Dramatic Technique Part 70

In writing _The Playboy of the Western World_, as in my other plays, I have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers. A certain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also from herds and fishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo, or from beggar-women and ballad-singers near Dublin; and I am glad to acknowledge how much I owe to the folk-imagination of these fine people. Any one who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is a collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller's or the playwright's hand as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard as he sat at dinner, from his mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who know the people have the same privilege. When I was writing _The Shadow of the Glen_, some years ago, I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a c.h.i.n.k in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in the kitchen. This matter, I think, is of importance for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans producing this literature; and on the other Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality of life in joyless and pallid words. On the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by any one who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.[71]

As Ibsen says, "Style must conform to the degree of ideality which pervades the representation."

You are of opinion that the drama ought to have been written in verse, and that it would have gained by this. Here I must differ from you.

The play is, as you must have observed, conceived in the most realistic style; the illusion I wished to produce was that of reality.

I wished to produce the impression on the reader that what he was reading was something that had really happened. If I had employed verse I should have counteracted my own intention and prevented the accomplishment of the task I had set myself. The many ordinary, insignificant characters whom I have intentionally introduced into the play would have become indistinct, and indistinguishable from one another, if I had allowed all of them to speak in one and the same rhythmical measure. We are no longer living in the days of Shakespeare. Speaking generally, the style must conform to the degree of ideality which pervades the representation. My new drama is no tragedy in the ancient acceptation; what I desired to depict were human beings, and therefore I would not let them talk "the language of the G.o.ds."[72]

The dramatist who would write dialogue of the highest order should have not only an inborn and highly trained feeling for the emotional significance of the material in hand; a fine feeling for characterization; ability to write dialogue which states facts in character; and the power to bring out whatever charm, grace, irony, wit, or other specially attractive qualities his characters permit; also he should have, or develop, a strong feeling for the nicest use of language. Dumas fils said, "There should be something of the poet, the artist in words, in every dramatist."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Far East_, June 6, 1914, p. 295.

[2] _The Devonshire Hamlets_, pp. 1-2.

[3] _The Devonshire Hamlets_, pp. 26-27.

[4] Act I. Scene 1. Belles-Lettres Series. Austin Dobson, ed. D. C.

Heath & Co.

[5] _Hindle Wakes_, Stanley Houghton. J.W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

[6] _York Plays_, p. 363. L. T. Smith, ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[7] _Ludus Coventriae_, p. 322. J. O. Halliwell, ed. Shakespeare Society.

[8] _Plays_, pp. 71-72 Copyright, 1915, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[9] B. W. Huebsch. New York.

[10] _Julius Caesar_, Act III, Scene 3.

[11] _The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell_, Act I, Scene 1. George Lillo. Sir A.W. Ward, ed. Belles-Lettres Series. D.

C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[12] _Works_, R.W. Bond, ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[13] _Selected Dramas of John Dryden. Conquest of Granada_. G. R.

Noyes, ed.

[14] Belles-Lettres Series. Sir A. W. Ward, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[15] _L'Annee Psychologique_, 1894, p. 120.

[16] _The n.i.g.g.e.r_, Act I. Edward Sheldon. The Macmillan Co., New York.

[17] _The Devonshire Hamlets_, p. 99.

[18] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, p. 130. B. Matthews, ed.

[19] _Fortune by Land and Sea._ T. Heywood and W. Rowley. W. B.

Clarke Co, Boston.

[20] _From Ibsen's Workshop_, p. 162. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[21] _Prose Dramas_, vol. 1, p. 377. _Idem_.

[22] _From Ibsen's Workshop_, p. 171. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[23] _Prose Dramas_, vol. i, p. 386. _Idem_.

[24] _The Amba.s.sador._ T. Fisher Unwin, London.

[25] Samuel French, New York.

[26] _Mistress Beatrice Cope._ M. E. Le Clerc. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

[27] _The Devonshire Hamlets_, pp. 4, 6.

[28] _Becket._ Tennyson. The Macmillan Co.

[29] _Becket._ Arranged by Sir Henry Irving. _Idem._

[30] _George Riddle's Readings._ Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston.

[31] _The Origin of the English Drama_, vol. II, p. 48. T. Hawkins, ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1773.

[32] _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I, Scene 1.

[33] Belles-Lettres Series. K. L. Bates, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[34] _Pre-Shakesperean Drama_, vol. 1, p. 300. J. M. Manly. Ginn & Co., Boston.

[35] _Early Plays_, p. 72. C. G. Child. Riverside Literature Series, No. 191. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[36] Samuel French, New York.

[37] Note that this is a literary detail effective for readers only.

At best the first row of spectators alone could identify the t.i.tle of the book.

[38] _Justice._ Copyright, 1910, by John Galsworthy. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[39] _Die Frau im Fenster._ Theater in Versen. H. von Hofmannsthal.

S. Fischer, Berlin.

[40] The final scene of Act IV of _Nathan Hale_ shows effective use of pantomime.