KINDS OF PLAYLET
The kind of playlet is largely determined by its characters and
their surroundings, and on these there are practically no limits.
You may have characters of any nationality; you may treat them
reverently, or--save that you must never offend--you may make them
as funny as you desire; you may give them any profession that suits
your purpose; you may place them in any sort of house or on the
open hills or in an air-ship high in the sky; you may show them
in any country of the earth or on the moon or in the seas under
the earth--you may do anything you like with them. Vaudeville
wants everything--everything so long as it is well and strikingly
done. Therefore, to attempt to list the many different kinds of
playlet to be seen upon the vaudeville stage would, indeed, be a
task as fraught with hazard as to try to classify minutely the
divers kinds of men seen upon the stage of life. And of just as
little practical value would it be to have tables showing the
scores of superficial variations of character, nationality, time
and place which the years have woven into the playlets of the past.
In the "art" of the playlet there are, to be sure, the same three
"schools"--more or less unconsciously followed in nearly every
vaudeville instance--which are to be found in the novel, the
short-story, painting, and the full-length play. These are, of
course, realism, romance, and idealism. [1] These distinctions,
however, are--in vaudeville--merely distinctions without being
valuable differences. You need never give thought as to the school
to which you are paying allegiance in your playlet; your work will
probably be neither better nor worse for this knowledge or its
lack. Your playlet must stand on its own legs, and succeed or
fail by the test of interest. Make your playlet grip, that is the
thing.
[1] Should you wish to dally with the mooted question of the
difference between realism and romanticism--in the perplexing mazes
of which many a fine little talent has been snuffed out like a
flickering taper in a gust of wind--there are a score or more
volumes that you will find in any large library, in which the whole
matter is thrashed out unsatisfactorily. However, if you wish to
spend a half-hour profitably and pleasantly, read Robert Louis
Stevenson's short chapter, A Note on Realism, to be found in his
suggestive and all-too-few papers on The Art of Writing. In the
collection of his essays entitled Memories and Portraits will be
found an equally delightful and valuable paper, A Gossip on Romance.
A brief technical discussion will also be found in Writing the
Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein, pp. 64-67.
But do not confuse the word "romance," as it is used in the preceding
paragraph, with love. Love is an emotional, not a technical
element, and consorts equally well with either romance or realism
in writing. Love might be the heading of one of those tables we
have agreed not to bother with. Into everything that is written
for vaudeville love may stray. Or it may not intrude, if your
purpose demands that love stay out. Yet, like the world, what
would vaudeville be, if love were left out? And now we come to
those broad types of playlet which you should recognize instinctively.
Unless you do so recognize them--and the varying half-grounds that
lie between, where they meet and mingle quite as often as they
appear in their pure forms--you will have but little success in
writing the playlet.
In considering the broad types of playlet you should remember that
words are said to _denote_ definitely the ideas they delineate,
and to _connote_ the thoughts and emotions they do not clearly
express but arouse in the hearer or reader. For example, what do
"farce," "comedy," "tragedy" and "melodrama" _connote_ to you?
What emotions do they suggest? This is an important matter, because
all great artistic types are more or less fully associated with a
mood, a feeling, an atmosphere.
Webster's dictionary gives to them the following denotations, or
definitions:
_Farce_: "A dramatic composition, written without regularity, and
differing from comedy chiefly in the grotesqueness, extravagance
and improbability of its characters and incidents; low comedy."
Arthur Denvir's "The Villain Still Pursued Her" is one of the
best examples of the travesty vaudeville has produced. [1] James
Madison's "My Old Kentucky Home" is a particularly fine example
of burlesque in tabloid form. [1] These two acts have been chosen
to show the difference between two of the schools of farce.
[1] See Appendix.
_Comedy_: "A dramatic composition or representation, designed for
public amusement and usually based upon laughable incidents, or
the follies or foibles of individuals or classes; a form of the
drama in which humor and mirth predominate, and the plot of which
usually ends happily; the opposite of tragedy."
