PLAY-MAKING

_A Manual of Craftsmanship_

by William Archer

1912

PREFATORY NOTE

This book is, to all intents and purposes, entirely new. No considerableportion of it has already appeared, although here and there shortpassages and phrases from articles of bygone years are embedded--indistinguishably, I hope--in the text. I have tried, whereverit was possible, to select my examples from published plays, which thestudent may read for himself, and so check my observations. One reason, among others, which led me to go to Shakespeare and Ibsen for so many ofmy illustrations, was that they are the most generally accessible ofplaywrights. 

If the reader should feel that I have been over lavish in the use offootnotes, I have two excuses to allege. The first is that more thanhalf of the following chapters were written on shipboard and in placeswhere I had scarcely any books to refer to; so that a great deal had tobe left to subsequent enquiry and revision. The second is that severalof my friends, dramatists and others, have been kind enough to read mymanuscript, and to suggest valuable afterthoughts. 

LONDON

_January_, 1912

To

Brander Matthews

Guide Philosopher and Friend

CONTENTS

 BOOK I

 PROLOGUE

 _CHAPTER I_ INTRODUCTORY _CHAPTER II_ THE CHOICE OF A THEME _CHAPTER III_ DRAMATIC AND UNDRAMATIC _CHAPTER IV_ THE ROUTINE OF COMPOSITION _CHAPTER V_ DRAMATIS PERSONAE

 BOOK II

 THE BEGINNING

 _CHAPTER VI_ THE POINT OF ATTACK: SHAKESPEARE AND IBSEN _CHAPTER VII_ EXPOSITION: ITS END AND ITS MEANS _CHAPTER VIII_ THE FIRST ACT _CHAPTER IX_ "CURIOSITY" AND "INTEREST" _CHAPTER X_ FORESHADOWING, NOT FORESTALLING

 BOOK III

 THE MIDDLE

 _CHAPTER XI_ TENSION AND ITS SUSPENSION _CHAPTER XII_ PREPARATION: THE FINGER-POST _CHAPTER XIII_ THE OBLIGATORY SCENE _CHAPTER XIV_ THE PERIPETY _CHAPTER XV_ PROBABILITY, CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE _CHAPTER XVI_ LOGIC _CHAPTER XVII_ KEEPING A SECRET

 BOOK IV

 THE END

 _CHAPTER XVIII_ CLIMAX AND ANTICLIMAX _CHAPTER XIX_ CONVERSION _CHAPTER XX_ BLIND-ALLEY THEMES--AND OTHERS _CHAPTER XXI_ THE FULL CLOSE

 BOOK V

 EPILOGUE

 _CHAPTER XXII_ CHARACTER AND PSYCHOLOGY _CHAPTER XXIII_ DIALOGUE AND DETAILS

_BOOK I_

PROLOGUE

_CHAPTER I_

INTRODUCTORY

There are no rules for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay downnegative recommendations--to instruct the beginner how _not_ to do it. But most of these "don'ts" are rather obvious; and those which are notobvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that ifyou want your play to be acted, anywhere else than in China, you mustnot plan it in sixteen acts of an hour apiece; but where is the tyro whoneeds a text-book to tell him that? On the other hand, most theorists ofto-day would make it an axiom that you must not let your charactersnarrate their circumstances, or expound their motives, in speechesaddressed, either directly to the audience, or ostensibly to theirsolitary selves. But when we remember that, of all dramatic openings, there is none finer than that which shows Richard Plantagenet limpingdown the empty stage to say--

 "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried"--

we feel that the axiom requires large qualifications. There are noabsolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainestcommon sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse, classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. Hesaid, "you had better" rather than "you must. " It was Horace, in an ageof deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelianformulas of the Alexandrians as though they were unassailable dogmasof art. 

How comes it, then, that there is a constant demand for text-books ofthe art and craft of drama? How comes it that so many people--and Iamong the number--who could not write a play to save their lives, areeager to tell others how to do so? And, stranger still, how comes itthat so many people are willing to sit at the feet of these instructors?It is not so with the novel. Popular as is that form of literature, guides to novel-writing, if they exist at all, are comparatively rare. Why are people possessed with the idea that the art of dramatic fictiondiffers from that of narrative fiction, in that it can and mustbe taught?

The reason is clear, and is so far valid as to excuse, if not tojustify, such works as the present. The novel, as soon as it is legiblywritten, exists, for what it is worth. The page of black and white isthe sole intermediary between the creative and the perceptive brain. Even the act of printing merely widens the possible appeal: it does notalter its nature. But the drama, before it can make its proper appeal atall, must be run through a highly complex piece of mechanism--thetheatre--the precise conditions of which are, to most beginners, afascinating mystery. While they feel a strong inward conviction of theirability to master it, they are possessed with an idea, often exaggeratedand superstitious, of its technical complexities. Having, as a rule, little or no opportunity of closely examining or experimenting with it, they are eager to "read it up, " as they might any other machine. That isthe case of the average aspirant, who has neither the instinct of thetheatre fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of thatinstinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties orproblems. The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes, tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction, and to expect of analytic criticism more than it has to give. 

There is thus a fine opening for pedantry on the one side, and quackeryon the other, to rush in. The pedant, in this context, is he whoconstructs a set of rules from metaphysical or psychological firstprinciples, and professes to bring down a dramatic decalogue from theSinai of some lecture-room in the University of Weissnichtwo. The quack, on the other hand, is he who generalizes from the worst practices of themost vulgar theatrical journeymen, and has no higher ambition than tointerpret the oracles of the box-office. If he succeeded in so doing, his function would not be wholly despicable; but as he is generallydevoid of insight, and as, moreover, the oracles of the box-office varyfrom season to season, if not from month to month, his lucubrations areabout as valuable as those of Zadkiel or Old Moore. [1]

What, then, is the excuse for such a discussion as is here attempted?Having admitted that there are no rules for dramatic composition, andthat the quest of such rules is apt to result either in pedantry orquackery, why should I myself set forth upon so fruitless and foolhardyan enterprise? It is precisely because I am alive to its dangers that Ihave some hope of avoiding them. Rules there are none; but it does notfollow that some of the thousands who are fascinated by the art of theplaywright may not profit by having their attention called, in a plainand practical way, to some of its problems and possibilities. I havemyself felt the need of some such handbook, when would-be dramatistshave come to me for advice and guidance. It is easy to name excellenttreatises on the drama; but the aim of such books is to guide thejudgment of the critic rather than the creative impulse of theplaywright. There are also valuable collections of dramatic criticisms;but any practical hints that they may contain are scattered andunsystematic. On the other hand, the advice one is apt to give tobeginners--"Go to the theatre; study its conditions and mechanism foryourself"--is, in fact, of very doubtful value. It might, in many cases, be wiser to warn the aspirant to keep himself unspotted from theplayhouse. To send him there is to imperil, on the one hand, hisoriginality of vision, on the other, his individuality of method. He mayfall under the influence of some great master, and see life only throughhis eyes; or he may become so habituated to the current tricks of thetheatrical trade as to lose all sense of their conventionality andfalsity, and find himself, in the end, better fitted to write what Ihave called a quack handbook than a living play. It would be ridiculous, of course, to urge an aspirant positively to avoid the theatre; but thecommon advice to steep himself in it is beset with dangers. 

It may be asked why, if I have any guidance and help to give, I do nottake it myself, and write plays instead of instructing others in theart. This is a variant of an ancient and fallacious jibe againstcriticism in general. It is quite true that almost all critics who areworth their salt are "stickit" artists. Assuredly, if I had the power, Ishould write plays instead of writing about them; but one may have agreat love for an art, and some insight into its principles and methods, without the innate faculty required for actual production. On the otherhand, there is nothing to show that, if I were a creative artist, Ishould be a good mentor for beginners. An accomplished painter may bethe best teacher of painters; but an accomplished dramatist is scarcelythe best guide for dramatists. He cannot analyse his own practice, anddiscriminate between that in it which is of universal validity, and thatwhich may be good for him, but would be bad for any one else. If hehappened to be a great man, he would inevitably, even if unconsciously, seek to impose upon his disciples his individual attitude towards life;if he were a lesser man, he would teach them only his tricks. Butdramatists do not, as a matter of fact, take pupils or writehandbooks. [2] When they expound their principles of art, it is generallyin answer to, or in anticipation of, criticism--with a view, in short, not to helping others, but to defending themselves. If beginners, then, are to find any systematic guidance, they must turn to the critics, notto the dramatists; and no person of common sense holds it a reproach toa critic to tell him that he is a "stickit" playwright. 

If questions are worth discussing at all, they are worth discussinggravely. When, in the following pages, I am found treating with allsolemnity matters of apparently trivial detail, I beg the reader tobelieve that very possibly I do not in my heart overrate theirimportance. One thing is certain, and must be emphasized from theoutset: namely, that if any part of the dramatist's art can be taught, it is only a comparatively mechanical and formal part--the art ofstructure. One may learn how to tell a story in good dramatic form: howto develop and marshal it in such a way as best to seize and retain theinterest of a theatrical audience. But no teaching or study can enable aman to choose or invent a good story, and much less to do that whichalone lends dignity to dramatic story-telling--to observe and portrayhuman character. This is the aim and end of all serious drama; and itwill be apt to appear as though, in the following pages, this aim andend were ignored. In reality it is not so. If I hold comparativelymechanical questions of pure craftsmanship to be worth discussing, it isbecause I believe that only by aid of competent craftsmanship can thegreatest genius enable his creations to live and breathe upon the stage. The profoundest insight into human nature and destiny cannot find validexpression through the medium of the theatre without some understandingof the peculiar art of dramatic construction. Some people are born withsuch an instinct for this art, that a very little practice renders themmasters of it. Some people are born with a hollow in their cranium wherethe bump of drama ought to be. But between these extremes, as I saidbefore, there are many people with moderately developed and cultivablefaculty; and it is these who, I trust, may find some profit in thefollowing discussions. [3] Let them not forget, however, that the topicstreated of are merely the indispensable rudiments of the art, and arenot for a moment to be mistaken for its ultimate and incommunicablesecrets. Beethoven could not have composed the Ninth Symphony without amastery of harmony and counterpoint; but there are thousands of mastersof harmony and counterpoint who could not compose the Ninth Symphony. 

The art of theatrical story-telling is necessarily relative to theaudience to whom the story is to be told. One must assume an audience ofa certain status and characteristics before one can rationally discussthe best methods of appealing to its intelligence and its sympathies. The audience I have throughout assumed is drawn from what may be calledthe ordinary educated public of London and New York. It is not an idealor a specially selected audience; but it is somewhat above the averageof the theatre-going public, that average being sadly pulled down by themyriad frequenters of musical farce and absolutely worthless melodrama. It is such an audience as assembles every night at, say, the half-dozenbest theatres of each city. A peculiarly intellectual audience itcertainly is not. I gladly admit that theatrical art owes much, in bothcountries, to voluntary organizations of intelligent or would-beintelligent[4] playgoers, who have combined to provide themselves withforms of drama which specially interest them, and do not attract thegreat public. But I am entirely convinced that the drama renounces itschief privilege and glory when it waives its claim to be a popular art, and is content to address itself to coteries, however "high-browed. "Shakespeare did not write for a coterie: yet he produced some works ofconsiderable subtlety and profundity. Molière was popular with theordinary parterre of his day: yet his plays have endured for over twocenturies, and the end of their vitality does not seem to be in sight. Ibsen did not write for a coterie, though special and regrettablecircumstances have made him, in England, something of a coterie-poet. InScandinavia, in Germany, even in America, he casts his spell over greataudiences, if not through long runs (which are a vice of the merelycommercial theatre), at any rate through frequently-repeatedrepresentations. So far as I know, history records no instance of aplaywright failing to gain the ear of his contemporaries, and then beingrecognized and appreciated by posterity. Alfred de Musset might, perhaps, be cited as a case in point; but he did not write with a viewto the stage, and made no bid for contemporary popularity. As soon as itoccurred to people to produce his plays, they were found to bedelightful. Let no playwright, then, make it his boast that he cannotdisburden his soul within the three hours' limit, and cannot produceplays intelligible or endurable to any audience but a band of adepts. Apopular audience, however, does not necessarily mean the mere riff-raffof the theatrical public. There is a large class of playgoers, both inEngland and America, which is capable of appreciating work of a highintellectual order, if only it does not ignore the fundamentalconditions of theatrical presentation. It is an audience of this classthat I have in mind throughout the following pages; and I believe that aplaywright who despises such an audience will do so to the detriment, not only of his popularity and profits, but of the artistic qualityof his work. 

Some people may exclaim: "Why should the dramatist concern himself abouthis audience? That may be all very well for the mere journeymen of thetheatre, the hacks who write to an actor-manager's order--not for thetrue artist! He has a soul above all such petty considerations. Art, tohim, is simply self-expression. He writes to please himself, and has nothought of currying favour with an audience, whether intellectual oridiotic. " To this I reply simply that to an artist of this way ofthinking I have nothing to say. He has a perfect right to expresshimself in a whole literature of so-called plays, which may possibly bestudied, and even acted, by societies organized to that laudable end. But the dramatist who declares his end to be mere self-expressionstultifies himself in that very phrase. The painter may paint, thesculptor model, the lyric poet sing, simply to please himself, [5] butthe drama has no meaning except in relation to an audience. It is aportrayal of life by means of a mechanism so devised as to bring it hometo a considerable number of people assembled in a given place. "Thepublic, " it has been well said, "constitutes the theatre. " The moment aplaywright confines his work within the two or three hours' limitprescribed by Western custom for a theatrical performance, he iscurrying favour with an audience. That limit is imposed simply by thephysical endurance and power of sustained attention that can be demandedof Western human beings assembled in a theatre. Doubtless an authorcould express himself more fully and more subtly if he ignored theselimitations; the moment he submits to them, he renounces the pretencethat mere self-expression is his aim. I know that there arehaughty-souls who make no such submission, and express themselves indramas which, so far as their proportions are concerned, might as wellbe epic poems or historical romances. [6] To them, I repeat, I havenothing to say. The one and only subject of the following discussions isthe best method of fitting a dramatic theme for representation before anaudience assembled in a theatre. But this, be it noted, does notnecessarily mean "writing down" to the audience in question. It is byobeying, not by ignoring, the fundamental conditions of his craft thatthe dramatist may hope to lead his audience upward to the highestintellectual level which he himself can attain. 

These pages, in short, are addressed to students of play-writing whosincerely desire to do sound, artistic work under the conditions andlimitations of the actual, living playhouse. This does not mean, ofcourse, that they ought always to be studying "what the public wants. "The dramatist should give the public what he himself wants--but in suchform as to make it comprehensible and interesting in a theatre. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: It is against "technic" in this sense of the term that thehero of Mr. Howells's admirable novel, _The Story of a Play_, protestsin vigorous and memorable terms. "They talk, " says Maxwell, "about aknowledge of the stage as if it were a difficult science, instead of avery simple piece of mechanism whose limitations and possibilitiesanyone may see at a glance. All that their knowledge of it comes to isclaptrap, pure and simple. .. . They think that their exits and entrancesare great matters and that they must come on with such a speech, and gooff with another; but it is not of the least importance how they come orgo, if they have something interesting to say or do. " Maxwell, it mustbe remembered, is speaking of technic as expounded by the star actor, who is shilly-shallying--as star actors will--over the production of hisplay. He would not, in his calmer moments, deny that it is of little useto have something interesting to say, unless you know how to say itinterestingly. Such a denial would simply be the negation of the veryidea of art. ]

[Footnote 2: A dramatist of my acquaintance adds this footnote: "But, bythe Lord! They have to give advice. I believe I write more plays ofother people's than I do of my own. "]

[Footnote 3: It may be hoped, too, that even the accomplished dramatistmay take some interest in considering the reasons for things which hedoes, or does not do, by instinct. ]

[Footnote 4: This is not a phrase of contempt. The would-be intelligentplaygoer is vastly to be preferred to the playgoer who makes a boast ofhis unintelligence. ]

[Footnote 5: In all the arts, however, the very idea of craftsmanshipimplies some sort of external percipient, or, in other words, some sortof an audience. In point of sheer self-expression, a child's scrabblingswith a box of crayons may deserve to rank with the most masterly canvasof Velasquez or Vermeer. The real difference between the dramatist andother artists, is that they can be _their own audience_, in a sense inwhich he cannot. ]

[Footnote 6: Let me guard against the possibility that this might beinterpreted as a sneer at _The Dynasts_--a great work by a great poet. ]

_CHAPTER II_

THE CHOICE OF A THEME

The first step towards writing a play is manifestly to choose a theme. 

Even this simple statement, however, requires careful examination beforewe can grasp its full import. What, in the first place, do we mean by a"theme"? And, secondly, in what sense can we, or ought we to, "choose" one?

"Theme" may mean either of two things: either the subject of a play, orits story. The former is, perhaps, its proper or more convenient sense. The theme of _Romeo and Juliet_ is youthful love crossed by ancestralhate; the theme of _Othello_ is jealousy; the theme of _Le Tartufe_ ishypocrisy; the theme of _Caste_ is fond hearts and coronets; the themeof _Getting Married_ is getting married; the theme of _Maternité_ ismaternity. To every play it is possible, at a pinch, to assign a theme;but in many plays it is evident that no theme expressible in abstractterms was present to the author's mind. Nor are these always plays of alow class. It is only by a somewhat artificial process of abstractionthat we can formulate a theme for _As You Like It_, for _The Way of theWorld_, or for _Hedda Gabler_. 

The question now arises: ought a theme, in its abstract form, to be thefirst germ of a play? Ought the dramatist to say, "Go to, I will write aplay on temperance, or on woman's suffrage, or on capital and labour, "and then cast about for a story to illustrate his theme? This is apossible, but not a promising, method of procedure. A story made to theorder of a moral concept is always apt to advertise its origin, to thedetriment of its illusive quality. If a play is to be a moral apologueat all, it is well to say so frankly--probably in the title--and aim, not at verisimilitude, but at neatness and appositeness in the workingout of the fable. The French _proverbe_ proceeds on this principle, andis often very witty and charming. [1] A good example in English is _APair of Spectacles_, by Mr. Sydney Grundy, founded on a play by Labiche. In this bright little comedy every incident and situation bears upon thegeneral theme, and pleases us, not by its probability, but by itsingenious appropriateness. The dramatic fable, in fact, holds very muchthe same rank in drama as the narrative fable holds in literature atlarge. We take pleasure in them on condition that they be witty, andthat they do not pretend to be what they are not. 

A play manifestly suggested by a theme of temporary interest will oftenhave a great but no less temporary success. For instance, though therewas a good deal of clever character-drawing in _An Englishman's Home_, by Major du Maurier, the theme was so evidently the source andinspiration of the play that it will scarcely bear revival. In America, where the theme was of no interest, the play failed. 

It is possible, no doubt, to name excellent plays in which the theme, inall probability, preceded both the story and the characters in theauthor's mind. Such plays are most of M. Brieux's; such plays are Mr. Galsworthy's _Strife_ and _Justice_. The French plays, in my judgment, suffer artistically from the obtrusive predominance of the theme--thatis to say, the abstract element--over the human and concrete factors inthe composition. Mr. Galsworthy's more delicate and unemphatic arteludes this danger, at any rate in _Strife_. We do not remember untilall is over that his characters represent classes, and his action is, one might almost say, a sociological symbol. If, then, the theme does, as a matter of fact, come first in the author's conception, he will dowell either to make it patently and confessedly dominant, as in the_proverbe_, or to take care that, as in _Strife_, it be not suffered tomake its domination felt, except as an afterthought. [2] No outside forceshould appear to control the free rhythm of the action. 

The theme may sometimes be, not an idea, an abstraction or a principle, but rather an environment, a social phenomenon of one sort or another. The author's primary object in such a case is, not to portray anyindividual character or tell any definite story, but to transfer to thestage an animated picture of some broad aspect or phase of life, withoutconcentrating the interest on any one figure or group. There aretheorists who would, by definition, exclude from the domain of drama anysuch cinematograph-play, as they would probably call it; but we shallsee cause, as we go on, to distrust definitions, especially when theyseek to clothe themselves with the authority of laws. Tableau-plays ofthe type here in question may even claim classical precedent. What elseis Ben Jonson's _Bartholomew Fair_? What else is Schiller's_Wallensteins Lager_? Amongst more recent plays, Hauptmann's _Die Weber_and Gorky's _Nachtasyl_ are perhaps the best examples of the type. Thedrawback of such themes is, not that they do not conform to this or thatcanon of art, but that it needs an exceptional amount of knowledge anddramaturgic skill to handle them successfully. It is far easier to tella story on the stage than to paint a picture, and few playwrights canresist the temptation to foist a story upon their picture, thus marringit by an inharmonious intrusion of melodrama or farce. This has oftenbeen done upon deliberate theory, in the belief that no play can exist, or can attract playgoers, without a definite and more or less excitingplot. Thus the late James A. Herne inserted into a charming idyllicpicture of rural life, entitled _Shore Acres_, a melodramatic scene in alighthouse, which was hopelessly out of key with the rest of the play. The dramatist who knows any particular phase of life so thoroughly as tobe able to transfer its characteristic incidents to the stage, may beadvised to defy both critical and managerial prejudice, and give histableau-play just so much of story as may naturally and inevitably fallwithin its limits. 

One of the most admirable and enthralling scenes I ever saw on any stagewas that of the Trafalgar Square suffrage meeting in Miss ElizabethRobins's _Votes for Women_. Throughout a whole act it held usspellbound, while the story of the play stood still, and we forgot itsexistence. It was only within a few minutes of the end, when the storywas dragged in neck and crop, that the reality of the thing vanished, and the interest with it. 

 * * * * *

If an abstract theme be not an advisable starting-point, what is? Acharacter? A situation? Or a story? On this point it would be absurd tolay down any rule; the more so as, in many cases, a playwright is quiteunable to say in what form the germ of a play first floated into hismind. The suggestion may come from a newspaper paragraph, from anincident seen in the street, from an emotional adventure or a comicmisadventure, from a chance word dropped by an acquaintance, or fromsome flotsam or jetsam of phrase or fable that has drifted from theother end of history. Often, too, the original germ, whatever it may be, is transformed beyond recognition before a play is done. [3] In the mindof the playwright figs grow from thistles, and a silk purse--perhaps aFortunatus' purse--may often be made from a sow's ear. The wholedelicate texture of Ibsen's _Doll's House_ was woven from a commonplacestory of a woman who forged a cheque in order to redecorate herdrawing-room. Stevenson's romance of _Prince Otto_ (to take an examplefrom fiction) grew out of a tragedy on the subject of Semiramis!

One thing, however, we may say with tolerable confidence: whatever maybe the germ of a play--whether it be an anecdote, a situation, or whatnot--the play will be of small account as a work of art unlesscharacter, at a very early point, enters into and conditions itsdevelopment. The story which is independent of character--which can becarried through by a given number of ready-made puppets--is essentiallya trivial thing. Unless, at an early stage of the organizing process, character begins to take the upper hand--unless the playwright findshimself thinking, "Oh, yes, George is just the man to do this, " or, "That is quite foreign to Jane's temperament"--he may be pretty surethat it is a piece of mechanism he is putting together, not a drama withflesh and blood in it. The difference between a live play and a dead oneis that in the former the characters control the plot, while in thelatter the plot controls the characters. Which is not to say, of course, that there may not be clever and entertaining plays which are "dead" inthis sense, and dull and unattractive plays which are "live. "

A great deal of ink has been wasted in controversy over a remark ofAristotle's that the action or _muthos_, not the character or _êthos_, is the essential element in drama. The statement is absolutely true andwholly unimportant. A play can exist without anything that can be calledcharacter, but not without some sort of action. This is implied in thevery word "drama, " which means a doing, not a mere saying or existing. It would be possible, no doubt, to place Don Quixote, or Falstaff, orPeer Gynt, on the stage, and let him develop his character in mereconversation, or even monologue, without ever moving from his chair. Butit is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test ofcharacter; wherefore, from time immemorial, it has been the recognizedbusiness of the theatre to exhibit character in action. Historically, too, we find that drama has everywhere originated in the portrayal of anaction--some exploit or some calamity in the career of some demigod orhero. Thus story or plot is by definition, tradition, and practicalreason, the fundamental element in drama; but does it therefore followthat it is the noblest element, or that by which its value should bemeasured? Assuredly not. The skeleton is, in a sense, the fundamentalelement in the human organism. It can exist, and, with a littleassistance, retain its form, when stripped of muscle and blood andnerve; whereas a boneless man would be an amorphous heap, more helplessthan a jelly-fish. But do we therefore account the skeleton man'snoblest part? Scarcely. It is by his blood and nerve that he lives, notby his bones; and it is because his bones are, comparatively speaking, dead matter that they continue to exist when the flesh has fallen awayfrom them. It is, therefore, if not a misreading of Aristotle, [4] at anyrate a perversion of reason, to maintain that the drama lives by action, rather than by character. Action ought to exist for the sake ofcharacter: when the relation is reversed, the play may be an ingenioustoy, but scarcely a vital work of art. 

 * * * * *

It is time now to consider just what we mean when we say that the firststep towards play-writing is the "choice" of a theme. 

In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that theimpulse to write some play--any play--exists, so to speak, in theabstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that thewould-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination towork, and invent a story. But this frame of mind is to be regarded withsuspicion. Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted fromsuch an abstract impulse. Invention, in these cases, is apt to benothing but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscopeformed of fragmentary reminiscences. I remember once, in some momentaryaccess of ambition, trying to invent a play. I occupied several hours ofa long country walk in, as I believed, creating out of nothing at all adramatic story. When at last I had modelled it into some sort ofcoherency, I stepped back from it in my mind, as it were, andcontemplated it as a whole. No sooner had I done so than it began toseem vaguely familiar. "Where have I seen this story before?" I askedmyself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutesthat I found I had re-invented Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_. Thus, when wethink we are choosing a plot out of the void, we are very apt to be, infact, ransacking the store-house of memory. The plot which chooses usis much more to be depended upon--the idea which comes when we leastexpect it, perhaps from the most unlikely quarter, clamours at the gatesof birth, and will not let us rest till it be clothed in dramatic fleshand blood. [5] It may very well happen, of course, that it has towait--that it has to be pigeon-holed for a time, until its due turncomes. [6] Occasionally, perhaps, it may slip out of its pigeon-hole foran airing, only to be put back again in a slightly more developed form. Then at last its convenient season will arrive, and the play will beworked out, written, and launched into the struggle for life. In thesense of selecting from among a number of embryonic themes stored in hismind, the playwright has often to make a deliberate choice; but when, moved by a purely abstract impulse, he goes out of set purpose to lookfor a theme, it may be doubted whether he is likely to return with anyvery valuable treasure-trove. [7]

The same principle holds good in the case of the ready-made poetic orhistorical themes, which are--rightly or wrongly--considered suitablefor treatment in blank verse. Whether, and how far, the blank versedrama can nowadays be regarded as a vital and viable form is a questionto be considered later. In the meantime it is sufficient to say thatwhatever principles of conception and construction apply to the modernprose drama, apply with equal cogency to the poetic drama. Theverse-poet may perhaps take one or two licenses denied to theprose-poet. For instance, we may find reason to think the soliloquy moreexcusable in verse than in prose. But fundamentally, the two forms areruled by the same set of conditions, which the verse-poet, no less thanthe prose-poet, can ignore only at his peril. Unless, indeed, herenounces from the outset all thought of the stage and chooses toproduce that cumbrous nondescript, a "closet drama. " Of such we do notspeak, but glance and pass on. What laws, indeed, can apply to a formwhich has no proper element, but, like the amphibious animal describedby the sailor, "cannot live on land and dies in the water"?

To return to our immediate topic, the poet who essays dramaticcomposition on mere abstract impulse, because other poets have done so, or because he is told that it pays, is only too likely to producewilly-nilly a "closet drama. " Let him beware of saying to himself, "Iwill gird up my loins and write a play. Shall it be a Phaedra, or aSemiramis, or a Sappho, or a Cleopatra? A Julian, or an Attila, or aSavanarola, or a Cromwell?" A drama conceived in this reach-me-downfashion will scarcely have the breath of life in it. If, on the otherhand, in the course of his legendary, romantic, or historical reading, some character should take hold upon his imagination and demand to beinterpreted, or some episode should, as it were, startle him by puttingon vivid dramatic form before his mind's eye, then let him by all meansyield to the inspiration, and try to mould the theme into a drama. Thereal labour of creation will still lie before him; but he may face itwith the hope of producing a live play, not a long-drawn rhetoricalanachronism, whether of the rotund or of the spasmodic type. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: For instance, _Il ne faut jurer de rien. Il faut qu'uneporte soit ouverte ou fermée. Un bienfait n'est jamais perdu. _ There isalso a large class of pieces of which the title, though not itself aproverb, makes direct allusion to some fable or proverbial saying: forexample, _Les Brebis de Panurge, La Chasse aux Corbeaux, La Cigale chezles Fourmis_. ]

[Footnote 2: I learn, on the best authority, that I am wrong, in pointof fact, as to the origin of _Strife_. The play arose in Mr. Galsworthy's mind from his actually having seen in conflict the two menwho were the prototypes of Anthony and Roberts, and thus noted the wasteand inefficacy arising from the clash of strong characters unaccompaniedby balance. It was accident that led him to place the two men in anenvironment of capital and labour. In reality, both of them were, if notcapitalists, at any rate on the side of capital. This interestingcorrection of fact does not invalidate the theory above stated. ]

[Footnote 3: Mr. Henry Arthur Jones writes to me: "Sometimes I startwith a scene only, sometimes with a complete idea. Sometimes a playsplits into two plays, sometimes two or three ideas combine into aconcrete whole. Always the final play is altered out of all knowledgefrom its first idea. " An interesting account of the way in which twovery different plays by M. De Curel: _L'Envers d'une Sainte_ and_L'Invitée_, --grew out of one and the same initial idea, may be found in_L'Année Psychologique_, 1894, p. 121. ]

[Footnote 4: In my discussion of this point, I have rather simplifiedAristotle's position. He appears to make action the essential element intragedy and not merely the necessary vehicle of character. "In a play, "he says, "they do not act in order to portray the characters, theyinclude the characters for the sake of the action. So that it is theaction in it, _i. E. _ its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose ofthe tragedy, and the end is everywhere the chief thing. Besides this, atragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one withoutcharacter. " (Bywater's Translation. ) The last sentence is, in my view, the gist of the matter; the preceding sentences greatly overstate thecase. There was a lively controversy on the subject in the _Times_Literary Supplement in May, 1902. It arose from a review of Mr. Phillips's _Paolo and Francesco_, and Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. ChurtonCollins, and Mr. A. B. Walkley took part in it. ]

[Footnote 5: "Are the first beginnings of imaginative conceptiondirected by the will? Are they, indeed, conscious at all? Do they notrather emerge unbidden from the vague limbo of sub-consciousness?" A. B. Walkley, _Drama and Life_, p. 85. ]

[Footnote 6: Sardou kept a file of about fifty _dossiers_, each bearingthe name of an unwritten play, and containing notes and sketches for it. Dumas, on the other hand, always finished one play before he began tothink of another. See _L'Année Psychologique_, 1894, pp. 67, 76. ]

[Footnote 7: "My experience is, " a dramatist writes to me, "that younever deliberately choose a theme. You lie awake, or you go walking, andsuddenly there flashes into your mind a contrast, a piece of spiritualirony, an old incident carrying some general significance. Round thisyour mind broods, and there is the germ of your play. " Again be writes:"It is not advisable for a playwright to start out at all unless he hasso felt or seen something, that he feels, as it matures in his mind, that he must express it, and in dramatic form. "]

_CHAPTER III_

DRAMATIC AND UNDRAMATIC

It may be well, at this point, to consider for a little what we meanwhen we use the term "dramatic. " We shall probably not arrive at anydefinition which can be applied as an infallible touchstone todistinguish the dramatic from the undramatic. Perhaps, indeed, theupshot may rather be to place the student on his guard against troublingtoo much about the formal definitions of critical theorists. 

