Front matter (continued 2)

2 The Ancient Classical Drama, pp. 3-4. R. G. Moulton. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

3 Quoted in The Development of the Drama, pp. 10-11. Copyright, 1903, by Brander Matthews. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

4 For these two plays see Early Plays. Riverside Literature Series. C. G. Child. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

5 Works. 6 vols. Pearson, London.

6 Cymbeline, Act I, Scene 1.

7 Becket: A Tragedy. Lord Tennyson. Arranged for the stage by Henry Irving. Macmillan & Co., London and New York.

8 Macaire. By R. L. Stevenson and W. E. Henley. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York. Copyright, 1895, by Stone & Kimball, Chicago.

9 R. M. DeWitt, New York City.

10 Théâtre Complet, vol. v. Dumas fils. Calmann Lévy, Paris.

11 Marlowe’s Faustus, Act v. Mermaid Series or Everyman’s Library.

12 The Romancers. Translated by Mary Hendee. Doubleday & McClure Co., New York.

13 The Blind. Translated by Richard Hovey. Copyright, 1894 and 1896, by Stone & Kimball, Chicago.

14 Études Critiques vol. VII, p. 207.

15 Play-Making, p. 48. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

CHAPTER III

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT. CLEARING THE WAY

A play may start from almost anything: a detached thought that flashes through the mind; a theory of conduct or of art which one firmly believes or wishes only to examine; a bit of dialogue overheard or imagined; a setting, real or imagined, which creates emotion in the observer; a perfectly detached scene, the antecedents and consequences of which are as yet unknown; a figure glimpsed in a crowd which for some reason arrests the attention of the dramatist, or a figure closely studied; a contrast or similarity between two people or conditions of life; a mere incident—noted in a newspaper or book, heard in idle talk, or observed; or a story, told only in the barest outlines or with the utmost detail. “How do the ideas underlying plays come into being? Under the most varying conditions. Most often you cannot tell exactly how. At the outset you waste much time hunting for a subject, then suddenly one day, when you are in your study or even in the street, you bring up with a start, for you have found something. The piece is in sight. At first there is only an impression, an image of the brain that wholly defies words. If you were to write out exactly what you feel at the moment—provided that were at all possible—it would be exceedingly difficult to indicate its attractiveness. The situation is similar to that when you dream that you have discovered an idea of profound significance; on awaking you write it down; and on rereading perceive that it is commonplace or stale. Then you follow up the idea; it tries to escape, and when captured at last, still resists, ceaselessly changing form. You wish to write a comedy; the idea cries, ‘Make a tragedy of me, or a story-play.’ At last, after a struggle you master the idea.”1

Back of La Haine of Sardou was the detached thought or query: “Under what circumstances will the profound charity of woman show itself in the most striking manner? In the preface to La Haine, Sardou has told how his plays revealed themselves to him. ‘The problem is invariable. It appears as a kind of equation from which the unknown quantity must be found. The problem gives me no peace till I have found the answer.’”2 Maeterlinck wrote several of his earlier plays, The Intruder, Princess Maleine, The Blind, to demonstrate the truth of two artistic theories of his: that what would seem to most theatre-goers of the time inaction might be made highly dramatic, and that partial or complete repetition of a phrase may have great emotional effect. Magda (Heimat) of Sudermann was written to illustrate the possible inherent tragedy of Magda’s words: “Show them [people thoroughly sincere and honest but limited in experience and outlook] that beyond their narrow virtues there may be something true and good.” In Le Fils Naturel of Dumas the younger, the illegitimate son, till late in the play, believes his father to be his uncle. “The logical development would seem to be obvious: father and son falling into each other’s arms. Dumas, on the contrary, arranged that the son should not take the family name, and that the play should end with the following dialogue:

The Father. You will surely permit me, when we are alone together, to call you my son.

The Son. Yes, uncle.

It seems that Montigny, Director of the Gymnase Theatre, was shocked by the frigidity of this dénouement. He said to Dumas, ‘Make them embrace each other; the play, in that case, will have at least thirty additional performances.’ Dumas answered, ‘I can’t suppress the last word. It is for that I wrote the piece.’”3 One suspects that Lord Dunsany feels the same about the last words of his King Argimenes. The whole play apparently illustrates the almost irresistible effect of habit and environment. At the opening of the play, King Argimenes is the hungry, overworked slave of the captors who deprived him of his kingship. He talks eagerly with his fellow slaves of the King’s sick dog, who will make a rich feast for them if he dies. At the end, Argimenes, completely successful in his revolt, is lord of all he surveys. Surprised by the news of the incoming messenger, he suddenly reverts to a powerful desire of his slavehood, speaking instinctively as did Le fils of Dumas.

Enter running, a Man of the household of King Darniak. He starts and stares aghast on seeing King Argimenes

King Argimenes. Who are you?

Man. I am the servant of the King’s dog.

King Argimenes. Why do you come here?

Man. The King’s dog is dead.

King Argimenes and His Men. (Savagely and hungrily.) Bones!

King Argimenes. (Remembering suddenly what has happened and where he is.) Let him be buried with the late King.

Zarb. (In a voice of protest.) Majesty!

Curtain.4

John G. Whittier’s poem, Barbara Frietchie, provided the picture or incident which started Clyde Fitch on his play of the same name. In Cyrano de Bergerac; in the numerous adaptations of Vanity Fair usually known as Becky Sharp; in Peg O’ My Heart, Rip Van Winkle, and Louis XI, it is characterization of a central figure which was probably the point of departure for the play. Whether the source was an observed or an imagined figure, a character from history or fiction, the problem of the dramatist was like that of Sardou in Rabagas,—to find the story which will best illustrate the facets of character of the leading figure. Sometimes, as in Nos Bons Villageois, by the same author, the point of departure is a group of country people whose manners and customs must be portrayed,—in this case to illustrate the reception these rapacious peasants give pleasure-seeking Parisians, whom they detest and seek to turn to monetary advantage.5 Mr. William Archer points out that Strife “arose in Mr. Galsworthy’s mind from his actually having seen in conflict the two men who were the prototypes of Anthony and Roberts, and thus noted the waste and inefficacy arising from the clash of strong characters unaccompanied by balance. It was accident that led him to place the two men in an environment of capital and labour. In reality, both of them were, if not capitalists, at any rate, on the side of capital.” 6 In Theodora, Sardou tried to reconstitute an historical epoch which interested him.7 Still another source is this: “The point of departure of the plays of M. de Curel is psychological. What allures him is a curious situation which raises some problem. He asks himself, ‘What, under such circumstances, can have been going on in our minds?’ This was the case with L’Envers d’une Sainte. M. de Curel was thinking of this: A woman was arrested for murder; thanks to protection in high places, the action of the courts was held up. The woman was represented to be insane and shut up in an asylum. Years pass by; the woman succeeds in escaping, and returning home secretly, suddenly opens the door of the room where her children are playing. It is in this picture-like form that the idea of the piece came to him, a picture so detailed and concrete that in imagination he saw the astonishment of the children, the terror of the nurse calling for aid, and the husband hurrying to prevent his wife from stepping into the room.”8 The origin of A Doll’s House, of Ibsen, we have in these, his first, “Notes for the Modern Tragedy”:

Rome, 19.10, 78.

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man, and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each, other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

The wife in the play ends by having no idea of what is right or wrong; natural feeling on the one hand and belief in authority on the other have altogether bewildered her.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

She has committed forgery and she is proud of it; for she did it out of love for her husband, to save his life. But this husband with his commonplace principles of honour is on the side of the law and regards the question with masculine eyes.

Spiritual conflicts. Oppressed and bewildered by the belief in authority, she loses faith in her moral right and ability to bring up her children. Bitterness. A mother in modern society, like certain insects who go away and die when she has done her duty in the propagation of the race. Love of life, of husband and children and family. Here and there a womanly shaking off of her thoughts. Sudden return of anxiety and terror. She must bear it all alone. The catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably. Despair, conflict, and destruction.

(Krogstad has acted dishonourably and thereby become well-to-do; now his prosperity does not help him, he cannot recover his honour.)9

It is a truism, first, that Shakespeare wrote story plays, and secondly that he did not endeavor to imagine a new story. Instead, he made over plays grown out of date in his time, or adapted to the stage what today we should call novelettes which came to him in the original or translation from Italy, Spain, or France. Never did he find a story which seemed to him fully shaped and ready for the stage.10 The tales may be verbose and redundant; they may be mere bare outlines of the action, little if at all characterized, with unreal dialogue; or they may provide Shakespeare with only a part of the story he uses, the rest coming from other tales or from his own imagination. Widely different as they are, however, one and all they were points of departure for Shakespeare’s plays.

