THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF PLOT
In the chapter on the germ idea we saw that the theme or subject
of a playlet is a problem that must be solved with complete
satisfaction. In this chapter we shall see how the problem--which
is the first creeping form of a plot--is developed and expanded
by the application of formal elements and made to grow into a plot.
At the same time we shall see how the dramatic element of
plot--discussed in the preceding chapter--is given form and direction
in logical expression.
I. WHAT IS A PLAYLET PLOT?
You will recall that our consideration of the germ idea led us
farther afield than a mere consideration of a theme or subject,
or even of the problem--as we agreed to call the spark that makes
the playlet go. In showing how a playlet writer gets an idea and
how his mind works in developing it, we took the problem of "The
System" and developed it into a near-plot form. It may have seemed
to you at the time that the problem we assumed for the purpose of
exposition was worked out very carefully into a plot, but if you
will turn back to it now, you will realize how incomplete the
elaboration was--it was no more complete than any germ idea should
be before you even consider spending time to build it into a
playlet.
Let us now determine definitely what a playlet plot is, consider
its structural elements and then take one of the fine examples of
a playlet in the Appendix and see how its plot is constructed.
The plot of a playlet is its story. It is the general outline,
the plan, the skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the
characters and clothed by their words. If the theme or problem
is the heart that beats with life, then the scenery amid which the
animated body moves is its habitation, and the dramatic spirit is
the soul that reveals meaning in the whole.
To hazard a definition:
A playlet plot is a sequence of events logically developed out
of a theme or problem, into a crisis or entanglement due to a
conflict of the characters' wills, and then logically untangled
again, leaving the characters in a different relation to each
other--changed in themselves by the crisis.
Note that a mere series of incidents does not make a plot--the
presence of crisis is absolutely necessary to plot. If the series
of events does not develop a complication that changes the characters
in themselves and in their relations to each other, there can be
no plot. If this is so, let us now take the sequence of events
that compose the story of "The Lollard" [1] and see what constitutes
them a plot. I shall not restate its story, only repeat it in the
examination of its various points [2].
[1] Edgar Allan Woolf's fine satirical comedy to be found in the
Appendix.
[2] As a side light, you see how a playlet theme differs from a
playlet plot. You will recall that in the chapter on "The Germ
Idea," the theme of The Lollard was thus stated in terms of a
playlet problem: "A foolish young woman may leave her husband
because she has 'found him out,' yet return to him when she discovers
that another man is no better than he is." Compare this brief
statement with the full statement of the plot given hereafter.
The coming of Angela Maxwell to Miss Carey's door at 2 A.M.--unusual
as is the hour--is just an event; the fact that Angela has left
her husband, Harry, basic as it is, is but little more than an
event; the entrance of the lodger, Fred Saltus, is but another
event, and even Harry Maxwell's coming in search of his wife is
merely an event--for if Harry had sat down and argued Angela out
of her pique, even though Fred were present, there would have been
no complication, save for the cornerstone motive of her having
left him. If this sequence of events forms merely a mildly
interesting narrative, what, then, is the complication that weaves
them into a plot?
The answer is, in Angela's falling in love with Fred's broad
shoulders, wealth of hair and general good looks--this complication
develops the crisis out of Harry's wanting Angela. If Harry hadn't
cared, there would have been no drama--the drama comes from Harry's
wanting Angela when Angela wants Fred; Angela wants something that
runs counter to Harry's will--_there_ is the clash of wills out
of which flashes the dramatic.
But still there would be no plot--and consequently no playlet--if
Harry had acknowledged himself beaten after his first futile
interview with Angela. The entanglement is there--Harry has to
untangle it. He has to win Angela again--and how he does it, on
Miss Carey's tip, you may know from reading the playlet. But, if
you have read it, did you realize the dramatic force of the unmasking
of Fred--accomplished without (explanatory) words, merely by making
Fred run out on the stage and dash back into his room again? _There_
is a fine example of the revealing flash! This incident--made big
by the dramatic--is the ironical solvent that loosens the warp of
Angela's will and prepares her for complete surrender. Harry's
entrance in full regimentals--what woman does not love a uniform?--
is merely the full rounding out of the plot that ends with Harry's
carrying his little wife home to happiness again.
