Front matter (continued 5)

Sabine. That is not at all my idea of family relations. From my point of view, receiving life entails as great an obligation as giving it. There is a certain sort of link which makes the obligations counter balance. Since Nature has not made it possible for children to bring themselves into the world, of their own accord, I say that it was her intention to impose upon them a debt to those who give them life.

Maravon. They absolve that debt by giving life in turn to their children.

Sabine. They absolve it by filial piety which has been the inspiration of many deeds of heroism as you seem to forget.28

A recent editor of Hauptmann’s Gabriel Schilling’s Flight writes of it: “His analysis is projected creatively in the characters of the two women—Evelyn Schilling and Hanna Elias. What is it, in these women, that—different as they are—menaces the man and the artist Schilling? It is a passion for possession, for absorption, a hunger of the nerves rather than of the heart. These modern women have abandoned the simple and sane preoccupations of their grandmothers; the enormous garnered nervous energy that is no longer expended in household tasks and in childbearing strikes itself, beak and clawlike, into man. But man has not changed. His occupations are not gone. He cannot endure the double burden. That is why Gabriel Schilling, rather than be destroyed spiritually by these tyrannies and exactions, seeks a last refuge in the great and cleansing purity of the sea.

‘The modern malady of love is nerves.’”29

It is possible that all this may be derived from the play, but the Berlin audience which watched its first night left the theatre bewildered in more than one respect. There were a half-dozen opinions as to what this ugly story of a very weak man was meant to signify. Was it simply the tale of a weak man? Was it meant to show, as Professor Lewisohn thinks, that creation in an artist not naturally weak at first may be killed if he is pursued by women selfish in their love? Does the ending, however, show that Hanna is entirely selfish? Does the play signify that the man who chooses to follow women rather than his art is lost? Why is there so much emphasis on the awesomeness of Nature on the island? Have these conditions of Nature anything to do with Schilling’s death? If so, do they not mitigate the effect upon him of the women? Lack of well-placed emphasis made Gabriel Schilling’s Flight a failure, interesting as were the questions it raised and masterly as is much of its characterization.

Too often young dramatists forget that the beginning and the ending of acts and plays emphasize even when the author does not so intend. As in real life, it is first and final impressions, rather than intermediate, which count most. An able young dramatist complained that though he wished one of his characters to dominate Act I she certainly failed to do this. The trouble was that an attractive old gardener, the character who took the act away from the young woman, opened the play attractively characterized and closed Act I with effective speech and pantomime, when the woman was busy only with unimportant pantomime. The prominence unintentionally given to the old gardener emphasized him at the expense of the young woman.

For the value of openings in emphasizing the meaning of the whole play, see Tennyson’s Becket as originally written, and as rearranged by Sir Henry Irving.30 Tennyson’s Becket begins with Henry and the future Archbishop at chess, talking of matters in state and church.

PROLOGUE

A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the hall. Roofs of a city seen through windows. Henry and Becket at chess.

Henry. So then our good Archbishop Theobald

Lies dying.

Becket. I am grieved to know as much.

Henry. But we must have a mightier man than he

For his successor.

Becket. Have you thought of one?

Henry. A cleric lately poison’d his own mother,

And being brought before the courts of the Church,

They but degraded him. I hope they whipt him.

I would have hang’d him.

Becket. It is your move.

Henry. Well—there. (Moves.)

The Church in the pell-mell of Stephen’s time

Hath climb’d the throne and almost clutched the crown;

But by the royal customs of our realm

The Church should hold her baronies of me,

Like other lords amenable to law.

I’ll have them written down and made the law.

Becket. My liege, I move my bishop.

Henry. And if I live,

No man without my leave shall excommunicate

My tenants or my household.

Becket. Look to your king.

Henry. No man without my leave shall cross the seas

To set the Pope against me—I pray your pardon.

Becket. Well—will you move?

Henry. There. (Moves.)

Becket. Check—you move so wildly.

Henry. There then! (Moves.)

Becket. Why—there then, for you see my bishop

Hath brought your king to a standstill. You are beaten.

Henry. (Kicks over the board.) Why, there then—down go bishop and king together.

I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my fancy

Upon the game I should have beaten thee,

But that was vagabond.

Becket. Where, my liege? With Phryne,

Or Lais, or thy Rosamund, or another?

Henry. My Rosamund is no Lais, Thomas Becket;

And yet she plagues me too—no fault in her—

But that I fear the Queen would have her life.

Becket. Put her away, put her away, my liege!

Put her away into a nunnery!

Safe enough there from her to whom thou art bound

By Holy Church. And wherefore should she seek

The life of Rosamund de Clifford more

Than that of other paramours of thine?

Henry. How dost thou know I am not wedded to her?

Becket. How should I know?

Henry. That is my secret, Thomas.

Becket. State secrets should be patent to the statesman

Who serves and loves his king, and whom the king

Loves not as statesman, but true lover and friend.

Henry. Come, come, thou art but deacon, not yet bishop,

No, nor archbishop, nor my confessor yet.

I would to God thou wert, for I should find

An easy father confessor in thee.

Irving, transposing, takes us at once into the plotting of the Queen against Becket because of her hatred for Rosamund and Becket’s supposed protection of the King’s mistress. A secondary interest in Tennyson’s presentation becomes by this shifting first interest with Irving.

PROLOGUE

SCENE 1. A Castle in Normandy. Eleanor. Fitz Urse

Eleanor. Dost thou love this Becket, this son of a London merchant, that thou hast sworn a voluntary allegiance to him?

Fitz Urse. Not for my love toward him, but because he hath the love of the King. How should a baron love a beggar on horseback, with the retinue of three kings behind him, outroyaltying royalty?

Eleanor. Pride of the plebeian!

Fitz Urse. And this plebeian like to be Archbishop!

Eleanor. True, and I have an inherited loathing of these black sheep of the Papacy. Archbishop? I can see farther into man than our hot-headed Henry, and if there ever come feud between Church and Crown, and I do not charm this secret out of our loyal Thomas, I am not Eleanor.

Fitz Urse. Last night I followed a woman in the city here. Her face was veiled, but the back methought was Rosamund—his paramour, thy rival. I can feel for thee.

Eleanor. Thou feel for me!—paramour—rival! No paramour but his own wedded wife! King Louis had no paramours, and I loved him none the more. Henry had many and I loved him none the less. I would she were but his paramour, for men tire of their fancies; but I fear this one fancy hath taken root, and borne blossom too, and she, whom the King loves indeed, is a power in the State. Follow me this Rosamund day and night, whithersoever she goes; track her, if thou can’st, even into the King’s lodging, that I may (clenches her fist)—may at least have my cry against him and her,—and thou in thy way shouldst be jealous of the King, for thou in thy way didst once, what shall I call it, affect her thine own self.

Fitz Urse. Ay, but the young filly winced and whinnied and flung up her heels; and then the King came honeying about her, and this Becket, her father’s friend, like enough staved us from her.

Eleanor. Us!

Fitz Urse. Yea, by the blessed Virgin! There were more than I buzzing round the blossom—De Tracy—even that flint De Brito.

Eleanor. Carry her off among you; run in upon her and devour her, one and all of you; make her as hateful to herself and to the King as she is to me.

Fitz Urse. I and all should be glad to wreak our spite on the rose-faced minion of the King, and bring her to the level of the dust, so that the King—

Eleanor. If thou light upon her—free me from her!—let her eat it like the serpent and be driven out of her paradise!

The story of Nathan Hale might be made into a play with patriotism as its dominant idea, a close character study of Hale himself, or little more than a love story. Notice the way in which with Clyde Fitch the close of the acts steadily emphasizes the love story as the central interest. The first scene is in the school room where Hale is the teacher of Alice Adams.

(Hale goes toward Alice with his arms outstretched to embrace her; Alice goes into his arms—a long embrace and kiss; a loud tapping on a drum outside startles them.)

Hale. The Tory meeting!

Alice. Fitzroy will be back. I don’t want to see him!

Hale. Quick—we’ll go by the window! (Putting a chair under the window he jumps onto chair; then leans in the window and holds out his hands to Alice, who is on the chair.) And if tomorrow another drum makes me a soldier—?

Alice. It will make me a soldier’s sweetheart!

Hale. Come.

(She goes out of the window with his help, and with loud drum tattoo and bugle call, the stage is left empty and the curtain falls.)

The second act at Colonel Knowlton’s house closes on Hale’s decision to serve his country as a spy:

Alice. (In a whisper.) You will go?

Hale. I must.

Alice. (A wild cry.) Then I hate you!

Hale. And I love you and always will so long as a heart beats in my body. (He wishes to embrace her.)

Alice. No!

(She draws back her head, her eyes blazing, she is momentarily insane with fear and grief, anger and love. Hale bows his head and slowly goes from the room. Alice, with a faint heartbroken cry, sinks limply to the floor, her father hurrying to her as the curtain falls.)

This is the close of Act III.

Fitzroy. Look!

(And he bends Alice’s head back upon his shoulder to kiss her on the lips.)

Hale. Blackguard!

(With a blow of his right arm he knocks Cunningham on the head, who, falling, hits his head against the pillar of the porch and is stunned. Meanwhile, the moment he has hit Cunningham, Hale has sprung upon Fitzroy, and with one hand over his mouth has bent his head back with the other until he has released Alice. Hale then throws Fitzroy down and seizing Alice about the waist dashes off with her to the right, where his horse is. Fitzroy rises and runs to Cunningham, kicks him to get his gun, which has fallen under him.)

Fitzroy. Get up! Get up! You fool!

(Horse’s hoofs heard starting off.)

Third Picket’s Voice. (Off stage.) Who goes there?

