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DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE

by

GEORGE PIERCE BAKER

Professor of History and Technique of the Drama in Yale University

"_A good play is certainly the most rational and the highest

Entertainment that Human Invention can produce._"

COLLEY CIBBER

[Illustration]

Houghton Mifflin Company

Boston . New York . Chicago . Dallas . San Francisco

The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1919, by George Pierce Baker

All Rights Reserved

_The author acknowledges courteous permission to quote passages from

copyright plays as credited to various authors and publishers in the

footnotes._

The Riverside Press

Cambridge . Massachusetts

Printed in the U.S.A.

PREFACE

"The dramatist is born, not made." This common saying grants the

dramatist at least one experience of other artists, namely, birth, but

seeks to deny him the instruction in art granted the architect, the

painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Play-readers and producers,

however, seem not so sure of this distinction, for they are often heard

saying: "The plays we receive divide into two classes: those competently

written, but trite in subject and treatment; those in some way fresh and

interesting, but so badly written that they cannot be produced." Some

years ago, Mr. Savage, the manager, writing in _The Bookman_ on "The

United States of Playwrights," said: "In answer to the question, 'Do the

great majority of these persons know anything at all of even the

fundamentals of dramatic construction?' the managers and agents who read

the manuscripts unanimously agree in the negative. Only in rare

instances does a play arrive in the daily mails that carries within it a

vestige of the knowledge of the science of drama-making. Almost all the

plays, furthermore, are extremely artificial and utterly devoid of the

quality known as human interest." All this testimony of managers and

play-readers shows that there is something which the dramatist has not

as a birthright, but must learn. Where? Usually he is told, "In the

School of Hard Experience." When the young playwright whose manuscript

has been returned to him but with favorable comment, asks what he is to

do to get rid of the faults in his work, both evident to him and not

evident, he is told to read widely in the drama; to watch plays of all

kinds; to write with endless patience and the resolution never to be

discouraged. He is to keep submitting his plays till, by this somewhat

indefinite method of training, he at last acquires the ability to write

so well that a manuscript is accepted. This is "The School of

Experience." Though a long and painful method of training, it has had,

undeniably, many distinguished graduates.

Why, however, is it impossible that some time should be saved a would-be

dramatist by placing before him, not mere theories of play-writing, but

the practice of the dramatists of the past, so that what they have

shared in common, and where their practice has differed, may be clear to

him? That is all this book attempts. To create a dramatist would be a

modern miracle. To develop theories of the drama apart from the practice

of recent and remoter dramatists of different countries would be

visionary. This book tries in the light of historical practice merely to

distinguish the permanent from the impermanent in technique. It

endeavors, by showing the inexperienced dramatist how experienced

dramatists have solved problems similar to his own, to shorten a little

his time of apprenticeship. The limitations of any such attempt I fully

recognize. This book is the result of almost daily discussion for some

years with classes of the ideas contained in it, but in that discussion

there was a chance to treat with each individual the many exceptions,

apparent or real, which he could raise to any principle enunciated. Such

full discussion is impossible in a book the size of this one. Therefore

I must seem to favor an instruction far more dogmatic than my pupils

know from me. No textbook can do away with the value of proper classroom

work. The practice of the past provides satisfactory principles for

students of ordinary endowment. A person of long experience or unusually

endowed, however, after grasping these principles, must at times break

from them if he is to do his best work. The classroom permits a teacher

such adaptations of existing usage. Such special needs no textbook can

forestall. This book, then, is meant, not to replace wise classroom

instruction, but to supplement it or to offer what it can when such

instruction is impossible.

The contents of this book were originally brought together from notes

for the classroom as eight lectures delivered before the Lowell

Institute, Boston, in the winter of 1913. They were carefully reworked

for later lectures before audiences in Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

Indeed, both in and out of the classroom they have been slowly revised

in the intervening five years. Detailed consideration of the one-act

play has been reserved for later special treatment. Otherwise the book

attempts to treat helpfully the many problems which the would-be

dramatist must face in learning the fundamentals of a very difficult but

fascinating art.

I have written for the person who cannot be content except when writing

plays. I wish it distinctly understood that I have not written for the

person seeking methods of conducting a course in dramatic technique. I

view with some alarm the recent mushroom growth of such courses

throughout the country. I gravely doubt the advisability of such courses

for undergraduates. Dramatic technique is the means of expressing, for

the stage, one's ideas and emotions. Except in rare instances,

undergraduates are better employed in filling their minds with general

knowledge than in trying to phrase for the stage thoughts or emotions

not yet mature. In the main I believe instruction in the writing of

plays should be for graduate students. Nor do I believe that it should

be given except by persons who have had experience in acting, producing,

and even writing plays, and who have read and seen the drama of

different countries and times. Mere lectures, no matter how good, will

not make the students productive. The teacher who is not widely eclectic

in his tastes will at best produce writers with an easily recognizable

stamp. In all creative courses the problem is not, "What can we make

these students take from us, the teachers?" but, "Which of these

students has any creative power that is individual? Just what is it? How

may it be given its quickest and fullest development?" Complete freedom

of choice in subject and complete freedom in treatment so that the

individuality of the artist may have its best expression are

indispensable in the development of great art. At first untrained and

groping blindly for the means to his ends, he moves to a technique based

on study of successful dramatists who have preceded him. From that he

should move to a technique that is his own, a mingling of much out of

the past and an adaptation of past practice to his own needs. This book

will help the development from blind groping to the acquirement of a

technique based on the practice of others. It can do something, but only

a little, to develop the technique that is highly individual. The

instruction which most helps to that must be done, not by books, not by

lectures, but in frequent consultation of pupil and teacher. The man who

grows from a technique which permits him to write a good play because it

accords with historical practice to the technique which makes possible

for him a play which no one else could have written, must work under

three great Masters: Constant Practice, Exacting Scrutiny of the Work,

and, above all, Time. Only when he has stood the tests of these Masters

is he the matured artist.

GEO. P. BAKER

CONTENTS

I. TECHNIQUE IN DRAMA: WHAT IT IS. THE DRAMA AS AN INDEPENDENT

ART 1

II. THE ESSENTIALS OF DRAMA: ACTION AND EMOTION 16

III. FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT. CLEARING THE WAY 47

IV. FROM SUBJECT THROUGH STORY TO PLOT. CLEARNESS THROUGH WISE

SELECTION 73

V. FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: PROPORTIONING THE MATERIAL: NUMBER AND

LENGTH OF ACTS 117

VI. FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: ARRANGEMENT FOR CLEARNESS, EMPHASIS,

MOVEMENT 154

VII. CHARACTERIZATION 234

VIII. DIALOGUE 309

IX. MAKING A SCENARIO 420

X. THE DRAMATIST AND HIS PUBLIC 509

INDEX 523

DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE

CHAPTER I

TECHNIQUE IN DRAMA: WHAT IT IS. THE DRAMA AS AN INDEPENDENT ART

This book treats drama which has been tested before the public or which

was written to be so tested. It does not concern itself with plays, past

or present, intended primarily to be read--closet drama. It does not

deal with theories of what the drama, present or future, might or should

be. It aims to show what successful drama has been in different

countries, at different periods, as written by men of highly individual

gifts.

The technique of any dramatist may be defined, roughly, as his ways,

methods, and devices for getting his desired ends. No dramatist has this

technique as a gift at birth, nor does he acquire it merely by writing

plays. He reads and sees past and present plays, probably in large

numbers. If he is like most young dramatists, for example Shakespeare on

the one hand and Ibsen on the other, he works imitatively at first. He,

too, has his _Love's Labor's Lost_, or _Feast at Solhaug_. Even if his

choice of topic be fresh, the young dramatist inevitably studies the

dramatic practice just preceding his time, or that of some remoter

period which attracts him, for models on which to shape the play he has

in mind. Often, in whole-hearted admiration, he gives himself to close

imitation of Shakespeare, one of the great Greek dramatists, Ibsen,

Shaw, or Brieux. For the moment the better the imitation, the better he

is satisfied; but shortly he discovers that somehow the managers or the

public, if his play gets by the managers, seem to have very little

taste for great dramatists at second hand. Yet the history of the drama

has shown again and again that a dramatist may owe something to the

plays of a preceding period and achieve success. The influence of the

Greek drama on _The Servant in the House_ is unmistakable. _Kismet_, Mr.

Knobloch frankly states, was modeled on the loosely constructed

Elizabethan plays intended primarily to tell a story of varied and

exciting incident. Where lies the difficulty? Just here. Too many people

do not recognize that dramatic technique--methods and devices for

gaining in the theatre a dramatist's desired ends--is historically of

three kinds: universal, special, and individual. First there are certain

essentials which all good plays, from Aeschylus to Lord Dunsany, share at

least in part. They are the qualities which make a play a play. These

the tyro must study and may copy. To the discussion and illustration of

them the larger part of this book is devoted. Secondly, there is the

special technique of a period, such as the Elizabethan, the Restoration,

the period of Scribe and his influence, etc. A good illustration of this

kind of technique is the difference in treatment of the Antony and

Cleopatra story by Shakespeare in his play of that name, and by John

Dryden in _All For Love_. Each dramatist worked sincerely, believing the

technique that he used would give him best, with the public he had in

mind, his desired effects. The public of Shakespeare would not have

cared for Dryden's treatment: the Restoration found Shakespeare barbaric

until reshaped by dramatists whose touch today often seems that of a

vandal facing work the real beauty of which he does not understand. The

technique of the plays of Corneille and Racine, even though they base

their dramatic theory on classical practice, differs from the Greek and

from Seneca. In turn the drama which aimed to copy them, the so-called

Heroic Plays of England from 1660 to 1700, differed. That is, a story

dramatized before when re-presented to the stage must share with the

drama of the past certain characteristics if it is to be a play at all,

but to some extent it must be presented differently. Why? Because,

first, the dramatist is using a stage different from that of his

forebears, and, secondly, because he is writing for a public of

different standards in morals and art. Comparison for a moment of the

stage of the Greeks with the stage of the Elizabethans, the Restoration,

or of today shows the truth of the first statement. Comparison of the

religious and social ideals of the Greeks with those of Shakespeare's

audience, Congreve's public, Tom Robertson's, or the public of today

shows the truth of the second. That is, the drama of any past time, if

studied carefully, must reveal the essentials of the drama throughout

time. It must reveal, too, methods and devices effective for the public

of its time, but not effective at present. It is doubtless true that

usually a young dramatist may gain most light as to the technique of the

period on which he is entering from the practice of the playwrights just

preceding him, but this does not always follow. Witness the sharp

revolt, particularly in France and Germany, in the early nineteenth

century, from Classicism to Romanticism. Witness, too, the change late

in that century from the widespread influence of Scribe to the almost

equally widespread influence of Ibsen.

The chief gift of the drama of the past to the young playwright, then,

is illustration of what is essential in drama. This he safely copies.

Study of the technique of a special period, if the temper of his public

closely resembles the interests, prejudices, and ideals of the period he

studies, may give him even larger results. Such close resemblance,

however, is rare. Each period demands in part its own technique. What in

that technique is added to the basal practice of the past may even be to

some extent the contribution of the young dramatist in question.

Resting on what he knows of the elements common to all good drama, alert

to the significance of the hints which the special practice of any

period may give him, he thinks his way to new methods and devices for

getting with his public his desired effects. Many or most of these the

other dramatists of his day discover with him. These, which make the

special usage of his time, become the technique of his period.

Perhaps, however, he has added something in technique particularly his

own, to be found in the plays of no other man. This, the third sort of

technique, is to be seen specially in the work of the great dramatists.

Usually, it is peculiarly inimitable and elusive because the result of a

particular temperament working on problems of the drama peculiar to a

special time. Imitation of this individual technique in most instances

results, like wearing the tailor-made clothes of a friend, in a palpable

misfit.

It is just because the enthusiast copies, not simply what is of

universal significance in the practice of some past period, but with

equal closeness what is special to the time and individual to the

dramatist, that his play fails. He has produced something stamped as not

of his time nor by him, but as at best a successful literary exercise in

imitation. Of the three kinds of technique, then,--universal, special,

and individual,--a would-be dramatist should know the first thoroughly.

Recognizing the limitations of the second and third, he should study

them for suggestions rather than for models. When he has mastered the

first technique, and from the second has made his own what he finds

useful in it, he is likely to pass to the third, his individual

additions.

Why, however, should men or women who have already written stories long

or short declared by competent people to be "dramatic," make any special

study of the technique of plays? Like the dramatist, they must

understand characterization and dialogue or they could not have written

successful stories. Evidently, too, they must know something about

structure. Above all, they must have shown ability so to represent

people in emotion as to arouse emotional response in their readers, or

their work would not be called dramatic. Why, then, should they not

write at will either in the form of stories or of plays? It is certainly

undeniable that many novels seem in material and at moments in

treatment, as dramatic as plays on similar subjects. In each, something

is said or done which moves the reader or hearer as the author wishes.

These facts account for the widespread and deeply-rooted belief that any

novelist or writer of short stories should write successful plays if he

wishes, particularly if adapting his own work for the stage. The facts

account, too, for the repeated efforts in the past to put popular novels

on the stage as little changed as possible. Is it not odd that most

adaptations of successful stories and most novelizations of successful

plays are failures? The fact that the drama had had for centuries in

England and elsewhere a fecund history before the novel as a form took

shape at all would intimate that the drama is a different and

independent art from that of the novel or the short story. When

novelists and would-be playwrights recognize that it is, has been, and

ought to be an independent art, we shall be spared many bad plays.

It is undeniable that the novelist and the dramatist start with common

elements--the story, the characters, and the dialogue. If their common

ability to discern in their story or characters possible emotional

interests for other people, their so-called "dramatic sense," is "to

achieve success on the stage it must be developed into theatrical talent

by hard study and generally by long practice. For theatrical talent

consists in the power of making your characters not only tell a story by

means of dialogue but tell it in such skilfully devised form and order

as shall, within the limits of an ordinary theatrical representation,

give rise to the greatest possible amount of that peculiar kind of

emotional effect, the production of which is the one great function of

the theatre."[1] Certain underlying differences between the relation of

the novelist to his reader and that of the dramatist to his audience

reveal why the art of each must be different.

The relative space granted novelist and dramatist is the first condition

which differentiates their technique. A play of three acts, say forty

pages each of ordinary typewriter paper, will take in action

approximately a hundred and fifty minutes, or two hours and a half. When

allowance is made for waits between the acts, the manuscript should

probably be somewhat shorter. A novel runs from two hundred and fifty to

six hundred pages. Obviously such difference between the length of play

and novel means different methods of handling material. The dramatist,

if he tries for the same results as the novelist, must work more

concisely. This demands very skilful selection among his materials to

gain his desired effects in the quickest possible ways.

A novel we read at one or a half-dozen sittings, as we please. When we

so wish, we can pause to consider what we have just read, or can re-read

it. In the theatre, a play must be seen as a whole and at once.

Listening to it, we cannot turn back, we cannot pause to reflect, for

the play pushes steadily on to the close of each act. Evidently, then,

here is another reason why a play must make its effects more swiftly

than a novel. This needed swiftness requires methods of making effects

more obviously and more emphatically than in the novel. In a play, then,

while moving much more swiftly than in a novel, we must at any given

moment be even clearer than in the novel. What the dramatist selects for

presentation must be more productive of immediate effect than is the

case with the novelist, for one swingeing blow must, with him, replace

repeated strokes by the novelist.

In most novels, the reader is, so to speak, personally conducted, the

author is our guide. In the drama, so far as the dramatist is concerned,

we must travel alone. In the novel, the author describes, narrates,

analyzes, and makes his personal comment on circumstance and character.

We rather expect a novelist to reveal himself in his work. On the other

hand, the greatest dramatists, such as Shakespeare and Moliere, in their

plays reveal singularly little of themselves. It is the poorer

dramatists--Dryden, Jonson, Chapman--who, using their characters as

mouthpieces, reveal their own personalities. Now that soliloquy and the

aside have nearly gone out of use, the dramatist, when compared with the

novelist, seems, at first thought, greatly hampered in his expression.

He never can use description, narration, analysis, and personal comment

as his own. He may use them only in the comparatively rare instances

when they befit the character speaking. His mainstay is illustrative

action appropriate to his characters, real or fictitious. Surely so

great a difference will affect the technique of his art. The novel,

then, may be, and often is, highly personal; the best drama is

impersonal.

The theatre in which the play is presented also produces differences

between the practice of the dramatist and that of the novelist. No

matter how small the theatre or its stage, it cannot permit the intimacy

of relation which exists between reader and book. A person reads a book

to himself or to a small group. In most cases, he may choose the

conditions under which he will read it, indoors or out, alone or with

people about him, etc. In the theatre, according to the size of the

auditorium, from one hundred to two thousand people watch the play, and

under given conditions of light, heat, and ventilation. They are at a

distance, in most cases, from the stage. It is shut off from them more

than once in the performance by the fall of the curtain. The novel

appeals to the mind and the emotions through the eye. The stage appeals

to both eye and ear. Scenery, lighting, and costuming render unnecessary

many descriptions absolutely required in the novel. The human voice

quickens the imagination as the mere printed page cannot in most cases.

These unlike conditions are bound to create differences in the

presentation of the same material.

It is just this greater concreteness and consequent greater vividness of

the staged play which makes us object to seeing and hearing in the

theatre that of which we have read with comparative calmness in the

newspaper, the magazine, or the novel. Daily we read in the newspapers

with unquickened pulse of horror after horror. Merely to see a fatal

runaway or automobile accident sends us home sickened or unnerved. We

read to the end, though horrified, the _Red Laugh_ of Andreiev.

Reproduce accurately on the stage the terrors of the book and some

persons in the audience would probably go as mad as did people in the

story. This difference applies in our attitude toward moral questions as

treated in books or on the stage. "Let us instance the _Matron of

Ephesus_. This acrid fable is well known; it is unquestionably the

bitterest satire that was ever made on female frivolity. It has been

recounted a thousand times after Petronius, and since it pleased even in

the worst copy, it was thought that the subject must be an equally happy

one for the stage.... The character of the matron in the story provokes

a not unpleasant sarcastic smile at the audacity of wedded love; in the

drama this becomes repulsive, horrible. In the drama, the soldier's

persuasions do not seem nearly so subtle, importunate, triumphant, as in

the story. In the story we picture to ourselves a sensitive little woman

who is really in earnest in her grief, but succumbs to temptation and

to her temperament, her weakness seems the weakness of her sex, we

therefore conceive no especial hatred towards her, we deem that what she

does nearly every woman would have done. Even her suggestion to save her

living lover by means of her dead husband we think we can forgive her

because of its ingenuity and presence of mind; or rather its very

ingenuity leads us to imagine that this suggestion may have been

appended by the malicious narrator who desired to end his tale with some

right poisonous sting. Now in the drama we cannot harbour this

suggestion; what we hear has happened in the story, we see really occur;

what we would doubt of in the story, in the drama the evidence of our

own eyes settles incontrovertibly. The mere possibility of such an

action diverted us; its reality shows it in all its atrocity; the

suggestion amused our fancy, the execution revolts our feelings, we turn

our backs to the stage and say with the Lykas of Petronius, without

being in Lykas's peculiar position: 'Had the emperor been just, he would

have restored the body of the father to its tomb and crucified the

woman.' And she seems to us the more to deserve this punishment, the

less art the poet has expended on her seduction, for we do not then

condemn in her weak woman in general, but an especially volatile,

worthless female in particular."[2]

As Lessing points out, in the printed page we can stand a free treatment

of social question after social question which on the stage we should

find revolting. Imagine the horror and outcry if we were to put upon the

stage a dramatized newspaper or popular magazine. Just in this intense

vividness, this great reality of effect, lies a large part of the power

of the stage. On the other hand, this very vividness may create

difficulties. For instance, the novelist can say, "So, in a silence,

almost unbroken, the long hours passed." But we watching, on the stage,

the scene described in the novel, know perfectly that only a few

minutes have elapsed. From this difficulty have arisen, to create a

sense of time, the Elizabethan use of the Chorus, our _entr'acte_

pauses, interpolated scenes which draw off our attention from the main

story, and many other devices. But even with all the devices of the

past, it is well-nigh impossible in a one-act play or in an act of one

setting to create the feeling that much time has passed. Many an attempt

has been made to dramatize in one act Stevenson's delightful story, _The

Sire de Maletroit's Door_, but all have come to grief because the

greater vividness of the stage makes the necessary lapse of considerable

time too apparent. It is not difficult for the story-teller to make us

believe that, between a time late one evening and early the next

morning, Blanche de Maletroit lost completely her liking for one man and

became more than ready to marry Denis de Beaulieu, who entered the house

for the first time on this same evening. On the stage, motivation and

dialogue must be such as to make so swift a change entirely convincing

even though it occur merely in the time of the acting. The motivation

that was easy for the novelist as he explained how profoundly Blanche

was moved by winning words or persuasive action of Denis, becomes almost

impossible unless the words and action when seen and heard are for us

equally winning and persuasive. The time difficulty in this story has

led to all sorts of amusing expedients to account for Blanche's complete

change of feeling. One young author went so far as to make the first

lover of Blanche flirt so desperately with a maid-servant off stage that

the report of his conduct by a jealous man-servant was the last straw to

bring about the change in Blanche's feelings. Though aiming at a real

difficulty, this device missed because it so vulgarized the original.

When all is said and done, this time difficulty caused by the greater

vividness of stage presentation remains the chief obstacle in the way of

the dramatist who would write of a sequence of historical events or of

evolution or devolution in character. Again we foresee probable

differences in technique, this time caused by the theatre, the stage,

and the intense vividness of the latter.

The novel is, so to speak, the work of an individual; a play is a

cooperative effort--of author, actor, producer, and even audience.

Though the author writes the play, it cannot be properly judged till the

producer stages it, the players act it, and the audience approves or

disapproves of it. Undeniably the dialogue of a play must be very

different from that of a novel because the gesture, facial expression,

intonation, and general movement of the actor may in large part replace

description, narration, and even parts of the dialogue of a novel. We

have good dialogue for a novel when Cleopatra says, "I'll seem the thing

I am not; Antony will be himself." The fact and the characterization are

what count here. In the same scene, Antony, absorbed in adoration of

Cleopatra, cries, when interrupted by a messenger from Rome, "Grates me;

the sum." Here we need the action of the speaker, his intonation, and

his facial expression, if the speech is to have its full value. In its

context, however, it is as dramatic dialogue perfect. In a story or

novel, mere clearness would demand more because the author could not be

sure that the reader would hit the right intonation or feel the gesture

which must accompany the words. It is in large part just because

dramatic dialogue is a kind of shorthand written by the dramatist for

the actor to fill out that most persons find plays more difficult

reading than novels. Few untrained imaginations respond quickly enough

to feel the full significance of the printed page of the play. On the

other hand, any one accustomed to read plays often finds novels

irritating because they tell so much more than is necessary for him who

responds quickly to emotionalized speech properly recorded.

Just as dialogue for the stage is incomplete without the actor, so,

too, the stage direction needs filling out. Made as concise as possible

by the dramatist, it is meant to be packed with meaning, not only for

the actor, but for the producer. The latter is trusted to fill out, in

as full detail as his means or his desires permit, the hints of stage

directions as to setting and atmosphere. On the producer depends wholly

the scenery, lighting, and properties used. All of this the novelist

supplies in full detail for himself. An intelligent producer who reads

the play with comprehension but follows only the letter of the stage

directions gives a production no more than adequate at best. An

uncomprehending and self-willed producer may easily so confuse the

values of a well-written play as to ruin its chances. A thoroughly

sympathetic and finely imaginative producer may, like an equally endowed

actor, reveal genuine values in the play unsuspected even by the

dramatist himself. Surely writing stage directions will differ from the

narration and description of a novel.

The novelist, as has been pointed out, deals with the individual reader,

or through one reader with a small group. What has just been said makes

obvious that the dramatist never works directly, but through

intermediaries, the actors and the producer. More than that, he seeks to

stir the individual, not for his own sake as does the novelist, but

because he is a unit in the large group filling the theatre. The

novelist--to make a rough generalization--works through the individual,

the dramatist through the group. This is not the place to discuss in

detail the relation of a dramatist to his audience, but it is undeniable

that the psychology of the crowd in a theatre is not exactly the same

thing as the sum total of the emotional responses of each individual in

it to some given dramatic incident. The psychology of the individual and

the psychology of the crowd are not one and the same. The reputation of

the novelist rests very largely on the verdict of his individual

readers. The dramatist must move, not a considerable number of

individuals, but at least the great majority of his audience. He must

move his audience, too, not by emotions individual to a considerable

number, but by emotions they naturally share in common or by his art can

be made to share. The dramatist who understands only the psychology of

the individual or the small group may write a play well characterized,

but he cannot write a successful play till he has studied deeply the

psychology of the crowd and has thus learned so to present his chosen

subject as to gain from the group which makes the theatrical public the

emotional response he desires.

