A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping
of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the
dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to
the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear',
'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the
great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now,
and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed
immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.
The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its
spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its
creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture
into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted
moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets so completely that
it often prides itself on having forgotten.
Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three
courses open to the serious dramatist. The first is: To definitely set
before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the views
and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes.
This way is the most common, successful, and popular. It makes the
dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.
The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views and
codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those theories in
which he himself believes, the more effectively if they are the opposite
of what the public wishes to have placed before it, presenting them so
that the audience may swallow them like powder in a spoonful of jam.
There is a third course: To set before the public no cut-and-dried codes,
but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not
distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favour, or
prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor moral as nature may
afford. This third method requires a certain detachment; it requires a
sympathy with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, things for their own
sake; it requires a far view, together with patient industry, for no
immediately practical result.
It was once said of Shakespeare that he had never done any good to any
one, and never would. This, unfortunately, could not, in the sense in
which the word "good" was then meant, be said of most modern dramatists.
In truth, the good that Shakespeare did to humanity was of a remote, and,
shall we say, eternal nature; something of the good that men get from
having the sky and the sea to look at. And this partly because he was,
in his greater plays at all events, free from the habit of drawing a
distorted moral. Now, the playwright who supplies to the public the
facts of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does so that he
may do the public what he considers an immediate good, by fortifying its
prejudices; and the dramatist who supplies to the public facts distorted
by his own advanced morality, does so because he considers that he will
at once benefit the public by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his
own. In both cases the advantage the dramatist hopes to confer on the
public is immediate and practical.
But matters change, and morals change; men remain--and to set men, and
the facts about them, down faithfully, so that they draw for us the moral
of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to the
community. It is, at all events, harder than to set men and facts down,
as they ought, or ought not to be. This, however, is not to say that a
dramatist should, or indeed can, keep himself and his temperamental
philosophy out of his work. As a man lives and thinks, so will he write.
But it is certain, that to the making of good drama, as to the practice
of every other art, there must be brought an almost passionate love of
discipline, a white-heat of self-respect, a desire to make the truest,
fairest, best thing in one's power; and that to these must be added an
eye that does not flinch. Such qualities alone will bring to a drama the
selfless character which soaks it with inevitability.
The word "pessimist" is frequently applied to the few dramatists who have
been content to work in this way. It has been applied, among others, to
Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied to many in the
future. Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way in which these
two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the optimist appears
to be he who cannot bear the world as it is, and is forced by his nature
to picture it as it ought to be, and the pessimist one who cannot only
bear the world as it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully.
The true lover of the human race is surely he who can put up with it in
all its forms, in vice as well as in virtue, in defeat no less than in
victory; the true seer he who sees not only joy but sorrow, the true
painter of human life one who blinks nothing. It may be that he is also,
incidentally, its true benefactor.
In the whole range of the social fabric there are only two impartial
persons, the scientist and the artist, and under the latter heading such
dramatists as desire to write not only for to-day, but for to-morrow,
must strive to come.
But dramatists being as they are made--past remedy it is perhaps more
profitable to examine the various points at which their qualities and
defects are shown.
The plot! A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the
interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on
circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A human being
is the best plot there is; it may be impossible to see why he is a good
plot, because the idea within which he was brought forth cannot be fully
grasped; but it is plain that he is a good plot. He is organic. And so
it must be with a good play. Reason alone produces no good plots; they
come by original sin, sure conception, and instinctive after-power of
selecting what benefits the germ. A bad plot, on the other hand, is
simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each--characters who
would have liked to live, but came to untimely grief; who started
bravely, but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were
transfixed one by one, while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and
gibbering, through the play. Whether these stakes are made of facts or
of ideas, according to the nature of the dramatist who planted them,
their effect on the unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures
were begotten to be staked, and staked they are! The demand for a good
plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations
by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be
troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the persons of the play
to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!"