No matter which one of the numerous starting points noted may be that of the dramatist, he must end in story even if he does not begin with it. Suppose that he starts with a character. He cannot merely talk about the figure. This might produce a kind of history; it cannot produce drama. Inevitably, he will try to illustrate, by means of action, some one dominant characteristic, or group of characteristics, or to the full, the many-sided nature of the man. Very nearly the same thing may be said of any attempt to dramatize an historical epoch. Its chief characteristic or characteristics must be illustrated in action. Some story is inevitable. Suppose, for the moment, that as in Morose of Ben Jonson’s Silent Woman,11 the dramatist is stressing one characteristic, in this instance morbid sensitiveness to noise of any kind. It is well known that Jonson cared more for character and less for story than most dramatists of his day. Yet even in this play we find the story of the tricking of Morose by his nephew, Dauphine, resulting in the marriage of Morose to Dauphine’s page. The reason why the three parts of Henry VI of Shakespeare are little read and very rarely acted is not merely that they are somewhat crude early work, but that crowding incident of all kinds lacks the massing needed to give it clearness of total effect to round it out into a well-told story. Illustrative incidents, unrelated except that historically they happen to the same person, and that historically they are given in proper sequence, are likely to be confusing. We need the Baedeker of a biographer or an historian to emphasize the incidents so that the meaning they have for him may be clear to us. The first part of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine,12 when quickly read, seems but a succession of conquests, not greatly unlike, leading to his control of the world of his day. He who sees no deeper into the play than this praises certain scenes or passages, but finds the whole repetitious and confusing. Closer examination shows, however, that behind these many incidents of war and slaughter is an interest of Marlowe’s own creation which keeps us waiting for, anticipating the final scene—the desire of Zenocrate, at first captive of Tamburlaine, and later his devoted wife, to reconcile her father, the Soldan, and her husband. The satisfaction of her desire makes the spectacular ending of Part I. This thread of interest gives a certain unity to the material presented, creates a slight story in the mass of incident,—that is, something with a beginning, a middle, and an end. What gives unity to the Second Part of Tamburlaine is the idea that, even as Tamburlaine declares himself all-conquering, he faces unseen forces against which he cannot stand—the physical cowardice of his son, so incomprehensible to him that he kills the boy; the illness and death of his beloved Zenocrate, though he spares nothing to save her; his own growing physical weakness, his breakdown and death even as the generals he has never called on in vain before prove unable to aid him. Again we find an element of story to unify the material.

A moment’s thought will show that if, beginning with character we must ultimately reach some story, however slight, this is just as true of a play which begins with an idea, a bit of dialogue, a detached scene, or a mere setting. The setting must be the background of some incident. This, in turn, must be part of a story or we shall have the episodic form already found undesirable. Similarly, a detached scene must become part of a series of scenes. Get rid of the effect of episodic scenes, that is, give them unity, and lo, we have story of some sort. The bit of dialogue must become part of a larger dialogue belonging to characters of the play; and characterization, as we have seen, results in some story. The artistic or moral idea of the dramatist can be made clear only by human figures, the pawns with which he makes his emotional moves. At once we are on the way to story. The Red Robe13 of Brieux aims to illustrate the idea that in France the administration of justice has been confused by personal ambition and personal intrigue. Is it without story? Surely we have the story of Mouzon,—his hopes, his consequent intrigues for advancement, and his resulting death. Here is a group of incidents developing something from a beginning to an end, that is, providing story. The play contains, too, the story of Yanetta and Etchepare. May we not say that the Vagret family provides a third story?

A play, then, may begin in almost anything seen or thought. Speaking broadly, there is no reason why one source is better than another. The important point is that something seen or thought should so stir the emotions of the dramatist that the desire to convey his own emotion or the emotions of characters who become connected with what he has seen or thought, forces him to write till he has worked out his purpose. Undoubtedly, however, he who begins with a story is nearer his goal than he who begins with an idea or a character. Disconnected episodes, then, may possibly make a vaudeville sketch or the libretto of a lower order of musical comedy. Unless unified in story, even though it be very slight, they cannot make a play.

This point needs emphasis for two reasons: because lately there has been some attempt to maintain that a newer type of play has no story, and because many a beginner in dramatic writing seems to agree with Bayes in The Rehearsal. “What the devil’s a plot except to stuff in fine things?” In good play-writing it is not a question of bringing together as many incidents or as many illustrations of character as you can crowd together in a given number of acts, but of selecting the illustrative incidents, which, when properly developed will produce in an audience the largest amount of the emotional response desired. Later this error will be considered in detail.

Nor will the recent attempt to maintain that there is a new type of play with “absolutely no story in it” stand close analysis. The story may be very slight, but story is present in all such plays. Take two cases. Mr. William Archer, in his excellent book on Play-Making,14 sums up Miss Elizabeth Baker’s Chains15 as follows: “A city clerk, oppressed by the deadly monotony of his life, thinks of going to Australia—and doesn’t go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a middle-aged widower—and doesn’t do it.” He then declares that the play has “absolutely no story.” Does any reader believe that this play could have succeeded, as it has, if the audience had been left in any doubt as to why the city clerk and the shopgirl did not do what they had planned? Yet surely, if this play makes clear, as it does, why these two people changed their minds, it must have story, for it shows us people thinking of escaping from conditions they find irksome, and explains why they give up the idea. If that isn’t story, what is it?

The Weavers of Hauptmann,16 giving us somewhat loosely connected pictures of social conditions among the weavers of Germany in the forties of the nineteenth century, is said to be another specimen of these plays without story. Now such plays as The Weavers have one of two results: they rouse us to thought on the social conditions represented, or they do not. To succeed they must rouse us; but if our stirred feelings are to lead anywhere, we must be not only stirred but clear as to the meaning of the play. There have been many who have thought that The Weavers, though it stirs us to sympathy, leaves us nowhere because not clear. Be this as it may, even The Weavers has some story, for it tells us of the rise and development of a revolt of the weavers against their employers.

Confusion as to “story” results from two causes. First, story in drama is often taken to imply only complicated story. To say that every play must have complicated story is absurd. To say that every play must have some story, though it may be very slight, is undeniable. Secondly, story is frequently used to mean plot, and plot of the older type, namely a play of skilfully arranged suspense and climax in a story of complicated and extreme emotion. It is the second cause which underlies Mr. Archer’s curious statement about Chains. He says that the play has no “emotional tension worth speaking of,” and assumes that where there is no emotional tension there cannot be story. Tension in the sense of suspense the play has little, but Mr. Archer states that it held “an audience absorbed through four acts” and stirred “them to real enthusiasm.” In these words he grants the emotional response of the audience. Miss Baker substitutes sympathy for the characters and deft dealing with ironic values (see the ends of Act II and Act III) for complicated plot and dependence on suspense. One kind of play, however, no more precludes story than another.

What, then, is the difference between story and plot? In treating drama, what should be meant by story is what a play boils down to when you try to tell a friend as briefly as possible what it is about—what Mr. Knobloch calls the vital active part, the “verb” of the play. Here is the story of the play, Barbara Frietchie, as it re-shaped itself in Clyde Fitch’s mind from Whittier’s poem:17 “A Northern man loves a Southern girl. She defies her father and runs away to marry him. By a sudden battle the ceremony is prevented. The minister’s house is seized by the rebels, and soldiers stationed there. Barbara, who has remained, seeing a Confederate sharpshooter about to fire on her lover passing with his regiment, drops on her knees, slowly levels a gun she has seized, and shoots the Southerner. Her lover is wounded and she struggles to protect him from her father, brother, and rebel suitor, and from every little noise which might cost his life. He dies, and she, now wholly wedded to the Northern cause, waves the flag, as does the old woman in Whittier’s poem, in defiance of the Southern army, and is shot by her crazy rebel lover.”18 Note that this summary, though it makes the story clear, in no way presents the scenes of the play as to order, suspense, or climax. This is the story, not the plot of Barbara Frietchie. Plot, dramatically speaking, is the story so moulded by the dramatist as to gain for him in the theatre the emotional response he desires. In order to create and maintain interest, he gives his story, as seems to him wise, simple or complex structure; and discerning elements in it of suspense, surprise, and climax, he reveals them to just the extent necessary for his purposes. Plot is story proportioned and emphasized so as to accomplish, under the conditions of the theatre, the purposes of the dramatist. Compare the plot of Barbara Frietchie with its story.

Act I. The Frietchies’ front stoop facing on a street in the town of Frederick, which is in the hands of the hated Yankees. By the sentimental talk of the Southern girls sitting on the steps we learn that Barbara Frietchie is carrying on a flirtation with Captain Trumbull, a Union officer, under the noses of her outraged family, friends, and lover, Jack Negly. After a short scene, Barbara sends him off rebuffed and incensed. She is then left alone in the dusk. Her brother, Arthur Frietchie, steals round the corner of the house, wounded. Barbara takes him in and they are not yet out of earshot when Captain Trumbull appears to call on Barbara much to the wrath of the Frietchies’ next-door neighbor, Colonel Negly. The Yankee lover summons Barbara, and dismisses a Union searching party, swearing on his honor that there are no rebels in the Frietchie home. Her gratitude for this leads them into a love scene, turbulent from the clash of sectional sympathies, terminating in her promise to become his wife. No sooner has the betrothal been spoken than Barbara’s father, incensed to it by old Colonel Negly, forbids the Union man his house and his daughter. To complete their separation, an Orderly rushes on, announcing the departure of Captain Trumbull’s Company for Hagerstown in the early morning. Leaning over the second-floor balcony, Barbara tells her lover that she will be at the minister’s house at Hagerstown the next day at noon.