Obviously, then, from many different points of view, the great art of

the novelist and the equally great art of the dramatist are not the

same. It is the unwise holding of an opposite opinion which has led many

a successful novelist into disastrous play-writing. It is the attempt to

reproduce exactly on the stage the most popular parts of successful

novels which has made many an adaptation a failure surprising to author

and adapter. The whole situation is admirably summed up in a letter of

Edward Knobloch, author of _Kismet_. "I have found it very useful, when

asked to dramatize a novel, not to read it myself, but to get some one

else to read it and tell me about it. At once, all the stuffing drops

away, and the vital active part, the verb of the novel comes to the

fore. If the story of a novel cannot be told by some one in a hundred

words or so, there is apt to be no drama in it. If I were to write a

play on Hamilton, I would look up an article in an encyclopaedia; then

make a scenario; then read detailed biographies. Too much knowledge

hampers. It is just for that reason that short stories are easier

dramatized than long novels. The stories that Shakespeare chose for his

plays are practically summaries. As long as they stirred his

imagination, that was all he asked of them. Then he added his magic.

Once the novel has been told, make the scenario. Then read the novel

after. There will be very little to alter and only a certain amount of

touches to add." If, in accordance with this suggestion, an adapter

would plan out in scenario the mere story of the novel he wishes to

adapt for the stage, would then transfer to his scenario only so much of

the novel as perfectly fits the needs of the stage; and finally with the

aid of the original author, would rewrite the portions which can be used

only in part, and with him compose certain parts entirely anew, we

should have a much larger proportion of permanently successful

adaptations.

Though it is true, then, that the novelist and the dramatist work with

common elements of story, characterization and dialogue, the differing

conditions under which they work affect their story-telling, their

characterization, and their dialogue. The differences brought about by

the greater speed, greater compactness, and greater vividness of the

drama, with its impersonality, its cooperative nature, its appeal to the

group rather than to the individual, create the fundamental technique

which distinguishes the drama from the novel. This is the technique

possessed in common by the dramatists of all periods. The art of the

playwright is not, then, the art of the novelist. Throughout the

centuries a very different technique has distinguished them.

"But," it may be urged, "all that has been said of the differences

between the play and the novel shows that the play cramps truthful

presentation of life. Is not play-writing an art of falsification rather

than truth?" A living French novelist once exclaimed, "I have written

novels for many years, with some returns in reputation but little return

in money. Now, when a young actor helps me, I adapt one of my novels to

the stage and this bastard art immediately makes it possible for me to

buy automobiles." Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, toward the end of his

life, to Mr. Sidney Colvin, "No, I will not write a play for Irving nor

for the devil. Can you not see that the work of _falsification_, which a

play demands is, of all tasks, the most ungrateful? And I have done it a

long while,--and nothing ever came of it."[3] The trouble with both

these critics of the drama was that they held a view of the stage which

makes it necessary to shape, to twist, and to contort life when

represented on it. While it is true that selection and compression

underlie all dramatic art, as they underlie all of the pictorial arts,

it is no longer true, as it was in the mid-nineteenth century, that

dramatists believe that we should shape life to fit hampering conditions

of the stage, accepted as inevitably rigid. Today we regard the stage,

as we should, as plastic. If the stage of the moment forbids in any way

the just representation of life, so much the worse for that stage; it

must yield. The ingenuity of author, producer, scenic artist, and stage

mechanician must labor until the stage is fitted to represent life as

the author sees it. For many years now, the cry of the dramatist has

been, not "Let us adapt life to the stage," but rather: "Let us adapt

the stage, at any cost for it, at any cost of imaginative effort or

mechanical labor, to adequate and truthful representation of life." The

art of the playwright may be the art of fantasy or of realism, but for

him who understands it rightly, not mistaking it for another art, and

laboring till he grasps and understands its seeming mysteries, it can

never be an art of falsification. Instead, it is the art that, drawing

to its aid all its sister fine arts, in splendid cooperation, moves the

masses of men as does no other art. As Sir Arthur Pinero has said, "The

art--the great and fascinating and most difficult art--of the modern

dramatist is nothing else than to achieve that compression of life which

the stage undoubtedly demands, without falsification."[4]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Robert Louis Stevenson: The Dramatist_, p. 7. Sir A. Pinero.

Chiswick Press, London.

[2] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, pp. 329-330. Leasing. Bohn ed.

[3] _Robert Louis Stevenson: the Dramatist_, p. 30. Sir A. Pinero.

Chiswick Press, London.

[4] _Idem._

CHAPTER II

THE ESSENTIALS OF DRAMA: ACTION AND EMOTION

What is the common aim of all dramatists? Twofold: first, as promptly as

possible to win the attention of the audience; secondly, to hold that

interest steady or, better, to increase it till the final curtain falls.

It is the time limit to which all dramatists are subject which makes the

immediate winning of attention necessary. The dramatist has no time to

waste. How is he to win this attention? By what is done in the play; by

characterization; by the language the people of his play speak; or by a

combination of two or more of these. Today we hear much discussion

whether it is what is done, _i.e._ action, or characterization, or

dialogue which most interests a public. Which is the chief essential in

good drama? History shows indisputably that the drama in its beginnings,

no matter where we look, depended most on action. The earliest extant

specimen of drama in England, _circa_ 967, shows clearly the essential

relations of action, characterization, and dialogue in drama at its

outset. The italics in the following show the action; the roman type the

dialogue.

_While the third lesson is being chanted, let four brothers vest

themselves, one of whom, vested in an alb, enters as if to do

something, and, in an inconspicuous way, approaches the place where

the sepulchre is, and there holding a palm in his hand, sits quiet.

While the third respond is chanted, let the three others approach, all

alike vested in copes, bearing thuribles (censers) with incense in

their hands, and, with hesitating steps, in the semblance of persons

seeking something, let them come before the place of the sepulchre.

These things are done, indeed, in representation of the angel sitting

within the tomb and of the women who came with spices to anoint the

body of Jesus. When, therefore, he who is seated sees the three

approaching as if wandering about and seeking something, let him

begin to sing melodiously and in a voice moderately loud_

Whom seek you at the sepulchre, O Christians?

_When this has been sung to the end, let the three respond in unison,_

Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, O heavenly one.

_Then he,_

He is not here; he has risen, as was foretold.

Go ye, announcing that he has risen from the dead.

_Upon the utterance of this command, let the three turn to the choir

and say,_

Alleluia! the Lord is risen.

_This said, let him, still remaining seated, say, as if calling them

back, the antiphon,_

Come, and see the place where the Lord lay.

Alleluia, Alleluia!

_Having said this, however, let him rise and lift the veil, and show

them the place empty of the cross, but the clothes, only, laid there

with which the cross was wrapped. When they see this, let them set

down the thuribles that they have carried within that same sepulchre,

and take up the cloth and hold it up before the clergy, and, as if in

testimony that the Lord has risen and is not now wrapped therein, let

them sing this antiphon:_

The Lord has risen from the tomb,

Who for us was crucified,

_and let them lay the cloth upon the altar. The antiphon finished, let

the prior, rejoicing with them in the triumph of our King, in that,

death vanquished, he has risen, begin the hymn,_

We praise thee, O Lord.

_This begun, all the bells are rung together, at the end of which let

the priest say the verse,_

In thy resurrection, O Christ,

_as far as this word, and let him begin Matins, saying,_

O Lord, hasten to my aid![1]

Obviously in this little play the directions for imitative movement

fill three quarters of the space; dialogue fills one quarter;

characterization, except as the accompanying music may very faintly have

suggested it, there is none. Historically studied, the English drama

shows that characterization appeared as an added interest when the

interest of action was already well established. The value of dialogue

for its own sake was recognized even later.

What is true of the English drama is of course equally true of all

Continental drama which, like the English drama, had its origin in the

Trope and the Miracle Play. Even, however, if we go farther back, to the

origin of Greek Drama in the Ballad Dance we shall find the same

results. The Ballad Dance consisted "in the combination of speech,

music, and that imitative gesture which, for lack of a better word, we

are obliged to call dancing. It is very important, however, to guard

against modern associations with this term. Dances in which men and

women joined are almost unknown to Greek antiquity, and to say of a

guest at a banquet that he danced would suggest intoxication. The real

dancing of the Greeks is a lost art, of which the modern ballet is a

corruption, and the orator's action a faint survival. It was an art

which used bodily motion to convey thought: as in speech the tongue

articulated words, so in dancing the body swayed and gesticulated into

meaning.... In epic poetry, where thought takes the form of simple

narrative, the speech (Greek _epos_) of the Ballad Dance triumphs over

the other two elements. Lyric poetry consists in meditation or highly

wrought description taking such forms as odes, sonnets, hymns,--poetry

that lends itself to elaborate rhythms and other devices of musical art:

here the music is the element of the Ballad Dance which has come to the

front. And the imitative gesture has triumphed over the speech and the

music in the case of the third branch of poetry; drama is thought

expressed in action."[2]

Imitative movement is the drama of the savage.

"An Aleut, who was armed with a bow, represented a hunter, another a

bird. The former expressed by gestures how very glad he was he had found

so fine a bird; nevertheless he would not kill it. The other imitated

the motions of a bird seeking to escape the hunter. He at last, after a

long delay, pulled his bow and shot: the bird reeled, fell, and died.

The hunter danced for joy; but finally he became troubled, repented

having killed so fine a bird, and lamented it. Suddenly the dead bird

rose, turned into a beautiful woman, and fell into the hunter's

arms."[3]

Look where we will, then,--at the beginnings of drama in Greece, in

England centuries later, or among savage peoples today--the chief

essential in winning and holding the attention of the spectator was

imitative movement by the actors, that is, physical action. Nor, as the

drama develops, does physical action cease to be central. The most

elaborate of the Miracle Plays, the Towneley _Second Shepherds' Play_

and the Brome _Abraham and Isaac_[4] prove this. In the former we are of

course interested in the characterization of the Shepherds and Mak, but

would this hold us without the stealing of the sheep and the varied

action attending its concealment and discovery in the house of Mak?

Undoubtedly in the _Abraham and Isaac_ characterization counts for more,

but we have the journey to the Mount, the preparations for the

sacrifice, the binding of the boy's eyes, the repeatedly upraised sword,

the farewell embracings, the very dramatic coming of the Angel, and the

joyful sacrifice of the sheep when the child is released. Without all

this central action, the fine characterization of the play would lose

its significance. In Shakespeare's day, audiences again and again, as

they watched plays of Dekker, Heywood, and many another dramatist,

willingly accepted inadequate characterization and weak dialogue so long

as the action was absorbing. Just this interest in, for instance, _The

Four Prentices_, or the various _Ages_[5] of Thomas Heywood, was

burlesqued by Francis Beaumont in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_. It

may be urged that the plays of Racine and Corneille, as well as the

Restoration Comedy in England, show characterization and dialogue

predominant. It should be remembered, however, that Corneille and

Racine, as well as the Restoration writers of comedy wrote primarily for

the Court group and not for the public at large. Theirs was the

cultivated audience of the time, proud of its special literary and

dramatic standards. Around and about these dramatists were the writers

of popular entertainment, which depended on action. In England, we must

remember that Wycherley and Vanbrugh, who are by no means without action

in their plays, belong to Restoration Comedy as much as Etherege or

Congreve, and that the Heroic Drama, in which action was absolutely

central, divided the favor of even the Court public with the Comedy of

Manners. The fact is, the history of the Drama shows that only rarely

does even a group of people for a brief time care more for plays of

characterization and dialogue than for plays of action. Throughout the

ages, the great public, cultivated as well as uncultivated, have cared

for action first, then, as aids to a better understanding of the action

of the story, for characterization and dialogue. Now, for more than a

century, the play of mere action has been so popular that it has been

recognized as a special form, namely, melodrama. This type of play, in

which characterization and dialogue have usually been entirely

subordinated to action, has been the most widely attended. Today the

motion picture show has driven mere melodrama from our theatres, yet who

will deny that the "movie" in its present form subordinates everything

to action? Even the most ambitious specimens, such as _Cabiria_ and _The

Birth of a Nation_, finding their audiences restless under frequent use

of the explanatory "titles" which make clear what cannot be clearly

shown in action, hasten to depict some man hunt, some daring leap from a

high cliff into the sea, or a wild onrush of galloping white-clad

figures of the Ku Klux Klan. From the practice of centuries the feeling

that action is really central in drama has become instinctive with most

persons who write plays without preconceived theories. Watch a child

making his first attempt at play-writing. In ninety-nine cases out of a

hundred, the play will contain little except action. There will be

slight characterization, if any, and the dialogue will be mediocre at

best. The young writer has depended almost entirely upon action because

instinctively, when he thinks of drama, he thinks of action.

Nor, if we paused to consider, is this dependence of drama upon action

surprising. "From emotions to emotions" is the formula for any good

play. To paraphrase a principle of geometry, "A play is the shortest

distance from emotions to emotions." The emotions to be reached are

those of the audience. The emotions conveyed are those of the people on

the stage or of the dramatist as he has watched the people represented.

Just herein lies the importance of action for the dramatist: it is his

quickest means of arousing emotion in an audience. Which is more popular

with the masses, the man of action or the thinker? The world at large

believes, and rightly that, as a rule, "Actions speak louder than

words." The dramatist knows that not what a man thinks he thinks, but

what at a crisis he does, instinctively, spontaneously, best shows his

character. The dramatist knows, too, that though we may think, when

discussing patriotism in the abstract, that we have firm ideas about it,

what reveals our real beliefs is our action at a crisis in the history

of our country. Many believed from the talk of German Socialists that

they would not support their Government in the case of war. Their

actions have shown far more clearly than their words their real beliefs.

Ulster sounded as hostile as possible to England not long ago, but when

the call upon her loyalty came she did not prove false. Is it any

wonder, then, that popular vote has declared action the best revealer of

feeling and, therefore, that the dramatist, in writing his plays,

depends first of all upon action? If any one is disposed to cavil at

action as popular merely with the masses and the less cultivated, let

him ask himself, "What, primarily in other people interests me--what

these people do or why they do it?" Even if he belong to the group,

relatively very small in the mass of humanity, most interested by "Why

did these people do this?" he must admit that till he knows clearly what

the people did, he cannot take up the question which more interests him.

For the majority of auditors, action is of first importance in drama:

even for the group which cares far more for characterization and

dialogue it is necessary as preparing the way for that characterization

and dialogue on which they insist.

Consider for a moment the nature of the attention which a dramatist may

arouse. Of course it may be only of the same sort which an audience

gives a lecturer on a historical or scientific subject,--a readiness to

hear and to try to understand what he has to present,--close but

unemotional attention. Comparatively few people, however, are capable of

sustained attention when their emotions are not called upon. How many

lectures last over an hour? Is not the "popular lecturer" popular

largely because he works into his lecture many anecdotes and dramatic

illustrations in order to avoid or to lighten the strain of close,

sustained attention? There is, undoubtedly, a public which can listen to

ideas with the same keen enjoyment which most auditors feel when

listening to something which stirs them emotionally, but as compared

with the general public it is infinitesimal. Understanding this, the

dramatist stirs the emotions of his hearers by the most concrete means

at his command, his quickest communication from brain to brain,--action

just for itself or illustrating character. The inferiority to action of

mere exposition as a creator of interest the two following extracts

show.

ACT I. SCENE 1. _Britain. The garden of Cymbeline's palace_

_Enter two gentlemen_

_1. Gent._ You do not meet a man but frowns. Our bloods

No more obey the heavens than our courtiers

Still seem as does the King.

_2. Gent._ But what's the matter?

_1. Gent._ His daughter, and the heir of's kingdom, whom

He purpos'd to his wife's sole son--a widow

That late he married--hath referred herself

Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She's wedded,

Her husband banish'd, she imprison'd; all

Is outward sorrow; though I think the King

Be touched at very heart.

_2. Gent._ None but the King?

_1. Gent._ He that hath lost her too; so is the Queen,

That most desir'd the match: but not a courtier,

Although they wear their faces to the bent

Of the King's look, hath a heart that is not

Glad at the thing they scowl at.

_2. Gent._ And why so?

_1. Gent._ He that hath miss'd the Princess is a thing

Too bad for bad report; and he that hath her--

I mean, that married her, alack, good man!

And therefore banish'd--is a creature such

As, to seek through the regions of the earth

For one his like, there would be something failing

In him that should compare. I do not think

So fair an outward, and such stuff within

Endows a man but he.

_2. Gent._ You speak him far.

_1. Gent._ I do extend him, sir, within himself,

Crush him together rather than unfold

His measure duly.

_2. Gent._ What's his name and birth?

_1. Gent._ I cannot delve him to the root. His father

Was call'd Sicilius, who did gain his honour

Against the Romans with Cassibelan,

But had his titles by Tenantius whom

He serv'd with glory and admir'd success,

So gain'd the sur-addition Leonatus;

And hath, besides this gentleman in question,

Two other sons, who in the wars o' the time

Died with their swords in hand; for which their father

Then old and fond of issue, took such sorrow

That he quit being, and his gentle lady,

Big of this gentleman our theme, deceas'd

As he was born. The King he takes the babe

To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus,

Breeds him and makes him of his bed chamber,

Puts to him all the learnings that his time

Could make him the receiver of; which he took,

As we do air, fast as 'twas minist'red,

And in's spring became a harvest; liv'd in court--

Which rare it is to do--most prais'd, most lov'd,

A sample to the youngest, to the more mature

A glass that feated them, and to the graver

A child that guided dotards; to his mistress,

For whom he is now banish'd,--her own price

Proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue;

By her election may be truly read

What kind of man he is.

_2. Gent._ I honour him

Even out of your report. But, pray you, tell me

Is she sole child to the King?

_1. Gent._ His only child.

He had two sons,--if this be worth your hearing,

Mark it--the eldest of them at three years old,

I' the swathing-clothes the other, from their nursery

Were stolen, and to this hour no guess in knowledge

Which way they went.

_2. Gent._ How long is this ago?

_1. Gent._ Some twenty years.

_2. Gent._ That a King's children should be so convey'd,

So slackly guarded and the search so slow,

That could not trace them!

_1. Gent._ Howso'er 'tis strange,

Or that the negligence may well be laughed at,

Yet it is true, sir.

_2. Gent._ I do well believe you.

_1. Gent._ We must forbear; here comes the gentleman,

The Queen and Princess. (_Exeunt._)[6]

Here Shakespeare trusts mere exposition to rouse interest. His speakers

merely question and answer, showing little characterization and

practically no emotion. Is this extract as interesting as the following?

_Fits Urse. (Catches hold of the last flying monk.)_ Where is the

traitor Becket?

_Becket._ Here.

No traitor to the King, but Priest of God,

Primate of England. (_Descending into the transept._)

I am he ye seek.

What would ye have of me?

_Fits Urse._ Your life.

_De Tracy._ Your life.

_De Morville._ Save that you will absolve the bishops.

_Becket._ Never,--

Except they make submission to the Church.

You had my answer to that cry before.

_De Morville._ Why, then you are a dead man; flee!

_Becket._ I will not.

I am readier to be slain than thou to slay.

Hugh, I know well that thou hast but half a heart

To bathe this sacred pavement with my blood.

God pardon thee and these, but God's full curse

Shatter you all to pieces if ye harm

One of my flock!

_Fitz Urse._ Seize him and carry him!

Come with us--nay--thou art our prisoner--come!

(_Fitz Urse lays hold of Archbishop's pall._)

_Becket._ Down!

(_Throws him headlong._)

_De Morville._ Ay, make him prisoner, do not harm the man.

_Fitz Urse._ (_Advances with drawn sword._) I told thee that I should

remember thee!

_Becket._ Profligate pander!

_Fitz Urse._ Do you hear that? Strike, strike.

(_Strikes the Archbishop and wounds him in the forehead._)

_Becket._ (_Covers his eyes with his hand._) I do commend my cause to

God.

_Fitz Urse._. Strike him, Tracy!

_Rosamund._ (_Rushing down the steps from the choir._) No, no, no, no.

Mercy, Mercy,

As you would hope for mercy.

_Fitz Urse._ Strike, I say.

_Grim._ O, God, O, noble knight, O, sacrilege!

_Fitz Urse._ Strike! I say.

_De Tracy._ There is my answer then.

(_Sword falls on Grim's arm, and glances from it, wounding Becket._)

This last to rid thee of a world of brawls!

_Becket._ (_Falling on his knees._) Into thy hands, O Lord--into thy

hands--! (_Sinks prone._)

_De Brito._ The traitor's dead, and will arise no more.

(_De Brito, De Tracy, Fitz Urse rush out, crying "King's men!" De

Morville follows slowly. Flashes of lightning through the Cathedral.

Rosamund seen kneeling at the body of Becket._)[7]

The physical action of this extract instantly grips attention.

Interested at once by this action, shortly we rush on unthinking, but

feeling more and more intensely. In this extract action is everywhere.

The actionless _Cymbeline_ is undramatic. This extract is intensely

dramatic.

Just what, however, is this action which in drama is so essential? To

most people it means physical or bodily action which rouses sympathy or

dislike in an audience. The action of melodrama certainly exists largely

for itself. We expect and get little but physical action for its own

sake when a play is announced as was the well-known melodrama, _A Race

for Life_.

As Melodramatically and Masterfully Stirring, Striking and Sensational

as Phil Sheridan's Famous Ride.

Superb, Stupendous Scenes in Sunset Regions.

Wilderness Wooings Where Wild Roses Grow.

The Lights and Shades of Rugged Border Life.

Chinese Comedy to Make Confucius Chuckle.

The Realism of the Ranch and Race Track.

The Hero Horse That Won a Human Life.

An Equine Beauty Foils a Murderous Beast.

Commingled Gleams of Gladness, Grief, and Guilt.

Dope, Dynamite and Devilish Treachery Distanced.

Continuous Climaxes That Come Like Cloudbursts.

Some plays depend almost wholly upon mere bustle and rapidly shifting

movement, much of it wholly unnecessary to the plot. Large portions of

many recent musical comedies illustrate this. Such unnecessary but

crudely effective movement Stevenson burlesqued more than once in the

stage directions of his _Macaire_.

ACT I. SCENE I

_Aline and maids; to whom Fiddlers; afterwards Dumont and Charles. As

the curtain rises, the sound of the violin is heard approaching. Aline

and the inn servants, who are discovered laying the table, dance up to

door L.C., to meet the Fiddlers, who enter likewise dancing to their

own music. Air: "Haste to the Wedding." The Fiddlers exeunt playing

into house, R.U.E. Aline and Maids dance back to table, which they

proceed to arrange._

_Aline._ Well, give me fiddles: fiddles and a wedding feast. It

tickles your heart till your heels make a runaway match of it. I don't

mind extra work, I don't, so long as there's fun about it. Hand me up

that pile of plates. The quinces there, before the bride. Stick a pink

in the Notary's glass: that's the girl he's courting.

_Dumont._ (_Entering with Charles._) Good girls, good girls! Charles,

in ten minutes from now what happy faces will smile around that board!

ACT II. SCENE 2

_To these all the former characters, less the Notary. The fiddlers are

heard without, playing dolefully. Air: "O, dear, what can the matter

be?" in time to which the procession enters._

_Macaire._ Well, friends, what cheer? \

|

_Aline._ No wedding, no wedding! > _Together_

|

_Goriot._ I told 'ee he can't, and he can't! /

_Dumont._ Dear, dear me. \

|

_Ernestine._ They won't let us marry. > _Together_

|

_Charles._ No wife, no father, no nothing. /

_Curate._ The facts have justified the worst anticipations of our

absent friend, the Notary.

_Macaire._ I perceive I must reveal myself.[8]

If physical action in and of itself is so often dramatic, is all

physical action dramatic? That is, does it always create emotion in an

onlooker? No. It goes for naught unless it rouses his interest. Of

itself, or because of the presentation given it by the dramatist, it

must rouse in the onlooker an emotional response. A boy seeing "Crazy

Mary" stalking the street in bedizened finery and bowing right and left,

may see nothing interesting in her. More probably her actions will move

him to jeer and jibe at her. Let some spectator, however, tell the boy

of the tragedy in Crazy Mary's younger life which left her unbalanced,

and, if he has any right feeling, the boy's attitude will begin to

change. He may even give over the jeering he has begun. Reveal to him

exactly what is passing in the crazed mind of the woman, and his mere

interest will probably turn to sympathy. Characterization, preceding and

accompanying action, creates sympathy or repulsion for the figure or

figures involved. This sympathy or repulsion in turn converts mere

interest into emotional response of the keenest kind. Though physical

action is undoubtedly fundamental in drama, no higher form than crude

melodrama or crude farce can develop till characterization appears to

explain and interpret action.

The following extracts from Robertson's _Home_ show physical action,

silly it is true, yet developing characterization by illustrative

action. The first, even as it amuses, characterizes the timid Bertie,

and the second shows the mild mentality and extreme confusion of the two

central figures.

_Mr. Dorrison._ Will you give Mrs. Pinchbeck your arm, Colonel? Dora,

my dear. (_Taking Dora's._) Lucy, Captain Mountraffe will--(_Sees him

asleep._) Ah, Lucy, you must follow by yourself.

