No other artist is so little appreciated by the public that enjoys his
work, or is granted so little studious consideration from the critically
minded, as the dramatist. Other artists, like the novelist, the painter,
the sculptor, or the actor, appeal directly to the public and the critics;
nothing stands between their finished work and the minds that contemplate
it. A person reading a novel by Mr. Howells, or looking at a statue by
Saint-Gaudens or a picture by Mr. Sargent, may see exactly what the artist
has done and what he has not, and may appreciate his work accordingly. But
when the dramatist has completed his play, he does not deliver it directly
to the public; he delivers it only indirectly, through the medial
interpretation of many other artists,--the actor, the stage-director, the
scene-painter, and still others of whom the public seldom hears. If any of
these other and medial artists fails to convey the message that the
dramatist intended, the dramatist will fail of his intention, though the
fault is not his own. None of the general public, and few of the critics,
will discern what the dramatist had in mind, so completely may his creative
thought be clouded by inadequate interpretation.
The dramatist is obviously at the mercy of his actors. His most delicate
love scene may be spoiled irrevocably by an actor incapable of profound
emotion daintily expressed; his most imaginative creation of a hard and
cruel character may be rendered unappreciable by an actor of too persuasive
charm. And, on the other hand, the puppets of a dramatist with very little
gift for characterisation may sometimes be lifted into life by gifted
actors and produce upon the public a greater impression than the characters
of a better dramatist less skilfully portrayed. It is, therefore, very
difficult to determine whether the dramatist has imagined more or less than
the particular semblance of humanity exhibited by the actor on the stage.
Othello, as portrayed by Signor Novelli, is a man devoid of dignity and
majesty, a creature intensely animal and nervously impulsive; and if we had
never read the play, or seen other performances of it, we should probably
deny to Shakespeare the credit due for one of his most grand conceptions.
On the other hand, when we witness Mr. Warfield's beautiful and truthful
performance of _The Music Master_, we are tempted not to notice that the
play itself is faulty in structure, untrue in character, and obnoxiously
sentimental in tone. Because Mr. Warfield, by the sheer power of his
histrionic genius, has lifted sentimentality into sentiment and
conventional theatricism into living truth, we are tempted to give to Mr.
Charles Klein the credit for having written a very good play instead of a
very bad one.
Only to a slightly less extent is the dramatist at the mercy of his
stage-director. Mrs. Rida Johnson Young's silly play called _Brown of
Harvard_ was made worth seeing by the genius of Mr. Henry Miller as a
producer. By sheer visual imagination in the setting and the handling of
the stage, especially in the first act and the last, Mr. Miller contrived
to endow the author's shallow fabric with the semblance of reality. On the
other hand, Mr. Richard Walton Tully's play, _The Rose of the Rancho_, was
spoiled by the cleverest stage-director of our day. Mr. Tully must,
originally, have had a story in his mind; but what that story was could not
be guessed from witnessing the play. It was utterly buried under an
atmosphere of at least thirty pounds to the square inch, which Mr. Belasco
chose to impose upon it. With the stage-director standing thus, for benefit
or hindrance, between the author and the audience, how is the public to
appreciate what the dramatist himself has, or has not, done?
An occasion is remembered in theatric circles when, at the tensest moment
in the first-night presentation of a play, the leading actress, entering
down a stairway, tripped and fell sprawling. Thus a moment which the
dramatist intended to be hushed and breathless with suspense was made
overwhelmingly ridiculous. A cat once caused the failure of a play by
appearing unexpectedly upon the stage during the most important scene and
walking foolishly about. A dramatist who has spent many months devising a
melodrama which is dependent for its effect at certain moments on the way
in which the stage is lighted may have his play sent suddenly to failure at
any of those moments if the stage-electrician turns the lights
incongruously high or low. These instances are merely trivial, but they
serve to emphasise the point that so much stands between the dramatist and
the audience that it is sometimes difficult even for a careful critic to
appreciate exactly what the dramatist intended.
