The question whether or not a given play should have a so-called happy
ending is one that requires more thorough consideration than is usually
accorded to it. It is nearly always discussed from one point of view, and
one only,--that of the box-office; but the experience of ages goes to show
that it cannot rightly be decided, even as a matter of business expediency,
without being considered also from two other points of view,--that of art,
and that of human interest. For in the long run, the plays that pay the
best are those in which a self-respecting art is employed to satisfy the
human longing of the audience.
When we look at the matter from the point of view of art, we notice first
of all that in any question of an ending, whether happy or unhappy, art is
doomed to satisfy itself and is denied the recourse of an appeal to nature.
Life itself presents a continuous sequence of causation, stretching on; and
nature abhors an ending as it abhors a vacuum. If experience teaches us
anything at all, it teaches us that nothing in life is terminal, nothing
is conclusive. Marriage is not an end, as we presume in books; but rather a
beginning. Not even death is final. We find our graves not in the ground
but in the hearts of our survivors, and our slightest actions vibrate in
ever-widening circles through incalculable time. Any end, therefore, to a
novel or a play, must be in the nature of an artifice; and an ending must
be planned not in accordance with life, which is lawless and illogical, but
in accordance with art, whose soul is harmony. It must be a strictly
logical result of all that has preceded it. Having begun with a certain
intention, the true artist must complete his pattern, in accordance with
laws more rigid than those of life; and he must not disrupt his design by
an illogical intervention of the long arm of coincidence. Stevenson has
stated this point in a letter to Mr. Sidney Colvin: "Make another end to
it? Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I
never use an effect when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that
are to follow; that's what a story consists in. To make another end, that
is to make the beginning all wrong." In this passage the whole question is
considered _merely_ from the point of view of art. It is the only point of
view which is valid for the novelist; for him the question is comparatively
simple, and Stevenson's answer, emphatic as it is, may be accepted as
final. But the dramatist has yet another factor to consider,--the factor
of his audience.
The drama is a more popular art than the novel, in the sense that it makes
its appeal not to the individual but to the populace. It sets a contest of
human wills before a multitude gathered together for the purpose of
witnessing the struggle; and it must rely for its interest largely upon the
crowd's instinctive sense of partisanship. As Marlowe said, in _Hero and
Leander_,--
When two are stripped, long e'er the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win.
The audience takes sides with certain characters against certain others;
and in most cases it is better pleased if the play ends in a victory for
the characters it favors. The question therefore arises whether the
dramatist is not justified in cogging the dice of chance and intervening
arbitrarily to insure a happy outcome to the action, even though that
outcome violate the rigid logic of the art of narrative. This is a very
important question; and it must not be answered dogmatically. It is safest,
without arguing _ex cathedra_, to accept the answer of the very greatest
dramatists. Their practice goes to show that such a violation of the strict
logic of art is justifiable in comedy, but is not justifiable in what we
may broadly call the serious drama. Molière, for instance, nearly always
gave an arbitrary happy ending to his comedies. Frequently, in the last
act, he introduced a long lost uncle, who arrived upon the scene just in
time to endow the hero and heroine with a fortune and to say "Bless you, my
children!" as the curtain fell. Molière evidently took the attitude that
since any ending whatsoever must be in the nature of an artifice, and
contrary to the laws of life, he might as well falsify upon the pleasant
side and send his auditors happy to their homes. Shakespeare took the same
attitude in many comedies, of which _As You Like It_ may be chosen as an
illustration. The sudden reform of Oliver and the tardy repentance of the
usurping duke are both untrue to life and illogical as art; but Shakespeare
decided to throw probability and logic to the winds in order to close his
comedy with a general feeling of good-will. But this easy answer to the
question cannot be accepted in the case of the serious drama; for--and this
is a point that is very often missed--in proportion as the dramatic
struggle becomes more vital and momentous, the audience demands more and
more that it shall be fought out fairly, and that even the characters it
favors shall receive no undeserved assistance from the dramatist. This
instinct of the crowd--the instinct by which its demand for fairness is
proportioned to the importance of the struggle--may be studied by any
follower of professional base-ball. The spectators at a ball-game are
violently partisan and always want the home team to win. In any unimportant
game--if the opposing teams, for instance, have no chance to win the
pennant--the crowd is glad of any questionable decision by the umpires that
favors the home team. But in any game in which the pennant is at stake, a
false or bad decision, even though it be rendered in favor of the home
team, will be received with hoots of disapproval. The crowd feels, in such
a case, that it cannot fully enjoy the sense of victory unless the victory
be fairly won. For the same reason, when any important play which sets out
to end unhappily is given a sudden twist which brings about an arbitrary
happy ending, the audience is likely to be displeased. And there is yet
another reason for this displeasure. An audience may enjoy both farce and
comedy without believing them; but it cannot fully enjoy a serious play
unless it believes the story. In the serious drama, an ending, to be
enjoyable, must be credible; in other words, it must, for the sake of human
interest, satisfy the strict logic of art. We arrive, therefore, at the
paradox that although, in the final act, the comic dramatist may achieve
popularity by renouncing the laws of art, the serious dramatist can achieve
popularity only by adhering rigidly to a pattern of artistic truth.
This is a point that is rarely understood by people who look at the
general question from the point of view of the box-office; they seldom
appreciate the fact that a serious play which logically demands an unhappy
ending will make more money if it is planned in accordance with the
sternest laws of art than if it is given an arbitrary happy ending in which
the audience cannot easily believe. The public wants to be pleased, but it
wants even more to be satisfied. In the early eighteenth century both _King
Lear_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ were played with fabricated happy endings; but
the history of these plays, before and after, proves that the alteration,
considered solely from the business standpoint, was an error. And yet,
after all these centuries of experience, our modern managers still remain
afraid of serious plays which lead logically to unhappy terminations, and,
because of the power of their position, exercise an influence over writers
for the stage which is detrimental to art and even contrary to the demands
of human interest.