when the dramatist lives. The
principles of playmaking are eternal, no doubt, but the practices of
playmaking are modified by the constantly changing conditions of the
stage.
Pinero likens the art of the drama to the art of war, the permanent
principles of playmaking to strategy, and its variable principles to
tactics. Strategy is to-day what it was yesterday; and it was
succinctly defined during our Civil War by General Forrest, when he
said it consisted in “getting there first with the most men”—that is to
say, in gaining an advantageous position for yourself and putting the
enemy in a disadvantageous position. It is therefore unchanging in
its essential elements, Foch profiting by the example of Napoleon
and Cæsar, Hannibal and Alexander. But tactics are in incessant
modification, as the soldier has new implements put in his hands by
the inventions of the ages, gunpowder unhorsing the man in armor
and tanks taking the place of elephants. While the strategy of the
drama is constant, its tactics “are always changing,” so Pinero has
put it; and
every dramatist whose ambition it is to produce live plays is absolutely bound to
study carefully, and I may add respectfully—at any rate not contemptuously—the
conditions that hold good for his own age and generation.

The strategy of Shakspere is that of Sophocles, of Molière and of


Ibsen, even if the later men did not recognize their own obedience to
the laws which had governed the earlier. The tactics of Sophocles
were diametrically opposed to those of Shakspere, because the
Greek dramatist built his massive plays to conform to the conditions
of the immense open air theater of Athens with its extraordinarily
intelligent spectators, whereas the English dramatist had to adjust
his pieces, comic and tragic, to the bare platform of the half-timbered
London playhouse, with its gallants seated on the stage and its rude
and turbulent groundlings standing in the unroofed yard. So the
tactics of Molière and Ibsen are strangely unlike, the French author
fitting his comedies to a long, narrow theater, dimly lighted by
candles, with the courtiers accommodated on benches just behind
the curtain and with the well-to-do burghers of Paris making up the
bulk of the audience, while the stern Scandinavian found his profit in
the modern picture-frame stage, with its realistic sets and with its
spectators comfortably seated in front of the curtain. Each of the four
followed the methods of his own time and place; and each in turn
made the best of the theatrical conditions which confronted him. But
however much they may differ in practice, in tactics they worked in
accord with the same principles, and employed the same strategy.
Bronson Howard admitted that Aeschylus “taught the future world
the art of writing a play” but he “did not create the laws of dramatic
construction. Those laws exist in the passions and sympathies of the
human race.” A little later in the same address, Bronson Howard
declared that the laws of dramatic construction “bear about the same
relation to human character and human sympathies as the laws of
nature bear to the material universe.” In other words, the drama is
what it is, what it always has been, what it always will be, because
human nature is what it is and was and will be. And this brings us
back to the inexorable fact that the eternally dominating element in
the theater is the audience. “The dramatist,” so Bronson Howard
reminded us, “must remember that his work cannot, like that of the
novelist or the poet, pick out the hearts, here and there, that happen
to be in sympathy with its subject. He appeals to a thousand hearts
at the same moment; he has no choice in the matter; he must do
this.” That is to say, the drama is immitigably “a function of the
crowd,” as Mr. Walkley has aptly called it.
Finally, Bronson Howard pointed out that there is no great difficulty
in obeying the laws of dramatic construction, even if it may be
impossible to declare them with precision. “Be honest and sincere” in
using

your common sense in the study of your own and other people’s emotions.... The
public will be your jury. That public often condescends to be trifled with by mere
tricksters, but believe me, it is only a condescension, and very contemptuous. In
the long run, the public will judge you, and respect you, according to your artistic
sincerity.

What has here been quoted from the critical writings of the
dramatists may seem to some rather elementary; but it is perhaps all
the more valuable. As Diderot once said, “a man must have a deep
knowledge of any art or science before he is in possession of its
elements.”
(1920)
II
UNDRAMATIC CRITICISM
II
UNDRAMATIC CRITICISM

