Dramatic Technique Part 8

John G. Whittier's poem, _Barbara Frietchie_, provided the picture or incident which started Clyde Fitch on his play of the same name. In _Cyrano de Bergerac;_ in the numerous adaptations of _Vanity Fair_ usually known as _Becky Sharp;_ in _Peg O' My Heart_, _Rip Van Winkle_, and _Louis XI_, it is characterization of a central figure which was probably the point of departure for the play. Whether the source was an observed or an imagined figure, a character from history or fiction, the problem of the dramatist was like that of Sardou in _Rabagas_,--to find the story which will best ill.u.s.trate the facets of character of the leading figure. Sometimes, as in _Nos Bons Villageois_, by the same author, the point of departure is a group of country people whose manners and customs must be portrayed,--in this case to ill.u.s.trate the reception these rapacious peasants give pleasure-seeking Parisians, whom they detest and seek to turn to monetary advantage.[5] Mr. William Archer points out that _Strife_ "arose in Mr. Galsworthy's mind from his actually having seen in conflict the two men who were the prototypes of Anthony and Roberts, and thus noted the waste and inefficacy arising from the clash of strong characters unaccompanied by balance. It was accident that led him to place the two men in an environment of capital and labour. In reality, both of them were, if not capitalists, at any rate, on the side of capital." [6] In _Theodora_, Sardou tried to reconst.i.tute an historical epoch which interested him.[7] Still another source is this: "The point of departure of the plays of M. de Curel is psychological. What allures him is a curious situation which raises some problem. He asks himself, 'What, under such circ.u.mstances, can have been going on in our minds?' This was the case with _L'Envers d'une Sainte_.

M. de Curel was thinking of this: A woman was arrested for murder; thanks to protection in high places, the action of the courts was held up. The woman was represented to be insane and shut up in an asylum.

Years pa.s.s by; the woman succeeds in escaping, and returning home secretly, suddenly opens the door of the room where her children are playing. It is in this picture-like form that the idea of the piece came to him, a picture so detailed and concrete that in imagination he saw the astonishment of the children, the terror of the nurse calling for aid, and the husband hurrying to prevent his wife from stepping into the room."[8] The origin of _A Doll's House_, of Ibsen, we have in these, his first, "Notes for the Modern Tragedy":

Rome, 19.10, 78.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No matter which one of the numerous starting points noted may be that of the dramatist, he must end in story even if he does not begin with it.

Suppose that he starts with a character. He cannot merely talk about the figure. This might produce a kind of history; it cannot produce drama.

Inevitably, he will try to ill.u.s.trate, by means of action, some one dominant characteristic, or group of characteristics, or to the full, the many-sided nature of the man. Very nearly the same thing may be said of any attempt to dramatize an historical epoch. Its chief characteristic or characteristics must be ill.u.s.trated in action. Some story is inevitable. Suppose, for the moment, that as in Morose of Ben Jonson's _Silent Woman_,[11] the dramatist is stressing one characteristic, in this instance morbid sensitiveness to noise of any kind. It is well known that Jonson cared more for character and less for story than most dramatists of his day. Yet even in this play we find the story of the tricking of Morose by his nephew, Dauphine, resulting in the marriage of Morose to Dauphine's page. The reason why the three parts of _Henry VI_ of Shakespeare are little read and very rarely acted is not merely that they are somewhat crude early work, but that crowding incident of all kinds lacks the ma.s.sing needed to give it clearness of total effect to round it out into a well-told story.

Ill.u.s.trative incidents, unrelated except that historically they happen to the same person, and that historically they are given in proper sequence, are likely to be confusing. We need the Baedeker of a biographer or an historian to emphasize the incidents so that the meaning they have for him may be clear to us. The first part of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_,[12] when quickly read, seems but a succession of conquests, not greatly unlike, leading to his control of the world of his day. He who sees no deeper into the play than this praises certain scenes or pa.s.sages, but finds the whole repet.i.tious and confusing.

Closer examination shows, however, that behind these many incidents of war and slaughter is an interest of Marlowe's own creation which keeps us waiting for, antic.i.p.ating the final scene--the desire of Zenocrate, at first captive of Tamburlaine, and later his devoted wife, to reconcile her father, the Soldan, and her husband. The satisfaction of her desire makes the spectacular ending of Part I. This thread of interest gives a certain unity to the material presented, creates a slight story in the ma.s.s of incident,--that is, something with a beginning, a middle, and an end. What gives unity to the Second Part of _Tamburlaine_ is the idea that, even as Tamburlaine declares himself all-conquering, he faces unseen forces against which he cannot stand--the physical cowardice of his son, so incomprehensible to him that he kills the boy; the illness and death of his beloved Zenocrate, though he spares nothing to save her; his own growing physical weakness, his breakdown and death even as the generals he has never called on in vain before prove unable to aid him. Again we find an element of story to unify the material.