But, let us pursue this examination further, in the light of the
preceding chapter. There would have been no drama if the _meaning_
of these incidents had not--because Angela is a "character" and
Harry one, too--been inherent in them. There would have been no
plot, nothing of dramatic spirit, if Harry had not been made by
those events to realize his mistake and Angela had not been made
to see that Harry was "no worse" than another man. It is the
_change_ in Harry and the _change_ in Angela that changes their
relations to each other--therein lies the essence of the plot. [1]
[1] Unfortunately, the bigger, broader meaning we all read into
this satire of life, cannot enter into our consideration of the
structure of plot. It lies too deep in the texture of the
playwright's mind and genius to admit of its being plucked out by
the roots for critical examination. The bigger meaning is there--we
all see it, and recognize that it stamps The Lollard as good drama.
Each playwright must work out his own meanings of life for himself
and weave them magically into his own playlets; this is something
that cannot be added to a man, that cannot be satisfactorily
explained when seen, and cannot be taken away from him.
Now, having determined what a plot is, let us take up its structural
parts and see how these clearly understood principles make the
construction of a playlet plot in a measure a matter of clear
thinking.
II. THE VITAL PARTS OF THE PLOT
We must swerve for a moment and cut across lots, that we may touch
every one of the big structural elements of plot and relate them
with logical closeness to the playlet, summing them all up in the
end and tying them closely into--what I hope may be--a helpful
definition, on the last page of this chapter.
The first of the structural parts that we must consider before we
take up the broader dramatic unities, is the seemingly obvious one
that _a plot has a beginning, a middle and an ending_.
There has been no clearer statement of this element inherent in
all plots, than that made by Aristotle in his famous twenty-century
old dissection of tragedy; he says:
"Tragedy is an imitation of an action, that is complete and whole,
and of a certain magnitude (not trivial). . . . A whole is that
which has a beginning, middle and end. A beginning is that which
does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after
which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the
contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing,
either by necessity or in the regular course of events, but has
nothing to follow it. A middle is that which naturally follows
something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot,
therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform
to the type here described." [1]
[1] Aristotle, Poetics VII.
Let us state the first part of the doctrine in this way:
1. The Beginning Must State the Premises of the Problem Clearly
and Simply
Although life knows neither a beginning nor an end--not your life
nor mine, but the stream of unseparate events that make up
existence--a work of art, like the playlet, must have both. The
beginning of any event in real life may lie far back in history;
its immediate beginnings, however, start out closely together and
distinctly in related causes and become more indistinctly related
the farther back they go. Just where you should consider the event
that is the crisis of your playlet has its beginning, depends upon
how you want to tell it--in other words, it depends upon you. No
one can think for you, but there are one or two observations upon
the nature of plot-beginnings that may be suggestive.
In the first place, no matter how carefully the dramatic material
has been severed from connection with other events, it cannot be
considered entirely independent. By the very nature of things,
it must have its roots in the past from which it springs, and these
roots--the foundations upon which the playlet rises--must be
presented to the audience at the very beginning.
If you were introducing a friend of yours and his sister and brother
to your family, who had never met them before, you would tell which
one was your particular friend, what his sister's name was, and
his brother's name, too, and their relationship to your friend.
And, if the visit were unexpected, you would--naturally and
unconsciously--determine how they happened to come and how long
you might have the pleasure of entertaining them; in fact, you
would fix every fact that would give your family a clear understanding
of the event of their presence. In other words, you would very
informally and delicately establish their status, by outlining
their relations to you and to each other, so that your family might
have a clear understanding of the situation they were asked to
face.