As criticism has to find its material in the work of the creators it is not
surprizing that the masters of the craft have appeared during periods
of abundant creation or shortly thereafter. Aristotle was not
separated by many years from Sophocles and Euripides. Boileau
was the most intimate friend of Molière; and Sainte-Beuve was the
contemporary of Hugo and Balzac, altho he did not greatly care for
either of them. Coleridge lived in an epoch of ample productivity; and
so did Matthew Arnold. Lessing was stimulated by Voltaire and
Diderot; and he prepared the way for Goethe and Schiller. And these
are only a few of the critics who have held their own by the side of
the creators.
But when the creative impulse relaxes, when there is no longer a
succession of masterpieces demanding appreciation, then is it that
the criticasters have their turn, the pigmies who promulgate edicts for
those who are still striving to attain the twin summits of Parnassus. It
was not in the rich abundance of Athens but in the thin sterility of
Alexandria that the laws of poetry were codified with Draconian
severity. It was not under Louis XIV but under Napoleon, when
French literature was dying of inanition, that Népomucène Lemercier
declared the twenty-five rules which the writer of tragedy must obey
and the twenty-two to which the writer of comedy must conform.
There was no living Latin drama when Horace penned his epistle
on poetry, and the theaters of Rome were given over to unliterary
spectacle. It is unlikely that Horace had ever had occasion to see a
worthy play worthily acted. No doubt he had read the works of the
great Greeks, but that could not disclose to him the full emotional
force of their dramas revealed only by actual performance. To judge
a play by reading it is like judging a picture by a photograph. The
greater the drama the more completely does it put forth its power
when it is made to live by the actor in the theater and before the
audience. As a result of Horace’s lack of experience as a spectator,
what he has to say about the principles of playmaking has little
validity. He is not exercising his own keen critical faculty; he is
merely echoing the opinions of Alexandrian criticasters. His counsel
to aspiring dramatists was not practical; it was academic in the worst
sense of the word. In fact, Horace was only going through the
motions of giving advice, since there were no aspiring dramatists in
Rome, as there were then no stages on which a play could be acted
and no company of actors to perform it.
A comparison of the ‘Poetics’ of Aristotle with the ‘Art of Poetry’ of
Horace is as amusing as it is profitable. Aristotle is the earliest and
the shrewdest of dramatic critics. Horace had no intimacy with the
theater. Horace is sketching from a lay-figure in a studio, whereas
Aristotle is drawing from the living model in the open air. When
Aristotle discusses the effect of an episode upon an audience, we
can be sure that he himself was once one of that audience, and that
his memory had retained the intonations and the gestures of the
actors as well as the unformulated response of the spectators to the
emotional appeal of the plot. Aristotle is as insistent in taking the
audience in account as Sarcey was; and his dramatic criticism is as
technical as Sarcey’s. Horace had never thrilled to a situation as it
slowly unfolded itself in the theater; and therefore what he has to say
about the principles of playmaking is more or less beside the mark. It
is hit or miss; it may be right or it may be wrong; it is supported by no
understanding of dramaturgy; it is undramatic criticism.
The theories which Horace took over second-hand from the
Alexandrian criticasters, the supersubtle Italians of the Renascence
took third-hand from him. They suffered, as Horace had suffered,
from the lack of a living dramatic literature in their own tongue. In the
pride of their newfound learning they looked with contempt upon the
unliterary types of drama then popular, the Sacred Representations
and the Comedy-of-Masks. They never suspected that in these
artless exhibitions there were the germs out of which a noble
dramatic literature might be evolved. They could not foresee that the
Elizabethans would develop their tragedy from the English Mystery-
Plays, which were no cruder than the Italian Sacred
Representations, and that in the ‘Étourdi’ Molière would lift into
literature the loose and lively Comedy-of-Masks. And because they
refused to do what Shakspere and Molière were to do, they left Italy
barren of drama for centuries. The most of the dramatic poems
which are catalogued in the histories of Italian literature were
unacted and unactable,—altho now and again one or another did
achieve performance by amateurs before an audience of dilettants.
So it is that the host of theorists of the theater in Renascence Italy
are undramatic critics, not because they lacked acuteness, but
because they knew nothing of the actual theater, the sole region
where drama can live, move and have its being. Only infrequently
does one of them,—Castelvetro, for example,—venture to give a
thought to the audience for whose delight a drama ought to be
prepared. As they had no acquaintance with any stage, except the
sporadic platform of the strolling acrobat-comedians whom they
despised, they had no concrete knowledge as a foundation for their
abstract speculation. They were working in a vacuum. And it is small
wonder that they complicated their concepts until they had
elaborated the Classicist doctrines of the Three Unities and of the
total separation of Comedy from Tragedy. The Classicist code was
so hampering to the free expansion of the drama that Corneille cried
out against its rigor, that Lope de Vega paid it lip-service but
disregarded it unhesitatingly, and that Shakspere never gave it a
thought—excepting only when he was writing his last play, the
‘Tempest.’