The orthodox opinion of the present time is that which is generallyassociated with the name of the late Ferdinand Brunetière. "The theatrein general, " said that critic, "is nothing but the place for thedevelopment of the human will, attacking the obstacles opposed to it bydestiny, fortune, or circumstances. " And again: "Drama is arepresentation of the will of man in conflict with the mysterious powersor natural forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrownliving upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, againstsocial law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if needbe, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, themalevolence of those who surround him. "[1]

The difficulty about this definition is that, while it describes thematter of a good many dramas, it does not lay down any truedifferentia--any characteristic common to all drama, and possessed by noother form of fiction. Many of the greatest plays in the world can withdifficulty be brought under the formula, while the majority of romancesand other stories come under it with ease. Where, for instance, is thestruggle in the _Agamemnon_? There is no more struggle betweenClytemnestra and Agamemnon than there is between the spider and the flywho walks into his net. There is not even a struggle in Clytemnestra'smind. Agamemnon's doom is sealed from the outset, and she merely carriesout a pre-arranged plot. There is contest indeed in the succeeding playsof the trilogy; but it will scarcely be argued that the _Agamemnon_, taken alone, is not a great drama. Even the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles, though it may at first sight seem a typical instance of a struggleagainst Destiny, does not really come under the definition. Oedipus, infact, does not struggle at all. His struggles, in so far as that wordcan be applied to his misguided efforts to escape from the toils offate, are all things of the past; in the actual course of the tragedy hesimply writhes under one revelation after another of bygone error andunwitting crime. It would be a mere play upon words to recognize as adramatic "struggle" the writhing of a worm on a hook. And does not thisdescription apply very closely to the part played by another greatprotagonist--Othello to wit? There is no struggle, no conflict, betweenhim and Iago. It is Iago alone who exerts any will; neither Othello norDesdemona makes the smallest fight. From the moment when Iago sets hismachination to work, they are like people sliding down an ice-slope toan inevitable abyss. Where is the conflict in _As You Like It_? No one, surely, will pretend that any part of the interest or charm of the playarises from the struggle between the banished Duke and the Usurper, orbetween Orlando and Oliver. There is not even the conflict, if so it canbe called, which nominally brings so many hundreds of plays under theBrunetière canon--the conflict between an eager lover and a more or lessreluctant maid. Or take, again, Ibsen's _Ghosts_--in what valid sensecan it be said that that tragedy shows us will struggling againstobstacles? Oswald, doubtless, wishes to live, and his mother desiresthat he should live; but this mere will for life cannot be thedifferentia that makes of _Ghosts_ a drama. If the reluctant descent ofthe "downward path to death" constituted drama, then Tolstoy's _Death ofIvan Ilytch_ would be one of the greatest dramas ever written--which itcertainly is not. Yet again, if we want to see will struggling againstobstacles, the classic to turn to is not _Hamlet_, not _Lear_, but_Robinson Crusoe_; yet no one, except a pantomime librettist, ever saw adrama in Defoe's narrative. In a Platonic dialogue, in _Paradise Lost_, in _John Gilpin_, there is a struggle of will against obstacles; thereis none in _Hannele_, which, nevertheless, is a deeply-moving drama. Such a struggle is characteristic of all great fiction, from _ClarissaHarlowe_ to _The House with the Green Shutters_; whereas in many playsthe struggle, if there be any at all, is the merest matter of form (forinstance, a quite conventional love-story), while the real interestresides in something quite different. 

The plain truth seems to be that conflict is _one_ of the most dramaticelements in life, and that many dramas--perhaps most--do, as a matterof fact, turn upon strife of one sort or another. But it is clearly anerror to make conflict indispensable to drama, and especially toinsist--as do some of Brunetière's followers--that the conflict must bebetween will and will. A stand-up fight between will and will--such afight as occurs in, say, the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides, or Racine's_Andromaque_, or Molière's _Tartufe_, or Ibsen's _Pretenders_, orDumas's _Françillon_, or Sudermann's _Heimat_, or Sir Arthur Pinero's_Gay Lord Quex_, or Mr. Shaw's _Candida_, or Mr. Galsworthy's_Strife_--such a stand-up fight, I say, is no doubt one of the intensestforms of drama. But it is comparatively rare at any rate as the formulaof a whole play. In individual scenes a conflict of will is frequentenough; but it is, after all, only one among a multitude of equallytelling forms of drama. No one can say that the Balcony Scene in _Romeoand Juliet_ is undramatic, or the "Galeoto fú il libro" scene in Mr. Stephen Phillips's _Paolo and Francesca_; yet the point of these scenesis not a clash, but an ecstatic concordance, of wills. Is thedeath-scene of Cleopatra undramatic? Or the Banquet scene in _Macbeth_?Or the pastoral act in _The Winter's Tale_? Yet in none of these isthere any conflict of wills. In the whole range of drama there isscarcely a passage which one would call more specifically dramatic thanthe Screen Scene in _The School for Scandal_; yet it would be theveriest quibbling to argue that any appreciable part of its effectarises from the clash of will against will. This whole comedy, indeed, suffices to show the emptiness of the theory. With a little strain it ispossible to bring it within the letter of the formula; but who canpretend that any considerable part of the attraction or interest of theplay is due to that possibility?

The champions of the theory, moreover, place it on a metaphysical basis, finding in the will the essence of human personality, and therefore ofthe art which shows human personality raised to its highest power. Itseems unnecessary, however, to apply to Schopenhauer for an explanationof whatever validity the theory may possess. For a sufficient account ofthe matter, we need go no further than the simple psychologicalobservation that human nature loves a fight, whether it be with clubs orwith swords, with tongues or with brains. One of the earliest forms ofmediaeval drama was the "estrif" or "flyting"--the scolding-matchbetween husband and wife, or between two rustic gossips. This motive isglorified in the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, degraded in thepatter of two "knockabout comedians. " Certainly there is nothing moretelling in drama than a piece of "cut-and-thrust" dialogue after thefashion of the ancient "stichomythia. " When a whole theme involvingconflict, or even a single scene of the nature described as a"passage-at-arms, " comes naturally in the playwright's way, by all meanslet him seize the opportunity. But do not let him reject a theme orscene as undramatic merely because it has no room for a clash ofwarring wills. 

There is a variant of the "conflict" theory which underlines the word"obstacles" in the above-quoted dictum of Brunetière, and lays down therule: "No obstacle, no drama. " Though far from being universally valid, this form of the theory has a certain practical usefulness, and may wellbe borne in mind. Many a play would have remained unwritten if theauthor had asked himself, "Is there a sufficient obstacle between my twolovers?" or, in more general terms, "between my characters and therealization of their will?" There is nothing more futile than a play inwhich we feel that there is no real obstacle to the inevitable happyending, and that the curtain might just as well fall in the middle ofthe first act as at the end of the third. Comedies abound (though theyreach the stage only by accident) in which the obstacle between Corydonand Phyllis, between Lord Edwin and Lady Angelina, is not even a defector peculiarity of character, but simply some trumperymisunderstanding[2] which can be kept afoot only so long as every oneconcerned holds his or her common sense in studious abeyance. "Pyramusand Thisbe without the wall" may be taken as the formula for the wholetype of play. But even in plays of a much higher type, the author mightoften ask himself with advantage whether he could not strengthen hisobstacle, and so accentuate the struggle which forms the matter of hisplay. Though conflict may not be essential to drama, yet, when you setforth to portray a struggle, you may as well make it as real and intenseas possible. 

It seems to me that in the late William Vaughn Moody's drama, _The GreatDivide_, the body of the play, after the stirring first act, is weakenedby our sense that the happy ending is only being postponed by a violenteffort. We have been assured from the very first--even before RuthJordan has set eyes on Stephen Ghent--that just such a rough diamond isthe ideal of her dreams. It is true that, after their marriage, therough diamond seriously misconducts himself towards her; and we havethen to consider the rather unattractive question whether a single actof brutality on the part of a drunken husband ought to be held sounpardonable as to break up a union which otherwise promises to be quitesatisfactory. But the author has taken such pains to emphasize the factthat these two people are really made for each other, that the answer tothe question is not for a moment in doubt, and we become ratherimpatient of the obstinate sulkiness of Ruth's attitude. If there hadbeen a real disharmony of character to be overcome, instead of, or inaddition to, the sordid misadventure which is in fact the sole barrierbetween them, the play would certainly have been stronger, and perhapsmore permanently popular. 

In a play by Mr. James Bernard Fagan, _The Prayer of the Sword_, we havea much clearer example of an inadequate obstacle. A youth named Andreahas been brought up in a monastery, and destined for the priesthood; buthis tastes and aptitudes are all for a military career. He is, however, on the verge of taking his priestly vows, when accident calls him forthinto the world, and he has the good fortune to quell a threatenedrevolution in a romantic Duchy, ruled over by a duchess of surpassingloveliness. With her he naturally falls in love; and the tragedy lies, or ought to lie, in the conflict between this earthly passion and hisheavenly calling and election. But the author has taken pains to makethe obstacle between Andrea and Ilaria absolutely unreal. The fact thatAndrea has as yet taken no irrevocable vow is not the essence of thematter. Vow or no vow, there would have been a tragic conflict if Andreahad felt absolutely certain of his calling to the priesthood, and haddefied Heaven, and imperilled his immortal soul, because of hisoverwhelming passion. That would have been a tragic situation; but theauthor had carefully avoided it. From the very first--before Andrea hadever seen Ilaria--it had been impressed upon us that he had no priestlyvocation. There was no struggle in his soul between passion and duty;there was no struggle at all in his soul. His struggles are all withexternal forces and influences; wherefore the play, which a realobstacle might have converted into a tragedy, remained a sentimentalromance--and is forgotten. 

 * * * * *

What, then, is the essence of drama, if conflict be not it? What is thecommon quality of themes, scenes, and incidents, which we recognize asspecifically dramatic? Perhaps we shall scarcely come nearer to ahelpful definition than if we say that the essence of drama is _crisis_. A play is a more or less rapidly-developing crisis in destiny orcircumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis within a crisis, clearlyfurthering the ultimate event. The drama may be called the art ofcrises, as fiction is the art of gradual developments. It is theslowness of its processes which differentiates the typical novel fromthe typical play. If the novelist does not take advantage of thefacilities offered by his form for portraying gradual change, whether inthe way of growth or of decay, he renounces his own birthright, in orderto trespass on the domain of the dramatist. Most great novels embraceconsiderable segments of many lives; whereas the drama gives us only theculminating points--or shall we say the intersecting culminations?--twoor three destinies. Some novelists have excelled precisely in the artwith which they have made the gradations of change in character orcircumstance so delicate as to be imperceptible from page to page, andmeasurable, as in real life, only when we look back over a considerableperiod. The dramatist, on the other hand, deals in rapid and startlingchanges, the "peripeties, " as the Greeks called them, which may be theoutcome of long, slow processes, but which actually occur in very briefspaces of time. Nor is this a merely mechanical consequence of thenarrow limits of stage presentation. The crisis is as real, though notas inevitable, a part of human experience as the gradual development. Even if the material conditions of the theatre permitted thepresentation of a whole _Middlemarch_ or _Anna Karénine_--as theconditions of the Chinese theatre actually do--some dramatists, wecannot doubt, would voluntarily renounce that license of prolixity, inorder to cultivate an art of concentration and crisis. The Greek drama"subjected to the faithful eyes, " as Horace phrases it, the culminatingpoints of the Greek epic; the modern drama places under the lens oftheatrical presentment the culminating points of modern experience. 

But, manifestly, it is not every crisis that is dramatic. A seriousillness, a law-suit, a bankruptcy, even an ordinary prosaic marriage, may be a crisis in a man's life, without being necessarily, or evenprobably, material for drama. How, then, do we distinguish a dramaticfrom a non-dramatic crisis? Generally, I think, by the fact that itdevelops, or can be made naturally to develop, through a series of minorcrises, involving more or less emotional excitement, and, if possible, the vivid manifestation of character. Take, for instance, the case of abankruptcy. Most people, probably, who figure in the _Gazette_ do not gothrough any one, or two, or three critical moments of special tension, special humiliation, special agony. They gradually drift to leeward intheir affairs, undergoing a series of small discouragements, smallvicissitudes of hope and fear, small unpleasantnesses, which they takelightly or hardly according to their temperament, or the momentary stateof their liver. In this average process of financial decline, there maybe--there has been--matter for many excellent novels, but scarcely for adrama. That admirable chapter in _Little Dorrit, _ wherein Dickensdescribes the gradual degradation of the Father of the Marshalsea, showshow a master of fiction deals with such a subject; but it would be quiteimpossible to transfer this chapter to the stage. So, too, with thebankruptcy of Colonel Newcome--certain emotional crises arising from ithave, indeed, been placed on the stage, but only after all Thackeray'sknowledge of the world and fine gradations of art had been eliminated. Mr. Hardy's _Mayor of Casterbridge_ has, I think, been dramatized, butnot, I think, with success. A somewhat similar story of financial ruin, the grimly powerful _House with the Green Shutters_, has not eventempted the dramatiser. There are, in this novel, indeed, manypotentially dramatic crises; the trouble is that they are too numerousand individually too small to be suitable for theatrical presentment. Moreover, they are crises affecting a taciturn and inarticulate race, [3]a fact which places further difficulties in the way of the playwright. In all these cases, in short, the bankruptcy portrayed is a matter ofslow development, with no great outstanding moments, and is consequentlysuited for treatment in fiction rather than in drama. 

But bankruptcy sometimes occurs in the form of one or more sudden, sharpcrises, and has, therefore, been utilized again and again as a dramaticmotive. In a hundred domestic dramas or melodramas, we have seen thehead of a happy household open a newspaper or a telegram announcing thefailure of some enterprise in which all his fortune is embarked. Soobviously dramatic is this incident that it has become sadly hackneyed. Again, we have bankruptcy following upon a course of gambling, generallyin stocks. Here there is evident opportunity, which has been frequentlyutilized, for a series of crises of somewhat violent and commonplaceemotion. In American drama especially, the duels of Wall Street, thecombats of bull and bear, form a very popular theme, which clearly fallsunder the Brunetière formula. Few American dramatists can resist thetemptation of showing some masterful financier feverishly watching the"ticker" which proclaims him a millionaire or a beggar. The "ticker" hadnot been invented in the days when Ibsen wrote _The League of Youth_, otherwise he would doubtless have made use of it in the fourth act ofthat play. The most popular of all Björnson's plays is specificallyentitled _A Bankruptcy_. Here the poet has had the art to select atypical phase of business life, which naturally presents itself in theform of an ascending curve, so to speak, of emotional crises. We see theenergetic, active business man, with a number of irons in the fire, aware in his heart that he is insolvent, but not absolutely clear as tohis position, and hoping against hope to retrieve it. We see him give agreat dinner-party, in order to throw dust in the eyes of the world, andto secure the support of a financial magnate, who is the guest ofhonour. The financial magnate is inclined to "bite, " and goes off, leaving the merchant under the impression that he is saved. This is aninteresting and natural, but scarcely a thrilling, crisis. It does not, therefore, discount the supreme crisis of the play, in which a cold, clear-headed business man, who has been deputed by the banks to lookinto the merchant's affairs, proves to him, point by point, that itwould be dishonest of him to flounder any longer in the swamp ofinsolvency, into which he can only sink deeper and drag more people downwith him. Then the bankrupt produces a pistol and threatens murder andsuicide if the arbiter of his fate will not consent to give him one morechance; but his frenzy breaks innocuous against the other's calm, relentless reason. Here we have, I repeat, a typically dramatic theme: agreat crisis, bringing out vivid manifestations of character, not onlyin the bankrupt himself, but in those around him, and naturallyunfolding itself through a series of those lesser crises, which we callinteresting and moving scenes. The play is scarcely a great one, partlybecause its ending is perfunctory, partly because Björnson, poet thoughhe was, had not Ibsen's art of "throwing in a little poetry" into hismodern dramas. I have summarized it up to its culminating point, becauseit happened to illustrate the difference between a bankruptcy, dramaticin its nature and treatment, and those undramatic bankruptcies to whichreference has been made. In _La Douloureuse_, by Maurice Donnay, bankruptcy is incidentally employed to bring about a crisis of adifferent order. A ball is proceeding at the house of a Parisianfinancier, when the whisper spreads that the host is ruined, and hascommitted suicide in a room above; whereupon the guests, after a momentof flustered consternation, go on supping and dancing![4] We are not atall deeply interested in the host or his fortunes. The author's purposeis to illustrate, rather crudely, the heartlessness of plutocraticBohemia; and by means of the bankruptcy and suicide he brings about whatmay be called a crisis of collective character. [5]

 * * * * *

As regards individual incidents, it may be said in general that thedramatic way of treating them is the crisp and staccato, as opposed tothe smooth or legato, method. It may be thought a point of inferiorityin dramatic art that it should deal so largely in shocks to the nerves, and should appeal by preference, wherever it is reasonably possible, tothe cheap emotions of curiosity and surprise. But this is a criticism, not of dramatic art, but of human nature. We may wish that mankind tookmore pleasure in pure apprehension than in emotion; but so long as thefact is otherwise, that way of handling an incident by which thegreatest variety of poignancy of emotion can be extracted from it willremain the specifically dramatic way. 

We shall have to consider later the relation between what may be calledprimary and secondary suspense or surprise--that is to say betweensuspense or surprise actually experienced by the spectator to whom thedrama is new, and suspense or surprise experienced only sympathetically, on behalf of the characters, by a spectator who knows perfectly what isto follow. The two forms of emotion are so far similar that we need notdistinguish between them in considering the general content of the term"dramatic. " It is plain that the latter or secondary form of emotionmust be by far the commoner, and the one to which the dramatist of anyambition must make his main appeal; for the longer his play endures, thelarger will be the proportion of any given audience which knows itbeforehand, in outline, if not in detail. 

As a typical example of a dramatic way of handling an incident, so as tomake a supreme effect of what might else have been an anti-climax, onemay cite the death of Othello. Shakespeare was faced by no easy problem. Desdemona was dead, Emilia dead, Iago wounded and doomed to the torture;how was Othello to die without merely satiating the audience with a glutof blood? How was his death to be made, not a foregone conclusion, amere conventional suicide, but the culminating moment of the tragedy? Inno single detail, perhaps, did Shakespeare ever show his dramatic geniusmore unmistakably than in his solution of this problem. We all rememberhow, as he is being led away, Othello stays his captors with a gesture, and thus addresses them:

 "Soft you; a word or two, before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know 't; No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice, then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. Set you down this; And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him--thus!"

What is the essence of Shakespeare's achievement in this marvellouspassage? What is it that he has done? He has thrown his audience, justas Othello has thrown his captors, off their guard, and substituted asudden shock of surprise for a tedious fulfilment of expectation. Inother words, he has handled the incident crisply instead of flaccidly, and so given it what we may call the specific accent of drama. 

Another consummate example of the dramatic handling of detail may befound in the first act of Ibsen's _Little Eyolf_. The lame boy, Eyolf, has followed the Rat-wife down to the wharf, has fallen into the water, and been drowned. This is the bare fact: how is it to be conveyed to thechild's parents and to the audience?

A Greek dramatist would probably have had recourse to a long andelaborately worked-up "messenger-speech, " a pathetic recitation. Thatwas the method best suited to the conditions, and to what may be calledthe prevailing tempo, of the Greek theatre. I am far from saying that itwas a bad method: no method is bad which holds and moves an audience. But in this case it would have had the disadvantage of concentratingattention on the narrator instead of on the child's parents, on the mereevent instead of on the emotions it engendered. In the modern theatre, with greater facilities for reproducing the actual movement of life, thedramatist naturally aims at conveying to the audience the growinganxiety, the suspense and the final horror, of the father and mother. The most commonplace playwright would have seen this opportunity andtried to make the most of it. Every one can think of a dozen commonplaceways in which the scene could be arranged and written; and some of themmight be quite effective. The great invention by which Ibsen snatchesthe scene out of the domain of the commonplace, and raises it to theheight of dramatic poetry, consists in leaving it doubtful to the fatherand mother what is the meaning of the excitement on the beach and theconfused cries which reach their ears, until one cry comes home to themwith terrible distinctness, "The crutch is floating!" It would be hardto name any single phrase in literature in which more dramatic effect isconcentrated than in these four words--they are only two words in theoriginal. However dissimilar in its nature and circumstances, thisincident is comparable with the death of Othello, inasmuch as in eachcase the poet, by a supreme felicity of invention, has succeeded indoing a given thing in absolutely the most dramatic method conceivable. Here we recognize in a consummate degree what has been called the"fingering of the dramatist"; and I know not how better to express thecommon quality of the two incidents than in saying that each is touchedwith extraordinary crispness, so as to give to what in both cases hasfor some time been expected and foreseen a sudden thrill of novelty andunexpectedness. That is how to do a thing dramatically. [6]

And now, after all this discussion of the "dramatic" in theme andincident, it remains to be said that the tendency of recent theory, andof some recent practice, has been to widen the meaning of the word, until it bursts the bonds of all definition. Plays have been written, and have found some acceptance, in which the endeavour of the dramatisthas been to depict life, not in moments of crisis, but in its most leveland humdrum phases, and to avoid any crispness of touch in thepresentation of individual incidents. "Dramatic, " in the eyes of writersof this school, has become a term of reproach, synonymous with"theatrical. " They take their cue from Maeterlinck's famous essay on"The Tragic in Daily Life, " in which he lays it down that: "An old man, seated in his armchair, waiting patiently, with his lamp besidehim--submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and hisdestiny--motionless as he is, does yet live in reality a deeper, morehuman, and more universal life than the lover who strangles hismistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or the husband who'avenges his honour. '" They do not observe that Maeterlinck, in his ownpractice, constantly deals with crises, and often with violent andstartling ones. 

At the same time, I am far from suggesting that the reaction against thetraditional "dramatic" is a wholly mistaken movement. It is a valuablecorrective of conventional theatricalism; and it has, at some points, positively enlarged the domain of dramatic art. Any movement is goodwhich helps to free art from the tyranny of a code of rules anddefinitions. The only really valid definition of the dramatic is: Anyrepresentation of imaginary personages which is capable of interestingan average audience assembled in a theatre. We must say "representationof imaginary personages" in order to exclude a lecture or a prize-fight;and we must say "an average audience" (or something to that effect) inorder to exclude a dialogue of Plato or of Landor, the recitation ofwhich might interest a specially selected public. Any further attempt tolimit the content of the term "dramatic" is simply the expression of anopinion that such-and-such forms of representation will not be found tointerest an audience; and this opinion may always be rebutted byexperiment. In all that I have said, then, as to the dramatic and thenon-dramatic, I must be taken as meaning: "Such-and-such forms andmethods have been found to please, and will probably please again. Theyare, so to speak, safer and easier than other forms and methods. But itis the part of original genius to override the dictates of experience, and nothing in these pages is designed to discourage original geniusfrom making the attempt. " We have already seen, indeed, that in acertain type of play--the broad picture of a social phenomenon orenvironment--it is preferable that no attempt should be made to depict amarked crisis. There should be just enough story to afford a plausibleexcuse for raising and for lowering the curtain. [7]

Let us not, however, seem to grant too much to the innovators and thequietists. To say that a drama should be, or tends to be, thepresentation of a crisis in the life of certain characters, is by nomeans to insist on a mere arbitrary convention. It is to make at once aninduction from the overwhelming majority of existing dramas, and adeduction from the nature and inherent conditions of theatricalpresentation. The fact that theatrical conditions often encourage aviolent exaggeration of the characteristically dramatic elements in lifedoes not make these elements any the less real or any the lesscharacteristically dramatic. It is true that crispness of handling mayeasily degenerate into the pursuit of mere picture-poster situation; butthat is no reason why the artist should not seek to achieve crispnesswithin the bounds prescribed by nature and common sense. There is adrama--I have myself seen it--in which the heroine, fleeing from thevillain, is stopped by a yawning chasm. The pursuer is at her heels, andit seems as though she has no resource but to hurl herself into theabyss. But she is accompanied by three Indian servants, who happen, bythe mercy of Providence, to be accomplished acrobats. The second climbson the shoulders of the first, the third on the shoulders of the second;and then the whole trio falls forward across the chasm, the top onegrasping some bush or creeper on the other side; so that a living bridgeis formed, on which the heroine (herself, it would seem, something of anacrobat) can cross the dizzy gulf and bid defiance to the baffledvillain. This is clearly a dramatic crisis within our definition; but, no less clearly, it is not a piece of rational or commendable drama. Tosay that such-and-such a factor is necessary, or highly desirable, in adramatic scene, is by no means to imply that every scene which containsthis factor is good drama. Let us take the case of another heroine--Ninain Sir Arthur Pinero's _His House in Order_. The second wife of FilmerJesson, she is continually being offered up as a sacrifice on the altardedicated to the memory of his adored first wife. Not only her husband, but the relatives of the sainted Annabel, make her life a burden to her. Then it comes to her knowledge--she obtains absolute proof--thatAnnabel was anything but the saint she was believed to be. By a singleword she can overturn the altar of her martyrdom, and shatter thedearest illusion of her persecutors. Shall she speak that word, or shallshe not? Here is a crisis which comes within our definition just asclearly as the other;[8] only it happens to be entirely natural andprobable, and eminently illustrative of character. Ought we, then, todespise it because of the element it has in common with thepicture-poster situation of preposterous melodrama? Surely not. Letthose who have the art--the extremely delicate and difficult art--ofmaking drama without the characteristically dramatic ingredients, do soby all means; but let them not seek to lay an embargo on the judicioususe of these ingredients as they present themselves in life. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: _Etudes Critiques_, vol. Vii, pp. 153 and 207. ]

[Footnote 2: In the most aggravated cases, the misunderstanding ismaintained by a persevering use of pronouns in place of proper names:"he" and "she" being taken by the hearer to mean A. And B. , when thespeaker is in fact referring to X. And Y. This ancient trick becomes themore irritating the longer the _quiproquo_ is dragged out. ]

[Footnote 3: The Lowland Scottish villager. It is noteworthy that Mr. J. M. Barrie, who himself belongs to this race, has an almost unique giftof extracting dramatic effect out of taciturnity, and even outof silence. ]

[Footnote 4: There is a somewhat similar incident in Clyde Fitch's play, _The Moth and the Flame_. ]

[Footnote 5: _Les Corbeaux_, by Henri Becque, might perhaps be classedas a bankruptcy play, though the point of it is that the Vigneron familyis not really bankrupt at all, but is unblushingly fleeced by thepartner and the lawyer of the deceased Vigneron, who play into eachother's hands. ]

[Footnote 6: "Dramatic" has recently become one of the most overworkedwords in the vocabulary of journalism. It constantly appears, not onlyin the text of the picturesque reporter, but in head-lines and onbulletin-boards. When, on July 20, 1911, Mr. Asquith wrote to Mr. Balfour to inform him that the King had guaranteed the creation ofpeers, should it prove necessary for the passing of the Parliament Bill, one paper published the news under this head-line: "DRAMATIC ANNOUNCEMENTBY THE PRIME MINISTER, " and the parliamentary correspondent of anotherpaper wrote: "With dramatic suddenness and swiftness, the Prime Ministerhurled his thunderbolt at the wavering Tory party yesterday. " As amatter of fact, the letter was probably not "hurled" more suddenly orswiftly than the most ordinary invitation to dinner: nor can itscontents have been particularly surprising to any one. It was probablythe conclusiveness, the finality, of the announcement that struck thesewriters as "dramatic. " The letter put an end to all dubiety with a"short, sharp shock. " It was, in fact, crisp. As a rule, however, "dramatic" is employed by the modern journalist simply as a ratherpretentious synonym for the still more hackneyed "startling. "]

[Footnote 7: As a specimen, and a successful specimen, of this newtechnic, I may cite Miss Elizabeth Baker's very interesting play, _Chains_. There is absolutely no "story" in it, no complication ofincidents, not even any emotional tension worth speaking of. Anotherrecent play of something the same type, _The Way the Money Goes_, byLady Bell, was quite thrilling by comparison. There we saw a workman'swife bowed down by a terrible secret which threatened to wreck her wholelife--the secret that she had actually run into debt to the amount of£30. Her situation was dramatic in the ordinary sense of the word, verymuch as Nora's situation is dramatic when she knows that Krogstad'sletter is in Helmer's hands. But in _Chains_ there is not even thissimple form of excitement and suspense. A city clerk, oppressed by thedeadly monotony and narrowness of his life, thinks of going toAustralia--and doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotonyand narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying amiddle-aged widower--and doesn't do it. If any one had told the lateFrancisque Sarcey, or the late Clement Scott, that a play could be madeout of this slender material, which should hold an audience absorbedthrough four acts, and stir them to real enthusiasm, these eminentcritics would have thought him a madman. Yet Miss Baker has achievedthis feat, by the simple process of supplementing competent observationwith a fair share of dramatic instinct. ]

[Footnote 8: If the essence of drama is crisis, it follows that nothingcan be more dramatic than a momentous choice which may make or mar boththe character and the fortune of the chooser and of others. There is anelement of choice in all action which is, or seems to be, the product offree will; but there is a peculiar crispness of effect when twoalternatives are clearly formulated, and the choice is made after amental struggle, accentuated, perhaps, by impassioned advocacy of theconflicting interests. Such scenes are _Coriolanus_, v. 3, the scenebetween Ellida, Wangel, and the Stranger in the last act of _The Ladyfrom the Sea_, and the concluding scene of _Candida_. ]

_CHAPTER IV_

THE ROUTINE OF COMPOSITION

As no two people, probably, ever did, or ever will, pursue the sameroutine in play-making, it is manifestly impossible to lay down anygeneral rules on the subject. There are one or two considerations, however, which it may not be wholly superfluous to suggest to beginners. 

An invaluable insight into the methods of a master is provided by thescenarios and drafts of plays published in Henrik Ibsen's _EfterladteSkrifter_. The most important of these "fore-works, " as he used to callthem, have now been translated under the title of _From Ibsen'sWorkshop_ (Scribner), and may be studied with the greatest profit. Notthat the student should mechanically imitate even Ibsen's routine ofcomposition, which, indeed, varied considerably from play to play. Thegreat lesson to be learnt from Ibsen's practice is that the play shouldbe kept fluid or plastic as long as possible, and not suffered to becomeimmutably fixed, either in the author's mind or on paper, before it hashad time to grow and ripen. Many, if not most, of Ibsen's greatestindividual inspirations came to him as afterthoughts, after the play hadreached a point of development at which many authors would have held theprocess of gestation ended, and the work of art ripe for birth. Amongthese inspired afterthoughts may be reckoned Nora's great line, "Millions of women have done that"--the most crushing repartee inliterature--Hedvig's threatened blindness, with all that ensues from it, and Little Eyolf's crutch, used to such purpose as we have already seen. 

This is not to say that the drawing-up of a tentative scenario ought notto be one of the playwright's first proceedings. Indeed, if he is ableto dispense with a scenario on paper, it can only be because his mind isso clear, and so retentive of its own ideas, as to enable him to carryin his head, always ready for reference, a more or less detailed scheme. Go-as-you-please composition may be possible for the novelist, perhapseven for the writer of a one-act play, a mere piece of dialogue; but ina dramatic structure of any considerable extent, proportion, balance, and the interconnection of parts are so essential that a scenario isalmost as indispensable to a dramatist as a set of plans to anarchitect. There is one dramatist of note whom one suspects of sometimesworking without any definite scenario, and inventing as he goes along. That dramatist, I need scarcely say, is Mr. Bernard Shaw. I have noabsolute knowledge of his method; but if he schemed out any scenario for_Getting Married_ or _Misalliance_, he has sedulously concealed thefact--to the detriment of the plays. [1]

The scenario or skeleton is so manifestly the natural ground-work of adramatic performance that the playwrights of the Italian _commedia dell'arte_ wrote nothing more than a scheme of scenes, and left the actors todo the rest. The same practice prevailed in early Elizabethan days, asone or two MS. "Plats, " designed to be hung up in the wings, are extantto testify. The transition from extempore acting regulated by a scenarioto the formal learning of parts falls within the historical period ofthe German stage. It seems probable that the romantic playwrights of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in England and in Spain, mayhave adopted a method not unlike that of the drama of improvisation, that is to say, they may have drawn out a scheme of entrances and exits, and then let their characters discourse (on paper) as their fancyprompted. So, at least, the copious fluency of their dialogue seems tosuggest. But the typical modern play is a much more close-knit organism, in which every word has to be weighed far more carefully than it was byplaywrights who stood near to the days of improvisation, and couldindulge in "the large utterance of the early gods. " Consequently itwould seem that, until a play has been thought out very clearly and ingreat detail, any scheme of entrances and exits ought to be merelyprovisional and subject to indefinite modification. A modern play is nota framework of story loosely draped in a more or less gorgeous robe oflanguage. There is, or ought to be, a close interdependence betweenaction, character and dialogue, which forbids a playwright to tie hishands very far in advance. 

As a rule, then, it would seem to be an unfavourable sign when a dramapresents itself at an early stage with a fixed and unalterable outline. The result may be a powerful, logical, well-knit piece of work; but thebreath of life will scarcely be in it. Room should be left as long aspossible for unexpected developments of character. If your charactersare innocent of unexpected developments, the less characters they. [2]Not that I, personally, have any faith in those writers of fiction, bethey playwrights or novelists, who contend that they do not speakthrough the mouths of their personages, but rather let their personagesspeak through them. "I do not invent or create" I have heard an eminentnovelist say: "I simply record; my characters speak and act, and I writedown their sayings and doings. " This author may be a fine psychologistfor purposes of fiction, but I question his insight into his own mentalprocesses. The apparent spontaneity of a character's proceedings is apure illusion. It means no more than that the imagination, once set inmotion along a given line, moves along that line with an ease andfreedom which seems to its possessor preternatural and almostuncanny. [3]

Most authors, however, who have any real gift for character-creationprobably fall more or less under this illusion, though they are saneenough and modest enough to realize that an illusion it is. [4] Acharacter will every now and then seem to take the bit between his teethand say and do things for which his creator feels himself hardlyresponsible. The playwright's scheme should not, then, until the latestpossible moment, become so hard and fast as to allow his characters noelbow room for such manifestations of spontaneity. And this is only oneof several forms of afterthought which may arise as the play develops. The playwright may all of a sudden see that a certain character issuperfluous, or that a new character is needed, or that a newrelationship between two characters would simplify matters, or that ascene that he has placed in the first act ought to be in the second, orthat he can dispense with it altogether, or that it reveals too much tothe audience and must be wholly recast. [5]

These are only a few of the re-adjustments which have constantly to bemade if a play is shaping itself by a process of vital growth; and thatis why the playwright may be advised to keep his material fluid as longas he can. Ibsen had written large portions of the play now known to usas _Rosmersholm_ before he decided that Rebecca should not be married toRosmer. He also, at a comparatively late stage, did away with twodaughters whom he had at first given to Rosmer, and decided to make herchildlessness the main cause of Beata's tragedy. 