(_Colonel takes off Mrs. Pinchbeck; Dorrison, Dora. At that moment,

Bertie enters window, R., and runs to Lucy, kneels at her feet, and is

about to kiss her hand. Mountraffe yawns, which frightens Bertie. He

is running off as the drop falls quickly._)

_End of Act I_

_Colonel_. I'd always give my eyes to be alone with this girl for five

minutes, and whenever I am alone with her, I haven't a word to say for

myself. (_Aloud._) That music, Miss Thornhaugh?

_Dora._ (_At piano._) Yes.

_Col._ (_Aside._) As if it could be anything else. How stupid of me.

(_Aloud._) New music?

_Dora._ Yes.

_Col._ New laid--I mean, fresh from the country--fresh from London,

or--yes--I--(_Dora sits on music stool at piano. This scene is played

with great constraint on both sides. Colonel bends over Dora at

piano._) Going to play any of it now?

_Dora._ No. I must practise it first. I can't play at sight.

_Col._ Can't you really? Don't you believe in--music--at first sight?

(_Dora drops a music book. Colonel picks it up. Dora tries to pick

it up. They knock their heads together; mutual confusion. As they

rise, each has hold of the book._)

_Dora._ \ I beg your pardon. (_Both trembling._)

_Col._ /

_Dora._ It's nothing.

_Col._ Nothing, quite so.

(_Dora sits on music stool. As she does so, both leave hold of the

book and it falls again._)

_Dora._ I thought you had the book.

_Col._ (_Picking it up._) And I thought you had it, and it appears

that neither of us had it. Ha! ha! (_Aside._) Fool that I am! (_Dora

sits thoughtfully, Colonel bending over her; a pause._) Won't you play

something?

_Dora._ I don't know how to play.

_Col._ Oh, well, play the other one. (_They resume their attitudes; a

pause._) The weather has been very warm today, has it not?

_Dora._ Very.

_Col._ Looks like thunder to me.

_Dora._ Does it?

_Col._ Are you fond of thunder--I mean fond of music? I should say are

you fond of lightning? (_Dora touches keys of piano mechanically._) Do

play something.

_Dora._ No, I--I didn't think of what I was doing. What were you

talking about?

_Col._ About? You--me--no! About thunder--music--I mean lightning.

_Dora._ I'm afraid of lightning. (Act II.)[9]

The first scene of Act I of _Romeo and Juliet_ is full of interesting

physical action--quarrels, fighting, and the halting of the fight by the

angry Prince. The physical action, however, characterizes in every

instance, from the servants of the two factions to Tybalt, Benvolio, the

Capulets, the Montagues, and the Prince. Moreover, this interesting

physical action, which is all the more interesting because it

characterizes, is interesting in the third place because in every

instance it helps to an understanding of the story. It shows so intense

an enmity between the two houses that even the servants cannot meet in

the streets without quarreling. By its characterization it prepares for

the parts Benvolio and Tybalt are to play in later scenes. It motivates

the edict of banishment which is essential if the tragedy of the play is

to occur.

SCENE 1. _Verona. A public place_

_Enter Sampson and Gregory, of the house of Capulet, with swords and

bucklers_

_Sampson._ Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals.

_Gregory._ No, for then we should be colliers.

_Sam._ I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw.

_Gre._ Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar.

_Sam._ I strike quickly, being mov'd.

_Gre._ But thou art not quickly mov'd to strike.

_Sam._ A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

* * * * *

Draw thy tool; here comes two of the house of Montague.

_Enter two other serving-men. (Abraham and Balthasar.)_

_Sam._ My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee.

_Gre._ How! turn thy back and run?

_Sam._ Fear me not.

_Gre._ No, marry; I fear thee!

_Sam._ Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.

_Gre._ I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.

_Sam._ Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is

disgrace to them if they bare it.

_Abraham._ Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

_Sam._ I do bite my thumb, sir.

_Abr._ Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

_Sam._ (_Aside to Gre._) Is the law of our side, if I say ay?

_Gre._ No.

_Sam._ No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my

thumb, sir.

_Gre._ Do you quarrel, sir?

_Abr._ Quarrel, sir? No, sir.

_Sam._ But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.

_Abr._ No better.

_Sam._ Well, sir.

_Enter Benvolio._

_Gre._ Say "better"; here comes one of my master's kinsmen.

_Sam._ Yes, better, sir.

_Abr._ You lie.

_Sam._ Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.

(_They fight._)

_Benvolio._ Part, fools!

Put up your swords; you know not what you do.

(_Beats down their swords._)

_Enter Tybalt_

_Tybalt._ What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?

Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.

_Ben._ I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword,

Or manage it to part these men with me.

_Tyb._ What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word

As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.

Have at thee, coward! (_They fight._)

_Enter three or four citizens, and officers, with clubs or partisans_

_Officer._ Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! Beat them down!

Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!

_Enter Capulet in his gown and Lady Capulet_

_Capulet._ What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!

_Lady Capulet._ A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?

_Cap._ My sword, I say! Old Montague is come,

And flourishes his blade in spite of me.

_Enter Montague and Lady Montague_

_Montague._ Thou villain, Capulet,--Hold me not, let me go.

_Lady Montague._ Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.

_Enter Prince, with his train_

_Prince._ Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,

Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,--

Will they not hear?--What, ho! you men, you beasts,

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

With purple fountains issuing from your veins,

On pain of torture, from those bloody hands

Throw your mistemper'd weapons to the ground,

And hear the sentence of your moved prince.

Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,

By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,

Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,

And made Verona's ancient citizens

Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,

To wield old partisans, in hands as old,

Cank'red with peace, to part your cank'red hate;

If ever you disturb our streets again

Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.

For this time, all the rest depart away.

You, Capulet, shall go along with me;

And Montague, come you this afternoon,

To know our farther pleasure in this case,

To old Free-town, our common judgement place,

Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.

(_Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague, and Benvolio._)

Even physical action, then, may interest for itself, or because it

characterizes, or because it helps on the story, or for two or more of

these reasons.

If we examine other extracts from famous plays we shall, however, find

ourselves wondering whether action in drama must not mean something

besides mere physical action. In the opening scene of _La Princesse

Georges_, by Dumas fils, the physical action is neither large in amount

nor varied, but the scene is undeniably dramatic, for emotions

represented create prompt emotional response in us.

ACT I. SCENE 1

_A Drawing Room_

_Severine, watching near the window, with the curtain drawn a little

aside, then Rosalie_

_Severine._ Rosalie! At last! What a night I have gone through!

Sixteen hours of waiting! (_To Rosalie, who enters._) Well?

_Rosalie._ Madame, the Princess must be calm.

_Severine._ Don't call me Princess. That's wasting time.

_Rosalie._ Madame has not slept?

_Severine._ No.

_Rosalie._ I suspected as much.

_Severine._ Tell me, is it true?

_Rosalie._ Yes.

_Severine._ The details, then.

_Rosalie._ Well, then, last evening I followed the Prince, who went to

the Western Railway, as he had told Madame that he would do, to take

the train at half past nine; only, instead of buying a ticket for

Versailles, he took one for Rouen.

_Severine._ But he was alone?

_Rosalie._ Yes. But five minutes after he arrived, she came.

_Severine._ Who was the woman?

_Rosalie._ Alas, Madame knows her better than I!

_Severine._ It is some one whom I know?

_Rosalie._ Yes.

_Severine._ Not one of those women?--

_Rosalie._ It is one of your intimate friends, of the best social

position.

_Severine._ Valentine? Bertha? No.--The Baroness?

_Rosalie._ The Countess Sylvanie.

_Severine._ She? Impossible! She stayed here, with me, until at least

nine o'clock. We dined alone together.

_Rosalie._ She was making sure that you didn't suspect anything.

_Severine._ Indeed, nothing. And she came to the train at what hour?

_Rosalie._ At twenty-five minutes past nine.

_Severine._ So, in twenty-five minutes--

_Rosalie._ She went home; she changed her dress (she arrived all in

black); she went to the St. Lazare Station. It is true that only your

garden and hers separate her house from yours; that she has the best

horses in Paris; and that she is accustomed to doing this sort of

thing, if I may believe what I have heard.

_Severine._ To what a pass we have come! My most intimate friend! Did

they speak to each other?[10]

This scene wins our attention because it reveals in Severine a mental

state which in itself interests and moves us far more than the mere

physical action.

What has been said of _La Princesse Georges_ is even more true of the

ending of Marlowe's _Faustus_.

_Faustus._ Ah, Faustus:

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make

Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

_O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!_

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The devil will come, and Faustus will be damn'd.

..........All beasts are happy,

For when they die,

Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;

But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.

Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!

No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer

That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

(_The clock strikes twelve._)

O, it strikes, it strikes! Now body, turn to air,

Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!

(_Thunder and lightning._)

O, soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,

And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

_Enter Devils_

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!

Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!

Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!

I'll burn my books!--Ah, Mephistophilis!

(_Exeunt Devils with Faustus._)[11]

Though this scene doubtless requires physical action as the tortured

Faustus flings himself about the stage, would that action be clear

enough to move us greatly were it not for the characterization of the

preceding scenes and the masterly phrasing which exactly reveals the

tortured soul? Is it not a mental state rather than physical action

which moves us here? Surely.

The fact is, the greatest drama of all time, and the larger part of the

drama of the past twenty years, uses action much less for its own sake

than to reveal mental states which are to rouse sympathy or repulsion in

an audience. In brief, marked mental activity may be quite as dramatic

as mere physical action. Hamlet may sit quietly by his fire as he speaks

the soliloquy "To be, or not to be," yet by what we already know of him

and what the lines reveal we are moved to the deepest sympathy for his

tortured state. There is almost no physical movement as Percinet reads

to Sylvette from _Romeo and Juliet_ in the opening pages of Rostand's

_Romancers_, yet we are amused and pleased by their excited delight.

ACT I

_The stage is cut in two by an old wall, mossy and garlanded by

luxurious vines. To the right, a corner of Bergamin's park; to the

left a corner of Pasquinot's. On each side, against the wall, a

bench._

SCENE 1. _Sylvette. Percinet. When the curtain rises, Percinet is

seated on the wall, with a book on his knees, from which he is reading

to Sylvette. She stands on the bench in her father's park, her chin in

her hands, her elbows against the wall, listening attentively._

_Sylvette_. O Monsieur Percinet, how beautiful it is!

_Percinet_. Isn't it? Hear Romeo's reply! (_He reads._)

"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:

Night's candles are burnt out and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops:

I must be gone...."

_Sylvette._ (_Alert, with animation._) Sh!

_Percinet._ (_Listens a moment, then_) No one! So, mademoiselle, don't

have the air of an affrighted birdling on a branch, ready to spread

wing at the slightest sound. Hear the immortal lovers talking:

_She._ "Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:

It is some meteor that the sun exhales,

To be to thee this night a torch bearer."

_He._ "Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye;

'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;

Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat

The vaulty heaven so high above our heads;

I have more care to stay than will to go:

Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so."

_Sylvette._ Oh, no! I won't have him talk of that; if he does, I shall

cry.

_Percinet._ Then we'll shut our book till tomorrow, and, since you

wish it, let sweet Romeo live.

(_He closes the book and looks about him._)

What an adorable spot! It seems made for lulling one's self with the

lines of the great William.[12]

Here is great activity, but it is mental rather than physical action. To

make it rouse us to the desired emotional response, good

characterization and wisely chosen words are necessary.

Examine also the opening scene of Maeterlinck's _The Blind_. A group of

sightless people have been deserted in a wood by their guide, and

consequently are so bewildered and timorous that they hardly dare move.

Yet all their trepidation, doubt, and awe are clearly conveyed to us,

with a very small amount of physical action, through skilful

characterization, and words specially chosen and ordered to create and

intensify emotion in us.

_An ancient Norland forest, with an eternal look, under a sky of deep

stars._

_In the centre and in the deep of the night, a very old priest is

sitting, wrapped in a great black cloak. The chest and the head,

gently upturned and deathly motionless, rest against the trunk of a

giant hollow oak. The face is fearsome pale and of an immovable waxen

lividness, in which the purple lips fall slightly apart. The dumb,

fixed eyes no longer look out from the visible side of Eternity and

seem to bleed with immemorial sorrows and with tears. The hair, of a

solemn whiteness, falls in stringy locks, stiff and few, over a face

more illuminated and more weary than all that surrounds it in the

watchful stillness of that melancholy wood. The hands, pitifully thin,

are clasped rigidly over the thighs._

_On the right, six old men, all blind, are sitting on stones, stumps,

and dead leaves._

_On the left, separated from them by an uprooted tree and fragments of

rock, six women, also blind, are sitting opposite the old men. Three

among them pray and mourn without ceasing, in a muffled voice. Another

is old in the extreme. The fifth, in an attitude of mute insanity,

holds on her knees a little sleeping child. The sixth is strangely

young and her whole body is drenched with her beautiful hair. They, as

well as the old men, are all clad in the same ample and sombre

garments. Most of them are waiting, with their elbows on their knees

and their faces in their hands; and all seem to have lost the habit of

ineffectual gesture and no longer turn their heads at the stifled and

uneasy noises of the Island. Tall funereal trees,--yews,

weeping-willows, cypresses,--cover them with their faithful shadows. A

cluster of long, sickly asphodels is in bloom, not far from the

priest, in the night. It is unusually oppressive, despite the

moonlight that here and there struggles to pierce for an instant the

glooms of the foliage._

_First Blind Man._ (_Who was born blind._) He hasn't come back yet?

_Second Blind Man._ (_Who also was born blind._) You have awakened me.

_First Blind Man._ I was sleeping, too.

_Third Blind Man._ (_Also born blind._) I was sleeping, too.

_First Blind Man._ He hasn't come yet?

_Second Blind Man._ I hear something coming.

_Third Blind Man._ It is time to go back to the Asylum.

_First Blind Man._ We ought to find out where we are.

_Second Blind Man._ It has grown cold since he left.

_First Blind Man._ We ought to find out where we are!

_The Very Old Blind Man._ Does any one know where we are?

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ We were walking a very long while; we must

be a long way from the Asylum.

_First Blind Man._ Oh! the women are opposite us?

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ We are sitting opposite you.

_First Blind Man._ Wait, I am coming over where you are. (_He rises

and gropes in the dark._) Where are you?--Speak! let me hear where you

are!

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ Here; we are sitting on stones.

_First Blind Man._ (_Advances and stumbles against the fallen tree and

the rocks._) There is something between us.

_Second Blind Man._ We had better keep our places.

_Third Blind Man._ Where are you sitting?--Will you come over by us?

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ We dare not rise!

_Third Blind Man._ Why did he separate us?

_First Blind Man._ I hear praying on the women's side.

_Second Blind Man._ Yes; the three old women are praying.

_First Blind Man._ This is no time for prayer!

_Second Blind Man._ You will pray soon enough, in the dormitory!

(_The three old women continue their prayers._)

_Third Blind Man._ I should like to know who it is I am sitting by.

_Second Blind Man._ I think I am next to you.

(_They feel about them._)

_Third Blind Man._ We can't reach each other.

_First Blind Man._ Nevertheless, we are not far apart. (_He feels

about him and strikes with his staff the fifth blind man, who utters a

muffled groan._) The one who cannot hear is beside us.

_Second Blind Man._ I don't hear anybody; we were six just now.

_First Blind Man._ I am going to count. Let us question the women,

too; we must know what to depend upon. I hear the three old women

praying all the time; are they together?

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ They are sitting beside me, on a rock.

_First Blind Man._ I am sitting on dead leaves.

_Third Blind Man._ And the beautiful blind girl, where is she?

_The Very Old Blind Woman._ She is near them that pray.

_Second Blind Man._ Where is the mad woman, and her child?

_The Young Blind Girl._ He sleeps; do not awaken him!

_First Blind Man._ Oh! How far away you are from us! I thought you

were opposite me!

_Third Blind Man._ We know--nearly--all we need to know. Let us chat a

little, while we wait for the priest to come back.[13]

Many an inexperienced dramatist fails to see the force of these words of

Maeterlinck: "An old man, seated in his armchair, waiting patiently,

with his lamp beside him--submitting with bent head to the presence of

his soul and his destiny--motionless as he is does yet live in reality a

deeper, more human, and more universal life than the lover who strangles

his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or the husband who

'avenges his honor.'" If an audience can be made to feel and understand

the strong but contained emotion of this motionless figure, he is rich

dramatic material.

In the extracts from _La Princesse Georges_, _Faustus_, _The Romancers_,

_The Blind_, in the soliloquy of Hamlet referred to, and the

illustration quoted from Maeterlinck, it is not physical outward

expression but the vivid picture we get of a state of mind which stirs

us. Surely all these cases prove that we must include mental as well as

physical activity in any definition of the word _dramatic_. Provided a

writer can convey to his audience the excited mental state of one or

more of his characters, then this mental activity is thoroughly

dramatic. That is, neither physical nor mental activity is in itself

dramatic; all depends on whether it naturally arouses, or can be made by

the author to arouse, emotion in an audience. Just as we had to add to

physical action which arouses emotional response of itself, physical

action which is made to arouse response because it develops the story

or illustrates character, we must now add action which is not physical,

but mental.

There is even another chance for confusion. A figure sitting motionless

not because he is thinking hard but because blank in mind may yet be

dramatic. Utter inaction, both physical and mental, of a figure

represented on the stage does not mean that it is necessarily

undramatic. If the dramatist can make an audience feel the terrible

tragedy of the contrast between what might have been and what is for

this perfectly quiet unthinking figure, he rouses emotion in his

hearers, and in so doing makes his material dramatic. Suppose, too, that

the expressionless figure is an aged father or mother very dear to some

one in the play who has strongly won the sympathy of the audience. The

house takes fire. The flames draw nearer and nearer the unconscious

figure. We are made to look at the situation through the eyes of the

character--some child or relative--to whom the scene, were he present,

would mean torture. Instantly the figure, because of the way in which it

is represented, becomes dramatic. Here again, however, the emotion of

the audience could hardly be aroused except through characterization of

the figure as it was or might have been, or of the child or relative who

has won our sympathy. Again, too, characterization so successful must

depend a good deal on well-chosen words.

This somewhat elaborate analysis should have made three points clear.

First, we may arouse emotion in an audience by mere physical action; by

physical action which also develops the story, or illustrates character,

or does both; by mental rather than physical action, if clearly and

accurately conveyed to the audience; and even by inaction, if

characterization and dialogue by means of other figures are of high

order. Secondly, as the various illustrations have been examined, it

must have become steadily more clear that while action is popularly held

to be central in drama, emotion is really the essential. Because it is

the easiest expression of emotion to understand, physical action, which

without illuminating characterization and dialogue can express only a

part of the world of emotion, has been too often accepted as expressing

all the emotion the stage can present. Thirdly, it should be clear that

a statement one meets too frequently in books on the drama, that certain

stories or characters, above all certain well-known books, are

essentially undramatic material is at least dubious. The belief arises

from the fact that the story, character, or idea, as usually presented,

seems to demand much analysis and description, and almost to preclude

illustrative action. In the past few years, however, the drama of mental

states and the drama which has revealed emotional significance in

seeming or real inaction, has been proving that "nothing human is

foreign" to the drama. A dramatist may see in the so-called undramatic

material emotional values. If so, he will develop a technique which will

create in his public a satisfaction equal to that which the so-called

undramatic story, character, or idea could give in story form. Of course

he will treat it differently in many respects because he is writing not

to be read but to be heard, and to affect the emotions, not of the

individual, but of a large group taken as a group. He will prove that

till careful analysis has shown in a given story, character, or idea, no

possibility of arousing the same or dissimilar emotions in an audience,

we cannot say that this or that is dramatic or undramatic, but only:

"This material will require totally different presentation if it is to

be dramatic on the stage, and only a person of acumen, experience with

audiences, and inventive technique can present it effectively."

The misapprehension just analyzed rests not only on the misconception

that action rather than emotion is the essential in drama, but also

largely on a careless use of the word _dramatic_. In popular use this

word means _material for drama_, or _creative of emotional response_, or

_perfectly fitted for production under the conditions of the theatre_.

If we examine a little, in the light of this chapter, the nature and

purpose of a play, we shall see that _dramatic_ should stand only for

the first two definitions, and that _theatric_ must be used for the

third. Avoiding the vague definition _material for drama_, use

_dramatic_ only as _creative of emotional response_ and the confusion

will disappear.

A play exists to create emotional response in an audience. The response

may be to the emotions of the people in the play or the emotions of the

author as he watches these people. Where would satirical comedy be if,

instead of sharing the amusement, disdain, contempt or moral anger of

the dramatist caused by his figures, we responded exactly to their

follies or evil moods? All ethical drama gets its force by creating in

an audience the feelings toward the people in the play held by the

author. Dumas fils, Ibsen, Brieux prove the truth of this statement. The

writer of the satirical or the ethical play, obtruding his own

personality as in the case of Ben Jonson, or with fine impersonality as

in the case of Congreve or Moliere, makes his feelings ours. It is an

obvious corollary of this statement that the emotions aroused in an

audience need not be the same as those felt by the people on the stage.

They may be in the sharpest contrast. Any one experienced in drama knows

that the most intensely comic effects often come from people acting very

seriously. In _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ (Act I, Scene 2), the morning

reception of M. Jourdain affords an instance of this in his trying on of

costumes, fencing, and lessons in dancing and language. Serious entirely

for M. Jourdain they are as presented by Moliere, exquisitely comic for

us. In brief, the dramatic may rouse the same, allied, or even

contrasting emotions in an onlooker.

Nor need the emotion roused in an audience by actor or author be exactly

the same in amount. The actress who abandons herself to the emotions of

the part she is playing soon exhausts her nervous vitality. It would be

the same if audiences listening to the tragic were permitted to feel the

scenes as keenly as the figures of the story. On the other hand, in some

cases, if the comic figure on the stage felt his comicality as strongly

as the audience which is speechless with laughter, he could not go on,

and the scene would fail. Evidently, an audience may be made, as the

dramatist wills, to feel more or less emotion than the characters of the

play.

That it is duplication of emotion to the same, a less, or a greater

extent or the creation of contrasting emotion which underlies all drama,

from melodrama, riotous farce and even burlesque to high-comedy and

tragedy, must be firmly grasped if a would-be dramatist is to steer his

way clearly through the many existing and confusing definitions of

_dramatic_. For instance, Brunetiere said, "Drama is the representation

of the will of man in contrast to the mysterious powers of natural

forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon

the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law,

against one of his fellow mortals, against himself, if need be, against

the emotions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, the malevolence

of those around him."[14] That is, by this definition, conflict is

central in drama. But we know that in recent drama particularly, the

moral drifter has many a time aroused our sympathy. Surely inertness,

supineness, stupidity, and even torpor may be made to excite emotion in

an audience. Conflict covers a large part of drama but not all of it.

Mr. William Archer, in his _Play-Making_, declares that "a crisis" is

the central matter in drama, but one immediately wishes to know what

constitutes a crisis, and we have defined without defining. When he says

elsewhere that that is dramatic which "by representation of imaginary

personages is capable of interesting an average audience assembled in a

theatre,"[15] he almost hits the truth. If we rephrase this definition:

"That is dramatic which by representation of imaginary personages

interests, through its emotions, an average audience assembled in a

theatre," we have a definition which will better stand testing.

Is all dramatic material, _theatric?_ No, for _theatric_ does not

necessarily mean _sensational, melodramatic, artificial_. It should

mean, and it will be so used in this book, _adapted for the purpose of

the theatre_. Certainly all dramatic material, that is, material which

arouses or may be made to arouse emotion, is not fitted for use in the

theatre when first it comes to the hand of the dramatist. Undeniably,

the famous revivalists, Moody, J.B. Gough, Billy Sunday, have worked

from emotions to emotions; that is, they have been dramatic.

Intentionally, feeling themselves justified by the ends obtained, they

have, too, been _theatric_ in the poor and popular sense of the word,

namely, _exaggerated, melodramatic, sensational_. Yet _theatric_ in the

best sense of the word these highly emotional speakers, who have swept

audiences out of all self-control, have not been. They worked as

speakers, not as playwrights. Though they sometimes acted admirably,

what they presented was in no sense a play. To accomplish in play form

what they accomplished as speakers, that is, to make the material

properly theatric, would have required an entire reworking. From all

this it follows that even material so emotional in its nature as to be

genuinely dramatic may need careful reworking if it is to succeed as a

play, that is, if it is to become properly _theatric_. Drama, then, is

presentation of an individual or group of individuals so as to move an

audience to responsive emotion of the kind desired by the dramatist and

to the amount required. This response must be gained under the

conditions which a dramatist finds or develops in a theatre; that is,

dramatic material must be made theatric in the right sense of the word

before it can become drama.

To summarize: accurately conveyed emotion is the great fundamental in

all good drama. It is conveyed by action, characterization, and

dialogue. It must be conveyed in a space of time, usually not exceeding

two hours and a half, and under the existing physical conditions of the

stage, or with such changes as the dramatist may bring about in them. It

must be conveyed, not directly through the author, but indirectly

through the actors. In order that the dramatic may become theatric in

the right sense of the word, the dramatic must be made to meet all these

conditions successfully. These conditions affect action,

characterization, and dialogue. A dramatist must study the ways in which

the dramatic has been and may be made theatric: that is what technique

means.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Early Plays_, pp. 5-6. Riverside Literature Series. C. G. Child.

Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[2] _The Ancient Classical Drama_, pp. 3-4. R. G. Moulton. Clarendon

Press, Oxford.

[3] Quoted in _The Development of the Drama_, pp. 10-11. Copyright,

1903, by Brander Matthews. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[4] For these two plays see _Early Plays_. Riverside Literature

Series. C. G. Child. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[5] _Works._ 6 vols. Pearson, London.

[6] _Cymbeline_, Act I, Scene 1.

[7] _Becket: A Tragedy._ Lord Tennyson. Arranged for the stage by

Henry Irving. Macmillan & Co., London and New York.

[8] _Macaire._ By R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley. Chas. Scribner's

Sons, New York. Copyright, 1895, by Stone & Kimball, Chicago.

[9] R. M. DeWitt, New York City.

[10] _Theatre Complet_, vol. v. Dumas fils. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[11] Marlowe's _Faustus_, Act v. Mermaid Series or Everyman's

Library.

[12] _The Romancers._ Translated by Mary Hendee. Doubleday & McClure

Co., New York.

[13] _The Blind._ Translated by Richard Hovey. Copyright, 1894 and

1896, by Stone & Kimball, Chicago.

[14] _Etudes Critiques_ vol. VII, p. 207.

[15] _Play-Making_, p. 48. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co.,

Boston.

CHAPTER III

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT. CLEARING THE WAY

A play may start from almost anything: a detached thought that flashes

through the mind; a theory of conduct or of art which one firmly

believes or wishes only to examine; a bit of dialogue overheard or

imagined; a setting, real or imagined, which creates emotion in the

observer; a perfectly detached scene, the antecedents and consequences

of which are as yet unknown; a figure glimpsed in a crowd which for some

reason arrests the attention of the dramatist, or a figure closely

studied; a contrast or similarity between two people or conditions of

life; a mere incident--noted in a newspaper or book, heard in idle talk,

or observed; or a story, told only in the barest outlines or with the

utmost detail. "How do the ideas underlying plays come into being? Under

the most varying conditions. Most often you cannot tell exactly how. At

the outset you waste much time hunting for a subject, then suddenly one

day, when you are in your study or even in the street, you bring up with

a start, for you have found something. The piece is in sight. At first

there is only an impression, an image of the brain that wholly defies

words. If you were to write out exactly what you feel at the

moment--provided that were at all possible--it would be exceedingly

difficult to indicate its attractiveness. The situation is similar to

that when you dream that you have discovered an idea of profound

significance; on awaking you write it down; and on rereading perceive

that it is commonplace or stale. Then you follow up the idea; it tries

to escape, and when captured at last, still resists, ceaselessly

changing form. You wish to write a comedy; the idea cries, 'Make a

tragedy of me, or a story-play.' At last, after a struggle you master

the idea."[1]

Back of _La Haine_ of Sardou was the detached thought or query: "Under

what circumstances will the profound charity of woman show itself in the

most striking manner? In the preface to _La Haine_, Sardou has told how

his plays revealed themselves to him. 'The problem is invariable. It

appears as a kind of equation from which the unknown quantity must be

found. The problem gives me no peace till I have found the answer.'"[2]

Maeterlinck wrote several of his earlier plays, _The Intruder_,

_Princess Maleine_, _The Blind_, to demonstrate the truth of two

artistic theories of his: that what would seem to most theatre-goers of

the time inaction might be made highly dramatic, and that partial or

complete repetition of a phrase may have great emotional effect. _Magda_

(_Heimat_) of Sudermann was written to illustrate the possible inherent

tragedy of Magda's words: "Show them [people thoroughly sincere and

honest but limited in experience and outlook] that beyond their narrow

virtues there may be something true and good." In _Le Fils Naturel_ of

Dumas the younger, the illegitimate son, till late in the play, believes

his father to be his uncle. "The logical development would seem to be

obvious: father and son falling into each other's arms. Dumas, on the

contrary, arranged that the son should not take the family name, and

that the play should end with the following dialogue:

_The Father._ You will surely permit me, when we are alone together,

to call you my son.

_The Son._ Yes, uncle.

It seems that Montigny, Director of the Gymnase Theatre, was shocked by

the frigidity of this denouement. He said to Dumas, 'Make them embrace

each other; the play, in that case, will have at least thirty additional

performances.' Dumas answered, 'I can't suppress the last word. It is

for that I wrote the piece.'"[3] One suspects that Lord Dunsany feels

the same about the last words of his _King Argimenes_. The whole play

apparently illustrates the almost irresistible effect of habit and

environment. At the opening of the play, King Argimenes is the hungry,

overworked slave of the captors who deprived him of his kingship. He

talks eagerly with his fellow slaves of the King's sick dog, who will

make a rich feast for them if he dies. At the end, Argimenes, completely

successful in his revolt, is lord of all he surveys. Surprised by the

news of the incoming messenger, he suddenly reverts to a powerful desire

of his slavehood, speaking instinctively as did _Le fils_ of Dumas.

_Enter running, a Man of the household of King Darniak. He starts and

stares aghast on seeing King Argimenes_

_King Argimenes._ Who are you?

_Man._ I am the servant of the King's dog.

_King Argimenes._ Why do you come here?

_Man._ The King's dog is dead.

_King Argimenes and His Men._ (_Savagely and hungrily._) Bones!

_King Argimenes._ (_Remembering suddenly what has happened and where

he is._) Let him be buried with the late King.

_Zarb._ (_In a voice of protest._) Majesty!

_Curtain._[4]

John G. Whittier's poem, _Barbara Frietchie_, provided the picture or

incident which started Clyde Fitch on his play of the same name. In

_Cyrano de Bergerac;_ in the numerous adaptations of _Vanity Fair_

usually known as _Becky Sharp;_ in _Peg O' My Heart_, _Rip Van Winkle_,

and _Louis XI_, it is characterization of a central figure which was

probably the point of departure for the play. Whether the source was an

observed or an imagined figure, a character from history or fiction, the

problem of the dramatist was like that of Sardou in _Rabagas_,--to find

the story which will best illustrate the facets of character of the

leading figure. Sometimes, as in _Nos Bons Villageois_, by the same

author, the point of departure is a group of country people whose

manners and customs must be portrayed,--in this case to illustrate the

reception these rapacious peasants give pleasure-seeking Parisians, whom

they detest and seek to turn to monetary advantage.[5] Mr. William

Archer points out that _Strife_ "arose in Mr. Galsworthy's mind from his

actually having seen in conflict the two men who were the prototypes of

Anthony and Roberts, and thus noted the waste and inefficacy arising

from the clash of strong characters unaccompanied by balance. It was

accident that led him to place the two men in an environment of capital

and labour. In reality, both of them were, if not capitalists, at any

rate, on the side of capital." [6] In _Theodora_, Sardou tried to

reconstitute an historical epoch which interested him.[7] Still another

source is this: "The point of departure of the plays of M. de Curel is

psychological. What allures him is a curious situation which raises some

problem. He asks himself, 'What, under such circumstances, can have been

going on in our minds?' This was the case with _L'Envers d'une Sainte_.

M. de Curel was thinking of this: A woman was arrested for murder;

thanks to protection in high places, the action of the courts was held

up. The woman was represented to be insane and shut up in an asylum.

Years pass by; the woman succeeds in escaping, and returning home

secretly, suddenly opens the door of the room where her children are

playing. It is in this picture-like form that the idea of the piece came

to him, a picture so detailed and concrete that in imagination he saw

the astonishment of the children, the terror of the nurse calling for

aid, and the husband hurrying to prevent his wife from stepping into the

room."[8] The origin of _A Doll's House_, of Ibsen, we have in these,

his first, "Notes for the Modern Tragedy":

Rome, 19.10, 78.

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in

man, and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not

understand each, other; but in practical life the woman is judged by

man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

The wife in the play ends by having no idea of what is right or wrong;

natural feeling on the one hand and belief in authority on the other

have altogether bewildered her.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is

an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a

judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of

view.

She has committed forgery and she is proud of it; for she did it out

of love for her husband, to save his life. But this husband with his

commonplace principles of honour is on the side of the law and regards

the question with masculine eyes.

Spiritual conflicts. Oppressed and bewildered by the belief in

authority, she loses faith in her moral right and ability to bring up

her children. Bitterness. A mother in modern society, like certain

insects who go away and die when she has done her duty in the

propagation of the race. Love of life, of husband and children and

family. Here and there a womanly shaking off of her thoughts. Sudden

return of anxiety and terror. She must bear it all alone. The

catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably. Despair, conflict, and

destruction.

(Krogstad has acted dishonourably and thereby become well-to-do; now

his prosperity does not help him, he cannot recover his honour.)[9]

It is a truism, first, that Shakespeare wrote story plays, and secondly

that he did not endeavor to imagine a new story. Instead, he made over

plays grown out of date in his time, or adapted to the stage what today

we should call novelettes which came to him in the original or

translation from Italy, Spain, or France. Never did he find a story

which seemed to him fully shaped and ready for the stage.[10] The tales

may be verbose and redundant; they may be mere bare outlines of the

action, little if at all characterized, with unreal dialogue; or they

may provide Shakespeare with only a part of the story he uses, the rest

coming from other tales or from his own imagination. Widely different as

they are, however, one and all they were points of departure for

Shakespeare's plays.

No matter which one of the numerous starting points noted may be that of

the dramatist, he must end in story even if he does not begin with it.

Suppose that he starts with a character. He cannot merely talk about the

figure. This might produce a kind of history; it cannot produce drama.

Inevitably, he will try to illustrate, by means of action, some one

dominant characteristic, or group of characteristics, or to the full,

the many-sided nature of the man. Very nearly the same thing may be said

of any attempt to dramatize an historical epoch. Its chief

characteristic or characteristics must be illustrated in action. Some

story is inevitable. Suppose, for the moment, that as in Morose of Ben

Jonson's _Silent Woman_,[11] the dramatist is stressing one

characteristic, in this instance morbid sensitiveness to noise of any

kind. It is well known that Jonson cared more for character and less for

story than most dramatists of his day. Yet even in this play we find the

story of the tricking of Morose by his nephew, Dauphine, resulting in

the marriage of Morose to Dauphine's page. The reason why the three

parts of _Henry VI_ of Shakespeare are little read and very rarely acted

is not merely that they are somewhat crude early work, but that

crowding incident of all kinds lacks the massing needed to give it

clearness of total effect to round it out into a well-told story.

Illustrative incidents, unrelated except that historically they happen

to the same person, and that historically they are given in proper

sequence, are likely to be confusing. We need the Baedeker of a

biographer or an historian to emphasize the incidents so that the

meaning they have for him may be clear to us. The first part of

Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_,[12] when quickly read, seems but a succession

of conquests, not greatly unlike, leading to his control of the world of

his day. He who sees no deeper into the play than this praises certain

scenes or passages, but finds the whole repetitious and confusing.

Closer examination shows, however, that behind these many incidents of

war and slaughter is an interest of Marlowe's own creation which keeps

us waiting for, anticipating the final scene--the desire of Zenocrate,

at first captive of Tamburlaine, and later his devoted wife, to

reconcile her father, the Soldan, and her husband. The satisfaction of

her desire makes the spectacular ending of Part I. This thread of

interest gives a certain unity to the material presented, creates a

slight story in the mass of incident,--that is, something with a

beginning, a middle, and an end. What gives unity to the Second Part of

_Tamburlaine_ is the idea that, even as Tamburlaine declares himself

all-conquering, he faces unseen forces against which he cannot

stand--the physical cowardice of his son, so incomprehensible to him

that he kills the boy; the illness and death of his beloved Zenocrate,

though he spares nothing to save her; his own growing physical weakness,

his breakdown and death even as the generals he has never called on in

vain before prove unable to aid him. Again we find an element of story

to unify the material.

A moment's thought will show that if, beginning with character we must

ultimately reach some story, however slight, this is just as true of a

play which begins with an idea, a bit of dialogue, a detached scene, or

a mere setting. The setting must be the background of some incident.

This, in turn, must be part of a story or we shall have the episodic

form already found undesirable. Similarly, a detached scene must become

part of a series of scenes. Get rid of the effect of episodic scenes,

that is, give them unity, and lo, we have story of some sort. The bit of

dialogue must become part of a larger dialogue belonging to characters

of the play; and characterization, as we have seen, results in some

story. The artistic or moral idea of the dramatist can be made clear

only by human figures, the pawns with which he makes his emotional

moves. At once we are on the way to story. _The Red Robe_[13] of Brieux

aims to illustrate the idea that in France the administration of justice

has been confused by personal ambition and personal intrigue. Is it

without story? Surely we have the story of Mouzon,--his hopes, his

consequent intrigues for advancement, and his resulting death. Here is a

group of incidents developing something from a beginning to an end, that

is, providing story. The play contains, too, the story of Yanetta and

Etchepare. May we not say that the Vagret family provides a third story?

A play, then, may begin in almost anything seen or thought. Speaking

broadly, there is no reason why one source is better than another. The

important point is that something seen or thought should so stir the

emotions of the dramatist that the desire to convey his own emotion or

the emotions of characters who become connected with what he has seen or

thought, forces him to write till he has worked out his purpose.

Undoubtedly, however, he who begins with a story is nearer his goal than

he who begins with an idea or a character. Disconnected episodes, then,

may possibly make a vaudeville sketch or the libretto of a lower order

of musical comedy. Unless unified in story, even though it be very

slight, they cannot make a play.

This point needs emphasis for two reasons: because lately there has been

some attempt to maintain that a newer type of play has no story, and

because many a beginner in dramatic writing seems to agree with Bayes in

_The Rehearsal_. "What the devil's a plot except to stuff in fine

things?" In good play-writing it is not a question of bringing together

as many incidents or as many illustrations of character as you can crowd

together in a given number of acts, but of selecting the illustrative

incidents, which, when properly developed will produce in an audience

the largest amount of the emotional response desired. Later this error

will be considered in detail.

Nor will the recent attempt to maintain that there is a new type of play

with "absolutely no story in it" stand close analysis. The story may be

very slight, but story is present in all such plays. Take two cases. Mr.

William Archer, in his excellent book on _Play-Making_,[14] sums up Miss

Elizabeth Baker's _Chains_[15] as follows: "A city clerk, oppressed by

the deadly monotony of his life, thinks of going to Australia--and

doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of

underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness

of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a middle-aged

widower--and doesn't do it." He then declares that the play has

"absolutely no story." Does any reader believe that this play could have

succeeded, as it has, if the audience had been left in any doubt as to

_why_ the city clerk and the shopgirl did not do what they had planned?

Yet surely, if this play makes clear, as it does, _why_ these two people

changed their minds, it must have story, for it shows us people

thinking of escaping from conditions they find irksome, and explains why

they give up the idea. If that isn't story, what is it?

_The Weavers_ of Hauptmann,[16] giving us somewhat loosely connected

pictures of social conditions among the weavers of Germany in the

forties of the nineteenth century, is said to be another specimen of

these plays without story. Now such plays as _The Weavers_ have one of

two results: they rouse us to thought on the social conditions

represented, or they do not. To succeed they must rouse us; but if our

stirred feelings are to lead anywhere, we must be not only stirred but

clear as to the meaning of the play. There have been many who have

thought that _The Weavers_, though it stirs us to sympathy, leaves us

nowhere because not clear. Be this as it may, even _The Weavers_ has

some story, for it tells us of the rise and development of a revolt of

the weavers against their employers.

Confusion as to "story" results from two causes. First, story in drama

is often taken to imply only complicated story. To say that every play

must have complicated story is absurd. To say that every play must have

some story, though it may be very slight, is undeniable. Secondly, story

is frequently used to mean plot, and plot of the older type, namely a

play of skilfully arranged suspense and climax in a story of complicated

and extreme emotion. It is the second cause which underlies Mr. Archer's

curious statement about _Chains_. He says that the play has no

"emotional tension worth speaking of," and assumes that where there is

no emotional tension there cannot be story. Tension in the sense of

suspense the play has little, but Mr. Archer states that it held "an

audience absorbed through four acts" and stirred "them to real

enthusiasm." In these words he grants the emotional response of the

audience. Miss Baker substitutes sympathy for the characters and deft

dealing with ironic values (see the ends of Act II and Act III) for

complicated plot and dependence on suspense. One kind of play, however,

no more precludes story than another.

What, then, is the difference between story and plot? In treating drama,

what should be meant by story is what a play boils down to when you try

to tell a friend as briefly as possible what it is about--what Mr.

Knobloch calls the vital active part, the "verb" of the play. Here is

the story of the play, _Barbara Frietchie_, as it re-shaped itself in

Clyde Fitch's mind from Whittier's poem:[17] "A Northern man loves a

Southern girl. She defies her father and runs away to marry him. By a

sudden battle the ceremony is prevented. The minister's house is seized

by the rebels, and soldiers stationed there. Barbara, who has remained,

seeing a Confederate sharpshooter about to fire on her lover passing

with his regiment, drops on her knees, slowly levels a gun she has

seized, and shoots the Southerner. Her lover is wounded and she

struggles to protect him from her father, brother, and rebel suitor, and

from every little noise which might cost his life. He dies, and she, now

wholly wedded to the Northern cause, waves the flag, as does the old

woman in Whittier's poem, in defiance of the Southern army, and is shot

by her crazy rebel lover."[18] Note that this summary, though it makes

the story clear, in no way presents the scenes of the play as to order,

suspense, or climax. This is the story, not the plot of _Barbara

Frietchie_. Plot, dramatically speaking, is the story so moulded by the

dramatist as to gain for him in the theatre the emotional response he

desires. In order to create and maintain interest, he gives his story,

as seems to him wise, simple or complex structure; and discerning

elements in it of suspense, surprise, and climax, he reveals them to

just the extent necessary for his purposes. Plot is story proportioned

and emphasized so as to accomplish, under the conditions of the theatre,

the purposes of the dramatist. Compare the plot of _Barbara Frietchie_

with its story.

Act I. The Frietchies' front stoop facing on a street in the town of

Frederick, which is in the hands of the hated Yankees. By the

sentimental talk of the Southern girls sitting on the steps we learn

that Barbara Frietchie is carrying on a flirtation with Captain

Trumbull, a Union officer, under the noses of her outraged family,

friends, and lover, Jack Negly. After a short scene, Barbara sends him

off rebuffed and incensed. She is then left alone in the dusk. Her

brother, Arthur Frietchie, steals round the corner of the house,

wounded. Barbara takes him in and they are not yet out of earshot when

Captain Trumbull appears to call on Barbara much to the wrath of the

Frietchies' next-door neighbor, Colonel Negly. The Yankee lover summons

Barbara, and dismisses a Union searching party, swearing on his honor

that there are no rebels in the Frietchie home. Her gratitude for this

leads them into a love scene, turbulent from the clash of sectional

sympathies, terminating in her promise to become his wife. No sooner has

the betrothal been spoken than Barbara's father, incensed to it by old

Colonel Negly, forbids the Union man his house and his daughter. To

complete their separation, an Orderly rushes on, announcing the

departure of Captain Trumbull's Company for Hagerstown in the early

morning. Leaning over the second-floor balcony, Barbara tells her lover

that she will be at the minister's house at Hagerstown the next day at

noon.

Act II. The Lutheran minister's house at Hagerstown. Barbara and her

friend, Sue Royce, appear all aflutter and, with the minister's wife,

Mrs. Hunter, await the arrival of the bridegroom and the divine. News

comes that the Confederates are swooping into the town, and Captain

Trumbull bursts into the room. An impassioned love scene follows in

which we learn that Barbara's sympathies are changing, so much so that

she presents her lover with an old Union flag to wear next his heart.

Orders for the soldier to join his Company part Barbara and Trumbull.

The Confederates are heard coming down the street as he leaves the

house. Barbara's brother Arthur breaks into the house and stations two

sharpshooters, angered deserters from Captain Trumbull's Company, at the

windows, Barbara protesting. Arthur goes about his business and she

learns that Gelwex, the deserter with the greatest grudge against her

lover, is to have the honor of picking him off as he comes down the

street. She gets a gun for herself. Captain Trumbull's excited voice is

heard outside the window. The deserter takes careful aim, puts his

finger to the trigger, and is shot from behind by Barbara.

Act III. Two days later. The front hallway of the Frietchie house. The

Confederates have re-taken the town. Barbara is in despair, her father

exultant, not speaking to her until she tells him that she is not

married to the Union officer. She pleads for news of her beloved, but

her father gives her little satisfaction. He has just gone upstairs when

Arthur comes in, supporting a wounded and fever-stricken man whom he has

shot. It is Captain Trumbull. Barbara takes him to her room, and when

her father, hearing who the wounded man is, orders him thrown into the

street, she pleads with all her strength to be allowed to keep him with

her. The old man yields, and when the Confederate searching party

invades the house, gives his word for its loyalty. Barbara has placed

herself at the foot of the stairs, determined to hold the fort against

the enemies of her lover. The doctor has insisted on absolute quiet for

him; noise may kill him. When the searching party has been turned back,

she summons new strength to quiet crazy Jack Negly, who has entered

howling his victory. He insists that she shall marry him, and tries,

pistol in hand, to force his way past Barbara to the bedside of his

enemy in love and war. By sheer force of will she conquers Negly and

rushes past him to the door of the room where her lover lies.

Act IV. Scene 1. The next morning. Barbara's room. Captain Trumbull lies

peacefully on the bed. Mammy Lu, the colored nurse, is dozing as Barbara

enters. They listen for the invalid's breathing, hear none, and find

that he is dead. Half crazed, Barbara snatches the bloody flag from his

bosom. The scene changes.

Scene 2. The balconied stoop in front of the house. The Confederate

soldiers, headed by Stonewall Jackson, are heralded by a large crowd!

Barbara, hanging the Union flag out on the balcony, is discovered by the

mob, who begin to stone her, urging somebody to shoot. The lines of

Whittier's poem, to fit the circumstances which Clyde Fitch has made,

now become:

Shoot! You've taken a life already dearer to me than my own. Shoot,

and I'll _thank_ you! but _spare_ your flag![19]

General Jackson orders that no shot be fired on penalty of death. Her

crazed lover, Negly, shoots her down from the street, and his own father

orders the execution of the penalty.

"In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the

impulse to write some play--any play--exists, so to speak, in the

abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the

would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to

work and invent a story. But this frame of mind is to be regarded with

suspicion. Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted from

such an abstract impulse. Invention in these cases is apt to be nothing

but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscope formed of

fragmentary reminiscences. I remember once in some momentary access of

ambition, trying to invent a play. I occupied several hours of a long

country walk, in, as I believed, creating out of nothing at all a

dramatic story. When at last I had modelled it into some sort of

coherency, I stepped back from it in my mind as it were, and

contemplated it as a whole. No sooner had I done so than it began to

seem vaguely familiar. 'Where have I seen this story before?' I asked

myself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutes

that I found I had re-invented Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_. Thus, when we

think we are choosing a plot out of the void, we are very apt to be, in

fact, ransacking the storehouse of memory."[20]

There is, of course, another group of would-be playwrights who care

nothing for freshness of subject but are perfectly content to imitate

the latest success, hoping thereby to win immediate notoriety, or what

interests them even more, immediate money return. Undoubtedly a man may

take a subject just presented in a successful play and so re-shape it by

the force of his own personality as to make it an original work of

power. Ordinarily, however, these imitators should remember the old

adage about the crock which goes so often to the well that at last it

comes back broken. He who merely imitates may have some temporary vogue,

and dramatic technique may help him to win it, but whatever is very

popular soon gives way to something else, for the fundamental law of

art, as of life, is change. He who is content merely to imitate must be

content with impermanency. It is the creator _and_ perfecter whom we

most remember. Even the creator _or_ the perfecter we remember. The mere

imitators have their brief day and pass. Today we still read the work of

the initiators, Lyly, Greene, Kyd. With pleasure we turn the pages of

Marlowe, Jonson, and Fletcher, not to mention Shakespeare. The dozens of

mere imitators who had their little day are known only as names.

The ambitious but inexperienced writer of plays worries himself much in

hunting a novel subject,--and in vain. Far afield he goes, seeking the

sensational, the bizarre, the occult, for new emotions and situations,

failing to recognize that the emotional life of yesterday, today, and

tomorrow can differ little fundamentally. Civilization refines or

deteriorates, kingdoms rise and fall, languages develop and pass, but

love of man and woman, of friend for friend, ambition, jealousy, envy,

selfishness,--these emotions abide. A book has been published to show

that there are but thirty-six possible dramatic situations. It is based

on the dictum of the Italian dramatist, Gozzi, that "there could be only

thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller gave himself much trouble to find

more, but was unable to find as many."[21] The very chapter headings of

the book mentioned prove that the number of possible dramatic situations

is a mere matter of subdivision: "Vengeance Pursuing Crime"; "Madness";

"Fatal Imprudence"; "Loss of Property "; "Ambition." Obviously, there

are many different kinds of vengeance, as the person pursuing the crime

is a hired detective, a wronged person, an officer of state, etc.