Act II. The Lutheran minister’s house at Hagerstown. Barbara and her friend, Sue Royce, appear all aflutter and, with the minister’s wife, Mrs. Hunter, await the arrival of the bridegroom and the divine. News comes that the Confederates are swooping into the town, and Captain Trumbull bursts into the room. An impassioned love scene follows in which we learn that Barbara’s sympathies are changing, so much so that she presents her lover with an old Union flag to wear next his heart. Orders for the soldier to join his Company part Barbara and Trumbull. The Confederates are heard coming down the street as he leaves the house. Barbara’s brother Arthur breaks into the house and stations two sharpshooters, angered deserters from Captain Trumbull’s Company, at the windows, Barbara protesting. Arthur goes about his business and she learns that Gelwex, the deserter with the greatest grudge against her lover, is to have the honor of picking him off as he comes down the street. She gets a gun for herself. Captain Trumbull’s excited voice is heard outside the window. The deserter takes careful aim, puts his finger to the trigger, and is shot from behind by Barbara.

Act III. Two days later. The front hallway of the Frietchie house. The Confederates have re-taken the town. Barbara is in despair, her father exultant, not speaking to her until she tells him that she is not married to the Union officer. She pleads for news of her beloved, but her father gives her little satisfaction. He has just gone upstairs when Arthur comes in, supporting a wounded and fever-stricken man whom he has shot. It is Captain Trumbull. Barbara takes him to her room, and when her father, hearing who the wounded man is, orders him thrown into the street, she pleads with all her strength to be allowed to keep him with her. The old man yields, and when the Confederate searching party invades the house, gives his word for its loyalty. Barbara has placed herself at the foot of the stairs, determined to hold the fort against the enemies of her lover. The doctor has insisted on absolute quiet for him; noise may kill him. When the searching party has been turned back, she summons new strength to quiet crazy Jack Negly, who has entered howling his victory. He insists that she shall marry him, and tries, pistol in hand, to force his way past Barbara to the bedside of his enemy in love and war. By sheer force of will she conquers Negly and rushes past him to the door of the room where her lover lies.

Act IV. Scene 1. The next morning. Barbara’s room. Captain Trumbull lies peacefully on the bed. Mammy Lu, the colored nurse, is dozing as Barbara enters. They listen for the invalid’s breathing, hear none, and find that he is dead. Half crazed, Barbara snatches the bloody flag from his bosom. The scene changes.

Scene 2. The balconied stoop in front of the house. The Confederate soldiers, headed by Stonewall Jackson, are heralded by a large crowd! Barbara, hanging the Union flag out on the balcony, is discovered by the mob, who begin to stone her, urging somebody to shoot. The lines of Whittier’s poem, to fit the circumstances which Clyde Fitch has made, now become:

Shoot! You’ve taken a life already dearer to me than my own. Shoot, and I’ll thank you! but spare your flag!19

General Jackson orders that no shot be fired on penalty of death. Her crazed lover, Negly, shoots her down from the street, and his own father orders the execution of the penalty.

“In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the impulse to write some play—any play—exists, so to speak, in the abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to work and invent a story. But this frame of mind is to be regarded with suspicion. Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted from such an abstract impulse. Invention in these cases is apt to be nothing but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscope formed of fragmentary reminiscences. I remember once in some momentary access of ambition, trying to invent a play. I occupied several hours of a long country walk, in, as I believed, creating out of nothing at all a dramatic story. When at last I had modelled it into some sort of coherency, I stepped back from it in my mind as it were, and contemplated it as a whole. No sooner had I done so than it began to seem vaguely familiar. ‘Where have I seen this story before?’ I asked myself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutes that I found I had re-invented Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Thus, when we think we are choosing a plot out of the void, we are very apt to be, in fact, ransacking the storehouse of memory.”20

There is, of course, another group of would-be playwrights who care nothing for freshness of subject but are perfectly content to imitate the latest success, hoping thereby to win immediate notoriety, or what interests them even more, immediate money return. Undoubtedly a man may take a subject just presented in a successful play and so re-shape it by the force of his own personality as to make it an original work of power. Ordinarily, however, these imitators should remember the old adage about the crock which goes so often to the well that at last it comes back broken. He who merely imitates may have some temporary vogue, and dramatic technique may help him to win it, but whatever is very popular soon gives way to something else, for the fundamental law of art, as of life, is change. He who is content merely to imitate must be content with impermanency. It is the creator and perfecter whom we most remember. Even the creator or the perfecter we remember. The mere imitators have their brief day and pass. Today we still read the work of the initiators, Lyly, Greene, Kyd. With pleasure we turn the pages of Marlowe, Jonson, and Fletcher, not to mention Shakespeare. The dozens of mere imitators who had their little day are known only as names.

The ambitious but inexperienced writer of plays worries himself much in hunting a novel subject,—and in vain. Far afield he goes, seeking the sensational, the bizarre, the occult, for new emotions and situations, failing to recognize that the emotional life of yesterday, today, and tomorrow can differ little fundamentally. Civilization refines or deteriorates, kingdoms rise and fall, languages develop and pass, but love of man and woman, of friend for friend, ambition, jealousy, envy, selfishness,—these emotions abide. A book has been published to show that there are but thirty-six possible dramatic situations. It is based on the dictum of the Italian dramatist, Gozzi, that “there could be only thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller gave himself much trouble to find more, but was unable to find as many.”21 The very chapter headings of the book mentioned prove that the number of possible dramatic situations is a mere matter of subdivision: “Vengeance Pursuing Crime”; “Madness”; “Fatal Imprudence”; “Loss of Property “; “Ambition.” Obviously, there are many different kinds of vengeance, as the person pursuing the crime is a hired detective, a wronged person, an officer of state, etc. Moreover, differing conditions surrounding the crime, as well as the character of the avenger, would make the vengeance sought different. The same may be said of the other chapter-headings. It may be possible to agree on the smallest number of dramatic situations possible, but disagreement surely lies beyond that, for, according to our natures, we shall wish to subdivide and increase the number. Just what that smallest number is, here is unimportant. The important fact is: keen thinkers about the drama agree that the stuff from which it is made may be put into a small number of categories. This rests on the belief that the emotions we feel today are the same old emotions, though we may feel them in greater or less degree because of differences in climate, civilization or ideals. Modern invention, of course, affects our emotional life. It is now a commonplace that invention has quite changed the heroism of warfare from what it was even a generation ago. It is still heroism, but under conditions so different that it needs wholly different treatment dramatically. In Restoration Comedy the rake was the hero. The audience, viewing life through his eyes saw the victims of his selfishness as fools or as people who, in any combat of wits with the hero, deservedly came off defeated. Interest in one’s fellow man, a more just sense of life had developed in the early years of the eighteenth century. This wholly changed the emphasis, and gave birth to the Sentimental Comedy. The characters, even the story, of this newer comedy are almost identical with the Restoration Comedy, but the material is so treated that our sympathies go to the unfortunate wife of The Careless Husband, not to the man himself, as they would have a generation before. In The Provoked Husband22 it is the point of view of that husband as to Lady Townley, though she is presented in all her charm and gaiety, with which we are left.

The sentimentality of the present day is not the sentimentality of 1850 to 1870. The higher education of women, the growth of suffrage, the prevailing wide discussion of scientific matters have not taken sentimentality from us, but have changed its look. Because of changes in costume and custom it even appears more different than it really is. A perfect illustration of the point is Milestones,23 of Mr. Edward Knobloch. Three generations live before our eyes the same story, but how differently because of changed costumes, ideas, and immediate surroundings. In French drama, the wet-nurse is no new figure as one employee in a household where we are watching the comedy or the tragedy of the employers. Brieux was the first, however, to study the emotions of such a household through the nurse, making her feelings of prime consequence. Hence, Les Remplaçantes.24 The whole situation is summed up by William Sharp (Fiona Macleod) in his Introduction to The House of Usna:

The tradition of accursed families is not the fantasy of one dramatist, or of one country or of one time....

Whether the poet turn to the tragedy of the Theban dynasty, or to the tragedy of the Achaian dynasty, or to the tragedy of Lear, or to the Celtic tragedy of the House of Fionn, or to the other and less familiar Gaelic tragedy of the House of Usna—whether one turn to these or to the doom of the House of Malatesta, or to the doom of the House of Macbeth, or to the doom of the House of Ravenswood, one turns in vain if he be blind and deaf to the same elemental forces as they move in their eternal ichor through the blood that has today’s warmth in it, that are the same powers though they be known of the obscure and the silent, and are committed like wandering flame to the torch of a ballad as well as to the starry march of the compelling words of genius; are of the same dominion, though that be in the shaken hearts of islesfolk and mountaineers, and not with kings in Mykênai, or by the thrones of Tamburlaine and Aurungzebe, or with great lords and broken nobles and thanes....

