THE PLAY AS THEME AND PERSONAL VIEW
We may now come directly to a consideration of the play regarded as a
work of art and a piece of life. After all, this is the central aim in
the attempt to become intelligent in our play-going. A play may properly
be thought of as a theme; it has a definite subject, which involves a
personal opinion about life on the author's part; a view of human beings
in their complex interrelations the sum of which make up man's existence
on this globe.
The play has a story, of course, and that story is so handled as to
constitute a plot: meaning a tangle of circumstances in which the fates
of a handful of human beings are involved, a tangle to which it is the
business of the plot to give meaning and direction. But back of the
story, in any drama that rises to some worth, there is a theme, in a
sense. Thus, the theme of _Macbeth_ is the degenerating effect of sin
upon the natures of the king and his spouse; and the theme of Ibsen's _A
Doll's House_ is the evil results of treating a grown-up woman as if she
were a mere puppet with little or no relation to life's serious
realities.
The thing that gives dignity and value to any play is to be found just
here: a distinctive theme, which is over and above the interest of
story-plot, sinks into the consciousness of the spectator or reader, and
gives him stimulating thoughts about life and living long after he may
have quite forgotten the fable which made the framework for this
suggestive impulse of the dramatist. Give the statement a practical
test. Plenty of plays suffice well enough perhaps to fill an evening
pleasantly, yet have no theme at all, no idea which one can take with
him from the playhouse and ruminate at leisure. For, although the story
may be skillfully handled and the technic of the piece be satisfying, if
it is not _about_ anything, the rational auditor is vaguely dissatisfied
and finds in the final estimate that all such plays fall below those
that really have a theme. To illustrate: Mr. Augustus Thomas's fine
play, _The Witching Hour_, has a theme embedded in a good, old-fashioned
melodramatic story; and this is one of the reasons for its great
success. But the same author's _Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots_, though
executed with practiced skill, has no theme at all and therefore is at
the best an empty, if amusing, trifle, far below the dramatist's full
powers. Frankly, it is a pot boiler. And, similarly, Mr. Thomas's
capital western American drama, _Arizona_, while primarily and
apparently story for its own sake, takes on an added virtue because it
illustrates, in a story-setting, certain typical and worthy American
traits to be found at the time and under those conditions in the far
west. To have a theme is not to be didactic, neither to argue for a
thesis nor moot a problem. It is simply to have an opinion about life
involved in and rising naturally out of the story, and never, never
lugged in by the heels. The true dramatist does not tell a story because
he has a theme he wishes to impose upon the audience; on the contrary,
he tells his story because he sees life that way, in terms of plot, of
drama, and in its course, and in spite of himself, a certain notion or
view about sublunary things enters into the structure of the whole
creation, and emanates from it like an atmosphere. One of the very best
comedies of modern times is the late Sidney Grundy's _A Pair of
Spectacles_. It has sound technic, delightful characterization, and a
simple, plausible, coherent and interesting fable. But, beyond this, it
has a theme, a heart-warming one: namely, that one who sees life through
the kindly lenses of the optimist is not only happier, but gets the best
results from his fellow beings; in short, is nearer the truth. And no
one should doubt that this theme goes far toward explaining the
remarkable vogue of this admirable comedy. Without a theme so clear,
agreeable and interpretive, a play equally skillful would never have had
like fortune.
And this theme in a play, as was hinted, must, to be acceptable, express
the author's personal opinion, honestly, fearlessly put forth. If it be
merely what he ought to think in the premises, what others
conventionally think, what it will, in his opinion, or that of the
producer of the play, pay to think, the drama will not ring true, and
will be likely to fail, even if the technic of a lifetime bolster it up.
It must embody a truth relative to the writer, a fact about life as he
sees it, and nothing else. A theme in a play cannot be abstract truth,
for to tell us of abstract truth is the _metier_ of the philosopher, and
herein lies his difference from the stage story-teller. Relative truth
is the play-maker's aim and the paramount demand upon him is that he be
sincere. He must give a view of life in his story which is an honest
statement of what human beings and human happenings really are in his
experience. If his experience has been so peculiar or unique as to make
his themes absurd and impossible to people in general, then his play
will pretty surely fail. He pays the penalty of his warped, or too
limited or degenerate experience. No matter: show the thing as he sees
it and knows it, that he must; and then take his chances.
And so convincing, so winning is sincerity, that even when the view that
lies at the heart of the theme appears monstrous and out of all belief,
yet it will stand a better chance of acceptance than if the author had
trimmed his sails to every wind of favor that blows.