Fitzroy. (Stops, looks up, and gives a triumphant cry.) Ah, the picket! They’re caught! They’re caught!

Hale. Returning with Alice Adams on private business.

Picket. The password.

Hale. “Love!”

Fitzroy. Damnation! Of course he heard! (Runs off right, yelling.) Fire on them! Fire! For God’s sake, fire!

(A shot is heard, followed by a loud defiant laugh from Hale, and echoed “Love,” as the clatter of the horse’s hoofs dies away, and the curtain falls.)

Act IV has a double ending: the closing of the love story and the execution. The chief interest thus far created for the audience could end with the parting of the lovers.

(The soldiers sing the air of what is now called “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.” Hale stands listening for the sound of Alice’s coming. The Sentinel retires to the farther corner of the tent, and stands with arms folded, his back towards Hale. Tom comes on first, bringing Alice. As they come into Hale’s presence, Alice glides from out of Tom’s keeping, and her brother leaves the two together. They stand looking at each other a moment without moving and then both make a quick movement to meet. As their arms touch in the commencement of their embrace, they remain in that position a few moments, looking into each other’s eyes. Then they embrace, Hale clasping her tight in his arms and pressing a long kiss upon her lips. They remain a few moments in this position, silent and immovable. Then they slowly loosen their arms—though not altogether discontinuing the embrace—until they take their first position and again gaze into each other’s faces. Alice sways, about to fall, faint from the effort to control her emotions, and Hale gently leads her to the tree stump at right. He kneels beside her so that she can rest against him with her arms about his neck. After a moment, keeping her arms still tight about him, Alice makes several ineffectual efforts to speak, but her quivering lips refuse to form any words, and her breath comes with difficulty. Hale shakes his head with a sad smile, as if to say, “No, don’t try to speak. There are no words for us.” And again they embrace. At this moment, while Alice is clasped again tight in Hale’s arms, the Sentinel, who has his watch in his hand, slowly comes out from the tent. Tom also re-enters, but Alice and Hale are oblivious. Tom goes softly to them and touches Alice very gently on the arm, resting his hand there. She starts violently, with a hysterical taking-in of her breath, and an expression of fear and horror, as she knows this is the final moment of parting. Hale also starts slightly, rising, and his muscles grow rigid. He clasps and kisses her once more, but only for a second. They both are unconscious of Tom, of everything but each other. Tom takes her firmly from Hale, and leads her out, her eyes fixed upon Hale’s eyes, their arms outstretched toward each other. After a few paces she breaks forcibly away from Tom, and with a wild cry of “No! No!” locks her hands about Hale’s neck. Tom draws her away again and leads her backward from the scene, her lips dry now and her breath coming in short, loud, horror-stricken gasps. Hale holds in his hand a red rose she wore on her breast, and thinking more of her than of himself, whispers, as she goes, “Be brave! be brave!” The light is being slowly lowered, till, as Alice disappears, the stage is in total darkness.)

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

Colonel Rutger’s Orchard, the next morning. The scene is an orchard whose trees are heavy with red and yellow fruit. The centre tree has a heavy dark branch jutting out, which is the gallows; from this branch all the leaves and the little branches have been chopped off; a heavy coil of rope with a noose hangs from it, and against the trunk of the tree leans a ladder. It is the moment before dawn, and slowly at the back through the trees is seen a purple streak, which changes to crimson as the sun creeps up. A dim gray haze next fills the stage, and through this gradually breaks the rising sun. The birds begin to wake, and suddenly there is heard the loud, deep-toned, single toll of a bell, followed by a roll of muffled drums in the distance. Slowly the orchard fills with murmuring, whispering people; men and women coming up through the trees make a semicircle amongst them, about the gallows tree, but at a good distance. The bell tolls at intervals, and muffled drums are heard between the twittering and happy songs of birds. There is the sound of musketry, of drums beating a funeral march, which gets nearer, and finally a company of British soldiers marches in, led by Fitzroy, Nathan Hale in their midst, walking alone, his hands tied behind his back. As he comes forward the people are absolutely silent, and a girl in the front row of the spectators falls forward in a dead faint. She is quickly carried out by two bystanders. Hale is led to the foot of the tree before the ladder. The soldiers are in double lines on either side.

Fitzroy. (To Hale.) Nathan Hale, have you anything to say? We are ready to hear your last dying speech and confession!

(Hale is standing, looking up, his lips moving slightly, as if in prayer. He remains in this position a moment, and then, with a sigh of relief and rest, looks upon the sympathetic faces of the people about him, with almost a smile on his face.)

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

(Fitzroy makes a couple of steps toward him; Hale turns and places one foot on the lower rung of the ladder, as the curtain falls.)31

Watch, then, the beginning and the ending of scenes and acts, lest an unconscious and undesired emphasis result.

An important means of emphasis is contrast—in character, situation, and even dialogue. Melodrama has always rested, in large part, for its definite emotional appeals on sharply contrasted characters—the spotless hero, the double-dyed villain, the adventuress, and the heroine so innocent of the world as to provide unlimited dramatic situations. Recall the impetuous Julia and the gentle Sylvia of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. If it be said that such direct contrasting of dissimilar figures belongs more to the earlier plays of dramatists, this is not true. In The Gay Lord Quex,32 contrast of the old and the young roués, Quex and Bastling, helps to make clear and to emphasize the point of the play. The Princess and the Butterfly33 largely depends upon contrast,—among the restless women of Act I, the restless men of Act II, between the Princess and Sir George, between the love of Fay Zuliani for Sir George and that of Edward for the Princess.

Contrast in situation was a great reliance with the Elizabethans and, even when very crudely used, remains popular with the American public today. So much pleasure did the Elizabethan derive from contrasted situation that he was willing to have it worked up as a separate sub-plot, at times very slightly connected with the main plot. Take The Changeling of Middleton: the titular part, written for comic value, deals with scenes in a madhouse; the other intensely tragic plot of De Flores and Beatrice-Joanna is but slightly connected with it. Think of the grave-diggers in Hamlet, just before the burial of Ophelia, and, above all, consider in Macbeth the consummate use of a contrasting scene, in the porter at the gate just after the murder of Duncan.

It is a sense of the value of contrasting situation which produces the best dramatic irony. When in Scene 2, Act I, of Hindle Wakes, we listen to Alan Jeffcote’s father and mother planning for his marriage, the fine dramatic irony comes from the contrast we feel with the facts of his conduct, known to us from the preceding scene, which may make his marriage impossible. Dramatic irony depends on a preceding planting in the minds of the auditors of information which makes what is true contrast sharply with what the characters of the particular scene suppose to be true. Contrast, then, underlies dramatic irony. An audience, feeling the dramatic irony of a scene, is put into a state of suspense as to how and when the blow they anticipate will fall. Evidently, then, emphasis by means of contrast, when it results in dramatic irony, makes for dramatic suspense.

Contrast may be used effectively in dialogue. The modern dramatist sometimes overdoes this use. Because he has observed that the greatest suffering of the strongest natures rarely finds expression in rich or varied speech, he tries to discover words which in their feebleness, their inappositeness, or their unexpected commonplaceness, contrast sharply with what a hearer feels is the intensity of the emotion behind them. This has given us in recent drama some dialogue unnatural in its tameness. This kind of contrast, however, when handled with real understanding, is extremely effective. In the parting of Laurie and the heroine in Iris,34 the very commonplaceness of the details of which they talk shows that they do not dare to speak of what is really in their minds, and makes the best preparation for the sudden loosing of emotion by Iris in what would be ordinarily a simple request: “Close the jalousies!”

Except in our recent revival of Moralities for the delectation of moral Broadway, we are growing away dramatically from mere contrasting of types of character and from plays in which a serious and a comic plot are but loosely connected. Yet dramatists will always find contrast highly useful in emphasizing points of characterization and important values in the story. Moreover, any trained dramatist knows that when his audience has been somewhat exhausted by laughter or tears, a scene of contrasting emotional value is of the highest importance. By changing the focus of interest, it renews the power of response exhausted in the just preceding scene. As has been pointed out again and again, though it may be true that the drunken porter in Macbeth was funnier for an Elizabethan public than he is today, nevertheless his coming breaks the tension of the terrible murder scene and makes it possible even now to turn to fresh horrors with surer responsiveness. There is no space here to go into any satisfactory analysis of the basal relations between the serious and the comic, but every competent actor knows that frequently, if the full desired comic values are to appear, it is necessary to play a part, or all the parts, with great seriousness, even in a piece meant to be broadly comic for the audience. This is true not merely in some of Shaw’s plays,—Man and Superman, You Never Can Tell, etc., but in many old farces and even in burlesque. In the contrast the audience makes between the seriousness of the characters in what they do and say and the attitude the dramatist creates toward them lie the real comic values. Often it is only on the flint of the serious that one may strike the most brilliant spark of the comic.

Emphasis is needed not only to keep clear the development of the story and its thesis, if there be any, but also to determine and maintain the dramatic form in which it is cast—farce, comedy, melodrama, and tragedy. If an audience is kept long in the dark as to whether the dramatist is thinking of his material seriously or with amusement, or if they feel at the end that the story has been told with no coordinating emphasis to determine whether it is farce or comedy or tragedy, they are confused and likely to hold back part of their proper responsiveness. As has been pointed out, it is more than doubtful whether the scene of the attempted suicide in what is otherwise a genuine comedy of character, The Girl with the Green Eyes,35 did not seriously hurt the effectiveness of the play for a great many people.

