fictional fear, depending on whether I believe in or make-believe in the
existence of the threat. In both cases, I am experiencing the subjective
state associated with fear (what Walton terms‘quasi-fear’); sometimes
quasi-fear is brought about by belief, but sometimes it isn’t. So it is no
problem (in principle) for Walton thatfictional fear is very distressing, seems
just like real fear, has many or all of its physiological accompaniments and is
‘as intense as anything you might feel outside the theatre’.^13
Nonetheless, Walton’s solution to the problem leaves a great deal to be
desired from an account of my emotional response toUncle Vanya. For one
thing, his account leads to some very peculiar results. I mentioned not
just my pity for Vanya, but also my general feeling of gloominess. The
kind of moods wefind ourselves in during and after performances are
integral features of theatrical experience, but they don’t attach themselves
to particular characters or events in the play, nor do they obviously have
any specific beliefs associated with them. Here, Walton effectively claims
that my gloominess may be both real andfictional.^14 This looks to be
unnecessarily complicated. Isn’t it more natural just to say that I feel
gloomy and to forget about the hunt for clearly distinguishedfictional and
non-fictional emotions? More importantly, one has to wonder whether all
that much has been explained. After all, isn’t it still odd that I experience
what Walton would call‘quasi-pity’ (i.e. all the subjective responses
associated with that emotion) in response to the story of Vanya? Even
accepting that my pity doesn’t count as real pity, you might think that
full knowledge of Vanya’s non-existence would suffice to rule out the
kind of subjective feelings associated with pity: being sorrowful, weeping
and so on. So ideally we would want to have a better account of what Walton
takes to be our peculiar ability (say) to make our hearts beat faster, to clench
ourfists, to sweat, to feel all that we would associate with fear in relation
to a non-existent object. The simple explanation (which he has to deny) is
that I’m experiencing the symptoms of fear because I’m afraid; likewise
for pity. Make-believing that I am a millionaire does not make me rich; why
should make-believing that there is a ghost make me actually tremble?
Trembling and experiencing all the symptoms of terror in response to a
make-believe object is still odd. Walton has hardly offered a solution if
the curious phenomenon he sought out to explain is simply pushed back
to the level of make-belief, rather than belief.
To emphasise some of the problems here, it might be helpful to look
beyond the Vanya example, to some slightly different cases. In the Vanya
example, I have watched (what I take to be) a successful performance of a
great work. But, sadly, this is not always so. Sometimes plays completely
fail to move us: I know I’m supposed to feel pity for Elektra, let’s say, but the
performance has been so unutterably dreadful that all I feel is frustration and
regret. One could imagine similar scenarios for other emotions: a supposedly
134 From the Stage to the World