Perhaps I insist too strongly on the advisability of treating a dramatictheme as clay to be modelled and remodelled, rather than as wood ormarble to be carved unalterably and once for all. If so, it is becauseof a personal reminiscence. In my early youth, I had, like everybodyelse, ambitions in the direction of play-writing; and it was myinability to keep a theme plastic that convinced me of my lack oftalent. It pleased me greatly to draw out a detailed scenario, workingup duly to a situation at the end of each act; and, once made, thatscenario was like a cast-iron mould into which the dialogue had simplyto be poured. The result was that the play had all the merits of alogical, well-ordered essay. My situations worked out like the Q. E. D. 'sof Euclid. My characters obstinately refused to come to life, or to takethe bit between their teeth. They were simply cog-wheels in apre-arranged mechanism. In one respect, my two or three plays weremodels--in respect of brevity and conciseness. I was never troubled bythe necessity of cutting down--so cruel a necessity to manyplaywrights. [6] My difficulty was rather to find enough for mycharacters to say--for they never wanted to say anything that was notstrictly germane to the plot. It was this that made me despair ofplay-writing, and realize that my mission was to teach other people howto write plays. And, similarly, the aspirant who finds that his peoplenever want to say more than he can allow them to say--that they neverrush headlong into blind alleys, or do things that upset the balance ofthe play and have to be resolutely undone--that aspirant will do wellnot to be over-confident of his dramatic calling and election. There maybe authors who can write vital plays, as Shakespeare is said (on ratherpoor evidence)[7] to have done, without blotting a line; but I believethem to be rare. In our day, the great playwright is more likely to behe who does not shrink, on occasion, from blotting an act or two. 

There is a modern French dramatist who writes, with success, such playsas I might have written had I combined a strong philosophical facultywith great rhetorical force and fluency. The dramas of M. Paul Hervieuhave all the neatness and cogency of a geometrical demonstration. Oneimagines that, for M. Hervieu, the act of composition means merely thecareful filling in of a scenario as neat and complete as a schedule. [8]But for that very reason, despite their undoubted intellectual power, M. Hervieu's dramas command our respect rather than our enthusiasm. Thedramatist should aim at _being_ logical without _seeming_ so. [9]

It is sometimes said that a playwright ought to construct his playbackwards, and even to write his last act first. [10] This doctrinebelongs to the period of the well-made play, when climax was regarded asthe one thing needful in dramatic art, and anticlimax as theunforgivable sin. Nowadays, we do not insist that every play should endwith a tableau, or with an emphatic _mot de la fin_. We are more willingto accept a quiet, even an indecisive, ending. [11] Nevertheless it isand must ever be true that, at a very early period in the scheming ofhis play, the playwright ought to assure himself that his theme iscapable of a satisfactory ending. Of course this phrase does not imply a"happy ending, " but one which satisfies the author as being artistic, effective, inevitable (in the case of a serious play), or, in one word, "right. " An obviously makeshift ending can never be desirable, eitherfrom the ideal or from the practical point of view. Many excellent playshave been wrecked on this rock. The very frequent complaint that "thelast act is weak" is not always or necessarily a just reproach; but itis so when the author has clearly been at a loss for an ending, and hassimply huddled his play up in a conventional and perfunctory fashion. Itmay even be said that some apparently promising themes are deceptive intheir promise, since they are inherently incapable of a satisfactoryending. The playwright should by all means make sure that he has not runup against one of these blind-alley themes. [12] He should, at an earlypoint, see clearly the end for which he is making, and be sure that itis an end which he actively desires, not merely one which satisfiesconvention, or which "will have to do. "

Some dramatists, when a play is provisionally mapped out, do not attemptto begin at the beginning and write it as a coherent whole, but make adash first at the more salient and critical scenes, or those whichspecially attract their imagination. On such a point every author mustobviously be a law unto himself. From the theoretical point of view, onecan only approve the practice, since it certainly makes for plasticity. It is evident that a detached scene, written while those that lead up toit are as yet but vaguely conceived, must be subject to indefinitemodification. [13] In several of Ibsen's very roughest drafts, we findshort passages of dialogue sketched out even before the names have beenassigned to the characters, showing that some of his earliest ideas cameto him, as it were, ready dramatized. One would be tempted to hope muchof an author who habitually and unaffectedly thus "lisped in dialoguefor the dialogue came. "

Ought the playwright, at an early stage in the process of each act, tohave the details of its scene clearly before him? Ought he to draw out ascene-plot, and know, from moment to moment, just where each characteris, whether He is standing on the hearthrug and She sitting on thesettee, or _vice versa_? There is no doubt that furniture, properties, accidents of environment, play a much larger part in modern drama thanthey did on the Elizabethan, the eighteenth century, or even theearly-Victorian stage. Some of us, who are not yet centenarians, canremember to have seen rooms on the stage with no furniture at all excepttwo or three chairs "painted on the flat. " Under such conditions, it wasclearly useless for the playwright to trouble his head about furniture, and even "positions" might well be left for arrangement at rehearsal. This carelessness of the environment, however, is no longer possible. Whether we like it or no (and some theorists do not like it at all), scenery has ceased to be a merely suggestive background against whichthe figures stand out in high relief. The stage now aims at presenting acomplete picture, with the figures, not "a little out of the picture, "but completely in it. This being so, the playwright must evidently, atsome point in the working out of his theme, visualize the stage-picturein considerable detail; and we find that almost all modern dramatistsdo, as a matter of fact, pay great attention to what may be called thetopography of their scenes, and the shifting "positions" of theircharacters. The question is: at what stage of the process of compositionought this visualization to occur? Here, again, it would be absurd tolay down a general rule; but I am inclined to think, both theoreticallyand from what can be gathered of the practice of the best dramatists, that it is wisest to reserve it for a comparatively late stage. Aplaywright of my acquaintance, and a very remarkable playwright too, used to scribble the first drafts of his play in little notebooks, whichhe produced from his pocket whenever he had a moment to spare--often onthe top of an omnibus. Only when the first draft was complete did heproceed to set the scenes, as it were, and map out the stage-management. On the other hand, one has heard of playwrights whose first step insetting to work upon a particular act was to construct a complete modelof the scene, and people it with manikins to represent the characters. As a general practice, this is scarcely to be commended. It is wiser, one fancies, to have the matter of the scene pretty fully roughed-outbefore details of furniture, properties, and position are arranged. [14]It may happen, indeed, that some natural phenomenon, some property orpiece of furniture, is the very pivot of the scene; in which case itmust, of course, be posited from the first. From the very moment of hisconceiving the fourth act of _Le Tartufe_, Molière must have had clearlyin view the table under which Orgon hides; and Sheridan cannot have gotvery far with the Screen Scene before he had mentally placed the screen. But even where a great deal turns on some individual object, thedetailed arrangements of the scene may in most cases be taken forgranted until a late stage in its working out. 

One proviso, however, must be made; where any important effect dependsupon a given object, or a particular arrangement of the scene, theplaywright cannot too soon assure himself that the object comes wellwithin the physical possibilities of the stage, and that the arrangementis optically[15] possible and effective. Few things, indeed, are quiteimpossible to the modern stage; but there are many that had much betternot be attempted. It need scarcely be added that the more serious a playis, or aspires to be, the more carefully should the author avoid anysuch effects as call for the active collaboration of thestage-carpenter, machinist, or electrician. Even when a mechanicaleffect can be produced to perfection, the very fact that the audiencecannot but admire the ingenuity displayed, and wonder "how it is done, "implies a failure of that single-minded attention to the essence of thematter in hand which the dramatist would strive to beget and maintain. Asmall but instructive example of a difficult effect, such as the prudentplaywright will do well to avoid, occurs in the third act of Ibsen's_Little Eyolf_. During the greater part of the act, the flag inAllmers's garden is hoisted to half-mast in token of mourning; until atthe end, when he and Rita attain a serener frame of mind, he runs it upto the truck. Now, from the poetic and symbolic point of view, this flagis all that can be desired; but from the practical point of view itpresents grave difficulties. Nothing is so pitifully ineffective as aflag in a dead calm, drooping nervelessly against the mast; and though, no doubt, by an ingenious arrangement of electric fans, it might bepossible to make this flag flutter in the breeze, the very fact of itsdoing so would tend to set the audience wondering by what mechanism theeffect was produced, instead of attending to the soul-struggles of Ritaand Allmers. It would be absurd to blame Ibsen for overriding theatricalprudence in such a case; I merely point out to beginners that it iswise, before relying on an effect of this order, to make sure that itis, not only possible, but convenient from the practical point of view. In one or two other cases Ibsen strained the resources of the stage. Theillumination in the last act of _Pillars of Society_ cannot be carriedout as he describes it; or rather, if it were carried out on someexceptionally large and well-equipped stage, the feat of the mechanicianwould eclipse the invention of the poet. On the other hand, the abode ofthe Wild Duck in the play of that name is a conception entirelyconsonant with the optics of the theatre; for no detail at all need be, or ought to be, visible, and a vague effect of light is all that isrequired. Only in his last melancholy effort did Ibsen, in a playdesigned for representation, demand scenic effects entirely beyond theresources of any theatre not specially fitted for spectacular drama, andpossible, even in such a theatre, only in some ridiculouslymakeshift form. 

There are two points of routine on which I am compelled to speak in nouncertain voice--two practices which I hold to be almost equallycondemnable. In the first place, no playwright who understands theevolution of the modern theatre can nowadays use in his stage-directionsthe abhorrent jargon of the early nineteenth century. When one comesacross a manuscript bespattered with such cabalistic signs as "R. 2. E. , ""R. C. , " "L. C. , " "L. U. E. , " and so forth, one sees at a glance that thewriter has neither studied dramatic literature nor thought out forhimself the conditions of the modern theatre, but has found his dramaticeducation between the buff covers of _French's Acting Edition_. Somebeginners imagine that a plentiful use of such abbreviations will betaken as a proof of their familiarity with the stage; whereas, in fact, it only shows their unfamiliarity with theatrical history. They might aswell set forth to describe a modern battleship in the nauticalterminology of Captain Marryat. "Right First Entrance, " "Left UpperEntrance, " and so forth, are terms belonging to the period when therewere no "box" rooms or "set" exteriors on the stage, when the sides ofeach scene were composed of "wings" shoved on in grooves, and entrancescould be made between each pair of wings. Thus, "R. 1 E. " meant theentrance between the proscenium and the first "wing" on the right, "R. 2E. " meant the entrance between the first pair of "wings, " and so forth. "L. U. E. " meant the entrance at the left between the last "wing" and theback cloth. Now grooves and "wings" have disappeared from the stage. The"box" room is entered, like any room in real life, by doors or Frenchwindows; and the only rational course is to state the position of yourdoors in your opening stage-direction, and thereafter to say in plainlanguage by which door an entrance or an exit is to be made. In exteriorscenes where, for example, trees or clumps of shrubbery answer in ameasure to the old "wings, " the old terminology may not be quitemeaningless; but it is far better eschewed. It is a good general rule toavoid, so far as possible, expressions which show that the author has astage scene, and not an episode of real life, before his eyes. Men ofthe theatre are the last to be impressed by theatrical jargon; and whenthe play comes to be printed, the general reader is merely bewilderedand annoyed by technicalities, which tend, moreover, to disturbhis illusion. 

A still more emphatic warning must be given against another and morerecent abuse in the matter of stage-directions. The "L. U. E. 's, " indeed, are bound very soon to die a natural death. The people who require to bewarned against them are, as a rule, scarcely worth warning. But it isprecisely the cleverest people (to use clever in a somewhat narrowsense) who are apt to be led astray by Mr. Bernard Shaw's practice ofexpanding his stage-directions into essays, disquisitions, monologues, pamphlets. This is a practice which goes far to justify the belief ofsome foreign critics that the English, or, since Mr. Shaw is inquestion, let us say the inhabitants of the British Islands, arecongenitally incapable of producing a work of pure art. Ournovelists--Fielding, Thackeray, George Eliot--have been sufficiently, though perhaps not unjustly, called over the coals for their habit ofcoming in front of their canvas, and either gossiping with the reader orpreaching at him. But, if it be a sound maxim that the novelist shouldnot obtrude his personality on his reader, how much more is this true ofthe dramatist! When the dramatist steps to the footlights and begins tolecture, all illusion is gone. It may be said that, as a matter of fact, this does not occur: that on the stage we hear no more of thedisquisitions of Mr. Shaw and his imitators than we do of the curt, andoften non-existent, stage-directions of Shakespeare and hiscontemporaries. To this the reply is twofold. First, the very fact thatthese disquisitions are written proves that the play is designed to beprinted and read, and that we are, therefore, justified in applying toit the standard of what may be called literary illusion. Second, when aplaywright gets into the habit of talking around his characters, heinevitably, even if unconsciously, slackens his endeavour to make themexpress themselves as completely as may be in their own proper medium ofdramatic action and dialogue. You cannot with impunity mix up twodistinct forms of art--the drama and the sociological essay or lecture. To Mr. Shaw, of course, much may, and must, be forgiven. Hisstage-directions are so brilliant that some one, some day, willassuredly have them spoken by a lecturer in the orchestra while theaction stands still on the stage. Thus, he will have begotten a bastard, but highly entertaining, form of art. My protest has no practicalapplication to him, for he is a standing exception to all rules. It isto the younger generation that I appeal not to be misled by hisseductive example. They have little chance of rivalling him associological essayists; but if they treat their art seriously, and as apure art, they may easily surpass him as dramatists. By adopting hispractice they will tend to produce, not fine works of art, but inferiorsociological documents. They will impair their originality and spoiltheir plays in order to do comparatively badly what Mr. Shaw has doneincomparably well. 

The common-sense rule as to stage directions is absolutely plain; bethey short, or be they long, they ought always to be _impersonal_. Theplaywright who cracks jokes in his stage-directions, or indulges ingraces of style, is intruding himself between the spectator and the workof art, to the inevitable detriment of the illusion. In preparing a playfor the press, the author should make his stage-directions as brief asis consistent with clearness. Few readers will burden their memory withlong and detailed descriptions. When a new character of importanceappears, a short description of his or her personal appearance and dressmay be helpful to the reader; but even this should be kept impersonal. Moreover, as a play has always to be read before it can be rehearsed oracted, it is no bad plan to make the stage-directions, from the first, such as tend to bring the play home clearly to the reader's mentalvision. And here I may mention a principle, based on more than mereconvenience, which some playwrights observe with excellent results. Notmerely in writing stage-directions, but in visualizing a scene, the ideaof the stage should, as far as possible, be banished from the author'smind. He should see and describe the room, the garden, the sea-shore, orwhatever the place of his action may be, not as a stage-scene, but as aroom, garden, or sea-shore in the real world. The cultivation of thishabit ought to be, and I believe is in some cases, a safeguard againsttheatricality. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: Sardou wrote careful and detailed scenarios, Dumas _fils_held it a waste of time to do so. Pailleron wrote "enormous" scenarios, Meilhac very brief ones, or none at all. Mr. Galsworthy, rather to mysurprise, disdains, and even condemns, the scenario, holding that atheme becomes lifeless when you put down its skeleton on paper. SirArthur Pinero says: "Before beginning to write a play, I always makesure, by means of a definite scheme, that there is _a_ way of doing it;but whether I ultimately follow that way is a totally different matter. "Mr. Alfred Sutro practically confesses to a scenario. He says: "Before Istart writing the dialogue of a play, I make sure that I shall have anabsolutely free hand over the entrances and exits: in other words, thatthere is ample and legitimate reason for each character appearing in anyparticular scene, and ample motive for his leaving it. " Mr. GranvilleBarker does not put on paper a detailed scenario. He says: "I plan thegeneral scheme, and particularly the balance of the play, in my head;but this, of course, does not depend entirely on entrances and exits. "Mr. Henry Arthur Jones says: "I know the leading scenes, and the generalcourse of action in each act, before I write a line. When I have got thewhole story clear, and divided into acts, I very carefully construct thefirst act, as a series of scenes between such and such of thecharacters. When the first act is written I carefully construct thesecond act in the same way--and so on. I sometimes draw up twentyscenarios for an act before I can get it to go straight. "]

[Footnote 2: A friend of the late Clyde Fitch writes to me: "Fitch wasoften astonished at the way in which his characters developed. He triedto make them do certain things: they did others. "]

[Footnote 3: This account of the matter seems to find support in astatement, by M. François de Curel, an accomplished psychologist, to theeffect that during the first few days of work at a play he is "clearlyconscious of creating, " but that gradually he gets "into the skin" ofhis characters, and appears to work by instinct. No doubt some artistsare actually subject to a sort of hallucination, during which they seemrather to record than to invent the doings of their characters. But thissomewhat morbid condition should scarcely be cultivated by thedramatist, whose intelligence should always keep a light rein on hismore instinctive mental processes. See _L'Année Psychologique_, 1894. P. 120. ]

[Footnote 4: Sir Arthur Pinero says: "The beginning of a play to me is alittle world of people. I live with them, get familiar with them, and_they_ tell me the story. " This may sound not unlike the remark of thenovelist above quoted; but the intention was quite different. Sir Arthursimply meant that the story came to him as the characters took on lifein his imagination. Mr. H. A. Jones writes: "When you have a character orseveral characters you haven't a play. You may keep these in your mindand nurse them till they combine in a piece of action; but you haven'tgot your play till you have theme, characters, and action all fused. Theprocess with me is as purely automatic and spontaneous as dreaming; infact it is really dreaming while you are awake. "]

[Footnote 5: "Here, " says a well-known playwright, "is a commonexperience. You are struck by an idea with which you fall in love. 'Ha!'you say. 'What a superb scene where the man shall find the missing willunder the sofa! If that doesn't make them sit up, what will?' You beginthe play. The first act goes all right, and the second act goes allright. You come to the third act, and somehow it won't go at all. Youbattle with it for weeks in vain; and then it suddenly occurs to you, 'Why, I see what's wrong! It's that confounded scene where the man findsthe will under the sofa! Out it must come!' You cut it out, and at onceall goes smooth again. But you have thrown overboard the great effectthat first tempted you. "]

[Footnote 6: The manuscripts of Dumas _fils_ are said to contain, as arule, about four times as much matter as the printed play! (Parigot:_Génie et Métier_, p. 243). This probably means, however, that hepreserved tentative and ultimately rejected scenes, which mostplaywrights destroy as they go along. ]

[Footnote 7: Lowell points out that this assertion of Heminge andCondell merely shows them to have been unfamiliar with the simplephenomenon known as a fair copy. ]

[Footnote 8: Since writing this I have learnt that my conjecture iscorrect, at any rate as regards some of M. Hervieu's plays. ]

[Footnote 9: See Chapters XIII and XVI. ]

[Footnote 10: This view is expressed with great emphasis by Dumas _fils_in the preface to _La Princesse Georges_. "You should not begin yourwork, " he says, "until you have your concluding scene, movement andspeech clear in your mind. How can you tell what road you ought to takeuntil you know where you are going?" It is perhaps a more apparent thanreal contradiction of this rule that, until _Iris_ was three partsfinished, Sir Arthur Pinero intended the play to end with the throttlingof Iris by Maldonado. The actual end is tantamount to a murder, thoughIris is not actually killed. ]

[Footnote 11: See Chapter XVIII. ]

[Footnote 12: See Chapter XX. ]

[Footnote 13: Most of the dramatists whom I have consulted are opposedto the principle of "roughing out" the big scenes first, and thenimbedding them, as it were, in their context. Sir Arthur Pinero goes thelength of saying: "I can never go on to page 2 until I am sure that page1 is as right as I can make it. Indeed, when an act is finished, I sendit at once to the printers, confident that I shall not have to go backupon it. " Mr. Alfred Sutro says: "I write a play straight ahead frombeginning to end, taking practically as long over the first act as overthe last three. " And Mr. Granville Barker: "I always write the beginningof a play first and the end last: but as to writing 'straight ahead'--itsounds like what one may be able to do in Heaven. " But almost alldramatists, I take it, jot down brief passages of dialogue which theymay or may not eventually work into the texture of their play. ]

[Footnote 14: One is not surprised to learn that Sardou "did hisstage-management as he went along, " and always knew exactly the positionof his characters from moment to moment. ]

[Footnote 15: And aurally, it may be added. Sarcey comments on theimpossibility of a scene in Zola's _Pot Bouille_ in which the so-called"lovers, " Octave Mouret and Blanche, throw open the window of the garretin which they are quarrelling, and hear the servants in the courtyardoutside discussing their intrigue. In order that the comments of theservants might reach the ears of the audience, they had to be shouted ina way (says M. Sarcey) that was fatal to the desired illusion. ]

_CHAPTER V_

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The theme being chosen, the next step will probably be to determine whatcharacters shall be employed in developing it. Most playwrights, I takeit, draw up a provisional Dramatis Personae before beginning the seriouswork of construction. Ibsen seems always to have done so; but, in someof his plays, the list of persons was at first considerably larger thanit ultimately became. The frugal poet sometimes saved up the charactersrejected from one play, and used them in another. Thus Boletta and HildaWangel were originally intended to have been the daughters of Rosmer andBeata; and the delightful Foldal of _John Gabriel Borkman_ was acharacter left over from _The Lady from the Sea_. 

The playwright cannot proceed far in planning out his work withoutdetermining, roughly at any rate, what auxiliary characters he means toemploy. There are in every play essential characters, without whom thetheme is unthinkable, and auxiliary characters, not indispensable to thetheme, but simply convenient for filling in the canvas and carrying onthe action. It is not always possible to decide whether a character isessential or auxiliary--it depends upon how we define the theme. In_Hamlet_, for example, Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude are manifestlyessential: for the theme is the hesitancy of a young man of a certaintemperament in taking vengeance upon the seducer of his mother andmurderer of his father. But is Ophelia essential, or merely auxiliary?Essential, if we consider Hamlet's pessimistic feeling as to woman andthe "breeding of sinners" a necessary part of his character; auxiliary, if we take the view that without this feeling he would still have beenHamlet, and the action, to all intents and purposes, the same. Theremaining characters, on the other hand, are clearly auxiliary. This istrue even of the Ghost: for Hamlet might have learnt of his father'smurder in fifty other ways. 

Polonius, Laertes, Horatio, and the rest might all have been utterlydifferent, or might never have existed at all, and yet the essence ofthe play might have remained intact. 

It would be perfectly possible to write a _Hamlet_ after the manner ofRacine, in which there should be only six personages instead ofShakespeare's six-and-twenty: and in this estimate I assume Ophelia tobe an essential character. The dramatis personae would be: Hamlet, hisconfidant; Ophelia, her confidant; and the King and Queen, who wouldserve as confidants to each other. Indeed, an economy of one personmight be affected by making the Queen (as she naturally might) play thepart of confidant to Ophelia. 

Shakespeare, to be sure, did not deliberately choose between his ownmethod and that of Racine. Classic concentration was wholly unsuited tothe physical conditions of the Elizabethan stage, on which externalmovement and bustle were imperatively demanded. But the modernplaywright has a wide latitude of choice in this purely technicalmatter. He may work out his plot with the smallest possible number ofcharacters, or he may introduce a crowd of auxiliary personages. Thegood craftsman will be guided by the nature of his theme. In a broadsocial study or a picturesque romance, you may have as many auxiliaryfigures as you please. In a subtle comedy, or a psychological tragedy, the essential characters should have the stage as much as possible tothemselves. In Becque's _La Parisienne_ there are only four charactersand a servant; in Rostand's _Cyrano de Bergerac_ there are fifty-fourpersonages named in the playbill, to say nothing of supernumeraries. In_Peer Gynt_, a satiric phantasmagory, Ibsen introduces some fiftyindividual characters, with numberless supernumeraries; in _An Enemy ofthe People_, a social comedy, he has eleven characters and a crowd; for_Ghosts_ and _Rosmersholm_, psychological tragedies, six persons apieceare sufficient. 

It can scarcely be necessary, at this time of day, to say much on thesubject of nomenclature. One does occasionally, in manuscripts of aquite hopeless type, find the millionaire's daughter figuring as "MissAurea Golden, " and her poor but sprightly cousin as "Miss Lalage Gay";but the veriest tyro realizes, as a rule, that this sort of punningcharacterization went out with the eighteenth century, or survived intothe nineteenth century only as a flagrant anachronism, likeknee-breeches and hair-powder. 

A curious essay might be written on the reasons why such names as SirJohn Brute, Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Lord Foppington, Lord Rake, Colonel Bully, Lovewell, Heartfree, Gripe, Shark and the rest were regarded as a matterof course in "the comedy of manners, " but have become offensive to-day, except in deliberate imitations of the eighteenth-century style. Theexplanation does not lie merely in the contrast between "conventional"comedy and "realistic" drama. Our forefathers (whatever Lamb may say)did not consciously place their comedy in a realm of convention, butgenerally considered themselves, and sometimes were, realists. Thefashion of label-names, if we may call them so, came down from theElizabethans, who, again, borrowed it from the Mediaeval Moralities. [1]Shakespeare himself gave us Master Slender and Justice Shallow; but itwas in the Jonsonian comedy of types that the practice of advertising a"humour" or "passion" in a name (English or Italian) established itselfmost firmly. Hence such strange appellatives as Sir Epicure Mammon, SirAmorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright, Fastidius Brisk, Volpone, Corbaccio, Sordido, and Fallace. After the Restoration, Jonson, Beaumontand Fletcher, and Massinger were, for a time, more popular thanShakespeare; so that the label-names seemed to have the sanction of thegiants that were before the Flood. Even when comedy began to deal withindividuals rather than mere incarnations of a single "humour, " thepractice of giving them obvious pseudonyms held its ground. Probably itwas reinforced by the analogous practice which obtained in journalism, in which real persons were constantly alluded to (and libelled) underfictitious designations, more or less transparent to the initiated. Thusa label-name did not carry with it a sense of unreality, but rather, perhaps, a vague suggestion of covert reference to a real person. I mustnot here attempt to trace the stages by which the fashion went out. Itcould doubtless be shown that the process of change ran parallel to theshrinkage of the "apron" and the transformation of the platform-stageinto the picture-stage. That transformation was completed about themiddle of the nineteenth century; and it was about that time thatlabel-names made their latest appearances in works of any artisticpretension--witness the Lady Gay Spanker of _London Assurance_, and theCaptain Dudley (or "Deadly") Smooth of _Money_. Faint traces of thepractice survive in T. W. Robertson, as in his master, Thackeray. But itwas in his earliest play of any note that he called a journalist Stylus. In his later comedies the names are admirably chosen: they arecharacteristic without eccentricity or punning. One feels that Eccles in_Caste_ could not possibly have borne any other name. How much lessliving would he be had he been called Mr. Soaker or Mr. Tosspot!

Characteristic without eccentricity--that is what a name ought to be. Asthe characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest anyprinciple of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is thatthe key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the keyof the play--that farcical names are, within limits, admissible infarce, eccentric names in eccentric comedy, while soberly appropriatenames are alone in place in serious plays. Some dramatists arehabitually happy in their nomenclature, others much less so. Ibsen wouldoften change a name three or four times in the course of writing a play, until at last he arrived at one which seemed absolutely to fit thecharacter; but the appropriateness of his names is naturally lost uponforeign audiences. 

One word may perhaps be said on the recent fashion--not to say fad--ofsuppressing in the printed play the traditional list of "DramatisPersonae. " Björnson, in some of his later plays, was, so far as I amaware, the first of the moderns to adopt this plan. I do not knowwhether his example has influenced certain English playwrights, orwhether they arrived independently at the same austere principle, bysheer force of individual genius. The matter is a trifling one--sotrifling that the departure from established practice has something ofthe air of a pedantry. It is not, on the whole, to be approved. It addsperceptibly to the difficulty which some readers experience in pickingup the threads of a play; and it deprives other readers of a real andappreciable pleasure of anticipation. There is a peculiar and notirrational charm in looking down a list of quite unknown names, andthinking: "In the course of three hours, I shall know these people: Ishall have read their hearts: I shall have lived with them through agreat crisis in their lives: some of them may be my friends for ever. "It is one of the glories and privileges of the dramatist's calling thathe can arouse in us this eager and poignant expectation; and I cannotcommend his wisdom in deliberately taking the edge off it, and making usfeel as though we were not sitting down to a play, but to a sort ofconversational novel. A list of characters, it is true, may also affectone with acute anticipations of boredom; but I have never yet found aplay less tedious by reason of the suppression of the "DramatisPersonae. "

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: Partially, too, they were under the influence of antiquity;but the ancients were very discreet in their use of significant names. Only in satyr-plays, in the comic epics, and for a few extravagantcharacters in comedy (such as the boastful soldier) were grotesqueappellations employed. For the rest, the Greek habit of nomenclaturemade it possible to use significant names which were at the same timeprobable enough in daily life. For example, a slave might be calledOnesimus, "useful, " or a soldier Polemon, to imply his warlike function;but both names would be familiar to the audience in actual use. ]

_BOOK II_

THE BEGINNING

_CHAPTER VI_

THE POINT OF ATTACK: SHAKESPEARE AND IBSEN

Though, as we have already noted, the writing of plays does not alwaysfollow the chronological sequence of events, in discussing the processof their evolution we are bound to assume that the playwright begins atthe beginning, and proceeds in orderly fashion, by way of the middle, tothe end. It was one of Aristotle's requirements that a play should havea beginning, middle and end; and though it may seem that it scarcelyneeded an Aristotle to lay down so self-evident a proposition, the factis that playwrights are more than sufficiently apt to ignore or despisethe rule. [1] Especially is there a tendency to rebel against therequirement that a play should have an end. We have seen a good manyplays of late which do not end, but simply leave off: at their head wemight perhaps place Ibsen's _Ghosts_. But let us not anticipate. For themoment, what we have to inquire is where, and how, a play oughtto begin. 

In life there are no such things as beginnings. Even a man's birth is aquite arbitrary point at which to launch his biography; for thedetermining factors in his career are to be found in persons, events, and conditions that existed before he was ever thought of. For thebiographer, however, and for the novelist as a writer of fictitiousbiography, birth forms a good conventional starting-point. He can give achapter or so to "Ancestry, " and then relate the adventures of his herofrom the cradle onwards. But the dramatist, as we have seen, deals, notwith protracted sequences of events, but with short, sharp crises. Thequestion for him, therefore, is: at what moment of the crisis, or of itsantecedents, he had better ring up his curtain? At this point he is likethe photographer studying his "finder" in order to determine how much ofa given prospect he can "get in. "

The answer to the question depends on many things, but chiefly on thenature of the crisis and the nature of the impression which theplaywright desires to make upon his audience. If his play be a comedy, and if his object be gently and quietly to interest and entertain, thechances are that he begins by showing us his personages in their normalstate, concisely indicates their characters, circumstances andrelations, and then lets the crisis develop from the outset before oureyes. If, on the other hand, his play be of a more stirring description, and he wants to seize the spectator's attention firmly from the start, he will probably go straight at his crisis, plunging, perhaps, into thevery middle of it, even at the cost of having afterwards to go back inorder to put the audience in possession of the antecedent circumstances. In a third type of play, common of late years, and especially affectedby Ibsen, the curtain rises on a surface aspect of profound peace, whichis presently found to be but a thin crust over an absolutely volcaniccondition of affairs, the origin of which has to be traced backwards, itmay be for many years. 

Let us glance at a few of Shakespeare's openings, and consider at whatpoints he attacks his various themes. Of his comedies, all except onebegin with a simple conversation, showing a state of affairs from whichthe crisis develops with more or less rapidity, but in which it is asyet imperceptibly latent. In no case does he plunge into the middle ofhis subject, leaving its antecedents to be stated in what is technicallycalled an "exposition. " Neither in tragedy nor in comedy, indeed, wasthis Shakespeare's method. In his historical plays he relied to someextent on his hearers' knowledge of history, whether gathered from booksor from previous plays of the historical series; and where suchknowledge was not to be looked for, he would expound the situation ingood set terms, like those of a Euripidean Prologue. But thechronicle-play is a species apart, and practically an extinct species:we need not pause to study its methods. In his fictitious plays, withtwo notable exceptions, it was Shakespeare's constant practice to bringthe whole action within the frame of the picture, opening at such apoint that no retrospect should be necessary, beyond what could beconveyed in a few casual words. The exceptions are _The Tempest_ and_Hamlet_, to which we shall return in due course. 

