I
It is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the drama has
flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly, we are certain to find
a tendency to collaboration, to the partnership of two authors in the
composition of one play. In England in the spacious days of good Queen
Bess, there is not only the famous association of Beaumont and Fletcher,
but also a host of other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher
with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jonson and with Middleton.
In Spain Lope de Vega joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In
France in the seventeenth century Moliere, once at least called to his
aid Corneille and Quinault; and in France again in the nineteenth
century we find Augier working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe
working with Legouve, and with a score of others, while Dumas the elder
was encompassed by a cloud of collaborators, and Dumas the younger was
willing on more than one occasion to join various writers in the plays
which he included in the separate volumes of his works, called by him
the 'Theatre des Autres.' Then also in France there was the
long-continued alliance of Meilhac and Halevy, to which we owe
'Froufrou' and the 'Grand Duchess of Gerolstein'; and there was also
the almost equally interesting association of MM. Caillavet and de
Flers. Sardou had one ally in the composition of 'Divorcons,' and
another in the composition of 'Madame Sans Gene.' In Great Britain in
recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero unite
in writing a book for music; Mr. Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in
writing 'Milestones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence Housman
unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the United States there was a score
of years ago the steady collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C.
De Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 'Wife'; and more
recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated with Mr. John Luther Long in
writing 'Madame Butterfly,' and the 'Darling of the Gods.' Mr. Augustus
Thomas was once the partner of Mr. Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard
composed one of his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New
Amsterdam,' in association with another American man of letters; and Mr.
Booth Tarkington and Mr. Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the
'Man from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.
While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration in periods of
dramatic productivity is significant, it is equally significant that
there is no corresponding prevalence of the practise of collaboration in
novel-writing. True it is that there are certain fairly well-known
partnerships in the history of prose fiction--that of Erckmann-Chatrain,
in French, for instance, and that of Besant and Rice in English. True it
is that Dickens and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No
Thorofare,' and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were joint
authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True it is also, that novels have been
written not only by two partners, but by what can fairly be described as
a syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by four, 'Six of One
and Half a Dozen of the Other' by six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve
(including Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freakish conglomerates are
sporadic only; they seem to be little better than literary "stunts"; and
even the union of two writers in the production of a single novel is far
less frequently to be observed than the union of two writers in the
production of a single play. The former is unusual, whereas the latter
seems to be so common as to excite no comment.
Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If the playwrights find
it advantageous to double up, and the novelists do not discover any
profit in putting on double harness, there ought to be some evident
explanation. When we consider more carefully the essentially different
conditions of the art of prose fiction and the art of play-writing, it
is not difficult to perceive fairly obvious reasons for the varying
procedure of the practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so
much alike, but which are really so very different in their methods and
in their possibilities.
The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to make in advance an
exact and detailed plan is to deprive one's intellect of all the
pleasures of novelty and chance meeting during its execution; it is to
make this execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in works
calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This is an overstatement--but
it is not a misstatement--of a principle of composition which is
fundamentally sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is
fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The drama demands a
well-built story, artfully put together, while a novel need not have a
coherent and compact plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for
one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each of them a beautifully
articulated structure, and so has Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,'
to take a later example. But other great novels are frankly more or less
haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick Papers,' for instance, and
'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much
to say that only a very few novels attain to the severity of structure,
the regularity of action, the straightforward, unswerving movement which
we discover in the dramas of a corresponding rank, and which can be
achieved only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan that
Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm and
imagination.
Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and imagination quite as
often and quite as abundantly as can prose fiction, but it must use
these precious gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its
rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure the story-teller
into a host of by-paths not foreseen by him when he set out on his
journey; and while he is adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may
chance to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing
personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and whom the readers of
his book will be glad to welcome. But in a drama the story-teller is
debarred from these wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he
must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, compelling it to
do its work within the rigid limits of the artfully devised framework of
the plot.
In other words, character is all-important in prose fiction, and the
ultimate fame of the novelist depends upon his power of endowing his
creatures with life, and upon his ability to let them obey the laws of
their being before our eyes. This must the playwright also achieve; but
he has the added duty of relating his characters intimately to the main
action of his drama. Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this
sort; he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to the
solitary reader in the study; and experience shows that solitary readers
do not insist upon the solidity of structure in a novel which the same
individuals desire and demand when they betake themselves to the
theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters who do not know
their own minds, and who are merely exhibited and put through their
paces, without having any vital relation to the story, even if there is
anything which can fairly be called a story--and in some novels of high
repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' for example, and in Anatole
France's 'Histoire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over several
volumes, there is little or no story, no main thread, no pretense of a
plot.