A moment's thought will show that if, beginning with character we must ultimately reach some story, however slight, this is just as true of a play which begins with an idea, a bit of dialogue, a detached scene, or a mere setting. The setting must be the background of some incident.

This, in turn, must be part of a story or we shall have the episodic form already found undesirable. Similarly, a detached scene must become part of a series of scenes. Get rid of the effect of episodic scenes, that is, give them unity, and lo, we have story of some sort. The bit of dialogue must become part of a larger dialogue belonging to characters of the play; and characterization, as we have seen, results in some story. The artistic or moral idea of the dramatist can be made clear only by human figures, the p.a.w.ns with which he makes his emotional moves. At once we are on the way to story. _The Red Robe_[13] of Brieux aims to ill.u.s.trate the idea that in France the administration of justice has been confused by personal ambition and personal intrigue. Is it without story? Surely we have the story of Mouzon,--his hopes, his consequent intrigues for advancement, and his resulting death. Here is a group of incidents developing something from a beginning to an end, that is, providing story. The play contains, too, the story of Yanetta and Etchepare. May we not say that the Vagret family provides a third story?

A play, then, may begin in almost anything seen or thought. Speaking broadly, there is no reason why one source is better than another. The important point is that something seen or thought should so stir the emotions of the dramatist that the desire to convey his own emotion or the emotions of characters who become connected with what he has seen or thought, forces him to write till he has worked out his purpose.

Undoubtedly, however, he who begins with a story is nearer his goal than he who begins with an idea or a character. Disconnected episodes, then, may possibly make a vaudeville sketch or the libretto of a lower order of musical comedy. Unless unified in story, even though it be very slight, they cannot make a play.

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

Nor will the recent attempt to maintain that there is a new type of play with "absolutely no story in it" stand close a.n.a.lysis. The story may be very slight, but story is present in all such plays. Take two cases. Mr.

William Archer, in his excellent book on _Play-Making_,[14] sums up Miss Elizabeth Baker's _Chains_[15] as follows: "A city clerk, oppressed by the deadly monotony of his life, thinks of going to Australia--and doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a middle-aged widower--and doesn't do it." He then declares that the play has "absolutely no story." Does any reader believe that this play could have succeeded, as it has, if the audience had been left in any doubt as to _why_ the city clerk and the shopgirl did not do what they had planned?

Yet surely, if this play makes clear, as it does, _why_ these two people changed their minds, it must have story, for it shows us people thinking of escaping from conditions they find irksome, and explains why they give up the idea. If that isn't story, what is it?

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

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

What, then, is the difference between story and plot? In treating drama, what should be meant by story is what a play boils down to when you try to tell a friend as briefly as possible what it is about--what Mr.

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

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

Act II. The Lutheran minister's house at Hagerstown. Barbara and her friend, Sue Royce, appear all aflutter and, with the minister's wife, Mrs. Hunter, await the arrival of the bridegroom and the divine. News comes that the Confederates are swooping into the town, and Captain Trumbull bursts into the room. An impa.s.sioned love scene follows in which we learn that Barbara's sympathies are changing, so much so that she presents her lover with an old Union flag to wear next his heart.

Orders for the soldier to join his Company part Barbara and Trumbull.

The Confederates are heard coming down the street as he leaves the house. Barbara's brother Arthur breaks into the house and stations two sharpshooters, angered deserters from Captain Trumbull's Company, at the windows, Barbara protesting. Arthur goes about his business and she learns that Gelwex, the deserter with the greatest grudge against her lover, is to have the honor of picking him off as he comes down the street. She gets a gun for herself. Captain Trumbull's excited voice is heard outside the window. The deserter takes careful aim, puts his finger to the trigger, and is shot from behind by Barbara.

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

Act IV. Scene 1. The next morning. Barbara's room. Captain Trumbull lies peacefully on the bed. Mammy Lu, the colored nurse, is dozing as Barbara enters. They listen for the invalid's breathing, hear none, and find that he is dead. Half crazed, Barbara s.n.a.t.c.hes the b.l.o.o.d.y flag from his bosom. The scene changes.

Scene 2. The balconied stoop in front of the house. The Confederate soldiers, headed by Stonewall Jackson, are heralded by a large crowd!

