Act IV has a double ending: the closing of the love story and the

execution. The chief interest thus far created for the audience could

end with the parting of the lovers.

(_The soldiers sing the air of what is now called "Believe Me If All

Those Endearing Young Charms." Hale stands listening for the sound of

Alice's coming. The Sentinel retires to the farther corner of the

tent, and stands with arms folded, his back towards Hale. Tom comes on

first, bringing Alice. As they come into Hale's presence, Alice glides

from out of Tom's keeping, and her brother leaves the two together.

They stand looking at each other a moment without moving and then

both make a quick movement to meet. As their arms touch in the

commencement of their embrace, they remain in that position a few

moments, looking into each other's eyes. Then they embrace, Hale

clasping her tight in his arms and pressing a long kiss upon her lips.

They remain a few moments in this position, silent and immovable. Then

they slowly loosen their arms--though not altogether discontinuing the

embrace--until they take their first position and again gaze into each

other's faces. Alice sways, about to fall, faint from the effort to

control her emotions, and Hale gently leads her to the tree stump at

right. He kneels beside her so that she can rest against him with her

arms about his neck. After a moment, keeping her arms still tight

about him, Alice makes several ineffectual efforts to speak, but her

quivering lips refuse to form any words, and her breath comes with

difficulty. Hale shakes his head with a sad smile, as if to say, "No,

don't try to speak. There are no words for us." And again they

embrace. At this moment, while Alice is clasped again tight in Hale's

arms, the Sentinel, who has his watch in his hand, slowly comes out

from the tent. Tom also re-enters, but Alice and Hale are oblivious.

Tom goes softly to them and touches Alice very gently on the arm,

resting his hand there. She starts violently, with a hysterical

taking-in of her breath, and an expression of fear and horror, as she

knows this is the final moment of parting. Hale also starts slightly,

rising, and his muscles grow rigid. He clasps and kisses her once

more, but only for a second. They both are unconscious of Tom, of

everything but each other. Tom takes her firmly from Hale, and leads

her out, her eyes fixed upon Hale's eyes, their arms outstretched

toward each other. After a few paces she breaks forcibly away from

Tom, and with a wild cry of "No! No!" locks her hands about Hale's

neck. Tom draws her away again and leads her backward from the scene,

her lips dry now and her breath coming in short, loud, horror-stricken

gasps. Hale holds in his hand a red rose she wore on her breast, and

thinking more of her than of himself, whispers, as she goes, "Be

brave! be brave!" The light is being slowly lowered, till, as Alice

disappears, the stage is in total darkness._)

The second ending merely connects the play more closely with history.

_Colonel Rutger's Orchard, the next morning. The scene is an orchard

whose trees are heavy with red and yellow fruit. The centre tree has a

heavy dark branch jutting out, which is the gallows; from this branch

all the leaves and the little branches have been chopped off; a heavy

coil of rope with a noose hangs from it, and against the trunk of the

tree leans a ladder. It is the moment before dawn, and slowly at the

back through the trees is seen a purple streak, which changes to

crimson as the sun creeps up. A dim gray haze next fills the stage,

and through this gradually breaks the rising sun. The birds begin to

wake, and suddenly there is heard the loud, deep-toned, single toll of

a bell, followed by a roll of muffled drums in the distance. Slowly

the orchard fills with murmuring, whispering people; men and women

coming up through the trees make a semicircle amongst them, about the

gallows tree, but at a good distance. The bell tolls at intervals, and

muffled drums are heard between the twittering and happy songs of

birds. There is the sound of musketry, of drums beating a funeral

march, which gets nearer, and finally a company of British soldiers

marches in, led by Fitzroy, Nathan Hale in their midst, walking alone,

his hands tied behind his back. As he comes forward the people are

absolutely silent, and a girl in the front row of the spectators falls

forward in a dead faint. She is quickly carried out by two bystanders.

Hale is led to the foot of the tree before the ladder. The soldiers

are in double lines on either side._

_Fitzroy._ (_To Hale._) Nathan Hale, have you anything to say? We are

ready to hear your last dying speech and confession!

(_Hale is standing, looking up, his lips moving slightly, as if in

prayer. He remains in this position a moment, and then, with a sigh

of relief and rest, looks upon the sympathetic faces of the people

about him, with almost a smile on his face._)

_Hale._ I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country!

(_Fitzroy makes a couple of steps toward him; Hale turns and places

one foot on the lower rung of the ladder, as the curtain

falls._)[31]

Watch, then, the beginning and the ending of scenes and acts, lest an

unconscious and undesired emphasis result.

An important means of emphasis is contrast--in character, situation, and

even dialogue. Melodrama has always rested, in large part, for its

definite emotional appeals on sharply contrasted characters--the

spotless hero, the double-dyed villain, the adventuress, and the heroine

so innocent of the world as to provide unlimited dramatic situations.

Recall the impetuous Julia and the gentle Sylvia of _The Two Gentlemen

of Verona_. If it be said that such direct contrasting of dissimilar

figures belongs more to the earlier plays of dramatists, this is not

true. In _The Gay Lord Quex_,[32] contrast of the old and the young

roues, Quex and Bastling, helps to make clear and to emphasize the point

of the play. _The Princess and the Butterfly_[33] largely depends upon

contrast,--among the restless women of Act I, the restless men of Act

II, between the Princess and Sir George, between the love of Fay Zuliani

for Sir George and that of Edward for the Princess.

Contrast in situation was a great reliance with the Elizabethans and,

even when very crudely used, remains popular with the American public

today. So much pleasure did the Elizabethan derive from contrasted

situation that he was willing to have it worked up as a separate

sub-plot, at times very slightly connected with the main plot. Take _The

Changeling_ of Middleton: the titular part, written for comic value,

deals with scenes in a madhouse; the other intensely tragic plot of De

Flores and Beatrice-Joanna is but slightly connected with it. Think of

the grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, just before the burial of Ophelia, and,

above all, consider in _Macbeth_ the consummate use of a contrasting

scene, in the porter at the gate just after the murder of Duncan.

It is a sense of the value of contrasting situation which produces the

best dramatic irony. When in Scene 2, Act I, of _Hindle Wakes_, we

listen to Alan Jeffcote's father and mother planning for his marriage,

the fine dramatic irony comes from the contrast we feel with the facts

of his conduct, known to us from the preceding scene, which may make his

marriage impossible. Dramatic irony depends on a preceding planting in

the minds of the auditors of information which makes what is true

contrast sharply with what the characters of the particular scene

suppose to be true. Contrast, then, underlies dramatic irony. An

audience, feeling the dramatic irony of a scene, is put into a state of

suspense as to how and when the blow they anticipate will fall.

Evidently, then, emphasis by means of contrast, when it results in

dramatic irony, makes for dramatic suspense.

Contrast may be used effectively in dialogue. The modern dramatist

sometimes overdoes this use. Because he has observed that the greatest

suffering of the strongest natures rarely finds expression in rich or

varied speech, he tries to discover words which in their feebleness,

their inappositeness, or their unexpected commonplaceness, contrast

sharply with what a hearer feels is the intensity of the emotion behind

them. This has given us in recent drama some dialogue unnatural in its

tameness. This kind of contrast, however, when handled with real

understanding, is extremely effective. In the parting of Laurie and the

heroine in _Iris_,[34] the very commonplaceness of the details of which

they talk shows that they do not dare to speak of what is really in

their minds, and makes the best preparation for the sudden loosing of

emotion by Iris in what would be ordinarily a simple request: "Close the

jalousies!"

Except in our recent revival of Moralities for the delectation of moral

Broadway, we are growing away dramatically from mere contrasting of

types of character and from plays in which a serious and a comic plot

are but loosely connected. Yet dramatists will always find contrast

highly useful in emphasizing points of characterization and important

values in the story. Moreover, any trained dramatist knows that when his

audience has been somewhat exhausted by laughter or tears, a scene of

contrasting emotional value is of the highest importance. By changing

the focus of interest, it renews the power of response exhausted in the

just preceding scene. As has been pointed out again and again, though it

may be true that the drunken porter in _Macbeth_ was funnier for an

Elizabethan public than he is today, nevertheless his coming breaks the

tension of the terrible murder scene and makes it possible even now to

turn to fresh horrors with surer responsiveness. There is no space here

to go into any satisfactory analysis of the basal relations between the

serious and the comic, but every competent actor knows that frequently,

if the full desired comic values are to appear, it is necessary to play

a part, or all the parts, with great seriousness, even in a piece meant

to be broadly comic for the audience. This is true not merely in some of

Shaw's plays,--_Man and Superman_, _You Never Can Tell_, etc., but in

many old farces and even in burlesque. In the contrast the audience

makes between the seriousness of the characters in what they do and say

and the attitude the dramatist creates toward them lie the real comic

values. Often it is only on the flint of the serious that one may strike

the most brilliant spark of the comic.

Emphasis is needed not only to keep clear the development of the story

and its thesis, if there be any, but also to determine and maintain the

dramatic form in which it is cast--farce, comedy, melodrama, and

tragedy. If an audience is kept long in the dark as to whether the

dramatist is thinking of his material seriously or with amusement, or if

they feel at the end that the story has been told with no coordinating

emphasis to determine whether it is farce or comedy or tragedy, they are

confused and likely to hold back part of their proper responsiveness. As

has been pointed out, it is more than doubtful whether the scene of the

attempted suicide in what is otherwise a genuine comedy of character,

_The Girl with the Green Eyes_,[35] did not seriously hurt the

effectiveness of the play for a great many people.

Here, again, beginnings and endings are of the utmost consequence.

Notice the extreme care of Maeterlinck, at the outset of _Pelleas and

Melisande_[36] to create a mood for his play. One is prepared for the

tragic and the mysterious by the opening scene of the handmaidens

washing the mysterious stain from the palace steps. An auditor has not

heard ten speeches of Synge's _Riders to the Sea_[37] before he knows

that the dramatist is dealing seriously with grim matters, that, in all

probability, the play is a tragedy. Look at Rostand's _The

Romancers_.[38] It is to be a graceful telling of a jest played upon two

sentimental children by two fond fathers. The author must make clear

early in the play that what may be tragic enough for the young people is

to be fantastic comedy for any hearers. Could anything be better than

the opening: these two children, on the wall between their homes, so

reading _Romeo and Juliet_ together that it is obvious that they are in

love with being in love, nothing more? There is the perfect emphasis

which establishes early the attitude of the dramatist toward his

material, in this case making the play poetic comedy. Can any one feel

much doubt what form of drama is _The Importance of Being Earnest_?[39]

The first few pages show that dialogue is to count heavily as such.

Evidently the mood is comic. As evidently, there is exaggeration. Thus

we move from initial farce to the more broadly farcical mourning for the

death of the supposititious Earnest and to the fateful black handbag. If

the ending of _The Romancers_ be played as it was in London, with the

speakers of the last lines gradually fading from sight in the dimming

lights, surely that emphasis must mean to the audience that it has been

seeing a fantasy.[40]

However, as has been said, danger lurks in these places of easy

emphasis, the beginning and the ending, for at times something effective

in itself swings the emphasis the wrong way. In _Masks and Faces_,[41]

two generations have shed tears over the woes of Triplet as meant for

"real life," only to be somewhat rebuffed when, just before the final

curtain, all the characters step out of the play for the "Epilogue," and

so stamp it as "only a story after all."

In brief, unless some special purpose is subserved thereby, an audience

should not long be left in the dark as to the form in which the

dramatist thinks he has cast his play. He who treats his material in

many different moods runs the chance of confusing his hearers. Only by

sure and well-placed emphasis can he keep his chosen form clear.

Particularly is this true in the mixed forms, tragi-comedy and

farce-comedy. Only well-placed emphasis will carry an audience through

these with just the result desired by the dramatist.

How decide what to emphasize? Tom Taylor, despising the intelligence of

audiences of his day, used to say, "When you have something to say to an

audience, tell them you are going to say it. Tell them you 're saying

it. Tell them you've said it. Then, perhaps, they'll understand it."

Truth probably lies between this and the statement of a dramatist of

today, "I am re-writing a play originally composed some ten years ago.

Do you know what I am doing? I am cutting and condensing, because the

intervening years have taught me that I may suggest where I thought I

must explain in full, and state but once what I thought I must repeat.

Audiences are far quicker than ten years ago I supposed them to be."

Till the training of the dramatist gives him a kind of sixth sense

which tells him what in his plot needs emphasis for his public, he must

depend on the comments of really intelligent hearers to whom he reads

the manuscript and, above all, on retouching his play after the first

performances.

It is not enough, however, by clearness and right emphasis to maintain

interest: as the play develops, the interest should if possible be

increased. Either to maintain or to increase interest means that a

hearer must be led on from scene to scene, act to act, absorbed while

the curtain is up and, between the acts, eager for it to rise again.

Such attention given a play means that it has a third essential quality,

movement. The plays of tyro dramatists today are often sadly lacking in

good movement.

Good movement rests, first of all, on clearness; secondly, on right

emphasis; and thirdly, on something already mentioned in connection with

both clearness and right emphasis,--suspense. This means a straining

forward of interest, a compelling desire to know what will happen next.

Whether a hearer is totally at a loss to know what will happen, but

eager to ascertain; partly guesses what will take place, but deeply

desires to make sure; or almost holds back so greatly does he dread an

anticipated situation, he is in a state of suspense, for be it willingly

or unwillingly on his part, on sweeps his interest.

There should be good movement within the scene, the act, and even the

play as a whole. It is, however, easily checked. If scenes or characters

not essential are allowed place within a play, it has been shown on

pages 87-89 that this may interfere with either clearness or good

emphasis. They will hurt the movement of the play. Closely related as a

possible danger are necessary scenes not well placed. Often shifting

part of a scene or act makes all the difference between sustained and

interrupted suspense. For example, a young man, after some quarrelsome

words, threatens to shoot his sister. As they stand facing each other,

steps are heard outside. A group which enters brings about an amusing

scene. Good as it is, it may kill the suspense created by those two

tense figures, if it switches interest wholly or in large part from

them. If it does, any effective picking up the scene between the angry

brother and sister, when the visitors go out, may be impossible. On the

other hand, so write the scene that the audience, never diverted in its

attention to those two figures, feels that the moment the visitors leave

the quarrel will be resumed with greater intensity just because of the

interruption: then there will be no loss of tension. Just here lies the

important point: suspense once created must never be allowed to lapse so

long as to be lost. A scene for contrast or to renew the power of

desired emotional response in the audience or to develop part of a

correlated story may be introduced, but always what is put between

something which makes the audience strain forward and its goal should

leave it as eager, and preferably more eager for the solution.

A shift in order may do much to increase suspense. When Ibsen

transferred Rosmer's confession, which is very necessary to the play,

from Act II to the end of Act I, he greatly added to the suspense

created by the first act. To put it differently, he greatly accelerated

the movement of the play. An audience, knowing that Rosmer is "an

apostate from the faith of his fathers," eagerly desires to see what

will happen to him in such surroundings as those made clear in Act I. In

the earlier version, a reader learns that there are mysteries which the

play will probably solve, but has nothing on which to focus his

attention as a compelling element of suspense.