Moreover, differing conditions surrounding the crime, as well as the

character of the avenger, would make the vengeance sought different. The

same may be said of the other chapter-headings. It may be possible to

agree on the smallest number of dramatic situations possible, but

disagreement surely lies beyond that, for, according to our natures, we

shall wish to subdivide and increase the number. Just what that smallest

number is, here is unimportant. The important fact is: keen thinkers

about the drama agree that the stuff from which it is made may be put

into a small number of categories. This rests on the belief that the

emotions we feel today are the same old emotions, though we may feel

them in greater or less degree because of differences in climate,

civilization or ideals. Modern invention, of course, affects our

emotional life. It is now a commonplace that invention has quite changed

the heroism of warfare from what it was even a generation ago. It is

still heroism, but under conditions so different that it needs wholly

different treatment dramatically. In Restoration Comedy the rake was the

hero. The audience, viewing life through his eyes saw the victims of his

selfishness as fools or as people who, in any combat of wits with the

hero, deservedly came off defeated. Interest in one's fellow man, a more

just sense of life had developed in the early years of the eighteenth

century. This wholly changed the emphasis, and gave birth to the

Sentimental Comedy. The characters, even the story, of this newer comedy

are almost identical with the Restoration Comedy, but the material is so

treated that our sympathies go to the unfortunate wife of _The Careless

Husband_, not to the man himself, as they would have a generation

before. In _The Provoked Husband_[22] it is the point of view of that

husband as to Lady Townley, though she is presented in all her charm and

gaiety, with which we are left.

The sentimentality of the present day is not the sentimentality of 1850

to 1870. The higher education of women, the growth of suffrage, the

prevailing wide discussion of scientific matters have not taken

sentimentality from us, but have changed its look. Because of changes in

costume and custom it even appears more different than it really is. A

perfect illustration of the point is _Milestones_,[23] of Mr. Edward

Knobloch. Three generations live before our eyes the same story, but

how differently because of changed costumes, ideas, and immediate

surroundings. In French drama, the wet-nurse is no new figure as one

employee in a household where we are watching the comedy or the tragedy

of the employers. Brieux was the first, however, to study the emotions

of such a household through the nurse, making her feelings of prime

consequence. Hence, _Les Remplacantes_.[24] The whole situation is

summed up by William Sharp (Fiona Macleod) in his Introduction to _The

House of Usna_:

The tradition of accursed families is not the fantasy of one

dramatist, or of one country or of one time....

Whether the poet turn to the tragedy of the Theban dynasty, or to the

tragedy of the Achaian dynasty, or to the tragedy of Lear, or to the

Celtic tragedy of the House of Fionn, or to the other and less

familiar Gaelic tragedy of the House of Usna--whether one turn to

these or to the doom of the House of Malatesta, or to the doom of the

House of Macbeth, or to the doom of the House of Ravenswood, one turns

in vain if he be blind and deaf to the same elemental forces as they

move in their eternal ichor through the blood that has today's warmth

in it, that are the same powers though they be known of the obscure

and the silent, and are committed like wandering flame to the torch of

a ballad as well as to the starry march of the compelling words of

genius; are of the same dominion, though that be in the shaken hearts

of islesfolk and mountaineers, and not with kings in Mykenai, or by

the thrones of Tamburlaine and Aurungzebe, or with great lords and

broken nobles and thanes....

... I know one who can evoke modern dramatic scenes by the mere

iterance of the great musical names of the imagination. Menelaos,

Helen, Klytemaistra, Andromache, Kassandra, Orestes, Blind Oidipus,

Elektra, Kreusa, and the like. This is not because these names are in

themselves esoteric symbols. My friend has not seen any representation

of the _Agamemnon_ or the _Choephoroi_, of _Aias_ or _Oidipus at

Kolonos_, of _Elektra_ or _Ion_, or indeed of any Greek play. But he

knows the story of every name mentioned in each of the dramas of the

three kings of Greek Tragedy.... And here, he says, is his delight.

"For I do not live only in the past but in the present, in these

dramas of the mind. The names stand for the elemental passions, and I

can come to them through my own gates of today as well as through the

ancient portals of Aischylos or Sophocles or Euripides." ...

It is no doubt in this attitude that Racine, so French in the accent

of his classical genius, looked at the old drama which was his

inspiration: that Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Bridges, so English in the

accent of their genius, have looked at it; that Echegaray in Spain,

looked at it before he produced his troubled modern _Elektra_ which is

so remote in shapen thought and coloured semblance from the colour and

idea of its prototype; that Gabriele D'Annunzio looked at it before he

became obsessed with the old terrible idea of the tangled feet of

Destiny, so that a tuft of grass might withhold or a breath from

stirred dust empoison, and wrote that most perturbing of all modern

dramas, _La Citta Morta_.[25]

The drama must, then, go on treating over and over emotions the same in

kind. Real novelty comes in presenting them as they affect men and women

who are in ideas, habits, costume, speech, and environment distinctly of

their time. Their expression of the old elemental emotions brings

genuine novelty. Usually it is not through an incident or an episode,

obviously dramatic, but through the characters involved that one

understands and presents what is novel in the dramatic. Feeling this

strongly, Mr. Galsworthy asserts "Character is plot."[26]

So long as characters, ideas, and treatment seem to the public fresh,

they even have a weakness for a story they have heard before. Recall the

drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in which the dramatists

shared with their audiences a knowledge of the stories of the gods which

was theirs by education and from repeated treatment by the dramatists of

the day. That public asked, not new stories, but newness of effect

because old stories which were almost fixed subjects for their

dramatists were given individuality of treatment. In a modified sense

this was true of the Elizabethan public. _Romeo and Juliet_, _Lear_,

probably _Titus Andronicus_, and possibly _Julius Caesar_ Londoners had

known as plays just passing from popularity when Shakespeare made them

over. Here again, it was freshness of treatment through better

characterization, richer poetry, and finer technique, not creative

story, which won the public to Shakespeare. Nor is this attitude a thing

of the past. Think of the delight with which the public today watches

the rejuggling of old elements of plot in the rapid succession of

popular musical comedies, grateful for whatever element of freshness

they may find in the total product. Was it the story, or the

characterization and setting, indeed all that went with the treatment of

the story, which in _Peg o' My Heart_ and _Bunty Pulls the Strings_ won

these plays popularity? Seek for novelty, then, not by trying to invent

some new story, but in an idea, the setting of the play, the technical

treatment given it, above all the characters. The last, when studied,

are likely so to reshape the story which first presents itself to the

imagination as to make it really novel. Does the freshness of the story

of the Duke, Olivia, and Viola in _Twelfth Night_ rest on the story as

Shakespeare found it in Barnabe Riche's book,[27] or on the

characterization Shakespeare gave these suggested figures and the effect

of their developed characters on the story as he found it? Surely the

latter.

Another common fallacy of young dramatists is that what has happened is

better dramatic material than what is imagined. Among the trite maxims a

dramatist should remember, however, is: "Truth is often stranger than

fiction." The test for a would-be writer of plays, choosing among

several starting points, should be, not, "Is this true?" but "Will my

audience believe it true on sight or because of the treatment I can give

it?" "Aristotle long ago decided how far the tragic poet need regard

historical accuracy. He does not make use of an event because it really

happened, but because it happened so convincingly that for his present

purpose he cannot invent conditions more convincing."[28] Any reader of

manuscript plays knows that again and again, when he has objected to

something as entirely improbable, he has been told indignantly: "Why,

you must accept that, for it happened exactly like that to my friend,

Smith." On the other hand, who refuses to see _The Merchant of Venice_

because of the inherent improbability of the exaction of the pound of

flesh by Shylock? Highly improbable it is, but Shakespeare makes this

demand come from a figure so human in all other respects that we accept

it. A subject is not to be rejected because true or false. Every

dramatic subject must be presented with the probable human experience,

the ethical ideas, and the imaginativeness of the public in mind. To a

dramatist all subjects are possible till, after long wrestling with the

subject chosen, he is forced to admit that, whether originally true or

false, he cannot make it seem probable to an audience. Facts are, of

course, of very great value in drama, but if they are to convince a

theatrical public, the dramatist must so present them that they shall

not run completely counter to what an audience thinks it knows about

life.

Nor should a person who knows absolutely nothing of the theatre attempt

to write plays. He should go to see plays enough to know how long a

performance usually lasts, waits between the acts included, say two

hours and a half to two hours and three quarters; to know about how long

an act usually takes in playing; to gain some idea of the relation in

time between the written or printed page and the time in acting; to

understand that, in general, a small cast is preferable to a large one;

to know that the limited space of the stage makes some effects so

difficult as to be undesirable. This is to have ordinary common sense

about the theatre. Otherwise, what he puts on paper will be practically

sure of immediate rejection because the manuscript proves that the

writer has either not been in the theatre, or being there, has been

wholly unobservant. The following quotation seems almost fantastic, but

the experience of the writer in reading dramatic manuscripts fully bears

it out:

Many of the manuscripts that are sent to the New York managers are

such impossible oddities that few readers would regard a description

of them as really accurate. It was the privilege of the writer to look

over a collection of "plays" that have been mailed recently to several

of the theatrical offices, and, among the number, he came across a

dozen that were each about fifteen to twenty pages in length. This

included the scenic descriptions and stage directions. Such "plays,"

if enacted, would be of about ten to eleven minutes' duration instead

of two and a quarter hours. Three manuscripts called for from ninety

to one hundred characters, and from nine to fourteen different scenes.

Eight manuscripts were divided into nine acts each and, judging from

their thickness, would have run on for days, after the fashion of a

Chinese drama. One "play" was laid in the year 2200 A.D., and called

for twelve actors to portray "the new race of men"--each man to be at

least seven feet tall. These characters were to make all their

entrances and exits in airships. Several manuscripts that the writer

examined would have required professional strong men in their

enactment, so difficult were the physical feats outlined for some of

the actors. A great number of "modern dramas" included a ream of

colloquialisms and anachronisms intermixed with Louis XV situations.

And one manuscript, entitled "Love in All Ages" called for twelve

different acts with a new group of nine differently built actors in

each.[29]

A stage direction which ran something like this is the most naive in the

experience of the writer. "Germs of a locomotive, a cathedral, etc.,

detach themselves in an unknown manner from the walls and float airily,

merrily about the room." Impossible? Possibly not for a genius of a

stage manager. Likely to recommend the play to a manager trying to judge

from a manuscript the dramatic sense of its unknown author? Hardly.

Granted then that a would-be playwright has acquired ordinary common

sense about the theatre and has some point of departure, how does he

move from it to plot? First, by taking time enough, by avoiding hurry.

Let any would-be dramatist get rid promptly of the idea that good plays

are written in a rush. It is perfectly true that the mere writing out of

a play has often been done in what seems an amazingly short time,--a few

weeks, days, or even hours. However, in every case of rapid composition,

as for instance Sheridan's _Rivals_, which was put on paper in very

brief time, the author has either mulled his material for a long time or

was so thoroughly conversant with it that it required no careful

thinking out at the moment of composition. In _The Rivals_ Sheridan drew

upon his intimate knowledge for many years of the people and the gossip

of the Pump Room at Bath. Mr. H. A. Jones has more than once testified,

"I mull long on my plot, sometimes a year, but when I have it, the rest

(the mere writing out) is easy." Sardou turned out a very large number

of plays. Nor are his plays, seemingly, such as to demand the careful

preparation required for the drama of ideas or the drama more dependent

on characterization than incident. Yet he worked very carefully at all

stages, from point of departure to final draft. "Whenever an idea

occurred to Sardou, he immediately made a memorandum of it. These notes

he classified and filed. For example, years before the production of

_Thermidor_ he had the thought of one day writing such a play. Gradually

the character of Fabienne shaped itself; Labussiere was devised later to

fit Coquelin. Everything that he read about that epoch of the French

Revolution, and the ideas which his reading inspired, he wrote down in

the form of rough notes. Engravings, maps, prints, and other documents

of the time he carefully collected. Memoirs and histories he annotated

and indexed, filing away the index references in his file cases, or

dossiers. At the time of his death, Sardou had many hundreds of these

dossiers, old and new. Some of the older ones had been worked up into

plays, while the newer ones were merely raw material for future dramas.

When the idea of a play had measurably shaped itself in his mind he

wrote out a skeleton plot which he placed in its dossier. There it might

lie indefinitely. In this shape _Thermidor_ remained for nearly twenty

years, and _Theodora_ for ten. When he considered that the time was ripe

for one of his embryonic plays, Sardou would take out that particular

dossier, read over the material, and lay it aside again. After it had

fermented in his brain for a time, he would, if the inspiration seized

him, write out a scenario. After this, he began the actual writing of

the play."[30]

Late in the seventeenth century, one of the most prolific of English

playwrights, John Dryden, contracted to turn out four plays a year. He

failed completely to carry out his promise. Some dramatists of a much

more recent day should attribute to the speed with which they have

turned out plays their repeated failures, or, after early successes,

their waning hold on the public. Every dramatist should keep steadily in

mind the words of the old French adage: "Time spares not that on which

time hath been spared." Time, again time, and yet again time is the

chief element in successful writing of plays.

A wandering, erratic career is forbidden the dramatist. Back in the

eighteenth century Diderot stated admirably the qualities a dramatist

must have if he is to plot well. "He must get at the heart of his

material. He must consider order and unity. He must discern clearly the

moment at which the action should begin. He must recognize the

situations which will help his audience, and know what it is expedient

to leave unsaid. He must not be rebuffed by difficult scenes or long

labor. Throughout he must have the aid of a rich imagination."[31]

Selection, Proportion, Emphasis, Movement,--all making for

clearness,--these as the words of Diderot suggest, are what the

dramatist studies in developing his play from Subject, through Story, to

Plot.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Auteurs Dramatiques, Pailleron._ A. Binet and J. Passey.

_L'Annee Psychologique_, 1894, pp. 98-99.

[2] _Sardou and the Sardou Plays_, p. 127. Jerome A. Hart. J. B.

Lippincott Co., Philadelphia.

[3] _Auteurs Dramatiques, Dumas fils_, p. 77.

[4] _Five Plays_, p. 86. Lord Dunsany. Mitchell Kennerley, New York.

[5] _Auteurs Dramatiques, Sardou, L'Annee Psychologique_, 1894, p.

66.

[6] _Play-Making,_ pp. 18-19, note. William Archer. Small, Maynard &

Co., Boston.

[7] _Auteurs Dramatiques, Sardou_, p. 66.

[8] _Auteurs Dramatiques, M. de Curel_, p. 121.

[9] From _Ibsen's Workshop. Works_, vol. x, pp. 91-92. Chas.

Scribner's Sons, New York.

[10] Consult the pages of W. C. Hazlitt's _Shakespeare Library_, a

source book of his plays for proof of this.

[11] Belles-Lettres Series. F. E. Schelling, ed. D. C. Heath & Co.,

Boston and New York.

[12] Mermaid Series or Everyman's Library.

[13] Published in translation by Brentano; also in _Chief

Contemporary Dramatists_. Thomas H. Dickinson. Houghton Mifflin Co.,

Boston.

[14] _Note_, p. 49.

[15] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

[16] _Dramatic Works_, vol. I. Ed. Ludwig Lewisohn. B. Huebach., New

York.

[17] For purposes of useful comparison the lines of Whittier which

suggested the subject to Mr. Fitch are appended.

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched over the mountain wall;

Over the mountains winding down,

Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,

Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun

Of noon looked down and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

"Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast

"Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country's flag," she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman's deed and word:

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

All day long through Frederick street

Sounded the tread of marching feet;

All day long that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

[18] _The Stage in America_, p. 90. Norman Hapgood. The Macmillan

Co., New York.

[19] _Barbara Frietchie_, p. 126. Clyde Fitch. Life Publishing Co.,

New York.

[20] _Play-Making_, pp. 24-25. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co.,

Boston.

[21] _Les 36 Situations Dramatiques._ Georges Polti. Edition du

_Mercure de France_, 1895, p. 1.

[22] For texts of _The Careless Husband_ and _The Provoked Husband_,

both plays by Colley Cibber, see _Works_, vols. II and IV, 1777.

[23] Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.

[24] Not translated. Edition in French, P. V. Stock, Paris.

[25] Foreword to _The House of Usna_. Fiona Macleod. Published by

Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1903.

[26] _Some Platitudes Concerning Drama._ John Galsworthy. _Atlantic

Monthly_, December, 1909.

[27] _Shakespeare Library_, vol. I, pp. 387-412. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt.

[28] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, p. 279. Lessing. Bohn ed.

[29] _The United States of Playwrights_, Henry Savage. _The Bookman_,

September, 1909.

[30] _De la Poesie Dramatique._ Diderot. _Oeuvres_, vol. VII, p. 321.

Garnier Freres, Paris.

[31] _Sardou and the Sardou Plays_, p. 125. J. A. Hart. J. B.

Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

CHAPTER IV

FROM SUBJECT THROUGH STORY TO PLOT. CLEARNESS THROUGH WISE SELECTION

Dumas the younger, at twenty, wishing to write his first play, asked his

father for the secret of a successful play. That man of many successful

novels and plays replied: "It's very simple: First Act, clear; Third

Act, short; and everywhere, interest." Though play-writing is not always

so easy a matter as when a man of genius like Dumas the elder wrote the

relatively simple romantic dramas of his day, he emphasized one of the

fundamentals of drama when he called for clearness in the first act. He

might well have called for it everywhere. First of all, a dramatist who

has found his point of departure must know just what it means to him,

what he wants to do with it. Is he merely telling a story for its own

sake, satisfied if the incidents be increasingly interesting till the

final curtain falls? Is he writing his play, above all, for one special

scene in it, as was Mr. H. A. Jones, in _Mrs. Dane's Defence_,[1] in its

third act? Does he merely wish to set people thinking about conditions

of today, to write a drama of ideas, like Mr. Galsworthy in _The

Pigeon_,[2] or M. Paul Loyson, in _The Apostle_?[3] Has he, like Brieux

in _Damaged Goods_[4] or _The Cradle_,[5] an idea he wishes to convey,

and so must write a problem play? Is his setting significant for one

scene only or has it symbolic values for the whole play? As Dumas the

younger well said, "How can you tell what road to take unless you know

where you are going?"[6]

The trouble with most would-be dramatists is that they make too much of

the mere act of writing, too little of the thinking preliminary to

composition and accompanying it. With the point of departure clearly in

mind, seeing some characters who immediately connect themselves with the

subject, forecasting some scenes and a few bits of dialogue, they rush

to their desks before they see with equal clearness, we will not say the

plot but even the story necessary for the proposed play. What is the

result? "They have a general view of their subject, they know

approximately the situations, they have sketched out the characters, and

when they have said to themselves, 'This mother will be a coquette, this

father will be stern, this lover a libertine, this young girl

impressionable and tender,' the fury of making their scenes seizes them.

They write, they write, they come upon ideas, fine, delicate, and even

strong; they have charming details ready to hand: but when they have

worked much and come to plotting, for always one must come to that, they

try to find a place for this charming bit; they can never make up their

minds to put aside this delicate or strong idea, and they will do

exactly the opposite of what they should,--make the plot for the sake of

the scenes when the scenes should grow out of the plot. Consequently the

dialogue will be constrained in movement and much trouble and time will

be lost."[7]

A modern play recently submitted to the writer in manuscript showed just

this trouble. Act I was in itself good. Act II was good in one scene,

bad in the other. Act III was in itself right. Yet at the end of the

play one queried: "What is the meaning of it all?" Nothing bound the

parts together. There was no clear emphasis on some central purpose.

The author, when questioned, admitted that with certain characters in

mind, he had written the scenes as they came to him. When pressed to

state his exact subject, he advanced first one, then another, at last

admitting candidly: "I guess I never have been able to get far enough

away from the play to see quite what all of it does mean." Asked whether

there was not underlying all his scenes irony of fate, in that a man

trying his best to do what the world holds commendable is bound in such

relationship to two or three people that always they give his career a

tragic turn, he said, after consideration, "Yes. What if I call my play

_The Irony of Life_?" With the purpose of making that his meaning he

reworked his material. Quickly the parts fell into line, with a clear

and interesting play as the result. Many and many a play containing good

characterization, good dialogue and some real individuality of treatment

has gone to pieces in this way. A recent play opened with a well-written

picture of the life of a group of architects' draughtsmen. Apparently we

were started on a story of their common or conflicting interests. After

that first act, however, the play turned into a story of the way in

which one of these young draughtsmen, a kind of mixture of

Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and D'Artagnan, forced his way to

professional and social success. Once or twice, scenes seemed

intentional satire on our social classes. The fact is, the author had in

the back of his mind social satire, characterization of the central

figure, and a picture of the life of young draughtsmen. As material for

any one of these came to him when he was writing, he gave his attention

wholly to it. Though this might do for a rough draft, it must be

rewritten to make the chief interest stand out as most important, and to

give the other interests clearly their exact part in a perfectly clear

whole. Left as written, the play seemed to have a first act somewhat off

the question, and a later development going off now and then at a

tangent. Its total effect, in spite of some admirable characterization,

considerable truth to life, and real cleverness, was confusion for the

audience and consequent dissatisfaction.

Another play, often extremely well characterized, had, as an apparent

central purpose, study of a mother who has been trying to give her son

such surroundings that he cannot go the way of his father who, many

years since, had embezzled. Yet almost as frequently the purpose seemed

to be a very close study of the son, who, although the mother, blinded

by her affection, does not see it, is mentally and morally almost the

duplicate of his father. Moved with sympathy, now for one and now for

the other, just as the interest of the writer led him, the audience came

away confused and dissatisfied. How can an audience be expected to know

what a dramatist has not settled for himself, the chief of his interests

among several?

When M. de Curel, with his original idea or picture for _L'Envers d'une

Sainte_ sat down to reflect, "he noticed that the interest in the

subject lies in the feelings a woman must experience when she returns

after a long absence to a place full of memories, and finds herself face

to face with her past life. There was the psychological idea which

seemed to him alluring,--to paint a special phase of emotion."[8] There,

for him, lay the heart of his subject. Bulwer-Lytton, writing to

Macready in September, 1838, of a proposed play on the life of the

Chevalier de Marillac, in which Cardinal Richelieu must also be an

important figure, said: "Now look well at this story, you will see that

incident and position are good. But then there is one great objection.

Who is to do Richelieu? Marillac has the principal part and requires

you; but a bad Richelieu would spoil all. On the other hand, if you took

Richelieu, there would be two great acts without you, which will never

do; and the main interest of the plot would not fall on you. Tell me

what you propose. Must we give up this idea?"[9] Bulwer-Lytton had not

yet found the dramatic centre in his material. At first the story and

character of Marillac blinded him to the fact that the material was best

fitted for a dramatic study of the great Cardinal. When, shortly after

his letter, he came to see that the dramatic centre lay in Richelieu,

his famous play began developing. With that magnet in hand, he quickly

drew to him the right filaments of incident to make a unified and

interesting story.

Any dramatist has the right to decide first, what is the real importance

of his subject to him, but before he finishes he may find that he will

discard what originally seemed to him important, either because

something interests him more as he reflects or because he comes to see

in his subject an interest other than his own which will be stronger for

the audience. M. de Curel, thinking over his proposed play, abandoned

his first idea because "in ten minutes space it transformed itself. He

abandoned his first idea in order to try to paint the slightly analogous

feelings of a nun. He imagined a young girl who, at a former time, in a

moment of madness, had wished to kill the wife of the man with whom she

was infatuated. To expiate her crime, she entered a convent, took the

vows, and lived in retirement for twenty years. Then she learned that

the man whom she loved had just died. Whereupon, perhaps from desire for

freedom, perhaps from curiosity, she comes out of her exile, returns to

her family and finds herself in the presence of the widow and her

child." Here was the beginning, not of _L'Envers d'une Sainte_,[10] but

of another play, _L'Invitee_. "It may happen--something certainly

surprising--that the idea which allured the author into writing the

piece makes no part of the piece itself. It is excluded from it; no

trace of it remains. Note that the point of departure of _L'Invitee_ is

an idea of a woman capable of murder who is passed off as insane. Of the

murder nothing remains, and as to the mother's madness it is reduced to

almost nothing: it is no more than a rumor that has been going about,

and the mother has not been really insane."[11] Not to yield to such a

compelling new aspect of the subject is to find one's way blocked. The

resulting tragedy, or comedy, for the unyielding playwright, Mr. Archer

states amusingly. "'Here,' says a well-known playwright, 'is a common

experience. You are struck with an idea with which you fall in love.