How does _The Merchant of Venice_ open? With a long conversationexhibiting the character of Antonio, the friendship between him andBassanio, the latter's financial straits, and his purpose of wooingPortia. The second scene displays the character of Portia, and informsus of her father's device with regard to her marriage; but thisinformation is conveyed in three or four lines. Not till the third scenedo we see or hear of Shylock, and not until very near the end of the actis there any foreshadowing of what is to be the main crisis of the play. Not a single antecedent event has to be narrated to us; for the merefact that Antonio has been uncivil to Shylock, and shown disapproval ofhis business methods, can scarcely be regarded as a preliminary outsidethe frame of the picture. 

In _As You Like It_ there are no preliminaries to be stated beyond thefacts that Orlando is at enmity with his elder brother, and that DukeFrederick has usurped the coronet and dukedom of Rosalind's father. These facts being made apparent without any sort of formal exposition, the crisis of the play rapidly announces itself in the wrestling-matchand its sequels. In _Much Ado About Nothing_ there is even less ofantecedent circumstance to be imparted. We learn in the first scene, indeed, that Beatrice and Benedick have already met and crossed swords;but this is not in the least essential to the action; the play mighthave been to all intents and purposes the same had they never heard ofeach other until after the rise of the curtain. In _Twelfth Night_ thereis a semblance of a retrospective exposition in the scene between Violaand the Captain; but it is of the simplest nature, and conveys noinformation beyond what, at a later period, would have been imparted onthe playbill, thus--

 "Orsino, Duke of Illyria, in love with Olivia. Olivia, an heiress, in mourning for her brother, "

and so forth. In _The Taming of the Shrew_ there are no antecedentswhatever to be stated. It is true that Lucentio, in the opening speech, is good enough to inform Tranio who he is and what he is doingthere--facts with which Tranio is already perfectly acquainted. But thiswas merely a conventional opening, excused by the fashion of the time;it was in no sense a necessary exposition. For the rest, the crisis ofthe play--the battle between Katherine and Petruchio--begins, develops, and ends before our very eyes. In _The Winter's Tale_, a briefconversation between Camillo and Archidamus informs us that the King ofBohemia is paying a visit to the King of Sicilia; and that is absolutelyall we need to know. It was not even necessary that it should beconveyed to us in this way. The situation would be entirelycomprehensible if the scene between Camillo and Archidamus were omitted. 

It is needless to go through the whole list of comedies. The broad factis that in all the plays commonly so described, excepting only _TheTempest_, the whole action comes within the frame of the picture. In_The Tempest_ the poet employs a form of opening which otherwise hereserves for tragedies. The first scene is simply an animated tableau, calculated to arrest the spectator's attention, without conveying to himany knowledge either of situation or character. Such gleams of characteras do, in fact, appear in the dialogue, are scarcely perceived in thehurly-burly of the storm. Then, in the calm which ensues, Prosperoexpounds to Miranda in great detail the antecedents of the crisis nowdeveloping. It might almost seem, indeed, that the poet, in this, hispoetic last-will-and-testament, intended to warn his successors againstthe dangers of a long narrative exposition; for Prospero's story sendsMiranda to sleep. Be this as it may, we have here a case in whichShakespeare deliberately adopted the plan of placing on the stage, notthe whole crisis, but only its culmination, leaving its earlier stagesto be conveyed in narrative. [2] It would have been very easy for him tohave begun at the beginning and shown us in action the events narratedby Prospero. This course would have involved no greater leap, either intime or space, than he had perpetrated in the almost contemporary_Winter's Tale_; and it cannot be said that there would have been anydifficulty in compressing into three acts, or even two, the essentialsof the action of the play as we know it. His reasons for departing fromhis usual practice were probably connected with the particular occasionfor which the play was written. He wanted to produce a masque ratherthan a drama. We must not, therefore, attach too much significance tothe fact that in almost the only play in which Shakespeare seems to havebuilt entirely out of his own head, with no previous play or novel toinfluence him, he adopted the plan of going straight to the catastrophe, in which he had been anticipated by Sophocles (_Oedipus Rex_), and wasto be followed by Ibsen (_Ghosts_, _Rosmersholm_, etc. ). 

Coming now to the five great tragedies, we find that in four of themShakespeare began, as in _The Tempest_, with a picturesque and stirringepisode calculated to arrest the spectator's attention and awaken hisinterest, while conveying to him little or no information. The openingscene of _Romeo and Juliet_ is simply a brawl, bringing home to usvividly the family feud which is the root of the tragedy, but informingus of nothing beyond the fact that such a feud exists. This is, indeed, absolutely all that we require to know. There is not a singlepreliminary circumstance, outside the limits of the play, that has to beexplained to us. The whole tragedy germinates and culminates within whatthe prologue calls "the two hours' traffick of the stage. " The openingcolloquy of the Witches in _Macbeth_, strikes the eerie keynote, butdoes nothing more. Then, in the second scene, we learn that there hasbeen a great battle and that a nobleman named Macbeth has won a victorywhich covers him with laurels. This can in no sense be called anexposition. It is the account of a single event, not of a sequence; andthat event is contemporary, not antecedent. In the third scene, themeeting of Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches, we have what may becalled an exposition reversed; not a narrative of the past, but aforeshadowing of the future. Here we touch on one of the subtlest of theplaywright's problems--the art of arousing anticipation in just theright measure. But that is not the matter at present in hand. [3]

In the opening scene of _Othello_ it is true that some talk passesbetween Iago and Roderigo before they raise the alarm and awakenBrabantio; but it is carefully non-expository talk; it expounds nothingbut Iago's character. Far from being a real exception to the rule thatShakespeare liked to open his tragedies with a very crisply dramaticepisode, _Othello_ may rather be called its most conspicuous example. The rousing of Brabantio is immediately followed by the encounterbetween his men and Othello's, which so finely brings out the loftycharacter of the Moor; and only in the third scene, that of the Doge'sCouncil, do we pass from shouts and swords to quiet discussion and, in asense, exposition. Othello's great speech, while a vital portion of thedrama, is in so far an exposition that it refers to events which do notcome absolutely within the frame of the picture. But they are veryrecent, very simple, events. If Othello's speech were omitted, or cutdown to half a dozen lines, we should know much less of his characterand Desdemona's, but the mere action of the play would remain perfectlycomprehensible. 

_King Lear_ necessarily opens with a great act of state, the partitionof the kingdom. A few words between Kent and Gloucester show us what isafoot, and then, at one plunge, we are in the thick of the drama. Therewas no opportunity here for one of those picturesque tableaux, excitingrather than informative, which initiate the other tragedies. It wouldhave had to be artificially dragged in; and it was the less necessary, as the partition scene took on, in a very few lines, just thatarresting, stimulating quality which the poet seems to have desired inthe opening of a play of this class. 

Finally, when we turn to _Hamlet_, we find a consummate example of thecrisply-touched opening tableau, making a nervous rather than anintellectual appeal, informing us of nothing, but exciting a vivid, though quite vague, anticipation. The silent transit of the Ghost, desiring to speak, yet tongue-tied, is certainly one of Shakespeare'sunrivalled masterpieces of dramatic craftsmanship. One could prettysafely wager that if the _Ur-Hamlet_, on which Shakespeare worked, wereto come to light to-morrow, this particular trait would not be found init. But, oddly enough, into the middle of this admirable openingtableau, Shakespeare inserts a formal exposition, introduced in the mostconventional way. Marcellus, for some unexplained reason, is ignorant ofwhat is evidently common knowledge as to the affairs of the realm, andasks to be informed; whereupon Horatio, in a speech of some twenty-fivelines, sets forth the past relations between Norway and Denmark, andprepares us for the appearance of Fortinbras in the fourth act. Inmodern stage versions all this falls away, and nobody who has notstudied the printed text is conscious of its absence. The commentators, indeed, have proved that Fortinbras is an immensely valuable element inthe moral scheme of the play; but from the point of view of pure drama, there is not the slightest necessity for this Norwegian-Danishembroilment or its consequences. [4] The real exposition--for _Hamlet_differs from the other tragedies in requiring an exposition--comes inthe great speech of the Ghost in Scene V. The contrast between thisspeech and Horatio's lecture in the first scene, exemplifies thedifference between a dramatized and an undramatized exposition. Thecrisis, as we now learn, began months or years before the rise of thecurtain. It began when Claudius inveigled the affections of Gertrude;and it would have been possible for the poet to have started from thispoint, and shown us in action all that he in fact conveys to us by wayof narration. His reason for choosing the latter course is abundantlyobvious. [5] Hamlet the Younger was to be the protagonist: the interestof the play was to centre in his mental processes. To have awakened ourinterest in Hamlet the Elder would, therefore, have been a superfluityand an irrelevance. Moreover (to say nothing of the fact that the Ghostwas doubtless a popular figure in the old play, and demanded by thepublic) it was highly desirable that Hamlet's knowledge of the usurper'scrime should come to him from a supernatural witness, who could not becross-questioned or called upon to give material proof. This was thereadiest as well as the most picturesque method of begetting in him thatcondition of doubt, real or affected, which was necessary to account forhis behaviour. But to have shown us in action the matter of the Ghost'srevelation would have been hopelessly to ruin its effect. A repetitionin narrative of matters already seen in action is the grossest oftechnical blunders. [6] Hamlet senior, in other words, beingindispensable in the spirit, was superfluous in the flesh. But there wasanother and equally cogent reason for beginning the play after thecommission of the initial crime or crimes. To have done otherwise wouldhave been to discount, not only the Ghost, but the play-scene. By apiece of consummate ingenuity, which may, of course, have been conceivedby the earlier playwright, the initial incidents of the story are infact presented to us, in the guise of a play within the play, and as ameans to the achievement of one of the greatest dramatic effects in allliterature. The moment the idea of the play-scene presented itself tothe author's mind, it became absolutely unthinkable that he should, toput it vulgarly, "queer the pitch" for the Players by showing us thereal facts of which their performance was to be the counterfeitpresentment. The dramatic effect of the incidents was incalculablyheightened when they were presented, as in a looking-glass, before theguilty pair, with the eye of the avenger boring into their souls. Andhave we not here, perhaps, a clue to one of the most frequent andessential meanings of the word "dramatic"? May we not say that thedramatic quality of an incident is proportionate to the variety[7] andintensity of the emotions involved in it?

All this may appear too obvious to be worth setting forth at suchlength. Very likely it never occurred to Shakespeare that it waspossible to open the play at an earlier point; so that he can hardly besaid to have exercised a deliberate choice in the matter. Nevertheless, the very obviousness of the considerations involved makes this a goodexample of the importance of discovering just the right point at whichto raise the curtain. In the case of _The Tempest_, Shakespeare plungedinto the middle of the crisis because his object was to produce aphilosophico-dramatic entertainment rather than a play in the strictsense of the word. He wanted room for the enchantments of Ariel, thebrutishnesses of Caliban, the humours of Stephano and Trinculo--allelements extrinsic to the actual story. But in _Hamlet_ he adopted asimilar course for purely dramatic reasons--in order to concentrate hiseffects and present the dramatic elements of his theme at theirhighest potency. 

In sum, then, it was Shakespeare's usual practice, histories apart, tobring the whole action of his plays within the frame of the picture, leaving little or nothing to narrative exposition. The two notableexceptions to this rule are those we have just examined--_Hamlet_ and_The Tempest_. Furthermore, he usually opened his comedies with quietconversational passages, presenting the antecedents of the crisis withgreat deliberation. In his tragedies, on the other hand, he was apt tolead off with a crisp, somewhat startling passage of more or lessvehement action, appealing rather to the nerves than to theintelligence--such a passage as Gustav Freytag, in his _Technik desDramas_, happily entitles an _einleitende Akkord_, an introductorychord. It may be added that this rule holds good both for _Coriolanus_and for _Julius Caesar_, in which the keynote is briskly struck inhighly animated scenes of commotion among the Roman populace. 

Let us now look at the practice of Ibsen, which offers a sharp contrastto that of Shakespeare. To put it briefly, the plays in which Ibsen getshis whole action within the frame of the picture are as exceptional asthose in which Shakespeare does not do so. 

Ibsen's practice in this matter has been compared with that of the Greekdramatists, who also were apt to attack their crisis in the middle, oreven towards the end, rather than at the beginning. It must not beforgotten, however, that there is one great difference between hisposition and theirs. They could almost always rely upon a generalknowledge, on the part of the audience, of the theme with which theywere dealing. The purpose even of the Euripidean prologue is not so muchto state unknown facts, as to recall facts vaguely remembered, to statethe particular version of a legend which the poet proposes to adopt, andto define the point in the development of the legend at which he isabout to set his figures in motion. Ibsen, on the other hand, drew uponno storehouse of tradition. He had to convey to his audience everythingthat he wanted them to know; and this was often a long and complexseries of facts. 

The earliest play in which Ibsen can be said to show maturity ofcraftsmanship is _The Vikings at Helgeland_. It is curious to note thatboth in _The Vikings_ and in _The Pretenders_, two plays which are insome measure comparable with Shakespearean tragedies, he opens with afirmly-touched _einleitende Akkord_. In _The Vikings_, Ornulf and hissons encounter and fight with Sigurd and his men, very much after thefashion of the Montagues and Capulets in _Romeo and Juliet_. In _ThePretenders_ the rival factions of Haakon and Skule stand outside thecathedral of Bergen, intently awaiting the result of the ordeal which isproceeding within; and though they do not there and then come to blows, the air is electrical with their conflicting ambitions and passions. Hismodern plays, on the other hand, Ibsen opens quietly enough, thoughusually with some more or less arresting little incident, calculated toarouse immediate curiosity. One may cite as characteristic examples thehurried colloquy between Engstrand and Regina in _Ghosts_; Rebecca andMadam Helseth in _Rosmersholm_, watching to see whether Rosmer willcross the mill-race; and in _The Master Builder_, old Brovik's querulousoutburst, immediately followed by the entrance of Solness and hismysterious behaviour towards Kaia. The opening of _Hedda Gabler_, withits long conversation between Miss Tesman and the servant Bertha, comesas near as Ibsen ever did to the conventional exposition of the Frenchstage, conducted by a footman and a parlour-maid engaged in dusting thefurniture. On the other hand, there never was a more masterly opening, in its sheer simplicity, than Nora's entrance in _A Doll's House_, andthe little silent scene that precedes the appearance of Helmer. 

Regarding _The Vikings_ as Ibsen's first mature production, andsurveying the whole series of his subsequent works in which he had stagepresentation directly in view, [8] we find that in only two out of thefifteen plays does the whole action come within the frame of thepicture. These two are _The League of Youth_ and _An Enemy of thePeople_. In neither of these have any antecedents to be stated; neitherturns upon any disclosure of bygone events or emotions. We are, indeed, afforded brief glimpses into the past both of Stensgaard and ofStockmann; but the glimpses are incidental and inessential. It iscertainly no mere coincidence that if one were asked to pick out thepieces of thinnest texture in all Ibsen's mature work, one wouldcertainly select these two plays. Far be it from me to disparage _AnEnemy of the People_; as a work of art it is incomparably greater thansuch a piece as _Pillars of Society_; but it is not so richly woven, not, as it were, so deep in pile. Written in half the time Ibsen usuallydevoted to a play, it is an outburst of humorous indignation, a _jeud'esprit_, one might almost say, though the _jeu_ of a giant _esprit_. 

Observing the effect of comparative tenuity in these two plays, wecannot but surmise that the secret of the depth and richness of textureso characteristic of Ibsen's work, lay in his art of closelyinterweaving a drama of the present with a drama of the past. _An Enemyof the People_ is a straightforward, spirited melody; _The Wild Duck_and _Rosmersholm_ are subtly and intricately harmonized. 

Going a little more into detail, we find in Ibsen's work anextraordinary progress in the art of so unfolding the drama of the pastas to make the gradual revelation no mere preface or prologue to thedrama of the present, but an integral part of its action. It is truethat in _The Vikings_ he already showed himself a master in this art. The great revelation--the disclosure of the fact that Sigurd, notGunnar, did the deed of prowess which Hiördis demanded of the man whoshould be her mate--this crucial revelation is brought about in a sceneof the utmost dramatic intensity. The whole drama of the past, indeed--both its facts and its emotions--may be said to be dragged tolight in the very stress and pressure of the drama of the present. Not asingle detail of it is narrated in cold blood, as, for example, Prosperorelates to Miranda the story of their marooning, or Horatio expounds theNorwegian-Danish political situation. I am not holding up _The Vikings_as a great masterpiece; it has many weaknesses both of substance and ofmethod; but in this particular art of indistinguishably blending thedrama of the present with the drama of the past, it is alreadyconsummate. _The Pretenders_ scarcely comes into the comparison. It isIbsen's one chronicle-play; and, like Shakespeare, he did not shrinkfrom employing a good deal of narrative, though his narratives, it mustbe said, are always introduced under such circumstances as to make thema vital part of the drama. It is when we come to the modern plays thatwe find the poet falling back upon conventional and somewhat clumsymethods of exposition, which he only by degrees, though by rapiddegrees, unlearns. 

_The League of Youth_, as we have seen, requires no exposition. All wehave to learn is the existing relations of the characters, which appearquite naturally as the action proceeds. But let us look at _Pillars ofSociety_. Here we have to be placed in possession of a whole antecedentdrama: the intrigue of Karsten Bernick with Dina Dorf's mother, thethreatened scandal, Johan Tönnesen's vicarious acceptance of Bernick'sresponsibility, the subsidiary scandal of Lona Hessel's outburst onlearning of Bernick's engagement to her half-sister, the report of anembezzlement committed by Johan before his departure for America. Allthis has to be conveyed to us in retrospect; or, rather, in the firstplace, we have to be informed of the false version of these incidentswhich is current in the little town, and on which Bernick's moral andcommercial prestige is built up. What device, then, does Ibsen adopt tothis end? He introduces a "sewing-bee" of tattling women, one of whomhappens to be a stranger to the town, and unfamiliar with its gossip. Into her willing ear the others pour the popular version of the Bernickstory; and, this impartment effected, the group of gossips disappears, to be heard of no more. These ladies perform the function, in fact, ofthe First, Second, and Third Gentlemen, so common in Elizabethan andpseudo-Elizabethan plays. [9] They are not quite so artless in theirconventionality, for they bring with them the social atmosphere of thetattling little town, which is an essential factor in the drama. Moreover, their exposition is not a simple narrative of facts. It is tosome extent subtilized by the circumstance that the facts are not facts, and that the gist of the drama is to lie in the gradual triumph of thetruth over this tissue of falsehoods. Still, explain it as we may, thefact remains that in no later play does Ibsen initiate us into thepreliminaries of his action by so hackneyed and unwieldy a device. It isno conventional canon, but a maxim of mere common sense, that thedramatist should be chary of introducing characters who have no personalshare in the drama, and are mere mouthpieces for the conveyance ofinformation. Nowhere else does Ibsen so flagrantly disregard so obviousa principle of dramatic economy. [10]

When we turn to his next play, _A Doll's House_, we find that he hasalready made a great step in advance. He has progressed from the First, Second, and Third Gentlemen of the Elizabethans to the confidant[11] ofthe French classic drama. He even attempts, not very successfully, todisguise the confidant by giving her a personal interest, an effectiveshare, in the drama. Nothing can really dissemble the fact that the longscene between Nora and Mrs. Linden, which occupies almost one-third ofthe first act, is simply a formal exposition, outside the action of theplay. Just as it was providential that one of the house-wives of thesewing-bee in _Pillars of Society_ should have been a stranger to thetown, so it was the luckiest of chances (for the dramatist'sconvenience) that an old school-friend should have dropped in from theclouds precisely half-an-hour before the entrance of Krogstad brings toa sudden head the great crisis of Nora's life. This happy conjuncture ofevents is manifestly artificial: a trick of the dramatist's trade: apoint at which his art does not conceal his art. Mrs. Linden does not, like the dames of the sewing-bee, fade out of the saga; she even, through her influence on Krogstad, plays a determining part in thedevelopment of the action. But to all intents and purposes she remains amere confidant, a pretext for Nora's review of the history of hermarried life. There are two other specimens of the genus confidant inIbsen's later plays. Arnholm, in _The Lady from the Sea_, is littlemore; Dr. Herdal, in _The Master Builder_, is that and nothing else. Itmay be alleged in his defence that the family physician is theprofessional confidant of real life. 

In _Ghosts_, Ibsen makes a sudden leap to the extreme of hisretrospective method. I am not one of those who consider this playIbsen's masterpiece: I do not even place it, technically, in the firstrank among his works. And why? Because there is here no reasonableequilibrium between the drama of the past and the drama of the present. The drama of the past is almost everything, the drama of the presentnext to nothing. As soon as we have probed to the depths the Alvingmarriage and its consequences, the play is over, and there is nothingleft but for Regina to set off in pursuit of the joy of life, and forOswald to collapse into imbecility. It is scarcely an exaggeration tocall the play all exposition and no drama. Here for the first time, however, Ibsen perfected his peculiar gift of imparting tense dramaticinterest to the unveiling of the past. While in one sense the play isall exposition, in another sense it may quite as truly be said tocontain no exposition; for it contains no narrative delivered in coldblood, in mere calm retrospection, as a necessary preliminary to thedrama which is in the meantime waiting at the door. In other words, theexposition is all drama, it _is_ the drama. The persons who are tearingthe veils from the past, and for whom the veils are being torn, areintensely concerned in the process, which actually constitutes thedramatic crisis. The discovery of this method, or its rediscovery inmodern drama, [12] was Ibsen's great technical achievement. In his bestwork, the progress of the unveiling occasions a marked development, orseries of changes, in the actual and present relations of thecharacters. The drama of the past and the drama of the present proceed, so to speak, in interlacing rhythms, or, as I said before, in a rich, complex harmony. In _Ghosts_ this harmony is not so rich as in somelater plays, because the drama of the present is disproportionatelymeagre. None the less, or all the more, is it a conspicuous example ofIbsen's method of raising his curtain, not at the beginning of thecrisis, but rather at the beginning of the catastrophe. 

In _An Enemy of the People_, as already stated, he momentarily desertedthat method, and gave us an action which begins, develops, and endsentirely within the frame of the picture. But in the two followingplays, _The Wild Duck_ and _Rosmersholm_, he touched the highest pointof technical mastery in his interweaving of the past with the present. Ishall not attempt any analysis of the fabric of these plays. The processwould be long, tedious, and unhelpful; for no one could hope to employ amethod of such complexity without something of Ibsen's genius; andgenius will evolve its methods for itself. Let me only ask the reader tocompare the scene between old Werle and Gregers in the first act of _TheWild Duck_ with the scene between Nora and Mrs. Linden in the first actof _A Doll's House_, and mark the technical advance. Both scenes are, ina sense, scenes of exposition. Both are mainly designed to place us inpossession of a sequence of bygone facts. But while the _Doll's House_scene is a piece of quiet gossip, brought about (as we have noted) byrather artificial means, and with no dramatic tension in it, the _WildDuck_ scene is a piece of tense, one might almost say fierce, drama, fulfilling the Brunetière definition in that it shows us two characters, a father and son, at open war with each other. The one scene is outsidethe real action, the other is an integral part of it. The one belongs toIbsen's tentative period, the other ushers in, one might almost say, hisperiod of consummate mastery. [13]

_Rosmersholm_ is so obviously nothing but the catastrophe of anantecedent drama that an attempt has actually been made to rectifyIbsen's supposed mistake, and to write the tragedy of the deceasedBeata. It was made by an unskilful hand; but even a skilful hand wouldscarcely have done more than prove how rightly Ibsen judged that therecoil of Rebecca's crime upon herself and Rosmer would prove moreinteresting, and in a very real sense more dramatic, than the somewhatvulgar process of the crime itself. The play is not so profound in itshumanity as _The Wild Duck_, but it is Ibsen's masterpiece in the art ofwithdrawing veil after veil. From the technical point of view, it willrepay the closest study. 

We need not look closely at the remaining plays. _Hedda Gabler_ isperhaps that in which a sound proportion between the past and thepresent is most successfully preserved. The interest of the presentaction is throughout very vivid; but it is all rooted in facts andrelations of the past, which are elicited under circumstances of highdramatic tension. Here again it is instructive to compare the scenebetween Hedda and Thea, in the first act, with the scene between Noraand Mrs. Linden. Both are scenes of exposition: and each is, in its way, character-revealing; but the earlier scene is a passage of quiteunemotional narrative; the later is a passage of palpitating drama. Inthe plays subsequent to _Hedda Gabler_, it cannot be denied that thepast took the upper hand of the present to a degree which could only bejustified by the genius of an Ibsen. Three-fourths of the action of _TheMaster Builder_, _Little Eyolf_, _John Gabriel Borkman_, and _When WeDead Awaken_, consists of what may be called a passionate analysis ofthe past. Ibsen had the art of making such an analysis absorbinglyinteresting; but it is not a formula to be commended for the practicalpurposes of the everyday stage. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: Writing of _Le Supplice d'une Femme_, Alexandre Dumas_fils_ said: "This situation I declare to be one of the most dramaticand interesting in all drama. But a situation is not an idea. An idea, has a beginning, a middle and an end: an exposition, a development, aconclusion. Any one can relate a dramatic situation: the art lies inpreparing it, getting it accepted, rendering it possible, especially inuntying the knot. "]

[Footnote 2: This is what we regard as peculiarly the method of Ibsen. There is, however, this essential difference, that, instead of narratinghis preliminaries in cold blood, Ibsen, in his best work, _dramatizes_the narration. ]

[Footnote 3: See Chapter XII. ]

[Footnote 4: This must not be taken to imply that, in a goodstage-version of the play, Fortinbras should be altogether omitted. Mr. Forbes Robertson, in his Lyceum revival of 1897, found severaladvantages in his retention. Among the rest, it permitted the retentionof one of Hamlet's most characteristic soliloquies. ]

[Footnote 5: I omit all speculation as to the form which the storyassumed in the _Ur-Hamlet_. We have no evidence on the point; and, asthe poet was no doubt free to remodel the material as he thought fit, even in following his original he was making a deliberateartistic choice. ]

[Footnote 6: Shakespeare committed it in _Romeo and Juliet_, where hemade Friar Laurence, in the concluding scene, retell the whole story ofthe tragedy. Even in so early a play, such a manifest redundancy seemsunaccountable. A narrative of things already seen may, of course, be atrait of character in the person delivering it; but, in that case, itwill generally be mendacious (for instance, Falstaff and the men inbuckram). Or it may be introduced for the sake of its effect upon thecharacters to whom the narration is addressed. But in these cases itspurpose is no longer to convey information to the audience--it belongs, not to the "intelligence department, " but to the department ofanalysis. ]

[Footnote 7: I say "variety" rather than complexity because I take itthat the emotions of all concerned are here too intense to be verycomplex. The effect of the scene would appear to lie in the rapidlyincreasing intensity of comparatively simple emotions in Hamlet, in theKing, in the Queen, and in the amazed and bewildered courtiers. ]

[Footnote 8: This excludes _Love's Comedy, Brand, Peer Gynt_, and_Emperor and Galilean_. ]

[Footnote 9: See, for example, _King Henry VIII_, Act IV, and theopening scene of Tennyson's _Queen Mary_. ]

[Footnote 10: This rule of economy does not necessarily exclude a groupof characters performing something like the function of the antiqueChorus; that is to say, commenting upon the action from a more or lessdisinterested point of view. The function of _Kaffee-Klatsch_ in_Pillars of Society_ is not at all that of the Chorus, but rather thatof the Euripidean Prologue, somewhat thinly disguised. ]

[Footnote 11: It is perhaps worth nothing that Gabriele d'Annunzio in_La Gioconda_, reverts to, and outdoes, the French classic convention, by giving us three actors and four confidants. The play consists of acrisis in three lives, passively, though sympathetically, contemplatedby what is in effect a Chorus of two men and two women. It would beinteresting to inquire why, in this particular play, such an abuse ofthe confidant seems quite admissible, if not conspicuously right. ]

[Footnote 12: Dryden, in his _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, represents thismethod as being characteristic of Greek tragedy as a whole. The tragicpoet, he says, "set the audience, as it were, at the post where the raceis to be concluded; and, saving them the tedious expectation of seeingthe poet set out and ride the beginning of the course, they suffer younot to behold him, till he is in sight of the goal and just upon you. "Dryden seems to think that the method was forced upon them by "the ruleof time. "]

[Footnote 13: It is a rash enterprise to reconstruct Ibsen, but onecannot help wondering how he would have planned _A Doll's House_ had hewritten it in the 'eighties instead of the 'seventies. One can imagine along opening scene between Helmer and Nora in which a great deal of thenecessary information might have been conveyed; while it would haveheightened by contrast the effect of the great final duologue as we nowpossess it. Such information as could not possibly have been conveyed indialogue with Helmer might, one would think, have been left for Nora'sfirst scene with Krogstad, the effect of which it would have enhanced. Perhaps Mrs. Linden might with advantage have been retained, though notin her present character of confidant, in order to show Nora in relationto another woman. ]

_CHAPTER VII_

EXPOSITION: ITS END AND ITS MEANS

We have passed in rapid survey the practices of Shakespeare and Ibsen inrespect of their point and method of attack upon their themes. Whatpractical lessons can we now deduce from this examination?

One thing is clear: namely, that there is no inherent superiority in onemethod over another. There are masterpieces in which the whole crisisfalls within the frame of the picture, and masterpieces in which thegreater part of the crisis has to be conveyed to us in retrospect, onlythe catastrophe being transacted before our eyes. Genius can manifestitself equally in either form. 

But each form has its peculiar advantages. You cannot, in aretrospective play like _Rosmersholm_, attain anything like themagnificent onward rush of Othello, which moves--

 "Like to the Pontick sea Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontick and the Hellespont. "

The movement of _Rosmersholm_ is rather like that of a winding river, which flows with a full and steady current, but seems sometimes to bealmost retracing its course. If, then, you aim at rapidity of movement, you will choose a theme which leaves little or nothing to retrospect;and conversely, if you have a theme the whole of which falls easily andconveniently within the frame of the picture, you will probably takeadvantage of the fact to give your play animated and rapid movement. 

There is an undeniable attraction in a play which constitutes, so tospeak, one brisk and continuous adventure, begun, developed, and endedbefore our eyes. For light comedy in particular is this a desirableform, and for romantic plays in which no very searching character-studyis attempted. _The Taming of the Shrew_ no doubt passed for a lightcomedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name. Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready totake the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a verydifferent play had the poet required to account for Katharine'speculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity andupbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays, or dual-adventure plays, in the sense that the main action sometimesstands aside to let an underplot take the stage. Both _She Stoops toConquer_ and _The Rivals_ are good examples of the rapid working-out ofan intrigue, engendered, developed, and resolved all within the frame ofthe picture. Single-adventure plays of a more modern type are the elderDumas's _Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, the younger Dumas's _Francillon_, Sardou's _Divorçons_, Sir Arthur Pinero's _Gay Lord Quex_, Mr. Shaw's_Devil's Disciple_, Oscar Wilde's _Importance of Being Earnest_, Mr. Galsworthy's _Silver Box_. Widely as these plays differ in type andtone, they are alike in this, that they do not attempt to present verycomplex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience. The last play cited, _The Silver Box_, may perhaps be thought anexception to this rule; but, though the experience of the haplesscharwoman is pitiful enough, hers is a simple soul, so inured tosuffering that a little more or less is no such great matter. The playis an admirable genre-picture rather than a searching tragedy. 

The point to be observed is that, under modern conditions, it isdifficult to produce a play of very complex psychological, moral, oremotional substance, in which the whole crisis comes within the frame ofthe picture. The method of attacking the crisis in the middle or towardsthe end is really a device for relaxing, in some measure, the narrowbounds of theatrical representation, and enabling the playwright to dealwith a larger segment of human experience. It may be asked why modernconditions should in this respect differ from Elizabethan conditions, and why, if Shakespeare could produce such profound and complextragedies as _Othello_ and _King Lear_ without a word of exposition orretrospect, the modern dramatist should not go and do likewise? Theanswer to this question is not simply that the modern dramatist isseldom a Shakespeare. That is true, but we must look deeper than that. There are, in fact, several points to be taken into consideration. Forone thing--this is a minor point--Shakespeare had really far moreelbow-room than the playwright of to-day. _Othello_ and _King Lear_, tosay nothing of _Hamlet_, are exceedingly long plays. Something like athird of them is omitted in modern representation; and when we speak oftheir richness and complexity of characterization, we do not thinksimply of the plays as we see them compressed into acting limits, but ofthe plays as we know them in the study. It is possible, no doubt, formodern playwrights to let themselves go in the matter of length, andthen print their plays with brackets or other marks to show the"passages omitted in representation. " This is, however, essentially aninartistic practice, and one cannot regret that it has gone out offashion. Another point to be considered is this: are Othello and Learreally very complex character-studies? They are extremely vivid: theyare projected with enormous energy, in actions whose violence affordsscope for the most vehement self-expression; but are they not, inreality, colossally simple rather than complex? It is true that in Learthe phenomena of insanity are reproduced with astonishing minuteness andtruth; but this does not imply any elaborate analysis or demand anygreat space. Hamlet is complex; and were I "talking for victory, " Ishould point out that _Hamlet_ is, of all the tragedies, precisely theone which does not come within the frame of the picture. But the truesecret of the matter does not lie here: it lies in the fact that Hamletunpacks his heart to us in a series of soliloquies--a device employedscarcely at all in the portrayal of Othello and Lear, and denied to themodern dramatist. [1] Yet again, the social position and environment ofthe great Shakespearean characters is taken for granted. No time isspent in "placing" them in a given stratum of society, or inestablishing their heredity, traditions, education, and so forth. And, finally, the very copiousness of expression permitted by the rhetoricalElizabethan form came to Shakespeare's aid. The modern dramatist ishampered by all sorts of reticences. He has often to work rather inindirect suggestion than in direct expression. He has, in short, tosubmit to a hundred hampering conditions from which Shakespeare wasexempt; wherefore, even if he had Shakespeare's genius, he would find itdifficult to produce a very profound effect in a crisis worked out fromfirst to last before the eyes of the audience. 