... I know one who can evoke modern dramatic scenes by the mere iterance of the great musical names of the imagination. Menelaos, Helen, Klytemaistra, Andromachê, Kassandra, Orestes, Blind Oidipus, Elektra, Kreusa, and the like. This is not because these names are in themselves esoteric symbols. My friend has not seen any representation of the Agamemnon or the Choephoroi, of Aias or Oidipus at Kolonos, of Elektra or Ion, or indeed of any Greek play. But he knows the story of every name mentioned in each of the dramas of the three kings of Greek Tragedy.... And here, he says, is his delight. “For I do not live only in the past but in the present, in these dramas of the mind. The names stand for the elemental passions, and I can come to them through my own gates of today as well as through the ancient portals of Aischylos or Sophocles or Euripides.” ...

It is no doubt in this attitude that Racine, so French in the accent of his classical genius, looked at the old drama which was his inspiration: that Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Bridges, so English in the accent of their genius, have looked at it; that Echegaray in Spain, looked at it before he produced his troubled modern Elektra which is so remote in shapen thought and coloured semblance from the colour and idea of its prototype; that Gabriele D’Annunzio looked at it before he became obsessed with the old terrible idea of the tangled feet of Destiny, so that a tuft of grass might withhold or a breath from stirred dust empoison, and wrote that most perturbing of all modern dramas, La Città Morta.25

The drama must, then, go on treating over and over emotions the same in kind. Real novelty comes in presenting them as they affect men and women who are in ideas, habits, costume, speech, and environment distinctly of their time. Their expression of the old elemental emotions brings genuine novelty. Usually it is not through an incident or an episode, obviously dramatic, but through the characters involved that one understands and presents what is novel in the dramatic. Feeling this strongly, Mr. Galsworthy asserts “Character is plot.”26

So long as characters, ideas, and treatment seem to the public fresh, they even have a weakness for a story they have heard before. Recall the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in which the dramatists shared with their audiences a knowledge of the stories of the gods which was theirs by education and from repeated treatment by the dramatists of the day. That public asked, not new stories, but newness of effect because old stories which were almost fixed subjects for their dramatists were given individuality of treatment. In a modified sense this was true of the Elizabethan public. Romeo and Juliet, Lear, probably Titus Andronicus, and possibly Julius Cæsar Londoners had known as plays just passing from popularity when Shakespeare made them over. Here again, it was freshness of treatment through better characterization, richer poetry, and finer technique, not creative story, which won the public to Shakespeare. Nor is this attitude a thing of the past. Think of the delight with which the public today watches the rejuggling of old elements of plot in the rapid succession of popular musical comedies, grateful for whatever element of freshness they may find in the total product. Was it the story, or the characterization and setting, indeed all that went with the treatment of the story, which in Peg o’ My Heart and Bunty Pulls the Strings won these plays popularity? Seek for novelty, then, not by trying to invent some new story, but in an idea, the setting of the play, the technical treatment given it, above all the characters. The last, when studied, are likely so to reshape the story which first presents itself to the imagination as to make it really novel. Does the freshness of the story of the Duke, Olivia, and Viola in Twelfth Night rest on the story as Shakespeare found it in Barnabe Riche’s book,27 or on the characterization Shakespeare gave these suggested figures and the effect of their developed characters on the story as he found it? Surely the latter.

Another common fallacy of young dramatists is that what has happened is better dramatic material than what is imagined. Among the trite maxims a dramatist should remember, however, is: “Truth is often stranger than fiction.” The test for a would-be writer of plays, choosing among several starting points, should be, not, “Is this true?” but “Will my audience believe it true on sight or because of the treatment I can give it?” “Aristotle long ago decided how far the tragic poet need regard historical accuracy. He does not make use of an event because it really happened, but because it happened so convincingly that for his present purpose he cannot invent conditions more convincing.”28 Any reader of manuscript plays knows that again and again, when he has objected to something as entirely improbable, he has been told indignantly: “Why, you must accept that, for it happened exactly like that to my friend, Smith.” On the other hand, who refuses to see The Merchant of Venice because of the inherent improbability of the exaction of the pound of flesh by Shylock? Highly improbable it is, but Shakespeare makes this demand come from a figure so human in all other respects that we accept it. A subject is not to be rejected because true or false. Every dramatic subject must be presented with the probable human experience, the ethical ideas, and the imaginativeness of the public in mind. To a dramatist all subjects are possible till, after long wrestling with the subject chosen, he is forced to admit that, whether originally true or false, he cannot make it seem probable to an audience. Facts are, of course, of very great value in drama, but if they are to convince a theatrical public, the dramatist must so present them that they shall not run completely counter to what an audience thinks it knows about life.

Nor should a person who knows absolutely nothing of the theatre attempt to write plays. He should go to see plays enough to know how long a performance usually lasts, waits between the acts included, say two hours and a half to two hours and three quarters; to know about how long an act usually takes in playing; to gain some idea of the relation in time between the written or printed page and the time in acting; to understand that, in general, a small cast is preferable to a large one; to know that the limited space of the stage makes some effects so difficult as to be undesirable. This is to have ordinary common sense about the theatre. Otherwise, what he puts on paper will be practically sure of immediate rejection because the manuscript proves that the writer has either not been in the theatre, or being there, has been wholly unobservant. The following quotation seems almost fantastic, but the experience of the writer in reading dramatic manuscripts fully bears it out:

Many of the manuscripts that are sent to the New York managers are such impossible oddities that few readers would regard a description of them as really accurate. It was the privilege of the writer to look over a collection of “plays” that have been mailed recently to several of the theatrical offices, and, among the number, he came across a dozen that were each about fifteen to twenty pages in length. This included the scenic descriptions and stage directions. Such “plays,” if enacted, would be of about ten to eleven minutes’ duration instead of two and a quarter hours. Three manuscripts called for from ninety to one hundred characters, and from nine to fourteen different scenes. Eight manuscripts were divided into nine acts each and, judging from their thickness, would have run on for days, after the fashion of a Chinese drama. One “play” was laid in the year 2200 A.D., and called for twelve actors to portray “the new race of men”—each man to be at least seven feet tall. These characters were to make all their entrances and exits in airships. Several manuscripts that the writer examined would have required professional strong men in their enactment, so difficult were the physical feats outlined for some of the actors. A great number of “modern dramas” included a ream of colloquialisms and anachronisms intermixed with Louis XV situations. And one manuscript, entitled “Love in All Ages” called for twelve different acts with a new group of nine differently built actors in each.29

A stage direction which ran something like this is the most naïve in the experience of the writer. “Germs of a locomotive, a cathedral, etc., detach themselves in an unknown manner from the walls and float airily, merrily about the room.” Impossible? Possibly not for a genius of a stage manager. Likely to recommend the play to a manager trying to judge from a manuscript the dramatic sense of its unknown author? Hardly.

Granted then that a would-be playwright has acquired ordinary common sense about the theatre and has some point of departure, how does he move from it to plot? First, by taking time enough, by avoiding hurry. Let any would-be dramatist get rid promptly of the idea that good plays are written in a rush. It is perfectly true that the mere writing out of a play has often been done in what seems an amazingly short time,—a few weeks, days, or even hours. However, in every case of rapid composition, as for instance Sheridan’s Rivals, which was put on paper in very brief time, the author has either mulled his material for a long time or was so thoroughly conversant with it that it required no careful thinking out at the moment of composition. In The Rivals Sheridan drew upon his intimate knowledge for many years of the people and the gossip of the Pump Room at Bath. Mr. H. A. Jones has more than once testified, “I mull long on my plot, sometimes a year, but when I have it, the rest (the mere writing out) is easy.” Sardou turned out a very large number of plays. Nor are his plays, seemingly, such as to demand the careful preparation required for the drama of ideas or the drama more dependent on characterization than incident. Yet he worked very carefully at all stages, from point of departure to final draft. “Whenever an idea occurred to Sardou, he immediately made a memorandum of it. These notes he classified and filed. For example, years before the production of Thermidor he had the thought of one day writing such a play. Gradually the character of Fabienne shaped itself; Labussière was devised later to fit Coquelin. Everything that he read about that epoch of the French Revolution, and the ideas which his reading inspired, he wrote down in the form of rough notes. Engravings, maps, prints, and other documents of the time he carefully collected. Memoirs and histories he annotated and indexed, filing away the index references in his file cases, or dossiers. At the time of his death, Sardou had many hundreds of these dossiers, old and new. Some of the older ones had been worked up into plays, while the newer ones were merely raw material for future dramas. When the idea of a play had measurably shaped itself in his mind he wrote out a skeleton plot which he placed in its dossier. There it might lie indefinitely. In this shape Thermidor remained for nearly twenty years, and Theodora for ten. When he considered that the time was ripe for one of his embryonic plays, Sardou would take out that particular dossier, read over the material, and lay it aside again. After it had fermented in his brain for a time, he would, if the inspiration seized him, write out a scenario. After this, he began the actual writing of the play.”30

Late in the seventeenth century, one of the most prolific of English playwrights, John Dryden, contracted to turn out four plays a year. He failed completely to carry out his promise. Some dramatists of a much more recent day should attribute to the speed with which they have turned out plays their repeated failures, or, after early successes, their waning hold on the public. Every dramatist should keep steadily in mind the words of the old French adage: “Time spares not that on which time hath been spared.” Time, again time, and yet again time is the chief element in successful writing of plays.