Any one knows that when an actor fails to come on at the right moment,

unless quick-witted actors invent dialogue or action, the stage "waits"

for the actor. There is something which exactly corresponds to this in

the text of plays. Henry Le Barren comes to call on Madge Ellsworth.

The maid, after showing him into the library, goes to find her mistress.

"_Meanwhile Henry looks idly at the books on the table till Madge

enters._" Unless Madge, perfectly sure that Henry would call at this

hour, is waiting just outside the door, some action is needed on the

stage to cover the time space until she can enter naturally. It is true

that looking at the books fills the time for Henry, but it does not

sustain for the audience interest already created in him or the story.

When nothing is taking place on the stage, something is taking place in

the audience which greatly concerns the dramatist: it is slipping away

from him because it is losing interest. For contrast, suppose that Henry

sits restlessly only a moment, then with a sigh picks up a book, tries

to read, falls to dreaming, and holds the book so that we may see he is

reading it upside down. He tries another book in vain. He starts three

or four times, thinking that the door is about to open. He

absent-mindedly examines a piece of bric-a-brac. He starts forward

eagerly the moment Madge enters. Now we are interested, because he is

either exhibiting emotions the cause of which we understand, emotions

which lead us to expect an interesting scene between him and Madge, or

his conduct sets us guessing as to what can lie ahead between the two.

In the first illustration, the play lacks movement; in the second,

commonplace as it is, the movement does not cease.

At times it helps suspense not only to shift the order of details but to

separate two elements of suspense, treating them separately in well

correlated groups. In _Hamlet_, Q1, the soliloquy, "To be, or not to be"

precedes the meeting of Ophelia and Hamlet, part of Hamlet's tricking of

Polonius, and the coming of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The greater

part of the befuddling of Polonius then follows. The players enter and

plan with Hamlet the performance of _The Mousetrap_. Hamlet, left alone,

bursts into the soliloquy, "Why what a dunghill idiot slave am I!" Q2

rearranges thus: Polonius and Hamlet; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern;

Polonius returning to announce the players; the planning for _The

Mousetrap_; Hamlet left alone crying, "Oh what a rogue and peasant's

slave am I!" Here all the details bearing on the play are gathered

together. Next come the King and Queen with their plot to try out Hamlet

by means of Ophelia. The soliloquy, "To be, or not to be" follows this.

Then Hamlet and Ophelia have the scene "To a nunnery go!" Instead of

jumbling two elements of suspense,--probable results of the play planned

by Hamlet and of the Ophelia-Hamlet interest,--each is given added

suspense by separate treatment. In Q1, as we shift from one to the

other, each weakens the other or is momentarily blocked by it.

Rearranged, the very order of the details in each part makes not only

for clearer but stronger suspense.[42]

Today a plot made up of two or three but slightly related stories is far

less popular than in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Our public demands

that such stories shall be so correlated within the play as to be

mutually helpful. This desire results not from innate niceness of

feeling for unity of design but from dislike of a distribution of

interests which interferes with the suspense each story creates. Though

it is, of course, possible perfectly to maintain suspense in plays of

interwoven plots--the plays of Shakespeare and many writers since prove

this--it is far more difficult than maintaining suspense in a play of

single plot. Quite possibly this is the chief reason for the great

popularity today of plays of single plot: they are both easier to follow

and easier to write.

A related fault which interferes with suspense is the "stage wait"

treated on page 209. As has also been pointed out, there is danger in

transitional scenes meant to cover a time space or to shift the

interest of an audience. If they accomplish either purpose and do not

advance the plot, they really fail. Bulwer-Lytton met this difficulty in

writing _Money_:

I think in the first 3 acts you will find little to alter. But in Act

4--the 2 scene with Lady B. & Clara--& Joke & the Tradesman don't help

on the Plot much--they were wanted, however, especially the last to

give time for change of dress & smooth the lapse of the theme from

money to dinner; you will see if this part requires any amendment.[43]

Also exposition, undoubtedly necessary but delayed too long, may so clog

an act as to weaken or kill it. In a play set in what was once a

fashionable dining-room, but is now the fitting-room of a dressmaker,

the scene is not placed for some time. Finally, a figure entering makes

clear the supposed setting, but for this the action on stage has to be

broken off.

The increasing popularity of a play of three or four acts as compared

with five has almost wholly done away with another destroyer of

suspense--the explanatory and adjusting last act. In it, intelligent

auditors who knew from the close of the fourth act how the story must

end were expected to watch with interest final disposition of the

characters. Dramatists of the eighties and nineties turned from this use

slowly. For proof examine the last act of _The Hypocrites_, by H. A.

Jones, in other respects a play well away from the older methods of

technique. Now, both the older and the younger generation of dramatists

expect to carry suspense as near the end of the play as they possibly

can. Letting an audience anticipate something of the end of a play is

all very well, but when it foresees just what is going to happen and has

no farther interest, except to learn whether it happens exactly as

anticipated, suspense and even attention cease. In that case an

audience begins to gather its belongings for departure. Something held

back which cannot surely be anticipated is the very basis of suspense.

It follows from what has just been said that there can never be perfect

suspense when the plot ends an act or more before the final curtain. It

is vain to try to start new interests in order to create fresh suspense.

Unless the latter part of a play grows out of the first, at least as

much as the Perdita-Florizel story grows out of that of Leontes and

Hermione, there can be no good suspense. When it seems necessary to tack

on new material because all suspense is ended, do not add: rewrite.

It has often been said that surprise--springing something unexpectedly

upon an audience--is better than suspense. Lessing said of the

comparative value of surprise and suspense:

For one instance where it is useful to conceal from the spectator an

important event until it has taken place there are ten and more where

interest demands the very contrary. By means of secrecy a poet effects

a short surprise, but in what enduring disquietude could he have

maintained us if he had made no secret about it! Whoever is struck

down in a moment, I can only pity for a moment. But how if I expect

the blow, how if I see the storm brewing and threatening for some time

about my head or his? For my part none of the personages need know

each other if only the spectator knows them all. Nay I would even

maintain that the subject which requires such secrecy is a thankless

subject, that the plot in which we have to make recourse to it is not

as good as that in which we could have done without it. It will never

give occasion for anything great. We shall be obliged to occupy

ourselves with preparations that are either too dark or too clear, the

whole poem becomes a collection of little artistic tricks by means of

which we effect nothing more than a short surprise. If on the contrary

everything that concerns the personages is known, I see in this

knowledge the source of the most violent emotions. Why have certain

monologues such a great effect? Because they acquaint me with the

secret intentions of the speaker and this confidence at once fills me

with hope or fear. If the condition of the personages is unknown, the

spectator cannot interest himself more vividly in the action than the

personages. But the interest would be doubled for the spectator if

light is thrown on the matter, and he feels that action and speech

would be quite otherwise if the personages knew one another.

Only then I shall scarcely be able to await what is to become of them

when I am able to compare that which they really are with that which

they do or would do.[44]

Look at the quotation from the _First Part of Henry VI_ on Pp. 97-100.

Talbot whispers to the Captain, and leaves us guessing what he means to

do at his meeting with the Countess of Auvergne. In like manner the

Countess merely refers to the plot she has laid with her Porter. We

never know just what was the plan of the Countess. We get only a

momentary sensation, surprise, when Talbot's soldiers force their way

in. Suppose we had been allowed to know the plans of the Countess, and

they had seemed very dangerous for Talbot. Then, as she played with him,

sure of her position, there would have been more suspense than in

Shakespeare's text, because an audience would have been wondering, not

merely "What is the blow Talbot will strike?" but "Can any blow he will

strike overcome the seemingly effective plans of the Countess?" Suppose

we had been allowed to know the plans of both. Then, as we watched the

Countess playing her scheme off against the plan of Talbot, of which she

would be unaware, might there not easily be even more suspense? At every

turn of their dialogue we should be wondering: "Why does not Talbot

strike now? Can he save the situation, if he delays? With all this

against him, can he save it in any case?" In the use of surprise, the

dramatist depends almost entirely on his situation. Suspense permits him

to elaborate his situation by means of the characters in it. In other

words, surprise is situation, suspense is characterization.

On this matter recent words of William Archer seem final:

Curiosity [I said] is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas

the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in

foreknowledge. In relation to the characters of the drama, the

audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre,

we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience. With vision

unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness

and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests,

their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics. To keep a secret

from us is to reduce us to their level, and deprive us of our

clairvoyant aloofness. There may be a pleasure in that too; we may

join with zest in the game of blind-man's-buff; but the theatre is in

its essence a place where we are privileged to take off the bandage we

wear in daily life, and to contemplate, with laughter or with tears,

the blindfold gambols of our neighbors.[45]

What is basal in suspense is, of course, that an audience shall feel for

some person or persons of the play just the degree of sympathy the

dramatist desires. Unless their sympathy is as keen as his, the scene

must fall short emotionally. For instance, in a play produced some years

ago author and actors expected the audience to sympathize throughout

with a mother. At the climax of one of the acts she was left on-stage in

an agonized state of mind because her husband, who hates her

illegitimate child, has left the stage with threats to kill it. The

actress wrote of the first night: "In that scene I might as well have

recited the alphabet for all the audience cared for my emotion. Their

sympathy made them live, not with me, but with the defenceless child who

at any moment might be murdered off-stage by the cruel father." Suspense

for the audience there certainly was, but not of the kind intended. It

was necessary to rewrite the scene.

Evidently, what happens off-stage may, by its greater interest for the

audience, kill the effect of what is passing on-stage. What the

dramatist dares not try to represent on-stage because of its mechanical

difficulty or horror, he tries to carry off by vivid and even terrifying

description. By making the audience see the off-stage action through

the eyes of the person most affected, or by portraying vividly his

emotions when another describes the action to him, dramatists endeavor

to lose none of their desired suspense. The point to remember is that

the moment the off-stage action becomes of more importance than the

emotions caused by that action for persons on-stage, the real centre of

interest has been shifted, the desired suspense is gone, and the scene

must be rewritten. Suspense in a play is rightly handled, then, when it

is promptly created to the extent desired by the dramatist; carries on

with increasing intensity from act to act; and reaches its climax at or

just before the final curtain. Climax is, therefore, an integral part of

suspense. The point of greatest intensity reached in an incident, scene,

act, or play is the moment of climax. Climax is not the result of theory

but comes from long observation of audiences. A scene or act which

breaks off or declines in interest towards its close never delights an

audience as does a scene or act which closes with its strongest

emotional effect. Look at the ending of _The Troublesome Raigne of King

John, Part I_. Though King John declares himself "the joyfulst man

alive," the audience does not so sympathize with him that his delight is

a fitting climax to the play. Rather do they so keenly sympathize with

Prince Arthur and even the lords who have been outraged by Arthur's

proposed death that they want to know more of him and them.

_Hubert._ My lord, attend the happie tale I tell,

For heauens health send Sathan packing hence

That instigates your Highnes to despaire.

If Arthurs death be dismall to be heard,

Bandie the newes for rumors of vnthruth:

He liues my Lord, the sweetest youth aliue,

In health, with eyesight, not a hair amisse.

This hart tooke vigor from this froward hand,

Making it weake to execute your charge.

_Iohn._ What, liues he! Then sweete hope come home agen,

Chase hence despaire, the purueyor for hell.

Hye Hubert, tell these tidings to my Lords

That throb in passions for yong Arthurs death:

Hence Hubert, stay not till thou hast reueald

The wished newes of Arthurs happy health.

I go my selfe, the joyfulst man aliue

To storie out this new supposed crime. (_Exeunt._)[46]

The author, though he got from this a suspense which carried his

audience over to the performance of Part II on the next day, missed any

real climax for Part I.

Inexperienced playwrights, in spite of good characterization and

dialogue, frequently do not understand the value and the nature of real

climax. Consequently, an audience feels that any interest it has given

is cheated in the end. The following scenario, though its feebleness can

hardly be traced solely to lack of climax, illustrates what is meant.

THE DEBUTANTE

_Characters_:

_Major Worthington_, an American financier;

_Emil Richter_, a young poet;

_Dr Van Metre_, \ who do "team work" for the hand of _Kitty_.

_Willy Squeam_, /

_Kitty Worthington_, the _debutante_.

_Mme. Cavanaugh King_, a widow, _Kitty's_ aunt.

SCENE: _Den, off the ballroom of Major Worthington's home. Music from

the ballroom is heard intermittently during the action._

DISCOVERED: _A group of guests who chatter and pass out, leaving

Squeam and Van Metre. They talk of the attractions of Kitty, the

debutante, and make a wager as to who will win out. Each agrees to

back the other up in case of failure. They go off as Mrs. King and

Major Worthington enter. She reproves her brother for looking tired

and uninterested on this occasion of his daughter's "coming out."_

_At length, exhausted by his sister's flippancy, he tells her that

they are financially ruined, and that the crash will come on the

morrow. Mrs. King is distracted, but they both brighten as Kitty

enters in a whirl. She is radiantly happy, and hugs one and then the

other, then both. Enter Richter, a stalwart young westerner, who does

not know how to dance. They congratulate him on his little volume of

verses which has just been published. After promising to sit out a

dance with him, Kitty sends him off to talk with Miss Smithkins. He

picks up a rose which Kitty has dropped and goes off with it. Enter

Dr. Van Metre and Squeam. Exeunt Major Worthington and Mrs. King. Van

Metre and Squeam take turns in proposing to Kitty. Enter Mrs. King, to

whom Squeam finds himself making violent love, mistaking her for

Kitty. He starts to bolt, but she lays hold of him, and they go off

together. Kitty and Van Metre go of to dance, she laughing at his

ardent protestations. Enter Major. He takes out a revolver from his

writing desk, and puts it back as some dancers pass through. Enter

Emil, and the two exeunt arm-in-arm. Enter Mrs. King and Kitty. Mrs.

King bluntly tells Kitty their financial straits, and adds that Kitty

must give up any sentimental feelings she has for Richter, and must,

if she gets the chance, accept Van Meter or Squeam on the spot. With

this, she hastily departs, leaving Kitty in tears. The tears turn to

dimples the moment Richter appears, and she tries to shock him into a

dislike for her. Nevertheless, he makes a clumsy effort at proposing

which is interrupted by Van Metre, then Squeam, then both, who insist

on taking her to supper. She dismisses them. (Soft music.) Richter

proposes, and Kitty refuses him, telling him the reason frankly, as

her aunt has just given it to her. He reprimands her for having

mercenary motives, and makes an eloquent plea for the equality of men.