Here, again, beginnings and endings are of the utmost consequence. Notice the extreme care of Maeterlinck, at the outset of Pelleas and Melisande36 to create a mood for his play. One is prepared for the tragic and the mysterious by the opening scene of the handmaidens washing the mysterious stain from the palace steps. An auditor has not heard ten speeches of Synge’s Riders to the Sea37 before he knows that the dramatist is dealing seriously with grim matters, that, in all probability, the play is a tragedy. Look at Rostand’s The Romancers.38 It is to be a graceful telling of a jest played upon two sentimental children by two fond fathers. The author must make clear early in the play that what may be tragic enough for the young people is to be fantastic comedy for any hearers. Could anything be better than the opening: these two children, on the wall between their homes, so reading Romeo and Juliet together that it is obvious that they are in love with being in love, nothing more? There is the perfect emphasis which establishes early the attitude of the dramatist toward his material, in this case making the play poetic comedy. Can any one feel much doubt what form of drama is The Importance of Being Earnest?39 The first few pages show that dialogue is to count heavily as such. Evidently the mood is comic. As evidently, there is exaggeration. Thus we move from initial farce to the more broadly farcical mourning for the death of the supposititious Earnest and to the fateful black handbag. If the ending of The Romancers be played as it was in London, with the speakers of the last lines gradually fading from sight in the dimming lights, surely that emphasis must mean to the audience that it has been seeing a fantasy.40

However, as has been said, danger lurks in these places of easy emphasis, the beginning and the ending, for at times something effective in itself swings the emphasis the wrong way. In Masks and Faces,41 two generations have shed tears over the woes of Triplet as meant for “real life,” only to be somewhat rebuffed when, just before the final curtain, all the characters step out of the play for the “Epilogue,” and so stamp it as “only a story after all.”

In brief, unless some special purpose is subserved thereby, an audience should not long be left in the dark as to the form in which the dramatist thinks he has cast his play. He who treats his material in many different moods runs the chance of confusing his hearers. Only by sure and well-placed emphasis can he keep his chosen form clear. Particularly is this true in the mixed forms, tragi-comedy and farce-comedy. Only well-placed emphasis will carry an audience through these with just the result desired by the dramatist.

How decide what to emphasize? Tom Taylor, despising the intelligence of audiences of his day, used to say, “When you have something to say to an audience, tell them you are going to say it. Tell them you ’re saying it. Tell them you’ve said it. Then, perhaps, they’ll understand it.” Truth probably lies between this and the statement of a dramatist of today, “I am re-writing a play originally composed some ten years ago. Do you know what I am doing? I am cutting and condensing, because the intervening years have taught me that I may suggest where I thought I must explain in full, and state but once what I thought I must repeat. Audiences are far quicker than ten years ago I supposed them to be.” Till the training of the dramatist gives him a kind of sixth sense which tells him what in his plot needs emphasis for his public, he must depend on the comments of really intelligent hearers to whom he reads the manuscript and, above all, on retouching his play after the first performances.

It is not enough, however, by clearness and right emphasis to maintain interest: as the play develops, the interest should if possible be increased. Either to maintain or to increase interest means that a hearer must be led on from scene to scene, act to act, absorbed while the curtain is up and, between the acts, eager for it to rise again. Such attention given a play means that it has a third essential quality, movement. The plays of tyro dramatists today are often sadly lacking in good movement.

Good movement rests, first of all, on clearness; secondly, on right emphasis; and thirdly, on something already mentioned in connection with both clearness and right emphasis,—suspense. This means a straining forward of interest, a compelling desire to know what will happen next. Whether a hearer is totally at a loss to know what will happen, but eager to ascertain; partly guesses what will take place, but deeply desires to make sure; or almost holds back so greatly does he dread an anticipated situation, he is in a state of suspense, for be it willingly or unwillingly on his part, on sweeps his interest.

There should be good movement within the scene, the act, and even the play as a whole. It is, however, easily checked. If scenes or characters not essential are allowed place within a play, it has been shown on pages 87-89 that this may interfere with either clearness or good emphasis. They will hurt the movement of the play. Closely related as a possible danger are necessary scenes not well placed. Often shifting part of a scene or act makes all the difference between sustained and interrupted suspense. For example, a young man, after some quarrelsome words, threatens to shoot his sister. As they stand facing each other, steps are heard outside. A group which enters brings about an amusing scene. Good as it is, it may kill the suspense created by those two tense figures, if it switches interest wholly or in large part from them. If it does, any effective picking up the scene between the angry brother and sister, when the visitors go out, may be impossible. On the other hand, so write the scene that the audience, never diverted in its attention to those two figures, feels that the moment the visitors leave the quarrel will be resumed with greater intensity just because of the interruption: then there will be no loss of tension. Just here lies the important point: suspense once created must never be allowed to lapse so long as to be lost. A scene for contrast or to renew the power of desired emotional response in the audience or to develop part of a correlated story may be introduced, but always what is put between something which makes the audience strain forward and its goal should leave it as eager, and preferably more eager for the solution.

A shift in order may do much to increase suspense. When Ibsen transferred Rosmer’s confession, which is very necessary to the play, from Act II to the end of Act I, he greatly added to the suspense created by the first act. To put it differently, he greatly accelerated the movement of the play. An audience, knowing that Rosmer is “an apostate from the faith of his fathers,” eagerly desires to see what will happen to him in such surroundings as those made clear in Act I. In the earlier version, a reader learns that there are mysteries which the play will probably solve, but has nothing on which to focus his attention as a compelling element of suspense.

Any one knows that when an actor fails to come on at the right moment, unless quick-witted actors invent dialogue or action, the stage “waits” for the actor. There is something which exactly corresponds to this in the text of plays. Henry Le Barren comes to call on Madge Ellsworth. The maid, after showing him into the library, goes to find her mistress. “Meanwhile Henry looks idly at the books on the table till Madge enters.” Unless Madge, perfectly sure that Henry would call at this hour, is waiting just outside the door, some action is needed on the stage to cover the time space until she can enter naturally. It is true that looking at the books fills the time for Henry, but it does not sustain for the audience interest already created in him or the story. When nothing is taking place on the stage, something is taking place in the audience which greatly concerns the dramatist: it is slipping away from him because it is losing interest. For contrast, suppose that Henry sits restlessly only a moment, then with a sigh picks up a book, tries to read, falls to dreaming, and holds the book so that we may see he is reading it upside down. He tries another book in vain. He starts three or four times, thinking that the door is about to open. He absent-mindedly examines a piece of bric-à-brac. He starts forward eagerly the moment Madge enters. Now we are interested, because he is either exhibiting emotions the cause of which we understand, emotions which lead us to expect an interesting scene between him and Madge, or his conduct sets us guessing as to what can lie ahead between the two. In the first illustration, the play lacks movement; in the second, commonplace as it is, the movement does not cease.

At times it helps suspense not only to shift the order of details but to separate two elements of suspense, treating them separately in well correlated groups. In Hamlet, Q1, the soliloquy, “To be, or not to be” precedes the meeting of Ophelia and Hamlet, part of Hamlet’s tricking of Polonius, and the coming of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The greater part of the befuddling of Polonius then follows. The players enter and plan with Hamlet the performance of The Mousetrap. Hamlet, left alone, bursts into the soliloquy, “Why what a dunghill idiot slave am I!” Q2 rearranges thus: Polonius and Hamlet; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Polonius returning to announce the players; the planning for The Mousetrap; Hamlet left alone crying, “Oh what a rogue and peasant’s slave am I!” Here all the details bearing on the play are gathered together. Next come the King and Queen with their plot to try out Hamlet by means of Ophelia. The soliloquy, “To be, or not to be” follows this. Then Hamlet and Ophelia have the scene “To a nunnery go!” Instead of jumbling two elements of suspense,—probable results of the play planned by Hamlet and of the Ophelia-Hamlet interest,—each is given added suspense by separate treatment. In Q1, as we shift from one to the other, each weakens the other or is momentarily blocked by it. Rearranged, the very order of the details in each part makes not only for clearer but stronger suspense.42

Today a plot made up of two or three but slightly related stories is far less popular than in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Our public demands that such stories shall be so correlated within the play as to be mutually helpful. This desire results not from innate niceness of feeling for unity of design but from dislike of a distribution of interests which interferes with the suspense each story creates. Though it is, of course, possible perfectly to maintain suspense in plays of interwoven plots—the plays of Shakespeare and many writers since prove this—it is far more difficult than maintaining suspense in a play of single plot. Quite possibly this is the chief reason for the great popularity today of plays of single plot: they are both easier to follow and easier to write.

A related fault which interferes with suspense is the “stage wait” treated on page 209. As has also been pointed out, there is danger in transitional scenes meant to cover a time space or to shift the interest of an audience. If they accomplish either purpose and do not advance the plot, they really fail. Bulwer-Lytton met this difficulty in writing Money:

I think in the first 3 acts you will find little to alter. But in Act 4—the 2 scene with Lady B. & Clara—& Joke & the Tradesman don’t help on the Plot much—they were wanted, however, especially the last to give time for change of dress & smooth the lapse of the theme from money to dinner; you will see if this part requires any amendment.43

Also exposition, undoubtedly necessary but delayed too long, may so clog an act as to weaken or kill it. In a play set in what was once a fashionable dining-room, but is now the fitting-room of a dressmaker, the scene is not placed for some time. Finally, a figure entering makes clear the supposed setting, but for this the action on stage has to be broken off.

The increasing popularity of a play of three or four acts as compared with five has almost wholly done away with another destroyer of suspense—the explanatory and adjusting last act. In it, intelligent auditors who knew from the close of the fourth act how the story must end were expected to watch with interest final disposition of the characters. Dramatists of the eighties and nineties turned from this use slowly. For proof examine the last act of The Hypocrites, by H. A. Jones, in other respects a play well away from the older methods of technique. Now, both the older and the younger generation of dramatists expect to carry suspense as near the end of the play as they possibly can. Letting an audience anticipate something of the end of a play is all very well, but when it foresees just what is going to happen and has no farther interest, except to learn whether it happens exactly as anticipated, suspense and even attention cease. In that case an audience begins to gather its belongings for departure. Something held back which cannot surely be anticipated is the very basis of suspense.

