ABRAHAM DREYFUS (1847-) was the author of half a dozen ingenious little
plays, mostly confined to a single act. One of them, 'Un Crane sans un
Tempête,' adapted into English as the 'Silent System,' was acted in New
York by Coquelin and Agnes Booth. Dreyfus was also the author of two
volumes of lively sketches lightly satirizing different aspects of the
French stage,--'Scènes de la vie de théâtre' (1880) and 'L'Incendie des
Folies-Plastiques' (1886).
In the Spring of 1884 he delivered an address on the art of playmaking
before the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire of Brussels. This lecture was
entitled 'Comment se fait une pièce de théâtre;' and it was printed
privately in an edition limited to fifty copies, (Paris: A. Quantin,
1884). In the course of this address he read letters received by him
from ten or twelve of the most distinguisht dramatists of France in
response to his request for information as to their methods of
composition. It was to these letters that the lecture owed its interest
and its value. What M. Dreyfus contributed himself was little more than
a running commentary on the correspondence that he had collected. This
commentary was characteristically clever, brisk, bright and amusing; but
its interest was partly personal, partly local, and partly contemporary.
The interest of the letters themselves is permanent; and this is the
reason why it has seemed advisable to select the most significant of
them and to present them here unincumbered by the less useful remarks of
the lecturer.
Émile Augier (1820-1889) disputes with Alexandre Dumas the foremost
place among the French dramatists of the second half of the nineteenth
century. The 'Gendre de M. Poirier' (which he wrote in collaboration
with Jules Sandeau) is the masterpiece of modern comedy, a worthy
successor to the 'Tartuffe' of Molière and the 'Marriage of Figaro' of
Beaumarchais.
Théodore de Banville (1823-1891) was a poet rather than a playwright.
Altho he composed half-a-dozen little pieces in verse, the only one of
his dramatic efforts which really succeeded in establishing itself on
the stage, was 'Gringoire,' a one-act comedy in prose; and this met with
a more fortunate fate than its more fantastic companions only because
Banville revised and strengthened his plot in accordance with the
skilful suggestions of Coquelin, who "created" the part of the starving
poet.
Adolphe Dennery (1811-1899) was the most adroit and fertile of
melodramatists in the midyears of the nineteenth century. Perhaps his
best play was 'Don César de Bazan'; and perhaps his most popular play
was the 'Two Orphans.'
Alexandre Dumas _fils_ (1824-1895) was the son of the author of the
'Three Guardsmen'; and he inherited from his father the native gift of
playmaking, which he declared in this letter to be the indispensable
qualification of the successful dramatist. His 'Dame aux Camélias' has
held the stage for more than sixty years and has been performed hundreds
of times in every modern language.
Edmond Gondinet (1828-1888) was the author of a host of pleasant pieces,
mostly comedies in from one to three acts, and mostly written in
collaboration. He believed that he preferred to write alone and that
only his good nature kept tempting him into working with others. It was
probably to warn away those who wanted to bring him their manuscripts
for expert revision that led him to assert in this letter that he was "a
detestable collaborator."
Ernest Legouvé (1807-1903) was the collaborator of Scribe in the
composition of 'Bataille de Dames' and 'Adrienne Lecouvreur.' In his
delightful recollections, 'Soixante Ans de Souvenirs' he has a chapter
on Scribe in which he describes the methods of that master-craftsman in
dramatic construction; and in one of his 'Conférences Parisiennes' he
sets forth the successive steps by which another dramatist, Bouilly, was
able to compound his pathetic piece, the 'Abbé de l'Epée';--two papers
which deserve careful study by all who wish to apprehend the principles
of playmaking.
Eugène Labiche (1815-1888) was the most prolific of the comic dramatists
of France in the nineteenth century and the most richly endowed with
comic force. Most of his pieces are frankly farcical, but not a few of
them rise to the level of true comedy. The solid merit of his best work
is cordially recognized in the luminous preface written by Augier for
the complete collection of Labiche's comedies.
Édouard Pailleron (1834-1899) was a comic dramatist of more aspiration
than inspiration; and yet he succeeded in writing one of the most
popular pieces of his time;--the 'Monde où l'on s'énnuie.'
Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) was probably the French playwright who was
most widely known outside of France. In the course of fifty years he was
successful in almost every kind of playwriting, from lively farce to
historic drama. His first indisputable triumph was with 'Pattes de
Mouche,' known in English as the 'Scrap of Paper' and as widely popular
in our language as in the original.
Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a novelist who repeatedly sought for success
as a dramatist, attaining it only in the adaptations of his stories made
by professional playwrights. Yet one of his earlier pieces, 'Thérèse
Raquin' is evidence that he might have mastered the art of the
playwright, if he had not allowed himself to be misled by his own
unfortunate theory of the theatre as set forth in his severe studies of
'Nos Auteurs Dramatiques' (1881).
In the 'Année Psychologique' for 1894 the distinguisht physiological
psychologist, the late Alfred Binet,--to whom we are indebted for the
useful Binet tests--publisht a series of papers dealing with the
psychology of the playwright, in the preparation of which he was aided
by M.J. Passy. The two investigators had a series of interviews with
Sardou, Dumas _fils_, Pailleron, Meilhac, Daudet, and Edmond de
Goncourt. Altho Daudet and Goncourt had written plays they were
essentially novelists with no instinctive understanding of the drama as
a specific art. Nor did either Pailleron and Meilhac make any
contribution of importance. But Dumas and Sardou were both of them born
playwrights of keen intelligence, having a definite understanding of the
principles of playmaking; and what they said to M. Binet and his
associate was interesting and significant.
Dumas declared that he made no notes for any of his plays and that he
never composed a detailed scenario. He thought of only one piece at a
time, brooding over it for long months sometimes, and then throwing it
on paper almost at white heat, if it dealt with passion. If, on the
other hand, it was a comedy of character, a study of social conditions,
the actual composition was necessarily more leisurely and protracted. He
had carried in mind for six or seven years the theme of 'Monsieur
Alphonse;' and he had actually put it on paper in seventeen days. He had
written the 'Princesse Georges' in three weeks and the 'Etrangère' in a
month; and the second act of the 'Dame aux Camélias' had been penned in
a single session of four hours. But he had toiled seven or eight hours a
day for eleven months over the 'Demi-Monde,' the second act alone
costing him two months labor. He rarely modified what he had written by
minor corrections; but sometimes, when his play was completed, he
discovered that it was weak in its structure or inadequate in its
motivation, in which case he reconstructed one or more acts, or even the
whole play, writing it all over again.
M. Dumas admitted that he took little interest in the setting of his
plays or in the manifold details of stage-management. He indicated
summarily the kind of room that he desired; and he put down in his
manuscript only the absolutely necessary movements of his characters.
The rest he left to the manager and the stage-manager.
Here--as indeed everywhere,--Dumas revealed himself in the sharpest
contrast with Sardou, who designed his sets himself and placed his
furniture precisely where he needed it for the action of his play,
sometimes finding that a given scene seemed to him to lose half its
effect if it was acted on the left side of the stage instead of the
right. He was a constant note-taker, putting down suggestions for single
scenes or for striking suggestions, as these might occur to him; and as
a result of this incessant cerebral activity he had always on hand more
or less complete plots for at least fifty plays. When he decided to
write one of these pieces, he assembled his scattered notes, set them in
order, amplified and strengthened them; and when at last he saw his way
clear he made out an elaborate and detailed scenario, containing the
whole story, with ample indication of all the changes of feeling which
might take place in any of the characters in any scene.
Then when he felt himself in the right mood, he feverishly improvized
the play, laughing over the jokes, weeping over the pathetic moments and
objurgating the evil deeds of the more despicable characters. But this
was only a first draft of the play; and it had to be gone over three or
four times, altered, condensed, sharpened, tightened in effect. The
first version was always too long; and the successive revisions reduced
it to scarcely more than a half of its original length. Sometimes he was
able to compact into a single pregnant phrase the substance of a speech
of many lines. And as the play slowly took on its final form Sardou not
only heard every word which every character had to speak, he also saw
every one of the movements which would animate the action. M. Binet
reminded him that when Scribe and Legouvé were collaborating on
'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' Scribe asserted that he visualized all that the
actors would do, while Legouvé heard all that they would say; and Sardou
then claimed that he was fortunate in possessing the double faculty of
both seeing and hearing.
Of course, Sardou stage-managed his plays himself, teaching the
performers carefully, and going upon the stage, if need be, to act the
scene as he wanted it to be acted, indicating the expression, the
intonation and the gesture which he felt to be demanded by the
situation.
He was equally meticulous in designing the scenery and the costumes; and
he was inexorable in insisting on the carrying out of his wishes. He had
a lively interest in painting, in sculpture and in architecture; and, in
fact, he confest, that if he had not been a playwright he would like to
have been an architect. This, it may be noted, is conformation of the
statement that there is a strong similarity between the art of
architecture and the art of the drama, due to the fact that both arts
are under the necessity of providing a solid structure to sustain the
fabric and to support the decoration.