Barbara, hanging the Union flag out on the balcony, is discovered by the mob, who begin to stone her, urging somebody to shoot. The lines of Whittier's poem, to fit the circ.u.mstances which Clyde Fitch has made, now become:

Shoot! You've taken a life already dearer to me than my own. Shoot, and I'll _thank_ you! but _spare_ your flag![19]

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

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

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

The ambitious but inexperienced writer of plays worries himself much in hunting a novel subject,--and in vain. Far afield he goes, seeking the sensational, the bizarre, the occult, for new emotions and situations, failing to recognize that the emotional life of yesterday, today, and tomorrow can differ little fundamentally. Civilization refines or deteriorates, kingdoms rise and fall, languages develop and pa.s.s, but love of man and woman, of friend for friend, ambition, jealousy, envy, selfishness,--these emotions abide. A book has been published to show that there are but thirty-six possible dramatic situations. It is based on the dictum of the Italian dramatist, Gozzi, that "there could be only thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller gave himself much trouble to find more, but was unable to find as many."[21] The very chapter headings of the book mentioned prove that the number of possible dramatic situations is a mere matter of subdivision: "Vengeance Pursuing Crime"; "Madness"; "Fatal Imprudence"; "Loss of Property "; "Ambition." Obviously, there are many different kinds of vengeance, as the person pursuing the crime is a hired detective, a wronged person, an officer of state, etc.

Moreover, differing conditions surrounding the crime, as well as the character of the avenger, would make the vengeance sought different. The same may be said of the other chapter-headings. It may be possible to agree on the smallest number of dramatic situations possible, but disagreement surely lies beyond that, for, according to our natures, we shall wish to subdivide and increase the number. Just what that smallest number is, here is unimportant. The important fact is: keen thinkers about the drama agree that the stuff from which it is made may be put into a small number of categories. This rests on the belief that the emotions we feel today are the same old emotions, though we may feel them in greater or less degree because of differences in climate, civilization or ideals. Modern invention, of course, affects our emotional life. It is now a commonplace that invention has quite changed the heroism of warfare from what it was even a generation ago. It is still heroism, but under conditions so different that it needs wholly different treatment dramatically. In Restoration Comedy the rake was the hero. The audience, viewing life through his eyes saw the victims of his selfishness as fools or as people who, in any combat of wits with the hero, deservedly came off defeated. Interest in one's fellow man, a more just sense of life had developed in the early years of the eighteenth century. This wholly changed the emphasis, and gave birth to the Sentimental Comedy. The characters, even the story, of this newer comedy are almost identical with the Restoration Comedy, but the material is so treated that our sympathies go to the unfortunate wife of _The Careless Husband_, not to the man himself, as they would have a generation before. In _The Provoked Husband_[22] it is the point of view of that husband as to Lady Townley, though she is presented in all her charm and gaiety, with which we are left.

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

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

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

... I know one who can evoke modern dramatic scenes by the mere iterance of the great musical names of the imagination. Menelaos, Helen, Klytemaistra, Andromache, Ka.s.sandra, Orestes, Blind Oidipus, Elektra, Kreusa, and the like. This is not because these names are in themselves esoteric symbols. My friend has not seen any representation of the _Agamemnon_ or the _Choephoroi_, of _Aias_ or _Oidipus at Kolonos_, of _Elektra_ or _Ion_, or indeed of any Greek play. But he knows the story of every name mentioned in each of the dramas of the three kings of Greek Tragedy.... And here, he says, is his delight.

"For I do not live only in the past but in the present, in these dramas of the mind. The names stand for the elemental pa.s.sions, and I can come to them through my own gates of today as well as through the ancient portals of Aischylos or Sophocles or Euripides." ...

It is no doubt in this att.i.tude that Racine, so French in the accent of his cla.s.sical genius, looked at the old drama which was his inspiration: that Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Bridges, so English in the accent of their genius, have looked at it; that Echegaray in Spain, looked at it before he produced his troubled modern _Elektra_ which is so remote in shapen thought and coloured semblance from the colour and idea of its prototype; that Gabriele D'Annunzio looked at it before he became obsessed with the old terrible idea of the tangled feet of Destiny, so that a tuft of gra.s.s might withhold or a breath from stirred dust empoison, and wrote that most perturbing of all modern dramas, _La Citta Morta_.[25]