Enraged, she leaves the room, but quickly returns and throws herself

into his arms. Enters Mrs. King hastily, and says they may go right on

embracing, as the Major has just received a telegram stating that he

has won out in a law suit involving millions of dollars' worth of iron

mines. Enter the Major hilarious. Enter Squeam and Van Meter. They

shake hands and declare the wager off. Enter the dancers from a

cotillion figure. They are arrayed in grotesque paper hats and bonnets

and garlands of paper flowers. They circle about Kitty and Richter,

and pelt them with paper flowers. Exeunt. Tableau: Kitty and Richter

looking into firelight._

_Curtain._

Obviously, though some slight suspense has been created as to the

possible solution of Kitty's difficulties, the proposed play goes all to

pieces the moment Mrs. King enters with her news. When an audience knows

that had the dramatist so willed, the fateful telegram might have

arrived at any moment in the play other than the point chosen, it is

likely to vote unanimously that the telegram should have been received

before the curtain was ever rung up. Except in amateur performances

arranged for admiring friends, there is no hope that such a fizzle can

be covered by introducing dancers to make a pretty picture and a

pseudo-climax.

Climax is, then, whatever in action, speech, pantomime, or thought

(whether conveyed or suggested) will produce in an audience the

strongest emotion of the scene, act, or play.

The means to climax range from mere action to quiet speech, from pure

theatricality to lifelike subtlety. The poisoned cup, the fatal duel,

indeed, the general slaughter at the end of _Hamlet_ make a tremendous

climax of action. Mere action, however, does not necessarily give

climax. The writer of the scenario just quoted, missing a real climax,

tried to offset this by the gay dance. Whether a dance, parade, or

tableau is a genuine climax depends on whether it illustrates attainment

of that in regard to which suspense has been created. No mere dance in

costume, no spectacular parade or brilliant tableau is ever an adequate

substitute for a climax which brings to the greatest intensity

emotionalized interest already awakened in an audience. Such climax by

action may, then, be as purely theatrical as in _revues_, much musical

comedy, or pure melodrama, or as simple and true as in Heijermans' _The

Good Hope_. The women, Joe and Kneirtje, are left alone, wild with

anxiety for their fisherman-lover and son. A storm rages outside.

_Jo._ (_Beating her head on the table._) The wind! It drives me mad,

mad!

_Kneirtje._ (_Opens the prayerbook, touches Jo's arm. Jo looks up,

sobbing passionately, sees the prayerbook, shakes her head fiercely.

Again wailing, drops to the floor, which she beats with her hands.

Kneirtje's trembling voice sounds._) O Merciful God! I trust! With a

firm faith, I trust.

(_The wind races with wild lashings about the house._)

_Curtain._[47]

Climax may come through surprise, as the discussion of suspense shows

(pp. 212-214). Such surprise may be theatrical, as in _Home_[48] where

it is obviously an arranged effect, or genuinely dramatic because

justified by the preceding characterization, as in _The Clod_.

(_Mary goes to the cupboard; returns to the table with the salt.

Almost ready to drop, she drags herself to the window nearer back, and

leans against it, watching the Southerners like a hunted animal.

Thaddeus sits nodding in the corner. The Sergeant and Dick go on

devouring food. The Sergeant pours the coffee. Puts his cup to his

lips, takes one swallow; then, jumping to his feet and upsetting his

chair as he does so, he hurls his cup to the floor. The crash of china

stirs Thaddeus. Mary shakes in terror._)

_Sergeant._ (_Bellowing and pointing to the fluid trickling on the

floor._) Have you tried to poison us, you God damn hag?

(_Mary screams, and the faces of the men turn white. It is like the

cry of the animal goaded beyond endurance._)

_Mary._ (_Screeching._) Call my coffee poison, will ye? Call me a hag?

I'll learn ye! I'm a woman, and ye're drivin' me crazy.

(_Snatches the gun from the wall, points it at the Sergeant, and

fires. Keeps on screeching. The Sergeant falls to the floor. Dick

rushes for his gun._)

_Thaddeus._ Mary! Mary!

_Mary._ (_Aiming at Dick, and firing._) I ain't a hag. I'm a woman,

but ye're killin' me.

(_Dick falls just as he reaches his gun. Thaddeus is in the corner

with his hands over his ears. Mary continues to pull the trigger of

the empty gun. The Northerner is motionless for a moment; then he

goes to Thaddeus, and shakes him._)

_Northerner._ Go get my horse, quick!

(_Thaddeus obeys. The Northerner turns to Mary. She gazes at him,

but does not understand a word he says._)

_Northerner._ (_With great fervor._) I'm ashamed of what I said. The

whole country will hear of this, and you.

(_Takes her hand, and presses it to his lips; then turns and hurries

out of the house. Mary still holds the gun in her hand. She pushes a

strand of gray hair back from her face, and begins to pick up the

fragments of the broken coffee cup._)

_Mary._ (_In dead, flat tone._) I'll have to drink out the tin cup

now.

(_The hoof-beats of the Northerner's horse are heard._)

_Curtain._[49]

Note the wholly unexpected turn after the final speech of the

Northerner. Yet this surprise merely rounds out the characterization of

Mary.

This kind of climax by surprise recalls one of the principles in acting

which Joseph Jefferson laid down for himself: "Never anticipate a strong

effect; in fact, lead your audience by your manner, so that they shall

scarcely suspect the character capable of such emotion; then when some

sudden blow has fallen, the terrible shock prepares the audience for a

new and striking phase in the character; they feel that under these new

conditions you would naturally exhibit the passion which till then was

not suspected."[50]

Before the present insistence on reality held sway, it was possible to

close a play of pretended truth to life with a tag. Here is the quiet

ending of _Still Waters Run Deep_ (1855):

_Potter._ My dear boy, you astonish me! But, however, there's an old

proverb that says that "All is not gold that glitters."

_Mildmay._ Yes, and there is another old proverb and one much more to

the purpose that says, "Still waters run deep."

The convention which made that sort of ending desirable has passed.

However, today another convention,--the quiet ending,--might make it

possible to end this same play with the speech just preceding the two

quoted.

_Potter._ John Mildmay the master of this house? Emily, my dear, has

your aunt been--I mean has your aunt lost her wits?

_Mrs. Mildmay._ No, she has found them, papa, as I have done, thanks

to dear John. Ask his pardon, papa, as we have, for the cruel

injustice we have done him.

_Potter._ Oh, certainly, if you desire it. John Mildmay, I ask your

pardon--Jane and Emily say I ought; though what I have done, or what

there is to ask pardon for--

_Mildmay._ Perhaps you'll learn in time. But we're forgetting

dinner--Langford, will you take my wife? (_He does so._) Markham,

you'll take Mrs. Sternhold?[51]

Add to this, "They all go out to dinner," and you have one of the "quiet

endings" dear to the hearts of some recent dramatists. These writers,

after an act has swept to a strong emotional height, add some very quiet

ending such as going out to dinner or the conventional farewells of the

group assembled, as if for some reason either were more artistic than to

close on the moment of strong emotion. This is bad. On the other hand,

if the quiet ending carries characterization, or irony, to point the

scene, act, or play, or really illustrates the meaning, this and not the

absence of strong emotion or physical action is what gives both real

value and genuine climax. For instance, at the end of Act I of _Monsieur

Poirier's Son-in-Law_, by Augier, this is the dialogue:

_Enter a Servant._

_Servant._ Dinner is served.

_Poirier._ (_To the Servant._) Bring up a bottle of 1811 Pomard--(_To

the Duke._) The year of the comet, Monsieur le duc--fifteen francs a

bottle! The king drinks no better. (_Aside to Verdelet._) You mustn't

drink any--neither will I!

_Gaston._ (_To the Duke._) Fifteen francs, bottle to be returned when

empty!

_Verdelet._ (_Aside to Poirier._) Are you going to allow him to make

fun of you like that?

_Poirier._ (_Aside to Verdelet._) In matters of this sort, you must

take your time. (_They all go out._)

_Curtain._[52]

Here it is not the quietude but the particularly apt, humorous

illustration of Poirier's character which gives climax. In _The

Amazons_, too, what could better illustrate acceptance of the usual by

all the group who have been fighting against it than the sedate and

utterly commonplace exeunt?

_Lady Castlejordan._ Lord Tweenwayes--

(_Tweenwayes comes with great dignity to Lady Castlejordan. The girls

fall back._)

_Lady Castlejordan._ Lord Litterly--Lady Noeline. Monsieur de

Grival--Lady Wilhelmina. Mr. Minchin--Lady Thomasin.

(_The couples are formed, and all go out sedately._)[53]

When quiet speech sums up the whole meaning of a scene or play, it too

gives climax. Ann's words at the end of _Man and Superman_, "John you

are still talking," make a fine ironic climax. Irony, whether quiet or

decidedly dramatic, is a very effective means to climax. At the end of

Act II, Herod, in the play of that name by Stephen Phillips, has ordered

Mariamne killed. Completely infatuated by her, he has done this only

when her enemies have forced him to believe that she is utterly false.

Almost instantly his love overwhelms his mistrust. He tries to revoke

his word, crying,

Yet will I not be bound, I will break free,

She shall not die--she shall not die--she shall not--

News of the triumph he has longed for interrupts:

_Enter Attendant._

_Attendant._ O king, the Roman eagles! See!

_A cry._ (_Without._) From Rome!

_Enter Roman Envoy and Suite._

_Envoy._ O king, great Caesar sent us after you,

But, though we posted fast, you still outran us.

Thus then by word of mouth great Caesar greets

Herod his friend. But he would not confine

That friendship to the easy spoken word,

And hear I bear a proof of Caesar's faith.

Herein is added to thy boundaries

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

And high-walled Joppa, and Anthedon's shore,

And Gaza unto these, and Straton's towers. (_Moves down._)

Here is the scroll, with Caesar's own hand signed.

_Herod._ (_Taking the scroll--at foot of steps._) Mariamne, hear you

this? Mariamne, see you? (_Turns to look at scroll._)

(_Servant enters and moves down to Gadias down L._)

(_He goes up the stairs._)

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

And high-walled Joppa, and Anthedon's shore,

And Gaza unto these, and Straton's towers.

_Servant._ (_Aside to Gadias._) O sir, the queen is dead!

_Gadias._ (_Aside to Pheroras, Cypros, and Salome._) The queen is dead!

_Herod._ Mariamne, hear you this? Mariamne, see you?

(_Repeating the words, and going up steps._)

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

And high-walled Joppa, and Anthedon, (_As he moves up._)

And Gaza unto these, and Straton's towers![54]

The perfect climax lies in the irony of the fact that all Herod most

desires as ruler comes to him at just the moment when he has killed the

thing that most he loved.

At the end of Act III of _Chains_, by Elizabeth Baker, everybody--the

father-in-law and mother-in-law, Percy, the brother-in-law, and Sybil, a

pretty but useless bit of femininity--has been making Charlie entirely

miserable because no one can understand that his expressed desire to try

his fortunes in Australia and then send for his wife, Lily, is not a

pretext for abandoning her. Percy, with next to nothing a year, is just

engaged to Sybil. Foster wants to marry Margaret, Charlie's

sister-in-law, who is dissatisfied with her lot.

_Enter Lily, dressed for going out, also Mrs. Massey. Lily goes round,

kissing and shaking hands, with a watery smile and a forced tearful

cheerfulness._

_Charley._ (_Without going all around and calling from the door._)

Good night, all! (_Exeunt Lily and Charley._)

_Mrs. Massey._ Well, I must say--

_Percy._ O, let's drop it, mother. Play something, Maggie.

_Maggie._ I don't want to.

_Mrs. Massey._ Walter would like to hear something, wouldn't

you, Walter?

_Foster._ If Maggie feels like it.

_Maggie._ She doesn't feel like it.

_Massey._ Be as pleasant as you can, my girl--Charley's enough

for one evening.

(_Maggie goes to the piano and sitting down plays noisily, with both

pedals on, the chorus, "Off to Philadelphia."_)

_Mrs. Massey._ Maggie, it's Sunday!

_Maggie._ I forgot!

_Mrs. Massey._ You shouldn't forget such things--Sybil, my

dear--

_Sybil._ I don't play.

_Massey._ Rubbish! Come on!

(_Sybil goes to the piano and Percy follows her._)

_Percy._ (_Very near to Sybil and helping her to find the music._)

Charley is a rotter! What d'ye think he was telling me the other day?

_Sybil._ I don't know.

_Percy._ Told me to be sure I got the right girl.

_Sybil._ Brute!

_Percy._ What do you think I said? Darling!

(_Kisses her behind music._)

_Massey._ (_Looking around._) Take a bigger sheet.

(_Sybil sits at piano quickly and plays the chorus to

"Count Your Many Blessings." To which they all sing:_)

Count your many blessings, count them one by one,

Count your blessings, see what God has done.

Count your blessings, count them one by one,

And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.[55]

Is not the irony of this group of unsatisfied or dissatisfied people

singing "Count your many blessings," fully climactic?

Not quietness of speech or action, then, but appropriateness makes any

of these approved endings climactic and artistic.

There can hardly be any question that the original ending of _Still

Waters Run Deep_ is theatrical in the sense that it is climactic only by

the dramatic convention of its time. Except when theatricality is

intentionally part of the artistic design, it is, of course,

undesirable. Rostand, letting the figures in _The Romancers_ comment on

their own play as a kind of epilogue, has a really artistic though

theatrical climax.

_Sylvette._ (_Summoning the actors about her._) And now we five--if

Master Straforel please--

Let us expound the play in which we've tried to please.

(_She comes down stage and addresses the audience, marking time with

her hand._)

Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light;

Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune. (_Soft music._)

_Bergamin._ A fairy-tale quintet, mad as Midsummer-night.

_Pasquin._ Some quarrels. Yes!--but all so very slight!

_Straforel._ Madness of sunstroke; madness of the moon!

A worthy villain, in his mantle dight.

_Sylvette._ Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light;

Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune.

_Percinet._ A Watteau picture--not by Watteau, quite;

Release from many a dreary Northern rune;

Lovers and fathers; old walls, flowery-bright;

A brave old plot--with music--ending soon.

_Sylvette._ Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light.

(_The stage gradually darkens; the last lines are delivered in

voices that grow fainter as the actors appear to fade away into mist

and darkness._)

_Curtain._[56]

So light the finale, as in London, that the figures fade from sight till

only their voices are faintly heard, and theatricality helps to place

the play as a mere bit of fantasy. On the other hand, there is something

like genuine theatricality at the end of Sudermann's _Fritzschen_. Fritz

is going to his death in a prospective duel with a man who is an

unerring shot. Though the others present suspect or know the truth, his

mother thinks he is going to new and finer fortunes. Isn't the following

the real climax?

_Fritz._ (_Stretching out his hand to her cheerfully._) Dear Ag--(_Looks

into her face, and understands that she knows. Softly, earnestly._)

Farewell, then.

_Agnes._ Farewell, Fritz!

_Fritz._ I love you.

_Agnes._ I shall always love you, Fritz!

_Fritz._ Away, then, Hallerpfort! Au revoir, papa! Au revoir! Revoir!

(_Starts for the door on the right._)

_Frau von Drosse._ Go by the park, boys--there I have you longer in

sight.

_Fritz._ Very well, mamma, we will do it! (_Passes with Hallerpfort

through the door at the centre; on the terrace, he turns with a

cheerful gesture, and calls once more._) Au Revoir! (_His voice is

still audible._) Au revoir!