This is precisely what must be done at the very beginning of a
playlet--the friends, who are the author's characters, must be
introduced to his interested family, the audience, with every bit
of information that is necessary to a clear understanding of the
playlet's situation. These are the roots from which the playlet
springs--the premise of its problem. Precisely as "The Lollard"
declares in its opening speeches who Miss Carey is and who Angela
Maxwell is, and that Angela is knocking at Miss Carey's door at
two o'clock in the morning because she has left Harry, her husband,
after a quarrel the roots of which lie in the past, so every playlet
must state in its very first speeches, the "whos" and "whys"--the
premises--out of which the playlet logically develops.
The prologue of "The Villain Still Pursued Her" is an excellent
illustration of this point. When this very funny travesty was
first produced, it did not have a prologue. It began almost
precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did
not know whether to take it seriously or not. The instant he
watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed
the problem he had to face. He knew, then, that he would have to
tell the next audience and every other that the playlet is a farce,
a roaring travesty, to get the full value of laughter that lies
in the situations. He pondered the matter and saw that if the
announcement in plain type on the billboards and in the program
that his playlet was a travesty was not enough, he would have to
tell the audience by a plain statement from the stage before his
playlet began. So he hit upon the prologue that stamps the act
as a travesty in its very first lines, introduces the characters
and exposes the roots out of which the action develops so clearly
that there cannot possibly be any mistake. And his reward was the
making over of an indifferent success into one of the most successful
travesties in vaudeville.
This conveying to the audience of the knowledge necessary to enable
them to follow the plot is technically known as "exposition." It
is one of the most important parts of the art of construction--indeed,
it is a sure test of a playwright's dexterity. While there are
various ways of offering preliminary information in the long
drama--that is, it may be presented all at once in the opening
scene of the first act, or homeopathically throughout the first
act, or some minor bits of necessary information may be postponed
even until the opening of the second act--there is only one way
of presenting the information necessary to the understanding of
the playlet: It must all be compressed into the very first speeches
of the opening scene.
The clever playlet writer is advertised by the ease--the
simplicity--with which he condenses every bit of the exposition
into the opening speeches. You are right in the middle of things
before you realize it and it is all done so skillfully that its
straightforwardness leaves never a suspicion that the simplicity
is not innate but manufactured; it seems artless, yet its artlessness
is the height of art. The beginning of a playlet, then, must
convey to the audience every bit of information about the characters
and their relations to each other that is necessary for clear
understanding. Furthermore, it must tell it all compactly and
swiftly in the very first speeches, and by the seeming artlessness
of its opening events it must state the problem so simply that
what follows is foreshadowed and seems not only natural but
inevitable.
2. The Middle Must Develop the Problem Logically and Solve the
Entanglement in a "Big" Scene
For the purpose of perfect understanding, I would define the
"middle" of a playlet as that part which carries the story on from
the indispensable introduction to and into the scene of final
suspense--the climax--in which the chief character's will breaks
or triumphs and the end is decided. In "The Lollard" this would
be from the entrance of Fred Saltus and his talk with Angela, to
Miss Carey's exposure of Fred's "lollardness," which breaks down
Angela's determination by showing her that her husband is no worse
than Fred and makes it certain that Harry has only to return to
his delightful deceptions of dress to carry her off with him home.
(a) _The "Exciting Force."_ The beginning of the action that we
have agreed to call the middle of a playlet, is technically termed
"the exciting force." The substance of the whole matter is this:
Remember what your story is and tell it with all the dramatic force
with which you are endowed.
Perhaps the most common, and certainly the very best, place to
"start the trouble"--to put the exciting force which arouses the
characters to conflict--is the very first possible instant after
the clear, forceful and foreshadowing introduction. The introduction
has started the action of the story, the chief characters have
shown what they are and the interest of the audience has been
awakened. Now you must clinch that interest by having something
happen that is novel, and promises in the division of personal
interests which grow out of it to hold a punch that will stir the
sympathies legitimately and deeply.