Mr. Kennedy wrote an odd drama a few years ago called _The Servant in
the House_, in which he did a most unconventional thing in the way of
introducing a mystic stranger out of the East into the midst of an
ordinary mundane English household. Anybody examining such a play in
advance, and aware of what sort of drama was typical of our day, might
have been forgiven had he absolutely refused to have faith in such a
work. But the author was one person who did have faith in it; he had a
fine theme: the idea that the Christ ideal, when projected into daily
life--instead of cried up once a week in church--and there acted on, is
efficacious. He had an unshaken belief in this idea. And he conquered,
because he dared to substitute for the conventional and supposed
inevitable demand an apparently unpopular personal conviction. He
found, as men who dare commonly do, that the assumed personal view was
the general view which no one had had the courage before to express.
In the same way, M. Maeterlinck, another idealist of the day, wrote _The
Blue Bird_. It is safe to say that those in a position to be wise in
matters dramatic would never have predicted the enormous success of this
simple child play in various countries. But the writer dared to vent his
ideas and feelings with regard to childhood and concerning the spiritual
aspirations of all mankind; in other words, he chose a theme for some
other reason than because it was good, tried theater material; and the
world knows the result. It may be said without hesitation that more
plays fail in the attempt to modify view in favor of the supposed view
of others--the audience, the manager or somebody else--than fail because
the dramatist has sturdily stuck to his point of view and honestly set
down in his story his own private reaction to the wonderful thing called
life; a general possession and yet not one thing, but having as many
sides as there are persons in the world to live it.
Consider, for example, the number of dramas that, instead of carrying
through the theme consistently to the end, are deflected from their
proper course through the playwright's desire (more often it is an
unwilling concession to others' desire) to furnish that
tradition-condiment, a "pleasant ending." Now everybody normal would
rather have a play end well than not; he who courts misery for its own
sake is a fool. But, if not a fool, he does not wish the pleasantness at
the expense of truth, because then the pleasantness is no longer
pleasant to the educated taste, and so defeats its own end. And it is an
observed fact that some stories, whether fiction or drama, "begin to end
well," as Stevenson expressed it; while others, just as truly, begin to
end ill. Hence, when such themes are manhandled by the cheap, dishonest
wresting of events or characters or both, so as presumably to send the
audience home "happy," we get a wretched malversion of art,--and without
at all attaining the object in view. For even the average, or
garden-variety, of audience is uneasy at the insult offered its
intelligence in such a nefarious transaction. It has been asked to
witness a piece of real life, for, testimony to the contrary
notwithstanding, that is what an audience takes every play to be. Up to
a certain point, this presentation of life is convincing; then, for the
sake of leaving an impression that all is well because two persons are
united who never should be, or because the hero didn't die when he
really did, or because coincidence is piled on coincidence to make a
fairy tale situation at which a fairly intelligent cow would rebel,
presto, a lie has to be told that would not deceive the very children in
the seats. It is pleasant to record truthfully that this miserable and
mistaken demand on the part of the short-sighted purveyors of
commercialized dramatic wares is yielding gradually to the more
enlightened notion that any audience wants a play to be consistent with
itself, and feels that too high a price can be paid even for the good
ending whose false deification has played havoc with true dramatic
interests.
Another mode of dishonesty, in which the writer of a play fails in
theme, is to be found whenever, instead of sticking to his subject
matter and giving it the unity of his main interest and the wholeness of
effect derived from paying it undivided attention, extraneous matter is
introduced for the sake of temporary alleviation. Not to stick to your
theme is almost as bad at times as to have none. No doubt the temptation
comes to all practical playwrights and is a considerable one. But it
must be resisted if they are to remain self-respecting artists. The late
Clyde Fitch, skilled man of the theater though he was, sinned not seldom
in this respect. He sometimes introduced scenes effective for novelty
and truth of local color, but so little related to the whole that the
trained auditor might well have met him with the famous question asked
by the Greek audiences of their dramatists who strayed from their theme:
"What has this to do with Apollo?" The remark applies to the
drastically powerful scene in his posthumous play _The City_, where the
theme which was plainly announced in the first act is lost sight of in
the dramatist's desire to use material well adapted to secure a
sensational effect in his climax. It is only fair to say that, had this
drama received the final molding at the author's hands, it might have
been modified to some extent. But there is no question that this was a
tendency with Fitch.
