From Victorien Sardou.
My dear friend:
It's not so easy to answer you as you think. ...There is no one
necessary way of writing a play for the theater. Everyone has his own,
according to his temperament, his type of intellect, and his habits of
work. If you ask me for mine, I should tell you that it is not so easy
to formulate as the recipe for duck _à la rouennaise_ or spring chicken
_au gros sel_. Not fifty lines are needed, but two or three hundred, and
even then I should have told you only my way of working, which has no
general significance and makes no pretense to being the best. It's
natural with _me_, that's all. Besides, you will find it indicated in
part in the preface to 'La Haine' and in a letter which I wrote to La
Pommeraye about 'Fédora.'
In brief, my dear friend, tho there are rules, and rules that are
invariable, precise, and eternal for the dramatic art, rules which only
the impotent, the ignorant, blockheads, and fools misunderstand, and
from which only they wish to be freed, yet there is only one true method
for the conception and parturition of a play--which is, to know quite
exactly where you are going and to take the best road that leads there.
However, some walk, others ride in a carriage, some go by train, X
hobbles along, Hugo sails in a balloon. Some drop behind on the way,
others run past the goal. This one rolls in the ditch, that one wanders
along a cross-road.
In short, that one goes straight to the mark who has the most common
sense. It is the gift which I wish for you--and myself also.
Victorien Sardou.
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