Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel and a play; a novel
may have a plot, but a plot is not necessary, and it can get along with
a minimum of story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully
articulated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it must have a
story peopled by persons knowing their own minds, a story set in action
by a dominating will, which determines the successive episodes of the
action. As the making of a plot, as the putting together of a supporting
skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of workmanship, for ingenuity of
resource, for adroitness of construction, for the most careful
consideration of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two heads
are often better than one, because the partners have to talk the thing
out to its uttermost details before they decide upon the straight line
which is the shortest distance between two points. The technic of
play-making is more exacting than the technic of novel-writing, and it
requires imperatively the exact and detailed plan which Joubert held to
be hampering to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, as he
tells us himself, began more than one of his novels not knowing what he
was going to put into it, and not knowing from day to day, as he was
writing, what his ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however
happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to begin a play before
he knew with absolute certainty how he intended to end it. In the drama
we insist upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the end is
implied in the beginning, and the beginning is only what that end makes
necessary.
As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to be acquired by a
period of apprenticeship; and here is another of the indisputable
advantages of collaboration. The more inexperienced of the two
collaborators is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert,
and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the best possible
way, by applying them under the direction, or at the suggestion and by
the advice, of an older practitioner, to whom they have become so
familiar that they are a second nature, as it were.
Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young playwrights. It
is impossible to overestimate the influence of Scribe's multiplied
collaborations upon the drama of France in the mid-years of the
nineteenth century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread,
was the influence of the many collaborations of the elder Dumas. Most of
those who were the temporary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued
to their more powerful associate, and contributed little or nothing
beyond their fundamental suggestions for the several plays, and their
incidental suggestions as to details of the working-out. That is to say,
most of the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership with others
have a close similarity to the plays they signed alone. But from this
generalization we may except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de
Dames,' in which Scribe had Legouve for a partner, and in which we find
a greater richness of character delineation than in any of the pieces
that Scribe composed alone, as we find also a greater dexterity of
construction than in any of the pieces that Legouve composed alone.
To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr.
Edward Knoblauch in conjunction, and to the friendly discussion due to
their working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness
of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. Knoblauch wrote alone, and
over the 'Great Adventure,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely
responsible. To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two
authors, the American and the Englishman, brought his special
qualifications, each of them not only stimulating but supplementing the
other. So we find the most famous French comedy of the nineteenth
century, the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, more
equably balanced than any play written alone by either Augier or
Sandeau.
It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little profit in a
partnership for play-making when both of the associates are equally
inexpert, or when they were both possessed of wrong notions about the
art of the drama. In the former case we have the blind leading the
blind, and the most lamentable example of this is the long forgotten
'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T.
Parsloe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the latter case we have
not only the blind leading the blind, but a perverseness in going the
wrong way, intensified by the complete sympathy between the two
associates; and the most lamentable example of this is the 'Deacon
Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley, who not
only were ignorant of the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored
it of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite the plain
sign that there was no thorofare.