The late Oscar Wilde had an almost unparalleled gift for witty
epigrammatic dialogue. In his two clever comedies, _Lady Windermere's
Fan_ and _A Woman of No Importance_, he allowed this gift to run away
with him to such an extent that the opening acts of both pieces contain
many speeches lifted from his notebooks, seemingly, and placed
arbitrarily in the mouths of sundry persons of the play: some of the
speeches could quite as well have been spoken by others. This
constituted a defect which might have seriously militated against the
success of those dramas had they not possessed in full measure brilliant
qualities of genuine constructive play-making. The theme, after all,
was there, once it was started; and so was the deft handling. But
dialogue not motivated by character or necessitated by story is always
an injury, and much drama to-day suffers from this fault. The producer
of the play declares that its tone is too steadily serious and demands
the insertion of some humor to lighten it, and the playwright, poor,
helpless wight, yields, though he knows he is sinning against the Holy
Ghost of his art. Or perhaps the play is too short to fill the required
time and so padding is deemed necessary;[B] or it may be that the
ignorance or short-sightedness of those producing the play will lead
them to confuse the interests of the chief player with that of the piece
itself; and so a departure from theme follows, and unity be sacrificed.
That is what unity means: sticking to theme.
And unity of story, be sure, waits on unity of theme. This insistence
upon singleness of purpose in a play, clinging to it against all
allurements, does not imply that what is known as a subplot may not be
allowed in a drama. It was common in the past and can still be seen
to-day, though the tendency of modern technic is to abandon it for the
sake of greater emphasis upon the main plot and the resulting tightening
of the texture, avoiding any risk of a splitting of interest. However, a
secondary or subplot in the right hands--as we see it in Shakespeare's
_Merchant of Venice_, or, for a modern instance, in Pinero's _Sweet
Lavender_--is legitimate enough. Those who manipulate it with success
will be careful to see that the minor plot shall never appear for a
moment to be major; and that both strands shall be interwoven into an
essential unity of design, which is admirably illustrated in
Shakespeare's comedy just mentioned.
Have a theme then, let it be quite your own, and stick to it, is a
succinct injunction which every dramatist will do well to heed and the
critic in the seat will do well to demand. Neither one nor the other
should ever forget that the one and only fundamental unity in drama,
past, present and to come, is unity of idea, and the unity of action
which gathers about that idea as surely as iron filings around the
magnetized center. The unities of time and place are conditional upon
the kind of drama aimed at, and the temporal and physical characteristic
of the theater; the Greeks obeyed them for reasons peculiar to the
Greeks, and many lands, beginning with the Romans, have imitated these
so-called laws since. But Shakespeare destroyed them for England, and
to-day, if unity of time and place are to be seen in an Ibsen play, it
simply means that, in the psychological drama he writes, time and place
are naturally restricted. But in the unity of action which means unity
of theme we have a principle which looks to the constitution of the
human mind; for the sake of that ease of attention which helps to hold
interest and produce pleasure, such unity there must be; the mind of man
(when he has one) is made that way.
There is a special reason why the intelligent play-goer must insist upon
this fundamental unity: because much in our present imaginative
literature is, as to form, in direct conflict with that appeal to a
sustained effect of unity offered by a well-wrought drama. The short
story that is all too brief, the vaudeville turn, the magazine habit of
reading a host of unrelated scamped trifles, all militate against the
habit of concentrated attention; all the more reason why it should be
cultivated.
Let me return to the thought that the dramatist, in making the theme his
own, may be tempted to present a view of life not only personal but
eccentric and vagarious to the point of insanity.
His view, to put it bluntly, may represent a crack-brained distortion of
life rather than life as it is experienced by men in general. In such a
case, and obviously, his drama will be ineffective and objectionable, in
the exact degree that it departs from what may be called broadly the
normal and the possible. As I have already asserted, distortion for
distortion, even a crazy handling of theme that is honest is to be
preferred to one consciously a deflection from belief. But the former is
not right because the latter is wrong. Both should be avoided, and will
be if the play-maker be at the same time sincere and healthily
representative in his reaction to life of humanity at large. The really
great plays, and the good plays that have shown a lasting quality, have
sinned in neither of these particulars.
It is especially of import that our critic-in-the-seat should insist on
this matter of normal appeal, because ours happens to be a day when
personal vagaries, extravagant theories and lawless imaginings are
granted a freedom in literary and other art in general such as an
earlier day hardly conceived of. The abuses under the mighty name of Art
are many and flagrant. All the more need for the knowing spectator in
the theater, or he who reads the play at home, to be prepared for his
function, quick to reprimand alike tame subserviency or the
abnormalities of unrestrained "genius." It is fair to say that absolute
honesty on the dramatist's part in the conception and presentation of
theme will meet all legitimate criticisms of his work. Within his
limitations, we shall get the best that is in him, if he will only show
us life as he sees it, and have the courage of his convictions, allowing
no son of man to warp his work from that purpose.