A wandering, erratic career is forbidden the dramatist. Back in the eighteenth century Diderot stated admirably the qualities a dramatist must have if he is to plot well. “He must get at the heart of his material. He must consider order and unity. He must discern clearly the moment at which the action should begin. He must recognize the situations which will help his audience, and know what it is expedient to leave unsaid. He must not be rebuffed by difficult scenes or long labor. Throughout he must have the aid of a rich imagination.”31 Selection, Proportion, Emphasis, Movement,—all making for clearness,—these as the words of Diderot suggest, are what the dramatist studies in developing his play from Subject, through Story, to Plot.

1 Auteurs Dramatiques, Pailleron. A. Binet and J. Passey. L’Année Psychologique, 1894, pp. 98-99.

2 Sardou and the Sardou Plays, p. 127. Jerome A. Hart. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia.

3 Auteurs Dramatiques, Dumas fils, p. 77.

4 Five Plays, p. 86. Lord Dunsany. Mitchell Kennerley, New York.

5 Auteurs Dramatiques, Sardou, L’Année Psychologique, 1894, p. 66.

6 Play-Making, pp. 18-19, note. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

7 Auteurs Dramatiques, Sardou, p. 66.

8 Auteurs Dramatiques, M. de Curel, p. 121.

9 From Ibsen’s Workshop. Works, vol. x, pp. 91-92. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

10 Consult the pages of W. C. Hazlitt’s Shakespeare Library, a source book of his plays for proof of this.

11 Belles-Lettres Series. F. E. Schelling, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

12 Mermaid Series or Everyman’s Library.

13 Published in translation by Brentano; also in Chief Contemporary Dramatists. Thomas H. Dickinson. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

14 Note, p. 49.

15 J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

16 Dramatic Works, vol. I. Ed. Ludwig Lewisohn. B. Huebach., New York.

17 For purposes of useful comparison the lines of Whittier which suggested the subject to Mr. Fitch are appended.

On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain wall; Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot, into Frederick town. Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight. “Halt!”—the dust-brown ranks stood fast “Fire!”—out blazed the rifle-blast. It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,” she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman’s deed and word: “Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!” he said. All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet; All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host.

18 The Stage in America, p. 90. Norman Hapgood. The Macmillan Co., New York.

19 Barbara Frietchie, p. 126. Clyde Fitch. Life Publishing Co., New York.

20 Play-Making, pp. 24-25. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

21 Les 36 Situations Dramatiques. Georges Polti. Edition du Mercure de France, 1895, p. 1.

22 For texts of The Careless Husband and The Provoked Husband, both plays by Colley Cibber, see Works, vols. II and IV, 1777.

23 Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.

24 Not translated. Edition in French, P. V. Stock, Paris.

25 Foreword to The House of Usna. Fiona Macleod. Published by Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1903.

26 Some Platitudes Concerning Drama. John Galsworthy. Atlantic Monthly, December, 1909.

27 Shakespeare Library, vol. I, pp. 387-412. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt.

28 Hamburg Dramaturgy, p. 279. Lessing. Bohn ed.

29 The United States of Playwrights, Henry Savage. The Bookman, September, 1909.

30 De la Poésie Dramatique. Diderot. Œuvres, vol. VII, p. 321. Garnier Frères, Paris.

31 Sardou and the Sardou Plays, p. 125. J. A. Hart. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

CHAPTER IV

FROM SUBJECT THROUGH STORY TO PLOT. CLEARNESS THROUGH WISE SELECTION

Dumas the younger, at twenty, wishing to write his first play, asked his father for the secret of a successful play. That man of many successful novels and plays replied: “It’s very simple: First Act, clear; Third Act, short; and everywhere, interest.” Though play-writing is not always so easy a matter as when a man of genius like Dumas the elder wrote the relatively simple romantic dramas of his day, he emphasized one of the fundamentals of drama when he called for clearness in the first act. He might well have called for it everywhere. First of all, a dramatist who has found his point of departure must know just what it means to him, what he wants to do with it. Is he merely telling a story for its own sake, satisfied if the incidents be increasingly interesting till the final curtain falls? Is he writing his play, above all, for one special scene in it, as was Mr. H. A. Jones, in Mrs. Dane’s Defence,1 in its third act? Does he merely wish to set people thinking about conditions of today, to write a drama of ideas, like Mr. Galsworthy in The Pigeon,2 or M. Paul Loyson, in The Apostle?3 Has he, like Brieux in Damaged Goods4 or The Cradle,5 an idea he wishes to convey, and so must write a problem play? Is his setting significant for one scene only or has it symbolic values for the whole play? As Dumas the younger well said, “How can you tell what road to take unless you know where you are going?”6

The trouble with most would-be dramatists is that they make too much of the mere act of writing, too little of the thinking preliminary to composition and accompanying it. With the point of departure clearly in mind, seeing some characters who immediately connect themselves with the subject, forecasting some scenes and a few bits of dialogue, they rush to their desks before they see with equal clearness, we will not say the plot but even the story necessary for the proposed play. What is the result? “They have a general view of their subject, they know approximately the situations, they have sketched out the characters, and when they have said to themselves, ‘This mother will be a coquette, this father will be stern, this lover a libertine, this young girl impressionable and tender,’ the fury of making their scenes seizes them. They write, they write, they come upon ideas, fine, delicate, and even strong; they have charming details ready to hand: but when they have worked much and come to plotting, for always one must come to that, they try to find a place for this charming bit; they can never make up their minds to put aside this delicate or strong idea, and they will do exactly the opposite of what they should,—make the plot for the sake of the scenes when the scenes should grow out of the plot. Consequently the dialogue will be constrained in movement and much trouble and time will be lost.”7

A modern play recently submitted to the writer in manuscript showed just this trouble. Act I was in itself good. Act II was good in one scene, bad in the other. Act III was in itself right. Yet at the end of the play one queried: “What is the meaning of it all?” Nothing bound the parts together. There was no clear emphasis on some central purpose. The author, when questioned, admitted that with certain characters in mind, he had written the scenes as they came to him. When pressed to state his exact subject, he advanced first one, then another, at last admitting candidly: “I guess I never have been able to get far enough away from the play to see quite what all of it does mean.” Asked whether there was not underlying all his scenes irony of fate, in that a man trying his best to do what the world holds commendable is bound in such relationship to two or three people that always they give his career a tragic turn, he said, after consideration, “Yes. What if I call my play The Irony of Life?” With the purpose of making that his meaning he reworked his material. Quickly the parts fell into line, with a clear and interesting play as the result. Many and many a play containing good characterization, good dialogue and some real individuality of treatment has gone to pieces in this way. A recent play opened with a well-written picture of the life of a group of architects’ draughtsmen. Apparently we were started on a story of their common or conflicting interests. After that first act, however, the play turned into a story of the way in which one of these young draughtsmen, a kind of mixture of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and D’Artagnan, forced his way to professional and social success. Once or twice, scenes seemed intentional satire on our social classes. The fact is, the author had in the back of his mind social satire, characterization of the central figure, and a picture of the life of young draughtsmen. As material for any one of these came to him when he was writing, he gave his attention wholly to it. Though this might do for a rough draft, it must be rewritten to make the chief interest stand out as most important, and to give the other interests clearly their exact part in a perfectly clear whole. Left as written, the play seemed to have a first act somewhat off the question, and a later development going off now and then at a tangent. Its total effect, in spite of some admirable characterization, considerable truth to life, and real cleverness, was confusion for the audience and consequent dissatisfaction.

Another play, often extremely well characterized, had, as an apparent central purpose, study of a mother who has been trying to give her son such surroundings that he cannot go the way of his father who, many years since, had embezzled. Yet almost as frequently the purpose seemed to be a very close study of the son, who, although the mother, blinded by her affection, does not see it, is mentally and morally almost the duplicate of his father. Moved with sympathy, now for one and now for the other, just as the interest of the writer led him, the audience came away confused and dissatisfied. How can an audience be expected to know what a dramatist has not settled for himself, the chief of his interests among several?

When M. de Curel, with his original idea or picture for L’Envers d’une Sainte sat down to reflect, “he noticed that the interest in the subject lies in the feelings a woman must experience when she returns after a long absence to a place full of memories, and finds herself face to face with her past life. There was the psychological idea which seemed to him alluring,—to paint a special phase of emotion.”8 There, for him, lay the heart of his subject. Bulwer-Lytton, writing to Macready in September, 1838, of a proposed play on the life of the Chevalier de Marillac, in which Cardinal Richelieu must also be an important figure, said: “Now look well at this story, you will see that incident and position are good. But then there is one great objection. Who is to do Richelieu? Marillac has the principal part and requires you; but a bad Richelieu would spoil all. On the other hand, if you took Richelieu, there would be two great acts without you, which will never do; and the main interest of the plot would not fall on you. Tell me what you propose. Must we give up this idea?”9 Bulwer-Lytton had not yet found the dramatic centre in his material. At first the story and character of Marillac blinded him to the fact that the material was best fitted for a dramatic study of the great Cardinal. When, shortly after his letter, he came to see that the dramatic centre lay in Richelieu, his famous play began developing. With that magnet in hand, he quickly drew to him the right filaments of incident to make a unified and interesting story.