II

Horace’s mistake was in his adventuring himself beyond the


boundaries of his knowledge; and the blunder of the Renascence
critics was caused by their scornful disregard of the contemporary
types of drama in their own time, artless as these might be. But
nowadays the theater is flourishing and every man has frequent
opportunity to see worthy plays worthily performed and to acquaint
himself with the immediate effect of a worthy performance upon the
spectators. No apology is acceptable for the undramatic criticism
which we discover in not a few of the learned treatises which profess
to expound and explain the masterpieces of the mighty dramatists
who lived in Periclean Athens and in Elizabethan England. Some of
the scholars, who discuss Sophocles and Shakspere, deal with
these expert playwrights as if their pieces had been composed not to
be seen in swift action in the theater but to be read at leisure in the
library. In their eyes ‘Œdipus the King’ and ‘Othello’ are only dramatic
poems, and not poetic dramas. They study the printed page under
the microscope; and they make no effort to recapture the sound of
the spoken word or to visualize the illustrative action.
The undramatic critic of this type has no apprehension of the
principles of playmaking, as these are set forth by Aristotle and by
Lessing, by Sarcey and by Brunetière. He has made no effort to
keep abreast of the “state of the art” of dramatic criticism. He seems
never to have considered the triple influence exerted on the form and
on the content of a play by the theater for which it was composed, by
the actors for whom its characters were intended or by the audience
for whose pleasure it was written. It is only occasionally that we have
proffered to us a book like the late Professor Goodell’s illuminating
analysis of ‘Athenian Tragedy,’ in which we are agreeably surprized
to find a Greek scholar elucidating the masterpieces of the Greek
drama by the aid of Brunetière’s ‘Law of the Drama’ and Archer’s
‘Playmaking.’ Professor Goodell firmly grasped the fact that the art of
the drama is unchanging, no matter how various its manifestations
may be in different centuries and in different countries. And he was
therefore able to cast light upon the plays of the past by his
observation of the plays of the present.
Less satisfactory is an almost contemporary volume on ‘Greek
Tragedy,’ which covers the same ground. Altho Professor Norwood
has not found his profit in Brunetière or Archer, he makes a valiant
effort to visualize actual performance in the Theater of Dionysus
more than twenty centuries ago. He deals with Greek plays as poetic
dramas and not merely as dramatic poems. But he has fallen victim
to the wiles of the late Professor Verrall, one of the most ingenious of
undramatic critics; and in his discussion of ‘Agamemnon’ of
Æschylus he gives Verrall credit for having solved a series of
difficulties. Professor Norwood even goes so far as to declare that
“Verrall’s theory should probably be accepted.”
I doubt if a single one of the alleged difficulties even occurred to
any of the spectators present at the first performance of the play.
The action of ‘Agamemnon’ is swift, irresistible, inevitable; and the
audience was allowed no time for cavil. As the story unrolled itself in
the theater it was convincing; and if any doubt arose in the mind of
any spectator as to anything that had occurred, it could arise only
after he had left the theater; and then it was too late. As a play,
performed by actors, in a theater, before an audience, ‘Agamemnon’
triumphs. Only when it is considered in the study do we perceive any
“difficulties.” In fact, when so considered one difficulty is likely to
strike many readers; and it repays consideration.
The play begins with a long monolog from a watchman of the roof
of Agamemnon’s palace. The king is at the siege of Troy; and when
the beleaguered city is taken a series of beacons on the intervening
hills will be lighted, one after another, to convey the glad news.
Suddenly the watchman sees the distant flame, the wireless
message that Troy has fallen and that the monarch is free to return
home. In real life it would be two or three weeks before Agamemnon
would arrive; yet in the play, before it is half over, the king comes in;
he enters his palace, where he is done to death by his guilty wife and
her paramour, Ægisthus. The exigencies of the two hours’ traffic of
the stage often compel a playwright to telescope time; but no other
dramatist has ever dared so violent a compression as this.
And this is how Verrall solves the difficulty “with lucidity, skill and
brilliance,” so Professor Norwood tells us. The story of the series of
beacons is a lie concocted by the wife and her lover. There is only
one beacon, which Ægisthus lights when he discovers the landing of
Agamemnon; it is to warn his accomplice that she may make ready
to murder her husband. And as Agamemnon is actually on shore
when this single beacon flames up, he is able to arrive in the middle
of the play. If we accept this solution of the difficulty we are
compelled to believe that Æschylus wrote a play, instantly accepted
as a masterpiece, which had to wait for more than two thousand
years for a British scholar to explain away an impossibility. This
explanation is undoubtedly lucid and skilful and brilliant; but none the
less is it a specimen of undramatic criticism. It could never have
been put forward by anyone who had an elementary knowledge of
the principles of playmaking.
A dramatist never tells lies to his audience; and the audience
always accepts the statements of his characters as true—unless he
himself takes care to suggest that a given statement is false. The
play has to be taken at its face value. The characters talk on purpose
to convey all needful information to the spectators. Æschylus may
make the queen lie to the king, but when she does this the audience
is aware of the truth or surmises it. The dramatist never hesitates to
let his characters deceive one another; but if he knows his business
he does not deceive the spectators. In real life Agamemnon could
not arrive for a fortnight after Troy had fallen; but the Athenian
audience could not wait in their seats two weeks, so Æschylus
frankly brings on Agamemnon; and the spectators were glad to
behold him, asking no inconvenient questions, because they were
eager to see what would happen to him. It might be a contradiction
of the fact, but it was not a departure from the truth, since the king
would assuredly come home sooner or later. Everyone familiar with
Sarcey’s discussion of the conventions of the drama is aware that
the spectators in the theater are never sticklers for fact; they are
willing to accept a contradiction of fact, if that contradiction is for their
own profit, as it was in this case. And they accept it unthinkingly; and
it is only when they hold the play in their hands to pick it to pieces
that they discover any “difficulty.”