(_Frau von Drosse throws kisses after him, and waves her

handkerchief, then presses her hand wearily to her heart and sighs

heavily._)[57]

Because the history of the theatre shows that the contained appeal

always moves an audience, Sudermann adds one more touch of misery as

the mother dwells on her dream of the night before:

(_Agnes hurries to her, and leads her to a chair, then goes over to

the Major, who, with heaving breast, is lost in thought._)

_Frau von Drosse._ Thank you, my darling!--Already, I am quite well

again!... God, the boy! How handsome he looked! And so brown and so

healthy.... You see, I saw him exactly like that last night.... No,

that is no illusion! And I told you how the Emperor led him in among

all the generals! And the Emperor said--(_More softly, looking far

away with a beatific smile_.) And the Emperor said--

_Curtain_.[58]

Though a new twist is given our emotions, is not something lost to the

artistry of the play?

If the means to climax be various, the ways in which it may elude a

writer are several. If an audience foresees it, much of the value of

climax, perhaps all, disappears. Bulwer-Lytton, in writing _Money_,

recognized this:

And principally with regard to Act 5 I don't feel easy. The first idea

suggested by you & worked on by me was of course to carry on Evelyn's

trick to the last--& bring in the creditors &c when it is discovered

that he is as rich as ever. I so made Act 5 at first. But ... the

trick was so palpable to the audience that having been carried thro'

Acts 3 & 4, it became stale in Act 5--& the final discovery was much

less comic than you w^d suppose.[59]

If anticipating a climax will impair it for an audience, repetition may

kill it. In the civic masque, _Caliban_,[60] as performed, many of the

historical scenes were introduced in the same way: Ariel asked his

master, Prospero, what he should show him next, and at his bidding

summoned the episode. No variety in phrasing could surmount the monotony

of this. There was consequent loss in suspense and climax.

It is easy, also, to miss possible climax by using more at a given point

than is absolutely necessary. Sometimes it is wiser to postpone part or

all of thoroughly desirable material for later treatment. In the novel,

_Les Oberle_,[61] father and daughter sympathize with the Germans,

mother and son with the old French tradition. In patriarchal fashion,

the half-paralytic grandfather, as head of the house, keeps the keys.

When a young German officer, favored by the daughter, asks her hand,

feeling becomes intense and strained between the parents and the brother

and the sister. Suddenly the old paralytic enters, half-supported by his

attendant. Furious to think of his granddaughter as the wife of a German

he cries, with a superb gesture of dismissal, "Clear out! This is my

house!" (_Va t'en! Ici chez moi!_) The dramatizer saw that with the

accompanying action of all concerned, especially the silent going of the

German suitor, "Ici chez moi" made a sufficient climax. Therefore, with

a touch of real genius, he saved the "Va t'en" for a climax to a totally

different scene. Later in the play, Jean, who has determined to escape

across the French boundary rather than serve longer in the German army,

has been locked in his room by his outraged father. As usual, after the

house has been locked up for the night, the keys have been handed to the

old, half-paralytic grandfather, who lies sleepless in a room near

Jean's. Learning from Uncle Ulrich what has occurred, the grandfather

totters into the living room with his keys. Unlocking Jean's door, with

a fine gesture of affection, and command toward the outer door, he cries

to Jean, "Va." Here the dramatist gets two fine climaxes where the

novelist gained but one.

Sometimes a very effective climax at a given point should be postponed

because it will be even more effective later, and if given the first

position would check preferable movement in the play. At the end of Act

IV of _Magda_ (_Heimat_) by Sudermann, we seem all ready for a scene in

which Magda confesses the truth about her past life to her father.

_Schwartze._ Magda,--I want Magda.

_Marie._ (_Goes to the door and opens it._) She's coming now,--down

the stairs.

_Schwartze._ So! (_Pulls himself together with an effort._)

_Marie._ (_Clasping her hands._) Don't hurt her!

(_Pauses with the door open. Magda is seen descending the stairs. She

enters in travelling dress, hat in hand, very pale but calm._)

_Magda._ I heard you call, father.

_Schwartze._ I have something to say to you.

_Magda._ And I to you.

_Schwartze._ Go in,--into my room.

_Magda._ Yes, father.

(_She goes to the door left. Schwartze follows her. Marie, who has

drawn back frightened to the dining-room, makes an unseen gesture of

entreaty._)[62]

Now, any interview between Magda and her father will both unduly

lengthen an act already long and bring the play well into its final

climax. Stopping the act here creates superb suspense. Starting a new

act under slightly different conditions keeps all the suspense created

by Act IV and intensifies it by new details. The new act gives us the

chance easily to introduce von Keller, who is needed if the play is to

be more than another treatment of the erring daughter confessing her sin

to her father. Just through him comes emphasis which gives special

meaning to the play. Therefore, we gain by postponing the full

confession from the end of Act IV till well toward the end of Act V.

Evidently, climax rests on (a) right feeling for order in presenting

ideas; (b) a correct sense of what is weaker and what is stronger in

phrasing emotions; and (c) just appreciation of the feeling of the

audience toward the emotions presented. For both clearness and climax it

is usually a wise rule to consider but one idea at a time. In the

following illustration, column 1 shows confusion, because three

subjects--the fan, the greeting, and the compliment of Lady

Windermere--are started at the same time. In column 2, quoted from Miss

Anglin's acting version of _Lady Windermere's Fan_, treating each of

these subjects in its natural sequence brings both clearness and climax.

_Parker._ Mrs. Erlynne. _Parker._ Mrs. Erlynne.

(_Lord Windermere starts. (_Lord Windermere starts.

Mrs. Erlynne enters, very Mrs. Erlynne enters, very

beautifully dressed and very beautifully dressed and very

dignified. Lady Windermere dignified. Lady Windermere

clutches at her fan, then clutches at her fan, then

lets it drop on the floor. lets it drop on the floor.

She bows coldly to She bows coldly to

Mrs. Erlynne, who bows Mrs. Erlynne, who bows

to her sweetly in turn, and to her sweetly in turn, and

sails into the room._) sails into the room._)

_Lord Darlington._ You have _Mrs. Erlynne._ (_C._) How do

dropped your fan, Lady you do again, Lord Windermere?

Windermere.

(_Picks it up and hands it _Lord Darlington._ You have

to her_.) dropped your fan, Lady

Windermere.

_Mrs. Erlynne._ (_C._) How do (_Picks it up and hands it

you do again, Lord Windermere? to her._)

How charming your sweet wife

looks! Quite a picture!

_Lord Windermere._ (_In a low _Lord Windermere._ (_In a low

voice._) It was terribly voice._) It was terribly

rash of you to come! rash of you to come!

_Mrs. Erlynne._ (_Smiling._) _Mrs. Erlynne._ (_Smiling._)

The wisest thing I ever did in my The wisest thing I ever did in my

life. And, by the way, you must life. How charming your sweet

pay me a good deal of attention wife looks! Quite a picture! And,

this evening. by the way, you must pay me a

good deal of attention this

evening.[63]

In the next extract, note that omission of "I want to live childless

still" and shifting the position of the words "For twenty years, as you

say, I have lived childless" permit an actress to work up to the

strongest climax of the speech, when spoken, "They made me suffer too

much." Miss Anglin, trained by years of experience to great

sensitiveness to the emotional values of words, has here arranged the

sentences better than the author himself.

_Lord Windermere._ What do _Lord Windermere._ What do

you mean by coming here this you mean by coming here this

morning? What is your object? morning? What is your object?

(_Crossing L.C. and sitting._) _(Crossing L.C. and sitting._)

_Mrs. Erlynne._ (_With a note of _Mrs. Erlynne._ (_With a note of

irony in her voice._) To bid good- irony in her voice._) To bid

bye to my dear daughter, of good-bye to my dear daughter, of

course. (_Lord Windermere bites course. (_Lord Windermere bites

his underlip in anger. Mrs. Erlynne his underlip in anger. Mrs. Erlynne

looks at him, and her voice looks at him, and her voice

and manner become serious. In and manner become serious. In

her accents as she talks there her accents as she talks there

is a note of deep tragedy. For a is a note of deep tragedy. For a

moment she reveals herself._) Oh, moment she reveals herself._) Oh,

don't imagine I am going to have don't imagine I am going to

a pathetic scene with her, weep have a pathetic scene with her,

on her neck and tell her who I weep on her neck and tell her

am, and all that kind of thing. who I am, and all that kind of

I have no ambition to play the thing. I have no ambition to

part of mother. Only once in my play the part of mother. For

life have I known a mother's twenty years, as you say, I have

feelings. That was last night. lived childless. Only once in my

They were terrible--they made life have I known a mother's

me suffer--they made me suffer feelings. That was last night.

too much. For twenty years, They were terrible--they made

as you say, I have lived me suffer--they made me suffer

childless--I want to live too much.[64]

childless still.

When an eighteenth-century manager, in his production of _The School for

Scandal_, had colored fire set off in the wings as the falling screen

revealed Lady Teazle, he failed of his intended effect because he

thought that for his audience the falling of the screen was climactic.

Really, of course, the enjoyment of the audience, as it listens to the

dialogue, knowing that Lady Teazle overhears, is the chief source of

pleasure. It is the dismay of Sir Peter, when he sees who is really

behind the screen, which makes the climax. That dismay is not greater

against a background of red fire. Crowded with action as the end of

_Hamlet_ is, we close it in acting, not on the fatal wounding of Hamlet,

but either on his words, "The rest is silence," or as the soldiers of

Fortinbras march out with Hamlet's body on their shields. Experience has

proved that a stronger climax for an audience lies in those words or in

seeing the procession which passes among the kneeling courtiers,

stronger than from all the noisy emotions which have just preceded. In

brief, except when we feel sure that we have made our feeling as to the

emotions of a scene or act the public's, it is they who must determine

where the climax lies. Where it rests we must in all cases of doubt

decide from our past experience of the public and present observation of

it.

From all these illustrations it must be clear that the only rule for

finding climax is: Understand clearly the audience for which you intend

your play; create in it the sympathetic relation toward your characters

you wish; then you may be sure that what seems to you a climax for your

scene will be so for your audience.

Movement depends, then, on clearness, unity, emphasis, and a right

feeling for suspense and climax. This movement may be steadily upward,

as in the last scene of _Hamlet_, or it may have the wave-like advance

found in Sigurjonsson's _Eyvind of the Hills_[65] or Sir Arthur Pinero's

_The Gay Lord Quex_. The emotional interest in each of these sweeps up

to a pure climax, drops back part way for a fresh start, and then

advances to a stronger climax.

Granted that a would-be playwright understands the proportioning of his

work and the correct development of it for clearness, emphasis and

movement, he is ready to repeat the words of Ibsen: "I have just

completed a play in five acts, that is to say, the rough draft of it.

Now comes the elaboration, the more energetic individualization of the

persons, and their modes of expression."[66] He is ready to perfect his

characterization and dialogue.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Ancient Classical Drama_, chap. VII, "Elements of Comedy."

Moulton. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[2] _The "Choephori" of Aeschylus._ Introduction, p. xvi. A. W.

Verral. The Macmillan Co., New York.

[3] _The Rising of the Moon_, Lady Gregory. _Contemporary

Dramatists_. T. H. Dickinson, ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[4] _Mme. Sans Gene_, Prologue, Scene 1. Sardou and Moreau. Samuel

French, New York.

[5] _Lonely Lives_, Act IV. _The Dramatic Works of Gerhart

Hauptmann_, vol. III, p. 265. Ludwig Lewisohn, ed. B. W. Huebsch, New

York.

[6] _Farces_, "The Galloper," Act I. Richard Harding Davis.

Copyright, 1906, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[7] _The Lonely Way_, etc. _Three Plays by Arthur Schnitzler_.

Translated by E. Bjorkman. Mitchell Kennerley.

[8] _Phaedra_, Act I. Racine. Translated by R. B. Boswell. _Chief

European Dramatists._ Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[9] _Works_, vol. 3. W. Gifford and Dyce. Murray, London.

[10] _The Rehearsal_, Act I. The Duke of Buckingham. Bell's _British

Theatre_, vol. XV. London, 1780.

[11] _The Lady of Andros_, Act I. Terence. Translated by J.

Sargeaunt. The Macmillan Co., New York; W. Heinemann, London.

[12] _The Lady of Andros_, Act III.

[13] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[14] _Theatre Complet_, vol. II. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[15] _Theatre_, vol. II. Michel Levy freres, Paris.

[16] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston.

[17] _Magda_, translated by A. E. A. Winslow. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.,

Boston.

[18] _From Ibsen's Workshop_, pp. 271-272. Translated by A. G.

Chater. Copyright, 1911, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[19] _Idem_, pp. 288-289.

[20] _Ibsen's Prose Dramas_, vol. V, Walter Scott, London; Chas.

Scribner's Sons, New York.

[21] _Letters of Henrik Ibsen_, p. 291. Fox, Duffield & Co., New

York.

[22] _Some Platitudes concerning Drama. Atlantic Monthly_,

December, 1909.

[23] _Othello_, Act III, Scene 3.

[24] _Lady Windermere's Fan_, Act I. Oscar Wilde. J. W. Luce & Co.,

Boston.

[25] Duffield & Co., New York.

[26] _Plays._ G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[27] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[28] _The Trail of the Torch_, Paul Hervieu. Translated by J. H.

Haughton. Drama League Series, vol. XII. Doubleday Page & Co., New

York.

[29] _The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann_, vol. VI,

Introduction, p. xi, Ludwig Lewisohn, ed. B. W. Huebsch, New York.

[30] The Macmillan Co. publish both forms.

[31] _Nathan Hale_, Act IV, Scene 2. Clyde Fitch. Little, Brown &

Co., Boston.

[32] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[33] _Idem._

[34] Pp. 143-45. R. H. Russell, New York. Also published by Walter H.

Baker & Co., Boston.

[35] Act IV, Scene 2. The Macmillan Co.

[36] _Contemporary Dramatists._ Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[37] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

[38] Translated by May Hendee. Doubleday, McClure & Co., New York.

[39] _Plays of Oscar Wilde_, vol. II. J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

[40] _The Fantasticks_, pp. 145-146. Translated by George Fleming. R.

H. Russell, New York.

[41] Samuel French, New York.

[42] _The Devonshire Hamlets_, pp. 34-46. Sampson Low, Son & Co.,

London.

[43] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, LXIII. Brander Matthews,

ed.

[44] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, p. 377. Lessing. Bohn, ed.

[45] _Play-Making_, pp. 171-172. William Archer. Small, Maynard &

Co., Boston.

[46] _The Troublesome Raigne of King Iohn_, pp. 279-280;

_Shakespeare's Library_, vol. V. Reeves & Turner, London.

[47] _The Good Hope_, Act III. Herman Heijermans. _The Drama_,

November, 1912.

[48] See pp. 29-30.

[49] _Washington Square Plays; The Clod._.\ Lewis Beach. Drama League

Series, No. XX. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[50] _The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson_, pp. 210-211. Century

Co., New York.

[51] The DeWitt Publishing House, New York.