Any dramatist has the right to decide first, what is the real importance of his subject to him, but before he finishes he may find that he will discard what originally seemed to him important, either because something interests him more as he reflects or because he comes to see in his subject an interest other than his own which will be stronger for the audience. M. de Curel, thinking over his proposed play, abandoned his first idea because “in ten minutes space it transformed itself. He abandoned his first idea in order to try to paint the slightly analogous feelings of a nun. He imagined a young girl who, at a former time, in a moment of madness, had wished to kill the wife of the man with whom she was infatuated. To expiate her crime, she entered a convent, took the vows, and lived in retirement for twenty years. Then she learned that the man whom she loved had just died. Whereupon, perhaps from desire for freedom, perhaps from curiosity, she comes out of her exile, returns to her family and finds herself in the presence of the widow and her child.” Here was the beginning, not of L’Envers d’une Sainte,10 but of another play, L’Invitée. “It may happen—something certainly surprising—that the idea which allured the author into writing the piece makes no part of the piece itself. It is excluded from it; no trace of it remains. Note that the point of departure of L’Invitée is an idea of a woman capable of murder who is passed off as insane. Of the murder nothing remains, and as to the mother’s madness it is reduced to almost nothing: it is no more than a rumor that has been going about, and the mother has not been really insane.”11 Not to yield to such a compelling new aspect of the subject is to find one’s way blocked. The resulting tragedy, or comedy, for the unyielding playwright, Mr. Archer states amusingly. “’Here,’ says a well-known playwright, ‘is a common experience. You are struck with an idea with which you fall in love. “Ha!” you say. “What a superb scene where the man shall find the will under the sofa! If that doesn’t make them sit up, what will?” You begin the play. The first act goes all right, and the second act goes all right. You come to the third act and somehow it won’t go at all. You battle with it for weeks in vain; and then it suddenly occurs to you, “Why, I see what’s wrong! It’s that confounded scene where the man finds the will under the sofa. Out it must come!” You cut it out and at once all goes smooth again. But you have thrown overboard the great effect that first tempted you.’”12

The point is not that when a dramatist first begins to think over his subject, he must decide exactly what is for him the heart of it. He may shift, reject, and change his own interest again and again, as attractive aspects of his subject suggest themselves. The point is that this shifting of interest should take place before he begins to put his play on paper. Not to be perfectly clear with one’s self which of three or four possible interests offered by a subject is the one really interesting is to waste time. As the play develops, a writer wobbles from one subject to another and so leaves no clear final impression. Or he is obliged to rewrite the play, placing the emphasis properly for clearness. In one case he fails. In the other he does his work twice. The present writer has seen many a manuscript, after a year or more of juggling with shifting interests, given up in despair and thrown into the waste basket.

Probably it is best to leave till revision the question whether the interest presented will appeal to the general audience just as it does to the writer. It certainly can do no harm, however, and may save labor, when an author knows just what he wants to treat and how he wishes to treat it, for him to consider whether this interest is likely to be as important for his public as for him. Many years ago, Mr. A.M. Palmer produced The Parisian Romance, a play so trite in subject and treatment that, as written, it might easily have failed. A young actor, seeing in a minor rôle the opportunities for a popular success built up a fine piece of characterization in the part of Baron Chevrial. That gave Richard Mansfield his first real start. The play was remodeled so that this element of novelty, this fresh piece of characterization, became central. Thus re-emphasized the play became known all over the country.13 Not long since a play written by its author to be wholly amusing, proved so hilarious in the second act that the actors rehearsed it with difficulty. When produced, however, the audience was so won by the hero in Act I that they took his mishaps in the second act with sympathetic seriousness. The play had to be rewritten.

It is at careful planning or plotting that the inexperienced dramatist balks. Scenarios, the outlines which will show any intelligent reader what plot the dramatist has in mind and its exact development, are none too popular. They are, however, the very best means by which a dramatist may force himself to find what for him is the heart of his subject.14 The moment that is clear to him, it is the open sesame to whatever story his play will demand. It is, too, the magnet which draws to him the bits of thought, character, action and dialogue which he shapes into plot.

With his purpose clearly in mind, the dramatist, as he passes from point of departure through story to plot, selects, and selects, and selects. Among all the possible people who might be the main figure in accomplishing his purpose, he picks the one most interesting him, or which he believes will most interest his public. From all the people who might surround his central figure he chooses the few who will best accomplish his purpose. If his people first appear to him as types, as in the case of The Country Boy to be cited in a moment, selectively he moves from type to individuals. Sooner or later he must determine how many of the possible characteristics of his figures he cares to present. As he writes, he selects from all that his people might say, and from all they might do in the way of illustrative action, only what seems to him necessary for his purpose. No dramatist uses all that occurs to him in the way of dramatic incident, characters, or dialogue. As he shapes his story; as he reshapes his story into plot; in many cases before he touches pen to paper, he has rejected much, always selecting what he uses by the touchstone of the definite purpose which knowing the heart of his subject has given him.

Doubtless some writers see situation first, and others character, but sooner or later all must come to some story. Now as story is only incident so unified that it has interesting movement from a beginning to an end, ultimately the task of all dramatists is to find illustrative action which as clearly and quickly as possible will present the characters of the story or make clear the purpose of the dramatist. Here is the selective process by which Mr. Selwyn got at the story of his Country Boy:

It happened to be just before Christmas of last year. The season some way impressed itself on me, and I began to think what a desolate place New York must be for a lot of fellows who had come here from small towns and who were thinking of the homes they had left there, and longing to go back to them for the Christmas season. Doubtless there are hundreds of them here who came here years ago vowing that they would never go back till they had “made good,” with the result that they have never since spent Christmas in the old home. [The initial idea.] There is always somebody to whom we are always successful, and some one to whom we are never successful, and many times, if these fellows would go back to their old homes, among the people who really care for them, they would be regarded as successes, whereas in the great city they are looked upon as failures. [Type character.]

It seemed to me that a character of that kind would make a good subject for a play, and then I began to look around for some one tangible to work from. Suddenly I thought of a newspaper man I used to know when I lived at a boarding house on 51st Street, here in New York. He was a free lance, and a grouchy, rheumatic, envious, bitter fellow, who had all the “dope” on life—was a philosopher and could tell every one else how to live, but didn’t seem to be able to apply any of his knowledge to himself. He wouldn’t even speak to any one in the boarding house but me, and why he singled me out for the honor I don’t know. But anyway he did, and he used to tell me all of his troubles—how he had come from a little town with great ambitions, and had vowed never to go back till he had attained all that he had set out to get. And yet he had never been back. He was a failure; dressed shabbily and had given up hope for himself—and still, as I say, he could tell everybody else just what to do to succeed. When I lived there in the boarding house and used to see him, I thought he was the only one of his kind in town, but since then I have found that there are many others just like him. [Individual character.]

So it occurred to me that he would be a good subject for The Country Boy, and I worked out his life as it had actually been lived here in New York. Though the character was good I presently discovered that it would not do for my central figure, for the reason that he had been here too long. He had gone through the mill and knew all about it, and what I really needed was a boy who could be shown to come from the country, and who could be taken through the temptations and discouragements that a boy of that sort would have to endure. So I just drew this younger character from my imagination. [Selection of special figure.]

I had to have this chap a bumptious, conceited sort of youth so as to have the contrast stronger when he met the hard knocks that were to come to him in the city. There are many boys of that sort in small towns. They do not see the opportunities around them but imagine nothing short of a big city has space enough for them to develop in. [Purpose determining characterization.]15

From idea through type-character to the individual Mr. Selwyn worked to the life in New York of the older man, and the story of the temptations and discouragements of the boy. When he had reached these, Mr. Selwyn saw that the best story for his purpose would be a mingling of the two. The boy “worked, in very well with the character of the old newspaper man, because it allowed him to give the youngster the benefit of his experience, and to succeed eventually by taking advantage of it. That brought a happy ending for both of them.”16

Any one of these stories as it lay in the mind of Mr. Selwyn before he turned it into plot, was a sequence of incidents, actions illustrative of one or both of the two characters, and, through them, of the original idea. Just what is meant by this “illustrative action” so often mentioned? In Les Oberlé, by René Bazin, is a charming chapter describing the Alsatian vintage festival. At their work the women sing the song of the Black Bow of Alsace—in the novel but one detail of an interesting description. The account comes about midway in the book. When the novel was dramatized it became necessary to make the audience understand, even before the hero, Jean, enters in Act I, that absorbed in his studies in Germany, he has been unaware of the constant friction in the home land between the governing Germans and the Alsatians. Here is the way the dramatist, emotionalizing the description of the novel, turned it into dramatic illustration of Jean’s ignorance of the condition of the country. Uncle Ulrich, Bastian, a neighbor, and his daughter, Odile, at sunset are waiting in a wood road for Jean, just arrived from Germany and walking home from the station.

(Outside a voice sings as it approaches in the distance.)

The Black Bow of the daughters of Alsace Is like a bird with spreading wings.

Ulrich. Ah, look there! Who can be so imprudent as to sing that air of Alsace?