Nevertheless, as before stated, such a crisis has a charm of its own. There is a peculiar interest in watching the rise and development out ofnothing, as it were, of a dramatic complication. For this class of play(despite the Shakespearean precedents) a quiet opening is oftenadvisable, rather than a strong _einleitende Akkord_. "From calm, through storm, to calm, " is its characteristic formula; whether theconcluding calm be one of life and serenity or of despair and death. Tomy personal taste, one of the keenest forms of theatrical enjoyment isthat of seeing the curtain go up on a picture of perfect tranquillity, wondering from what quarter the drama is going to arise, and thenwatching it gather on the horizon like a cloud no bigger than a man'shand. Of this type of opening, _An Enemy of the People_ provides us witha classic example; and among English plays we may cite Mr. Shaw's_Candida_, Mr. Barker's _Waste_, and Mr. Besier's _Don_, in which sosudden and unlooked-for a cyclone swoops down upon the calm of anEnglish vicarage. An admirable instance of a fantastic type may be foundin _Prunella_, by Messrs. Barker and Housman. [2]

There is much to be said, however, in favour of the opening which doesnot present an aspect of delusive calm, but shows the atmosphere alreadycharged with electricity. Compare, for instance, the opening of _TheCase of Rebellious Susan_, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, with that of aFrench play of very similar theme--Dumas's _Francillon_. In the latter, we see the storm-cloud slowly gathering up on the horizon; in theformer, it is already on the point of breaking, right overhead. Mr. Jones places us at the beginning, where Dumas leaves us at the end, ofhis first act. It is true that at the end of Mr. Jones's act he has notadvanced any further than Dumas. The French author shows his heroinegradually working up to a nervous crisis, the English author introduceshis heroine already at the height of her paroxysm, and the act consistsof the unavailing efforts of her friends to smooth her down. The upshotis the same; but in Mr. Jones's act we are, as the French say, "in fulldrama" all the time, while in Dumas's we await the coming of the drama, and only by exerting all his wit, not to say over-exerting it, does heprevent our feeling impatient. I am not claiming superiority for eithermethod; I merely point to a good example of two different ways ofattacking the same problem. 

In _The Benefit of the Doubt_, by Sir Arthur Pinero, we have a crisplydramatic opening of the very best type. A few words from a contemporarycriticism may serve to indicate the effect it produced on a first-nightaudience--

 We are in the thick of the action at once, or at least in the thick of the interest, so that the exposition, instead of being, so to speak, a mere platform from which the train is presently to start, becomes an inseparable part of the movement. The sense of dramatic irony is strongly and yet delicately suggested. We foresee a "peripety, " apparent prosperity suddenly crumbling into disaster, within the act itself; and, when it comes, it awakens our sympathy and redoubles our interest. 

Almost the same words might be applied to the opening of _The Climbers_, by the late Clyde Fitch, one of the many individual scenes which makeone deeply regret that Mr. Fitch did not live to do full justice to hisremarkable talent. 

One of the ablest of recent openings is that of Mr. Galsworthy's _SilverBox_. The curtain rises upon a solid, dull, upper-middle-classdining-room, empty and silent, the electric lights burning, the traywith whiskey, siphon and cigarette-box marking the midnight hour. Thenwe have the stumbling, fumbling entrance of Jack Barthwick, beatificallydrunk, his maudlin babble, and his ill-omened hospitality to the haggardloafer who follows at his heels. Another example of a high-pitchedopening scene may be found in Mr. Perceval Landon's _The HouseOpposite_. Here we have a midnight parting between a married woman andher lover, in the middle of which the man, glancing at the lightedwindow of the house opposite, sees a figure moving in such a way as tosuggest that a crime is being perpetrated. As a matter of fact, an oldman is murdered, and his housekeeper is accused of the crime. The hero, if so he can be called, knows that it was a man, not a woman, who was inthe victim's room that night; and the problem is: how can he give hisevidence without betraying a woman's secret by admitting his presence inher house at midnight? I neither praise nor blame this class of story; Imerely cite the play as one in which we plunge straight into the crisis, without any introductory period of tranquillity. 

The interest of Mr. Landon's play lay almost wholly in the story. Therewas just enough character in it to keep the story going, so to speak. The author might, on the other hand, have concentrated our attention oncharacter, and made his play a soul-tragedy; but in that case it woulddoubtless have been necessary to take us some way backward in theheroine's antecedents and the history of her marriage. In other words, if the play had gone deeper into human nature, the preliminaries of thecrisis would have had to be traced in some detail, possibly in a firstact, introductory to the actual opening, but more probably, and better, in an exposition following the crisply touched _einleitende Akkord_. This brings us to the question how an exposition may best be managed. 

It may not unreasonably be contended, I think, that, when an expositioncannot be thoroughly dramatized--that is, wrung out, in the stress ofthe action, from the characters primarily concerned--it may best bedismissed, rapidly and even conventionally, by any not too improbabledevice. That is the principle on which Sir Arthur Pinero has alwaysproceeded, and for which he has been unduly censured, by critics whomake no allowances for the narrow limits imposed by custom and theconstitution of the modern audience upon the playwrights of to-day. In_His House in Order_ (one of his greatest plays) Sir Arthur effects partof his exposition by the simple device of making Hilary Jesson acandidate for Parliament, and bringing on a reporter to interview hisprivate secretary. The incident is perfectly natural and probable; allone can say of it is that it is perhaps an over-simplification of thedramatist's task. [3] _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ requires an unusualamount of preliminary retrospect. We have to learn the history of AubreyTanqueray's first marriage, with the mother of Ellean, as well as thehistory of Paula Ray's past life. The mechanism employed to this end hasbeen much criticized, but seems to me admirable. Aubrey gives a farewelldinner-party to his intimate friends, Misquith and Jayne. CayleyDrummle, too, is expected, but has not arrived when the play opens. Without naming the lady, Aubrey announces to his guests his approachingmarriage. He proposes to go out with them, and has one or two notes towrite before doing so. Moreover, he is not sorry to give them anopportunity to talk over the announcement he has made; so he retires toa side-table in the same room, to do his writing. Misquith and Jayneexchange a few speeches in an undertone, and then Cayley Drummle comesin, bringing the story of George Orreyd's marriage to the unmentionableMiss Hervey. This story is so unpleasant to Tanqueray that, to get outof the conversation, he returns to his writing; but still he cannot helplistening to Cayley's comments on George Orreyd's "disappearance"; andat last the situation becomes so intolerable to him that he purposelyleaves the room, bidding the other two "Tell Cayley the news. " Thetechnical manipulation of all this seems to me above reproach--dramatically effective and yet life-like in every detail. Ifone were bound to raise an objection, it would be to the coincidencewhich brings to Cayley's knowledge, on one and the same evening, twosuch exactly similar misalliances in his own circle of acquaintance. Butthese are just the coincidences that do constantly happen. Every oneknows that life is full of them. 

The exposition might, no doubt, have been more economically effected. Cayley Drummle might have figured as sole confidant and chorus; or evenhe might have been dispensed with, and all that was necessary might haveappeared in colloquies between Aubrey and Paula on the one hand, Aubreyand Ellean on the other. But Cayley as sole confidant--the "Charles, hisfriend, " of eighteenth-century comedy--would have been more plainlyconventional than Cayley as one of a trio of Aubrey's old cronies, representing the society he is sacrificing in entering upon thisexperimental marriage; and to have conveyed the necessary informationwithout any confidant or chorus at all would (one fancies) have strainedprobability, or, still worse, impaired consistency of character. Aubreycould not naturally discuss his late wife either with her successor orwith her daughter; while, as for Paula's past, all he wanted was toavert his eyes from it. I do not say that these difficulties might nothave been overcome; for, in the vocabulary of the truly ingeniousdramatist there is no such word as impossible. But I do suggest that theresult would scarcely have been worth the trouble, and that it ishyper-criticism which objects to an exposition so natural and probableas that of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, simply on the ground thatcertain characters are introduced for the purpose of conveying certaininformation. It would be foolish to expect of every work of art anabsolutely austere economy of means. 

Sometimes, however, Sir Arthur Pinero injudiciously emphasizes theartifices employed to bring about an exposition. In _The Thunderbolt_, for instance, in order that the Mortimores' family solicitor may withoutreproach ask for information on matters with which a family solicitorought to be fully conversant, it has to be explained that the seniorpartner of the firm, who had the Mortimore business specially in hand, has been called away to London, and that a junior partner has taken hisplace. Such a rubbing-in, as it were, of an obvious device ought at allhazards to be avoided. If the information cannot be otherwise imparted(as in this case it surely could), the solicitor had better be allowedto ask one or two improbable questions--it is the lesser evil ofthe two. 

When the whole of a given subject cannot be got within the limits ofpresentation, is there any means of determining how much should be leftfor retrospect, and at what point the curtain ought to be raised? Theprinciple would seem to be that slow and gradual processes, andespecially separate lines of causation, should be left outside the frameof the picture, and that the curtain should be raised at the point whereseparate lines have converged, and where the crisis begins to movetowards its solution with more or less rapidity and continuity. Theideas of rapidity and continuity may be conveniently summed up in thehackneyed and often misapplied term, unity of action. Though the unitiesof time and place are long ago exploded as binding principles--indeed, they never had any authority in English drama--yet it is true that abroken-backed action, whether in time or space, ought, so far aspossible, to be avoided. An action with a gap of twenty years in it maybe all very well in melodrama or romance, but scarcely in higher andmore serious types of drama. [4] Especially is it to be desired thatinterest should be concentrated on one set of characters, and should notbe frittered away on subsidiary or preliminary personages. Take, forinstance, the case of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. It would have beentheoretically possible for Sir Arthur Pinero to have given us either (orboth) of two preliminary scenes: he might have shown us the first Mrs. Tanqueray at home, and at the same time have introduced us more at largeto the characters of Aubrey and Ellean; or he might have depicted for usone of the previous associations of Paula Ray--might perhaps have let ussee her "keeping house" with Hugh Ardale. But either of these openingswould have been disproportionate and superfluous. It would have excited, or tried to excite, our interest in something that was not the realtheme of the play, and in characters which were to drop out before thereal theme--the Aubrey-Paula marriage--was reached. Therefore theauthor, in all probability, never thought of beginning at either ofthese points. He passed instinctively to the point at which the twolines of causation converged, and from which the action could be carriedcontinuously forward by one set of characters. He knew that we couldlearn in retrospect all that it was necessary for us to know of thefirst Mrs. Tanqueray, and that to introduce her in the flesh would bemerely to lead the interest of the audience into a blind alley, and tobreak the back of his action. Again, in _His House in Order_ it may seemthat the intrigue between Maurewarde and the immaculate Annabel, withits tragic conclusion, would have made a stirring introductory act. Butto have presented such an act would have been to destroy the unity ofthe play, which centres in the character of Nina. Annabel is "anotherstory"; and to have told, or rather shown us, more of it than wasabsolutely necessary, would have been to distract our attention from thereal theme of the play, while at the same time fatally curtailing theall-too-brief time available for the working-out of that theme. Thereare cases, no doubt, when verbal exposition may advantageously beavoided by means of a dramatized "Prologue"--a single act, constitutinga little drama in itself, and generally separated by a considerablespace of time from the action proper. But this method is scarcely to becommended, except, as aforesaid, for purposes of melodrama and romance. A "Prologue" is for such plays as _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _The OnlyWay_, not for such plays as _His House in Order_. 

The question whether a legato or a staccato opening be the moredesirable must be decided in accordance with the nature andopportunities of each theme. The only rule that can be stated is that, when the attention of the audience is required for an exposition of anylength, some attempt ought to be made to awaken in advance their generalinterest in the theme and characters. It is dangerous to plunge straightinto narrative, or unemotional discussion, without having first made theaudience actively desire the information to be conveyed to them. Especially is it essential that the audience should know clearly who arethe subjects of the discussion or narrative--that they should not bemere names to them. It is a grave flaw in the construction of Mr. Granville Barker's otherwise admirable play _Waste_, that it should openwith a long discussion, by people whom we scarcely know, of other peoplewhom we do not know at all, whose names we may or may not have noted onthe playbill. 

Trebell, Lord Charles Cantelupe, and Blackborough ought certainly tohave been presented to us in the flesh, however briefly and summarily, before we were asked to interest ourselves in their characters and thepolitical situation arising from them. 

There is, however, one limitation to this principle. A great effect issometimes attained by retarding the entrance of a single leading figurefor a whole act, or even two, while he is so constantly talked about asto beget in the audience a vivid desire to make his personalacquaintance. Thus Molière's Tartufe does not come on the stage untilthe third act of the comedy which bears his name. Ibsen's John GabrielBorkman is unseen until the second act, though (through his wife's ears)we have already heard him pacing up and down his room like a wolf in hiscage. Dubedat, in _The Doctor's Dilemma_, is not revealed to us in theflesh until the second act. But for this device to be successful, it isessential that only one leading character[5] should remain unseen, onwhom the attention of the audience may, by that very fact, be riveted. In _Waste_, for instance, all would have been well had it suited Mr. Barker's purpose to leave Trebell invisible till the second act, whileall the characters in the first act, clearly presented to us, canvassedhim from their various points of view. Keen expectancy, in short, is themost desirable frame of mind in which an audience can be placed, so longas the expectancy be not ultimately disappointed. But there is no lessdesirable mental attitude than that of straining after gleams ofguidance in an expository twilight. 

The advantage of a staccato opening--or, to vary the metaphor, a brisk, highly aerated introductory passage--is clearly exemplified in _A Doll'sHouse_. It would have been quite possible for Ibsen to have sent up hiscurtain upon Nora and Mrs. Linden seated comfortably before the stove, and exchanging confidences as to their respective careers. Nothingindispensable would have been omitted; but how languid would have beenthe interest of the audience! As it is, a brief, bright scene hasalready introduced us, not only to Nora, but to Helmer, and aroused aneager desire for further insight into the affairs of this--to allappearance--radiantly happy household. Therefore, we settle down withoutimpatience to listen to the fireside gossip of the two oldschool-fellows. 

The problem of how to open a play is complicated in the English theatreby considerations wholly foreign to art. Until quite recently, it usedto be held impossible for a playwright to raise his curtain upon hisleading character or characters, because the actor-manager would thus bebaulked of his carefully arranged "entrance" and "reception, " and, furthermore, because twenty-five per cent of the audience would probablyarrive about a quarter of an hour late, and would thus miss the openingscene or scenes. It used at one time to be the fashion to add to theadvertisement of a play an entreaty that the audience should bepunctually in their seats, "as the interest began with the rise of thecurtain. " One has seen this assertion made with regard to plays inwhich, as a matter of fact, the interest had not begun at the fall ofthe curtain. Nowadays, managers, and even leading ladies, are a gooddeal less insistent on their "reception" than they used to be. Theyrealize that it may be a distinct advantage to hold the stage from thevery outset. There are few more effective openings than that of _TheSecond Mrs. Tanqueray_, where we find Aubrey Tanqueray seated squarelyat his bachelor dinner-table with Misquith on his right and Jayne on hisleft. It may even be taken as a principle that, where it is desired togive to one character a special prominence and predominance, it ought, if possible, to be the first figure on which the eye of the audiencefalls. In a Sherlock Holmes play, for example, the curtain oughtassuredly to rise on the great Sherlock enthroned in Baker Street, withDr. Watson sitting at his feet. The solitary entrance of Richard IIIthrows his figure into a relief which could by no other means have beenattained. So, too, it would have been a mistake on Sophocles' part tolet any one but the protagonist open the _Oedipus Rex_. 

So long as the fashion of late dinners continues, however, it mustremain a measure of prudence to let nothing absolutely essential to thecomprehension of a play be said or done during the first ten minutesafter the rise of the curtain. Here, again, _A Doll's House_ may becited as a model, though Ibsen, certainly, had no thought of the Britishdinner-hour in planning the play. The opening scene is just what theideal opening scene ought to be--invaluable, yet not indispensable. Thelate-comer who misses it deprives himself of a preliminary glimpse intothe characters of Nora and Helmer and the relation between them; but hemisses nothing that is absolutely essential to his comprehension of theplay as a whole. This, then, would appear to be a sound maxim both ofart and prudence: let your first ten minutes by all means be crisp, arresting, stimulating, but do not let them embody any absolutely vitalmatter, ignorance of which would leave the spectator in the dark as tothe general design and purport of the play. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: See Chapter XXIII. ]

[Footnote 2: Henri Becque's two best-known plays aptly exemplify the twotypes of opening. In _Les Corbeaux_ we have almost an entire act of calmdomesticity in which the only hint of coming trouble is an allusion toVigneron's attacks of vertigo. In _La Parisienne_ Clotilde and Lafontare in the thick of a vehement quarrel over a letter. It proceeds forten minutes or so, at the end of which Clotilde says, "Prenez garde, voilà mon mari!"--and we find that the two are not husband and wife, butwife and lover. ]

[Footnote 3: Mrs. Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes") opened her verysuccessful play, _The Ambassador_, with a scene between JulietDesborough and her sister Alice, a nun, who apparently left her conventspecially to hear her sister's confession, and then returned to it forever. This was certainly not an economical form of exposition, but itwas not unsuited to the type of play. ]

[Footnote 4: In that charming comedy, _Rosemary_, by Messrs. Parker andCarson, there is a gap of fifty years between the last act and itspredecessor; but the so-called last act is only an "epi-monologue. "]

[Footnote 5: Or at most two closely connected characters: for instance, a husband and wife. ]

_CHAPTER VIII_

THE FIRST ACT

Both in the theory and in practice, of late years, war has been declaredin certain quarters against the division of a play into acts. Studentsof the Elizabethan stage have persuaded themselves, by what I believe tobe a complete misreading of the evidence, that Shakespeare did not, asit were, "think in acts, " but conceived his plays as continuous seriesof events, without any pause or intermission in their flow. It can, Ithink, be proved beyond any shadow of doubt that they are wrong in this;that the act division was perfectly familiar to Shakespeare, and wasused by him to give to the action of his plays a rhythm which ought not, in representation, to be obscured or falsified. It is true that in theElizabethan theatre there was no need of long interacts for the changeof scenes, and that such interacts are an abuse that calls for remedy. But we have abundant evidence that the act division was sometimes markedon the Elizabethan stage, and have no reason to doubt that it was alwaysmore or less recognized, and was present to Shakespeare's mind no lessthan to Ibsen's or Pinero's. 

Influenced in part, perhaps, by the Elizabethan theorists, but mainly bythe freakishness of his own genius, Mr. Bernard Shaw has taken towriting plays in one continuous gush of dialogue, and has put forward, more or less seriously, the claim that he is thereby reviving thepractice of the Greeks. In a prefatory note to _Getting Married_, he says--

 "There is a point of some technical interest to be noted in this play. The customary division into acts and scenes has been disused, and a return made to unity of time and place, as observed in the ancient Greek drama. In the foregoing tragedy, _The Doctor's Dilemma_, there are five acts; the place is altered five times; and the time is spread over an undetermined period of more than a year. No doubt the strain on the attention of the audience and on the ingenuity of the playwright is much less; but I find in practice that the Greek form is inevitable when the drama reaches a certain point in poetic and intellectual evolution. Its adoption was not, on my part, a deliberate display of virtuosity in form, but simply the spontaneous falling of a play of ideas into the form most suitable to it, which turned out to be the classical form. "

It is hard to say whether Mr. Shaw is here writing seriously or in amood of solemn facetiousness. Perhaps he himself is not quite clear onthe point. There can be no harm, at any rate, in assuming that hegenuinely believes the unity of _Getting Married_ to be "a return to theunity observed in, " say, the _Oedipus Rex_, and examining a little intoso pleasant an illusion. 

It is, if I may so phrase it, a double-barrelled illusion. _GettingMarried_ has not the unity of the Greek drama, and the Greek drama hasnot the unity of _Getting Married_. Whatever "unity" is predicable ofeither form of art is a wholly different thing from whatever "unity" ispredicable of the other. Mr. Shaw, in fact, is, consciously orunconsciously, playing with words, very much as Lamb did when he said tothe sportsman, "Is that your own hare or a wig?" There are, roughlyspeaking, three sorts of unity: the unity of a plum-pudding, the unityof a string or chain, and, the unity of the Parthenon. Let us call them, respectively, unity of concoction, unity of concatenation, andstructural or organic unity. The second form of unity is that of mostnovels and some plays. They present a series of events, more or lessclosely intertwined or interlinked with one another, but not built upinto any symmetrical interdependence. This unity of longitudinalextension does not here concern us, for it is not that of either Shaw orSophocles. Plum-pudding unity, on the other hand--the unity of a numberof ingredients stirred up together, put in a cloth, boiled to a certainconsistency, and then served up in a blue flame of lambent humour--thatis precisely the unity of _Getting Married_. A jumble of ideas, prejudices, points of view, and whimsicalities on the subject ofmarriage is tied up in a cloth and boiled into a sort of glutinousfusion or confusion, so that when the cloth is taken off they do not atonce lose the coherent rotundity conferred upon them by pressure fromwithout. In a quite real sense, the comparison does more than justice tothe technical qualities of the play; for in a good plum-pudding the dueproportions of the ingredients are carefully studied, whereas Mr. Shawflings in recklessly whatever comes into his head. At the same time itis undeniably true that he shows us a number of people in one room, talking continuously and without a single pause, on different aspects ofa given theme. If this be unity, then he has achieved it. In thetheatre, as a matter of fact, the plum-pudding was served up in threechunks instead of one; but this was a mere concession to human weakness. The play had all the globular unity of a pill, though it happened to betoo big a pill to be swallowed at one gulp. 

Turning now to the _Oedipus_--I choose that play as a typical example ofGreek tragedy--what sort of unity do we find? It is the unity, not of acontinuous mass or mash, but of carefully calculated proportion, order, interrelation of parts--the unity of a fine piece of architecture, oreven of a living organism. The inorganic continuity of _Getting Married_it does not possess. If that be what we understand by unity, then Shawhas it and Sophocles has not. The _Oedipus_ is as clearly divided intoacts as is _Hamlet_ or _Hedda Gabler_. In modern parlance, we shouldprobably call it a play in five acts and an epilogue. It so happenedthat the Greek theatre did not possess a curtain, and did possess aChorus; consequently, the Greek dramatist employed the Chorus, as weemploy the curtain, to emphasize the successive stages of his action, tomark the rhythm of its progress, and, incidentally, to provideresting-places for the mind of the audience--intervals during which thestrain upon their attention was relaxed, or at any rate varied. It isnot even true that the Greeks habitually aimed at such continuity oftime as we find in _Getting Married_. They treated time ideally, theimaginary duration of the story being, as a rule, widely different fromthe actual time of representation. In this respect the _Oedipus_ issomething of an exception, since the events might, at a pinch, beconceived as passing within the "two hours' traffick of the stage"; butin many cases a whole day, or even more, must be understood to becompressed within these two hours. It is true that the continuouspresence of the Chorus made it impossible for the Greeks to overleapmonths and years, as we do on the modern stage; but they did not aim atthat strict coincidence of imaginary with actual time which Mr. Shawbelieves himself to have achieved. [1] Even he, however, subjects theevents which take place behind the scenes to a good deal of "ideal"compression. 

Of course, when Mr. Shaw protests that, in _Getting Married_, he did notindulge in a "deliberate display of virtuosity of form, " that is onlyhis fun. You cannot well have virtuosity of form where there is no form. What he did was to rely upon his virtuosity of dialogue to enable him todispense with form. Whether he succeeded or not is a matter of opinionwhich does not at present concern us. The point to be noted is theessential difference between the formless continuity of _GettingMarried_, and the sedulous ordering and balancing of clearlydifferentiated parts, which went to the structure of a Greek tragedy. Adramatist who can so develop his story as to bring it within thequasi-Aristotelean "unities" performs a curious but not particularlydifficult or valuable feat; but this does not, or ought not to, implythe abandonment of the act-division, which is no mere convention, but avaluable means of marking the rhythm of the story. When, on the otherhand, you have no story to tell, the act-division is manifestlysuperfluous; but it needs no "virtuosity" to dispense with it. 

It is a grave error, then, to suppose that the act is a mere division ofconvenience, imposed by the limited power of attention of the humanmind, or by the need of the human body for occasional refreshment. Aplay with a well-marked, well-balanced act-structure is a higherartistic organism than a play with no act-structure, just as avertebrate animal is higher than a mollusc. In every crisis of real life(unless it be so short as to be a mere incident) there is a rhythm ofrise, progress, culmination and solution. We are not always, perhaps notoften, conscious of these stages; but that is only because we do notreflect upon our experiences while they are passing, or map them out inmemory when they are past. We do, however, constantly apply to real-lifecrises expressions borrowed more or less directly from the terminologyof the drama. We say, somewhat incorrectly, "Things have come to aclimax, " meaning thereby a culmination; or we say, "The catastrophe isat hand, " or, again, "What a fortunate _dénouement_!" Be this as it may, it is the business of the dramatist to analyse the crises with which hedeals, and to present them to us in their rhythm of growth, culmination, solution. To this end the act-division is--not, perhaps, essential, since the rhythm may be marked even in a one-act play--but certainly ofenormous and invaluable convenience. "Si l'acte n'existait pas, ilfaudrait l'inventer"; but as a matter of fact it has existed wherever, in the Western world, the drama has developed beyond its rudestbeginnings. 

It was doubtless the necessity for marking this rhythm that Aristotlehad in mind when he said that a dramatic action must have a beginning, amiddle and an end. Taken in its simplicity, this principle wouldindicate the three-act division as the ideal scheme for a play. As amatter of fact, many of the best modern plays in all languages fall intothree acts; one has only to note _Monsieur Alphonse, Françillon, LaParisienne, Amoureuse, A Doll's House, Ghosts, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, Johannisfeuer, Caste, Candida, The Benefit of the Doubt, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Silver Box_; and, furthermore, manyold plays which are nominally in five acts really fall into a triplerhythm, and might better have been divided into three. Alexandrianprecept, handed on by Horace, gave to the five act division a purelyarbitrary sanction, which induced playwrights to mask the natural rhythmof their themes beneath this artificial one. [2] But in truth thethree-act division ought no more to be elevated into an absolute rulethan the five-act division. We have seen that a play consists, or oughtto consist, of a great crisis, worked out through a series of minorcrises. An act, then, ought to consist either of a minor crisis, carriedto its temporary solution, or of a well-marked group of such crises; andthere can be no rule as to the number of such crises which ought topresent themselves in the development of a given theme. On the modernstage, five acts may be regarded as the maximum, simply by reason of thetime-limit imposed by social custom on a performance. But one frequentlysees a melodrama divided into "five acts and eight tableaux, " or evenmore; which practically means that the play is in eight, or nine, or tenacts, but that there will be only the four conventional interacts in thecourse of the evening. The playwright should not let himself beconstrained by custom to force his theme into the arbitrary mould of astated number of acts. Three acts is a good number, four acts is a goodnumber, [3] there is no positive objection to five acts. Should he findhimself hankering after more acts, he will do well to consider whetherhe be not, at one point or another, failing in the art of condensationand trespassing on the domain of the novelist. 

There is undoubted convenience in the rule of the modern stage: "Oneact, one scene. " A change of scene in the middle of an act is not onlymaterially difficult, but tends to impair the particular order ofillusion at which the modern drama aims. [4] Roughly, indeed, an act maybe defined as any part of a given crisis which works itself out at onetime and in one place; but more fundamentally it is a segment of theaction during which the author desires to hold the attention of hisaudience unbroken and unrelaxed. It is no mere convention, however, which decrees that the flight of time is best indicated by an interact. When the curtain is down, the action on the stage remains, as it were, in suspense. The audience lets its attention revert to the affairs ofreal life; and it is quite willing, when the mimic world is once morerevealed, to suppose that any reasonable space of time has elapsed whileits thoughts were occupied with other matters. It is much more difficultfor it to accept a wholly imaginary lapse of time while its attention iscentred on the mimic world. Some playwrights have of late years adoptedthe device of dropping their curtain once, or even twice, in the middleof an act, to indicate an interval of a few minutes, or even of anhour--for instance, of the time between "going in to dinner" and thereturn of the ladies to the drawing-room. Sir Arthur Pinero employs thisdevice with good effect in _Iris_; so does Mr. Granville Barker in_Waste_, and Mr. Galsworthy in _The Silver Box_. It is certainly farpreferable to that "ideal" treatment of time which was common in theFrench drama of the nineteenth century, and survives to this day inplays adapted or imitated from the French. 

I remember seeing in London, not very long ago, a one-act play on thesubject of Rouget de l'Isle. In the space of about half-an-hour, hehanded the manuscript of the "Marseillaise" to an opera-singer whom headored, she took it away and sang it at the Opera, it caught the popularear from that one performance, and the dying Rouget heard it sung by thepassing multitude in the streets within about fifteen minutes of themoment when it first left his hands. (The whole piece, I repeat, occupied about half-an-hour; but as a good deal of that time was devotedto preliminaries, not more than fifteen minutes can have elapsed betweenthe time when the cantatrice left Rouget's garret and the time when allParis was singing the "Marseillaise. ") This is perhaps an extremeinstance of the ideal treatment of time; but one could find numberlesscases in the works of Scribe, Labiche, and others, in which thetransactions of many hours are represented as occurring within thelimits of a single act. Our modern practice eschews such licenses. Itwill often compress into an act of half-an-hour more events than wouldprobably happen in real life in a similar space of time, but not such atrain of occurrences as to transcend the limits of possibility. It mustbe remembered, however, that the standard of verisimilitude naturallyand properly varies with the seriousness of the theme under treatment. Improbabilities are admissible in light comedy, and still more in farce, which would wreck the fortunes of a drama purporting to present a soberand faithful picture of real life. 

Acts, then, mark the time-stages in the development of a given crisis;and each act ought to embody a minor crisis of its own, with aculmination and a temporary solution. It would be no gain, but a loss, if a whole two hours' or three hours' action could be carried through inone continuous movement, with no relaxation of the strain upon theattention of the audience, and without a single point at which thespectator might review what was past and anticipate what was to come. The act-division positively enhances the amount of pleasurable emotionthrough which the audience passes. Each act ought to stimulate andtemporarily satisfy an interest of its own, while definitely advancingthe main action. The psychological principle is evident enough; namely, that there is more sensation to be got out of three or fourcomparatively brief experiences, suited to our powers of perception, than out of one protracted experience, forced on us without relief, without contrast, in such a way as to fatigue and deaden our faculties. Who would not rather drink three, four, or five glasses of wine than putthe bottle to his lips and let its contents pour down his throat in onelong draught? Who would not rather see a stained-glass window brokeninto three, four, or five cunningly-proportioned "lights, " than a greatflat sheet of coloured glass, be its design never so effective?

It used to be the fashion in mid Victorian melodramas to give each act amore or less alluring title of its own. I am far from recommending therevival of this practice; but it might be no bad plan for a beginner, insketching out a play, to have in his mind, or in his private notes, adescriptive head-line for each act, thereby assuring himself that eachhad a character of its own, and at the same time contributed its dueshare to the advancement of the whole design. Let us apply thisprinciple to a Shakespearean play--for example, to _Macbeth_. The actheadings might run somewhat as follows--

 ACT I. --TEMPTATION. 

 ACT II. --MURDER AND USURPATION. 

 ACT III. --THE FRENZY OF CRIME AND THE HAUNTING OF REMORSE. 

 ACT IV. --GATHERING RETRIBUTION. 

 ACT V. --RETRIBUTION CONSUMMATED. 

Can it be doubted that Shakespeare had in his mind the rhythm marked bythis act-division? I do not mean, of course, that these phrases, oranything like them, were present to his consciousness, but merely thathe "thought in acts, " and mentally assigned to each act its definiteshare in the development of the crisis. 

Turning now to Ibsen, let us draw up an act-scheme for the simplest andmost straightforward of his plays, _An Enemy of the People_. It mightrun as follows:

 ACT I. --THE INCURABLE OPTIMIST. --Dr. Stockmann announces his discovery of the insanitary condition of the Baths. 