It follows from what has just been said that there can never be perfect suspense when the plot ends an act or more before the final curtain. It is vain to try to start new interests in order to create fresh suspense. Unless the latter part of a play grows out of the first, at least as much as the Perdita-Florizel story grows out of that of Leontes and Hermione, there can be no good suspense. When it seems necessary to tack on new material because all suspense is ended, do not add: rewrite.

It has often been said that surprise—springing something unexpectedly upon an audience—is better than suspense. Lessing said of the comparative value of surprise and suspense:

For one instance where it is useful to conceal from the spectator an important event until it has taken place there are ten and more where interest demands the very contrary. By means of secrecy a poet effects a short surprise, but in what enduring disquietude could he have maintained us if he had made no secret about it! Whoever is struck down in a moment, I can only pity for a moment. But how if I expect the blow, how if I see the storm brewing and threatening for some time about my head or his? For my part none of the personages need know each other if only the spectator knows them all. Nay I would even maintain that the subject which requires such secrecy is a thankless subject, that the plot in which we have to make recourse to it is not as good as that in which we could have done without it. It will never give occasion for anything great. We shall be obliged to occupy ourselves with preparations that are either too dark or too clear, the whole poem becomes a collection of little artistic tricks by means of which we effect nothing more than a short surprise. If on the contrary everything that concerns the personages is known, I see in this knowledge the source of the most violent emotions. Why have certain monologues such a great effect? Because they acquaint me with the secret intentions of the speaker and this confidence at once fills me with hope or fear. If the condition of the personages is unknown, the spectator cannot interest himself more vividly in the action than the personages. But the interest would be doubled for the spectator if light is thrown on the matter, and he feels that action and speech would be quite otherwise if the personages knew one another.

Only then I shall scarcely be able to await what is to become of them when I am able to compare that which they really are with that which they do or would do.44

Look at the quotation from the First Part of Henry VI on Pp. 97-100. Talbot whispers to the Captain, and leaves us guessing what he means to do at his meeting with the Countess of Auvergne. In like manner the Countess merely refers to the plot she has laid with her Porter. We never know just what was the plan of the Countess. We get only a momentary sensation, surprise, when Talbot’s soldiers force their way in. Suppose we had been allowed to know the plans of the Countess, and they had seemed very dangerous for Talbot. Then, as she played with him, sure of her position, there would have been more suspense than in Shakespeare’s text, because an audience would have been wondering, not merely “What is the blow Talbot will strike?” but “Can any blow he will strike overcome the seemingly effective plans of the Countess?” Suppose we had been allowed to know the plans of both. Then, as we watched the Countess playing her scheme off against the plan of Talbot, of which she would be unaware, might there not easily be even more suspense? At every turn of their dialogue we should be wondering: “Why does not Talbot strike now? Can he save the situation, if he delays? With all this against him, can he save it in any case?” In the use of surprise, the dramatist depends almost entirely on his situation. Suspense permits him to elaborate his situation by means of the characters in it. In other words, surprise is situation, suspense is characterization.

On this matter recent words of William Archer seem final:

Curiosity [I said] is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters of the drama, the audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre, we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience. With vision unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics. To keep a secret from us is to reduce us to their level, and deprive us of our clairvoyant aloofness. There may be a pleasure in that too; we may join with zest in the game of blind-man’s-buff; but the theatre is in its essence a place where we are privileged to take off the bandage we wear in daily life, and to contemplate, with laughter or with tears, the blindfold gambols of our neighbors.45

What is basal in suspense is, of course, that an audience shall feel for some person or persons of the play just the degree of sympathy the dramatist desires. Unless their sympathy is as keen as his, the scene must fall short emotionally. For instance, in a play produced some years ago author and actors expected the audience to sympathize throughout with a mother. At the climax of one of the acts she was left on-stage in an agonized state of mind because her husband, who hates her illegitimate child, has left the stage with threats to kill it. The actress wrote of the first night: “In that scene I might as well have recited the alphabet for all the audience cared for my emotion. Their sympathy made them live, not with me, but with the defenceless child who at any moment might be murdered off-stage by the cruel father.” Suspense for the audience there certainly was, but not of the kind intended. It was necessary to rewrite the scene.

Evidently, what happens off-stage may, by its greater interest for the audience, kill the effect of what is passing on-stage. What the dramatist dares not try to represent on-stage because of its mechanical difficulty or horror, he tries to carry off by vivid and even terrifying description. By making the audience see the off-stage action through the eyes of the person most affected, or by portraying vividly his emotions when another describes the action to him, dramatists endeavor to lose none of their desired suspense. The point to remember is that the moment the off-stage action becomes of more importance than the emotions caused by that action for persons on-stage, the real centre of interest has been shifted, the desired suspense is gone, and the scene must be rewritten. Suspense in a play is rightly handled, then, when it is promptly created to the extent desired by the dramatist; carries on with increasing intensity from act to act; and reaches its climax at or just before the final curtain. Climax is, therefore, an integral part of suspense. The point of greatest intensity reached in an incident, scene, act, or play is the moment of climax. Climax is not the result of theory but comes from long observation of audiences. A scene or act which breaks off or declines in interest towards its close never delights an audience as does a scene or act which closes with its strongest emotional effect. Look at the ending of The Troublesome Raigne of King John, Part I. Though King John declares himself “the joyfulst man alive,” the audience does not so sympathize with him that his delight is a fitting climax to the play. Rather do they so keenly sympathize with Prince Arthur and even the lords who have been outraged by Arthur’s proposed death that they want to know more of him and them.

Hubert. My lord, attend the happie tale I tell, For heauens health send Sathan packing hence That instigates your Highnes to despaire. If Arthurs death be dismall to be heard, Bandie the newes for rumors of vnthruth: He liues my Lord, the sweetest youth aliue, In health, with eyesight, not a hair amisse. This hart tooke vigor from this froward hand, Making it weake to execute your charge. Iohn. What, liues he! Then sweete hope come home agen, Chase hence despaire, the purueyor for hell. Hye Hubert, tell these tidings to my Lords That throb in passions for yong Arthurs death: Hence Hubert, stay not till thou hast reueald The wished newes of Arthurs happy health. I go my selfe, the joyfulst man aliue To storie out this new supposed crime. (Exeunt.)46

The author, though he got from this a suspense which carried his audience over to the performance of Part II on the next day, missed any real climax for Part I.

Inexperienced playwrights, in spite of good characterization and dialogue, frequently do not understand the value and the nature of real climax. Consequently, an audience feels that any interest it has given is cheated in the end. The following scenario, though its feebleness can hardly be traced solely to lack of climax, illustrates what is meant.

THE DÉBUTANTE

Characters:

Major Worthington, an American financier;

Emil Richter, a young poet;

Dr Van Metre, who do “team work” for the hand of Kitty. Willy Squeam,

Kitty Worthington, the débutante.

Mme. Cavanaugh King, a widow, Kitty’s aunt.

SCENE: Den, off the ballroom of Major Worthington’s home. Music from the ballroom is heard intermittently during the action.

DISCOVERED: A group of guests who chatter and pass out, leaving Squeam and Van Metre. They talk of the attractions of Kitty, the débutante, and make a wager as to who will win out. Each agrees to back the other up in case of failure. They go off as Mrs. King and Major Worthington enter. She reproves her brother for looking tired and uninterested on this occasion of his daughter’s “coming out.” At length, exhausted by his sister’s flippancy, he tells her that they are financially ruined, and that the crash will come on the morrow. Mrs. King is distracted, but they both brighten as Kitty enters in a whirl. She is radiantly happy, and hugs one and then the other, then both. Enter Richter, a stalwart young westerner, who does not know how to dance. They congratulate him on his little volume of verses which has just been published. After promising to sit out a dance with him, Kitty sends him off to talk with Miss Smithkins. He picks up a rose which Kitty has dropped and goes off with it. Enter Dr. Van Metre and Squeam. Exeunt Major Worthington and Mrs. King. Van Metre and Squeam take turns in proposing to Kitty. Enter Mrs. King, to whom Squeam finds himself making violent love, mistaking her for Kitty. He starts to bolt, but she lays hold of him, and they go off together. Kitty and Van Metre go of to dance, she laughing at his ardent protestations. Enter Major. He takes out a revolver from his writing desk, and puts it back as some dancers pass through. Enter Emil, and the two exeunt arm-in-arm. Enter Mrs. King and Kitty. Mrs. King bluntly tells Kitty their financial straits, and adds that Kitty must give up any sentimental feelings she has for Richter, and must, if she gets the chance, accept Van Meter or Squeam on the spot. With this, she hastily departs, leaving Kitty in tears. The tears turn to dimples the moment Richter appears, and she tries to shock him into a dislike for her. Nevertheless, he makes a clumsy effort at proposing which is interrupted by Van Metre, then Squeam, then both, who insist on taking her to supper. She dismisses them. (Soft music.) Richter proposes, and Kitty refuses him, telling him the reason frankly, as her aunt has just given it to her. He reprimands her for having mercenary motives, and makes an eloquent plea for the equality of men. Enraged, she leaves the room, but quickly returns and throws herself into his arms. Enters Mrs. King hastily, and says they may go right on embracing, as the Major has just received a telegram stating that he has won out in a law suit involving millions of dollars’ worth of iron mines. Enter the Major hilarious. Enter Squeam and Van Meter. They shake hands and declare the wager off. Enter the dancers from a cotillion figure. They are arrayed in grotesque paper hats and bonnets and garlands of paper flowers. They circle about Kitty and Richter, and pelt them with paper flowers. Exeunt. Tableau: Kitty and Richter looking into firelight.