The Voice.

It can overpass the mountains.

Bastian. If it should be he!

The Voice.

And watch what goes on there.

Odile. I am sure it is Jean’s voice.

Ulrich. Foolhardy! They will hear him!

The Voice. (Nearer.)

The Black Bow of the daughters of Alsace—

Ulrich. Again, and louder than ever!

The Voice.

Is like a cross we carry In memory of those men and women Whose souls were like our own.

Ulrich. Jean! Upon my word that young lawyer cannot know the laws. Jean!17

Just at the end of the same act it is necessary to illustrate the constant presence, the activity and alertness of the German forces and the irritation all this means to the Alsatians. In a story much of this would be described by the author. In the play we feel with each of the speakers the irritating presence of the troops, and so have perfect dramatic illustrative action.

(They are just starting off when Bastian stops them.)

Bastian. Chut!

Jean. What?

Bastian. (Softly.) Listen!

Jean. (Softly.) A rolling stone in the ravine.

Ulrich. Another!

Jean. Steps!

Ulrich. Of horses.

Jean. Well?

Ulrich. A patrol!

Jean. (Moved.) Ah!

Bastian. The Hussars!

Jean. What are they doing?

Ulrich. They are keeping watch.

Bastian. They are drilling.

Ulrich. Always!

Jean. Ah!

Bastian. Day and night.

Ulrich. Never resting.

Bastian. Perhaps they are trailing some deserter.

Jean. Ah! There are deserters?

Bastian. They won’t tell you so in the town.

Odile. But we on the frontiers see them.

Jean. Ah!

Bastian. They who go out by the Grand’ fontaine pass this way.

Odile. (Softly.) Near our farm. From our house one can see them passing.

Jean. Ah!

Ulrich. Chut!

Jean. I hear the breathing of their horses.

Ulrich. Be still.

Jean. We are doing nothing wrong.

Bastian. Wait.

Ulrich. Down there—wait—lean over.

Jean. I see—

Ulrich. They are coming up.

Bastian. They are going by.

Jean. They have crossed the road.

Ulrich. We can go down for the moment.

Bastian. Ouf!

Jean. It is strange—twenty times, a hundred times in Germany I have met the patrols of dragoons, or hussars, and admired their fine form. Here—

Ulrich. Here?

Jean. Only to see them gives me a queer feeling at the heart.

Ulrich. Don’t you understand, my dear Jean? There they were in their own country, here they are in ours.18

Early in the first scene of The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton, Beatrice states clearly, and more than once, the physical repulsion De Flores causes her. Knowing full well, however, the dramatic value of illustrative action, Middleton handled the ending of the scene in this way. Beatrice turning to leave the room, starts as she finds De Flores close at hand.

Beatrice. (Aside.) Not this serpent gone yet? (Drops a glove.)

Vermandero. Look, girl, thy glove’s fallen, Stay, stay! De Flores, help a little.

(Exeunt Vermandero, Alsemero and Servant.)

De Flores. Here, lady. (Offers her glove.)

Beatrice. Mischief on your officious forwardness! Who bade you stoop? they touch my hand no more: There! for the other’s sake I part with this;

(Takes off and throws down the other glove.)

Take ’em, and draw thine own skin off with ’em.

(Exit with Diaphanta and Servants.)

De Flores. Here’s a favour with a mischief now! I know She had rather wear my pelt tanned in a pair Of dancing pumps, than I should thrust my fingers Into her sockets here.19

Here the dramatist makes repulsion clear by illustrative action so emotional that it moves us to keenest sympathy or dislike for the woman herself. Dramatically speaking, then, illustrative action is not merely something which illustrates an idea or character, but it must be an illustration mirroring emotion of the persons in the play or creating it in the observer.

What is the relation of illustrative action to dramatic situation? The first is the essence of the second. A dramatic episode presents an individual or group of individuals so moved as to stir an audience to responsive emotion. Illustrative action by each person in the group or by the group as a whole is basal. The glove incident in The Changeling concerns both Beatrice and De Flores. Hers is illustrative action when she shrinks from the glove his hand has touched. He shows it when kissing and amorously fondling the glove she has refused. Their illustrative actions make together the dramatic episode of the glove,—which is in turn a part of Scene 1 of the first act of the play. There are the divisions: play, act, scene, episode, and illustrative action. Just as sometimes the development of a single episode may make a scene, or there may be but one scene to an act, there are cases when an illustrative action is a dramatic episode. The ending of Act II of Ostrovsky’s Storm illustrates this.

Varvara, who has just gone out, has put into the hands of Catherine the key to a gate in the garden hedge. This Varvara has taken without the knowledge of her mother, who is the mother-in-law of Catherine. Just as Varvara goes, she has said that if she meets Catherine’s lover, Boris, she will tell him to come to the gate. Catherine, terrified, at first tries to refuse the key, but Varvara insists on leaving it with her.

Catherine. (Alone, the key in her hand.) Oh, what is she doing? What hasn’t she courage for? Ah, she is crazy—yes, crazy. Here is what will ruin me. That’s the truth! I must throw this key away, throw it far away, into the river, so that it may never be found again. It burns my hand like a hot coal. (Dreamily.) This is how we are ruined, people like me! Slavery, that isn’t a gay business for any one. How many ideas it puts into our heads. Another would be enchanted with what has happened to me, and would rush on full tilt. How can one act in that way without reflection, without reason? Misfortune comes so quickly, and afterward there is all the rest of one’s life in which to weep and torment oneself, and the slavery will be still more bitter. (Silence.) And how bitter it is, slavery! Oh, how bitter it is! Who would not suffer from it? And we other women suffer more than all the rest. Here am I at this moment battling with myself in vain, not seeing a ray of light, and I shan’t see one. The further I go, the worse it is. And here is this additional sin that I am going to take on my conscience. (She dreams a moment.) Were not my mother-in-law—she has broken me: it is she who has made me come to hate this house. I hate its very walls. (She looks pensively at the key.) Ought I to throw it away? Of course I ought. How did it get into my hands? To seduce me to my ruin. (Listening.) Some one is coming! My heart fails me. (She puts the key into her pocket.) No!—no one. Why was I so frightened? And I hid the key—Very well, that’s the way it is to be. It is clear that fate wills it. And after all, where is the sin in seeing him just once, if at a distance? And if I were even to talk with him a little, where would the harm be?—But my husband—Very well, it was he himself who didn’t forbid it! Perhaps I shall never have such another chance in all my life. Then I shall weep and say to myself, “You had a chance to see him and didn’t know how to take advantage of it.” What am I saying? Why lie to myself? I will die for it if necessary, but see him I will. Whom do I want to deceive here? Throw away the key? No, not for anything in the world. I keep it. Come what will, I will see Boris. Ah, if the night would only come more quickly!

Curtain.20

Sometimes, even a playwright of considerable experience, though his mind is full of dramatic material, finds his plotting at a standstill. The trouble is that he has not sifted his material by means of the purpose he has in mind. When he does, details of setting, bits of characterization or even characters as wholes, parts or all of a scene and many ideas good in themselves but not necessarily connected with his real subject, will drop out. Many plays of modern realism have been overloaded with details of setting, with figures, or even scenes really unessential. In a recent play of Breton life a prominent detail in the setting of a cave was the figurehead of a ship. Even if one missed noticing this striking detail, its presence was emphasized by the text. It turned out, however, that the figurehead had nothing to do with the story or its development, nor was it really needed for any special color it gave. It should, therefore, have been omitted. No fault is more common than the use of unnecessary figures. When Lady Gregory wrote her version of The Workhouse Ward, she wisely cut out the matron, the doorkeeper, and all the inmates except two. With three figures her play is a masterpiece. With five actors and voices from off stage, Dr. Hyde’s Gaelic version is not. A one-act play adapted from the Spanish showed some dozen or more individual parts and a mob of at least forty. Ultimately, on a small stage, the plot was done full justice with half that number of individual parts and the crowd reduced to twenty or less. An amusing play of mistaken identity had a delightful scene in which an aunt of the heroine is proposed to by a friend of her youth. In it, the dramatist, with admirable characterization, set forth the views on matrimony of many middle-aged women. Yet the whole scene had nothing whatever to do with the story of the heroine. Consequently it was ultimately dropped out. That dramatic ideas must be sifted was shown on page 75 in the play seemingly about architects’ draughtsmen.

Not even when a scene, a bit of dialogue or some other detail, is entirely in character may it always keep its position. Though a detail or episode must be in character before it is admitted, it can hold its position only if it is necessary for the purpose of the play. Time limits everything for the dramatist. The final curtain impending inevitably at the end of two hours and a half is the dramatist’s “sword of Damocles.” It reminds him that in a play, “whatever goes for nothing, goes for less than nothing” because it shuts out something which, in its place, might be effective. In Tennyson’s Becket is a fine scene, the washing of the beggars’ feet by the Archbishop.21 It illustrates both customs of the time and a side of Becket’s character, yet it contained nothing absolutely necessary to the central purpose of the play. Consequently, as the play must be condensed for acting purposes, Sir Henry Irving cut out the whole scene.