[52] _Monsieur Poirier's Son-in-Law_, Act I. Emile Augier. Translated

by B. H. Clark. A. Knopf, New York.

[53] _The Amazons_, Act III. Sir Arthur Pinero. Walter H. Baker &

Co., Boston.

[54] _Herod, A Tragedy_, Act. II. Stephen Phillips. John Lane, New

York.

[55] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

[56] _The Fantasticks_, Act III. Edmond Rostand. Translated by Geo.

Fleming. R. H. Russell & Co., New York.

[57] _Morituri, Fritzshen_, Herman-Sudermann. Translated by Archibald

Alexander. Copyright, 1910, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[58] _Idem._

[59] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, Brander Matthews, ed.

[60] Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[61] _Les Oberle._ Rene Bazin. Dramatized by E. Haraucourt.

L'Illustration Theatrale, December 9, 1905, p. 14.

[62] _Magda._ Translated by C. E. A. Winslow. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.,

Boston.

[63] _Lady Windermere's Fan_, Act II. Oscar Wilde. Acting version as

arranged by Miss Margaret Anglin.

[64] _Idem_, Act IV. Acting version as arranged by Miss Margaret

Anglin.

[65] _Eyvind of the Hills_, J. Sigurjonsson. American Scandinavian

Society, New York.

[66] _From Ibsen's Workshop_, p. 8. Copyright, 1911, by Chas.

Scribner's Sons, New York.

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERIZATION

In drama, undoubtedly the strongest immediate appeal to the general

public is action. Yet if a dramatist is to communicate with his audience

as he wishes, command of dialogue is indispensable. The permanent value

of a play, however, rests on its characterization. Characterization

focuses attention. It is the chief means of creating in an audience

sympathy for the subject or the people of the play. "A Lord," "A Page,"

in a pre-Shakespearean play usually was merely a speaker of lines and

little, if at all, characterized. When Robert Greene or his

contemporaries adapted such sources for their stage, with sure instinct

for creating a greater interest in their public, they changed these

prefixes to "Eustace," "Jacques," "Nano," etc. Merely changing the name

from type to individual called for individualization of character and

usually brought it. Indeed, in drama, individualization is always the

sign of developing art. In any country, the history of modern drama is a

passing, under the influence of the audience, from abstractions and

personifications, through type, to individualized character. In the

Trope, cited p. 17, one Mary cannot be distinguished from another. In a

later form it is not a particular unguent seller who meets the Maries on

the way to the tomb, but a type,--Unguent Seller. When a writer of a

Miracle Play first departed a little from the exact actions and dialogue

of the Bible, it was to add abstractions--Justice, Virtue, etc.--or

types: soldiers, shepherds, etc. From these he moved quickly or slowly,

as he was more or less endowed dramatically, to figures individualized

from types, such as the well-characterized shepherds of the Second

Towneley Play. The Morality illustrates this same evolution even more

clearly. Beginning with the pure abstractions of _Mundus et Infans_ or

_Mankind_ it passes through type characterization in _Lusty Juventus_ or

_Hyckescorner_ to as well individualized figures as Delilah and Ishmael

in _The Nice Wanton_.[1] Abstractions permit an author to say what he

pleases with the least possible thought for characterization. Type

presents characteristics so marked that even the unobservant cannot have

failed to discern them in their fellow men. Individualization

differentiates within the types, running from broad distinctions to

presentation of very subtle differences. Because individualization moves

from the known to the less known or the unknown, it is harder for an

audience to follow than type characterization, and far more difficult to

write. However, he who cannot individualize character must keep to the

broader kinds of melodrama and farce, and above all to that last asylum

of time-honored types--musical comedy.

Fundamentally, type characterization rests on a false premise, namely,

that every human being may be adequately represented by some dominant

characteristic or small group of closely related characteristics. All

the better recent drama emphasizes the comic or tragic conflict in human

beings caused by many contradictory impulses and ideas, some mutually

exclusive, some negativing others to a considerable extent, some

apparently dormant for a time, yet ready to spring into great activity

at unforeseen moments. Ben Jonson carried the false idea to an extreme

when he wrote of his "humour" comedies:

In every human body,

The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,

By reason that they flow continually

In some one part and are not continent,

Receive the name of humours. Now thus far

It may, by metaphor, apply itself

Unto the general disposition:

As when some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man that it doth draw

All his affects, his spirits and his powers,

In his confluctions, all to run one way,

This may be truly said to be a humour.[2]

Were Ben Jonson's physiology sound, we should have, not occasional

cranks and neurotics as now, but a race of nothing else. Today modern

medical science has proved the bad physiology of his words, and

dramatists have followed its lead.

What gave the type drama its great hold, in the Latin comedy of Plautus

and Terence, in Ben Jonson and other Elizabethans, what keeps it alive

today in the less artistic forms--broad farce, pure melodrama--is

fourfold. Type characterization, exhibiting a figure wholly in one

aspect, or through a small group of closely related characteristics, is

easy to understand. Secondly, it is both easy to create, and, as Ben

Jonson's great following between 1605 and 1750 proves, even easier to

imitate. Thirdly, farce and melodrama, indeed all drama depending

predominantly on mere situation, may succeed, though lacking

individualization of character, with any audience which, like the Roman

or the Elizabethan, gladly hears the same stories or sees the same

figures handled differently by different writers. Much in the plays of

Reade, Tom Taylor, and Bulwer-Lytton[3] which passed, in the

mid-nineteenth century, for real life, depending as it did on a

characterization which barely rose above type, was only thinly disguised

melodrama. The recent increasing response of the public to better

characterization in both farce and melodrama has tended to lift the

former into comedy, the latter into story-play and tragedy. Just here

appears a fourth reason for the popularity of characterization by types.

Though entertaining plays may be presented successfully with type

characterization only, no dramatist with inborn or acquired ability to

characterize, can hold consistently to types. Observation,

interpretative insight, or a flash of sympathy will advance him now and

again, as Jonson was advanced more than once, to real individualization

of character. Contrast the thoroughly real Subtle, Face, and Doll of

_The Alchemist_[4] with the types, Ananias and Sir Epicure Mammon;

contrast the masterly, if very brief, characterization of Ursula in

_Bartholomew Fair_[5] with the mere type of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. An

uncritical audience responding to the best characterization in a play,

overlooks the merely typical quality of the other figures. That is, the

long vogue of types upon the stage rests upon ease of comprehension,

entire adequacy for some crude dramatic forms, ease of imitation, and a

constant tendency in a dramatist of ability to rise to higher levels of

characterization. Now that we are more and more dissatisfied with types

in plays making any claim to realism, the keen distinction first laid

down by Mr. William Archer in his _Play-Making_ becomes essential. If

type presents a single characteristic or group of intimately related

characteristics, "character drawing is the presentment of human nature

in its commonly recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology

is, as it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto

unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and

comprehension."[6] Mr. Galsworthy in _The Silver Box_ and _Justice_ Mr.

Archer regards as a drawer of character; in _Strife_[7] as a

psychologist. He holds Sir Arthur Pinero a characterizer of great

versatility who becomes a psychologist in some of his studies of

feminine types--in Iris, in Letty, in the heroine of _Mid-Channel_.[8 ]

By this distinction, most good drama shows character drawing; only the

great work, psychology.

Drama which does not rise above interest in its action rests, as has

been said, on the idea that most people are simple, uncomplicated, and

easy to understand. Great drama depends on a firm grasp and sure

presentation of complicated character, but of course a dramatist has a

perfect right to say that, though he knows his hero--Cyrano de Bergerac,

for instance--may have had many characteristics, it is enough for the

purpose of his play to represent the vanity, the audacity, and the

underlying tenderness of the man. It is undeniable, too, that particular

characteristics of ours may be so strong that other characteristics will

not prevent them from taking us into sufficient dramatic complications

to make a good play. In such a case, the dramatist who is not primarily

writing for characterization will present the characteristics creating

his desired situations, and let all others go. Conversely, he who cares

most for characterization will try so to present even minor qualities

that the perfect portrait of an individual will be recognized. Often,

however, the happenings of a play may seem to an audience incompatible,

that is, the character in one place may seem to contradict himself as

presented elsewhere. Just here is where the psychologist in the

dramatist, stepping to the front, must convince his audience that there

is only a seeming contradiction. Otherwise, the play falls promptly to

the level of simple melodrama or farce. That is, the character-drawer

paints his portrait, knowing that, if it is well done, its life-likeness

will at once be recognized. The psychologist, knowing that the

life-likeness will not be readily admitted, by illustrative action

throws light on his character till his point is won. Our final judgment

of characterization must depend on whether the author is obviously

trying to present a completely rounded figure or only chosen aspects.

Thus the old statement, "Know thyself," becomes for the dramatist "Know

your characters as intimately as possible." Too many beginners in

play-writing who care more for situation than for character, sketch in a

figure with the idea that they may safely leave it to the actor to "fill

out the part." When brought to book they say: "I felt sure the actor in

his larger experience, catching my idea--you do think it was clearly

stated, don't you?--would fill it out perfectly, and be glad of the

freedom." Were modesty the real basis for this kind of work, there might

be good in it; but what really lies behind it are two great foes of good

dramatic writing: haste or incompetence. The interest and the delight of

a dramatist in studying people should lie in accurate conveying to

others of their contradictions, their deterioration or growth as time

passes, the outcropping of characteristics in them for which our

observation has not prepared us. Nobody who really cares for

characterization wants somebody else to do it for him. Nobody who has

really entered into his characters thoroughly will for a moment be

satisfied to sketch broad outlines and let the actor fill in details.

Rarely, however, does the self-deceived author of such slovenly work

deceive his audience. It meets at their hands the condemnation it

deserves. Such an author assumes that in all the parts of his play,

actors of marked ability and keen intelligence will be cast. Only in the

rarest cases does that happen. Many actors may not see the full

significance of the outlines. Others, whether they see them or not, will

develop a character so as to get as swiftly as possible effects not

intended by the author but for which they, as actors, are specially

famous. Such a playwright must, then, contend, except in specially

fortunate circumstances, against possible dullness, indifference, and

distortion. It is the merest common sense so to present characters that

a cast of average ability, or a stage manager of no extraordinary

imagination may understand and represent them with at least approximate

correctness, rather than so to write that only a group of creative

artists can do any justice to the play. Clear and definitive

characterization never hampers the best actors: for actors not the best

it is absolutely necessary unless intended values are to be blurred.

It frequently happens that a writer whose dialogue is good and who has

enough dramatic situations finds himself unable to push ahead. He knows

broadly what he wants a scene to be, but somehow cannot make his

characters move freely and naturally in it. Above all, the minor

transitional scenes prove strangely difficult to write. Of course a

scene or act may be thus clogged because the writer is mentally fagged.

If, when a writer certainly is not tired, or when, after rest, he cannot

with two or three sustained attempts develop a scene, the difficulty is

not far to seek. In real life do we surely find out about people at our

first, second, or even third meeting? Only if the people are of the

simplest and most self-revelatory kind. The difficulty in these clogged

scenes usually is that the author is treating the situation as if it

were not the creation of the people in it, and as if a skilful writer

could force any group of people into any situation. As Mr. Galsworthy

has pointed out, "character is situation."[9] The latter exists because

someone is what he is and so has inner conflict, or clashes with

another person, or with his environment. Change his character a little

and the situation must change. Involve more people in it, and

immediately their very presence, affecting the people originally in the

scene, will change the situation. In the left-hand column of what

follows, the Queen, though she has one speech, in no way affects the

scene: the situation is treated for itself, and barely. In the

right-hand column, the Queen becomes an individual whose presence

affects the speeches of the King and Hamlet. Because she is what she is,

Hamlet addresses to her some of the lines which in the first version he

spoke to the King: result, a scene far more effective emotionally.

_King._ And now princely _King._ But now my Cosin Hamlet,

Sonne Hamlet, and my sonne.

What meanes these sad and

melancholy moodes? _Ham._ A little more than kin,

For your intent going to and lesse then kind.

Wittenberg,

Wee hold it most unmeet and _King._ How is it that the

unconvenient, clowdes still hang on you.

Being the Joy and halfe heart _Ham._ Not so much my Lord, I am

of your mother. too much in the sonne.

Therefore let mee intreat you

stay in Court, _Queene._ Good Hamlet cast thy

All Denmarkes hope our coosin nighted colour off

and dearest Soone And let thine eye looke like a

friend on Denmarke,

Doe not forever with thy vailed

lids

Seeke for thy noble Father in

the dust,

Thou know'st 'tis common all

that lives must die,

Passing through nature to

eternitie.

_Ham._ I Maddam, it is common.

_Quee._ If it be

Why seemes it so perticuler

with thee.

_Ham._ Seemes Maddam, nay

it is, I know not seemes,

_Ham._ My lord, 'tis not Tis not alone my incky cloake

the sable sute I weare: coold mother

No nor the teares that still Nor customary suites of solembe

stand in my eyes, blacke

Nor the distracted haviour in Nor windie suspiration of forst

the visage, breath

Nor all together mixt with No, nor the fruitfull river in

outward semblance, the eye,

Is equall to the sorrow of my Nor the dejected havior of the

heart, visage

Him have I lost I must of force Together with all formes moodes,

forgoe, chapes of griefe

These but the ornaments and That can denote me truely, these

sutes of woe. indeede seeme,

For they are actions that a man

might play

But I have that within which

passes showe

These but the trappings and the

suites of woe.

_King._ This shewes a loving _King._ Tis sweete and

care in you, Sonne Hamlet, commendable in your nature

But you must thinke your father Hamlet,

lost a father, To give these mourning duties

That father dead, lost his, and to your father,

so shalbe untill the But you must knowe your

Generall ending. Therefore father lost a father,

cease laments, That father lost, lost his, and

It is a fault gainst heaven, the surviver bound

fault gainst the dead, In fillial obligation for some

A fault gainst nature, and tearme

in reasons To do obsequious sorrowe, but

Common course most certaine, to persever

None lives on earth, but hee In obstinate condolement, is a

is borne to die. course

Of impious stubbornes ... etc.

_Que._ Let not thy mother _Quee._ Let not thy mother

loose her praiers Hamlet, loose her prayers Hamlet,

Stay here with us, go not to I pray thee stay with us, goe

Wittenberg. not to Wittenberg

_Ham._ I shall in all my best _Ham._ I shall in all my best

obay you madam. obay you madam.[10]

Inexperienced dramatists too often forget that a character who is simply

one of several in a scene may not act as he would alone.

Mr. Macready's Bentevole is very fine in its kind. It is natural,

easy, and forcible. Indeed, we suspect some parts of it were too

natural, that is, that Mr. Macready thought too much of what his

feelings might dictate in such circumstances, rather than of what the

circumstances must have dictated to him to do. We allude particularly

to the half significant, half hysterical laugh and distorted jocular

leer, with his eyes towards the persons accusing him of the murder,

when the evidence of his guilt comes out. Either the author did not

intend him to behave in this manner, or he must have made the other

parties on the stage interrupt him as a self-convicted criminal.[11]

Stevenson clearly recognized this truth:

I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my

Braxfield story. Braxfield--only his name is Hermiston--has a son who

is condemned to death; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about

this; and I meant he was to hang. But now, on considering my minor

characters, I saw there were five people who would--in a sense who

must--break prison and attempt his rescue. They are capable, hardy

folks, too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not, then?

Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be

happy if he could with his--But soft! I will betray my secret or my

heroine.[12]

When a scene clogs, don't hold the pen waiting for the impulse to write:

don't try to write at all. Study the situation, not for itself, but for

the people in it. "The Dramatist who depends his characters to his

plot," says Mr. Galsworthy, worthy, "instead of his plot to his

characters, ought himself to be depended."[13] If a thorough knowledge

of the characters in the particular situation does not bring a solution,

study them as the scene relates itself to what must precede in

characterization. More than once a dramatist has found that he could not

compose some scene satisfactorily till he had written carefully the

previous history of the important character or characters. The detailed

knowledge thus gained revealed whether or not the characters could enter

the desired situation, and if so, how. Pailleron, author of _Le Monde ou

l'on s'ennuie_ declared that, in his early drafts, he always had three

or four times the material in regard to his _dramatis personae_

ultimately used by him.

Intimate knowledge of his characters is the only safe foundation for the

ambitious playwright. It is well-nigh useless to ask managers and actors

to pass finally on a mere statement of a situation or group of

situations, without characterization. All they can say is: "Bring me

this again as an amplified scenario, or a play, which shows me to what

extent the people you have in mind give freshness of interest to this

story, which has been used again and again in the drama of different

nations, and I will tell you what I will do for you." Reduce any

dramatic masterpiece to simple statement of its plot and the story will

seem so trite as hardly to be worth dramatization. For instance: a man

of jealous nature, passionately in love with his young wife, is made by

the lies and trickery of a friend to believe that his wife has been

intriguing with another of his friends. The fact is that the calumniator

slanders because he thinks his abilities have not been properly

recognized by the husband and he has been repulsed by the wife. In a

fury of jealousy the husband kills his innocent wife and then himself.

That might be recognized as the story of any one of fifty French,

German, Italian, English, or American plays of the last hundred years.

It is, of course, the story of _Othello_--a masterpiece because

Shakespeare knew Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio so intimately that

by their interplay of character upon character they shape every scene

perfectly. In other words, though a striking dramatic situation is

undoubtedly dramatic treasure trove, whether it can be developed into

anything fresh and contributive depends on a careful study of the people

involved. What must they be to give rise to such a situation--not each

by himself, but when brought together under the conditions of the scene?

Even if a writer knows this, he must work backward into the earlier

history of his people before he can either move through the particular

scene or go forward into other scenes which should properly result from

it.

Far too often plays are planned in this way. A writer thinks of some

setting that will permit him a large amount of local color--a barroom, a

dance hall, the wharf of an incoming ocean liner. Recognizing or not

that most of this local color is unessential to the real action of the

play, he does see that one or two incidents which are necessary and

striking may be set against this background. Knowing broadly, how he

wants to treat the scene, instead of studying the main and minor

characters in it till he knows them so intimately that he can select

from a larger amount of material than he can possibly use, he moves, not

where the characters lead him, but whither, _vi et armis_, he can drive

them. Rarely to him will come the delightful dilemma, so commonly

experienced by the dramatist who really cares for character, when he

must choose between what he was going to do and the scene as developed

by the creatures of his imagination who, as they become real, take the

scene away from him and shape it to vastly richer results.[14] When the

dramatist interested only in situation shapes the acts preceding his

most important scene, he searches simply for conditions of character

which will permit this important scene to follow. Result: earlier acts,

largely of exposition and talk, or of illustrative action slight and

unconvincing because characters forced into a crucial situation can

hardly reveal how they brought themselves to it. There is no middle way

for the dramatist who seeks truth in characterization. Given a

situation, either it must grow naturally out of the characters in it, or

the people originally in the mind of the author must be remodeled till

they fit naturally into the situation. In the latter case, all that

precedes and follows the central situation must be re-worked, not as the

dramatist may wish, but as the remodeled characters permit. A critic met

a well-known dramatist on the Strand. The dramatist looked worried.

"What's the matter," queried the critic, "anything gone wrong?" "Yes.

You remember the play I told you about, and that splendid situation for

my heroine?" "Yes. Well?" "Well! She won't go into it, confound her, do

the best I can." "Why make her?" "Why? Because if I don't there's an end

to that splendid situation." "Well?" "Oh, that's just why I'm bothered.

I don't want to give in, I don't want to lose that situation; but she's

right, of course she's right, and the trouble is I know I've got to

yield."

At first sight the problem may seem different in an historical play, for

here a writer is not creating incident but is often baffled by the

amount of material from which he must select,--happenings that seem

equally dramatic, speeches that cry out to be transferred to the stage,

and delightful bits of illustrative action. Yet, whether his underlying

purpose is to convey an idea, depict a character, or tell a story, how

can he decide which bits among his material make the best illustrative

action before he has minutely studied the important figures? Above all

others, the dramatist working with history is subject to the principles

of characterization already laid down. Lessing stated the whole case

succinctly:

Only if he chooses other and even opposed characters to the

historical, he should refrain from using historical names, and rather

credit totally unknown personages with well-known facts than invent

characters to well-known personages. The one mode enlarges our

knowledge or seems to enlarge it and is thus agreeable. The other

contradicts the knowledge that we already possess and is thus

unpleasant. We regard the facts as something accidental, as something

that may be common to many persons; the characters we regard as

something individual and intrinsic. The poet may take any liberties he

likes with the former so long as he does not put the facts into

contradiction with the characters; the characters he may place in full

light but he may not change them, the smallest change seems to destroy

their individuality and to substitute in their place other persons,

false persons, who have usurped strange names and pretend to be what

they are not.[15]

There is, however, a contrasting danger to insufficient

characterization. Any one profoundly interested in character may easily

fill a scene with delicate touches which nevertheless swell the play to

undue length. When careful examination of a play which is too long makes

obvious that no act or scene can be spared in whole or in part, and that

the dialogue is nowhere wordy or redundant, watch the best characterized

scenes to discover whether something has not been conveyed by two

strokes rather than one. If so, choose the better. Watch the scenes also

lest delicate and sure touches of characterization may have been

included which, delightful though they be, are not absolutely necessary

to our understanding of the character. If so, select what most swiftly

yet clearly gives the needed information. Over-detail in

characterization is the reason why certain modern plays have sagged, or

hitched their way to a conclusion, instead of producing the effect

desired by the author.

For ultimate convincingness no play can rise above the level of its

characterization. The playwright who works for only momentary success

may doubtless depend upon the onward rush of events, in a play of strong

emotion, to blind his audience to lack of motivation in his characters.

John Fletcher is the great leader of these opportunists of the theatre.

Evadne, in _The Maid's Tragedy_,[16] killing the King, is a very

different woman from the Evadne who gladly became his mistress. Nor are

the reproaches and exhortations of her brother Melantius powerful enough

to change a woman of her character so swiftly and completely. An

audience, absorbed in the emotion of the moment, may overlook such

faults of characterization in the theatre. As it reviews the play in

calmer mood, however, it ranks it, no matter how poetic as a whole or

how well characterized in particular scenes, not as a drama which

interprets life, but as mere entertainment. Even perfect

characterization of some figures, when the chief are mere puppets,

cannot make us accept the play as more than pure fiction. In Thomas

Heywood's _A Woman Killed with Kindness_ and _English Traveler_,[17] if

the erring wives and their lovers were only as well characterized as the

fine-spirited husbands, the servants, and youths like Young Geraldine,

the plays might hold the stage today. Doubtless the actor's art in the

days of Elizabeth and James gave to villains like Wendoll and women like

Mrs. Frankford enough verisimilitude to make the plays far more

convincing than they are in the reading. But try as we may, we cannot

understand from the text either of these characters. Their motivation is

totally inadequate; that is, their conduct seems not to grow out of

their characters. Rather, they are the creatures of any situation into

which the dramatist wishes to thrust them.

This need of motivation may be fundamental, that is, the characters may

seem to an audience unconvincing from the start; or may be evident in

some insufficiently explained change, transition in character; or may

appear only in the last scene of the play, where characters hitherto

consistent are made to act in a way which seems to the audience

improbable. When Nathaniel Rowe produced his _Ambitious Stepmother_ in

1700, Charles Gildon bitterly attacked it as unconvincing in its very

fundamentals.

_Mirza_ is indeed a Person of a peculiar Taste; for a Cunning Man to

own himself a Rogue to the Man he shou'd keep in ignorance, and whom

he was to work to his ends, argues little pretence to that Name; but

he laughs at _Honesty_, and professes himself a Knave to one he wou'd

have honest to him....

In the second Act, he talks of _Memnon's_ having recourse to Arms, of

which Power we have not the least Word in the first: All that we know

is, that he returns from Banishment on a day of Jubilee, when all was

Safe and Free....[18]

For similar reasons, Mr. Eaton criticises unfavorably _The Fighting

Hope_:

One of the best (or the worst) examples of false ethics in such a play

is furnished by _The Fighting Hope_, produced by Mr. Belasco in the

Autumn of 1908, and acted by Miss Blanche Bates. In this play a man,

Granger, has been jailed, his wife and the world believe for another

man's crime. The other man, Burton Temple, is president of the bank

Granger has been convicted of robbing. A district attorney, hot after

men higher up, is about to reopen the case. It begins to look bad for

Temple. Mrs. Granger, disguised as a stenographer, goes to his house

to secure evidence against him. What she secures is a letter proving

that not he, but her husband, was after all the criminal.

Of course this letter is a knockout blow for her. She realizes that

the "father of her boys" is a thief, that the man she would send to

jail (and with whom you know the dramatist is going to make her

finally fall in love) is innocent. Still, in her first shock, her

instinct to protect the "father of her boys" persists, and she burns

the letter.

So far, so good, but Mrs. Granger is represented as a woman of fine

instincts and character. That she should persist in cooler blood in

her false and immoral supposition that her boys' name will be

protected or their happiness preserved--to say nothing of her own--by

the guilt of two parents instead of one, is hard to believe. Yet that

is exactly what the play asks you to believe, and it asks you to

assume that here is a true dilemma. A babbling old housekeeper, whose

chief use in the house seems to be to help the plot along, after the

manner of stage servants, tells Mrs. Granger that she must not atone

for her act by giving honest testimony in court, that of course she

must let an innocent man go to jail, to "save her boys' name."

It would be much more sensible should Mrs. Granger here strike the

immoral old lady, instead of saving her blows for her cur of a

husband, in the last act, who, after all, was the "father of her

boys." But she listens to her. She appears actually in doubt not only

as to which course she will pursue, but which she should pursue. She

is intended by the dramatist as a pitiable object because on the one

hand she feels it right to save an innocent man (whom she has begun to

love), and on the other feels it her duty to save her sons' happiness

by building their future on a structure of lies and deceit. And she

reaches a solution, not by reasoning the tangle out, not by any real

thought for her boys, their general moral welfare, not by any

attention to principles, but simply by discovering that her husband

has been sexually unfaithful to her. Further, he becomes a cad and

charges her with infidelity. Then she springs upon him and beats him

with her fists, which is not the most effective way of convincing an

audience that she was a woman capable of being torn by moral problems.

Of course as the play is written, there is no moral problem. The

morality is all of the theatre. It belongs to that strange world

behind the proscenium, wherein we gaze, and gazing sometimes utter

chatter about "strong situations," "stirring climaxes," and the like,

as people hypnotized. There might have been a moral problem if Mrs.

Granger, before she discovered her husband's guilt, had been forced to

fight a rising tide of passion for Temple in her own heart. There

might have been a moral problem after the discovery and her first

hasty, but natural, destruction of the letter, if she had felt that

her desire to save Temple was prompted by a passion still illicit,

rather than by justice. But no such real problems were presented. The

lady babbles eternally of "saving her boys' good name," while you are

supposed to weep for her plight. Unless you have checked your sense of

reality in the cloak room, you scorn her perceptions and despise her

standards. How much finer had she continued to love her husband! But

he, after all, was only the "father of her boys."[19]

It is insufficiently motivated characterization which Mr. Eaton censures

in _The Nigger_:

Obviously, the emotional interest in this play is--or should be,

rather--in the tragedy of the proud, ambitious Morrow, who wakes

suddenly to find himself a "nigger," an exile from his home, and

hopes, from his sweetheart and his dreams. Yet, as Mr. Sheldon has

written it, and as it was played by Mr. Guy Bates Post in the part of

Morrow, and by the other actors, the play is most poignant in its

moments of sheer theatrical appeal, almost of melodrama, such as the

suspense of the cross-examination of the old mammy and her cry of

revelation, or the pursuit of the fugitive in act one. Between his

interest in the suspense of his story and in the elucidation of the

broader aspects of the negro question in the South, Mr. Sheldon

neglected too much his chief figure, as a human being. Unless the

figures live and suffer for the audience, unless their personal fate

is followed, their minds and hearts felt as real, the naturalistic

drama of contemporary life can have but little value, after all. That

is what makes its technique so difficult and so baffling. From the

moment when Morrow learned of his birth, he became a rather nebulous

figure, not suffering so much as listening to theories which were only

said by the dramatist to have altered his character and point of

view.[20]

Perhaps it would be more strictly accurate to say that the comment on

_The Nigger_ points to inadequate treatment of character changing as the

play progresses. The favorite place of many so-called dramatists for a

change of character is in their vast silences between the acts. There,

the authors expect us to believe that marked and necessary changes take

place. They show us in clear-cut dramatic action the good character

before he became bad and after he has become bad, but for proof that the

changes took place, we must look off stage in the _entr'acte_. Read

_Lady Bountiful_ and note that between the last and the next to the last

acts large changes have taken place in the main characters. _Iris_ would

be a far greater play than it is could we have seen how its central

figure passes from the taking of the check book to the state of mind

which makes her accept Maldonado's apartment. Contrast with these plays

the thoroughly motivated change in the Sergeant of _The Rising of the

Moon_ or of Nora in _A Doll's House_.

Where American plays too frequently break down is in what may be called

the logic of character. Even when actions have been properly motivated

up to the last act or scene, this is handled in such a way as rather to

please the audience than to grow inevitably out of what has preceded.

Rumor has it that when _Secret Service_ was produced in one of the

central cities of New York State, the hero at the end chose his country

rather than the girl. The public, with that fine disregard in the

theatre for the values it places on action outside, disapproved.

Promptly, the ending was so changed that the two lovers could be started

on that sure road to happiness ever after which all men know an

engagement is--upon the stage. In a play such as _Secret Service_,

planned primarily to entertain, such a shift may be pardonable, but even

in such a case it must be done with skill if it is not to jar. _The Two

Gentlemen of Verona_ in some fifty lines at its close shows Proteus

madly in love with Silvia, and Valentine longing for her also; Valentine

threatening the life of Proteus when he discovers the latter's perfidy,

but forgiving him instantly when Proteus merely asks pardon; and

Proteus, when he discovers that the page who has been following him is

Julia, turning instantly away from Silvia to her. Here is faulty

characterization in two respects: each change is not sufficiently

motived; each does not accord with the characterization of Proteus and

Valentine in the earlier scenes.