(b) _The "Rising Movement."_ This exciting force is the beginning
of what pundits call "the rising movement"--in simple words, the
action which from now on increases in meaning vital to the characters
and their destinies. What happens, of course, depends upon the
material and the treatment, but there is one point that requires
a moment's discussion here, although closely linked with the ability
to seize upon the dramatic--if it is not, itself, the heart of the
dramatic. This important point is, that in every story set for
the stage, there are certain
(c) _Scenes that Must be Shown_. From the first dawn of drama
until today, when the motion pictures are facing the very same
necessity, the problem that has vexed playwrights most is the
selection of what scenes must be shown. These all-important scenes
are the incidents of the story or the interviews between characters
that cannot be recounted by other characters. Call them dramatic
scenes, essential scenes, what you will, if they are not shown
actually happening, but are described by dialogue--the interest
of the audience will lag and each person from the first seat in
the orchestra to the last bench in the gallery will be disappointed
and dissatisfied. For instance:
If, instead of Fred Saltus' appearing before the audience and
having his humorously thoughtless but nevertheless momentous talk
with Angela _in which Angela falls in love with him_, the interview
had been told the audience by Miss Carey, there would have been
no playlet. Nearly as important is the prologue of "The Villian
Still Pursued Her"; Mr. Denvir found it absolutely necessary to
show those characters to the audience, so that they might see them
with their own eyes in their farcical relations to each other,
before he secured the effect that made his playlet. Turn to "The
System" and try to find even one scene there shown that could be
replaced by narrative dialogue and you will see once more how
important are the "scenes that must be shown."
One of the all-rules-in-one for writing drama that I have heard,
though I cannot now recall what playwright told me, deals with
precisely this point. He expressed it this way: "First tell your
audience what you are going to do, then show it to them happening,
and then tell 'em it has happened!" You will not make a mistake,
of course, if you show the audience those events in which the
dramatic conflict enters. The soul of a playlet is the clash of
the wills of the characters, from which fly the revealing flashes;
a playlet, therefore, loses interest for the audience when the
scenes in which those wills clash and flash revealingly are not
shown.
It is out of such revealing scenes that the rising movement grows,
as Freytag says, "with a progressive intensity of interest." But,
not only must the events progress and the climax be brought nearer,
but the scenes themselves must broaden with force and revealing
power. They must grow until there comes one big scene--"big" in
every way--somewhere on the toes of the ending, a scene next to
the last or the last itself.
(d) _The Climax_. Here is where the decisive blow is struck in a
moment when the action becomes throbbing and revealing in every
word and movement. In "The Lollard" it is when Fred makes his
revealing dash through the room--this is the dramatic blow which
breaks Angela's infatuation. It is the crowning point of the
crowning scene in which the forces of the playlet culminate, and
the "heart wallop"--as Tom Barry calls it [1]--is delivered and
the decision is won and made.
[1] Vaudeville Appeal and the "Heart Wallop," by Tom Barry, author
of The Upstart and Brother Fans, an interesting article in The
Dramatic Mirror of December 16, 1914. For this and other valuable
information I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and to express
my thanks to The Dramatic Mirror and its courteous Vaudeville
Editor, Frederick James Smith.
Whatever this decision may be and however it is won and made, the
climax must be first of all a real climax--it must be "big," whether
it be a comedy scream or the seldom-seen tragic tear. Big in
movement and expression it must be, depending for effect not on
words but on the revealing flash; it must be the summit of the
action; it must be the event toward which the entire movement has
been rising; it must be the fulfillment of what was foreshadowed;
it must be keen, quick, perfectly logical and _flash_ the illuminating
revelation, as if one would say, "Here, this is what I've kept you
waiting for--my whole reason for being." Need I say that such a
climax will be worth while?