This time limit forces the dramatist, when choosing between two episodes of equal value otherwise, to select that which does more in less space, or to combine desirable parts of the two episodes when possible. In Tennyson’s Becket, Scene 1 of Act II and Scene 1 of Act III take place in Rosamund’s Bower. Henry and Rosamund are the principal speakers in both. There is, too, no marked lapse of time between the scenes, though Tennyson chose to separate them by the “Meeting of the Kings” at Montmirail. Very naturally, therefore, when condensation was necessary, Irving by severe cutting brought these two scenes together as Act II of his version. He not only saved time; he gained in unity of effect. Similarly, Irving brings together the essential parts of Scene 2, Act II, the “Meeting of the Kings,” and Scene 3, Act III, “Traitor’s Meadow at Freteval,” making them the first scene of the third act in his version.

A cluttered play is always a bad play. Such clutter usually comes from including details of setting, characterization or idea, and even whole characters or scenes, not really necessary. Selection with one’s purpose clearly in mind is the remedy for such clutter.

Even, however, when a writer has so carefully selected his dramatic episodes that each is one or more bits of illustrative action bearing on the main idea and entirely in character, he may still be short of story. He cannot rouse and maintain interest moving at haphazard. His central idea must appear in dramatic episodes so ordered as to have sequence,—a beginning, a middle, and an end,—and so emphasized as to have the increasing interest which means movement. He cannot have good story till it has unity of action. When Bulwer-Lytton wrote Macready that he had discovered the heart of his proposed play on Marillac to be Richelieu, note that he speaks of the simplification and the unity resulting: “You will be pleased to hear that I have completed the rough Sketch of the Play in 5 acts—& I hope you will like it. I have taken the subject of Richelieu. Not being able to find any other so original & effective, & have employed somewhat of the story I before communicated to you, but simplified and connected.—You are Richelieu, & Richelieu is brought out, accordingly, as the prominent light round which the other satellites move. It is written on the plan of a great Historical Comedy, & I have endeavoured to concentrate a striking picture of the passions & events—the intrigue & ambition of that era—in a familiar point of view.”22

Thomas Dekker found the source of his Shoemakers’ Holiday23 in a pamphlet by Thomas Deloney, The Pleasant and Princely History of the Gentle-Craft.24 This loosely written pamphlet tries to tell three stories supposed to redound to the credit of the shoemakers: that of Prince Hugh and his love for Winifred; that of Crispin and Crispinianus and the brave deeds of the latter in the wars in France; and, finally, that of Simon Eyre, the master shoemaker who rose to be Lord Mayor of London, his wife and his apprentices. What obviously attracted Dekker in the pamphlet was the third story, to which he saw he could give much realism from his knowledge of the shoemakers about Leadenhall. Unfortunately, the story of Simon Eyre, though it provided him with delightful characters, gave him little variety of incident. Perhaps today a dramatist might make such a play carry almost wholly on the characterization of the shoemaker group. The Elizabethans, however, wanted a complicated story of varied action. Dekker, though he had first-rate romantic material in the story of Crispin and Crispinianus, could hardly weave this in with the story of Eyre, a relatively recent historical figure, for one material called for romantic and the other for realistic treatment. There seemed the deadlock. But Dekker, thinking of this Crispin in love with a princess, who disguised himself as a shoemaker in order to win her hand, remembered the wars of 1588 and English sympathy for the Huguenots involved therein. Therefore he turned Crispin into Lacy, a youth of that period. Lacy is not a prince, but a relative of the Earl of Lincoln, and something of a ne’er-do-well, in love with the Lord Mayor’s daughter, Rose. He fears that if he goes to the wars in France, his duty as “chief colonel” of the London Companies, he will lose her. Therefore he sends Askew in his stead and stays in London disguised as one of Eyre’s shoemaker apprentices. The purpose of Dekker to write a realistic play of complicated plot has helped him to reshape his material till two stories, as in the case of The Country Boy, have become one. Unity appears in materials seemingly as irreconcilable as romance and realism.

There are, however, two weaknesses in this story as now developed: Rose and Lacy, though they appear against the background of the wars, do not connect the apprentices with the enlistment, nor do they afford many scenes of marked dramatic force. Wishing one or two scenes of stronger emotion which at the same time would bring the apprentices into closer connection with the wars, Dekker creates Ralph, Jane, and Hammon. Ralph is one of the shoemakers who, pressed to the war, is torn from his protesting wife and fellow apprentices. In his absence, the citizen Hammon falls in love with Jane. Trying to make her believe that Ralph is dead, he wishes to marry her. Ralph, returning from the war to his former work with Eyre, can find no trace of Jane, for after a slight difference with Margery Eyre, she has disappeared. One day a servant brings Ralph a pair of shoes to be duplicated for a wedding gift. The pair to be copied Ralph recognizes as his parting gift to Jane. Summoning his fellow apprentices to aid him, he goes to the place proposed for the wedding and rescues Jane. Thus some scenes of fine if homely emotion are provided. Wedded love is contrasted with that of Rose and Lacy and with Hammon’s courtship, and through Ralph the apprentices are brought closely into connection with the wars.

Many a would-be dramatist suffers, however, not from a superabundance of material bearing on his subject but a dearth of it. Again and again one hears the complaint: “I know who my characters are to be, and I have dramatic situation, but I cannot find my story. I haven’t enough dramatic situation to round it out.” Just this difficulty troubled Bulwer-Lytton when he was preparing for Richelieu. He wrote to Macready:

Many thanks for your letter. You are right about the Plot—it is too crowded & the interest too divided.—But Richelieu would be a splendid fellow for the Stage, if we could hit on a good plot to bring him out—connected with some domestic interest. His wit—his lightness—his address—relieve so admirably his profound sagacity—his Churchman’s pride—his relentless vindictiveness and the sublime passion for the glory of France that elevated all. He would be a new addition to the Historical portraits of the Stage; but then he must be connected with a plot in which he would have all the stage to himself, & in which some Home interest might link itself with the Historical. Alas, I’ve no such story yet & he must stand over, tho’ I will not wholly give him up....

... Depend on it, I don’t cease racking my brains, & something must come at last.25

Such difficulty means that a writer forgets or is ignorant of one of the first principles of dramatic composition. When he has three or four good situations which are in character, he should not hunt new situations till he is sure he knows the full emotional possibilities of the situations he already has. To decide after the closest scrutiny of the situations in hand, that others are needed is one thing. On the other hand, the inexperienced workman presents as quickly as possible the climactic moment of the scene he has in mind, and gets away as rapidly as possible to another intense climax. Finding himself, as a result, badly in need of additional dramatic moments, he hunts for situations as situations. Returning triumphantly with some strong emotional effect, he must perforce put the characters of the earlier scenes into these. Usually, as they have no real part in these later scenes, they prove troublesome. Sometimes the new scenes may be so reshaped as to fit the original characters, but usually the result of this method is that the scenes are foisted on the original characters, becoming obvious misfits, or that the original characters are so modified as to fit them. When modified, however, the original characters no longer perfectly fit the original scenes. Driven backward and forward between character and story, the dramatist pursuing this method often gives up the attempt, saying despairingly: “It is no use. My characters will not give me a plot.”

The trouble here is that the inexperienced dramatist treats the situation as if its value lay in its most climactic moment. Often, however, there is as much pleasure for the public emotionally in working up to the climax as in the climax itself. To “hold a situation,” that is, to get from it the full dramatic possibilities the characters involved offer, a dramatist must study his characters in it till he has discovered the entire range of their emotion in the scene. This will give him not only many and many a new situation within the original situation, but the transitional scenes which will unify situations originally apparently unrelated except as the same figures appeared in them. For example, consider this.

A kindly woman in middle life comes in friendliest fashion to offer to take the daughter of a proud man in great financial straits into her own home. As treated by an inexperienced writer, there was a prompt, clear statement of what the woman desired, with an immediate passionate denial of the request by the jealously affectionate father. In this treatment we lose the best of the scene. Really this worldly-wise woman, talking to such a man, would lead up tactfully to her proposal. As she led up to it, there would be many dramatic moments, with much interesting revelation of her own and the man’s character. Caring for the man as she does, and loving the girl deeply, she would not immediately accept a refusal. After the man’s first denial, as she tried by turns to cajole, convince or dominate him, there would be strong dramatic conflict, and, once more, interesting revelation of character. Given, then, some happening, the nature of the human being involved in it will affect its look. A second person involved will affect it even more. Two people, influencing each other because affected by the same incident will give still a third look to the original situation. When you have what seems a good situation, don’t rush into another at your earliest opportunity, but instead study it till you know every permutation and combination it holds emotionally for every one involved, both because the situation affects every character, and because every character may affect all the others. Then you will know how to “hold a situation.” Said Dumas the Younger: “Before every situation that a dramatist creates, he should ask himself three questions. In this situation, what should I do? What would other people do? What ought to be done? Every author who does not feel disposed to make this analysis should renounce the theatre, for he will never become a dramatist.”26 Though every writer may not examine his material by means of such formal categories, he must in some way gain the thorough information about it for which Dumas calls. Then and then only he can select from the results of his thinking that which will best accomplish his purpose in the play.