The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in America in these
early years of the twentieth century; and it had been attempted
infrequently even in the seventeenth century. Yet only one of these
novelized plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for itself
in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of theatrical life in the
eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,' which Charles Reade made out of
the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration with
Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing this comedy without
asking Taylor's permission, and even without consulting his
collaborator; and all the comment that need be made is that the
procedure was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude toward
others--an attitude taken by him on many other occasions. But whatever
injustice he did to his fellow worker, he did none to the joint product
of their invention; he transmuted a play into a novel with due
appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he produced a
fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, which has been read by
thousands who have had no suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally
figured in a comedy.
Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because he was more
skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist, altho he fancied himself
rather as a maker of plays than as a writer of stories. More than once
did he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two prizes with
the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de Paris' of Brisebarre and
Nus--the same play which Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of
New York'--and made a version which he called 'Gold,' under which name
it had a few performances. He had materially modified the French plot in
his English play; and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus,
when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,' a matter-of-fact
romance. Later he dramatized this novel of his, and the resulting play
did not bear any close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'
Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry Pettitt in a piece
called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,' which he promptly proceeded to
novelize--again without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy,
swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being then unprotected
by copyright in the United States, was immediately dramatized by Messrs.
George H. Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually that
another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward dramatized by him,
had been originally novelized from a French play called the 'Chateau de
Grantier,' written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 'Three
Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a little surprising that a man
like Reade, who prided himself on his originality, and who even went so
far as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should have been
willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators, and to derive
so much of his material from foreign sources.
The only other author who has ventured to turn a play into a novel, and
then back into a play varying widely from the original piece, is Sir
James Barrie, and what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir
James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White Bird,' and he
found in his own prose fiction part of the material out of which he was
moved later to make a charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons
best known to himself, but deplored by all who are interested in the
progress of the English drama, Sir James Barrie has chosen to publish
only a few of his comedies. Yet he met the demands of a multitude of
readers by borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material
which he made into a delightful tale, called 'Peter Pan in Kensington
Gardens.' These successive rehandlings of an idea, first in prose
fiction, then in dramatic form, and finally again in prose fiction, were
possible only to a novelist who was also a dramatist--to an author who
had mastered the secrets of two different methods of story-telling, the
method of the theater and the method of the library.
V
The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively new figure in
literature. Formerly there was a sharp line of cleavage between the man
who wrote novels and the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other
might be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the territory of
the other. During three-quarters of the nineteenth century prose fiction
reigned supreme in every modern literature except that of France, and
the novelists were rather inclined to look down on the playwrights, and
to dismiss the drama as an inferior form, likely to be absolutely
superseded by prose fiction. But toward the end of the century there
began to be visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and
also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The novelists of the
twentieth century, so far from holding the drama to be an inferior form,
are discovering that it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore
artistically more attractive. As a result of this discovery not a few
novelists have turned playwrights, taking the pains to learn the
principles of the more dangerous art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in
England, M. Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany, and
Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have abandoned altogether the prose
fiction in which they first won fame, but at least they now devote the
major part of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled that Clyde
Fitch began his literary career as a writer of short stories, and that
Mr. Bernard Shaw originally emerged to view as the author of a novel.
On the other hand, it must be noted as significant that the playwrights
are not tempted to turn novelists; they seem to be satisfied with their
own art as the more exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M.
Rostand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur
Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. Augustus Thomas have not been lured
from the drama into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which makes
only lax demands on its practitioners, and which does not require an
artist always to do his best. The play has a severe technic, and it
tolerates no carelessness of construction. The more gifted a
story-teller may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is that
in the immediate future he will seek to express himself in the drama,
even if he is also moved now and again to return to the easier path of
prose fiction.
And this raises another interesting point. Now that the drama is rising
again into rivalry with prose fiction, is not the playwright who allows
his piece to be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact,
confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the novel? Apparently
this is the attitude taken by the more prominent dramatists of the day;
most of them publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow these
plays to be novelized--altho they might find a superior profit if they
descended to this. It is an unfortunate fact that the public which is
eager to read prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the
dearth of dramatic literature in our language during the nineteenth
century, the public lost the habit of reading plays, a habit possessed
by the public of the eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel
had been established in consequence of the overwhelming popularity of
Scott, followed speedily by that of Dickens and Thackeray.
Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly recovering the
ability to find pleasure in the perusal of a play. The social dramas of
Ibsen have, most of them, been performed here and there in the theaters
of Great Britain and the United States; but they have been read by
thousands who have had no opportunity to see them on the stage. So it is
with the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared in
our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. Maeterlinck, only a few of
which have been produced in the American theater. In time, it seems
highly probable that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome to
a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington as to one of their
novels. But this happy state can be brought about only if the
dramatists resolutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves,
and from authorizing novelization by others.
(1913.)