And now, as the climax is the scene toward which every moment of
the playlet--from the first word of the introduction and the first
scene-statement of the playlet's problem--has been motivated, and
toward which it has risen and culminated, so also the climax holds
within itself the elements from which develops the ending.
3. The Ending Must Round the Whole Out Satisfyingly.
For the purpose of clearness, let me define the ending of a playlet
as a scene that lies between the climax or culminating scene--in
which the audience has been made to feel the coming-to-an-end
effect--and the very last word on which the curtain descends. If
you have ever watched a sailor splicing a rope, you will know what
I mean when I say that the worker, reaching for the loose ends to
finish the job off neatly, is like the playlet writer who reaches
here and there for the playlet's loose ends and gathers them all
up into a neat, workmanlike finish. The ending of a playlet must
not leave unfulfilled any promises of the premise, but must fulfill
them all satisfyingly.
The characteristics of a good playlet ending--besides the completeness
with which the problem has been "proved" and the satisfyingness
with which it all rounds out--are terseness, speed and "punch."
If the climax is a part of the playlet wherein words may not be
squandered, the ending is the place where words--you will know
what I mean--may not be used at all. Everything that must be
explained must be told by means which reach into the spectator's
memory of what has gone before and make it the positive pole of
the battery from which flash the wireless messages from the scene
of action. As Emerson defined character as that which acts by
mere presence without words, let me define the ending of a playlet
as that which acts without words by the simple bringing together
of the characters in their new relations.
The climax has said to the audience, "Here, this is what I've kept
you waiting for--my whole reason for being," therefore the ending
cannot dally--it must run swiftly to the final word. There is no
excuse for the ending to linger over anything at all--the shot has
been fired and the audience waits only for the smoke to clear away,
that it may see how the bull's-eye looks. The swifter you can blow
the smoke away, show them that you've hit the bull's-eye dead in the
centre, and bow yourself off amid their pleased applause, the better
your impression will be.
Take these three examples:
When Fred Saltus dashes revealingly across the stage and back into
his room again, "The Lollard's" climax is reached; and as soon
as Angela exclaims "What 'a lollard' _that_ is!" there's a ring
at the door bell and in comes Harry to win Angela completely with
his regimentals and to carry her off and bring the curtain down--
_in eight very short speeches_.
In "The System," the climax arrives when the honest Inspector
orders Dugan arrested and led away. Then he gives "The Eel" and
Goldie their freedom and exits with a simple "Good Night"--and the
curtain comes down--_all in seven speeches_.
The climax of "Blackmail" seems to come when Fallon shoots Mohun
and Kelly breaks into the room--to the curtain it is _seven
speeches_. But the real climax is reached when Kelly shouts over
the telephone "Of course, in self-defense, you fool, _of course_,
in self-defense." This is--_the last speech_.
Convincing evidence, is this not, of the speed with which the
curtain must follow the climax?
And so we have come, to this most important point--the "finish"
or "the curtain," as vaudeville calls it. The very last thing
that must be shown, and the final word that must be said before
the curtain comes down, are the last loose ends of the plot which
must be spliced into place--the final illuminating word to round
out the whole playlet humanly and cleverly. "The Lollard" goes
back to Miss Carey's sleep, which Angela's knock on the door
interrupted: "Now, thank Gawd, I'll get a little sleep," says Miss
Carey as she puts out the light. A human, an everyday word it is,
spoken like a reminiscent thrill--and down comes the curtain amid
laughter and applause. A fine way to end.
But not the only way--let us examine "The System."