Curtain.

Obviously, though some slight suspense has been created as to the possible solution of Kitty’s difficulties, the proposed play goes all to pieces the moment Mrs. King enters with her news. When an audience knows that had the dramatist so willed, the fateful telegram might have arrived at any moment in the play other than the point chosen, it is likely to vote unanimously that the telegram should have been received before the curtain was ever rung up. Except in amateur performances arranged for admiring friends, there is no hope that such a fizzle can be covered by introducing dancers to make a pretty picture and a pseudo-climax.

Climax is, then, whatever in action, speech, pantomime, or thought (whether conveyed or suggested) will produce in an audience the strongest emotion of the scene, act, or play.

The means to climax range from mere action to quiet speech, from pure theatricality to lifelike subtlety. The poisoned cup, the fatal duel, indeed, the general slaughter at the end of Hamlet make a tremendous climax of action. Mere action, however, does not necessarily give climax. The writer of the scenario just quoted, missing a real climax, tried to offset this by the gay dance. Whether a dance, parade, or tableau is a genuine climax depends on whether it illustrates attainment of that in regard to which suspense has been created. No mere dance in costume, no spectacular parade or brilliant tableau is ever an adequate substitute for a climax which brings to the greatest intensity emotionalized interest already awakened in an audience. Such climax by action may, then, be as purely theatrical as in revues, much musical comedy, or pure melodrama, or as simple and true as in Heijermans’ The Good Hope. The women, Joe and Kneirtje, are left alone, wild with anxiety for their fisherman-lover and son. A storm rages outside.

Jo. (Beating her head on the table.) The wind! It drives me mad, mad!

Kneirtje. (Opens the prayerbook, touches Jo’s arm. Jo looks up, sobbing passionately, sees the prayerbook, shakes her head fiercely. Again wailing, drops to the floor, which she beats with her hands. Kneirtje’s trembling voice sounds.) O Merciful God! I trust! With a firm faith, I trust.

(The wind races with wild lashings about the house.)

Curtain.47

Climax may come through surprise, as the discussion of suspense shows (pp. 212-214). Such surprise may be theatrical, as in Home48 where it is obviously an arranged effect, or genuinely dramatic because justified by the preceding characterization, as in The Clod.

(Mary goes to the cupboard; returns to the table with the salt. Almost ready to drop, she drags herself to the window nearer back, and leans against it, watching the Southerners like a hunted animal. Thaddeus sits nodding in the corner. The Sergeant and Dick go on devouring food. The Sergeant pours the coffee. Puts his cup to his lips, takes one swallow; then, jumping to his feet and upsetting his chair as he does so, he hurls his cup to the floor. The crash of china stirs Thaddeus. Mary shakes in terror.)

Sergeant. (Bellowing and pointing to the fluid trickling on the floor.) Have you tried to poison us, you God damn hag?

(Mary screams, and the faces of the men turn white. It is like the cry of the animal goaded beyond endurance.)

Mary. (Screeching.) Call my coffee poison, will ye? Call me a hag? I’ll learn ye! I’m a woman, and ye’re drivin’ me crazy.

(Snatches the gun from the wall, points it at the Sergeant, and fires. Keeps on screeching. The Sergeant falls to the floor. Dick rushes for his gun.)

Thaddeus. Mary! Mary!

Mary. (Aiming at Dick, and firing.) I ain’t a hag. I’m a woman, but ye’re killin’ me.

(Dick falls just as he reaches his gun. Thaddeus is in the corner with his hands over his ears. Mary continues to pull the trigger of the empty gun. The Northerner is motionless for a moment; then he goes to Thaddeus, and shakes him.)

Northerner. Go get my horse, quick!

(Thaddeus obeys. The Northerner turns to Mary. She gazes at him, but does not understand a word he says.)

Northerner. (With great fervor.) I’m ashamed of what I said. The whole country will hear of this, and you.

(Takes her hand, and presses it to his lips; then turns and hurries out of the house. Mary still holds the gun in her hand. She pushes a strand of gray hair back from her face, and begins to pick up the fragments of the broken coffee cup.)

Mary. (In dead, flat tone.) I’ll have to drink out the tin cup now.

(The hoof-beats of the Northerner’s horse are heard.)

Curtain.49

Note the wholly unexpected turn after the final speech of the Northerner. Yet this surprise merely rounds out the characterization of Mary.

This kind of climax by surprise recalls one of the principles in acting which Joseph Jefferson laid down for himself: “Never anticipate a strong effect; in fact, lead your audience by your manner, so that they shall scarcely suspect the character capable of such emotion; then when some sudden blow has fallen, the terrible shock prepares the audience for a new and striking phase in the character; they feel that under these new conditions you would naturally exhibit the passion which till then was not suspected.”50

Before the present insistence on reality held sway, it was possible to close a play of pretended truth to life with a tag. Here is the quiet ending of Still Waters Run Deep (1855):

Potter. My dear boy, you astonish me! But, however, there’s an old proverb that says that “All is not gold that glitters.”

Mildmay. Yes, and there is another old proverb and one much more to the purpose that says, “Still waters run deep.”

The convention which made that sort of ending desirable has passed. However, today another convention,—the quiet ending,—might make it possible to end this same play with the speech just preceding the two quoted.

Potter. John Mildmay the master of this house? Emily, my dear, has your aunt been—I mean has your aunt lost her wits?

Mrs. Mildmay. No, she has found them, papa, as I have done, thanks to dear John. Ask his pardon, papa, as we have, for the cruel injustice we have done him.

Potter. Oh, certainly, if you desire it. John Mildmay, I ask your pardon—Jane and Emily say I ought; though what I have done, or what there is to ask pardon for—

Mildmay. Perhaps you’ll learn in time. But we’re forgetting dinner—Langford, will you take my wife? (He does so.) Markham, you’ll take Mrs. Sternhold?51

Add to this, “They all go out to dinner,” and you have one of the “quiet endings” dear to the hearts of some recent dramatists. These writers, after an act has swept to a strong emotional height, add some very quiet ending such as going out to dinner or the conventional farewells of the group assembled, as if for some reason either were more artistic than to close on the moment of strong emotion. This is bad. On the other hand, if the quiet ending carries characterization, or irony, to point the scene, act, or play, or really illustrates the meaning, this and not the absence of strong emotion or physical action is what gives both real value and genuine climax. For instance, at the end of Act I of Monsieur Poirier’s Son-in-Law, by Augier, this is the dialogue:

Enter a Servant.

Servant. Dinner is served.

Poirier. (To the Servant.) Bring up a bottle of 1811 Pomard— (To the Duke.) The year of the comet, Monsieur le duc—fifteen francs a bottle! The king drinks no better. (Aside to Verdelet.) You mustn’t drink any—neither will I!

Gaston. (To the Duke.) Fifteen francs, bottle to be returned when empty!

Verdelet. (Aside to Poirier.) Are you going to allow him to make fun of you like that?

Poirier. (Aside to Verdelet.) In matters of this sort, you must take your time. (They all go out.)

Curtain.52

Here it is not the quietude but the particularly apt, humorous illustration of Poirier’s character which gives climax. In The Amazons, too, what could better illustrate acceptance of the usual by all the group who have been fighting against it than the sedate and utterly commonplace exeunt?

Lady Castlejordan. Lord Tweenwayes—

(Tweenwayes comes with great dignity to Lady Castlejordan. The girls fall back.)

Lady Castlejordan. Lord Litterly—Lady Noeline. Monsieur de Grival—Lady Wilhelmina. Mr. Minchin—Lady Thomasin.

(The couples are formed, and all go out sedately.)53

When quiet speech sums up the whole meaning of a scene or play, it too gives climax. Ann’s words at the end of Man and Superman, “John you are still talking,” make a fine ironic climax. Irony, whether quiet or decidedly dramatic, is a very effective means to climax. At the end of Act II, Herod, in the play of that name by Stephen Phillips, has ordered Mariamne killed. Completely infatuated by her, he has done this only when her enemies have forced him to believe that she is utterly false. Almost instantly his love overwhelms his mistrust. He tries to revoke his word, crying,

Yet will I not be bound, I will break free, She shall not die—she shall not die—she shall not—

News of the triumph he has longed for interrupts:

Enter Attendant.

Attendant. O king, the Roman eagles! See!

A cry. (Without.) From Rome!

Enter Roman Envoy and Suite.

Envoy. O king, great Cæsar sent us after you,

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

Thus then by word of mouth great Cæsar greets

Herod his friend. But he would not confine

That friendship to the easy spoken word,

And hear I bear a proof of Cæsar’s faith.

Herein is added to thy boundaries

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

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

And Gaza unto these, and Straton’s towers. (Moves down.)

Here is the scroll, with Cæsar’s own hand signed.

Herod. (Taking the scroll—at foot of steps.) Mariamne, hear you this? Mariamne, see you?

(Turns to look at scroll.)

(Servant enters and moves down to Gadias down L.)

(He goes up the stairs.)

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

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

And Gaza unto these, and Straton’s towers.

Servant. (Aside to Gadias.) O sir, the queen is dead!

Gadias. (Aside to Pheroras, Cypros, and Salome.) The queen is dead!

Herod. Mariamne, hear you this? Mariamne, see you?

(Repeating the words, and going up steps.)

Hippo, Samaria and Gadara,

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

And Gaza unto these, and Straton’s towers!54

The perfect climax lies in the irony of the fact that all Herod most desires as ruler comes to him at just the moment when he has killed the thing that most he loved.