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

So long as characters, ideas, and treatment seem to the public fresh, they even have a weakness for a story they have heard before. Recall the drama of aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in which the dramatists shared with their audiences a knowledge of the stories of the G.o.ds which was theirs by education and from repeated treatment by the dramatists of the day. That public asked, not new stories, but newness of effect because old stories which were almost fixed subjects for their dramatists were given individuality of treatment. In a modified sense this was true of the Elizabethan public. _Romeo and Juliet_, _Lear_, probably _t.i.tus Andronicus_, and possibly _Julius Caesar_ Londoners had known as plays just pa.s.sing from popularity when Shakespeare made them over. Here again, it was freshness of treatment through better characterization, richer poetry, and finer technique, not creative story, which won the public to Shakespeare. Nor is this att.i.tude a thing of the past. Think of the delight with which the public today watches the rejuggling of old elements of plot in the rapid succession of popular musical comedies, grateful for whatever element of freshness they may find in the total product. Was it the story, or the characterization and setting, indeed all that went with the treatment of the story, which in _Peg o' My Heart_ and _Bunty Pulls the Strings_ won these plays popularity? Seek for novelty, then, not by trying to invent some new story, but in an idea, the setting of the play, the technical treatment given it, above all the characters. The last, when studied, are likely so to reshape the story which first presents itself to the imagination as to make it really novel. Does the freshness of the story of the Duke, Olivia, and Viola in _Twelfth Night_ rest on the story as Shakespeare found it in Barnabe Riche's book,[27] or on the characterization Shakespeare gave these suggested figures and the effect of their developed characters on the story as he found it? Surely the latter.

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

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

Many of the ma.n.u.scripts that are sent to the New York managers are such impossible oddities that few readers would regard a description of them as really accurate. It was the privilege of the writer to look over a collection of "plays" that have been mailed recently to several of the theatrical offices, and, among the number, he came across a dozen that were each about fifteen to twenty pages in length. This included the scenic descriptions and stage directions. Such "plays,"

if enacted, would be of about ten to eleven minutes' duration instead of two and a quarter hours. Three ma.n.u.scripts called for from ninety to one hundred characters, and from nine to fourteen different scenes.

Eight ma.n.u.scripts were divided into nine acts each and, judging from their thickness, would have run on for days, after the fashion of a Chinese drama. One "play" was laid in the year 2200 A.D., and called for twelve actors to portray "the new race of men"--each man to be at least seven feet tall. These characters were to make all their entrances and exits in airships. Several ma.n.u.scripts that the writer examined would have required professional strong men in their enactment, so difficult were the physical feats outlined for some of the actors. A great number of "modern dramas" included a ream of colloquialisms and anachronisms intermixed with Louis XV situations.

And one ma.n.u.script, ent.i.tled "Love in All Ages" called for twelve different acts with a new group of nine differently built actors in each.[29]

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

Granted then that a would-be playwright has acquired ordinary common sense about the theatre and has some point of departure, how does he move from it to plot? First, by taking time enough, by avoiding hurry.

Let any would-be dramatist get rid promptly of the idea that good plays are written in a rush. It is perfectly true that the mere writing out of a play has often been done in what seems an amazingly short time,--a few weeks, days, or even hours. However, in every case of rapid composition, as for instance Sheridan's _Rivals_, which was put on paper in very brief time, the author has either mulled his material for a long time or was so thoroughly conversant with it that it required no careful thinking out at the moment of composition. In _The Rivals_ Sheridan drew upon his intimate knowledge for many years of the people and the gossip of the Pump Room at Bath. Mr. H. A. Jones has more than once testified, "I mull long on my plot, sometimes a year, but when I have it, the rest (the mere writing out) is easy." Sardou turned out a very large number of plays. Nor are his plays, seemingly, such as to demand the careful preparation required for the drama of ideas or the drama more dependent on characterization than incident. Yet he worked very carefully at all stages, from point of departure to final draft. "Whenever an idea occurred to Sardou, he immediately made a memorandum of it. These notes he cla.s.sified and filed. For example, years before the production of _Thermidor_ he had the thought of one day writing such a play. Gradually the character of Fabienne shaped itself; Labussiere was devised later to fit Coquelin. Everything that he read about that epoch of the French Revolution, and the ideas which his reading inspired, he wrote down in the form of rough notes. Engravings, maps, prints, and other doc.u.ments of the time he carefully collected. Memoirs and histories he annotated and indexed, filing away the index references in his file cases, or dossiers. At the time of his death, Sardou had many hundreds of these dossiers, old and new. Some of the older ones had been worked up into plays, while the newer ones were merely raw material for future dramas.

When the idea of a play had measurably shaped itself in his mind he wrote out a skeleton plot which he placed in its dossier. There it might lie indefinitely. In this shape _Thermidor_ remained for nearly twenty years, and _Theodora_ for ten. When he considered that the time was ripe for one of his embryonic plays, Sardou would take out that particular dossier, read over the material, and lay it aside again. After it had fermented in his brain for a time, he would, if the inspiration seized him, write out a scenario. After this, he began the actual writing of the play."[30]