_Proteus._ Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words

Can no way change you to a milder form,

I'll woo you like a soldier, at arms' end,

And love you 'gainst the nature of love,--force ye.

_Silvia._ O heaven!

_Pro._ I'll force thee yield to my desire.

_Valentine._ Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch,

Thou friend of an ill fashion!

_Pro._ Valentine!

_Val._ Thou common friend, that's without faith or love,

For such is a friend now! Treacherous man,

Thou hast beguil'd my hopes! Nought but mine eye

Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say

I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me.

Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand

Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,

I am sorry I must never trust thee more,

But count the world a stranger for thy sake.

The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst,

'Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!

_Pro._ My shame and guilt confounds me.

Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrow

Be a sufficient ransom for offence,

I tender't here; I do as truly suffer

As e'er I did commit.

_Val._ Then I am paid;

And once again I do receive thee honest.

Who by repentance is not satisfied

Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas'd.

By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeas'd;

And, that my love may appear plain and free,

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

_Julia._ O me unhappy! (_Swoons._)

_Pro._ Look to the boy.

_Val._ Why, boy! why, wag! how now! What's the matter? Look up; speak.

_Jul._ O good sir, my master charg'd me to deliver a ring to

Madame Silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done.

_Pro._ Where is that ring, boy?

_Jul._ Here 'tis; this is it.

_Pro._ How? let me see!

Why this is the ring I gave to Julia.

_Jul._ O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook;

_Pro._ But how cam'st thou by this ring? At my depart

I gave this unto Julia.

_Jul._ And Julia herself did give it me;

And Julia herself hath brought it hither.

_Pro._ How! Julia!

_Jul._ Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,

And entertain'd 'em deeply in her heart.

How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!

O Proteus let this habit make thee blush!

Be thou asham'd that I have took upon me

Such an immodest raiment, if shame live

In a disguise of love.

It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,

Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

_Pro._ Than men their minds! 'tis true. O heaven! were man

But constant, he were perfect. That one error

Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.

Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.

What is Silvia's face, but I may spy

More fresh in Julia's with a constant eye?

_Vol._ Come, come, a hand from either.

Let me be blest to make this happy close;

'Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.

_Pro._ Bear witness, Heaven, I have my wish for ever.

_Jul._ And I mine.

Similar inconsistencies are in many modern plays. A dramatist has a

particularly striking scene which he wishes to make the climax of his

play. Into it he forces his figures regardless. Lessing made fun of this

fault.

... In another still worse tragedy where one of the principal

characters died quite casually, a spectator asked his neighbor, "But

what did she die of?"--"Of what? Of the fifth act," was the reply. In

very truth the fifth act is an ugly evil disease that carries off many

a one to whom the first four acts promised a longer life.[21]

Or it may be, as in the case of Shakespeare just cited, that a dramatist

feels certain changes of character are necessary if the play is to end

as promptly as it must. Such changes, therefore, he brings about even if

it means throwing character or truth to the winds. English and American

plays of the 1880 and 1890 periods show many instances of theatrically

effective endings either forced upon the characters or only one of

several possible endings--and not the most probable. According to the

conventions of the time, any young woman who had parted with her virtue,

no matter what the circumstances, must make reparation by death. This

usually came from some wasting but not clearly diagnosed disease. There

was not always a clear distinction between inanition and inanity. A

similar convention usually saved from death the male partners of these

"faults," provided they indulged at the right moment in self-repentant

speeches. Sir Arthur Pinero, writing what he regarded as the logical

ending of _The Profligate_, was forced by the sentimentality of his

public to keep Dunstan Renshaw alive. Here are the two endings:

THE ENDING AS ACTED

_Dunstan._ (_He is raising the glass to his lips when he recoils with

a cry of horror._) Ah! stop, stop! This is the deepest sin of all my

life--blacker than that sin for which I suffer! No, I'll not! I'll

not! (_He dashes the glass to the ground._) God, take my wretched life

when You will, but till You lay Your hand upon me, I will live on!

Help me! Give me strength to live on! Help me! Oh, help me!

(_He falls on his knees and buries his face in his hands. Leslie

enters softly, carrying a lamp which she places on the sideboard; then

she goes to Dunstan._)

_Leslie._ Dunstan! Dunstan!

_Dunstan._ You! You!

_Leslie._ I have remembered. When we stood together at our prayerless

marriage, my heart made promises my lips were not allowed to utter. I

will not part from you, Dunstan.

_Dunstan._ Not--part--from me?

_Leslie._ No.

_Dunstan._ I don't understand you. You--will--not--relent? You cannot

forget what I am!

_Leslie._ No. But the burden of the sin you have committed I will bear

upon my shoulders, and the little good that is in me shall enter into

your heart. We will start life anew, always seeking for the best that

we can do, always trying to repair the worst that we have done.

(_Stretching out her hand to him._) Dunstan! (_He approaches her as in

a dream._) Don't fear me! I will be your wife, not your judge. Let us

from this moment begin the new life you spoke of.

_Dunstan._ (_He tremblingly touches her hand as she bursts into

tears._) Wife! Ah, God bless you! God bless you, and forgive me!

(_He kneels at her side, and she bows her head down to his._)

_Leslie._ Oh, my husband!

THE ENDING AS PRINTED

_Dunstan._ Fool! Fool! Why couldn't you have died in Florence? Why did

you drag yourself here all these miles--to end it _here_? I should

have known better--I should have known better. (_He takes a phial from

his pocket and slowly pours some poison into a tumbler._) When I've

proved that I could not live away from her, perhaps she'll pity me. I

shall never know it, but perhaps she'll pity me then. (_About to

drink._) Supposing I am blind! Supposing there is some chance of my

regaining her. Regaining her! How dull sleeplessness makes me! How

much could I regain of what I've lost! Why, _she knows me_--nothing

can ever undo that--_she knows me._ Every day would be a dreary,

hideous masquerade; every night a wakeful, torturing retrospect. If

she smiled, I should whisper to myself--"yes, yes, that's a very

pretty pretence, but--_she knows you!_" The slamming of a door would

shout it, the creaking of a stair would murmur it "_she knows you!_"

And when she thought herself alone, or while she lay in her sleep, I

should be always stealthily spying for that dreadful look upon her

face, and I should find it again and again as I see it now--the look

which cries out so plainly "Profligate! you taught one good woman to

believe in you, but now _she knows you!_" No, no--no, no! (_He drains

the contents of the tumbler._) The end--the end. (_Pointing towards

the clock._) The hour at which we used to walk together in the garden

at Florence--husband and wife--lovers. (_He pulls up the window-blind

and looks out._) The sky--the last time--the sky. (_He rests drowsily

against the piano._) Tired--tired. (_He walks rather unsteadily to the

table._) A line to Murray. (_Writing._) A line to Murray--telling

him--poison--morphine--message--(_The pen falls from his hand and his

head drops forward._) The light is going out. I can't see. Light--I'll

finish this when I wake--I'll rest. (_He staggers to the sofa and

falls upon it._) I shall sleep tonight. The voice has gone.

Leslie--wife--reconciled--

(_Leslie enters softly and kneels by his side._)

_Leslie._ Dunstan, I am here. (_He partly opens his eyes, raises

himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie's

face averted._) Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we

will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not

your Judge--let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of.

Dunstan! (_She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and

reads it._) Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! (_She catches

him in her arms._) Husband! Husband! Husband![22]

It is of course true, as M. Brieux maintains in regard to the two

endings of his early play, _Blanchette_,[23] that sometimes more than

one ending may be made plausible. Consequently he changed a tragic close

to something more pleasing to his audience. Belief grows, however, that

when a play has been begun and developed with a tragic ending in mind,

this cannot with entire convincingness be changed to something else

unless the play is rewritten from the start. There is inevitableness in

the conduct on the stage of the creatures of our brains even as with

people of real life. So strongly does Sir Arthur Pinero feel this as the

result of his long experience that, though he changed the ending of

_The Big Drum_ in 1915 in accordance with public demand, he restored the

original version when printing the play. He says in his Preface:

_The Big Drum_ is published exactly as it was written, and as it was

originally performed. At its first representation, however, the

audience was reported to have been saddened by its "unhappy ending."

Pressure was forthwith put upon me to reconcile Philip and Ottoline at

the finish, and at the third performance of the play the curtain fell

upon the picture, violently and crudely brought about, of Ottoline in

Philip's arms.

I made the alteration against my principles and against my conscience,

and yet not altogether unwillingly. For we live in depressing times;

and perhaps in such times it is the first duty of a writer for the

stage to make concessions to his audience and, above everything, to

try to afford them a complete, if brief, distraction from the gloom

which awaits them outside the theatre.

My excuse for having at the start provided an "unhappy" ending is that

I was blind enough not to regard the ultimate break between Philip and

Ottoline as really unhappy for either party. On the contrary, I looked

upon the separation of these two people as a fortunate occurrence for

them both; and I conceive it as a piece of ironic comedy which might

not prove unentertaining that the falling away of Philip from his high

resolves was checked by the woman he had once despised and who had at

last grown to know and to despise herself.

But comedy of this order has a knack of cutting rather deeply, of

ceasing, in some minds, to be comedy at all; and it may be said that

this is what has happened in the present instance. Luckily it is

equally true that certain matters are less painful, because less

actual, in print than upon the stage. The "wicked publisher"

therefore, even when bombs are dropping round him, can afford to be

more independent than the theatrical manager; and for this reason I

have not hesitated to ask my friend Mr. Heinemann to publish _The Big

Drum_ in its original form.[24]

What Ibsen thought of the ultimate effect of changing an ending to

accord with public sentiment, these words about _A Doll's House_ show:

At the time when _A Doll's House_ was quite new, I was obliged to give

my consent to an alteration of the last scene for Frau Hedwig

Niemann-Raabe, who was to play the part of Nora in Berlin. At that

time I had no choice. I was entirely unprotected by copyright law in

Germany, and could, consequently, prevent nothing. Besides, the play

in its original, uncorrupted form was accessible to the German public

in a German edition which was already printed and published. With its

altered ending it had only a short run. In its unchanged form it is

still being played.[25]

Dumas fils was even more severe in his strictures:

If at the second performance you are ready to modify your central

idea, your development or your conclusion to please the public whom

the night before you were pretending to teach something fresh, you may

be, perhaps, an ingenious worker in the theatre, an adroit impresario,

a facile inventor; you will never be a dramatist. You can make

mistakes in details of execution; you have no right to make a mistake

in the logic of your play, its correlations of emotions and acts, and

least of all, in their outcome.[26]

Characterization, then, should be watched carefully in its fundamentals,

all changes, and especially for its logical outcome. Long ago, Diderot

summed up the subject thus:

One can form an infinitude of plans on the same subject and developed

around the same characters. But the characters being once settled,

they can have but one manner of speaking. Your figures will have this

or that to say according to the situation in which you may have placed

them, but being the same human beings in all the situations, they will

not, fundamentally, contradict themselves.[27]

How may we know whether our motivation is good or not? First of all, it

must be clear. If an audience cannot make out why one of our characters

does what he is doing, from that moment the play weakens. It is on this

ground that William Archer objected to the _Becket_ of Tennyson:

"Some gents," says the keeper, in _Punch_, to the unsuccessful

sportsman, "goes a-wingin' and a-worritin' the poor birds; but you,

sir--you misses 'em clane and nate!" With the like delicate tact

criticism can only compliment the poet on the "clane and nate" way in

which he has missed the historical interest, the psychological

problem, of his theme. What was it that converted the Becket of

Toulouse into the Becket of Clarendon--the splendid

warrior-diplomatist into the austere prelate? The cowl, we are told,

does not make the monk; but in Lord Tennyson's psychology it seems

that it does. Of the process of thought, the development of feeling,

which leads Becket, on assuming the tonsure, to break with the

traditions of his career, with the friend of his heart and with his

own worldly interest--of all this we have no hint. The social and

political issues involved are left equally in the vague. Of the two

contending forces, the Church and the Crown, which makes for good, and

which for evil? With which ought we to sympathize? It might be argued

that we have no right to ask this question, and that it is precisely a

proof of the poet's art that he holds the balance evenly, and does not

write as a partisan. But as a matter of fact this is not so. The poet

is not impartial; he is only indefinite. We are evidently intended to

sympathize, and we _do_ sympathize, with Becket, simply because we

feel that he is staking his life on a principle; but what that

principle precisely is, and what its bearings on history and

civilization, we are left to find out for ourselves. Thus the

intellectual opportunity, if I may call it so, is missed "clane and

nate."[28]

Contrast the third, fourth, and fifth acts of _Michael and His Lost

Angel_[29] with the first and second. So admirable is the

characterization of Acts I and II that a reader understands exactly what

Audrie and Michael are doing and why. In the other acts, though what

they are doing is clear, why the Audrie and Michael of the first two

acts behaved thus is by no means clear and plausible. Indeed,

plausibility and clearness go hand in hand as tests of motivation.

Accounting for the deeds of any particular character is easy if the

conduct rests on motives which any audience will immediately recognize

as both widespread and likely to produce the situation. It is just here,

however, that national taste and literary convention complicate the work

of the dramatist. An American, watching a performance of _Simone_[30] by

M. Brieux, hardly understood the loud protests which burst from the

audience when the heroine, at the end of the play, sternly denounced her

father's conduct. To him, it seemed quite natural that an American girl

should assume this right of individual judgment. The French audience

felt that a French girl, because of her training, would not, under the

circumstances, thus attack her father. M. Brieux admitted himself wrong

and changed the ending. It is this fact, that conduct plausible for one

nation is not always equally plausible for another, which makes it hard

for an American public to understand a goodly number of the masterpieces

of recent Continental dramatic literature.

What literary convention may do in twisting conduct from the normal, the

pseudo-classic French drama of Corneille and Racine, and its foster

child, the Heroic Drama of England, illustrate. Dryden himself points

out clearly the extent to which momentary convention among the French

deflected the characters in their tragedies from the normal:

The French poets ... would not, for example, have suffer'd Cleopatra

and Octavia to have met; or, if they had met, there must only have

passed betwixt them some cold civilities, but no eagerness of

repartee, for fear of offending against the greatness of their

characters, and the modesty of their sex. This objection I foresaw,

and at the same time contemn'd; for I judg'd it both natural and

probable that Octavia, proud of her new-gain'd conquest, would search

out Cleopatra to triumph over her; and that Cleopatra, thus attack'd,

was not of a spirit to shun the encounter: and 'tis not unlikely that

two exasperated rivals should use such satire as I have put into their

mouths; for, after all, tho' the one were a Roman, and the other a

queen, they were both women.