"Well, we're broke again," says Goldie tearfully. "We can't go
West now, so there's no use packing." Now, note the use of business
in the ending, and the surprise. The Eel goes stealthily to the
window L, looks out, and pulls the dictograph from the wall. Then
he comes down stage to Goldie who is sitting on the trunk and has
watched him. He taps her on the shoulder, taking Dugan's red
wallet out of his pocket. "Go right ahead and pack," says The
Eel, while Goldie looks astonished and begins to laugh. The
audience, too, look astonished and begin to laugh when they see
that red wallet. It is a surprise--a surprise so cleverly constructed
that it hits the audience hard just above the laughter-and-applause-belt--
a surprise that made the act at least twenty-five per cent better
than it would have been without it. And from it we may now draw
the "rules" for the use of that most helpful and most dangerous
element, surprise in the vaudeville finish:
Note first, that it was entirely logical for The Eel to steal the
wallet--he is a pickpocket. Second, that the theft of the wallet
is not of trivial importance to Goldie's destiny and to his--they
are "broke" and they must get away; the money solves all their
problems. And third, note that while The Eel's possession of the
wallet is a surprise, the wallet itself is _not_ a surprise--it
has first played a most important part in the tempting of Goldie
and has been shown to the audience not once but many times; and
its very color--red--makes it instantly recognizable; the spectators
know what it contains and what its contents mean to the destinies
of both The Eel and Goldie--it is only that The Eel has it, that
constitutes the surprise.
Now I must sound a warning against striving too hard after a
surprise finish. The very nature of many playlets makes it
impossible to give them such a curtain. If you have built up a
story which touches the heart and brings tears to the eyes, and
then turn it all into a joke, the chances are the audience will
feel that their sympathies have been outraged, and so the playlet
will fail. For instance, one playlet was ruined because right on
top of the big, absorbing climax two of the characters who were
then off stage stuck their heads in at the door and shouted at the
hero of the tense situation, "April Fool."
Therefore, the following may be considered as an important "rule";
a playlet that touches the heart should never end with a trick or
a surprise. [1]
[1] See Chapter XVIII, section III, par. 4.
Now, let me sum up these four elements of surprise:
A surprise finish must be fitting, logical, vitally important,
and revealingly dramatic; if you cannot give a playlet a
surprise-finish that shall be all of these four things at once,
be content with the simpler ending.
The importance of a playlet's ending is so well understood in
vaudeville that the insistence upon a "great finish" to every
playlet has sometimes seemed to be over-insistence, for, important
as it is, it is no more important than a "great opening" and "great
scenes." The ending is, of course, the final thing that quickens
applause, and, coming last and being freshest in the mind of the
audience, it is more likely to carry just a fair act to success
than a fine act is likely to win with the handicap of a poor finish.
But, discounting this to be a bit under the current valuation of
"great finishes," we still may round out this discussion of the
playlet's three important parts, with this temperate sentence:
A well constructed playlet plot is one whose Beginning states
the premises of its problem clearly and simply, whose Middle
develops the problem logically and solves the entanglement in a
"big" scene, and whose Ending rounds out the whole satisfyingly--
with a surprise, if fitting.
But, temperate and helpful as this statement of a well constructed
plot may be, there is something lacking in it. And that something
lacking is the very highest test of plot--lightly touched on at
various times, but which, although it enters into a playwright's
calculations every step of the way, could not be logically considered
in this treatise until the structure had been examined as a whole:
I mean the formidable-sounding, but really very simple dramatic
unities.
III. THE THREE DRAMATIC UNITIES
Now, but only for a moment, we must return to the straight line
of investigation from which we swerved in considering the structural
parts of a playlet plot.
At the beginning of this chapter we saw that a simple narrative
of events is made a plot by the addition of a crisis or entanglement,
and its resolution or untying. Now, the point I wish to present
with all the emphasis at my command, is that complication does not
mean complexity.
1. Unity of Action
In other words, no matter how many events you place one after
another--no matter how you pile incident upon incident--you will
not have a plot unless you so _inter-relate_ them that the removal
of anyone event will destroy the whole story. Each event must
depend on the one preceding it, and in turn form a basis for the
one following, and each must depend upon all the others so vitally
that if you take one away the whole collapses. [1]
[1] See Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter VIII, and also Poe's criticism,
The American Drama.