Edgar Allan Woolf's "The Lollard" is an exceptionally good example
of satirical comedy. [1]
_Tragedy_: "A dramatic composition, representing an important event
or a series of events in the life of some person or persons in
which the diction is elevated, the movement solemn and stately,
and the catastrophe sad; a kind of drama of a lofty or mournful
cast, dealing with the dark side of life and character." Richard
Harding Davis's "Blackmail" is a notable example of tragedy. [1]
[1] See Appendix.
_Melodrama_: "A romantic [connoting love] play, generally of a
serious character, in which effect is sought by startling incidents,
striking situations, exaggerated sentiment and thrilling denouement,
aided by elaborate stage effects. The more thrilling passages are
sometimes accentuated by musical accompaniments, the only surviving
relic of the original musical character of the melodrama."
Taylor Granville's "The System" is one of the finest examples of
pure melodrama seen in vaudeville. [2]
[2] Written by Taylor Granville, Junie MacCree and Edward Clark;
see Appendix.
There are, of course, certain other divisions into which these
four basic kinds of playlet--as well as the full-length play--may
be separated, but they are more or less false forms. However,
four are worthy of particular mention:
_The Society Drama_: The form of drama in which a present-day story
is told, and the language, dress and manners of the actors are
those of polite modern society. [1] You will see how superficial
the distinction is, when you realize that the plot may be farcical,
comic, tragic or melodramatic.
[1] As the dramas of the legitimate stage are more often remembered
by name than are vaudeville acts, I will mention as example of the
society drama Clyde Fitch's The Climbers. This fine satire skirted
the edge of tragedy.
The same is true of
_The Problem Drama_: The form of drama dealing with life's
"problems"--of sex, business, or what not. [2]
[2] Ibsen's Ghosts; indeed, nearly every one of the problem master's
plays offer themselves as examples of the problem type.
And the same is likewise true of
_The Pastoral-Rural Drama_: The form of drama dealing with rustic
life. [3]
[3] The long play Way Down East is a fine example of the pastoral--or
rural--drama of American life.
And also of
_The Detective Drama_: [4] The form of drama dealing with the
detection of crime and the apprehension of the criminal. I cannot
recollect a detective playlet--or three-act play, for that
matter--that is not melodramatic. When the action is not purely
melodramatic, the lines and the feeling usually thrill with
melodrama. [5] "The System," which is a playlet dealing with the
detection of detectives, is but one example in point.
[4] Mr. Charlton Andrews makes a series of interesting and helpful
discriminations among the several dramatic forms, in his work The
Technique of Play Writing, published uniform with this volume in
"The Writer's Library."
[5] Sherlock Holmes, William Gillette's masterly dramatization of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective stories, is melodramatic
even when the action is most restrained.
Here, then, we have the four great kinds of playlet, and four out
of the many variations that often seem to the casual glance to
possess elemental individuality.
Remember that this chapter is merely one of definitions and that
a definition is a description of something given to it after--not
before--it is finished. A definition is a tag, like the label the
entomologist ties to the pin after he has the butterfly nicely
dead. Of questionable profit it would be to you, struggling to
waken your playlet into life, to worry about a definition that
might read "Here Lies a Polite Comedy."
Professor Baker says that the tragedies of Shakespere may have
seemed to the audiences of their own day "not tragedies at all,
but merely more masterly specimens of dramatic story-telling than
the things that preceded them." [1] If Shakespere did not worry
about the precise labels of the plays he was busy writing and
producing, you and I need not. Forget definitions--forget everything
but your playlet and the grip, the thrill, the punch, the laughter
of your plot.
[1] Development of Shakespere as a Dramatist, by Prof. Baker of
Harvard University.
To sum up: The limits of the playlet are narrow, its requirements
are exacting, but within those limits and those requirements you
may picture anything you possess the power to present. Pick out
from life some incident, character, temperament--whatever you
will--and flash upon it the glare of the vaudeville spot-light;
breathe into it the breath of life; show its every aspect and
effect; dissect away the needless; vivify the series of actions
you have chosen for your brief and trenchant crisis; lift it all
with laughter or touch it all with tears. Like a searchlight your
playlet must flash over the landscape of human hearts and rest
upon some phase of passion, some momentous incident, and make it
stand out clear and real from the darkness of doubt that surrounds
it.