And the general public, at least in present-day America, never makes the
effort to distinguish the intention of the dramatist from the
interpretation it receives from the actors and (to a less extent) the
stage-director. The people who support the theatre see and estimate the
work of the interpretative artists only; they do not see in itself and
estimate for its own sake the work of the creative artist whose imaginings
are being represented well or badly. The public in America goes to see
actors; it seldom goes to see a play. If the average theatre-goer has liked
a leading actor in one piece, he will go to see that actor in the next
piece in which he is advertised to appear. But very, very rarely will he go
to see a new play by a certain author merely because he has liked the last
play by the same author. Indeed, the chances are that he will not even know
that the two plays have been written by the same dramatist. Bronson Howard
once told me that he was very sure that not more than one person in ten out
of all the people who had seen _Shenandoah_ knew who wrote the play. And I
hardly think that a larger proportion of the people who have seen both Mr.
Willard in _The Professor's Love Story_ and Miss Barrymore in
_Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire_ could tell you, if you should ask them, that the
former play was written by the author of the latter. How many people who
remember vividly Sir Henry Irving's performance of _The Story of Waterloo_
could tell you who wrote the little piece? If you should ask them who wrote
the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, they would answer you at once. Yet
_The Story of Waterloo_ was written by the author of those same detective
stories.
The general public seldom knows, and almost never cares, who wrote a play.
What it knows, and what it cares about primarily, is who is acting in it.
Shakespearean dramas are the only plays that the public will go to see for
the author's sake alone, regardless of the actors. It will go to see a bad
performance of a play by Shakespeare, because, after all, it is seeing
Shakespeare: it will not go to see a bad performance of a play by Sir
Arthur Pinero, merely because, after all, it is seeing Pinero. The
extraordinary success of _The Master Builder_, when it was presented in New
York by Mme. Nazimova, is an evidence of this. The public that filled the
coffers of the Bijou Theatre was paying its money not so much to see a play
by the author of _A Doll's House_ and _Hedda Gabler_ as to see a
performance by a clever and tricky actress of alluring personality, who was
better advertised and, to the average theatre-goer, better known than
Henrik Ibsen.
Since the public at large is much more interested in actors than it is in
dramatists, and since the first-night critics of the daily newspapers write
necessarily for the public at large, they usually devote most of their
attention to criticising actors rather than to criticising dramatists.
Hence the general theatre-goer is seldom aided, even by the professional
interpreters of theatric art, to arrive at an understanding and
appreciation, for its own sake, of that share in the entire artistic
production which belongs to the dramatist and the dramatist alone.
For, in present-day America at least, production in the theatre is the
dramatist's sole means of publication, his only medium for conveying to the
public those truths of life he wishes to express. Very few plays are
printed nowadays, and those few are rarely read: seldom, therefore, do they
receive as careful critical consideration as even third-class novels. The
late Clyde Fitch printed _The Girl with the Green Eyes_. The third act of
that play exhibits a very wonderful and searching study of feminine
jealousy. But who has bothered to read it, and what accredited
book-reviewer has troubled himself to accord it the notice it deserves? It
is safe to say that that remarkable third act is remembered only by people
who saw it acted in the theatre. Since, therefore, speaking broadly, the
dramatist can publish his work only through production, it is only through
attending plays and studying what lies beneath the acting and behind the
presentation that even the most well-intentioned critic of contemporary
drama can discover what our dramatists are driving at.
The great misfortune of this condition of affairs is that the failure of a
play as a business proposition cuts off suddenly and finally the
dramatist's sole opportunity for publishing his thought, even though the
failure may be due to any one of many causes other than incompetence on the
part of the dramatist. A very good play may fail because of bad acting or
crude production, or merely because it has been brought out at the wrong
time of the year or has opened in the wrong sort of city. Sheridan's
_Rivals_, as everybody knows, failed when it was first presented. But when
once a play has failed at the present day, it is almost impossible for the
dramatist to persuade any manager to undertake a second presentation of it.
Whether good or bad, the play is killed, and the unfortunate dramatist is
silenced until his next play is granted a hearing.