III

To say this is to say that Verrall, however lucid and skilful and
brilliant, was a discoverer of mares’ nests. And a host of undramatic
critics have skilfully exercised their lucid brilliance in discovering
mares’ nests in Shakspere’s plays. Most of them are stolid Teutons,
with Gervinus and Ulrici in the forefront of the procession. They
analyzed the tragedies of Shakspere with the sincere conviction that
he was a philosopher with a system as elaborate as those of Kant
and Hegel; and they did not seem to suspect that even if a dramatist
is a philosopher he is—and must be—first of all a playwright, whose
invention and construction are conditioned by the theater for which
he is working. Even in the greatest plays philosophy is a by-product;
and the main object of the great dramatist is always to arouse and
retain and reward the interest of his immediate audience.
He must make his story plain to the comprehension of the average
playgoer; and he must therefore provide his characters with motives
which are immediately apparent and instantly plausible. Shakspere
is ever anxious that his spectators shall not be misled, and he goes
so far as to have his villains, Richard III and Iago, frankly inform the
audience that they are villains, a confession which in real life neither
of these astute scoundrels would ever have made to anybody. The
playwright knows that if he loses his case before the jury, he can
never move for a retrial; the verdict is without appeal. It may be
doubted whether any dramatist has ever cared greatly for the opinion
of posterity. Assuredly no popular playwright—and in their own day
every great dramatist was a popular playwright—would have found
any compensation for the failure of his play in the hope and
expectation that two hundred or two thousand years later its
difficulties might be explained by a Verrall, however lucid and skilful
and brilliant this belated expounder might be.
There are two Shaksperian mares’ nests which may be taken as
typical, altho the eggs in them are not more obviously addled than in
a host of others. One was discovered in ‘Macbeth,’ in the scene of
Banquo’s murder. Macbeth incites two men to make way with
Banquo; but when the deed is done, three murderers take part in it.
Two of them are the pair we have seen receiving instructions from
Macbeth. Who is the third? An undramatic critic once suggested that
this third murderer is no less a person than Macbeth himself, joining
his hired assassins to make sure that they do the job in workmanlike
fashion. The suggester supported his suggestion by an argument in
eight points, no one of which carries any weight, because we may be
sure that if Shakspere had meant Macbeth to appear in person, he
would have taken care to let the audience know it. He would not
have left it hidden to be uncovered two and a half centuries after his
death by the skilful lucidity of a brilliant undramatic critic.
It is reasonably certain that Burbage, who acted Richard III and
Hamlet, also acted Macbeth; and Shakspere would never have sent
this renowned performer on the stage to take part in a scene without
justifying his share in it and without informing the spectators that
their favorite was before them. Shakspere was an actor himself; he
knew what actors wanted and what they liked; he took good care of
their interests; and we may rest assured that he never asked
Burbage to disguise his identity. If he had meant the third murderer
to be Macbeth, we should have had the stage direction, “Enter two
murderers with Macbeth disguised.” As it is, the stage direction
reads “Enter three murderers.”
The other mare’s nest has been found in ‘King Lear.’ It has often
been pointed out that Cordelia is absent from a large portion of the
action of the tragedy, altho her presence might have aided its
effectiveness. It has been noted also that Cordelia and the Fool are
never seen on the stage together. And this has prompted the
suggestion that the Fool is Cordelia in disguise. Here again we see
the undramatic critic at his worst. If Shakspere had meant this, he
would have made it plain to the spectators the first time Cordelia
appeared as the Fool,—otherwise her assumption of this part would
have been purposeless, confusing, futile. Whatever poignancy there
might be in the companioning of the mad king by his cast-off
daughter all unknown to him, would be unfelt if her assumption of the
Fool’s livery was not at once recognized. The suggestion is not only
inacceptable, it is unthinkable by anyone who has even an
elementary perception of the playmaking art. It could have emanated
only from an undramatic critic who was familiar with ‘King Lear’ in
the study and not on the stage, who regarded the sublimest of
Shakspere’s tragedies as a dramatic poem and not as a poetic
drama planned for the playhouse.
Yet this inept suggestion can be utilized to explain the fact that
Cordelia and the Fool never meet before the eyes of the spectators.
The cast of characters in ‘King Lear’ is very long; and quite possibly
it called for more actors than there were in the limited company at
the Globe. We know that in the Tudor theater a performer was often
called upon to sustain two parts. It is possible that the shaven lad
who impersonated Cordelia was the only available actor for the Fool,
and that therefore Cordelia—at whatever loss to the effectiveness of
the play—could not appear in the scenes in which the Fool had to
appear. Cordelia did not don the disguise of the Fool; but the same
performer may have doubled the two parts. That much of supposition
can be ventured for whatever it may be worth.