At the end of Act III of Chains, by Elizabeth Baker, everybody—the father-in-law and mother-in-law, Percy, the brother-in-law, and Sybil, a pretty but useless bit of femininity—has been making Charlie entirely miserable because no one can understand that his expressed desire to try his fortunes in Australia and then send for his wife, Lily, is not a pretext for abandoning her. Percy, with next to nothing a year, is just engaged to Sybil. Foster wants to marry Margaret, Charlie’s sister-in-law, who is dissatisfied with her lot.

Enter Lily, dressed for going out, also Mrs. Massey. Lily goes round, kissing and shaking hands, with a watery smile and a forced tearful cheerfulness.

Charley. (Without going all around and calling from the door.) Good night, all!

(Exeunt Lily and Charley.)

Mrs. Massey. Well, I must say—

Percy. O, let’s drop it, mother. Play something, Maggie.

Maggie. I don’t want to.

Mrs. Massey. Walter would like to hear something, wouldn’t you, Walter?

Foster. If Maggie feels like it.

Maggie. She doesn’t feel like it.

Massey. Be as pleasant as you can, my girl—Charley’s enough for one evening.

(Maggie goes to the piano and sitting down plays noisily, with both pedals on, the chorus, “Off to Philadelphia.”)

Mrs. Massey. Maggie, it’s Sunday!

Maggie. I forgot!

Mrs. Massey. You shouldn’t forget such things—Sybil, my dear—

Sybil. I don’t play.

Massey. Rubbish! Come on!

(Sybil goes to the piano and Percy follows her.)

Percy. (Very near to Sybil and helping her to find the music.) Charley is a rotter! What d’ye think he was telling me the other day?

Sybil. I don’t know.

Percy. Told me to be sure I got the right girl.

Sybil. Brute!

Percy. What do you think I said? Darling!

(Kisses her behind music.)

Massey. (Looking around.) Take a bigger sheet.

(Sybil sits at piano quickly and plays the chorus to “Count Your Many Blessings.” To which they all sing:)

Count your many blessings, count them one by one, Count your blessings, see what God has done. Count your blessings, count them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.55

Is not the irony of this group of unsatisfied or dissatisfied people singing “Count your many blessings,” fully climactic?

Not quietness of speech or action, then, but appropriateness makes any of these approved endings climactic and artistic.

There can hardly be any question that the original ending of Still Waters Run Deep is theatrical in the sense that it is climactic only by the dramatic convention of its time. Except when theatricality is intentionally part of the artistic design, it is, of course, undesirable. Rostand, letting the figures in The Romancers comment on their own play as a kind of epilogue, has a really artistic though theatrical climax.

Sylvette. (Summoning the actors about her.) And now we five—if Master Straforel please— Let us expound the play in which we’ve tried to please.

(She comes down stage and addresses the audience, marking time with her hand.)

Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light; Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune. (Soft music.)

Bergamin. A fairy-tale quintet, mad as Midsummer-night.

Pasquin. Some quarrels. Yes!—but all so very slight!

Straforel. Madness of sunstroke; madness of the moon! A worthy villain, in his mantle dight.

Sylvette. Light, easy rhymes; old dresses, frail and light; Love in a park, fluting an ancient tune.

Percinet. A Watteau picture—not by Watteau, quite; Release from many a dreary Northern rune; Lovers and fathers; old walls, flowery-bright; A brave old plot—with music—ending soon.

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

(The stage gradually darkens; the last lines are delivered in voices that grow fainter as the actors appear to fade away into mist and darkness.)

Curtain.56

So light the finale, as in London, that the figures fade from sight till only their voices are faintly heard, and theatricality helps to place the play as a mere bit of fantasy. On the other hand, there is something like genuine theatricality at the end of Sudermann’s Fritzschen. Fritz is going to his death in a prospective duel with a man who is an unerring shot. Though the others present suspect or know the truth, his mother thinks he is going to new and finer fortunes. Isn’t the following the real climax?

Fritz. (Stretching out his hand to her cheerfully.) Dear Ag— (Looks into her face, and understands that she knows. Softly, earnestly.) Farewell, then.

Agnes. Farewell, Fritz!

Fritz. I love you.

Agnes. I shall always love you, Fritz!

Fritz. Away, then, Hallerpfort! Au revoir, papa! Au revoir! Revoir!

(Starts for the door on the right.)

Frau von Drosse. Go by the park, boys—there I have you longer in sight.

Fritz. Very well, mamma, we will do it! (Passes with Hallerpfort through the door at the centre; on the terrace, he turns with a cheerful gesture, and calls once more.) Au Revoir! (His voice is still audible.) Au revoir!

(Frau von Drosse throws kisses after him, and waves her handkerchief, then presses her hand wearily to her heart and sighs heavily.)57

Because the history of the theatre shows that the contained appeal always moves an audience, Sudermann adds one more touch of misery as the mother dwells on her dream of the night before:

(Agnes hurries to her, and leads her to a chair, then goes over to the Major, who, with heaving breast, is lost in thought.)

Frau von Drosse. Thank you, my darling!—Already, I am quite well again!... God, the boy! How handsome he looked! And so brown and so healthy.... You see, I saw him exactly like that last night.... No, that is no illusion! And I told you how the Emperor led him in among all the generals! And the Emperor said—(More softly, looking far away with a beatific smile.) And the Emperor said—

Curtain.58

Though a new twist is given our emotions, is not something lost to the artistry of the play?

If the means to climax be various, the ways in which it may elude a writer are several. If an audience foresees it, much of the value of climax, perhaps all, disappears. Bulwer-Lytton, in writing Money, recognized this:

And principally with regard to Act 5 I don’t feel easy. The first idea suggested by you & worked on by me was of course to carry on Evelyn’s trick to the last—& bring in the creditors &c when it is discovered that he is as rich as ever. I so made Act 5 at first. But ... the trick was so palpable to the audience that having been carried thro’ Acts 3 & 4, it became stale in Act 5—& the final discovery was much less comic than you w^d suppose.59

If anticipating a climax will impair it for an audience, repetition may kill it. In the civic masque, Caliban,60 as performed, many of the historical scenes were introduced in the same way: Ariel asked his master, Prospero, what he should show him next, and at his bidding summoned the episode. No variety in phrasing could surmount the monotony of this. There was consequent loss in suspense and climax.

It is easy, also, to miss possible climax by using more at a given point than is absolutely necessary. Sometimes it is wiser to postpone part or all of thoroughly desirable material for later treatment. In the novel, Les Oberlé,61 father and daughter sympathize with the Germans, mother and son with the old French tradition. In patriarchal fashion, the half-paralytic grandfather, as head of the house, keeps the keys. When a young German officer, favored by the daughter, asks her hand, feeling becomes intense and strained between the parents and the brother and the sister. Suddenly the old paralytic enters, half-supported by his attendant. Furious to think of his granddaughter as the wife of a German he cries, with a superb gesture of dismissal, “Clear out! This is my house!” (Va t’en! Ici chez moi!) The dramatizer saw that with the accompanying action of all concerned, especially the silent going of the German suitor, “Ici chez moi” made a sufficient climax. Therefore, with a touch of real genius, he saved the “Va t’en” for a climax to a totally different scene. Later in the play, Jean, who has determined to escape across the French boundary rather than serve longer in the German army, has been locked in his room by his outraged father. As usual, after the house has been locked up for the night, the keys have been handed to the old, half-paralytic grandfather, who lies sleepless in a room near Jean’s. Learning from Uncle Ulrich what has occurred, the grandfather totters into the living room with his keys. Unlocking Jean’s door, with a fine gesture of affection, and command toward the outer door, he cries to Jean, “Va.” Here the dramatist gets two fine climaxes where the novelist gained but one.

Sometimes a very effective climax at a given point should be postponed because it will be even more effective later, and if given the first position would check preferable movement in the play. At the end of Act IV of Magda (Heimat) by Sudermann, we seem all ready for a scene in which Magda confesses the truth about her past life to her father.

Schwartze. Magda,—I want Magda.

Marie. (Goes to the door and opens it.) She’s coming now,—down the stairs.

Schwartze. So! (Pulls himself together with an effort.)

Marie. (Clasping her hands.) Don’t hurt her!

(Pauses with the door open. Magda is seen descending the stairs. She enters in travelling dress, hat in hand, very pale but calm.)

Magda. I heard you call, father.

Schwartze. I have something to say to you.

Magda. And I to you.

Schwartze. Go in,—into my room.

Magda. Yes, father.

(She goes to the door left. Schwartze follows her. Marie, who has drawn back frightened to the dining-room, makes an unseen gesture of entreaty.)62

Now, any interview between Magda and her father will both unduly lengthen an act already long and bring the play well into its final climax. Stopping the act here creates superb suspense. Starting a new act under slightly different conditions keeps all the suspense created by Act IV and intensifies it by new details. The new act gives us the chance easily to introduce von Keller, who is needed if the play is to be more than another treatment of the erring daughter confessing her sin to her father. Just through him comes emphasis which gives special meaning to the play. Therefore, we gain by postponing the full confession from the end of Act IV till well toward the end of Act V.

Evidently, climax rests on (a) right feeling for order in presenting ideas; (b) a correct sense of what is weaker and what is stronger in phrasing emotions; and (c) just appreciation of the feeling of the audience toward the emotions presented. For both clearness and climax it is usually a wise rule to consider but one idea at a time. In the following illustration, column 1 shows confusion, because three subjects—the fan, the greeting, and the compliment of Lady Windermere—are started at the same time. In column 2, quoted from Miss Anglin’s acting version of Lady Windermere’s Fan, treating each of these subjects in its natural sequence brings both clearness and climax.

Parker. Mrs. Erlynne. Parker. Mrs. Erlynne.