* * * * *

Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency that he

will rather expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his

father; and my critics I am sure will commend him for it: but we of

grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity

is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was good manners

with a vengeance; and the audience is like to be much concern'd at the

misfortunes of this admirable hero; but take Hippolytus out of his

poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the

saddle on the right horse, and choose rather to live with the

reputation of a plain-spoken, honest man, than to die with the infamy

of an incestuous villain. In the meantime we may take notice that

where the poet ought to have preserv'd the character as it was

deliver'd to us by antiquity, when he should have given us the picture

of a rough young man, of the Amazonian strain, a jolly huntsman, and

both by his profession and his early rising a mortal enemy to love, he

has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from

Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the

Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolyte.[31]

One of the chief elements in the genius of Shakespeare is his power to

transcend momentary conventions, fads, and theories, and to discern in

his material, whether history or fiction, eternal principles of conduct.

Thus he wrote for all men and for all time. In _Love's Labor's Lost_ he

wrote for a special audience, appealing to its ideas of style and humor.

In _Twelfth Night_ he let his characters have full sway. Which is the

more alive today?

Nor is it only the literary conventions of an audience which affect the

problem of plausibility set an author. The French public of 1841 which

came to the five-act play of Eugene Scribe, _Une Chaine_,[32] asked, not

a convincing picture of life, but mere entertainment. Therefore they

accepted insufficient motivation and artificiality in handling the

scenes. Louise, the wife, discovering from words of her husband as she

enters the room that her former lover, Emmeric, now prefers Aline to

her, sits down and dashes off a signed letter releasing him. Just why is

not clear. In order that she may do this writing unobserved of her

husband, two characters must, for some time, be so managed as to stand

between him and her. In order that the husband may never know she has

been in love with Emmeric, the letter must be kept out of his hands, and

read only by the guardian of Aline, Clerambeau. All this requires

constant artifice. Sidney Grundy made a one-act adaptation of _Une

Chaine_ called _In Honor Bound_.[33] In this, Lady Carlyon, waking from

sleep on the divan in her husband's study, hears, unobserved by Philip

and Sir George, the young man's admission that he no longer cares for

her. When her cry reveals her, Sir George, her husband, thinking her

unwell, goes to bring her niece, Rose, to her aid. Lady Carlyon learns

promptly from Philip that the guardian of the girl he is engaged to

demands a letter releasing him from any former entanglement. Lady

Carlyon, to cover her chagrin, with seeming willingness writes and signs

a letter. Thus the writing takes place when the husband is off stage,

and the evident chagrin of Lady Carlyon motivates it better. The

relation of the husband to the letter is also handled better than in the

original. He, unlike St. Geran, strongly suspects that his wife has

cared for the younger man. Lady Carlyon is unaware that Sir George is

the guardian in question and that the girl is her niece, Rose.

Consequently she lets slip that Philip possesses the desired letter. Sir

George demands it as his right, noting her disturbance when she learns

that her husband is involved in the situation. When Philip refuses to

surrender the letter, Sir George courteously permits him to read it

aloud. Just before the signature is reached, he stops Philip, asking him

if the letter is signed. When Philip admits that it is, Sir George

insists on having the letter, then, without looking at it, burns it at

the lamp with words of sympathy for the writer. All this turns the

husband in this scene from a mere lay figure into a character, and

greatly lessens the artificiality of the original. By means of better

characterization a motivation fundamentally more plausible is provided.

Why? Because an English audience of 1880-90 expected much more

probability in a play than did a French or English audience of 1841.

Of course, conduct initially unconvincing may be so treated as to become

entirely satisfactory. One of the delights in characterization is so

preparing for an exhibition of character likely to seem unreal of itself

that when it is presented it is accepted either at once or before the

scene closes. Any motive which a dramatist can make acceptable to his

audience is ultimately just as good as one accepted unquestioningly.

Shylock's demand for the pound of flesh is in itself unplausible

enough--the act of one demented or insane. But Shakespeare's emphasis on

his racial hate lends it possibility. His presentation of the other

people in the play as accepting the bond with the minimum of question

makes it seem probable. If a would-be dramatist were to rule out as

material not to be treated whatever at the outset seems improbable or

impossible, think what our drama would lose: such plays as _Faust_,

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Blue Bird_, and even _Hamlet_.

Repeatedly in treating plausibility it has been implied or stated that

what is said or done must be "in character." This suggests another test

of good motivation. What happens must be plausible, not only in that it

accords with known human experience, but with what has been done by the

character in preceding portions of the play. In _The Masqueraders_, when

Sir Brice and David stake Dulcie and her child against the fortune of

the latter, and let all turn upon a game of cards, a reader is

skeptical, for even if it be admitted that Sir Brice might do this, it

does not accord with what we know of David from the earlier scenes of

the play.

(_Exit Dulcie. The two men are left alone. Another slight pause. Sir

Brice walks very deliberately up to David. The two men stand close to

each other for a moment or two._)

_Sir Brice._ You've come to settle your little account, I suppose?

_David._ I owe you nothing.

_Sir Brice._ But I owe you six thousand pounds. I haven't a penny in

the world. I'll cut you for it, double or quits.

_David._ I don't play cards.

_Sir Brice._ You'd better begin. (_Rapping on the table with the

cards._)

_David._ (_Very firmly._) I don't play cards with _you_.

_Sir Brice._ And I say you shall.

_David._ (_Very stern and contemptuous._) I don't play cards with you.

(_Going towards door; Sir Brice following him up._)

_Sir Brice._ You refuse?

_David._ I refuse.

_Sir Brice._ (_Stopping him._) Once for all, will you give me a chance

of paying back the six thousand pounds that Lady Skene has borrowed

from you? Yes or no?

_David._ No.

_Sir Brice._ No?

_David._ (_Very emphatically._) No. (_Goes to door, suddenly turns

round, comes up to him._) Yes. (_Comes to the table._) I _do_ play

cards with you. You want my money. Very well. I'll give you a chance

of winning all I have in the world.

_Sir Brice._ (_After a look of astonishment._) Good. I'm your man. Any

game you like, and any stakes.

_David._ (_Very calm, cold, intense tone all through._) The stakes on

my side are some two hundred thousand pounds. The stakes on your side

are--your wife and child.

_Sir Brice._ (_Taken aback._) My wife and child.

_David._ Your wife and child. Come--begin! (_Points to the cards._)

_Sir Brice._ (_Getting flurried._) My wife and child? (_Puts his hand

restlessly through his hair, looks intently at David. Pause._) All

right. (_Pause. Cunningly._) I value my wife and child very highly.

_David._ I value them at all I have in the world. (_Pointing to the

cards_.) Begin!

_Sir Brice._ You seem in a hurry.

_David._ I believe I haven't six months to live. I want to make the

most of those six months. If I have more I want to make the most of

all the years. Begin!

_Sir Brice._ (_Wipes his face with his handkerchief._) This is the

first time I've played this game. We'd better arrange conditions.

_David._ There's only one condition. We play till I'm beggared of

every farthing I have, or till you're beggared of them. Sit down!

_Sir Brice._ (_Sits down._) Very well. (_Pause._) What game?

_David._ The shortest.

_Sir Brice._ Simple cutting?

_David._ What you please. Begin!

_Sir. Brice._ There's no hurry. I mean to have a night's fun out of

this.

_David._ Look at me. Don't trifle with me! I want to have done with

you. I want them to have done with you. I want to get them away from

you. Quick! I want to know now--now--this very moment--whether they

are yours or mine. Begin.

_Sir Brice._ (_Shuffles the cards._) All right. What do we cut for?

_David._ Let one cut settle it.

_Sir Brice._ No. It's too much to risk on one throw.

_David._ One cut. Begin.

_Sir Brice._ It's too big. I can't. (_Gets up, walks a pace or two._)

I like high play, but that's too high for me. (_David remains at back

of table, very calm; does not stir all through the scene; Sir Brice

walking about._) No, by Jove! I'll tell you what I'll do. Three cuts

out of five. Damn it all! I'm game! Two out of three. By Jove, two out

of three! Will that do?

_David._ So be it! Shuffle. Sit down!

(_Sir Brice sits down; begins shuffling the cards. All through the

scene he is nervous, excited, hysterical, laughing. David as cold as

a statue._)[34]

An almost similar situation in a play set in a remote part of the West,

_Believe Me, Xantippe_, is more convincing. A loutish beast agrees to

gamble for a woman he is kidnapping with a young adventurer who sees at

the moment no other way to save her from the other man's clutches. The

scene is not at all improbable for either man. In _The Princess and the

Butterfly_, all the preceding acts are but a preparation for what the

world will call the unreason, in the last act, of the marriages of Sir

George and the Princess Pannonia,--of middle age with youth. Their final

conduct would seem unplausible were it not entirely in keeping with

their characters as carefully developed in the earlier parts of the

play. _The Rising of the Moon_ of Lady Gregory shows a final situation

for the Police Sergeant which, at the opening of the play, would seem

impossible for him. In a few pages, however, the dramatist so develops

the character that we are perfectly ready to accept his sacrifice of the

"hundred pounds reward" which he so coveted at the outset.

Motivation should not, however, be allowed to obtrude itself, but should

be subordinated to the emotional purpose of the scene. The modern

auditor prefers to gather it almost unconsciously as the action of the

play proceeds rather than to have it emphasized for him, as does Iago,

at the end of several acts of _Othello_. Another instance of this frank

motivation among the Elizabethans may be found in the soliloquy from

_The Duchess of Malfi_:

_Cardinal._ The reason why I would not suffer these

About my brother is because at midnight

I may with better privacy convay

Julias body, to her owne lodging. O, my conscience!

I would pray now: but the divell takes away my heart

For having any confidence in praier.

About this hour I appointed Bosola

To fetch the body: when he hath serv'd my turne,

He dies.[35]

Good motivation, then, must be clear; either plausible naturally or made

so by the art of the dramatist; should in each particular instance

comport with the preceding actions and speech of the character; and

should not be so stressed as to draw attention away from the emotional

significance of the scene.

It is by well-motived characterization that drama passes from melodrama

to story-play and so to tragedy; or, from the broadest farce or

extravaganza through low comedy to high. As long as we care little what

the people in our play are, and greatly for comic or serious happenings,

we may string situations together almost at will. The moment that our

figures come alive, as has been pointed out, selection in our possible

material has begun. Some of the incidents in our melodrama or broad

farce will drop out as wholly impossible for these figures which have

come to life. Others must be modified if the figures are to take part in

them. Give a melodrama sustaining, convincing characterization and it

must at least turn into a story-play, something which after a mingling

of the serious and the comic does not end tragically. So characterize in

a story with a serious ending that the tragic result develops inevitably

from the sequence of preceding scenes, and tragedy is born. Watch the

way in which Shakespeare lifts the Hubert and Arthur scene of the old

play of _King John_ by the infused characterization. In the old play the

author presents us with puppets depending for their effect on the

contained horror of the scene. Shakespeare creates a winsome, brave

young prince, and a very human Hubert. The scene moves us, not, simply

from our dread of physical torture, but because of our growing intense

sympathy for the lad who is fighting for his life.

ACT IV. SCENE 1. _Northampton.

A Room in the castle_

_Enter Hubert de Burgh with _Enter Hubert and two Attendants_

three men_

_Hub._ Heat me these irons hot,

_Hub._ My masters, I have and look thou stand

shewed you what warrant I have Within the arras: when I strike

of this attempt; I perceive my foot

by your heavie countenances, Upon the bosom of the ground, rush

you had rather be otherwise forth,

imployed, and for my owne part, And bind the boy, which you shall

I would the King had made choyce find with me,

of some other executioner; onely Fast to the chair: be heedful.

this is my comfort, that a King Hence, and watch.

commaunds, whose precepts

neglected or omitted, threatneth _1. Attend._ I hope, your warrant

torture for the default. will bear out the deed.

Therefore in briefe, leave me, _Hub._ Uncleanly scruples: fear not

and be readie to attend the you: look to't.--

adventure: stay within that (_Exeunt Attendants._)

entry, and when you hear me Young lad, come forth; I have to

crie, God save the King, issue say with you.

sodainly foorth, lay handes on

Arthur, set him in his chayre, _Enter Arthur_

wherein (once fast bound) leave

him with me to finish the rest. _Arth._ Good morning, Hubert.

_Hub._ Good morrow, little prince.

_Attendants._ We goe, though _Arth._ As little prince (having

loath. (_Exeunt._) so great a title

To be more prince,) as may be.--You

_Hub._ My Lord, will it please are sad.

your Honour to take the benefite

of the faire evening? _Hub._ Indeed I have been merrier.

_Enter Arthur to Hubert de Burgh_ _Arth._ Mercy on me!

Methinks nobody should be sad but

_Arth._ Gramercie Hubert for thy I:

care of me, Yet, I remember, when I was in

In or to whom restraint is newly France,

knowen, Young gentlemen would be as sad as

The joy of walking is small night,

benefit, Only for wantonness. By my

Yet will I take thy offer with christendom,

small thankes, So I were out of prison and kept

I would not loose the pleasure sheep,

of the eye. I should be as merry as the day is

But tell me curteous Keeper if long;

you can, And so I would be here, but that I

How long the King will have me doubt

tarrie here My uncle practises more harm to me:

He is afraid of me and I of him.

_Hub._ I know not Prince, but Is it my fault that I was Geffrey's

as I gesse, not long. son?

God send you freedome, and God No, indeed, is't not; and I would

save the King. to heaven,

(_They issue forth._) I were your son, so you would love

me, Hubert.

_Arth._ Why now sirs, what may _Hub. (Aside.)_ If I talk to him,

this outrage meane? with his innocent prate

O help me Hubert, gentle Keeper He will awake my mercy, which lies

helpe; dead:

God send this sodaine mutinous Therefore I will be sudden, and

approach dispatch.

Tend not to reave a wretched

guiltless life. _Arth._ Are you sick, Hubert? you

look pale today.

_Hub._ So sirs, depart, and In sooth, I would you were a little

leave the rest for me. sick;

That I might sit all night, and

_Arth._ Then Arthur yeeld, watch with you:

death frowneth in thy face, I warrant I love you more than you

What meaneth this? Good Hubert do me.

plead the case.

_Hub. (Aside.)_ His words do take

_Hub._ Patience yong Lord, and possession of my bosom.--

listen words of woe, Read here, young Arthur,

Harmful and harsh, hells horror

to be heard: (_Showing a paper._)

A dismall tale fit for a furies

tongue. (_Aside._) How now, foolish rheum!

I faint to tell, deepe sorrow Turning dispiteous torture out of

is the sound. door?

I must be brief; lest resolution

_Arth._ What, must I die? drop

Out at mine eyes in tender womanish

_Hub._ No newes of death, but tears.--

tidings of more hate, Can you read it? Is it not fair

A wrathfull doome, and most writ?

unluckie fate:

Deaths dish were daintie at so _Arth._ Too fairly, Hubert, for so

fell a feast, foul effect.

Be deafe, heare not, its hell Must you with hot irons burn out

to tell the rest. both mine eyes?

_Arth._ Alas, thou wrongst my _Hub._ Young boy, I must.

youth with words of feare,

Tis hell, tis horror, not for

one to heare:

What is it man if needes be don,

Act it, and end it, that the

paine were gon.