Now, true dramatic action is what characters do, at once contrary, as it
were, to expectation, and yet because they have already done other
things. No dramatist should let his audience know what is coming; but
neither should he suffer his characters to, act without making his
audience feel that those actions are in harmony with temperament, and
arise from previous known actions, together with the temperaments and
previous known actions of the other characters in the play. The
dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging his
plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin.
The dialogue! Good dialogue again is character, marshalled so as
continually to stimulate interest or excitement. The reason good
dialogue is seldom found in plays is merely that it is hard to write, for
it requires not only a knowledge of what interests or excites, but such a
feeling for character as brings misery to the dramatist's heart when his
creations speak as they should not speak--ashes to his mouth when they
say things for the sake of saying them--disgust when they are "smart."
The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying
itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere machinery
of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from character,
relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of life. From start to
finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, of fine
texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and strength of a design
to which all must be subordinated.
But good dialogue is also spiritual action. In so far as the dramatist
divorces his dialogue from spiritual action--that is to say, from
progress of events, or toward events which are significant of
character--he is stultifying the thing done; he may make pleasing
disquisitions, he is not making drama. And in so far as he twists
character to suit his moral or his plot, he is neglecting a first
principle, that truth to Nature which alone invests art with handmade
quality.
The dramatist's license, in fact, ends with his design. In conception
alone he is free. He may take what character or group of characters he
chooses, see them with what eyes, knit them with what idea, within the
limits of his temperament; but once taken, seen, and knitted, he is bound
to treat them like a gentleman, with the tenderest consideration of their
mainsprings. Take care of character; action and dialogue will take care
of themselves! The true dramatist gives full rein to his temperament in
the scope and nature of his subject; having once selected subject and
characters, he is just, gentle, restrained, neither gratifying his lust
for praise at the expense of his offspring, nor using them as puppets to
flout his audience. Being himself the nature that brought them forth, he
guides them in the course predestined at their conception. So only have
they a chance of defying Time, which is always lying in wait to destroy
the false, topical, or fashionable, all--in a word--that is not based on
the permanent elements of human nature. The perfect dramatist rounds up
his characters and facts within the ring-fence of a dominant idea which
fulfils the craving of his spirit; having got them there, he suffers them
to live their own lives.
Plot, action, character, dialogue! But there is yet another subject for
a platitude. Flavour! An impalpable quality, less easily captured than
the scent of a flower, the peculiar and most essential attribute of any
work of art! It is the thin, poignant spirit which hovers up out of a
play, and is as much its differentiating essence as is caffeine of
coffee. Flavour, in fine, is the spirit of the dramatist projected into
his work in a state of volatility, so that no one can exactly lay hands
on it, here, there, or anywhere. This distinctive essence of a play,
marking its brand, is the one thing at which the dramatist cannot work,
for it is outside his consciousness. A man may have many moods, he has
but one spirit; and this spirit he communicates in some subtle,
unconscious way to all his work. It waxes and wanes with the currents of
his vitality, but no more alters than a chestnut changes into an oak.
For, in truth, dramas are very like unto trees, springing from seedlings,
shaping themselves inevitably in accordance with the laws fast hidden
within themselves, drinking sustenance from the earth and air, and in
conflict with the natural forces round them. So they slowly come to full
growth, until warped, stunted, or risen to fair and gracious height, they
stand open to all the winds. And the trees that spring from each
dramatist are of different race; he is the spirit of his own sacred
grove, into which no stray tree can by any chance enter.
One more platitude. It is not unfashionable to pit one form of drama
against another--holding up the naturalistic to the disadvantage of the
epic; the epic to the belittlement of the fantastic; the fantastic to the
detriment of the naturalistic. Little purpose is thus served. The
essential meaning, truth, beauty, and irony of things may be revealed
under all these forms. Vision over life and human nature can be as keen
and just, the revelation as true, inspiring, delight-giving, and
thought-provoking, whatever fashion be employed--it is simply a question
of doing it well enough to uncover the kernel of the nut. Whether the
violet come from Russia, from Parma, or from England, matters little.