 ACT II. --THE COMPACT MAJORITY. --Dr. Stockmann finds that he will have to fight vested interests before the evils he has discovered can be remedied, but is assured that the Compact Majority is at his back. 

 ACT III. --THE TURN OF FORTUNE. --The Doctor falls from the pinnacle of his optimistic confidence, and learns that he will have the Compact Majority, not _at_, but _on_ his back. 

 ACT IV. --THE COMPACT MAJORITY ON THE WARPATH. --The crowd, finding that its immediate interests are identical with those of the privileged few, joins with the bureaucracy in shouting down the truth, and organizing a conspiracy of silence. 

 ACT V. --OPTIMISM DISILLUSIONED BUT INDOMITABLE. --Dr. Stockmann, gagged and thrown back into poverty, is tempted to take flight, but determines to remain in his native place and fight for its moral, if not for its physical, sanitation. 

Each of these acts is a little drama in itself, while each leads forwardto the next, and marks a distinct phase in the development ofthe crisis. 

When the younger Dumas asked his father, that master of dramaticmovement, to initiate him into the secret of dramatic craftsmanship, thegreat Alexandre replied in this concise formula: "Let your first act beclear, your last act brief, and the whole interesting. " Of the wisdom ofthe first clause there can be no manner of doubt. Whether incidentallyor by way of formal exposition, the first act ought to show us clearlywho the characters are, what are their relations and relationships, andwhat is the nature of the gathering crisis. It is very important thatthe attention of the audience should not be overstrained in followingout needlessly complex genealogies and kinships. How often, at the endof a first act, does one turn to one's neighbour and say, "Are Edith andAdela sisters or only half-sisters?" or, "Did you gather what was thevillain's claim to the title?" If a story cannot be made clear withoutan elaborate study of one or more family trees, beware of it. In allprobability, it is of very little use for dramatic purposes. But beforegiving it up, see whether the relationships, and other relations, cannotbe simplified. Complexities which at first seemed indispensable willoften prove to be mere useless encumbrances. 

In _Pillars of Society_ Ibsen goes as far as any playwright ought to goin postulating fine degrees of kinship--and perhaps a little further. Karsten Bernick has married into a family whose gradations put somethingof a strain on the apprehension and memory of an audience. We have tobear in mind that Mrs. Bernick has (_a_) a half-sister, Lona Hessel;(_b_) a full brother, Johan Tönnesen; (_c_) a cousin, Hilmar Tönnesen. Then Bernick has an unmarried sister, Martha; another relationship, however simple, to be borne in mind. And, finally, when we see Dina Dorfliving in Bernick's house, and know that Bernick has had an intriguewith her mother, we are apt to fall into the error of supposing her tobe Bernick's daughter. There is only one line which proves that this isnot so--a remark to the effect that, when Madam Dorf came to the town. Dina was already old enough to run about and play angels in the theatre. Any one who does not happen to hear or notice this remark, is almostcertain to misapprehend Dina's parentage. Taking one thing with another, then, the Bernick family group is rather more complex than is strictlydesirable. Ibsen's reasons for making Lona Hessel a half-sister insteadof a full sister of Mrs. Bernick are evident enough. He wanted her to bea considerably older woman, of a very different type of character; andit was necessary, in order to explain Karsten's desertion of Lona forBetty, that the latter should be an heiress, while the former waspenniless. These reasons are clear and apparently adequate; yet it maybe doubted whether the dramatist did not lose more than he gained byintroducing even this small degree of complexity. It was certainly notnecessary to explain the difference of age and character between Lonaand Betty; while as for the money, there would have been nothingimprobable in supposing that a wealthy uncle had marked his disapprovalof Lona's strong-mindedness by bequeathing all his property to heryounger sister. Again, there is no reason why Hilmar should not havebeen a brother of Johan and Betty;[5] in which case we should have hadthe simple family group of two brothers and two sisters, instead of thecomparatively complex relationship of a brother and sister, ahalf-sister and a cousin. 

These may seem very trivial considerations: but nothing is reallytrivial when it comes to be placed under the powerful lens of theatricalpresentation. Any given audience has only a certain measure of attentionat command, and to claim attention for inessentials is to diminish thestock available for essentials. In only one other play does Ibsenintroduce any complexity of relationship, and in that case it does notappear in the exposition, but is revealed at a critical moment towardsthe close. In _Little Eyolf_, Asta and Allmers are introduced to us atfirst as half-sister and half-brother; and only at the end of the secondact does it appear that Asta's mother (Allmers' stepmother) wasunfaithful to her husband, and that, Asta being the fruit of thisinfidelity, there is no blood kinship between her and Allmers. Thedanger of relying upon such complexities is shown by the fact that soacute a critic as M. Jules Lemaître, in writing of _Little Eyolf_, mistook the situation, and thought that Asta fled from Allmers becausehe was her brother, whereas in fact she fled because he was not. I hadthe honour of calling M. Lemaître's attention to this error, which hehandsomely acknowledged. 

Complexities of kinship are, of course, not the only complexities whichshould, so far as possible, be avoided. Every complexity of relation orof antecedent circumstance is in itself a weakness, which, if it cannotbe eliminated, must, so to speak, be lived down. No dramatic critic, Ithink, can have failed to notice that the good plays are those of whichthe story can be clearly indicated in ten lines; while it very oftentakes a column to give even a confused idea of the plot of a bad play. Here, then, is a preliminary test which may be commended to the would-beplaywright, in order to ascertain whether the subject he iscontemplating is or is not a good one: can he state the gist of it in ahundred words or so, like the "argument" of a Boccaccian novella? Thetest, of course, is far from being infallible; for a theme may err onthe side of over-simplicity or emptiness, no less than on the side ofover-complexity. But it is, at any rate, negatively useful: if theplaywright finds that he cannot make his story comprehensible without along explanation of an intricate network of facts, he may be pretty surethat he has got hold of a bad theme, or of one that stands sorely inneed of simplification. [6]

It is not sufficient, however, that a first act should fulfil Dumas'srequirement by placing the situation clearly before us: it ought also tocarry us some way towards the heart of the drama, or, at the very least, to point distinctly towards that quarter of the horizon where the cloudsare gathering up. In a three-act play this is evidently demanded by themost elementary principles of proportion. It would be absurd to makeone-third of the play merely introductory, and to compress the wholeaction into the remaining two-thirds. But even in a four- or five-actplay, the interest of the audience ought to be strongly enlisted, andits anticipation headed in a definite direction, before the curtainfalls for the first time. When we find a dramatist of repute neglectingthis principle, we may suspect some reason with which art has noconcern. Several of Sardou's social dramas begin with two acts of moreor less smart and entertaining satire or caricature, and only at the endof the second or beginning of the third act (out of five) does the dramaproper set in. What was the reason of this? Simply that under the systemof royalties prevalent in France, it was greatly to the author'sinterest that his play should fill the whole evening. Sardou needed nomore than three acts for the development of his drama; to have spread itout thinner would have been to weaken and injure it; wherefore hepreferred to occupy an hour or so with clever dramatic journalism, rather than share the evening, and the fees, with another dramatist. So, at least, I have heard his practice explained; perhaps his own accountof the matter may have been that he wanted to paint a broad socialpicture to serve as a background for his action. 

The question how far an audience ought to be carried towards the heartof a dramatic action in the course of the first act is always andinevitably one of proportion. It is clear that too much ought not to betold, so as to leave the remaining acts meagre and spun-out; nor shouldany one scene be so intense in its interest as to outshine allsubsequent scenes, and give to the rest of the play an effect ofanti-climax. If the strange and fascinating creations of Ibsen's lastyears were to be judged by ordinary dramaturgic canons, we should haveto admit that in _Little Eyolf_ he was guilty of the latter fault, sincein point of sheer "strength, " in the common acceptation of the word, thesituation at the end of the first act could scarcely be outdone, in thatplay or any other. The beginner, however, is far more likely to put toolittle than too much into his first act: he is more likely to leave ourinterest insufficiently stimulated than to carry us too far in thedevelopment of his theme. My own feeling is that, as a general rule, what Freytag calls the _erregende Moment_ ought by all means to fallwithin the first act. What is the _erregende Moment_? One is inclined torender it "the firing of the fuse. " In legal parlance, it might beinterpreted as the joining of issue. It means the point at which thedrama, hitherto latent, plainly declares itself. It means thegermination of the crisis, the appearance on the horizon of the cloud nobigger than a man's hand. I suggest, then, that this _erregende Moment_ought always to come within the first act--if it is to come at all Thereare plays, as we have seen, which depict life on so even a plane that itis impossible to say at any given point, "Here the drama sets in, " or"The interest is heightened there. "

_Pillars of Society_ is, in a sense, Ibsen's prentice-work in the formof drama which he afterwards perfected; wherefore it affords us numerousillustrations of the problems we have to consider. Does he, or does henot, give us in the first act sufficient insight into his story? I aminclined to answer the question in the negative. The first act puts usin possession of the current version of the Bernick-Tönnesen familyhistory, but it gives us no clear indication that this version is anelaborate tissue of falsehoods. It is true that Bernick's evidentuneasiness and embarrassment at the mere idea of the reappearance ofLona and Johan may lead us to suspect that all is not as it seems; butsimple annoyance at the inopportune arrival of the black sheep of thefamily might be sufficient to account for this. To all intents andpurposes, we are completely in the dark as to the course the drama isabout to take; and when, at the end of the first act, Lona Hesselmarches in and flutters the social dovecote, we do not know in whatlight to regard her, or why we are supposed to sympathize with her. Thefact that she is eccentric, and that she talks of "letting in freshair, " combines with our previous knowledge of the author's idiosyncrasyto assure us that she is his heroine; but so far as the evidenceactually before us goes, we have no means of forming even the vaguestprovisional judgment as to her true character. This is almost certainlya mistake in art. It is useless to urge that sympathy and antipathy areprimitive emotions, and that we ought to be able to regard a characterobjectively, rating it as true or false, not as attractive or repellent. The answer to this is twofold. Firstly, the theatre has never been, andnever will be, a moral dissecting room, nor has the theatrical audienceanything in common with a class of students dispassionately following aprofessor's demonstration of cold scientific facts. Secondly, in theparticular case in point, the dramatist makes a manifest appeal to oursympathies. There can be no doubt that we are intended to take Lona'spart, as against the representatives of propriety and conventionassembled at the sewing-bee; but we have been vouchsafed no rationalreason for so doing. In other words, the author has not taken us farenough into his action to enable us to grasp the true import andsignificance of the situation. He relies for his effect either on thegeneral principle that an eccentric character must be sympathetic, or onthe knowledge possessed by those who have already seen or read the restof the play. Either form of reliance is clearly inartistic. The formerappeals to irrational prejudice; the latter ignores what we shallpresently find to be a fundamental principle of the playwright'sart--namely, that, with certain doubtful exceptions in the case ofhistorical themes, he must never assume previous knowledge either ofplot or character on the part of his public, but must always have in hismind's eye a first-night audience, which knows nothing but what hechooses to tell it. 

My criticism of the first act of _Pillars of Society_ may be summed upin saying that the author has omitted to place in it the _erregendeMoment_. The issue is not joined, the true substance of the drama is notclear to us, until, in the second act, Bernick makes sure there are nolisteners, and then holds out both hands to Johan, saying: "Johan, nowwe are alone; now you must give me leave to thank you, " and so forth. Why should not this scene have occurred in the first act? Materially, there is no reason whatever. It would need only the change of a fewwords to lift the scene bodily out of the second act and transfer it tothe first. Why did Ibsen not do so? His reason is not hard to divine; hewished to concentrate into two great scenes, with scarcely a moment'sinterval between them, the revelation of Bernick's treachery, first toJohan, second to Lona. He gained his point: the sledge-hammer effect ofthese two scenes is undeniable. But it remains a question whether he didnot make a disproportionate sacrifice; whether he did not empty hisfirst act in order to overfill his second. I do not say he did: I merelypropound the question for the student's consideration. One thing we mustrecognize in dramatic art as in all other human affairs; namely, thatperfection, if not unattainable, is extremely rare. We have often tomake a deliberate sacrifice at one point in order to gain some greateradvantage at another; to incur imperfection here that we may achieveperfection there. It is no disparagement to the great masters to admitthat they frequently show us rather what to avoid than what to do. Negative instruction, indeed, is in its essence more desirable thanpositive. The latter tends to make us mere imitators, whereas theformer, in saving us from dangers, leaves our originality unimpaired. 

It is curious to note that, in another play, Ibsen did actually transferthe _erregende Moment_, the joining of issue, from the second act to thefirst. In his early draft of _Rosmersholm_, the great scene in whichRosmer confesses to Kroll his change of views did not occur until thesecond act. There can be no doubt that the balance and proportion of theplay gained enormously by the transference. 

After all, however, the essential question is not how much or how littleis conveyed to us in the first act, but whether our interest isthoroughly aroused, and, what is of equal importance, skilfully carriedforward. Before going more at large into this very important detail ofthe playwright's craft, it may be well to say something of the nature ofdramatic interest in general. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: There are several cases in Greek drama in which a heroleaves the stage to fight a battle and returns victorious in a fewminutes. See, for example, the _Supplices_ of Euripides. ]

[Footnote 2: So far was Shakespeare from ignoring the act-division thatit is a question whether his art did not sometimes suffer from thesupposed necessity of letting a fourth act intervene between theculmination in the third act and the catastrophe in the fifth. ]

[Footnote 3: I think it may be said that the majority of modern seriousplays are in four acts. It is a favourite number with Sir Arthur Pinero, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. Clyde Fitch, and Mr. Alfred Sutro. ]

[Footnote 4: This must not be taken to mean that in no case is a changeof scene within the act advisable. The point to be considered is whetherthe author does or does not want to give the audience time forreflection--time to return to the real world--between two episodes. Ifit is of great importance that they should not do so, then a rapidchange of scene may be the less of two evils. In this case the lightsshould be kept lowered in order to show that no interact is intended;but the fashion of changing the scene on a pitch-dark stage, withoutdropping the curtain, is much to be deprecated. If the revolving stageshould ever become a common institution in English-speaking countries, dramatists would doubtless be more tempted than they are at present tochange their scenes within the act; but I doubt whether the tendencywould be wholly advantageous. No absolute rule, however, can be laiddown, and it may well be maintained that a true dramatic artist couldonly profit by the greater flexibility of his medium. ]

[Footnote 5: He was, in the first draft; and Lona Hessel was only adistant relative of Bernick's. ]

[Footnote 6: The Greeks, who knew most things, knew the value ofmanageable dimensions and simple structure in a work of art, and had aword to express that combination of qualities--the word _eusynopton_. ]

_CHAPTER IX_

"CURIOSITY" AND "INTEREST"

The paradox of dramatic theory is this: while our aim is, of course, towrite plays which shall achieve immortality, or shall at any rate becomehighly popular, and consequently familiar in advance to a considerableproportion of any given audience, we are all the time studying how toawaken and to sustain that interest, or, more precisely, that curiosity, which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time, without any previous knowledge of its action. Under modern conditionsespecially, the spectators who come to the theatre with their minds anabsolute blank as to what is awaiting them, are comparatively few; fornewspaper criticism and society gossip very soon bruit abroad a generalidea of the plot of any play which attains a reasonable measure ofsuccess. Why, then, should we assume, in the ideal spectator to whom weaddress ourselves, a state of mind which, we hope and trust, will not bethe state of mind of the majority of actual spectators?

To this question there are several answers. The first and most obviousis that to one audience, at any rate, every play must be absolutely new, and that it is this first-night audience which in great measuredetermines its success or failure. Many plays have survived afirst-night failure, and still more have gone off in a rapid declineafter a first-night success. But these caprices of fortune are not to becounted on. The only prudent course is for the dramatist to direct allhis thought and care towards conciliating or dominating an audience towhich his theme is entirely unknown, [1] and so coming triumphant throughhis first-night ordeal. This principle is subject to a certainqualification in the case of historic and legendary themes. In treatingsuch subjects, the dramatist is not relieved of the necessity ofdeveloping his story clearly and interestingly, but has, on thecontrary, an additional charge imposed upon him--that of not flagrantlydefying or disappointing popular knowledge or prejudice. Charles I mustnot die in a green old age, Oliver Cromwell must not display the mannersand graces of Sir Charles Grandison, Charles II must not be representedas a model of domestic virtue. Historians may indict a hero or whitewasha villain at their leisure; but to the dramatist a hero must be (more orless) a hero, a villain (more or less) a villain, if accepted traditionso decrees it. [2] Thus popular knowledge can scarcely be said to lightena dramatist's task, but rather to impose a new limitation upon him. Insome cases, however, he can rely on a general knowledge of the historicbackground of a given period, which may save him some exposition. AnEnglish audience, for instance, does not require to be told what was thedifference between Cavaliers and Roundheads; nor does any audience, Iimagine, look for a historical disquisition on the Reign of Terror. Thedramatist has only to bring on some ruffianly characters in Phrygiancaps, who address each other as "Citizen" and "Citizeness, " and at oncethe imagination of the audience will supply the roll of the tumbrels andthe silhouette of the guillotine in the background. 

To return to the general question: not only must the dramatist reckonwith one all-important audience which is totally ignorant of the storyhe has to tell; he must also bear in mind that it is very easy toexaggerate the proportion of any given audience which will know his plotin advance, even when his play has been performed a thousand times. There are inexhaustible possibilities of ignorance in the theatricalpublic. A story is told, on pretty good authority, of a late eminentstatesman who visited the Lyceum one night when Sir Henry Irving wasappearing as Hamlet. After the third act he went to the actor'sdressing-room, expressed great regret that duty called him back toWestminster, and begged Sir Henry to tell him how the play ended, as ithad interested him greatly. [3] One of our most eminent novelists hasassured me that he never saw or read _Macbeth_ until he was present at(I think) Mr. Forbes Robertson's revival of the play, he being thennearer fifty than forty. These, no doubt, are "freak" instances; but inany given audience, even at the most hackneyed classical plays, therewill be a certain percentage of children (who contribute as much astheir elders to the general temper of an audience), and also apercentage of adult ignoramuses. And if this be so in the case of playswhich have held the stage for generations, are studied in schools, andare every day cited as matters of common knowledge, how much morecertain may we be that even the most popular modern play will have toappeal night after night to a considerable number of people who have noprevious acquaintance with either its story or its characters! Theplaywright may absolutely count on having to make such an appeal; but hemust remember at the same time that he can by no means count on keepingany individual effect, more especially any notable trick or device, asecret from the generality of his audience. Mr. J. M. Barrie (to take arecent instance) sedulously concealed, throughout the greater part of_Little Mary_, what was meant by that ever-recurring expression, andprobably relied to some extent on an effect of amused surprise when thedisclosure was made. On the first night, the effect came off happilyenough; but on subsequent nights, there would rarely be a score ofpeople in the house who did not know the secret. The great majoritymight know nothing else about the play, but that they knew. Similarly, in the case of any mechanical _truc_, as the French call it, or feat oftheatrical sleight-of-hand, it is futile to trust to its taking unawaresany audience after the first. Nine-tenths of all subsequent audiencesare sure to be on the look-out for it, and to know, or think they know, "how it's done. "[4] These are the things which theatrical gossip, printed and oral, most industriously disseminates. The fine details of aplot are much less easily conveyed and less likely to be remembered. 

To sum up this branch of the argument: however oft-repeated andmuch-discussed a play may be, the playwright must assume that in everyaudience there will be an appreciable number of persons who knowpractically nothing about it, and whose enjoyment will depend, like thatof the first-night audience, on the skill with which he develops hisstory. On the other hand, he can never rely on taking an audience bysurprise at any particular point. The class of effect which depends onsurprise is precisely the class of effect which is certain to bediscounted. [5]

We come now to a third reason why a playwright is bound to assume thatthe audience to which he addresses himself has no previous knowledge ofhis fable. It is simply that no other assumption has, or can have, anylogical basis. If the audience is not to be conceived as ignorant, howmuch is it to be assumed to know? There is clearly no possible answer tothis question, except a purely arbitrary one, having no relation to thefacts. In any audience after the first, there will doubtless be ahundred degrees of knowledge and of ignorance. Many people will knownothing at all about the play; some people will have seen or read ityesterday, and will thus know all there is to know; while between theseextremes there will be every variety of clearness or vagueness ofknowledge. Some people will have read and remembered a detailednewspaper notice; others will have read the same notice and forgottenalmost all of it. Some will have heard a correct and vivid account ofthe play, others a vague and misleading summary. It would be absolutelyimpossible to enumerate all the degrees of previous knowledge which arepretty certain to be represented in an average audience; and to whichdegree of knowledge is the playwright to address himself? If he is tohave any firm ground under his feet, he must clearly adopt the onlylogical course, and address himself to a spectator assumed to have noprevious knowledge whatever. To proceed on any other assumption wouldnot only be to ignore the all-powerful first-night audience, but toplunge into a veritable morass of inconsistencies, dubieties andslovenlinesses. 

These considerations, however, have not yet taken us to the heart of thematter. We have seen that the dramatist has no rational course open tohim but to assume complete ignorance in his audience; but we have alsoseen that, as a matter of fact, only one audience will be entirely inthis condition, and that, the more successful the play is, the morewidely will subsequent audiences tend to depart from it. Does it notfollow that interest of plot, interest of curiosity as to coming events, is at best an evanescent factor in a play's attractiveness--of a certainimportance, no doubt, on the first night, but less and less efficientthe longer the play holds the stage?

In a sense, this is undoubtedly true. We see every day that a merestory-play--a play which appeals to us solely by reason of the adroitstimulation and satisfaction of curiosity--very rapidly exhausts itssuccess. No one cares to see it a second time; and spectators who happento have read the plot in advance, find its attraction discounted even ona first hearing. But if we jump to the conclusion that the skilfulmarshalling and development of the story is an unimportant detail, whichmatters little when once the first-night ordeal is past, we shall govery far astray. Experience shows us that dramatic _interest_ isentirely distinct from mere _curiosity_, and survives when curiosity isdead. Though a skilfully-told story is not of itself enough to securelong life for a play, it materially and permanently enhances theattractions of a play which has other and higher claims to longevity. Character, poetry, philosophy, atmosphere, are all very good in theirway; but they all show to greater advantage by aid of a well-orderedfable. In a picture, I take it, drawing is not everything; but drawingwill always count for much. 

This separation of interest from curiosity is partly explicable by onevery simple reflection. However well we may know a play beforehand, weseldom know it by heart or nearly by heart; so that, though we mayanticipate a development in general outline, we do not clearly foreseethe ordering of its details, which, therefore, may give us almost thesame sort of pleasure that it gave us when the story was new to us. Mostplaygoers will, I think, bear me out in saying that we constantly find agreat scene or act to be in reality richer in invention and moreingenious in arrangement than we remembered it to be. 

We come, now, to another point that must not be overlooked. It needs nosubtle introspection to assure us that we, the audience, do our ownlittle bit of acting, and instinctively place ourselves at the point ofview of a spectator before whose eyes the drama is unrolling itself forthe first time. If the play has any richness of texture, we have manysensations that he cannot have. We are conscious of ironies andsubtleties which necessarily escape him, or which he can but dimlydivine. But in regard to the actual development of the story, we imagineourselves back into his condition of ignorance, with this difference, that we can more fully appreciate the dramatist's skill, and moreclearly resent his clumsiness or slovenliness. Our sensations, in short, are not simply conditioned by our knowledge or ignorance of what is tocome. The mood of dramatic receptivity is a complex one. Weinstinctively and without any effort remember that the dramatist isbound by the rules of the game, or, in other words, by the inherentconditions of his craft, to unfold his tale before an audience to whichit is unknown; and it is with implicit reference to these conditionsthat we enjoy and appreciate his skill. Even the most unsophisticatedaudience realizes in some measure that the playwright is an artistpresenting a picture of life under such-and-such assumptions andlimitations, and appraises his skill by its own vague and instinctivestandards. As our culture increases, we more and more consistently adoptthis attitude, and take pleasure in a playwright's marshalling ofmaterial in proportion to its absolute skill, even if that skill nolonger produces its direct and pristine effect upon us. In many cases, indeed, our pleasure consists of a delicate blending of surprise withrealized anticipation. We foresaw, and are pleased to recognize, the artof the whole achievement, while details which had grown dim to us giveus each its little thrill of fresh admiration. Regarded in this aspect, a great play is like a great piece of music: we can hear it again andagain with ever-new realization of its subtle beauties, its complexharmonies, and with unfailing interest in the merits and demerits ofeach particular rendering. 

But we must look deeper than this if we would fully understand the truenature of dramatic interest. The last paragraph has brought us to theverge of the inmost secret, but we have yet to take the final step. Wehave yet to realize that, in truly great drama, the foreknowledgepossessed by the audience is not a disadvantage with certain incidentalmitigations and compensations, but is the source of the highest pleasurewhich the theatre is capable of affording us. In order to illustrate mymeaning, I propose to analyse a particular scene, not, certainly, amongthe loftiest in dramatic literature, but particularly suited to mypurpose, inasmuch as it is familiar to every one, and at the same timefull of the essential qualities of drama. I mean the Screen Scene in_The School for Scandal_. 

In her "English Men of Letters" volume on Sheridan, Mrs. Oliphantdiscusses this scene. Speaking in particular of the moment at which thescreen is overturned, revealing Lady Teazle behind it, she says--

 "It would no doubt have been higher art could the dramatist have deceived his audience as well as the personages of the play, and made us also parties in the surprise of the discovery. "

There could scarcely be a completer reversal of the truth than this"hopeless comment, " as Professor Brander Matthews has justly called it. The whole effect of the long and highly-elaborated scene depends uponour knowledge that Lady Teazle is behind the screen. Had the audienceeither not known that there was anybody there, or supposed it to be the"little French milliner, " where would have been the breathless interestwhich has held us through a whole series of preceding scenes? When SirPeter reveals to Joseph his generous intentions towards his wife, thepoint lies in the fact that Lady Teazle overhears; and this is doublythe case when he alludes to Joseph as a suitor for the hand of Maria. So, too, with the following scene between Joseph and Charles; in itselfit would be flat enough; the fact that Sir Peter is listening lends it acertain piquancy; but this is ten times multiplied by the fact that LadyTeazle, too, hears all that passes. When Joseph is called from the roomby the arrival of the pretended Old Stanley, there would be no interestin his embarrassment if we believed the person behind the screen to bethe French milliner. And when Sir Peter yields to the temptation to letCharles into the secret of his brother's frailty, and we feel everymoment more certain that the screen will be overthrown, where would bethe excitement, the tension, if we did not know who was behind it? Thereal drama, in fact, passes behind the screen. It lies in the terror, humiliation, and disillusionment which we know to be coursing each otherthrough Lady Teazle's soul. And all this Mrs. Oliphant would havesacrificed for a single moment of crude surprise!

Now let us hear Professor Matthews's analysis of the effect of thescene. He says:

"The playgoer's interest is really not so much as to what is to happenas the way in which this event is going to affect the charactersinvolved. He thinks it likely enough that Sir Peter will discover thatLady Teazle is paying a visit to Joseph Surface; but what he is reallyanxious to learn is the way the husband will take it. What will LadyTeazle have to say when she is discovered where she has no business tobe? How will Sir Peter receive her excuses? What will the effect be onthe future conduct of both husband and wife? These are the questionswhich the spectators are eager to have answered. "

This is an admirable exposition of the frame of mind of the Drury Laneaudience of May 8, 1777. Who first saw the screen overturned. But in thethousands of audiences who have since witnessed the play, how manyindividuals, on an average, had any doubt as to what Lady Teazle wouldhave to say, and how Sir Peter would receive her excuses? It wouldprobably be safe to guess that, for a century past, two-thirds of everyaudience have clearly foreknown the outcome of the situation. ProfessorMatthews himself has edited Sheridan's plays, and probably knows _TheSchool for Scandal_ almost by heart; yet we may be pretty sure that anyreasonably good performance of the Screen Scene will to-day give himpleasure not so very much inferior to that which he felt the first timehe saw it. In this pleasure, it is manifest that mere curiosity as tothe immediate and subsequent conduct of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle canhave no part. There is absolutely no question which Professor Matthews, or any playgoer who shares his point of view, is "eager to haveanswered. "

Assuming, then, that we are all familiar with the Screen Scene, andassuming that we, nevertheless, take pleasure in seeing it reasonablywell acted, [6] let us try to discover of what elements that pleasure iscomposed. It is, no doubt, somewhat complex. For one thing, we havepleasure in meeting old friends. Sir Peter, Lady Teazle, Charles, evenJoseph, are agreeable creatures who have all sorts of pleasantassociations for us. Again, we love to encounter not only familiarcharacters but familiar jokes. Like Goldsmith's Diggory, we can neverhelp laughing at the story of "ould Grouse in the gunroom. " The bestorder of dramatic wit does not become stale, but rather grows upon us. We relish it at least as much at the tenth repetition as at the first. But while these considerations may partly account for the pleasure wetake in seeing the play as a whole, they do not explain why the ScreenScene in particular should interest and excite us. Another source ofpleasure, as before indicated, may be renewed recognition of theingenuity with which the scene is pieced together. However familiar wemay be with it, short of actually knowing it by heart, we do not recallthe details of its dovetailing, and it is a delight to realize afreshthe neatness of the manipulation by which the tension is heightened fromspeech to speech and from incident to incident. If it be objected thatthis is a pleasure which the critic alone is capable of experiencing, Iventure to disagree. The most unsophisticated playgoer feels the effectof neat workmanship, though he may not be able to put his satisfactioninto words. It is evident, however, that the mere intellectualrecognition of fine workmanship is not sufficient to account for theemotions with which we witness the Screen Scene. A similar, though, ofcourse, not quite identical, effect is produced by scenes of the utmostsimplicity, in which there is no room for delicacy of dovetailing orneatness of manipulation. 

Where, then, are we to seek for the fundamental constituent in dramaticinterest, as distinct from mere curiosity? Perhaps Mrs. Oliphant'sglaring error may put us on the track of the truth. Mrs. Oliphantthought that Sheridan would have shown higher art had he kept theaudience, as well as Sir Peter and Charles, ignorant of Lady Teazle'spresence behind the screen. But this, as we saw, is precisely thereverse of the truth: the whole interest of the scene arises from ourknowledge of Lady Teazle's presence. Had Sheridan fallen into Mrs. Oliphant's mistake, the little shock of surprise which the first-nightaudience would have felt when the screen was thrown down would have beenno compensation at all for the comparative tameness and pointlessness ofthe preceding passages. Thus we see that the greater part of ourpleasure arises precisely from the fact that we know what Sir Peter andCharles do not know, or, in other words, that we have a clear vision ofall the circumstances, relations, and implications of a certainconjuncture of affairs, in which two, at least, of the persons concernedare ignorantly and blindly moving towards issues of which they do notdream. We are, in fact, in the position of superior intelligencescontemplating, with miraculous clairvoyance, the stumblings andtumblings of poor blind mortals straying through the labyrinth of life. Our seat in the theatre is like a throne on the Epicurean Olympus, whence we can view with perfect intelligence, but without participationor responsibility, the intricate reactions of human destiny. And thissense of superiority does not pall upon us. When Othello comes on thescene, radiant and confident in Desdemona's love, our knowledge of thefate awaiting him makes him a hundred times more interesting than couldany mere curiosity as to what was about to happen. It is our previsionof Nora's exit at the end of the last act that lends its dramaticpoignancy to her entrance at the beginning of the first. 

There is nothing absolutely new in this theory. [7] "The irony of fate"has long been recognized as one of the main elements of dramatic effect. It has been especially dwelt upon in relation to Greek tragedy, of whichthe themes were all known in advance even to "first-day" audiences. Weshould take but little interest in seeing the purple carpet spread forAgamemnon's triumphal entry into his ancestral halls, if it were not forour foreknowledge of the net and the axe prepared for him. But, familiaras is this principle, I am not aware that it has hitherto been extended, as I suggest that it should be, to cover the whole field of dramaticinterest. I suggest that the theorists have hitherto dwelt far too muchon curiosity[8]--which may be defined as the interest of ignorance--andfar too little on the feeling of superiority, of clairvoyance, withwhich we contemplate a foreknown action, whether of a comic or of atragic cast. Of course the action must be, essentially if not in everydetail, true to nature. We can derive no sense of superiority from ourforeknowledge of an arbitrary or preposterous action; and that, I takeit, is the reason why a good many plays have an initial success ofcuriosity, but cease to attract when their plot becomes familiar. Again, we take no pleasure in foreknowing the fate of wholly uninterestingpeople; which is as much as to say that character is indispensable toenduring interest in drama. With these provisos, I suggest areconstruction of our theories of dramatic interest, in which merefirst-night curiosity shall be relegated to the subordinate place whichby right belongs to it. 