(Lord Windermere starts. Mrs. Erlynne enters, very beautifully dressed and very dignified. Lady Windermere clutches at her fan, then lets it drop on the floor. She bows coldly to Mrs. Erlynne, who bows to her sweetly in turn, and sails into the room.) (Lord Windermere starts. Mrs. Erlynne enters, very beautifully dressed and very dignified. Lady Windermere clutches at her fan, then lets it drop on the floor. She bows coldly to Mrs. Erlynne, who bows to her sweetly in turn, and sails into the room.)

Lord Darlington. You have dropped your fan, Lady Windermere. Mrs. Erlynne. (C.) How do you do again, Lord Windermere?

(Picks it up and hands it to her.) Lord Darlington. You have dropped your fan, Lady Windermere.

Mrs. Erlynne. (C.) How do you do again, Lord Windermere? How charming your sweet wife looks! Quite a picture! (Picks it up and hands it to her.)

Lord Windermere. (In a low voice.) It was terribly rash of you to come! Lord Windermere. (In a low voice.) It was terribly rash of you to come!

Mrs. Erlynne. (Smiling.) The wisest thing I ever did in my life. And, by the way, you must pay me a good deal of attention this evening. Mrs. Erlynne. (Smiling.) The wisest thing I ever did in my life. How charming your sweet wife looks! Quite a picture! And, by the way, you must pay me a good deal of attention this evening.63

In the next extract, note that omission of “I want to live childless still” and shifting the position of the words “For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless” permit an actress to work up to the strongest climax of the speech, when spoken, “They made me suffer too much.” Miss Anglin, trained by years of experience to great sensitiveness to the emotional values of words, has here arranged the sentences better than the author himself.

Lord Windermere. What do you mean by coming here this morning? What is your object? Lord Windermere. What do you mean by coming here this morning? What is your object?

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

Mrs. Erlynne. (With a note of irony in her voice.) To bid good-bye to my dear daughter, of course. (Lord Windermere bites his underlip in anger. Mrs. Erlynne looks at him, and her voice and manner become serious. In her accents as she talks there is a note of deep tragedy. For a moment she reveals herself.) Oh, don't imagine I am going to have a pathetic scene with her, weep on her neck and tell her who I am, and all that kind of thing. I have no ambition to play the part of mother. Only once in my life have I known a mother's feelings. That was last night. They were terrible—they made me suffer—they made me suffer too much. For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless—I want to live childless still. Mrs. Erlynne. (With a note of irony in her voice.) To bid good-bye to my dear daughter, of course. (Lord Windermere bites his underlip in anger. Mrs. Erlynne looks at him, and her voice and manner become serious. In her accents as she talks there is a note of deep tragedy. For a moment she reveals herself.) Oh, don't imagine I am going to have a pathetic scene with her, weep on her neck and tell her who I am, and all that kind of thing. I have no ambition to play the part of mother. For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless. Only once in my life have I known a mother's feelings. That was last night. They were terrible—they made me suffer—they made me suffer too much.64

When an eighteenth-century manager, in his production of The School for Scandal, had colored fire set off in the wings as the falling screen revealed Lady Teazle, he failed of his intended effect because he thought that for his audience the falling of the screen was climactic. Really, of course, the enjoyment of the audience, as it listens to the dialogue, knowing that Lady Teazle overhears, is the chief source of pleasure. It is the dismay of Sir Peter, when he sees who is really behind the screen, which makes the climax. That dismay is not greater against a background of red fire. Crowded with action as the end of Hamlet is, we close it in acting, not on the fatal wounding of Hamlet, but either on his words, “The rest is silence,” or as the soldiers of Fortinbras march out with Hamlet’s body on their shields. Experience has proved that a stronger climax for an audience lies in those words or in seeing the procession which passes among the kneeling courtiers, stronger than from all the noisy emotions which have just preceded. In brief, except when we feel sure that we have made our feeling as to the emotions of a scene or act the public’s, it is they who must determine where the climax lies. Where it rests we must in all cases of doubt decide from our past experience of the public and present observation of it.

From all these illustrations it must be clear that the only rule for finding climax is: Understand clearly the audience for which you intend your play; create in it the sympathetic relation toward your characters you wish; then you may be sure that what seems to you a climax for your scene will be so for your audience.

Movement depends, then, on clearness, unity, emphasis, and a right feeling for suspense and climax. This movement may be steadily upward, as in the last scene of Hamlet, or it may have the wave-like advance found in Sigurjónsson’s Eyvind of the Hills65 or Sir Arthur Pinero’s The Gay Lord Quex. The emotional interest in each of these sweeps up to a pure climax, drops back part way for a fresh start, and then advances to a stronger climax.

Granted that a would-be playwright understands the proportioning of his work and the correct development of it for clearness, emphasis and movement, he is ready to repeat the words of Ibsen: “I have just completed a play in five acts, that is to say, the rough draft of it. Now comes the elaboration, the more energetic individualization of the persons, and their modes of expression.”66 He is ready to perfect his characterization and dialogue.

1 Ancient Classical Drama, chap. VII, “Elements of Comedy.” Moulton. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

2 The “Choephori” of Æschylus. Introduction, p. xvi. A. W. Verral. The Macmillan Co., New York.

3 The Rising of the Moon, Lady Gregory. Contemporary Dramatists. T. H. Dickinson, ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

4 Mme. Sans Gêne, Prologue, Scene 1. Sardou and Moreau. Samuel French, New York.

5 Lonely Lives, Act IV. The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, vol. III, p. 265. Ludwig Lewisohn, ed. B. W. Huebsch, New York.

6 Farces, “The Galloper,” Act I. Richard Harding Davis. Copyright, 1906, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

7 The Lonely Way, etc. Three Plays by Arthur Schnitzler. Translated by E. Björkman. Mitchell Kennerley.

8 Phædra, Act I. Racine. Translated by R. B. Boswell. Chief European Dramatists. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

9 Works, vol. 3. W. Gifford and Dyce. Murray, London.

10 The Rehearsal, Act I. The Duke of Buckingham. Bell’s British Theatre, vol. XV. London, 1780.

11 The Lady of Andros, Act I. Terence. Translated by J. Sargeaunt. The Macmillan Co., New York; W. Heinemann, London.

12 The Lady of Andros, Act III.

13 Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

14 Théâtre Complet, vol. II. Calmann Lévy, Paris.

15 Théâtre, vol. II. Michel Lévy frères, Paris.

16 Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston.

17 Magda, translated by A. E. A. Winslow. Lamson, Wolffe & Co., Boston.

18 From Ibsen’s Workshop, pp. 271-272. Translated by A. G. Chater. Copyright, 1911, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

19 Idem, pp. 288-289.

20 Ibsen’s Prose Dramas, vol. V, Walter Scott, London; Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

21 Letters of Henrik Ibsen, p. 291. Fox, Duffield & Co., New York.

22 Some Platitudes concerning Drama. Atlantic Monthly, December, 1909.

23 Othello, Act III, Scene 3.

24 Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act I. Oscar Wilde. J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

25 Duffield & Co., New York.

26 Plays. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.

27 Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

28 The Trail of the Torch, Paul Hervieu. Translated by J. H. Haughton. Drama League Series, vol. XII. Doubleday Page & Co., New York.

29 The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, vol. VI, Introduction, p. xi, Ludwig Lewisohn, ed. B. W. Huebsch, New York.

30 The Macmillan Co. publish both forms.

31 Nathan Hale, Act IV, Scene 2. Clyde Fitch. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

32 Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

33 Idem.

34 Pp. 143-45. R. H. Russell, New York. Also published by Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston.

35 Act IV, Scene 2. The Macmillan Co.

36 Contemporary Dramatists. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

37 J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

38 Translated by May Hendee. Doubleday, McClure & Co., New York.

39 Plays of Oscar Wilde, vol. II. J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

40 The Fantasticks, pp. 145-146. Translated by George Fleming. R. H. Russell, New York.

41 Samuel French, New York.

42 The Devonshire Hamlets, pp. 34-46. Sampson Low, Son & Co., London.

43 Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready, LXIII. Brander Matthews, ed.

44 Hamburg Dramaturgy, p. 377. Lessing. Bohn, ed.

45 Play-Making, pp. 171-172. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

46 The Troublesome Raigne of King Iohn, pp. 279-280; Shakespeare’s Library, vol. V. Reeves & Turner, London.

47 The Good Hope, Act III. Herman Heijermans. The Drama, November, 1912.

48 See pp. 29-30.

49 Washington Square Plays; The Clod..\ Lewis Beach. Drama League Series, No. XX. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

50 The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, pp. 210-211. Century Co., New York.

51 The DeWitt Publishing House, New York.

52 Monsieur Poirier’s Son-in-Law, Act I. Emile Augier. Translated by B. H. Clark. A. Knopf, New York.

53 The Amazons, Act III. Sir Arthur Pinero. Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston.

54 Herod, A Tragedy, Act. II. Stephen Phillips. John Lane, New York.

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

56 The Fantasticks, Act III. Edmond Rostand. Translated by Geo. Fleming. R. H. Russell & Co., New York.

57 Morituri, Fritzshen, Herman-Sudermann. Translated by Archibald Alexander. Copyright, 1910, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

58 Idem.

59 Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready, Brander Matthews, ed.

60 Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

61 Les Oberlé. René Bazin. Dramatized by E. Haraucourt. L’Illustration Théâtrale, December 9, 1905, p. 14.

62 Magda. Translated by C. E. A. Winslow. Lamson, Wolffe & Co., Boston.

63 Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act II. Oscar Wilde. Acting version as arranged by Miss Margaret Anglin.