Close by the Greek temples at Paestum there are violets that seem redder,
and sweeter, than any ever seen--as though they have sprung up out of the
footprints of some old pagan goddess; but under the April sun, in a
Devonshire lane, the little blue scentless violets capture every bit as
much of the spring. And so it is with drama--no matter what its form it
need only be the "real thing," need only have caught some of the precious
fluids, revelation, or delight, and imprisoned them within a chalice to
which we may put our lips and continually drink.
And yet, starting from this last platitude, one may perhaps be suffered
to speculate as to the particular forms that our renascent drama is
likely to assume. For our drama is renascent, and nothing will stop its
growth. It is not renascent because this or that man is writing, but
because of a new spirit. A spirit that is no doubt in part the gradual
outcome of the impact on our home-grown art, of Russian, French, and
Scandinavian influences, but which in the main rises from an awakened
humanity in the conscience of our time.
What, then, are to be the main channels down which the renascent English
drama will float in the coming years? It is more than possible that
these main channels will come to be two in number and situate far apart.
The one will be the broad and clear-cut channel of naturalism, down which
will course a drama poignantly shaped, and inspired with high intention,
but faithful to the seething and multiple life around us, drama such as
some are inclined to term photographic, deceived by a seeming simplicity
into forgetfulness of the old proverb, "Ars est celare artem," and
oblivious of the fact that, to be vital, to grip, such drama is in every
respect as dependent on imagination, construction, selection, and
elimination--the main laws of artistry--as ever was the romantic or
rhapsodic play: The question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed,
much more study than has yet been given to it. The aim of the dramatist
employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of actual life
passing on the stage as to compel the spectator to pass through an
experience of his own, to think, and talk, and move with the people he
sees thinking, talking, and moving in front of him. A false phrase, a
single word out of tune or time, will destroy that illusion and spoil the
surface as surely as a stone heaved into a still pool shatters the image
seen there. But this is only the beginning of the reason why the
naturalistic is the most exacting and difficult of all techniques. It is
easy enough to reproduce the exact conversation and movements of persons
in a room; it is desperately hard to produce the perfectly natural
conversation and movements of those persons, when each natural phrase
spoken and each natural movement made has not only to contribute toward
the growth and perfection of a drama's soul, but also to be a revelation,
phrase by phrase, movement by movement, of essential traits of character.
To put it another way, naturalistic art, when alive, indeed to be alive
at all, is simply the art of manipulating a procession of most delicate
symbols. Its service is the swaying and focussing of men's feelings and
thoughts in the various departments of human life. It will be like a
steady lamp, held up from time to time, in whose light things will be
seen for a space clearly and in due proportion, freed from the mists of
prejudice and partisanship. And the other of these two main channels
will, I think, be a twisting and delicious stream, which will bear on its
breast new barques of poetry, shaped, it may be, like prose, but a prose
incarnating through its fantasy and symbolism all the deeper aspirations,
yearning, doubts, and mysterious stirrings of the human spirit; a poetic
prose-drama, emotionalising us by its diversity and purity of form and
invention, and whose province will be to disclose the elemental soul of
man and the forces of Nature, not perhaps as the old tragedies disclosed
them, not necessarily in the epic mood, but always with beauty and in the
spirit of discovery.
Such will, I think, be the two vital forms of our drama in the coming
generation. And between these two forms there must be no crude unions;
they are too far apart, the cross is too violent. For, where there is a
seeming blend of lyricism and naturalism, it will on examination be
found, I think, to exist only in plays whose subjects or settings--as in
Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," or in Mr. Masefield's "Nan"--are
so removed from our ken that we cannot really tell, and therefore do not
care, whether an absolute illusion is maintained. The poetry which may
and should exist in naturalistic drama, can only be that of perfect
rightness of proportion, rhythm, shape--the poetry, in fact, that lies in
all vital things. It is the ill-mating of forms that has killed a
thousand plays. We want no more bastard drama; no more attempts to dress
out the simple dignity of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of
false lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; no more rabbits
and goldfish from the conjurer's pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have
starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects.
1909.