(a) _Unity of Hero is not Unity of Action._ One of the great errors
into which the novice is likely to fall, is to believe that because
he makes every event which happens happen to the hero, he is
observing the rule of unity. Nothing could be farther from the
truth--nothing is so detrimental to successful plot construction.
[2]
[2] See Freytag's Technique of the Drama, p. 36.
Aristotle tried to correct this evil, which he saw in the plays
of the great Athenian poets, by saying: "The action is the first
and most important thing, the characters only second;" and, "The
action is not given unity by being made to concern only one person."
Remember, unity of action means unity of _story_.
(b) _Double-Action is Dangerous to Unity_. If you have a scene
in which two minor characters come together for a reason vital to
the plot, you must be extremely careful not to tell anything more
than the facts that are vital. In long plays the use of what is
called "double-action "--that is, giving to characters necessary
to the plot an interest and a destiny separate from that of the
chief characters--is, of course, recognized and productive of fine
results. But, even in the five-act play, the use of double-action
is dangerous. For instance: Shakespere developed Falstaff so
humorously that today we sometimes carelessly think of "Henry IV"
as a delightful comedy, when in reality it was designed as a serious
drama--and is most serious, when Falstaff's lines are cut from the
reading version to the right proportions for to-day's stage effect.
If Shakespere nodded, it is a nod even the legitimate dramatist
of today should take to heart, and the playlet writer--peculiarly
restricted as to time--must engrave deeply in his memory.
The only way to secure unity of action is to concentrate upon your
problem or theme; to realize that you are telling a _story_; to
remember that each character, even your hero, is only a pawn to
advance the story; and to cut away rigorously all non-essential
events. If you will bear in mind that a playlet is only as good
as its plot, that a plot is a _story_ and that you must give to
your story, as has been said, "A completeness--a kind of universal
dovetailedness, a sort of general oneness," you will have little
difficulty in observing the one playlet rule that should never be
broken--Unity of action.
2. Unity of Time
The second of the classical unities, unity of time, is peculiarly
perplexing, if you study to "understand" and not merely to write.
Briefly--for I must reiterate that our purpose is practice and not
theory--the dramatists of every age since Aristotle have quarreled
over the never-to-be-settled problem of what space of time a play
should be permitted to represent. Those who take the stand that
no play should be allowed to show an action that would require
more than twenty-four hours for the occurrences in real life, base
their premise on the imitative quality of the stage, rather than
upon the selective quality of art. While those who contend that
a play may disregard the classical unity of time, if only it
preserves the unity of action, base their contention upon the fact
that an audience is interested not in time at all--but in story.
In other words, a play preserves the only unity worth preserving
when it deals with the incidents that cause a crisis and ends by
showing its effect, no matter whether the action takes story-years
to occur or happens all in a story-hour.
If we were studying the long drama it might be worth our while to
consider the various angles of this ancient dispute, but, fortunately,
we have a practical and, therefore, better standard by which to
state this unity in its application to the playlet. Let us approach
the matter in this way:
Vaudeville is variety--it strives to compress into the space of
about two hours and a half a great number of different acts which
run the gamut of the entertainment forms, and therefore it cannot
afford more than an average of twenty minutes to each. This time
limit makes it difficult for a playlet to present effectively any
story that does not occur in consecutive minutes. It has been
found that even the lowering of the curtain for one second to
denote the lapse of an hour or a year, has a tendency to distract
the minds of the audience from the story and to weaken the singleness
of effect without which a playlet is nothing.
On the other hand, this "rule" is not unbreakable: a master
craftsman's genius is above all laws. In "The System" the first
scene takes place in the evening; scene two, a little later the
same evening; and scene three later that same night. The story
is really continuous in time, but the story-time is not equal to
the playing-time even though this playlet consumes nearly twice
twenty minutes. But, you will note, the scenery changes help to
keep the interest of the audience from flagging, and also stamp
the lapses of time effectively.
A still greater violation of the "rule"--if it were stated as
absolutely rigid--is to be found in Mr. Granville's later act,
"The Yellow Streak," written in collaboration with James Madison.