64 Idem, Act IV. Acting version as arranged by Miss Margaret Anglin.

65 Eyvind of the Hills, J. Sigurjónsson. American Scandinavian Society, New York.

66 From Ibsen’s Workshop, p. 8. Copyright, 1911, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERIZATION

In drama, undoubtedly the strongest immediate appeal to the general public is action. Yet if a dramatist is to communicate with his audience as he wishes, command of dialogue is indispensable. The permanent value of a play, however, rests on its characterization. Characterization focuses attention. It is the chief means of creating in an audience sympathy for the subject or the people of the play. “A Lord,” “A Page,” in a pre-Shakespearean play usually was merely a speaker of lines and little, if at all, characterized. When Robert Greene or his contemporaries adapted such sources for their stage, with sure instinct for creating a greater interest in their public, they changed these prefixes to “Eustace,” “Jacques,” “Nano,” etc. Merely changing the name from type to individual called for individualization of character and usually brought it. Indeed, in drama, individualization is always the sign of developing art. In any country, the history of modern drama is a passing, under the influence of the audience, from abstractions and personifications, through type, to individualized character. In the Trope, cited p. 17, one Mary cannot be distinguished from another. In a later form it is not a particular unguent seller who meets the Maries on the way to the tomb, but a type,—Unguent Seller. When a writer of a Miracle Play first departed a little from the exact actions and dialogue of the Bible, it was to add abstractions—Justice, Virtue, etc.—or types: soldiers, shepherds, etc. From these he moved quickly or slowly, as he was more or less endowed dramatically, to figures individualized from types, such as the well-characterized shepherds of the Second Towneley Play. The Morality illustrates this same evolution even more clearly. Beginning with the pure abstractions of Mundus et Infans or Mankind it passes through type characterization in Lusty Juventus or Hyckescorner to as well individualized figures as Delilah and Ishmael in The Nice Wanton.1 Abstractions permit an author to say what he pleases with the least possible thought for characterization. Type presents characteristics so marked that even the unobservant cannot have failed to discern them in their fellow men. Individualization differentiates within the types, running from broad distinctions to presentation of very subtle differences. Because individualization moves from the known to the less known or the unknown, it is harder for an audience to follow than type characterization, and far more difficult to write. However, he who cannot individualize character must keep to the broader kinds of melodrama and farce, and above all to that last asylum of time-honored types—musical comedy.

Fundamentally, type characterization rests on a false premise, namely, that every human being may be adequately represented by some dominant characteristic or small group of closely related characteristics. All the better recent drama emphasizes the comic or tragic conflict in human beings caused by many contradictory impulses and ideas, some mutually exclusive, some negativing others to a considerable extent, some apparently dormant for a time, yet ready to spring into great activity at unforeseen moments. Ben Jonson carried the false idea to an extreme when he wrote of his “humour” comedies:

In every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits and his powers, In his confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.2

Were Ben Jonson’s physiology sound, we should have, not occasional cranks and neurotics as now, but a race of nothing else. Today modern medical science has proved the bad physiology of his words, and dramatists have followed its lead.

What gave the type drama its great hold, in the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence, in Ben Jonson and other Elizabethans, what keeps it alive today in the less artistic forms—broad farce, pure melodrama—is fourfold. Type characterization, exhibiting a figure wholly in one aspect, or through a small group of closely related characteristics, is easy to understand. Secondly, it is both easy to create, and, as Ben Jonson’s great following between 1605 and 1750 proves, even easier to imitate. Thirdly, farce and melodrama, indeed all drama depending predominantly on mere situation, may succeed, though lacking individualization of character, with any audience which, like the Roman or the Elizabethan, gladly hears the same stories or sees the same figures handled differently by different writers. Much in the plays of Reade, Tom Taylor, and Bulwer-Lytton3 which passed, in the mid-nineteenth century, for real life, depending as it did on a characterization which barely rose above type, was only thinly disguised melodrama. The recent increasing response of the public to better characterization in both farce and melodrama has tended to lift the former into comedy, the latter into story-play and tragedy. Just here appears a fourth reason for the popularity of characterization by types. Though entertaining plays may be presented successfully with type characterization only, no dramatist with inborn or acquired ability to characterize, can hold consistently to types. Observation, interpretative insight, or a flash of sympathy will advance him now and again, as Jonson was advanced more than once, to real individualization of character. Contrast the thoroughly real Subtle, Face, and Doll of The Alchemist4 with the types, Ananias and Sir Epicure Mammon; contrast the masterly, if very brief, characterization of Ursula in Bartholomew Fair5 with the mere type of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. An uncritical audience responding to the best characterization in a play, overlooks the merely typical quality of the other figures. That is, the long vogue of types upon the stage rests upon ease of comprehension, entire adequacy for some crude dramatic forms, ease of imitation, and a constant tendency in a dramatist of ability to rise to higher levels of characterization. Now that we are more and more dissatisfied with types in plays making any claim to realism, the keen distinction first laid down by Mr. William Archer in his Play-Making becomes essential. If type presents a single characteristic or group of intimately related characteristics, “character drawing is the presentment of human nature in its commonly recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension.”6 Mr. Galsworthy in The Silver Box and Justice Mr. Archer regards as a drawer of character; in Strife7 as a psychologist. He holds Sir Arthur Pinero a characterizer of great versatility who becomes a psychologist in some of his studies of feminine types—in Iris, in Letty, in the heroine of Mid-Channel.8 By this distinction, most good drama shows character drawing; only the great work, psychology.

Drama which does not rise above interest in its action rests, as has been said, on the idea that most people are simple, uncomplicated, and easy to understand. Great drama depends on a firm grasp and sure presentation of complicated character, but of course a dramatist has a perfect right to say that, though he knows his hero—Cyrano de Bergerac, for instance—may have had many characteristics, it is enough for the purpose of his play to represent the vanity, the audacity, and the underlying tenderness of the man. It is undeniable, too, that particular characteristics of ours may be so strong that other characteristics will not prevent them from taking us into sufficient dramatic complications to make a good play. In such a case, the dramatist who is not primarily writing for characterization will present the characteristics creating his desired situations, and let all others go. Conversely, he who cares most for characterization will try so to present even minor qualities that the perfect portrait of an individual will be recognized. Often, however, the happenings of a play may seem to an audience incompatible, that is, the character in one place may seem to contradict himself as presented elsewhere. Just here is where the psychologist in the dramatist, stepping to the front, must convince his audience that there is only a seeming contradiction. Otherwise, the play falls promptly to the level of simple melodrama or farce. That is, the character-drawer paints his portrait, knowing that, if it is well done, its life-likeness will at once be recognized. The psychologist, knowing that the life-likeness will not be readily admitted, by illustrative action throws light on his character till his point is won. Our final judgment of characterization must depend on whether the author is obviously trying to present a completely rounded figure or only chosen aspects.

Thus the old statement, “Know thyself,” becomes for the dramatist “Know your characters as intimately as possible.” Too many beginners in play-writing who care more for situation than for character, sketch in a figure with the idea that they may safely leave it to the actor to “fill out the part.” When brought to book they say: “I felt sure the actor in his larger experience, catching my idea—you do think it was clearly stated, don’t you?—would fill it out perfectly, and be glad of the freedom.” Were modesty the real basis for this kind of work, there might be good in it; but what really lies behind it are two great foes of good dramatic writing: haste or incompetence. The interest and the delight of a dramatist in studying people should lie in accurate conveying to others of their contradictions, their deterioration or growth as time passes, the outcropping of characteristics in them for which our observation has not prepared us. Nobody who really cares for characterization wants somebody else to do it for him. Nobody who has really entered into his characters thoroughly will for a moment be satisfied to sketch broad outlines and let the actor fill in details. Rarely, however, does the self-deceived author of such slovenly work deceive his audience. It meets at their hands the condemnation it deserves. Such an author assumes that in all the parts of his play, actors of marked ability and keen intelligence will be cast. Only in the rarest cases does that happen. Many actors may not see the full significance of the outlines. Others, whether they see them or not, will develop a character so as to get as swiftly as possible effects not intended by the author but for which they, as actors, are specially famous. Such a playwright must, then, contend, except in specially fortunate circumstances, against possible dullness, indifference, and distortion. It is the merest common sense so to present characters that a cast of average ability, or a stage manager of no extraordinary imagination may understand and represent them with at least approximate correctness, rather than so to write that only a group of creative artists can do any justice to the play. Clear and definitive characterization never hampers the best actors: for actors not the best it is absolutely necessary unless intended values are to be blurred.

It frequently happens that a writer whose dialogue is good and who has enough dramatic situations finds himself unable to push ahead. He knows broadly what he wants a scene to be, but somehow cannot make his characters move freely and naturally in it. Above all, the minor transitional scenes prove strangely difficult to write. Of course a scene or act may be thus clogged because the writer is mentally fagged. If, when a writer certainly is not tired, or when, after rest, he cannot with two or three sustained attempts develop a scene, the difficulty is not far to seek. In real life do we surely find out about people at our first, second, or even third meeting? Only if the people are of the simplest and most self-revelatory kind. The difficulty in these clogged scenes usually is that the author is treating the situation as if it were not the creation of the people in it, and as if a skilful writer could force any group of people into any situation. As Mr. Galsworthy has pointed out, “character is situation.”9 The latter exists because someone is what he is and so has inner conflict, or clashes with another person, or with his environment. Change his character a little and the situation must change. Involve more people in it, and immediately their very presence, affecting the people originally in the scene, will change the situation. In the left-hand column of what follows, the Queen, though she has one speech, in no way affects the scene: the situation is treated for itself, and barely. In the right-hand column, the Queen becomes an individual whose presence affects the speeches of the King and Hamlet. Because she is what she is, Hamlet addresses to her some of the lines which in the first version he spoke to the King: result, a scene far more effective emotionally.