Nevertheless, we must come back to the point that there is always theordeal of the first night to be faced, and that the plays arecomparatively few which have lived-down a bad first-night. It is truethat specifically first-night merit is a trivial matter compared withwhat may be called thousandth-performance merit; but it is equally truethat there is no inconsistency between the two orders of merit, and thata play will never be less esteemed on its thousandth performance forhaving achieved a conspicuous first-night success. The practical lessonwhich seems to emerge from these considerations is that a wisetheatrical policy would seek to diminish the all-importance of thefirst-night, and to give a play a greater chance of recovery than it hasunder present conditions, from the depressing effect of an inauspiciousproduction. This is the more desirable as its initial misadventure mayvery likely be due to external and fortuitous circumstances, whollyunconnected with its inherent qualities. 

At the same time, we are bound to recognize that, from the very natureof the case, our present inquiry must be far more concerned withfirst-night than with thousandth-performance merit. Craftsmanship can, within limits, be acquired, genius cannot; and it is craftsmanship thatpilots us through the perils of the first performance, genius thatcarries us on to the apotheosis of the thousandth. Therefore, ourprimary concern must be with the arousing and sustaining of curiosity, though we should never forget that it is only a means to the ultimateenlistment of the higher and more abiding forms of interest. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: The view that the dramatist has only to think of pleasinghimself is elsewhere dealt with. ]

[Footnote 2: Two dramatists who have read these pages in proof, exclaimat this passage. The one says, "No, no!" the other asks, "Why?" I canonly reiterate that, where there exists a strong and generally acceptedtradition, the dramatist not only runs counter to it at his peril, butgoes outside the true domain of his art in so doing. New truth, inhistory, must be established either by new documents, or by a carefuland detailed re-interpretation of old documents; but the stage is notthe place either for the production of documents or for historicalexegesis. It is needless to say that where the popular mind is unbiased, the dramatist's hands are free. For instance, I presume that one might, in England, take any view one pleased of the character of Mary. Queen ofScots; but a highly unfavourable view would scarcely be accepted byScottish audiences. Similarly, it would be both dangerous andunprofitable to present on the English stage any very damaging "scandalabout Queen Elizabeth. " Historical criticism, I understand, does notaccept the view that Robespierre was mainly responsible for the Reign ofTerror, and that his death betokened a general revolt against hissanguinary tyranny; but it would be very hard for any dramatist tosecure general acceptance for a more accurate reading of his characterand function. Some further remarks on this subject will be found inChapter XIII. ]

[Footnote 3: A malicious anecdote to a similar effect was current in theearly days of Sir Henry Irving's career. It was said that at Bristol onenight, when Mr. Irving, as Hamlet, "took his call" after the first act, a man turned to his neighbour in the pit and said, "Can you tell me, sir, does that young man appear much in this play?" His neighbourinformed him that Hamlet was rather largely concerned in the action, whereupon the inquirer remarked, "Oh! Then I'm off!"]

[Footnote 4: If it be well done, it may remain highly effective in spiteof being discounted by previous knowledge. For instance, the clock-trickin _Raffles_ was none the less amusing because every one was on thelook-out for it. ]

[Footnote 5: The question whether it is ever politic for a playwright tokeep a secret from his audience is discussed elsewhere. What I have herein mind is not an ordinary secret, but a more or less tricky effect ofsurprise. ]

[Footnote 6: The pleasure received from exceptionally good acting is, ofcourse, a different matter. I assume that the acting is merely competentenough to pass muster without irritating us, and so distracting ourattention. ]

[Footnote 7: I myself expressed it in slightly different terms nearlyten years ago. "Curiosity, " I said, "is the accidental relish of asingle night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatrelies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters in the drama, theaudience 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 attheir stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplacedexultations, their groundless panics. To keep a secret from us is toreduce 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 gameof blind-man's-buff; but the theatre is in its essence a place where weare privileged to take off the bandage we wear in daily life, and tocontemplate, with laughter or with tears, the blindfold gambols of ourneighbours. "]

[Footnote 8: Here an acute critic writes: "On the whole I agree; but Ido think there is dramatic interest to be had out of curiosity, throughthe identification, so to speak, of the audience with the discoveringpersons on the stage. It is an interest of sympathy, not to be despised, rather than an interest of actual curiosity. "]

_CHAPTER X_

FORESHADOWING, NOT FORESTALLING

We return now to the point at which the foregoing disquisition--it isnot a digression--became necessary. We had arrived at the generalprinciple that the playwright's chief aim in his first act ought to beto arouse and carry forward the interest of the audience. This may seema tolerably obvious statement; but it is worth while to examine a littlemore closely into its implications. 

As to arousing the interest of the audience, it is clear that verylittle specific advice can be given. One can only say, "Find aninteresting theme, state its preliminaries clearly and crisply, and letissue be joined without too much delay. " There can be no rules forfinding an interesting theme, any more than for catching the Blue Bird. At a later stage we may perhaps attempt a summary enumeration of themeswhich are not interesting, which have exhausted any interest they everpossessed, and "repay careful avoidance. " But such an enumeration wouldbe out of place here, where we are studying principles of form apartfrom details of matter. 

The arousing of interest, however, is one thing, the carrying-forward ofinterest is another; and on the latter point there are one or two thingsthat may profitably be said. Each act, as we have seen, should consistof, or at all events contain, a subordinate crisis, contributory to themain crisis of the play: and the art of act-construction lies in givingto each act an individuality and interest of its own, without sorounding it off as to obscure even for a moment its subsidiary, and, inthe case of the first act, its introductory, relation to the whole. Thisis a point which many dramatists ignore or undervalue. Very often, whenthe curtain falls on a first or a second act, one says, "This is afairly good act in itself; but whither does it lead? what is to come ofit all?" It awakens no definite anticipation, and for two pins one wouldtake up one's hat and go home. The author has neglected the art ofcarrying-forward the interest. 

It is curious to note that in the most unsophisticated forms ofmelodrama this art is deliberately ignored. In plays of the type of _TheWorst Woman in London_, it appears to be an absolute canon of art thatevery act must have a "happy ending"--that the curtain must always fallon the hero, or, preferably, the comic man, in an attitude of triumph, while the villain and villainess cower before him in baffled impotence. We have perfect faith, of course, that the villain will come up smilingin the next act, and proceed with his nefarious practices; but, for themoment, virtue has it all its own way. This, however, is a very artlessformula which has somehow developed of recent years; and it is doubtfulwhether even the audiences to which these plays appeal would not inreality prefer something a little less inept in the matter ofconstruction. As soon as we get above this level, at all events, thefostering of anticipation becomes a matter of the first importance. Theproblem is, not to cut short the spectator's interest, or to leave itfluttering at a loose end, but to provide it either with aclearly-foreseen point in the next act towards which it can reachonwards, or with a definite enigma, the solution of which is impatientlyawaited. In general terms, a bridge should be provided between one actand another, along which the spectator's mind cannot but travel witheager anticipation. And this is particularly important, or particularlyapt to be neglected, at the end of the first act. At a later point, ifthe interest does not naturally and inevitably carry itself forward, thecase is hopeless indeed. 

To illustrate what is meant by the carrying-forward of interest, let mecite one or two instances in which it is achieved with conspicuoussuccess. 

In Oscar Wilde's first modern comedy, _Lady Windermere's Fan_, theheroine, Lady Windermere, has learnt that her husband has of late beenseen to call very frequently at the house of a certain Mrs. Erlynne, whom nobody knows. Her suspicions thus aroused, she searches herhusband's desk, discovers a private and locked bank-book, cuts it open, and finds that one large cheque after another has been drawn in favourof the lady in question. At this inopportune moment, Lord Windermereappears with a request that Mrs. Erlynne shall be invited to theirreception that evening. Lady Windermere indignantly refuses, her husbandinsists, and, finally, with his own hand, fills in an invitation-cardand sends it by messenger to Mrs. Erlynne. Here some playwrights mighthave been content to finish the act. It is sufficiently evident thatLady Windermere will not submit to the apparent insult, and thatsomething exciting may be looked for at the reception in the followingact. But Oscar Wilde was not content with this vague expectancy. Hefirst defined it, and then he underlined the definition, in a perfectlynatural and yet ingenious and skilful way. The day happens to be LadyWindermere's birthday, and at the beginning of the act her husband hasgiven her a beautiful ostrich-feather fan. When he sends off theinvitation, she turns upon him and says, "If that woman crosses mythreshold, I shall strike her across the face with this fan. " Here, again, many a dramatist might be content to bring down his curtain. Theannouncement of Lady Windermere's resolve carries forward the interestquite clearly enough for all practical purposes. But even this did notsatisfy Wilde. He imagined a refinement, simple, probable, and yetimmensely effective, which put an extraordinarily keen edge upon theexpectancy of the audience. He made Lady Windermere ring for her butler, and say: "Parker, be sure you pronounce the names of the guests verydistinctly to-night. Sometimes you speak so fast that I miss them. I amparticularly anxious to hear the names quite clearly, so as to make nomistake. " I well remember the effect which this little touch produced onthe first night. The situation was, in itself, open to grave objections. There is no plausible excuse for Lord Windermere's obstinacy in forcingMrs. Erlynne upon his wife, and risking a violent scandal in order topostpone an explanation which he must know to be ultimately inevitable. Though one had not as yet learnt the precise facts of the case, one feltpretty confident that his lordship's conduct would scarcely justifyitself. But interest is largely independent of critical judgment, and, for my own part, I can aver that, when the curtain fell on the firstact, a five-pound note would not have bribed me to leave the theatrewithout assisting at Lady Windermere's reception in the second act. Thatis the frame of mind which the author should try to beget in hisaudience; and Oscar Wilde, then almost a novice, had, in this one littlepassage between Lady Windermere and the butler, shown himself a masterof the art of dramatic story-telling. The dramatist has higher functionsthan mere story-telling; but this is fundamental, and the true artist isthe last to despise it. [1]

For another example of a first act brought to what one may call ajudiciously tantalizing conclusion, I turn to Mr. R. C. Carton's comedy_Wheels within Wheels. _ Lord Eric Chantrell has just returned fromabroad after many years' absence. He drives straight to the bachelorflat of his old chum, Egerton Vartrey. At the flat he finds only hisfriend's valet, Vartrey himself has been summoned to Scotland that veryevening, and the valet is on the point of following him. He knows, however, that his master would wish his old friend to make himself athome in the flat; so he presently goes off, leaving the newcomerinstalled for the night. Lord Eric goes to the bedroom to change hisclothes; and, the stage being thus left vacant, we hear a latch-keyturning in the outer door. A lady in evening dress enters, goes up tothe bureau at the back of the stage, and calmly proceeds to break itopen and ransack it. While she is thus burglariously employed, Lord Ericenters, and cannot refrain from a slight expression of surprise. Thelady takes the situation with humorous calmness, they fall intoconversation, and it is manifest that at every word Lord Eric is moreand more fascinated by the fair house-breaker. She learns who he is, andevidently knows all about him; but she is careful to give him no inklingof her own identity. At last she takes her leave, and he expresses suchan eager hope of being allowed to renew their acquaintance, that itamounts to a declaration of a peculiar interest in her. Thereupon sheaddresses him to this effect: "Has it occurred to you to wonder how Igot into your friend's rooms? I will show you how"--and, producing alatch-key, she holds it up, with all its questionable implications, before his eyes. Then she lays it on the table, says: "I leave you todraw your own conclusions" and departs. A better opening for a lightsocial comedy could scarcely be devised. We have no difficulty inguessing that the lady, who is not quite young, and has clearly a strongsense of humour, is freakishly turning appearances against herself, byway of throwing a dash of cold water on Lord Eric's sudden flame ofdevotion. But we long for a clear explanation of the whole quaint littleepisode; and here, again, no reasonable offer would tempt us to leavethe theatre before our curiosity is satisfied. The remainder of theplay, though amusing, is unfortunately not up to the level of the firstact; else _Wheels within Wheels_ would be a little classic oflight comedy. 

For a third example of interest carefully carried forward, I turn to arecent Norwegian play, _The Idyll_, by Peter Egge. At the very rise ofthe curtain, we find Inga Gar, wife of an author and journalist, Dr. Gar, reading, with evident tokens of annoyance and distaste, a new bookof poems by one Rolfe Ringve. Before her marriage, Inga was an actressof no great talent; Ringve made himself conspicuous by praising her farbeyond her merits; and when, at last, an engagement between them wasannounced, people shrugged their shoulders and said: "They are going toregularize the situation. " As a matter of fact (of this we have earlyassurance), though Ringve has been her ardent lover, Inga has neitherloved him nor been his mistress. Ringve being called abroad, she has, during his absence, broken off her engagement to him, and has then, about a year before the play opens, married Dr. Gar, to whom she isdevoted. While Gar is away on a short lecture tour, Ringve has publishedthe book of love-poems which we find her reading. They are veryremarkable poems; they have already made a great stir in the literaryworld; and interest is all the keener for the fact that they areevidently inspired by his passion for Inga, and are couched in such atone of intimacy as to create a highly injurious impression of therelations between them. Gar, having just come home, has no suspicion ofthe nature of the book; and when an editor, who cherishes a grudgeagainst him, conceives the malicious idea of asking him to reviewRingve's masterpiece, he consents with alacrity. One or two smallincidents have in the meantime shown us that there is a little rift inthe idyllic happiness of Inga and Gar, arising from her inveterate habitof telling trifling fibs to avoid facing the petty annoyances of life. For instance, when Gar asks her casually whether she has read Ringve'spoems, a foolish denial slips out, though she knows that the cut pagesof the book will give her the lie. These incidents point to a state ofunstable equilibrium in the relations between husband and wife;wherefore, when we see Gar, at the end of the act, preparing to readRingve's poems, our curiosity is very keen as to how he will take them. We feel the next hour to be big with fate for these two people; and welong for the curtain to rise again upon the threatened household. Thefuse has been fired; we are all agog for the explosion. 

In Herr Egge's place, I should have been inclined to have dropped mycurtain upon Gar, with the light of the reading-lamp full upon him, inthe act of opening the book, and then to have shown him, at thebeginning of the second act, in exactly the same position. With moredelicate art, perhaps, the author interposes a little domestic incidentat the end of the first act, while leaving it clearly impressed on ourminds that the reading of the poems is only postponed by a few minutes. That is the essential point: the actual moment upon which the curtainfalls is of minor importance. What is of vast importance, on the otherhand, is that the expectation of the audience should not be baffled, andthat the curtain should rise upon the immediate sequel to the reading ofthe poems. This is, in the exact sense of the words, _a scène àfaire_--an obligatory scene. The author has aroused in us a reasonableexpectation of it, and should he choose to balk us--to raise hiscurtain, say, a week, or a month, later--we should feel that we had beentrifled with. The general theory of the _scène à faire_ will presentlycome up for discussion. In the meantime, I merely make the obviousremark that it is worse than useless to awaken a definite expectation inthe breast of the audience, and then to disappoint it. [2]

The works of Sir Arthur Pinero afford many examples of interest veryskilfully carried forward. In his farces--let no one despise thetechnical lessons to be learnt from a good farce--there is always an_adventure_ afoot, whose development we eagerly anticipate. When thecurtain falls on the first act of _The Magistrate_, we foresee themeeting of all the characters at the Hôtel des Princes, and areimpatient to assist at it. In _The Schoolmistress_, we would not forworlds miss Peggy Hesseltine's party, which we know awaits us in Act II. An excellent example, of a more serious order, is to be found in _TheBenefit of the Doubt_. When poor Theo, rebuffed by her husband's chillyscepticism, goes off on some manifestly harebrained errand, we divine, as do her relatives, that she is about to commit social suicide byseeking out John Allingham; and we feel more than curiosity as to theevent--we feel active concern, almost anxiety, as though our ownpersonal interests were involved. Our anticipation is heightened, too, when we see Sir Fletcher Portwood and Mrs. Cloys set off upon her track. This gives us a definite point to which to look forward, while leavingthe actual course of events entirely undefined. It fulfils one of thegreat ends of craftsmanship, in foreshadowing without forestalling anintensely interesting conjuncture of affairs. 

I have laid stress on the importance of carrying forward the interest ofthe audience because it is a detail that is often overlooked. There is, as a rule, no difficulty in the matter, always assuming that the themebe not inherently devoid of interest. One could mention many plays inwhich the author has, from sheer inadvertence, failed to carry forwardthe interest of the first act, though a very little readjustment, or atrifling exercise of invention, would have enabled him to do so. _Pillars of Society_, indeed, may be taken as an instance, though not avery flagrant one. Such interest as we feel at the end of the first actis vague and unfocused. We are sure that something is to come of thereturn of Lona and Johan, but we have no inkling as to what thatsomething may be. If we guess that the so-called black sheep of thefamily will prove to be the white sheep, it is only because we know thatit is Ibsen's habit to attack respectability and criticize acceptedmoral values--it is not because of anything that he has told us, orhinted to us, in the play itself. In no other case does he leave ourinterest at such a loose end as in this, his prentice-work in moderndrama. In _The League of Youth_, an earlier play, but of an altogetherlighter type, the interest is much more definitely carried forward atthe end of the first act. Stensgaard has attacked Chamberlain Bratsbergin a rousing speech, and the Chamberlain has been induced to believethat the attack was directed not against himself, but against his enemyMonsen. Consequently he invites Stensgaard to his great dinner-party, and this invitation Stensgaard regards as a cowardly attempt atconciliation. We clearly see a crisis looming ahead, when thismisunderstanding shall be cleared up; and we consequently look forwardwith lively interest to the dinner-party of the second act--which ends, as a matter of fact, in a brilliant scene of comedy. 

The principle, to recapitulate, is simply this: a good first act shouldnever end in a blank wall. There should always be a window in it, withat least a glimpse of something attractive beyond. In _Pillars ofSociety_ there is a window, indeed; but it is of ground glass. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: That great story-teller, Alexandra Dumas _pere, _ those astraightforward way of carrying forward the interest at the end of thefirst act of _Henri III et sa Cour. _ The Due de Guise, insulted bySaint-Mégrin, beckons to his henchman and says, as the curtain falls, _"Qu'on me cherche les mêmes hommes qui ont assassiné Dugast!"_]

[Footnote 2: There are limits to the validity of this rule, as appliedto minor incidents. For example, it may sometimes be a point of art tolead the audience to expect the appearance of one person, when in factanother is about to enter. But it is exceedingly dangerous to baffle thecarefully fostered anticipation of an important scene. See ChaptersXVII and XXI. ]

_BOOK III_

THE MIDDLE

_CHAPTER XI_

TENSION AND ITS SUSPENSION

In the days of the five-act dogma, each act was supposed to have itsspecial and pre-ordained function. Freytag assigns to the second act, asa rule, the _Steigerung_ or heightening--the working-up, one might callit--of the interest. But the second act, in modern plays, has often todo all the work of the three middle acts under the older dispensation;wherefore the theory of their special functions has more of a historicalthan of a practical interest. For our present purposes, we may treat theinterior section of a play as a unit, whether it consist of one, two, orthree acts. 

The first act may be regarded as the porch or vestibule through which wepass into the main fabric--solemn or joyous, fantastic or austere--ofthe actual drama. Sometimes, indeed, the vestibule is reduced to a merethreshold which can be crossed in two strides; but normally the firstact, or at any rate the greater part of it, is of an introductorycharacter. Let us conceive, then, that we have passed the vestibule, andare now to study the principles on which the body of the structureis reared. 

In the first place, is the architectural metaphor a just one? Is there, or ought there to be, any analogy between a drama and afinely-proportioned building? The question has already been touched onin the opening paragraphs of Chapter VIII; but we may now look into it alittle more closely. 

What is the characteristic of a fine piece of architecture? Manifestlyan organic relation, a carefully-planned interdependence, between allits parts. A great building is a complete and rounded whole, just like aliving organism. It is informed by an inner law of harmony andproportion, and cannot be run up at haphazard, with no definite andpre-determined design. Can we say the same of a great play?

I think we can. Even in those plays which present a picture rather thanan action, we ought to recognize a principle of selection, proportion, composition, which, if not absolutely organic, is at any rate thereverse of haphazard. We may not always be able to define the principle, to put it clearly in words; but if we feel that the author has beenguided by no principle, that he has proceeded on mere hand-to-mouthcaprice, that there is no "inner law of harmony and proportion" in hiswork, then we instinctively relegate it to a low place in our esteem. Hauptmann's _Weavers_ certainly cannot be called a piece of dramaticarchitecture, like _Rosmersholm_ or _Iris_; but that does not mean thatit is a mere rambling series of tableaux. It is not easy to define theprinciple of unity in that brilliant comedy _The Madras House_; but wenevertheless feel that a principle of unity exists; or, if we do not, somuch the worse for the play and its author. 

There is, indeed, a large class of plays, often popular, and sometimesmeritorious, in relation to which the architectural metaphor entirelybreaks down. They are what may be called "running fire" plays. We haveall seen children setting a number of wooden blocks on end, at equalintervals, and then tilting over the first so that it falls against thesecond, which in turn falls against the third, and so on, till the wholerow, with a rapid clack-clack-clack, lies flat upon the table. This iscalled a "running fire"; and this is the structural principle of a goodmany plays. We feel that the playwright is, so to speak, inventing as hegoes along--that the action, like the child's fantastic serpentine ofblocks, might at any moment take a turn in any possible directionwithout falsifying its antecedents or our expectations. No part of it isnecessarily involved in any other part. If the play were found too longor too short, an act might be cut out or written in withoutnecessitating any considerable readjustments in the other acts. The playis really a series of episodes, "Which might, odd bobs, sir! in judicious hands, Extend from here to Mesopotamy. "

The episodes may grow out of each other plausibly enough, but by nopre-ordained necessity, and with no far-reaching interdependence. Welive, in such plays, from moment to moment, foreseeing nothing, desiringnothing; and though this frame of mind may be mildly agreeable, itinvolves none of that complexity of sensation with which we contemplatea great piece of architecture, or follow the development of afinely-constructed drama. To this order belong many cape-and-sword playsand detective dramas--plays like _The Adventure of Lady Ursula_, _TheRed Robe_, the Musketeer romances that were at one time so popular, andmost plays of the _Sherlock Holmes_ and _Raffles_ type. But pieces of amore ambitious order have been known to follow the same formula--some ofthe works, for instance, of Mr. Charles McEvoy, to say nothing of Mr. Bernard Shaw. 

We may take it, I think, that the architectural analogy holds good ofevery play which can properly be said to be "constructed. " Constructionmeans dramatic architecture, or in other words, a carefulpre-arrangement of proportions and interdependencies. But to carrybeyond this point the analogy between the two arts would be fantasticand unhelpful. The one exists in space, the other in time. The one seeksto beget in the spectator a state of placid, though it may be ofaspiring, contemplation; the other, a state of more or less acutetension. The resemblances between music and architecture are, as is wellknown, much more extensive and illuminating. It might not be whollyfanciful to call music a sort of middle term between the two other arts. 

A great part of the secret of dramatic architecture lies in the one word"tension. " To engender, maintain, suspend, heighten and resolve a stateof tension--that is the main object of the dramatist's craft. 

What do we mean by tension? Clearly a stretching out, a stretchingforward, of the mind. That is the characteristic mental attitude of thetheatrical audience. If the mind is not stretching forward, the bodywill soon weary of its immobility and constraint. Attention may becalled the momentary correlative of tension. When we are intent on whatis to come, we are attentive to what is there and then happening. Theterm tension is sometimes applied, not to the mental state of theaudience, but to the relation of the characters on the stage. "A sceneof high tension" is primarily one in which the actors undergo a greatemotional strain. But this is, after all, only a means towardsheightening of the mental tension of the audience. In such a scene themind stretches forward, no longer to something vague and distant, but tosomething instant and imminent. 

In discussing what Freytag calls the _erregende Moment, _ we might havedefined it as the starting-point of the tension. A reasonable audiencewill, if necessary, endure a certain amount of exposition, a certainpositing of character and circumstance, before the tension sets in; butwhen it once has set in, the playwright must on no account suffer it torelax until he deliberately resolves it just before the fall of thecurtain. There are, of course, minor rhythms of tension and resolution, like the harmonic vibrations of a violin-string. That is implied when wesay that a play consists of a great crisis worked out through a seriesof minor crises. But the main tension, once initiated, must never berelaxed. If it is, the play is over, though the author may have omittedto note the fact. Not infrequently, he begins a new play under theimpression that he is finishing the old one. That is what Shakespearedid in _The Merchant of Venice. _ The fifth act is an independentafterpiece, though its independence is slightly disguised by the factthat the _erregende Moment_ of the new play follows close upon the endof the old one, with no interact between. A very exacting technicalcriticism might accuse Ibsen of verging towards the same fault in _AnEnemy of the People. _ There the tension is practically resolved with Dr. Stockmann's ostracism at the end of the fourth act. At that point, if itdid not know that there was another act to come, an audience might gohome in perfect content. The fifth act is a sort of epilogue or sequel, built out of the materials of the preceding drama, but not forming anintegral part of it. With a brief exposition to set forth the antecedentcircumstances, it would be quite possible to present the fifth act as anindependent comedietta. 

But here a point of great importance calls for our notice. Though thetension, once started, must never be relaxed: though it ought, on thecontrary, to be heightened or tightened (as you choose to put it) fromact to act; yet there are times when it may without disadvantage, oreven with marked advantage, be temporarily suspended. In other words, the stretching-forward, without in any way slackening, may fall into thebackground of our consciousness, while other matters, the relevance ofwhich may not be instantly apparent, are suffered to occupy theforeground. We know all too well, in everyday experience, that tensionis not really relaxed by a temporary distraction. The dread of a comingordeal in the witness-box or on the operating-table may be forciblycrushed down like a child's jack-in-the-box; but we are always consciousof the effort to compress it, and we know that it will spring up againthe moment that effort ceases. Sir Arthur Pinero's play, _TheProfligate, _ was written at a time when it was the fashion to give eachact a sub-title; and one of its acts is headed "The Sword of Damocles. "That is, indeed, the inevitable symbol of dramatic tension: we see asword of Damocles (even though it be only a farcical blade of paintedlathe) impending over someone's head: and when once we are confidentthat it will fall at the fated moment, we do not mind having ourattention momentarily diverted to other matters. A rather flagrantexample of suspended attention is afforded by Hamlet's advice to thePlayers. We know that Hamlet has hung a sword of Damocles over theKing's head in the shape of the mimic murder-scene; and, while it ispreparing, we are quite willing to have our attention switched off tocertain abstract questions of dramatic criticism. The scene might havebeen employed to heighten the tension. Instead of giving the Players (intrue princely fashion) a lesson in the general principles of their art, Hamlet might have specially "coached" them in the "business" of thescene to be enacted, and thus doubly impressed on the audience hisresolve to "tent" the King "to the quick. " I am far from suggesting thatthis would have been desirable; but it would obviously have beenpossible. [1] Shakespeare, as the experience of three centuries hasshown, did right in judging that the audience was already sufficientlyintent on the coming ordeal, and would welcome an interlude ofaesthetic theory. 

There are times, moreover, when it is not only permissible to suspendthe tension, but when, by so doing, a great artist can produce apeculiar and admirable effect. A sudden interruption, on the very brinkof a crisis, may, as it were, whet the appetite of the audience for whatis to come. We see in the Porter scene in Macbeth a suspension of thisnature; but Shakespeare used it sparingly, unless, indeed, we are toconsider as a deliberate point of art the retardation of movementcommonly observable in the fourth acts of his tragedies. Ibsen, on theother hand, deliberately employed this device on three conspicuousoccasions. The entrance of Dr. Rank in the last act of _A Doll's House_is a wholly unnecessary interruption to the development of the crisisbetween Nora and Helmer. The scene might be entirely omitted withoutleaving a perceptible hiatus in the action; yet who does not feel thatthis brief respite lends gathered impetus to the main action when it isresumed? The other instances are offered by the two apparitions of UlricBrendel in _Rosmersholm. _ The first occurs when Rosmer is on the veryverge of his momentous confession to Kroll, the second when Rosmer andRebecca are on the very verge of their last great resolve; and in eachcase we feel a distinct value (apart from the inherent quality of theBrendel scenes) in the very fact that the tension has been momentarilysuspended. Such a _rallentando_ effect is like the apparent pause in therush of a river before it thunders over a precipice. 

The possibility of suspending tension is of wider import than may atfirst sight appear. But for it, our dramas would have to be all bone andmuscle, like the figures in an anatomical textbook. As it is, we areable, without relaxing tension, to shift it to various planes ofconsciousness, and thus find leisure to reproduce the surface aspects oflife, with some of its accidents and irrelevances. For example, when theplaywright has, at the end of his first act, succeeded in carryingonward the spectator's interest, and giving him something definite tolook forward to, it does not at all follow that the expected scene, situation, revelation, or what not, should come at the beginning of thesecond act. In some cases it must do so; when, as in _The Idyll_ abovecited, the spectator has been carefully induced to expect some imminentconjuncture which cannot be postponed. But this can scarcely be called atypical case. More commonly, when an author has enlisted the curiosityof his audience of some definite point, he will be in no great hurry tosatisfy and dissipate it. He may devote the early part of the second actto working-up the same line of interest to a higher pitch; or he mayhold it in suspense while he prepares some further development of theaction. The closeness with which a line of interest, once started, oughtto be followed up, must depend in some measure on the nature and tone ofthe play. If it be a serious play, in which character and action arevery closely intertwined, any pause or break in the conjoint developmentis to be avoided. If, on the other hand, it is a play of light andgraceful dialogue, in which the action is a pretext for setting thecharacters in motion rather than the chief means towards theirmanifestation, then the playwright can afford to relax the rate of hisprogress, and even to wander a little from the straight line of advance. In such a play, even the old institution of the "underplot" is notinadmissible; though the underplot ought scarcely to be a "plot, " butonly some very slight thread of interest, involving no strain on theattention. [2] It may almost be called an established practice, on theEnglish stage, to let the dalliance of a pair of boy-and-girl loversrelieve the main interest of a more or less serious comedy; and there isno particular harm in such a convention, if it be not out of keepingwith the general character of the play. In some plays the substance--thecharacter-action, if one may so call it--is the main, and indeed theonly, thing. In others the substance, though never unimportant, is insome degree subordinate to the embroideries; and it is for theplaywright to judge how far this subordination may safely be carried. 

One principle, however, may be emphasized as almost universally valid, and that is that the end of an act should never leave the action justwhere it stood at the beginning. An audience has an instinctive senseof, and desire for, progress. It does not like to realize that thingshave been merely marking time. Even if it has been thoroughlyentertained, from moment to moment, during the progress of an act, itdoes not like to feel at the end that nothing has really happened. Thefall of the curtain gives time for reflection, and for the ordering ofimpressions which, while the action was afoot, were more or less vagueand confused. It is therefore of great importance that each act should, to put it briefly, bear looking back upon--that it should appear tostand in due proportion to the general design of the play, and shouldnot be felt to have been empty, or irrelevant, or disappointing. Thisis, indeed, a plain corollary from the principle of tension. Suspendedit may be, sometimes with positive advantage; but it must not besuspended too long; and suspension for a whole act is equivalent torelaxation. 

To sum up: when once a play has begun to move, its movement ought toproceed continuously, and with gathering momentum; or, if it standsstill for a space, the stoppage ought to be deliberate and purposeful. It is fatal when the author thinks it is moving, while in fact it isonly revolving on its own axis. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: This method of heightening the tension would have beensomewhat analogous to that employed by Oscar Wilde in Lady Windermere'sinstructions to her butler, cited on p. 115. ]

[Footnote 2: Dryden (_Of Dramatic Poesy_, p. 56, ed. Arnold, 1903) says:"Our plays, besides the main design, have underplots or by-concernments, of less considerable persons and intrigues, which are carried on withthe motion of the main plot; as they say the orb of the fixed stars, andthose of the planets, though they have motions of their own, are whirledabout by the motion of the _primum mobile_, in which they arecontained. " This is an admirable description of the ideal underplot, asconceived by our forefathers; but we find that two lines of tension jarwith and weaken each other. ]

_CHAPTER XII_

PREPARATION: THE FINGER-POST

We shall find, on looking into it, that most of the technical maximsthat have any validity may be traced back, directly or indirectly, tothe great principle of tension. The art of construction is summed up, first, in giving the mind of an audience something to which to stretchforward, and, secondly, in not letting it feel that it has stretchedforward in vain. "You will find it infinitely pleasing, " says Dryden, [1]"to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see some of your waybefore you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it. " Or, he mighthave added, "if you foresee the end, but not the means by which it is tobe reached. " In drama, as in all art, the "how" is often more importantthan the "what. "

No technical maxim is more frequently cited than the remark of theyounger Dumas: "The art of the theatre is the art of preparations. " Thisis true in a larger sense than he intended; but at the same time thereare limits to its truth, which we must not fail to observe. 