Here scene two takes place later in the evening of the first scene,
and the third scene after a lapse of four months. But these two
exceptions, out of many that might be cited, merely prove that
dramatic genius can mold even the rigid time of the vaudeville
stage to its needs.
Of course, there is the possibility of foreshortening time to meet
the exigencies of vaudeville when the scene is not changed. For
instance: a character telephones that he will be right over and
solve the whole situation on which the punch of the playlet depends,
and he enters five actual minutes later--although in real life it
would take an hour to make the trip. This is an extreme instance,
as time foreshortening goes, because it is one where the audience
might grasp the disparity, and is given for its side-light of
warning as well as for its suggestive value.
More simple foreshortenings of time are found in many playlets
where the effect of an hour-or-more of events is compressed into
the average twenty minutes. As an example of this perfectly safe
use of shortening, note the quickness with which Harry returns to
Miss Carey's apartment when he goes out to change into his
regimentals. And as still safer foreshortenings, note the quickness
with which Fred Saltus enters after Miss Carey goes to bed leaving
Angela on the couch; and the quickness with which Angela falls in
love with him--in fact, the entire compression inherent in the
dramatic events which cannot be dissociated from time compression.
A safe attitude for a playlet writer to take, is that all of his
action shall mimic time reality as closely as his dramatic moment
and the time-allowance of presentation will permit. This is
considered in all dramatic art to be the ideal.
A good way to obviate disparaging comparison is to avoid reference
to time--either in the dialogue or by the movements of events.
To sum up the whole matter, a vaudeville playlet may be considered
as preserving unity of time when its action occurs in continuous
minutes of about the length the episode would take to occur in
real life.
3. Unity of Place
The commercial element of vaudeville often makes it inadvisable
for a playlet to show more than one scene--very often an otherwise
acceptable playlet is refused production because the cost of
supplying special scenes makes it a bad business venture. [1]
[1] See Chapter III.
Yet it is permissible for a writer to give his playlet more than
one place of happening--if he can make his story so compact and
gripping that it does not lose in effect by the unavoidable few
seconds' wait necessary to the changing of the scenery. But, even
if his playlet is so big and dramatic that it admits of a change
of scenes, he must conform it to the obvious vaudeville necessity
of scenic alternation. [2] With this scenic "rule" the matter of
unity of place in the playlet turns to the question of a playwright's
art, which rules cannot limit.
[2] See Chapter I.
This third and last unity of the playlet may, however, for all
save the master-craftsman, be safely stated as follows:
Except in rare instances a playlet should deal with a story that
requires but one set of scenery, thus conserving the necessities
of commercial vaudeville, aiding the smooth running of a performance,
and preserving the dramatic unity of place.
We may now condense the three dramatic unities into a statement
peculiarly applicable to the playlet--which would seem as though
specially designed to fulfill them all:
A playlet preserves the dramatic unities when it shows one action
in one time and in one place.
And now it may be worth while once more to sum up what I have said
about the elements of plot--of which the skeleton of every playlet
must be made up:
A mere sequence of events is not a plot; to become a plot there
must develop a crisis or entanglement due to a conflict of the
characters' wills; the entanglement must be of such importance
that when it is untangled the characters will be in a different
relation to each other--changed in themselves by the crisis. A
plot is divided into three parts: a Beginning, a Middle and an
Ending. The Beginning must state the premises of the playlet's
problem clearly and simply; the Middle must develop the problem
logically and solve the entanglement in a "big" scene, and the
Ending must round out the whole satisfyingly--with a surprise, if
fitting. A plot, furthermore, must be so constructed that the
removal of anyone of its component parts will be detrimental to
the whole. It is told best when its action occurs in continuous
time of about the length the episode would take to occur in real
life and does not require the changing of scenery. Thus will a
playlet be made to give the _singleness_ of effect that is the height
of playlet art.