IV

It is in England and in Germany that the undramatic critics have


been permitted to disport themselves most freely and most
frequently. In France they have never been encouraged to pernicious
activity. That the French have not suffered from this pest may be due
to the honorable existence of the Théâtre Français, where the
masterpieces of French tragedy and of French comedy have been
kept alive on the stage for which they had been written; or it may be
due to the fact that in the literature of France the drama has been
continuously more important than it has been in the literature of any
other country.
In England and in Germany the drama has had its seasons of
abundance and its seasons of famine, whereas in France, altho
there might be poor harvests for a succession of years, harvests of
some sort there always have been. No period in French literature is
as devoid of valid drama as that in English literature during the first
three-quarters of the nineteenth century. From 1800 to 1870 the
plays of our language which were actable were unreadable and the
plays which were readable were unactable. It is in the periods of
penury, when there is a divorce between literature and the drama,
that the undramatic critic is inspired to chase rainbows. As there is
then no vital drama in the theater, and as the pieces then exhibited
on the stage have little validity, the undramatic critic is led to the
conclusion that since the theater can get along without literature, so
the drama can get along without the theater. And that way madness
lies.
There is this excuse for the supersubtle critics of the Italian
Renascence that they lived not long removed from the middle ages,
in which all memory of the acted drama had been lost and in which
the belief was general that the comedies of Plautus and Terence had
been composed, not for performance by actors in a theater and
before an audience, but for a single reciter who should deal with
them as a modern elocutionist might stand and deliver ‘Pippa
Passes’ or the ‘Cenci.’ But there is no excuse for the English-
speaking expounders of Sophocles and Shakspere, because they
cannot help knowing that the plays of the Athenian were written to be
performed in the Theater of Dionysus and that the plays of the
Elizabethan were written to be performed in the Globe theater.
A friend of mine, not yet forty, told me that as an undergraduate he
had read half-a-dozen Greek plays with a professor, who was an
enthusiastic admirer of Greek literature, who had spent a winter in
Athens, and who had acquired modern Greek. This professor spared
no pains to make his students appreciate the poetic beauty of
Athenian tragedy; but never once did he call their attention to the
circumstances of original performance or arouse their interest by
pointing out the theatrical effectiveness of the successive situations.
To this ardent lover of Greece and of Greek literature, the
‘Agamemnon,’ the ‘Œdipus,’ and the ‘Medea’ were only poems in
dialog; they were not plays composed to be acted, adjusted to the
conditions of the Athenian theater, and conforming to the
conventions tacitly accepted by the Attic audience.
But worse remains behind. The writer of the chapters on
Shakspere in the composite ‘Cambridge History of English
Literature,’ deals skilfully and cautiously with the dates of
composition and performance of each of the plays; but he criticizes
them with no examination of their theatrical effectiveness. It is
scarcely too much to say that he considers them as dramatic poems
intended to be read rather than as poetic dramas intended to be
acted. Nothing in either of his chapters is evidence that he ever saw
a comedy or a tragedy of Shakspere’s on the stage. He reveals no
knowledge of the principles of playmaking; and it may be doubted
whether he suspects the existence of these principles. And in one
passage of his commentary he has given us the absolute
masterpiece of undramatic criticism:

It is, of course, quite true that all of Shakspere’s plays were written to be acted;
but it may be questioned whether this is much more than an accident arising from
the fact that the drama was the dominant form of literature. It was a happy
accident, because of the unique opportunity this form gives of employing both the
vehicles of poetry and prose.

(1921)
III
OLD PLAYS AND NEW PLAYGOERS
III
OLD PLAYS AND NEW PLAYGOERS

Every dramatist is of necessity subdued to what he works for—the


playgoers of his own generation in his own country. Their approval it
is that he has to win first of all; and if they render a verdict against
him he has no appeal to posterity. It is a matter of record that a play
which failed to please the public in its author’s lifetime never
succeeded later in establishing itself on the stage. Partizans may
prate about the dramatic power of the ‘Blot in the ’Scutcheon,’ but
when it is—as it has been half-a-dozen times—galvanized into a
semblance of life for a night or a fortnight, it falls prone in the
playhouse as dead as it was when Macready first officiated at its
funeral. Even the ‘Misanthrope,’ mightiest of Molière’s comedies and
worthy of all the acclaim it has received, was not an outstanding
triumph when its author impersonated Alceste, and it has rarely
rewarded the efforts of the succession of accomplished actors who
have tried to follow the footsteps of the master; it is praised, it is
admired; but it does not attract the many to the theater, because it
does not give them abundantly the special pleasure that only the
theater can bestow. ‘Tartuffe’ and the ‘Femmes Savantes’ do this
and also half-a-score of Molière’s lighter and less ambitious pieces,
supported by stories more theatrically effective than that of the
‘Misanthrope.’
The playwright who is merely a clever craftsman of the stage has
no higher aim than to win the suffrages of his contemporaries. He
knows what they want—for he is one of them—and he gives them
what they want, no more and no less. He does not put himself into
his plays; and perhaps his plays would be little better if he did. He is
strenuously and insistently “up to date,” as the phrase is; and as a
result he is soon “out of date.” He writes to be in the fashion; and the
more completely he portrays the fleeting modes of the moment, the
more swiftly must he fall out of fashion. The taste of the day is never
the taste of after days; and the journalist-dramatist buys his
evanescent popularity at a price. Who now is so poor as to pay
reverence to Kotzebue and to Scribe, who once had all the
managers at their feet? No maker of plays, not Lope de Vega or
Dumas—Alexander the Great—was more fertile than Scribe in the
invention of effective situations, none was ever more dextrous in the
knotting and unknotting of plots, grave and gay. But his fertility and
his dexterity have availed him little. He wrote for his own time, not for
all time. What sprang up in the morning of his career and bloomed
brightly in the sunshine, was by night-fall drooping and withered and
desiccated.
The comic dramatists of the Restoration had perforce to gratify the
lewd likings of vicious spectators who wanted to see themselves on
the stage even more vicious than they were. Congreve and Wycherly
put into their comedies what their contemporaries relished, a game
flavor that stank in the nostrils of all decent folk. The Puritan shrank
with horror from the picture in which the Impuritan recognized his
own image. So it was that a scant hundred years after they had
insulted the moral sense (which, like Truth, tho “crushed to earth will
rise again; the eternal years of God are hers,”) they were swept from
the stage. What had delighted under Charles II disgusted under
George IV.
Even the frequent attempt to deodorize them failed, for, as
Sheridan said—and he knew by experience since he had made his
‘Trip to Scarborough’ out of the ‘Relapse’—the Restoration comedies
were “like horses; you rob them of their vice and you rob them of
their vigor.” Charles Lamb, who had a whimsical predilection for
them, admitted that they were “quite extinct on our stage.”
Congreve’s pistol no longer discharged its steel bullets; and
Wycherly no longer knocked his victims down with the butt of his
gun. Yet they died hard; I am old enough to have seen Daly’s
company in the ‘Trip to Scarborough’ and the ‘Recruiting Officer,’ in
the ‘Inconstant,’ in ‘She Would and She Would Not’ and the ‘Country
Girl’ (Garrick’s skilful cleansing of Wycherly’s unspeakable ‘Country
Wife’)—all of which reappeared because they had appealing plots,
amusing situations and lively characters and because they did not
portray the immorals of the days of Nell Gwyn.
Yet when an adroit playwright who seeks to please the public of
his own time by the representation of its manners, happens to be
also a creative artist, enamored of life, he is sometimes able so to
vitalize his satire of a passing vogue that it has abiding vigor. This is
what Molière did when he made fun of the ‘Précieuses Ridicules.’
Even when he was writing this cleverest of skits, the cotery which
had clustered around Madame de Rambouillet was disintegrating
and would have disappeared without his bold blows. But affectation
is undying; it assumes new shapes; it is always a tempting target;
and Molière, by the magic of his genius, transcended his immediate
purpose. He composed a satire of one special manifestation of
pretence which survives after two centuries and a half as an
adequate satire of all later manifestations. The Précieuses in Paris
have long since been gathered to their mothers; so have the
Esthetes across the channel in London; and soon they will be
followed to the grave by the Little Groups of Serious Thinkers who
are to-day settling the problems of the cosmos by the aid of empty
phrases. No one sees the ‘Précieuses Ridicules’ to-day without
recognizing that it is almost as fresh as it was when Madame de
Rambouillet enjoyed it.
The man of genius is able to please his own generation by his
depiction of its foibles and yet to put into his work the permanent
qualities which make it pleasing to the generations that come after
him. The trick may not be easy, but it can be turned. How it shall be
done,—well, that is one of the secrets of genius. In the case of the
‘Précieuses Ridicules’ we can see that Molière framed a plot for his
lively little piece that is perennially pleasing, a plot which only a little
modified was to support two popular successes nearly two centuries
later,—the ‘Ruy Blas’ of Victor Hugo and the ‘Lady of Lyons’ of
Bulwer-Lytton. He tinged his dialog with just enough timeliness to hit
the taste of the town in 1658; and he did not so surcharge it as to
fatigue the playgoers of Paris two centuries and a half later.