"Ha!" you say. "What a superb scene where the man shall find the will

under the sofa! If that doesn't make them sit up, what will?" You begin

the play. The first act goes all right, and the second act goes all

right. You come to the third act and somehow it won't go at all. You

battle with it for weeks in vain; and then it suddenly occurs to you,

"Why, I see what's wrong! It's that confounded scene where the man finds

the will under the sofa. Out it must come!" You cut it out and at once

all goes smooth again. But you have thrown overboard the great effect

that first tempted you.'"[12]

The point is not that when a dramatist first begins to think over his

subject, he must decide exactly what is for him the heart of it. He may

shift, reject, and change his own interest again and again, as

attractive aspects of his subject suggest themselves. The point is that

this shifting of interest should take place before he begins to put his

play on paper. Not to be perfectly clear with one's self which of three

or four possible interests offered by a subject is the one really

interesting is to waste time. As the play develops, a writer wobbles

from one subject to another and so leaves no clear final impression. Or

he is obliged to rewrite the play, placing the emphasis properly for

clearness. In one case he fails. In the other he does his work twice.

The present writer has seen many a manuscript, after a year or more of

juggling with shifting interests, given up in despair and thrown into

the waste basket.

Probably it is best to leave till revision the question whether the

interest presented will appeal to the general audience just as it does

to the writer. It certainly can do no harm, however, and may save labor,

when an author knows just what he wants to treat and how he wishes to

treat it, for him to consider whether this interest is likely to be as

important for his public as for him. Many years ago, Mr. A.M. Palmer

produced _The Parisian Romance_, a play so trite in subject and

treatment that, as written, it might easily have failed. A young actor,

seeing in a minor role the opportunities for a popular success built up

a fine piece of characterization in the part of Baron Chevrial. That

gave Richard Mansfield his first real start. The play was remodeled so

that this element of novelty, this fresh piece of characterization,

became central. Thus re-emphasized the play became known all over the

country.[13] Not long since a play written by its author to be wholly

amusing, proved so hilarious in the second act that the actors rehearsed

it with difficulty. When produced, however, the audience was so won by

the hero in Act I that they took his mishaps in the second act with

sympathetic seriousness. The play had to be rewritten.

It is at careful planning or plotting that the inexperienced dramatist

balks. Scenarios, the outlines which will show any intelligent reader

what plot the dramatist has in mind and its exact development, are none

too popular. They are, however, the very best means by which a

dramatist may force himself to find what for him is the heart of his

subject.[14] The moment that is clear to him, it is the open sesame to

whatever story his play will demand. It is, too, the magnet which draws

to him the bits of thought, character, action and dialogue which he

shapes into plot.

With his purpose clearly in mind, the dramatist, as he passes from point

of departure through story to plot, selects, and selects, and selects.

Among all the possible people who might be the main figure in

accomplishing his purpose, he picks the one most interesting him, or

which he believes will most interest his public. From all the people who

might surround his central figure he chooses the few who will best

accomplish his purpose. If his people first appear to him as types, as

in the case of _The Country Boy_ to be cited in a moment, selectively he

moves from type to individuals. Sooner or later he must determine how

many of the possible characteristics of his figures he cares to present.

As he writes, he selects from all that his people might say, and from

all they might do in the way of illustrative action, only what seems to

him necessary for his purpose. No dramatist uses all that occurs to him

in the way of dramatic incident, characters, or dialogue. As he shapes

his story; as he reshapes his story into plot; in many cases before he

touches pen to paper, he has rejected much, always selecting what he

uses by the touchstone of the definite purpose which knowing the heart

of his subject has given him.

Doubtless some writers see situation first, and others character, but

sooner or later all must come to some story. Now as story is only

incident so unified that it has interesting movement from a beginning to

an end, ultimately the task of all dramatists is to find illustrative

action which as clearly and quickly as possible will present the

characters of the story or make clear the purpose of the dramatist.

Here is the selective process by which Mr. Selwyn got at the story of

his _Country Boy_:

It happened to be just before Christmas of last year. The season some

way impressed itself on me, and I began to think what a desolate place

New York must be for a lot of fellows who had come here from small

towns and who were thinking of the homes they had left there, and

longing to go back to them for the Christmas season. Doubtless there

are hundreds of them here who came here years ago vowing that they

would never go back till they had "made good," with the result that

they have never since spent Christmas in the old home. [_The initial

idea._] There is always somebody to whom we are always successful, and

some one to whom we are never successful, and many times, if these

fellows would go back to their old homes, among the people who really

care for them, they would be regarded as successes, whereas in the

great city they are looked upon as failures. [_Type character._]

It seemed to me that a character of that kind would make a good

subject for a play, and then I began to look around for some one

tangible to work from. Suddenly I thought of a newspaper man I used to

know when I lived at a boarding house on 51st Street, here in New

York. He was a free lance, and a grouchy, rheumatic, envious, bitter

fellow, who had all the "dope" on life--was a philosopher and could

tell every one else how to live, but didn't seem to be able to apply

any of his knowledge to himself. He wouldn't even speak to any one in

the boarding house but me, and why he singled me out for the honor I

don't know. But anyway he did, and he used to tell me all of his

troubles--how he had come from a little town with great ambitions, and

had vowed never to go back till he had attained all that he had set

out to get. And yet he had never been back. He was a failure; dressed

shabbily and had given up hope for himself--and still, as I say, he

could tell everybody else just what to do to succeed. When I lived

there in the boarding house and used to see him, I thought he was the

only one of his kind in town, but since then I have found that there

are many others just like him. [_Individual character._]

So it occurred to me that he would be a good subject for _The Country

Boy_, and I worked out his life as it had actually been lived here in

New York. Though the character was good I presently discovered that it

would not do for my central figure, for the reason that he had been

here too long. He had gone through the mill and knew all about it, and

what I really needed was a boy who could be shown to come from the

country, and who could be taken through the temptations and

discouragements that a boy of that sort would have to endure. So I

just drew this younger character from my imagination. [_Selection of

special figure._]

I had to have this chap a bumptious, conceited sort of youth so as to

have the contrast stronger when he met the hard knocks that were to

come to him in the city. There are many boys of that sort in small

towns. They do not see the opportunities around them but imagine

nothing short of a big city has space enough for them to develop in.

[_Purpose determining characterization._][15]

From idea through type-character to the individual Mr. Selwyn worked to

the life in New York of the older man, and the story of the temptations

and discouragements of the boy. When he had reached these, Mr. Selwyn

saw that the best story for his purpose would be a mingling of the two.

The boy "worked, in very well with the character of the old newspaper

man, because it allowed him to give the youngster the benefit of his

experience, and to succeed eventually by taking advantage of it. That

brought a happy ending for both of them."[16]

Any one of these stories as it lay in the mind of Mr. Selwyn before he

turned it into plot, was a sequence of incidents, actions illustrative

of one or both of the two characters, and, through them, of the original

idea. Just what is meant by this "illustrative action" so often

mentioned? In _Les Oberle_, by Rene Bazin, is a charming chapter

describing the Alsatian vintage festival. At their work the women sing

the song of the Black Bow of Alsace--in the novel but one detail of an

interesting description. The account comes about midway in the book.

When the novel was dramatized it became necessary to make the audience

understand, even before the hero, Jean, enters in Act I, that absorbed

in his studies in Germany, he has been unaware of the constant friction

in the home land between the governing Germans and the Alsatians. Here

is the way the dramatist, emotionalizing the description of the novel,

turned it into dramatic illustration of Jean's ignorance of the

condition of the country. Uncle Ulrich, Bastian, a neighbor, and his

daughter, Odile, at sunset are waiting in a wood road for Jean, just

arrived from Germany and walking home from the station.

(_Outside a voice sings as it approaches in the distance._)

_The Black Bow of the daughters of Alsace

Is like a bird with spreading wings._

_Ulrich._ Ah, look there! Who can be so imprudent as to sing that air

of Alsace?

_The Voice._

_It can overpass the mountains._

_Bastian._ If it should be he!

_The Voice_.

_And watch what goes on there._

_Odile._ I am sure it is Jean's voice.

_Ulrich._ Foolhardy! They will hear him!

_The Voice._ (_Nearer._)

_The Black Bow of the daughters of Alsace--_

_Ulrich._ Again, and louder than ever!

_The Voice._

_Is like a cross we carry

In memory of those men and women

Whose souls were like our own._

_Ulrich._ Jean! Upon my word that young lawyer cannot know the laws.

Jean![17]

Just at the end of the same act it is necessary to illustrate the

constant presence, the activity and alertness of the German forces and

the irritation all this means to the Alsatians. In a story much of this

would be described by the author. In the play we feel with each of the

speakers the irritating presence of the troops, and so have perfect

dramatic illustrative action.

(_They are just starting off when Bastian stops them._)

_Bastian._ Chut!

_Jean._ What?

_Bastian._ (_Softly._) Listen!

_Jean._ (_Softly._) A rolling stone in the ravine.

_Ulrich._ Another!

_Jean._ Steps!

_Ulrich._ Of horses.

_Jean._ Well?

_Ulrich._ A patrol!

_Jean._ (_Moved._) Ah!

_Bastian._ The Hussars!

_Jean._ What are they doing?

_Ulrich._ They are keeping watch.

_Bastian._ They are drilling.

_Ulrich._ Always!

_Jean._ Ah!

_Bastian._ Day and night.

_Ulrich._ Never resting.

_Bastian._ Perhaps they are trailing some deserter.

_Jean._ Ah! There are deserters?

_Bastian._ They won't tell you so in the town.

_Odile._ But we on the frontiers see them.

_Jean._ Ah!

_Bastian._ They who go out by the Grand' fontaine pass this way.

_Odile._ (_Softly._) Near our farm. From our house one can see them

passing.

_Jean._ Ah!

_Ulrich._ Chut!

_Jean._ I hear the breathing of their horses.

_Ulrich._ Be still.

_Jean._ We are doing nothing wrong.

_Bastian._ Wait.

_Ulrich._ Down there--wait--lean over.

_Jean._ I see--

_Ulrich._ They are coming up.

_Bastian._ They are going by.

_Jean._ They have crossed the road.

_Ulrich._ We can go down for the moment.

_Bastian._ Ouf!

_Jean._ It is strange--twenty times, a hundred times in Germany I have

met the patrols of dragoons, or hussars, and admired their fine form.

Here--

_Ulrich._ Here?

_Jean._ Only to see them gives me a queer feeling at the heart.

_Ulrich._ Don't you understand, my dear Jean? There they were in their

own country, here they are in ours.[18]

Early in the first scene of _The Changeling_, by Thomas Middleton,

Beatrice states clearly, and more than once, the physical repulsion De

Flores causes her. Knowing full well, however, the dramatic value of

illustrative action, Middleton handled the ending of the scene in this

way. Beatrice turning to leave the room, starts as she finds De Flores

close at hand.

_Beatrice._ (_Aside._) Not this serpent gone yet? (_Drops a glove._)

_Vermandero._ Look, girl, thy glove's fallen,

Stay, stay! De Flores, help a little.

(_Exeunt Vermandero, Alsemero and Servant._)

_De Flores._ Here, lady. (_Offers her glove._)

_Beatrice._ Mischief on your officious forwardness!

Who bade you stoop? they touch my hand no more:

There! for the other's sake I part with this;

(_Takes off and throws down the other glove._)

Take 'em, and draw thine own skin off with 'em.

(_Exit with Diaphanta and Servants._)

_De Flores._ Here's a favour with a mischief now! I know

She had rather wear my pelt tanned in a pair

Of dancing pumps, than I should thrust my fingers

Into her sockets here.[19]

Here the dramatist makes repulsion clear by illustrative action so

emotional that it moves us to keenest sympathy or dislike for the woman

herself. Dramatically speaking, then, illustrative action is not merely

something which illustrates an idea or character, but it must be an

illustration mirroring emotion of the persons in the play or creating

it in the observer.

What is the relation of illustrative action to dramatic situation? The

first is the essence of the second. A dramatic episode presents an

individual or group of individuals so moved as to stir an audience to

responsive emotion. Illustrative action by each person in the group or

by the group as a whole is basal. The glove incident in _The Changeling_

concerns both Beatrice and De Flores. Hers is illustrative action when

she shrinks from the glove his hand has touched. He shows it when

kissing and amorously fondling the glove she has refused. Their

illustrative actions make together the dramatic episode of the

glove,--which is in turn a part of Scene 1 of the first act of the play.

There are the divisions: play, act, scene, episode, and illustrative

action. Just as sometimes the development of a single episode may make a

scene, or there may be but one scene to an act, there are cases when an

illustrative action is a dramatic episode. The ending of Act II of

Ostrovsky's _Storm_ illustrates this.

Varvara, who has just gone out, has put into the hands of Catherine the

key to a gate in the garden hedge. This Varvara has taken without the

knowledge of her mother, who is the mother-in-law of Catherine. Just as

Varvara goes, she has said that if she meets Catherine's lover, Boris,

she will tell him to come to the gate. Catherine, terrified, at first

tries to refuse the key, but Varvara insists on leaving it with her.

_Catherine._ (_Alone, the key in her hand._) Oh, what is she doing?

What hasn't she courage for? Ah, she is crazy--yes, crazy. Here is

what will ruin me. That's the truth! I must throw this key away, throw

it far away, into the river, so that it may never be found again. It

burns my hand like a hot coal. (_Dreamily._) This is how we are

ruined, people like me! Slavery, that isn't a gay business for any

one. How many ideas it puts into our heads. Another would be enchanted

with what has happened to me, and would rush on full tilt. How can one

act in that way without reflection, without reason? Misfortune comes

so quickly, and afterward there is all the rest of one's life in which

to weep and torment oneself, and the slavery will be still more

bitter. (_Silence._) And how bitter it is, slavery! Oh, how bitter it

is! Who would not suffer from it? And we other women suffer more than

all the rest. Here am I at this moment battling with myself in vain,

not seeing a ray of light, and I shan't see one. The further I go, the

worse it is. And here is this additional sin that I am going to take

on my conscience. (_She dreams a moment._) Were not my

mother-in-law--she has broken me: it is she who has made me come to

hate this house. I hate its very walls. (_She looks pensively at the

key._) Ought I to throw it away? Of course I ought. How did it get

into my hands? To seduce me to my ruin. (_Listening._) Some one is

coming! My heart fails me. (_She puts the key into her pocket._)

No!--no one. Why was I so frightened? And I hid the key--Very well,

that's the way it is to be. It is clear that fate wills it. And after

all, where is the sin in seeing him just once, if at a distance? And

if I were even to talk with him a little, where would the harm

be?--But my husband--Very well, it was he himself who didn't forbid

it! Perhaps I shall never have such another chance in all my life.

Then I shall weep and say to myself, "You had a chance to see him and

didn't know how to take advantage of it." What am I saying? Why lie to

myself? I will die for it if necessary, but see him I will. Whom do I

want to deceive here? Throw away the key? No, not for anything in the

world. I keep it. Come what will, I will see Boris. Ah, if the night

would only come more quickly!

_Curtain._[20]

Sometimes, even a playwright of considerable experience, though his mind

is full of dramatic material, finds his plotting at a standstill. The

trouble is that he has not sifted his material by means of the purpose

he has in mind. When he does, details of setting, bits of

characterization or even characters as wholes, parts or all of a scene

and many ideas good in themselves but not necessarily connected with his

real subject, will drop out. Many plays of modern realism have been

overloaded with details of setting, with figures, or even scenes really

unessential. In a recent play of Breton life a prominent detail in the

setting of a cave was the figurehead of a ship. Even if one missed

noticing this striking detail, its presence was emphasized by the text.

It turned out, however, that the figurehead had nothing to do with the

story or its development, nor was it really needed for any special color

it gave. It should, therefore, have been omitted. No fault is more

common than the use of unnecessary figures. When Lady Gregory wrote her

version of _The Workhouse Ward_, she wisely cut out the matron, the

doorkeeper, and all the inmates except two. With three figures her play

is a masterpiece. With five actors and voices from off stage, Dr. Hyde's

Gaelic version is not. A one-act play adapted from the Spanish showed

some dozen or more individual parts and a mob of at least forty.

Ultimately, on a small stage, the plot was done full justice with half

that number of individual parts and the crowd reduced to twenty or less.

An amusing play of mistaken identity had a delightful scene in which an

aunt of the heroine is proposed to by a friend of her youth. In it, the

dramatist, with admirable characterization, set forth the views on

matrimony of many middle-aged women. Yet the whole scene had nothing

whatever to do with the story of the heroine. Consequently it was

ultimately dropped out. That dramatic ideas must be sifted was shown on

page 75 in the play seemingly about architects' draughtsmen.

Not even when a scene, a bit of dialogue or some other detail, is

entirely in character may it always keep its position. Though a detail

or episode must be in character before it is admitted, it can hold its

position only if it is necessary for the purpose of the play. Time

limits everything for the dramatist. The final curtain impending

inevitably at the end of two hours and a half is the dramatist's "sword

of Damocles." It reminds him that in a play, "whatever goes for nothing,

goes for less than nothing" because it shuts out something which, in

its place, might be effective. In Tennyson's _Becket_ is a fine scene,

the washing of the beggars' feet by the Archbishop.[21] It illustrates

both customs of the time and a side of Becket's character, yet it

contained nothing absolutely necessary to the central purpose of the

play. Consequently, as the play must be condensed for acting purposes,

Sir Henry Irving cut out the whole scene.

This time limit forces the dramatist, when choosing between two episodes

of equal value otherwise, to select that which does more in less space,

or to combine desirable parts of the two episodes when possible. In

Tennyson's _Becket_, Scene 1 of Act II and Scene 1 of Act III take place

in Rosamund's Bower. Henry and Rosamund are the principal speakers in

both. There is, too, no marked lapse of time between the scenes, though

Tennyson chose to separate them by the "Meeting of the Kings" at

Montmirail. Very naturally, therefore, when condensation was necessary,

Irving by severe cutting brought these two scenes together as Act II of

his version. He not only saved time; he gained in unity of effect.

Similarly, Irving brings together the essential parts of Scene 2, Act

II, the "Meeting of the Kings," and Scene 3, Act III, "Traitor's Meadow

at Freteval," making them the first scene of the third act in his

version.

A cluttered play is always a bad play. Such clutter usually comes from

including details of setting, characterization or idea, and even whole

characters or scenes, not really necessary. Selection with one's purpose

clearly in mind is the remedy for such clutter.

Even, however, when a writer has so carefully selected his dramatic

episodes that each is one or more bits of illustrative action bearing on

the main idea and entirely in character, he may still be short of story.

He cannot rouse and maintain interest moving at haphazard. His central

idea must appear in dramatic episodes so ordered as to have sequence,--a

beginning, a middle, and an end,--and so emphasized as to have the

increasing interest which means movement. He cannot have good story till

it has unity of action. When Bulwer-Lytton wrote Macready that he had

discovered the heart of his proposed play on Marillac to be Richelieu,

note that he speaks of the simplification and the unity resulting: "You

will be pleased to hear that I have completed the rough Sketch of the

Play in 5 acts--& I hope you will like it. I have taken the subject of

Richelieu. Not being able to find any other so original & effective, &

have employed somewhat of the story I before communicated to you, but

simplified and connected.--_You_ are Richelieu, & Richelieu is brought

out, accordingly, as the prominent light round which the other

satellites move. It is written on the plan of a great Historical Comedy,

& I have endeavoured to concentrate a striking picture of the passions &

events--the intrigue & ambition of that era--in a familiar point of

view."[22]

Thomas Dekker found the source of his _Shoemakers' Holiday_[23] in a

pamphlet by Thomas Deloney, _The Pleasant and Princely History of the

Gentle-Craft_.[24] This loosely written pamphlet tries to tell three

stories supposed to redound to the credit of the shoemakers: that of

Prince Hugh and his love for Winifred; that of Crispin and Crispinianus

and the brave deeds of the latter in the wars in France; and, finally,

that of Simon Eyre, the master shoemaker who rose to be Lord Mayor of

London, his wife and his apprentices. What obviously attracted Dekker in

the pamphlet was the third story, to which he saw he could give much

realism from his knowledge of the shoemakers about Leadenhall.

Unfortunately, the story of Simon Eyre, though it provided him with

delightful characters, gave him little variety of incident. Perhaps

today a dramatist might make such a play carry almost wholly on the

characterization of the shoemaker group. The Elizabethans, however,

wanted a complicated story of varied action. Dekker, though he had

first-rate romantic material in the story of Crispin and Crispinianus,

could hardly weave this in with the story of Eyre, a relatively recent

historical figure, for one material called for romantic and the other

for realistic treatment. There seemed the deadlock. But Dekker, thinking

of this Crispin in love with a princess, who disguised himself as a

shoemaker in order to win her hand, remembered the wars of 1588 and

English sympathy for the Huguenots involved therein. Therefore he turned

Crispin into Lacy, a youth of that period. Lacy is not a prince, but a

relative of the Earl of Lincoln, and something of a ne'er-do-well, in

love with the Lord Mayor's daughter, Rose. He fears that if he goes to

the wars in France, his duty as "chief colonel" of the London Companies,

he will lose her. Therefore he sends Askew in his stead and stays in

London disguised as one of Eyre's shoemaker apprentices. The purpose of

Dekker to write a realistic play of complicated plot has helped him to

reshape his material till two stories, as in the case of _The Country

Boy_, have become one. Unity appears in materials seemingly as

irreconcilable as romance and realism.

There are, however, two weaknesses in this story as now developed: Rose

and Lacy, though they appear against the background of the wars, do not

connect the apprentices with the enlistment, nor do they afford many

scenes of marked dramatic force. Wishing one or two scenes of stronger

emotion which at the same time would bring the apprentices into closer

connection with the wars, Dekker creates Ralph, Jane, and Hammon. Ralph

is one of the shoemakers who, pressed to the war, is torn from his

protesting wife and fellow apprentices. In his absence, the citizen

Hammon falls in love with Jane. Trying to make her believe that Ralph is

dead, he wishes to marry her. Ralph, returning from the war to his

former work with Eyre, can find no trace of Jane, for after a slight

difference with Margery Eyre, she has disappeared. One day a servant

brings Ralph a pair of shoes to be duplicated for a wedding gift. The

pair to be copied Ralph recognizes as his parting gift to Jane.

Summoning his fellow apprentices to aid him, he goes to the place

proposed for the wedding and rescues Jane. Thus some scenes of fine if

homely emotion are provided. Wedded love is contrasted with that of Rose

and Lacy and with Hammon's courtship, and through Ralph the apprentices

are brought closely into connection with the wars.

Many a would-be dramatist suffers, however, not from a superabundance of

material bearing on his subject but a dearth of it. Again and again one

hears the complaint: "I know who my characters are to be, and I have

dramatic situation, but I cannot find my story. I haven't enough

dramatic situation to round it out." Just this difficulty troubled

Bulwer-Lytton when he was preparing for _Richelieu_. He wrote to

Macready:

Many thanks for your letter. You are right about the Plot--it is too

crowded & the interest too divided.--But Richelieu would be a splendid

fellow for the Stage, if we could hit on a good plot to bring him

out--connected with some domestic interest. His wit--his

lightness--his address--relieve so admirably his profound

sagacity--his Churchman's pride--his relentless vindictiveness and the

sublime passion for the glory of France that elevated all. He would be

a new addition to the Historical portraits of the Stage; but then he

must be connected with a plot in which he would have all the stage to

himself, & in which some Home interest might link itself with the

Historical. Alas, I've no such story yet & he must stand over, tho' I

will not wholly give him up....

... Depend on it, I don't cease racking my brains, & something must

come at last.[25]

Such difficulty means that a writer forgets or is ignorant of one of the

first principles of dramatic composition. When he has three or four good

situations which are in character, he should not hunt new situations

till he is sure he knows the full emotional possibilities of the

situations he already has. To decide after the closest scrutiny of the

situations in hand, that others are needed is one thing. On the other

hand, the inexperienced workman presents as quickly as possible the

climactic moment of the scene he has in mind, and gets away as rapidly

as possible to another intense climax. Finding himself, as a result,

badly in need of additional dramatic moments, he hunts for situations as

situations. Returning triumphantly with some strong emotional effect, he

must perforce put the characters of the earlier scenes into these.

Usually, as they have no real part in these later scenes, they prove

troublesome. Sometimes the new scenes may be so reshaped as to fit the

original characters, but usually the result of this method is that the

scenes are foisted on the original characters, becoming obvious misfits,

or that the original characters are so modified as to fit them. When

modified, however, the original characters no longer perfectly fit the

original scenes. Driven backward and forward between character and

story, the dramatist pursuing this method often gives up the attempt,

saying despairingly: "It is no use. My characters will not give me a

plot."

The trouble here is that the inexperienced dramatist treats the

situation as if its value lay in its most climactic moment. Often,

however, there is as much pleasure for the public emotionally in working

up to the climax as in the climax itself. To "hold a situation," that

is, to get from it the full dramatic possibilities the characters

involved offer, a dramatist must study his characters in it till he has

discovered the entire range of their emotion in the scene. This will

give him not only many and many a new situation within the original

situation, but the transitional scenes which will unify situations

originally apparently unrelated except as the same figures appeared in

them. For example, consider this.

A kindly woman in middle life comes in friendliest fashion to offer to

take the daughter of a proud man in great financial straits into her own

home. As treated by an inexperienced writer, there was a prompt, clear

statement of what the woman desired, with an immediate passionate denial

of the request by the jealously affectionate father. In this treatment

we lose the best of the scene. Really this worldly-wise woman, talking

to such a man, would lead up tactfully to her proposal. As she led up to

it, there would be many dramatic moments, with much interesting

revelation of her own and the man's character. Caring for the man as she

does, and loving the girl deeply, she would not immediately accept a

refusal. After the man's first denial, as she tried by turns to cajole,

convince or dominate him, there would be strong dramatic conflict, and,

once more, interesting revelation of character. Given, then, some

happening, the nature of the human being involved in it will affect its

look. A second person involved will affect it even more. Two people,

influencing each other because affected by the same incident will give

still a third look to the original situation. When you have what seems a

good situation, don't rush into another at your earliest opportunity,

but instead study it till you know every permutation and combination it

holds emotionally for every one involved, both because the situation

affects every character, and because every character may affect all the

others. Then you will know how to "hold a situation." Said Dumas the

Younger: "Before every situation that a dramatist creates, he should

ask himself three questions. In this situation, what should I do? What

would other people do? What ought to be done? Every author who does not

feel disposed to make this analysis should renounce the theatre, for he

will never become a dramatist."[26] Though every writer may not examine

his material by means of such formal categories, he must in some way

gain the thorough information about it for which Dumas calls. Then and

then only he can select from the results of his thinking that which will

best accomplish his purpose in the play.

A one-act play with a very good central situation came to nothing

because its author had not grasped the principle just set forth. A young

man and a girl, eloping, come to the station of a small settlement. They

find no one about, but the door of the ticket office ajar as if the

person in charge had stepped out for a moment. They fear that the father

and mother of the girl and perhaps another admirer are on their trail.

Partly from curiosity and partly from the desire not to be seen till the

train comes, they step into the office, closing the door behind them.

Then they discover that they are prisoners, for the door can be opened

even from their side only by a person with the right key. Just at this

point, the father and mother arrive, amazed at finding no trace of the

fugitives. They too are puzzled by the absence of the ticket-seller.

Just as they start out to find him he appears, apologetic for his

absence. He is mildly interested in their story, but as he has seen no

young persons, and as he expects the train shortly, he starts to go into

his office. Then he discovers the closed door and admits that he went

out to look for his key, which he must have dropped somewhere since he

opened the station that morning. Here was of course a dramatic situation

of large possibilities, but in the play it was treated almost as just

stated. Of course the sensations of the two young people cooped up in

the ticket office, expecting the parents, the station agent, and the

train, should have given us a comic scene before any one else appeared.

The effect of the discovery that they are prisoners upon the girl, the

effect upon the young man, the way in which the resulting emotions of

each affect the other, all this must be given if the potential comedy of

the situation inside the ticket office is to be fully used. The arrival

of the father and mother offers a chance not only for the individual

emotions of each and their effect upon one another, but for the emotion

of the concealed elopers as they hear the familiar voices and understand

how enraged the parents are. There is opportunity for a good scene of

some length here before the station master appears. When he does enter,

he should be interesting, not simply for himself, but for the effect he

has on father, mother, girl, and young man, and the new interplay of

emotions he causes among them. Add the coming of the former admirer with

evidence he has found that the elopers have been making for this

station; and as the new complications developed by his coming take

shape, let the train be heard far up the line. Surely here is a group of

very promising situations.

In this play so crowded with dramatic opportunity, its author found only

the most dramatic moments, rushing rapidly from one to the other.

Result, a failure. Any dramatic situation made up of a congeries of

minor situations is like a great desk the pigeon holes of which are

crowded with letters and personal documents. The biographer sitting down

before it first makes himself thoroughly conversant with all the data.

Then he selects for use only what is of value for the biographical

purpose he has in mind. The people in a situation are, for a dramatist,

the human data he must study till he so completely understands them that

he can differentiate clearly in what they offer between what is useful

for his purposes and what is not.

Even Shakespeare, in his earliest work, had not grasped the importance

of "holding a situation," as a scene in the _First Part of Henry VI_

shows. He knows how to inform his audience in Scene 2 of Act II why it

is that Talbot visits the Countess of Auvergne; in the _Whispers_ of the

next to the last line of this scene he even prepares for the surprise

Talbot springs upon the Countess in the next scene; but Scene 3 itself

he treats merely for the broad situation and a few bits of rhetoric.

A Messenger come to the English camp has just asked which of the men

before him is the famous Talbot.

_Talbot._ Here is the Talbot; who would speak with him?

_Messenger._ The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne,

With modesty admiring thy renown,

By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe

To visit her poor castle where she lies,

That she may boast she hath beheld the man

Whose glory fills the world with loud report.

_Burgundy._ Is it even so? Nay, then, I see our wars

Will turn unto a peaceful comic sport,

When ladies crave to be encount'red with.

You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.

_Tal._ Ne'er trust me then; for what a world of men

Could not prevail with all their oratory,

Yet hath a woman's kindness over-rul'd;

And therefore tell her I return great thanks,

And in submission will attend on her.

Will not your honours bear me company?

_Bedford._ No, truly, 'tis more than manners will;

And I have heard it said, unbidden guests

Are often welcomest when they are gone.

_Tal._ Well, then, alone, since there's no remedy,

I mean to prove this lady's courtesy.

Come hither, captain. (_Whispers._) You perceive my mind?

_Captain._ I do, my lord, and mean accordingly. (_Exeunt._)

SCENE 3. _The Countess's castle_

_Enter the Countess and her porter_

_Countess._ Porter, remember what I gave in charge;

And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.

_Porter._ Madam, I will. (_Exit._)

_Countess._ The plot is laid. If all things fall out right

I shall as famous be by this exploit

As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death.

Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight,

And his achievements of no less account;

Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears,

To give their censure of these rare reports.

_Enter Messenger and Talbot_

_Messenger._ Madam,

According as your ladyship desir'd,

By message crav'd, so is Lord Talbot come.

_Countess._ And he is welcome. What! is this the man?

_Mess._ Madam, it is.

_Countess._ Is this the scourge of France?

Is this the Talbot, so much fear'd abroad

That with his name the mothers still their babes?

I see report is fabulous and false.

I thought I should have seen some Hercules,

A second Hector, for his grim aspect,

And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.

Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf!

It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp

Should strike such terror to his enemies.

_Tal._ Madam, I have been bold to trouble you;

But since your ladyship is not at leisure,

I'll sort some other time to visit you. (_Going._)

_Countess._ What means he now? Go ask him whither he goes.

_Mess._ Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my lady craves

To know the cause of your abrupt departure.

_Tal._ Marry, for that she's in a wrong belief,

I go to certify her Talbot's here.

_Reenter Porter with keys_

_Countess._ If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.

_Tal._ Prisoner! To whom!

_Countess._ To me, blood-thirsty lord;

And for that cause I train'd thee to my house.

Long time, thy shadow hath been thrall to me,

For in my gallery thy picture hangs;

But now the substance shall endure the like,

And I will chain these legs and arms of thine,

That hast by tyranny these many years

Wasted our country, slain our citizens,

And sent our sons and husbands captivate.

_Tal._ Ha, ha, ha!

_Countess._ Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to moan.

_Tal._ I laugh to see your ladyship so fond

To think that you have aught but Talbot's shadow

Whereon to practice your severity.

_Countess._ Why, art not thou the man?

_Tal._ I am indeed.

_Countess._ Then have I substance too.

_Tal._ No, no, I am but shadow of myself.

You are deceiv'd, my substance is not here.

For what you see is but the smallest part

And least proportion of humanity.

I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,

It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch,

Your roof were not sufficient to contain't.

_Countess._ This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;

He will be here, and yet he is not here.

How can these contrarieties agree?

_Tal._ That will I show you presently.

(_Winds his horn. Drums strike up: a peal of ordnance. The gates are

forced._)

_Enter Soldiers_

How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded

That Talbot is but shadow of himself?

These are his substance, sinews, arms, and strength,

With which he yoketh your rebellious necks,

Razeth your cities and subverts your towns

And in a moment makes you desolate.

_Countess._ Victorious Talbot! pardon my abuse.

I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited

And more than may be gathered by the shape.

Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath;

For I am sorry that with reverence

I did not entertain thee as thou art.

_Tal._ Be not dismay'd, fair lady; nor misconstrue

The mind of Talbot, as you did mistake

The outward composition of his body.

What you have done hath not offended me;

Nor other satisfaction do I crave,

But only with your patience, that we may

Taste of your wine and see what cates you have;

For soldiers' stomachs always serve them well.

_Countess._ With all my heart, and think me honoured

To feast so great a warrior in my house. (_Exeunt._)

Except for a few lines of rhetoric, could the account in Scene 3 be

shortened? The Countess awaits Talbot; he comes; she reviles him in a

few lines; he turns to go; she declares him a prisoner; he laughs at

her; and as she stands amazed, calls in his forces brought in secret to

the castle. When Talbot invites himself and his men to feast at her

expense, the Countess immediately agrees. Reading the scene, one recalls

the words of Dumas fils: "Any one can relate a dramatic situation: the

art lies in preparing it, getting it accepted, making it plausible,

especially in untying the knot."[27] Here Shakespeare does not untie the

knot; the Countess merely yields. What she feels, what happened

thereafter,--all these are omitted. It is merely the situation which

counts. Before Talbot comes in, the scene could easily be made to reveal

much more of the character of the Countess. When he does enter, the play

of wits between them, even as it disclosed character, might provide

interesting dramatic conflict. Surely the moment when the Countess

thinks Talbot trapped and he coolly jeers at her, is worth more

development. Here it is treated so quickly that the surprise in the

entrance of the soldiers hardly gets its full effect. All this is the

work of a tyro, even if he be Shakespeare.

In _Richard II_, there is a scene, not as long as that just quoted, in

which the central situation might seem to many people less dramatic than

that of Talbot and the Countess, yet note to what a clear and convincing

conclusion Shakespeare brings it, how plausible he makes the scene, how

thoroughly he prepares it for the largest emotional effect by entering

thoroughly into the characters involved.

_Enter Aumerle_

_Duchess._ Here comes my son Aumerle.

_York._ Aumerle that was;

But that is lost for being Richard's friend,

And, madam, you must call him Rutland now.

I am in Parliament pledge for his truth

And lasting fealty to the new made king.

_Duch._ Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now

That strew the green lap of the new come spring?

_Aum._ Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not

God knows I had as lief be none as one.

_York._ Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,

Lest you be cropp'd before you come to prime.

What news from Oxford? Do these jousts and triumphs hold?

_Aum._ For aught I know, my lord, they do.

_York._ You will be there, I know.

_Aum._ If God prevent not, I purpose so.

_York._ What seal is that, that hangs without thy bosom?

Yea, look'st thou pale? Let me see the writing.

_Aum._ My lord, 'tis nothing.

_York._ No matter, then, who see it.

I will be satisfied: let me see the writing.

_Aum._ I do beseech your grace to pardon me.

It is a matter of small consequence,

Which for some reasons I would not have seen.

_York._ Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see.

I fear, I fear,--

_Duch._ What should you fear?

'Tis nothing but some hand, which he has ent'red into

For gay apparel 'gainst the triumph day.

_York._ Bound to himself! What doth he with a bond

That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.

Boy, let me see the writing.

_Aum._ I do beseech you, pardon me. I may not show it.

_York._ I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.

(_He plucks it out of his bosom and reads it._)

Treason! foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!

_Duch._ What is the matter, my lord?

_York._ Ho! who is within there?

_Enter a Servant_

Saddle my horse.

God for his mercy, what treachery is here!

_Duch._ Why, what is it, my lord?

_York._ Give me my boots, I say; saddle my horse.

(_Exit Servant._)

Now, by mine honour, by my life, by my troth,

I will appeach the villain.

_Duch._ What is the matter?

_York._ Peace, foolish woman.

_Duch._ I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?

_Aum._ Good mother, have content; it is no more

Than my poor life must answer.

_Duch._ Thy life answer!

_York._ Bring me my boots; I will unto the King.

_Reenter Servant with boots_

_Duch._ Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amaz'd.

--Hence villain! never more come in my sight.

_York._ Give me my boots, I say.

_Duch._ Why, York, what wilt thou do?

Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?

Have we more sons? Or are we like to have?

Is not my teeming date drunk up with time?

And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age,

And rob me of a happy mother's name?

Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?

_York._ Thou fond mad woman.

Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?

A dozen of them here have ta'en the sacrament,

And interchangeably set down their hands,

To kill the King at Oxford.

_Duch._ He shall be none;

We'll keep him here; then what is that to him?

_York._ Away, fond woman! Were he twenty times my son,

I would appeach him.

_Duch._ Hadst thou groan'd for him

As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful.

But now I know thy mind; thou dost suspect

That I have been disloyal to thy bed,

And that he is a bastard, not thy son.

Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind.

He is as like thee as a man may be,

Not like to me or any of my kin,

And yet I love him.

_York._ Make way, unruly woman! (_Exit._)

_Duch._ After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse;

Spur post and get before him to the King,

And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee.

I'll not be long behind; though I be old,

I doubt not but to ride as fast as York.

And never will I rise up from the ground

Till Bolingbroke have pardon'd thee. Away, be gone!

(_Exeunt._)

So far as the situation is concerned we might go directly from York's

"fealty to the new made King" to his "What seal is that?" omitting some

ten lines. We should lose, however, the deft touches which make the

discovery all the more dramatic,--the words of York which show that he

has no idea that his son is really involved in any disloyalty; the

affectionate effort of the mother to draw the talk from unpleasant

subjects; and the distrait mood of Aumerle. Again, the discovery of the

contents of the seal might be made at once, but the fifteen intervening

lines before York cries "Treason! foul treason!" increase our suspense

by their clear presentation of the emotions of father, mother, and son.

Once more the situation is held when York does not declare at once the

nature of the treason and the frantic mother demands again and again the

contents of the paper before Aumerle says bitterly, and in perfect

character with his first speeches of the scene,

"it is no more

Than my poor life must answer."

Still again we should have the necessary action of the scene perfectly

if York, as soon as he has his boots, flung out of the room, to be

followed immediately by the Duchess, crying that she will follow him to

the King and ask the boy's pardon. However, had Shakespeare's treatment

here been that he used in the scene of Talbot and the Countess we should

have lacked the perfect portrayal of the mother who loses all sense of

right and wrong in fear that her loved child may die. Finally, do we not

gain greatly by the characterization of the Duchess in the last lines of

the scene? Five times, then, Shakespeare, by entering into his

characters, "holds the situation."

The second act of _The Magistrate_,[28] by Sir Arthur Pinero, is in

central situation broadly this. Cis Farringdon, represented by his

mother to his stepfather, Mr. Posket, as fourteen, because she does not

like to admit her own age, is really nineteen and precocious at that. He

has brought Mr. Posket to one of his haunts, a supper room in the Hotel

des Princes, Meek Street, London, where they are to sup together. As Mr.

Posket is a police justice, he has been induced to figure for the

evening as "Skinner of the stock exchange." Shortly after the arrival of

the two comes word that a frequenter of the restaurant twenty years ago,

now returned to London, wants to sup in their chosen room for the sake

of old times. Therefore Mr. Posket and Cis are put into an adjoining

room. Colonel Lukyn, the returned stranger, and a friend, Captain Vale,

enter. Just as they are ordering supper, a note comes to the effect that

Mrs. Posket, with a woman friend, is below, begging to speak with her

old acquaintance, Colonel Lukyn. As Mrs. Posket asks a private

interview, Captain Vale is put out on the balcony. With Mrs. Posket

comes her sister Charlotte. We have already learned from Vale that he is

deeply depressed because he thinks Charlotte no longer cares for him.

Mrs. Posket has come to beg Colonel Lukyn, who knew her before she

became a widow, not to reveal the truth about her age.

Watch now the permutations and combinations the author develops from

this general situation. Cis is hardly in the room before Isadore

presents his bill for past meals. Cis sees the chance, by borrowing from

his stepfather, to settle a long postponed account. Three figures, moved

in turn by shrewdness, trickiness, and gullibility, stir us to

amusement, giving us Situation I. Even as the bill is paid, Cis asks

Isadore to show Mr. Skinner the trick of "putting the silver to bed."

Three people amused or interested by a trick, amuse us--Situation II.

With the coming of the note from Alexander Lukyn, and the assignment of

the room adjoining to Cis and Mr. Skinner-Posket, there is a hint of

future complication which amuses us--Situation III. Lukyn and Vale

entering, the former sentimental over his memories of the place, and the

latter comically depressed over what he thinks to be the faithlessness

of Charlotte Verrinder, give us Situation IV. The note saying Mrs.

Posket is below with a friend, asking a private interview, produces

Situation V, for it amuses us to think what may happen with Mr. Posket

and Cis just on the other side of the door. Placing Vale on the balcony

leads to Situation VI, for he goes with amusing regret for the delayed

supper.

Up to this point the situations may be declared parts of the main

situation, which must now itself be developed. Just after Blond, the

proprietor, ushers in the ladies, the pattering of rain outside is

heard.

_Lukyn._ Good gracious, Blond! What's that?

_Blond._ The rain outside. It is cats and dogs.

_Lukyn._ (_Horrified._) By George, is it? (_To himself, looking

towards window._) Poor devil! (_To Blond._) There isn't any method of

getting off that balcony is there?

_Blond._ No--unless by getting on to it.

_Lukyn._ What do you mean?

_Blond._ It is not at all safe. Don't use it.

(_Lukyn stands horror-stricken. Blond goes out. Heavy rain is

heard._)--Situation VII.

As Mrs. Posket reveals to Lukyn the complications in which her lie is

involving her, voices from the next room, not clearly distinguished by

those on the stage, but known to us as the voices of Cis and Mr.

Skinner-Posket, are heard--Situation VIII. Just when Lukyn is straining

every nerve to get the ladies away so that he may release Vale,

Charlotte, overwhelmed by hunger, invites herself to supper--Situation

IX. As the two women eat, Lukyn sits in anxious despair, at times

forgetful of his guests. This brings Situation X, when Vale reaches out

from behind the curtains of the balcony and passes to the absent-minded

Lukyn from the buffet the dishes Charlotte desires. When Charlotte,

turning suddenly, sees the outstretched arm, we have Situation XI. When

Vale reenters, thoroughly irritated and quarrels with Lukyn, we have

Situation XII. The reunion of Charlotte and Vale makes the thirteenth.

That is, if six initial situations produced the situation when all the

characters were upon the stage, Sir Arthur has developed seven new

situations from the sixth. Now by adding a fresh complication through

some new figures, he develops six more situations.

Just as Lukyn, Mrs. Posket, Charlotte, and Vale are about to leave

amicably, Blond rushes in to say that the police are below because the

prescribed hour for closing has passed. The names and addresses of all

persons found on the premises will be taken--Situation XIV. Lukyn, Vale,

Mrs. Posket and Charlotte hide themselves in different parts of the

room, putting out the lights. Situation XV is the entrance in the

darkness of Blond leading Cis and Mr. Skinner-Posket, in order that the

other room may be searched safely. At last, the room where all are

hidden is examined by the police. All try to hold their breath, but in

vain. The police detect some one breathing--Situation XVI. In the

resulting confusion, Cis escapes, dragging his stepfather with

him--Situation XVII. The other four when caught, foolishly give false

names. Lukyn, thoroughly irritated by the officers, flings one of them

aside and attempts to force his way out, when he and his party are

promptly arrested for assault--Situation XVIII.

_Lukyn._ You'll dare to lock us up all night?

_Messiter._ It's one o'clock now, Colonel--you'll come on first thing

in the morning.

_Lukyn._ Come on? At what court?

_Messiter._ Mulberry Street.

_Agatha Posket._ Ah! The Magistrate?

_Messiter._ Mr. Posket, Mum.

(_Agatha Posket sinks into a chair, Charlotte at her feet; Lukyn,

overcome, falls on Vale's shoulders._)--Situation XIX.

Five situations of nineteen lead up to the sixth. Seven are developed

from that sixth by means of four people. The new complication, the

search of the restaurant by the police and the bringing into one room of

all the figures, gives us six more situations. Certainly Sir Arthur

knows how to "hold a situation."

Act III of _Mrs. Dane's Defence_[29] is just equally divided between

preparatory material and the great scene which ebbs and flows about the

following situation. Mrs. Dane, in love with Lionel, the adopted son of

Sir Daniel Carteret, at the opening of the scene has lied so

successfully about her past that Sir Daniel, who has been suspicious of

her, has been entirely convinced of her innocence. Eager to help her set

herself right, he asks in the kindest way for information which may aid

him. Trying not to commit herself, Mrs. Dane slips once or twice and all

the old suspicions of Sir Daniel are rearoused. He cross-examines her so

rigidly that ultimately she breaks down and confesses. Handled by the

inexperienced that situation might have been good for four or five

pages. As treated by Mr. H.A. Jones, it makes a scene of twenty pages of

finest suspense and climax. The situation is well held because every

reaction upon it by the two characters has been worked out.

One would hardly think two quarrelsome inmates of a poorhouse, visited

by a relative of one of them who wishes to take him away to manage her

place, likely to produce a masterpiece of comic drama. Yet it does with

Lady Gregory in _The Workhouse Ward_,[30] for she knows Irish character

and speech so intimately that minor situation after minor situation

develops, through the characters, from the original situation.

Indeed, much of our so-called new drama is but a prolonged holding of a

situation stated as the play opens, or clearly before us at the end of

Act I. _Chains_[31] of Miss Elizabeth Baker in Act I puts this double

situation before us. A young married man without children, though happy

enough in his marriage, is so weary of the sordidness of his small means

and limited opportunities that he longs to break away, go out to

Australia, and when he has made a career for himself, send for his wife.

His sister-in-law, a shop girl, equally weary of her life, is weakly

thinking of marrying a man she does not love, but who really loves her,

in order to escape the grayness of her life. At the end of the play

these two are accepting the situations in which we found them. Yet the

three acts of the play are full of varied interest for an audience, so

admirably does the writer discern the situations which her characters

will develop from the original situation. _Hindle Wakes_,[32] the best

play of Stanley Houghton, is really a study of the way in which a

situation which took place before the play began affects three families.

Surely it must now be evident that if a dramatist should in the first

place understand perfectly that illustrative action is the core of

drama, and must be carefully selected; and secondly that he must, among

possible illustrative actions, select those which quickest will produce

the largest emotional results; he must also recognize that till he has

searched and probed his situations by means of the characters, in the

first place he cannot know which are his strongest, and in the second

place cannot hope to hold the situations chosen.

Another complaint from the inexperienced dramatist when shaping up his

story is that though he sees the big moments in his play, he does not

see his way from one to another. That is, transitional scenes are

lacking. They will not worry him long, however, if he follows the

methods just stated for holding a situation. Let him watch the people

who have come into his imagination, first simply as people. Who and what

are they? Secondly, what are they feeling and thinking in the situations

which have occurred to him? He can't long consider this without deciding

what people they must have been in order to be in the situations in

question. Hard upon this comes the question: "What will people who have

been like these and have passed through this experience do immediately,

and thereafter?" In the answer to the question, "What have they been?"

he finds the transitional scenes which take him back into an earlier

episode; in the answer to "What will they become?" the transitional

scenes that carry him forward. In the scene cited from _Richard II_ the

main moments are the home-coming, the discovery of the traitorous paper,

and the departure of the Duke and Duchess of York. How is the transition

from one to the other to be gained? Through knowledge of the characters,

as the analysis showed. What applies here to transition within a scene

from dramatic moment to dramatic moment applies equally in transition

from scene to scene. Suppose that Sir Arthur Pinero had as the

starting-point of the third act of _The Magistrate_ the idea that Mrs.

Posket should be arrested under such conditions that she must appear in

the court of her husband when he is as guilty as she. Sir Arthur has

decided that they must be in some place like the Hotel des Princes when

it is raided. He has in mind episodes which will bring them all together

at that place. He already sees clearly the scene of the raid and the

arrest. But the place cannot be raided till late in the evening, and

Agatha Posket is too jealous of her reputation thoughtlessly to stay

late in such a place. What are to be the transitional "scenes" which, in

the first place, shall make us feel that considerable time has passed

since Mrs. Posket came to the hotel, and secondly shall keep us amused?

Sir Arthur finds them through the characters. It is the hunger of

self-indulgent Charlotte which motivates the staying and gives us the

supper "scene." It is the character of Vale which gives us his quarrel

with Lukyn. The love making of Charlotte and Vale provides another

transitional "scene." In other words, whether one is looking for more

episodes or for transitions from one chosen episode to another, one

should not go far afield hunting episodes as episodes, but should become

acquainted with the characters as closely as possible. They will solve

the difficulties.

All this lengthy consideration of selection makes for unity of action in

the story resulting. Some unity of action, whether the story be slight

or complicated, there must be. Of the three great unities over which

there has been endless discussion, Action, Place, and Time, the modern

dramatists, as we shall see, treat Place with the greatest freedom, and

are constantly inventing devices to avoid the Time difficulty. With the

dramatists of the present, as with the dramatists of the past, however,

what they write must be a whole, a unit. Some central idea, plan,

purpose, whatever we choose to call it, must give the play organic

structure. Story is the first step to this. Which gives most

pleasure,--a string of disconnected anecdotes and jests; or a series of

them given some unity because they concern some man of note, for

instance, Abraham Lincoln; or the same series edited till, taken all

together, they make Abraham Lincoln, in one or more of his

characteristics, clearer than ever before? Does not a large part of our

pleasure in biography come from the way in which it co-ordinates and

interprets episodes and incidents hitherto not properly inter-related in

our minds? Unity of action is, then, of first importance in story.