II

The likings of the groundlings who stood in the yard of the Globe
theater when Shakspere began to write plays were coarser and
grosser than those of the burghers whom Molière had to attract to
the Petit-Bourbon; and unfortunately Shakspere in his earlier efforts
was not as cautious as Molière. In the Falstaff plays, for example,
the fat knight is as alive to-day as when Elizabeth is fabled to have
expressed the wish to have him shown in love. But the talk of his
companions, Nym and Pistol, is too thickly bespangled with the tricks
of speech of Elizabethan London to interest American and British
theater-goers three hundred years later. There is but a faded appeal
in topical allusions which need to be explained before they are
appreciated and even before they are understood; and in the
playhouse itself footnotes are impossible.
In his earliest pieces, written during his arduous apprenticeship to
the craft of playmaking, when he was not yet sure of his footing in
the theater, Shakspere had to provide parts for a pair of popular fun-
makers,—Will Kempe and another as yet unidentified. They were
lusty and robust comedians accustomed to set the house in a roar as
soon as they showed their cheerful faces. They created the two
Dromios, the two Gobbos, Launce and Speed, Costard and Dull; and
it is idle to deny that not a little of the talk that Shakspere put in their
mouths is no longer laughter-provoking; it is not only too topical, too
deliberately Tudor, it is also too mechanical in its effort at humor to
move us to mirth to-day. Their merry jests,—Heaven save the mark!
—are not lifted above the level of the patter of the “sidewalk
comedians” of our variety-shows. They are frankly “clowns”; and
Shakspere has set down for them what the groundlings expected
them to utter, only little better than the rough repartee and vigorous
innuendo and obvious pun which they would have provided for
themselves if they had been free to do as they were wont to do.
What he gives them to say is rarely the utterance of the characters

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