There is, however, another kind of unity which has not been enough

considered,--what may, perhaps, be called artistic unity. Why is it that

a play which begins seriously and for most of its course so develops,

only to end farcically, or which begins lightly only to become tragic,

leaves us dissatisfied? Because the audience finds it difficult to

readjust its mood as swiftly as does the author. _The Climbers_[33] and

_The Girl With the Green Eyes_[34] of Clyde Fitch are examples in point.

The first begins with such dignity and mysteriousness that its lighter

moods, after Act I, seem almost trivial. In the second play the very

tragic scene of the attempted suicide, after the light comedy touch of

the preceding parts, is distinctly jarring. A recent play which for two

acts or more seemingly had been dealing with but slightly disguised

figures of the political world had a late scene in which one of these

politicians, like Manson in _The Servant in the House_,[35] or The

Stranger in _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_,[36] shadowed the

figure of Christ himself. The effect was jarring, unpleasant, and

confusing, mainly because of its suddenness. It will be noted that in

both the plays mentioned, Manson and The Stranger carry their suggestion

from the start. Should we know how to take Percinet and Sylvette in _The

Romancers_[37] of Rostand did not that opening scene, when these two, in

love with being in love, read _Romeo and Juliet_ together, prepare us

for all the later fantasy? A dramatist will do well, then, to know

clearly before he begins to write whether he wishes his story to be

melodrama, tragedy, farce, or comedy of character or intrigue. Unless he

does and in consequence selects his illustrative material so that he may

give it artistic unity, he is likely to produce a play of so mixed a

genre as to be confusing.

"Just what is tragi-comedy, then?" a reader may ask. The Elizabethan

dramatist frequently offered one serious and one comic plot, running

parallel except when brought together in the last scene of the play.

Technically, however, tragi-comedy is a form which, although it may

contain tragic elements, is throughout given a general emphasis as

comedy and ends in comedy. We do not have good tragi-comedy when most of

the play is comedy or tragedy, and one scene or act is distinctly the

opposite. Therefore not only unity of action but artistic unity, unity

of genre, should be sought by the dramatist shaping up his story.

How much story does a play require? This is a difficult point to settle,

but first of all let us clearly understand that there are great

differences in audiences as far as plotting is concerned. Some periods

require more plot than others. Today we do not demand, as did the

audience of Shakespeare's time, plays containing two or more stories,

sometimes scarcely at all connected, sometimes neatly interwoven.

Middleton's _The Changeling_[38] contains two almost independent

stories. This is nearly as true of _The Coxcomb_[39] by Beaumont and

Fletcher. On the other hand, in _Much Ado About Nothing_ the

Hero-Claudio story, the Beatrice-Benedict story, and the Dogberry-Verges

story are so deftly interwoven that they are, to all appearances, a

unit. Even as late as thirty years ago one found in many plays a group

of characters for the serious interest and another for the comic values.

Gradually, however, dramatists have come to get their comic values from

people essential to the serious story, or from a comic emphasis they

place on certain aspects of the serious figures of the play. Today is

the time of the single story rather than the interwoven story. Yet even

now, so far as the public of the United States is concerned, a writer

may easily go too far in simplicity, or rather scantiness of story,

trusting too much to admirable characterization. That is why that

delightful play, _The Mollusc_,[40] failed in this country. Many people,

among them the intelligent, declared the play too thin to give them

pleasure. That is, apparently we of the United States care more in our

plays for elaborate stories than do our English cousins.

Indeed, national taste differs as to the amount of plot desirable. Both

Americans and English care more for plot than do most of the Continental

nations, which are often satisfied with plays of slight story-value but

admirable characterization. Nor is the difference a new one. Writing of

Wycherley's arrangement of Moliere's _Misanthrope_ in his _Plain

Dealer_, Voltaire said, "The English author has corrected the only

fault of Moliere's piece, lack of plot."[41] In the same _Letter on

Comedy_, Voltaire brings out clearly what any student of English drama

knows, that all through its greatest period it depended far more on

complicated story than did the drama of the Continent. Lessing in his

_Hamburg Dramaturgy_, speaking of Colman's _The English Merchant_, says

it has not action enough for the English critics. "Curiosity is not

sufficiently fostered, the whole complication is visible in the first

act. We Germans are well content that the action is not richer and more

complex. The English taste on this point distracts and fatigues us, we

love a simple plot that can be grasped at once. The English are forced

to insert episodes into French plays if they are to please on their

stage. In like manner we have to weed episodes out of the English plays

if we want to introduce them to our stage. The best comedies of Congreve

and Wycherley would seem intolerable to us without this excision. We

manage better with their tragedies. In part these are not so complex and

many of them have succeeded well amongst us without the least

alteration, which is more than I could say for any of their

comedies."[42]

About all the generalization one may permit one's self here is: For the

public of the United States one can at present feel sure that story

increases its interest in characterization, however fine. As we shall

see in dealing with character, the latter should never be sacrificed to

story, but story often ferries a play from the shore of unsuccess to the

shore of success. Even today it is not the great poetry, the subtle

characterization nor the fine thinking of _Hamlet_ which give it large

audiences: it is the varied story, full of surprises and suspense.

In another way, _Hamlet_ is a case in point. It shows the impossibility

of laying down any golden rule as to the amount of story a play should

have. Only speaking broadly is it true that different kinds of plays

seem to call for different amounts of story. Melodrama obviously does

depend on story-happenings often unmotivated and forced on the

characters by the will of the dramatist. Romance is almost synonymous

with action and we associate with it a large amount of story. The word

_Intrigue_ in the title "Comedy of Intrigue" at once suggests story.

Tragedy and High Comedy, on the other hand, depend for their values on

subtle characterization. In these last two forms it would seem that the

increasing characterization must, because of the time limit, mean

decrease in the amount of story; then _Hamlet_, with its complicated

story, occurs to us as by no means a single instance of a play of subtle

characterization in complicated story. Farce may be either of character

or of situation, but there are also farces in which both situation and

character have the exaggerations which distinguish this form from

comedy. Comedy of Manners must obviously use much characterization, but

it does not preclude a complicated story. Melodrama, then, does call

above all else for story. With all the other forms it is in the last

analysis the common sense of the dramatist which must tell him how much

story to use. He will employ the amount the time limits permit him if he

is at the same time to do justice to his characters and to the idea, if

any, he may wish to convey. That is, story as we have been watching it

develop from the point of departure is, for the dramatist, story in the

rough. It is only when it has been proportioned and emphasized so that

upon the stage it will produce in an audience the exact emotional

effects desired by the dramatist that it becomes plot.

Just as the point of departure for a play comes to a writer as a kind of

unconscious selection from among all possible subjects, so we have seen

that story takes shape by a similar process of conscious or unconscious

selection till it is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end,

and clear. Nor does selection stop here. The very necessary

proportioning and emphasizing mean, as we shall see, that the dramatist

selects, and again selects.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Samuel French, New York.

[2] Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[3] Drama League Series, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[4] Brentano, New York.

[5] _Le Berceau._ P. V. Stock, Paris.

[6] Preface, _Au Public_, to _La Princesse Georges_. A. Dumas fils.

_Oeuevres_, vol. V, p. 79. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[7] _De la Poesie Dramatique._ Diderot. _Oeuvres_, vol. VII, pp.

321-322. Garnier Freres, Paris.

[8] _Auteurs Dramatiques. F. de Curel. L'Annee Psychologique_, 1874,

p. 121.

[9] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, p. 35. Introduction by

Brander Matthews. Privately printed. The Carteret Book Club, Newark,

N.J., 1911.

[10] _A False Saint._ F. de Curel. Translated by B. H. Clark. Drama

League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[11] _Auteurs Dramatiques. F. de Curel. L'Annee Psychologique_, 1894,

pp. 121-123.

[12] _Play-Making_, pp. 58-59, note. William Archer. Small, Maynard &

Co., Boston.

[13] See chapter X, "The Dramatist and His Public."

[14] See chapter IX.

[15] _My Best Play._ Edgar Selwyn. _The Green Book Magazine_, March,

1911, pp. 536-537.

[16] _Idem._

[17] _Les Oberle._ Edmond Haraucourt. _L'Illustration Theatrale_,

Dec. 9, 1905, p. 5.

[18] _Les Oberle_, p. 7.

[19] _Plays of Thomas Middleton._ Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner's

Sons, New York.

[20] _Chefs-d'Oeuvres Dramatiques de A. N. Ostrovsky._ E.

Durand-Greville. E. Plon Nourrit et Cie, Paris.

[21] _Becket_, Act I, Scene 4. Alfred Lord Tennyson. The Macmillan

Co., New York.

[22] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton_, p. 38. Brander Matthews, ed.

[23] _Plays of Thomas Dekker._ Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner's Sons,

New York.

[24] A. F. Lange, ed. Mayer & Mueller, Berlin.

[25] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton_, pp. 36-37. Brander Matthews, ed.

[26] Preface, _Au Public_, to _La Princesse Georges_. _Oeuvres_, vol.

V. p. 78. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[27] Preface to _Le Supplice d'une Femme_. _Oeuvres_, vol. V. Calmann

Levy, Paris.

[28] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[29] The Macmillan Co., New York.

[30] _Seven Short Plays._ Maunsel & Co., Dublin.

[31] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

[32] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

[33] Harper & Bros., New York.

[34] Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London.

[35] Doubleday & McClure Co., New York.

[36] The Macmillan Co., New York.

[37] The Macmillan Co., New York.

[38] _Plays of Thomas Middleton._ Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner's

Sons, New York.

[39] _Works of Beaumont and Fletcher_, vol. IV. Whalley & Colman,

eds. 1811.

[40] _The Mollusc._ H. H. Davies. Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W.

Heinemann, London.

[41] _Lettres sur les Anglais_, Lettre XIX, _Sur la Comedie_, p. 170.

A. Basle, 1734.

[42] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, p. 265. Bohn ed.

CHAPTER V

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: PROPORTIONING THE MATERIAL: NUMBER AND LENGTH OF

ACTS

A dramatist, proportioning his rough story for performance in the

limited space of time the stage permits, faces at once the question:

"How many acts?" If inexperienced, noting the number of changes of set

his story seems to demand he finds himself in a dilemma: to give an act

to each change of scene is to break the play into many scrappy acts of a

few minutes each; to crowd all his needed scenes into five acts is to

get scenes as scrappy as the eight which make the fifth act of

Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ or the ten in Act IV of _Henry VI_, Part II. In

either case, if he gives his numerous scenes adequate treatment, he is

likely to find their combined length forces him beyond the time limit

the theatre allows--about two hours and a half.

Let him rid himself immediately of any feeling that custom or dramatic

dignity calls for any preference among three, four, or five acts. The

Elizabethan drama put such a spell upon the imagination of

English-speaking peoples that until recently the idea was accepted:

"Five is dignity, with a trailing robe, whereas one, two, or three acts

would be short skirts, and degrading."[1] Today a dramatist may plan for

a play of three, four, or five acts, as seems to him best.

Why, if no change of scene be required, is not a play of one long act

desirable? At first sight, there would seem to be a gain in the unbroken

movement. The power of sustained attention in audiences is, however,

distinctly limited. Any one who has seen a performance of _The Trojan

Women_[2] by Euripides, or von Hofmannsthal's _Electra_[3] needs no

further proof that though each makes a short evening's entertainment it

is exhausting because of uninterrupted movement from start to finish. To

plays of one long act most audiences become unresponsive from sheer

physical fatigue. Consequently, use has confined one-act plays to

subjects that may be treated in fifteen minutes to an hour, with an

average length of from twenty to forty-five minutes. Strindberg has

stated well the problem which the play in one long act involves: "I have

tried," he wrote in his Introduction to _Miss Julia_, "to abolish the

division into acts. And I have done so because I have come to fear that

our decreasing capacity for illusion might be unfavorably affected by

intermissions during which the spectator would have time to reflect and

to get away from the suggestive influence of the author-hypnotist. My

play will probably last an hour and a half, and as it is possible to

listen that length of time, or longer, to a lecture, a sermon, or a

debate, I have imagined that a theatrical performance could not become

fatiguing in the same time. As early as 1872, in one of my first

dramatic experiments, _The Outlaw_, I tried the same concentrated form,

but with scant success. The play was written in five acts, and wholly

completed, when I became aware of the restless, scattered effect it

produced. Then I burned it, and out of the ashes rose a single,

well-built act, covering fifty printed pages, and taking an hour for its

performance. Thus the form of the present play is not new, but it seems

to be my own, and changing aesthetical conventions may possibly make it

timely.

"My hope is still for a public educated to a point where it can sit

through a whole-evening performance in a single act. But that point

cannot be reached without a great deal of experimentation."[4]

The difficulty with a play of only two acts is similar. If the piece is

to fill an evening, each act must last an hour or more. _The Winter's

Tale_ is really a two-act play: Act I is the story of _Hermione_ and

_Leontes_, Act II the story of _Florizel_ and _Perdita_, with _Time_ as

Chorus separating the acts. Division of this play into five acts and use

of modern scenery have given it the effect of breaking to pieces midway,

where Time speaks. When each of the two parts is played uninterruptedly,

as in Mr. Granville Barker's recent revival, this effect disappears and

it becomes clear that the original division is artistically right.

However, so long is each of the two parts that _The Winter's Tale_, when

seen in this way, badly strains the attention of a present-day audience.

Contrastingly, to use more than five acts in the space of two hours and

a half is either to carry the performance over into a second day, as

with the two-part play of Elizabeth's time--something we cannot now

tolerate; or to write such scrappy acts that the frequent shifting of

scenery and dropping of the curtain spoil desired illusion. If it be

remembered that there is nothing essentially wrong in a play of one,

two, six, or even more acts, and that changing tastes or the necessities

of particular subjects may in very rare instances make any of these

divisions desirable, it can be said that three, four, or five acts are

today the normal divisions for plays.

An objection to long plays of one or two acts is that when the piece

lasts only an hour and a half, as in the case of _Miss Julia_, the

evening must be filled out with something else. In the first place, it

is by no means easy to arrange a mixed program in which each play shows

to complete advantage. Nor are audiences usually fond of adjusting

themselves to new characters and new plots two or three times in an

evening. On the professional stage, Barrie's short plays have done

something to make the general public more ready to shift their interest

to fresh subjects in the course of an evening, but a mixed program of

plays is rarely popular except in theatres of the so-called

"experimental" class.

The advantage in three acts is that each allows a longer space than does

the division into four or five acts in which characterization may

develop before the eyes of the audience, or a larger number of

illustrative actions bearing on the central purpose of the act may be

shown. The offset is that three acts provide only two breaks by which

the passing of time may be suggested. Neither four nor three acts have

any essential superiority over each other, or over five acts. Five acts,

in and of themselves, have no superiority over four or three; nor, as

some persons have seemed to think, are they the only divisions in which

a drama in verse may be written. Avoidance of awkward changes of scene

within an act may compel use of four or five acts rather than three. The

more episodes in the story to be dramatized, the more aspects of

character to be shown by action, the more acts or scenes the dramatist

must use. If long spaces of time must be allowed for because they are

part of the story or marked changes of character demand them, the

dramatist will need more _entr'acte_ space, and, consequently, more

acts. It is, then, necessary change of place and passage of time which

are the chief factors in determining choice among three, four, or five

acts.

For centuries theoretical students of the drama have worried themselves

about the two unities: place and time. Practising dramatists, however,

have usually found that generalizations in regard to them help little

and that in each individual play they must work out the place and time

problems for themselves. Practice as to shifting scenes has depended

most, and always will, upon whether the physical conditions of the stage

permit many real or imagined shifts. The Greek stage, with its fixed

background and its chorus nearly always present, forced an attempt at

unity of place, though the Greeks often broke through it.

Unity of action was the first dramatic law of the ancients; unity of

time and place were mere consequences of the former which they would

scarcely have observed more strictly than exigency required had not

the combination with the chorus arisen. For since their actions

required the presence of a large body of people and this concourse

always remained the same, who could go no farther from their dwellings

nor remain absent longer than it is customary to do from mere

curiosity, they were almost obliged to make the scene of the action

one and the same spot and confine the time to one and the same day.

They submitted bona fide to this restriction; but with a suppleness of

understanding such that in seven cases out of nine they gained more

than they lost thereby. For they used this restriction as a reason of

simplifying the action and to cut away all that was superfluous, and

thus, reduced to essentials, it became only the ideal of an action

which was developed most felicitously in this form which required the

least addition from circumstances of time and place.

The French, on the contrary, who found no charms in true unity of

action, who had been spoilt by the wild intrigues of the Spanish

school, before they had learnt to know Greek simplicity, regarded the

unity of time and place not as consequences of unity of action, but as

circumstances absolutely needful to the representation of an action,

to which they must therefore adapt their more complicated and richer

actions with all the severity required in the use of chorus, which,

however, they had totally abolished. When they found, however, how

difficult, nay at times impossible this was, they made a truce with

the tyrannical rules against which they had not the courage to rebel.

Instead of a single place they introduced an uncertain place, under

which we could imagine now this now that spot; enough if the places

combined were not too far apart and none required special scenery, so

that the scenery could fit the one about as well as the other. Instead

of the unity of a day, they substituted unity of duration, and a

certain period during which no one spoke of sunrise or sunset, or went

to bed, or at least did not go to bed more than once, however much

might occur in this space, they allowed to pass as a day.[5]

The Elizabethan author writing, in his public performances, for an

audience accustomed to build imaginatively a setting from hints given

by properties, signs on the stage, or descriptions in the text, changed

the scene at will. Recall the thirteen changes in Act III of _Antony and

Cleopatra_.

On the modern stage such frequent change is undesirable for three

reasons: the expense of constructing and painting so many scenes; the

time consumed in making the changes, which may reduce decidedly the

acting time of the play; and the check in sustained interest on the part

of the audience caused by these many changes. The growth of the touring

system also has led to reduction in the number of scenes, for

transportation of numerous and elaborate sets is too expensive.

Moreover, the interest in extreme realism has carried us more and more

into such scenes of simple or sordid living as call for only one to

three sets in a play.

At times it is easy, or at least possible with ingenuity, to have for a

play, whatever its length, but one setting. Von Hofmannsthal's _Electra_

is an illustration. Another is _The Servant in the House_, a play in

five acts by Rann Kennedy.

The scene, which remains unchanged throughout the play, is a room in

the vicarage. Jacobean in character, its oak-panelling and

beamed-ceiling, together with some fine pieces of antique furniture,

lend it an air of historical interest, whilst in all other respects it

speaks of solid comfort, refinement, and unostentatious elegance.[6]

Hervieu's _Connais-Toi_, a play of three acts, is another instance of

one setting throughout.[7]

Not infrequently it is comparatively simple to confine a play to one set

for each act, or even less. _The Great Divide_, by William Vaughn Moody,

and _The Weavers_, by Hauptmann, show a new setting for each act. In

_The Truth_, by Clyde Fitch, Acts I and II have the same setting: "At

_Mrs. Warder's_. An extremely attractive room in the best of taste";

Acts III and IV are in "_Mr. Roland's_ rooms in _Mrs. Crespigny's_ flat

in Baltimore." In the four acts of _The Witching Hour_, by Augustus

Thomas, there is a change of set only for Act II.[8] Such reducing of

possible settings to two or three for a play of four or five acts

requires practice, and, in some cases, decided ingenuity. In present-day

use the safest principle is this: a set to an act, if really needed, but

no change of set within the act unless there be unavoidable reason for

it.

What, then, is the would-be dramatist to do when faced by six or more

settings to a five-act play, or two or three settings within what he

believes should be an act? Often what seems a necessary early scene is

but clumsy exposition: skilful handling would incorporate it with the

scene immediately following. Scene 1, Act III, of Dryden's _The Spanish

Friar_ is in the street. Lorenzo, in friar's habit, meeting the real

friar, Dominic, bribes him to introduce him into the chamber of Elvira.

The scene is merely the easiest way of making the audience understand

why the two men enter together very early in the next scene.

ACT III. SCENE 1. _The Street_

_Enter Lorenzo, in Friar's habit, meeting Dominic_

Here follow some fifteen speeches in which the arrangements are made.

Then:

SCENE 2

_Enter Elvira, in her chamber_

_Elvira._ He'll come, that's certain; young appetites are sharp, and

seldom need twice bidding to such a banquet;--well, if I prove

frail,--as I hope I shall not till I have compassed my design,--never

woman had such a husband to provoke her, such a lover to allure her,

or such a confessor to absolve her. Of what am I afraid, then? not my

conscience that's safe enough; my ghostly father has given it a dose

of church opium to lull it; well, for soothing sin, I'll say that for

him, he's a chaplain for any court in Christendom.

_Enter Lorenzo and Dominic_

O father Dominic, what news? How, a companion with you! What game have

you on hand, that you hunt in couples?

_Lorenzo._ (_Lifting up his hood._) I'll show you that immediately.

_Elvira._ O my love!

_Lorenzo._ My life!

_Elvira._ My soul! (_They embrace._)

_Dominic._ I am taken on the sudden with a grievous swimming in my

head and such a mist before my eyes that I can neither hear nor

see.[9]

All the needed exposition given in Scene 1 could, with very little

difficulty, be transferred to Scene 2. Were the two men to enter, not to

Elvira, but by themselves, they could quickly make their relationship

clear. The conduct and speech of Elvira could be made to illustrate what

she now states in soliloquy just before the two men enter.

In the original last act[10] of Lillo's _George Barnwell_, the settings

are: "A room in a prison," "A dungeon." The whole act could easily have

been arranged to take place in some room where prisoners could see

friends. Today we should in many cases exchange a number of settings as

used in eighteenth century plays for one setting.

Scenes, which in the original story occurred upstairs or downstairs,

inside or outside a house, may often be easily interchanged or combined.

_The Clod_, by Lewis Beach, a one-act success of the Washington Square

Players, in its first draft showed a setting both upstairs and

downstairs. This unsightly arrangement was quickly changed so that all

the action took place in a lower room. At one time Bulwer-Lytton thought

seriously of changing what is now Scene 1, Act I, of his _Richelieu_,

an interior, to an exterior scene. To Macready he wrote:

Let me know what you mean about omitting altogether the scene at

Marion de Lorme's.

Do you mean to have no substitute for it?

What think you of merely the outside of the House? Francois, coming

out with the packet and making brief use of Huguet and Mauprat [who

figure in the interior scene]. Remember you wanted to have the packet

absolutely given to Francois.[11]

Greek plays, because of the fixed backing, provide many illustrations of

interior scenes brought outdoors:

...The dramatic action was necessarily laid in the open air--usually

before a palace or temple.... In general the dramatists displayed an

amazing fertility of invention in this particular, as a few

illustrations will suffice to show. In the _Alcestis_ Apollo explains

his leaving Ametus' palace on the ground of the pollution which a

corpse would bring upon all within the house (Euripides' _Alcestis_,

22 f.) and Alcestis herself, though in a dying condition, fares forth

to look for the last time upon the sun in heaven (_ibid._ 206).

Oedipus is so concerned in the afflictions of his subjects that he

cannot endure making inquiries through a servant but comes forth to

learn the situation in person (Sophocles' _Oedipus Rex_, 6 f.). Karion

is driven out of doors by the smoke of sacrifice upon the domestic

altar (Aristophanes' _Plutus_, 821 f.). In Plautus' _Mostellaria_ (1,

ff.) one slave is driven out of doors by another as the result of a

quarrel. Agathon cannot compose his odes in the winter time, unless he

bask in the sunlight (Aristophanes' _Thesmophoriazuae_, 67 f.). The

love-lorn Phaedra teases for light and air (Euripides' _Hippolytus_,

181). And Medea's nurse apologizes for her soliloquizing before the

house with the excuse that the sorrows within have stifled her and

caused her to seek relief by proclaiming them to earth and sky

(Euripides' _Medea_, 56 ff.).[12]

When it is not easy to see how a number of settings may be cut down, a

dramatist should carefully consider this: May episodes happening to the

same person or persons in the same settings, but apparently demanding

separate treatment because they occur at widely different times, be

brought together? The dramatizer of a novel faces many opportunities for

this telescoping of scenes. Any one adapting _A Tale of Two Cities_, if

he uses Jerry Cruncher, will probably combine the two scenes in his

home. To bring together incidents happening to the same person or

persons at the same place, but at different times, is the easiest method

of cutting down possible scenes.

It is, of course, possible to bring together circumstances which

happened at different places at different times, but to the same

persons. A notable instance is Irving's compacting of two scenes in

Tennyson's _Becket_: he places at Montmirail what is essential in both

Scene 2, Act II, Montmirail. "The Meeting of the Kings," and Scene 3,