Dumas, as we know, was an inveterate preacher, using the stage as apulpit for the promulgation of moral and social ideas which were, intheir day, considered very advanced and daring. The primary meaning ofhis maxim, then, was that a startling idea, or a scene wherein such anidea was implied, ought not to be sprung upon an audience whollyunprepared to accept it. For instance, in _Monsieur Alphonse, _ ahusband, on discovering that his wife has had an intrigue before theirmarriage, and that a little girl whom she wishes to adopt is really herdaughter, instantly raises her from the ground where she lies grovellingat his feet, and says: "Créature de Dieu, toi qui as failli et terepens, relève toi, je te pardonne. " This evangelical attitude on thepart of Admiral de Montaiglin was in itself very surprising, and perhapsnot wholly admirable, to the Parisian public of 1873; but Dumas had so"prepared" the _coup de théâtre_ that it passed with very slightdifficulty on the first night, and with none at all at subsequentperformances and revivals. How had he "prepared" it? Why, by playing, ina score of subtle ways, upon the sympathies and antipathies of theaudience. For instance, as Sarcey points out, he had made M. DeMontaiglin a sailor, "accustomed, during his distant voyages, to longreveries in view of the boundless ocean, whence he had acquired amystical habit of mind. .. . Dumas certainly would never have placed thispardon in the mouth of a stockbroker. " So far so good; but"preparation, " in the sense of the word, is a device of rhetoric or ofpropaganda rather than of dramatic craftsmanship. It is a method ofastutely undermining or outflanking prejudice. Desiring to enforce ageneral principle, you invent a case which is specially favourable toyour argument, and insinuate it into the acceptance of the audience byevery possible subtlety of adjustment. You trust, it would seem, thatpeople who have applauded an act of pardon in an extreme case will be somuch the readier to exercise that high prerogative in the less carefully"prepared" cases which present themselves in real life. This may or maynot be a sound principle of persuasion; as we are not here consideringthe drama as an art of persuasion, we have not to decide between thisand the opposite, or Shawesque, principle of shocking and startling anaudience by the utmost violence of paradox. There is something to besaid for both methods--for conversion by pill-and-jelly and forconversion by nitroglycerine. 

Reverting, now, to the domain of pure craftsmanship, can it be said that"the art of the theatre is the art of preparation"? Yes, it is verylargely the art of delicate and unobtrusive preparation, of helping anaudience to divine whither it is going, while leaving it to wonder howit is to get there. On the other hand, it is also the art of avoidinglaborious, artificial and obvious preparations which lead to little ornothing. A due proportion must always be observed between thepreparation and the result. 

To illustrate the meaning of preparation, as the word is here employed, I may perhaps be allowed to reprint a passage from a review of Mr. Israel Zangwill's play _Children of the Ghetto_. [2]

 ". .. To those who have not read the novel, it must seem as though the mere illustrations of Jewish life entirely overlaid and overwhelmed the action. It is not so in reality. One who knows the story beforehand can often see that it is progressing even in scenes which seem purely episodic and unconnected either with each other or with the general scheme. But Mr. Zangwill has omitted to provide finger-posts, if I may so express it, to show those who do not know the story beforehand whither he is leading them. He has neglected the great art of forecasting, of keeping anticipation on the alert, which is half the secret of dramatic construction. To forecast, without discounting, your effects--that is all the Law and the Prophets. In the first act of _Children of the Ghetto_, for instance, we see the marriage in jest of Hannah to Sam Levine, followed by the instant divorce with all its curious ceremonies. This is amusing so far as it goes; but when the divorce is completed, the whole thing seems to be over and done with. We have seen some people, in whom as yet we take no particular interest, enmeshed in a difficulty arising from a strange and primitive formalism in the interpretation of law; and we have seen the meshes cut to the satisfaction of all parties, and the incident to all appearance closed. There is no finger-post to direct our anticipation on the way it should go; and those who have not read the book cannot possibly guess that this mock marriage, instantly and ceremoniously dissolved, can have any ulterior effect upon the fortunes of any one concerned. Thus, the whole scene, however curious in itself, seems motiveless and resultless. How the requisite finger-post was to be provided I cannot tell. That is not my business; but a skilful dramatist would have made it his. Then, in the second act, amid illustrations of social life in the Ghetto, we have the meeting of Hannah with David Brandon, a prettily-written scene of love-at-first-sight. But, so far as any one can see, there is every prospect that the course of true love will run absolutely smooth. Again we lack a finger-post to direct our interest forward; nor do we see anything that seems to bring this act into vital relation with its predecessor. Those who have read the book know that David Brandon is a 'Cohen, ' a priest, a descendant of Aaron, and that a priest may not marry a divorced woman. Knowing this, we have a sense of irony, of impending disaster, which renders the love-scene of the second act dramatic. But to those, and they must always be a majority in any given audience, who do not know this, the scene has no more dramatic quality than lies in its actual substance, which, although pretty enough, is entirely commonplace. Not till the middle of the third act (out of four) is the obstacle revealed, and we see that the mighty maze was not without a plan. Here, then, the drama begins, after two acts and a half of preparation, during which we were vouchsafed no inkling of what was preparing. It is capital drama when we come to it, really human, really tragic. The arbitrary prohibitions of the Mosaic law have no religious or moral force either for David or for Hannah. They feel it to be their right, almost their duty, to cast off their shackles. In any community, save that of strict Judaism, they are perfectly free to marry. But in thus flouting the letter of the law, Hannah well knows that she will break her father's heart. Even as she struggles to shake them off, the traditions of her race take firmer hold on her; and in the highly dramatic last act (a not unskilful adaptation to the stage of the crucial scene of the book) she bows her neck beneath the yoke, and renounces love that the Law may be fulfilled. "

To state the matter in other terms, we are conscious of no tension inthe earlier acts of this play, because we have not been permitted to seethe sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of Hannah and DavidBrandon. For lack of preparation, of pointing-forward, we feel none ofthat god-like superiority to the people of the mimic world which we haverecognized as the characteristic privilege of the spectator. We know nomore than they do of the implications of their acts, and the network ofembarrassments in which they are involving themselves. Indeed, we knowless than they do: for Hannah, as a well brought-up Jewess, is no doubtvaguely aware of the disabilities attaching to a divorced woman. Agentile audience, on the other hand, cannot possibly foresee how--

 "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels. "

and, lacking that foreknowledge, it misses the specifically dramaticeffect of the scenes. The author invites it to play at blind-man's-buffwith the characters, instead of unsealing its eyes and enabling it towatch the game from its Olympian coign of vantage. 

Let the dramatist, then, never neglect to place the requisitefinger-posts on the road he would have us follow. It is not, of course, necessary that we should be conscious of all the implications of anygiven scene or incident, but we must know enough of them not only tocreate the requisite tension, but to direct it towards the right quarterof the compass. Retrospective elucidations are valueless and sometimesirritating. It is in nowise to the author's interest that we should say, "Ah, if we had only known this, or foreseen that, in time, the effect ofsuch-and-such a scene would have been entirely different!" We have nouse for finger-posts that point backwards. [3]

In the works of Sir Arthur Pinero I recall two cases in which the lackof a finger-post impairs the desired effect: slightly, in the oneinstance, in the other, very considerably. The third act of thatdelightful comedy _The Princess and the Butterfly_ contains nosufficient indication of Fay Zuliani's jealousy of the friendshipbetween Sir George Lamorant and the Princess Pannonia. We are rather ata loss to account for the coldness of her attitude to the Princess, andher perverse naughtiness in going off to the Opera Ball. This rendersthe end of the act practically ineffective. We so little foresee what isto come of Fay's midnight escapade, that we take no particular interestin it, and are rather disconcerted by the care with which it is led upto, and the prominence assigned to it. This, however, is a triflingfault. Far different is the case in the last act of _The Benefit of theDoubt_, which goes near to ruining what is otherwise a very fine play. The defect, indeed, is not purely technical: on looking into it we findthat the author is not in fact working towards an ending which can becalled either inevitable or conspicuously desirable. His failure topoint forward is no doubt partly due to his having nothing verysatisfactory to point forward to. But it is only in retrospect that thisbecomes apparent. What we feel while the act is in progress is simplythe lack of any finger-post to afford us an inkling of the end towardswhich we are proceeding. Through scene after scene we appear to bemaking no progress, but going round and round in a depressing circle. The tension, in a word, is fatally relaxed. It may perhaps be suggestedas a maxim that when an author finds a difficulty in placing therequisite finger-posts, as he nears the end of his play, he will do wellto suspect that the end he has in view is defective, and to try if hecannot amend it. 

In the ancient, and in the modern romantic, drama, oracles, portents, prophecies, horoscopes and such-like intromissions of the supernaturalafforded a very convenient aid to the placing of the requisitefinger-posts--"foreshadowing without forestalling. " It has often beensaid that _Macbeth_ approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare'stragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblanceclearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinnyfingers into the fated future. In _Romeo and Juliet_, inward forebodingtakes the place of outward prophecy. I have quoted above Romeo'sprevision of "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"; and beside itmay be placed Juliet's--

 "I have no joy of this contract to-night; It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. "

In _Othello, _ on the other hand, the most modern of all his plays, Shakespeare had recourse neither to outward boding, nor to inwardforeboding, but planted a plain finger-post in the soil of human nature, when he made Brabantio say--

 "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee. "

Mr. Stephen Phillips, in the first act of _Paolo and Francesca, _ outdoesall his predecessors, ancient or modern, in his daring use of sibyllineprophecy. He makes Giovanni's blind foster-mother, Angela, foretell thetragedy in almost every detail, save that, in her vision, she cannot seethe face of Francesca's lover. Mr. Phillips, I take it, is herereinforcing ancient tradition by a reference to modern "psychicalresearch. " He trusts to our conceiving such clairvoyance to be notwholly impossible, and giving it what may be called provisionalcredence. Whether the device be artistic or not we need not hereconsider. I merely point to it as a conspicuous example of the use ofthe finger-post. [4]

It need scarcely be said that a misleading finger-post is carefully tobe avoided, except in the rare cases where it may be advisable to begeta momentary misapprehension on the part of the audience, which shall bealmost instantly corrected in some pleasant or otherwise effectivefashion. [5] It is naturally difficult to think of striking instances ofthe misleading finger-posts; for plays which contain such a blunder arenot apt to survive, even in the memory. A small example occurs in aclever play named _A Modern Aspasia_ by Mr. Hamilton Fyfe. EdwardMeredith has two households: a London house over which his lawful wife, Muriel, presides; and a country cottage where dwells his mistress, Margaret, with her two children. One day Muriel's automobile breaks downnear Margaret's cottage, and, while the tyre is being repaired, Margaretgives her visitor tea, neither of them knowing the other. Throughout thescene we are naturally wondering whether a revelation is to occur; andwhen, towards the close, Muriel goes to Margaret's room, "to put her hatstraight, " we have no longer any doubt on the subject. It is practicallyinevitable that she should find in the room her husband's photograph, orsome object which she should instantly recognize as his, and shouldreturn to the stage in full possession of the secret. This is soprobable that nothing but a miracle can prevent it: we mentally give theauthor credit for bringing about his revelation in a very simple andnatural way; and we are proportionately disappointed when we find thatthe miracle has occurred, and that Muriel returns to the sitting-room nowiser than she left it. Very possibly the general economy of the playdemanded that the revelation should not take place at this juncture. That question does not here concern us. The point is that, havingdetermined to reserve the revelation for his next act, the author oughtnot, by sending Muriel into Margaret's bedroom, to have awakened in us aconfident anticipation of its occurring there and then. A romantic playby Mr. J. B. Fagan, entitled _Under Which King?_ offers another smallinstance of the same nature. The date is 1746; certain despatches ofvast importance have to be carried by a Hanoverian officer from Moidartto Fort William. The Jacobites arrange to drug the officer; and, to makeassurance doubly sure, in case the drug should fail to act, they post aHighland marksman in a narrow glen to pick him off as he passes. Thedrug does act; but his lady-love, to save his military honour, assumesmale attire and rides off with the despatches. We hear her horse's hoofsgo clattering down the road; and then, as the curtain falls, we hear ashot ring out into the night. This shot is a misleading finger-post. Nothing comes of it: we find in the next act that the marksman hasmissed! But marksmen, under such circumstances, have no business tomiss. It is a breach of the dramatic proprieties. We feel that theauthor has been trifling with us in inflicting on us this purelymechanical and momentary "scare. " The case would be different if theyoung lady knew that the marksman was lying in ambush, and determined torun the gantlet. In that case the incident would be a trait ofcharacter; but, unless my memory deceives me, that is not the case. Onthe stage, every bullet should have its billet--not necessarily in theperson aimed at, but in the emotions or anticipations of the audience. This bullet may, indeed, give us a momentary thrill of alarm; but it isdearly bought at the expense of subsequent disillusionment. 

We have now to consider the subject of over-preparation, too obtrusivepreparation, mountainous preparation leading only to a mouse-likeeffect. This is the characteristic error of the so-called "well-madeplay, " the play of elaborate and ingenious intrigue. The trouble withthe well-made play is that it is almost always, and of necessity, ill-made. Very rarely does the playwright succeed in weaving a web whichis at once intricate, consistent, and clear. In nineteen cases out oftwenty there are glaring flaws that have to be overlooked; or else thepattern is so involved that the mind's eye cannot follow it, and becomesbewildered and fatigued. A classical example of both faults may be foundin Congreve's so-called comedy _The Double-Dealer_. This is, in fact, apowerful drama, somewhat in the Sardou manner; but Congreve had none ofSardou's deftness in manipulating an intrigue. Maskwell is not only adouble-dealer, but a triple--or quadruple-dealer; so that the brain soongrows dizzy in the vortex of his villainies. The play, it may be noted, was a failure. 

There is a quite legitimate pleasure to be found, no doubt, in a complexintrigue which is also perspicuous. Plays such as Alexandre Dumas's_Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, or the pseudo-historical dramas ofScribe-_Adrienne Lecouvreur, Bertrand et Raton, Un Verre d'Eau, LesTrois Maupin, _ etc. --are amusing toys, like those social or militarytableaux, the figures of which you can set in motion by dropping a pennyin the slot. But the trick of this sort of "preparation" has long beenfound out, and even unsophisticated audiences are scarcely to bethrilled by it. We may accept it as a sound principle, based on commonsense and justified by experience, that an audience should never betempted to exclaim, "What a marvellously clever fellow is thisplaywright! How infinitely cleverer than the dramatist who constructsthe tragi-comedy of life. "

This is what we inevitably exclaim as we watch Victorien Sardou, in whomFrench ingenuity culminated and caricatured itself, laying thefoundations of one of his labyrinthine intrigues. The absurdities of"preparation" in this sense could scarcely be better satirized than inthe following page from Francisque Sarcey's criticism of _Nos Intimes_(known in English as _Peril_)--a page which is intended, not as satire, but as eulogy--

 At the sixth performance, I met, during the first interact, a man of infinite taste who . .. Complained of the lengthiness of this first act: "What a lot of details, " he said, "which serve no purpose, and had better have been omitted! What is the use of that long story about the cactus with a flower that is unique in all the world? Why trouble us with that dahlia-root, which M. Caussade's neighbour has thrown over the garden wall? Was it necessary to inflict on us all that talk about the fox that plays havoc in the garden? What have we to do with that mischievous beast? And that Tolozan, with his endless digressions! What do we care about his ideas on love, on metempsychosis, on friendship, etc. ? All this stuff only retards the action. "

 "On the contrary, " I replied, "all this is just what is going to interest you. You are impatient of these details, because you are looking out for the scenes of passion which have been promised you. But reflect that, without these preparations, the scenes of passion would not touch you. That cactus-flower will play its part, you may be sure; that dahlia-root is not there for nothing; that fox to which you object, and of which you will hear more talk during two more acts, will bring about the solution of one of the most entertaining situations in all drama. "

M. Sarcey does not tell us what his interlocutor replied; but he mighthave said, like the hero of _Le Réveillon_: "Are you sure there is nomistake? Are you defending Sardou, or attacking him?"

For another example of ultra-complex preparation let me turn to a playby Mr. Sydney Grundy, entitled _The Degenerates_. Mr. Grundy, though anadept of the Scribe school, has done so much strong and original workthat I apologize for exhuming a play in which he almost burlesqued hisown method; but for that very reason it is difficult to find a moreconvincing or more deterrent example of misdirected ingenuity. Thedetails of the plot need not be recited. It is sufficient to say thatthe curtain has not been raised ten minutes before our attention hasbeen drawn to the fact that a certain Lady Saumarez has her monogram oneverything she wears, even to her gloves: whence we at once foresee thatshe is destined to get into a compromising situation, to escape from it, but to leave a glove behind her. In due time the compromising situationarrives, and we find that it not only requires a room with threedoors, [6] but that a locksmith has to be specially called in to providetwo of these doors with peculiar locks, so that, when once shut, theycannot be opened from inside except with a key! What interest can wetake in a situation turning on such contrivances? Sane technic laughs atlocksmiths. And after all this preparation, the situation proves to be afamiliar trick of theatrical thimble-rigging: you lift the thimble, andinstead of Pea A, behold Pea B!--instead of Lady Saumarez it is Mrs. Trevelyan who is concealed in Isidore de Lorano's bedroom. Sir WilliamSaumarez must be an exceedingly simple-minded person to accept thesubstitution, and exceedingly unfamiliar with the French drama of the'seventies and 'eighties. If he had his wits about him he would say: "Iknow this dodge: it comes from Sardou. Lady Saumarez has just slippedout by that door, up R. , and if I look about I shall certainly find herfan, or her glove, or her handkerchief somewhere on the premises. " Theauthor may object that such criticism would end in paralysing theplaywright, and that, if men always profited by the lessons of thestage, the world would long ago have become so wise that there would beno more room in it for drama, which lives on human folly. "You will tellme next, " he may say, "that I must not make groundless jealousy thetheme of a play, because every one who has seen Othello would at oncedetect the machinations of an Iago!" The retort is logically specious, but it mistakes the point. It would certainly be rash to put any limitto human gullibility, or to deny that Sir William Saumarez, in the givensituation, might conceivably be hoodwinked. The question is not one ofpsychology but of theatrical expediency: and the point is that when asituation is at once highly improbable in real life and exceedinglyfamiliar on the stage, we cannot help mentally caricaturing it as itproceeds, and are thus prevented from lending it the provisionalcredence on which interest and emotion depend. 

An instructive contrast to _The Degenerates_ may be found in a nearlycontemporary play, _Mrs. Dane's Defence_, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones. Thefirst three acts of this play may be cited as an excellent example ofdexterous preparation and development. Our interest in the sequence ofevents is aroused, sustained, and worked up to a high tension withconsummate skill. There is no feverish overcrowding of incident, as isso often the case in the great French story-plays--_AdrienneLecouvreur_, for example, or _Fédora_. The action moves onwards, unhasting, unresting, and the finger-posts are placed just where theyare wanted. 

The observance of a due proportion between preparation and result is amatter of great moment. Even when the result achieved is in itself veryremarkable, it may be dearly purchased by a too long and too elaborateprocess of preparation. A famous play which is justly chargeable withthis fault is _The Gay Lord Quex_. The third act is certainly one of themost breathlessly absorbing scenes in modern drama; but by what long, and serpentine, and gritty paths do we not approach it! The elaborateseries of trifling incidents by means of which Sophy Fullgarney is firstbrought from New Bond Street to Fauncey Court, and then substituted forthe Duchess's maid, is at no point actually improbable; and yet we feelthat a vast effort has been made to attain an end which, owing to thevery length of the sequence of chances, at last assumes an air ofimprobability. There is little doubt that the substructure of the greatscene might have been very much simpler. I imagine that Sir ArthurPinero was betrayed into complexity and over-elaboration by his desireto use, as a background for his action, a study of that "curious phaseof modern life, " the manicurist's parlour. To those who find this studyinteresting, the disproportion between preliminaries and result may beless apparent. It certainly did not interfere with the success of theplay in its novelty; but it may very probably curtail its lease of life. What should we know of _The School for Scandal_ to-day, if it consistedof nothing but the Screen Scene and two laborious acts of preparation?

A too obvious preparation is very apt to defeat its end by begetting aperversely quizzical frame of mind in the audience. The desired effectis discounted, like a conjuring trick in which the mechanism is tootransparent. Let me recall a trivial but instructive instance of thiserror. The occasion was the first performance of _Pillars of Society_ atthe Gaiety Theatre, London--the first Ibsen performance ever given inEngland. At the end of the third act, Krap, Consul Bernick's clerk, knocks at the door of his master's office and says, "It is blowing up toa stiff gale. Is the _Indian Girl_ to sail in spite of it?" WhereuponBernick, though he knows that the _Indian Girl_ is hopelesslyunseaworthy, replies, "The _Indian Girl_ is to sail in spite of it. " Ithad occurred to someone that the effect of this incident would beheightened if Krap, before knocking at the Consul's door, were toconsult the barometer, and show by his demeanour that it was fallingrapidly. A barometer had accordingly been hung, up stage, near theveranda entrance; and, as the scenic apparatus of a Gaiety matinée wasin those days always of the scantiest, it was practically the onedecoration of a room otherwise bare almost to indecency. It had staredthe audience full in the face through three long acts; and when, at theend of the third, Krap went up to it and tapped it, a sigh of relief ranthrough the house, as much as to say, "At last! so _that_ was what itwas for!"--to the no small detriment of the situation. Here the faultlay in the obtrusiveness of the preparation. Had the barometer passedpractically unnoticed among the other details of a well-furnished hall, it would at any rate have been innocent, and perhaps helpful. As it was, it seemed to challenge the curiosity of the audience, saying, "I amevidently here with some intention; guess, now, what the intention canbe!" The producer had failed in the art which conceals art. 

Another little trait from a play of those far-past days illustrates thesame point. It was a drawing-room drama of the Scribe school. Near thebeginning of an act, some one spilt a bottle of red ink, and mopped itup with his (or her) handkerchief, leaving the handkerchief on theescritoire. The act proceeded from scene to scene, and the handkerchiefremained unnoticed; but every one in the audience who knew the rules ofthe game, kept his eye on the escritoire, and was certain that that inkhad not been spilt for nothing. In due course a situation of greatintensity was reached, wherein the villain produced a pistol and firedat the heroine, who fainted. As a matter of fact he had missed her; buther quick-witted friend seized the gory handkerchief, and, waving it inthe air, persuaded the villain that the shot had taken deadly effect, and that he must flee for his life. Even in those days, such anunblushing piece of trickery was found more comic than impressive. Itwas a case of preparation "giving itself away. "

A somewhat later play, _The Mummy and the Humming Bird_, by Mr. IsaacHenderson, contains a good example of over-elaborate preparation. TheEarl of Lumley, lost in his chemical studies with a more than Newtonianabsorption, suffers his young wife to form a sentimental friendship witha scoundrel of an Italian novelist, Signor D'Orelli. Remaining at homeone evening, when Lady Lumley and a party of friends, includingD'Orelli, have gone off to dine at a restaurant, the Earl chances tolook out of the window, and observes an organ-grinder making dolefulmusic in the snow. His heart is touched, and he invites the music-mongerto join him in his study and share his informal dinner. The conversationbetween them is carried on by means of signs, for the organ-grinderknows no English, and the Earl is painfully and improbably ignorant ofItalian. He does not even know that Roma means Rome, and Londra, London. This ignorance, however, is part of the author's ingenuity. It leads tothe establishment of a sort of object-speech, by aid of which the Earllearns that his guest has come to England to prosecute a vendettaagainst the man who ruined his happy Sicilian home. I need scarcely saythat this villain is none other than D'Orelli; and when at last he andthe Countess elope to Paris, the object-speech enables Giuseppe toconvey to the Earl, by aid of a brandy-bottle, a siphon, a broken plate, and half-a-crown, not only the place of their destination, but the veryhotel to which they are going. This is a fair example of that ingenuityfor ingenuity's sake which was once thought the very essence of theplaywright's craft, but has long ago lost all attraction for intelligentaudiences. 

We may take it as a rule that any scene which requires an obviouslypurposeful scenic arrangement is thereby discounted. It may be strongenough to live down the disadvantage; but a disadvantage it is none theless. In a play of Mr. Carton's, _The Home Secretary_, a paper of greatimportance was known to be contained in an official despatch-box. Whenthe curtain rose on the last act, it revealed this despatch-box on atable right opposite a French window, while at the other side of theroom a high-backed arm-chair discreetly averted its face. Every onecould see at a glance that the romantic Anarchist was going to sneak inat the window and attempt to abstract the despatch-box, while theheroine was to lie perdue in the high-backed chair; and when, at thefated moment, all this punctually occurred, one could scarcely repressan "Ah!" of sarcastic satisfaction. Similarly, in an able play named Mr. And Mrs. Daventry, Mr. Frank Harris had conceived a situation whichrequired that the scene should be specially built for eavesdropping. [7]As soon as the curtain rose, and revealed a screen drawn halfway downthe stage, with a sofa ensconced behind it, we knew what to expect. Ofcourse Mrs. Daventry was to lie on the sofa and overhear a duologuebetween her husband and his mistress: the only puzzle was to understandwhy the guilty pair should neglect the precaution of looking behind thescreen. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Daventry, before she lay down, switched off the lights, and Daventry and Lady Langham, finding the roomdark, assumed it to be empty. With astounding foolhardiness, consideringthat the house was full of guests, and this a much frequented publicroom, Daventry proceeded to lock the door, and continue his conversationwith Lady Langham in the firelight. Thus, when the lady's husband cameknocking at the door, Mrs. Daventry was able to rescue the guilty pairfrom an apparently hopeless predicament, by calmly switching on thelights and opening the door to Sir John Langham. The situation wasundoubtedly a "strong" one; but the tendency of modern technic is tohold "strength" too dearly purchased at such reckless expense ofpreparation. 

There are, then, very clear limits to the validity of the Dumas maximthat "The art of the theatre is the art of preparations. " Certain it isthat over-preparation is the most fatal of errors. The clumsiest thing adramatist can possibly do is to lay a long and elaborate train for theignition of a squib. We take pleasure in an event which has been"prepared" in the sense that we have been led to desire it, and havewondered how it was to be brought about. But we scoff at an occurrencewhich nothing but our knowledge of the tricks of the stage couldpossibly lead us to expect, yet which, knowing these tricks, we haveforeseen from afar, and resented in advance. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: _Of Dramatic Poesy, _ ed. Arnold, 1903, p. 60. ]

[Footnote 2: _The World_, December 20, 1899. ]

[Footnote 3: At the end of the first act of _Lady Inger of Ostraat_, Ibsen evidently intends to produce a startling effect through the suddenappearance of Olaf Skaktavl in Lady Inger's hall. But as he has totallyomitted to tell us who the strange man is, the incident has no meaningfor us. In 1855 Ibsen had all his technical lessons yet to learn. ]

[Footnote 4: The fact that Mr. Phillips should have deemed such aforeshadowing necessary shows how instinctively a dramatist feels thatthe logic of his art requires him to assume that his audience isignorant of his fable. In reality, very few members of the first-nightaudience, or of any other, can have depended on old Angela'svaticination for the requisite foresight of events. But this does notprove Angela to be artistically superfluous. ]

[Footnote 5: See pp. 118, 240. ]

[Footnote 6: There is no special harm in this: the question of exits andentrances and their mechanism is discussed in Chapter XXIII. ]

[Footnote 7: This might be said of the scene of the second act of _TheBenefit of the Doubt_; but here the actual stage-topography is naturalenough. The author, however, is rather over-anxious to emphasize theacoustic relations of the two rooms. ]

_CHAPTER XIII_

THE OBLIGATORY SCENE

I do not know whether it was Francisque Sarcey who invented the phrase_scène à faire_; but it certainly owes its currency to that valiantchampion of the theatrical theatre, if I may so express it. Note that inthis term I intend no disrespect. My conception of the theatricaltheatre may not be exactly the same as M. Sarcey's; but at all events Ishare his abhorrence of the untheatrical theatre. 

What is the _scène à faire_? Sarcey has used the phrase so often, and inso many contexts, that it is impossible to tie him down to any strictdefinition. Instead of trying to do so, I will give a typical example ofthe way in which he usually employs the term. 

In _Les Fourchambault_, by Emile Augier, the first act introduces us tothe household of a merchant, of Havre, who has married a wealthy, butextravagant woman, and has a son and daughter who are being graduallycorrupted by their mother's worldliness. We learn that Fourchambault, senior, has, in his youth, betrayed a young woman who was a governess inhis family. He wanted to marry her, but his relations maligned hercharacter, and he cast her off; nor does he know what has become of herand her child. In the second act we pass to the house of an energeticand successful young shipowner named Bernard, who lives alone with hismother. Bernard, as we divine, is secretly devoted to a young lady namedMarie Letellier, a guest in the Fourchambault house, to whom youngLeopold Fourchambault is paying undesirable attentions. One day Bernardcasually mentions to his mother that the house of Fourchambault is onthe verge of bankruptcy; nothing less than a quarter of a million francswill enable it to tide over the crisis. Mme. Bernard, to her son'sastonishment, begs him to lend the tottering firm the sum required. Heobjects that, unless the business is better managed, the loan will onlypostpone the inevitable disaster. "Well, then, my son, " she replied, "you must go into partnership with M. Fourchambault. " "I! with thatimbecile!" he exclaims. "My son, " she says gravely, and emphatically, "you must--it is your duty--I demand it of you!" "Ah!" cries Bernard. "Iunderstand--he is my father!"

After ecstatically lauding this situation and the scenes which have ledup to it, M. Sarcey continues--

 When the curtain falls upon the words "He is my father, " I at once see two _scènes à faire_, and I know that they will be _faites_: the scene between the son and the father whom he is to save, the scene between Bernard and his half-brother Leopold, who are in love with the same woman, the one dishonourably and the other secretly and nobly. What will they say to each other? I have no idea. But it is precisely this _expectation mingled with uncertainly_ that is one of the charms of the theatre. I say to myself, "Ah, they will have an encounter! What will come of it?" And that this is the state of mind of the whole audience is proved by the fact that when the two characters of the _scènes à faire_ stand face to face, a thrill of anticipation runs round the whole theatre. 

This, then, is the obligatory scene as Sarcey generally understandsit--a scene which, for one reason or another, an audience expects andardently desires. I have italicized the phrase "expectation mingled withuncertainty" because it expresses in other terms the idea which I havesought to convey in the formula "foreshadowing without forestalling. "But before we can judge of the merits of M. Sarcey's theory, we mustlook into it a little more closely. I shall try, then, to state it in myown words, in what I believe to be its most rational anddefensible form. 

An obligatory scene is one which the audience (more or less clearly andconsciously) foresees and desires, and the absence of which it may withreason resent. On a rough analysis, it will appear, I think, that thereare five ways in which a scene may become, in this sense, obligatory:

(1) It may be necessitated by the inherent logic of the theme. 

(2) It may be demanded by the manifest exigencies of specificallydramatic effect. 

(3) The author himself may have rendered it obligatory by seemingunmistakably to lead up to it. 

(4) It may be required in order to justify some modification ofcharacter or alteration of will, too important to be taken for granted. 

(5) It may be imposed by history or legend. 

These five classes of obligatory scenes may be docketed, respectively, as the Logical, the Dramatic, the Structural, the Psychological, and theHistoric. M. Sarcey generally employed the term in one of the firstthree senses, without clearly distinguishing between them. It is, indeed, not always easy to determine whether the compulsion (assuming itto exist at all) lies in the very essence of the theme or situation, oronly in the author's manipulation of it. 

Was Sarcey right in assuming such a compulsion to be a constant anddominant factor in the playwright's craft? I think we shall see reasonto believe him right in holding that it frequently arises, but wrong ifhe went the length of maintaining that there can be no good play withouta definite _scène à faire_--as eighteenth-century landscape painters aresaid to have held that no one could be a master of his art till he knewwhere to place "the brown tree. " I remember no passage in which Sarceyexplicitly lays down so hard and fast a rule, but several in which heseems to take it for granted. [1]

It may be asked whether--and if so, why--the theory of the obligatoryscene holds good for the dramatist and not for the novelist? Perhaps ithas more application to the novel than is commonly supposed; but in sofar as it applies peculiarly to the drama, the reason is pretty clear. It lies in the strict concentration imposed on the dramatist, and thehigh mental tension which is, or ought to be, characteristic of thetheatrical audience. The leisurely and comparatively passivenovel-reader may never miss a scene which an audience, with itsinstincts of logic and of economy keenly alert, may feel to beinevitable. The dramatist is bound to extract from his material the lastparticle of that particular order of effect which the stage, and thestage alone, can give us. If he fails to do so, we feel that there hasbeen no adequate justification for setting in motion all the complexmechanism of the theatre. His play is like a badly-designed engine inwhich a large part of the potential energy is dissipated to no purpose. The novelist, with a far wider range of effects at his command, andemploying no special mechanism to bring them home to us, is much morefree to select and to reject. He is exempt from the law of rigid economyto which the dramatist must submit. Far from being bound to do things inthe most dramatic way, he often does wisely in rejecting that course, asunsuited to his medium. Fundamentally, no doubt, the same principleapplies to both arts, but with a wholly different stringency in the caseof the drama. "Advisable" in the novelist's vocabulary is translated by"imperative" in the dramatist's. The one is playing a long-drawn game, in which the loss of a trick or two need not prove fatal; the other hasstaked his all on a single rubber. 

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Obligatory scenes of the first type--those necessitated by the inherentlogic of the theme--can naturally arise only in plays to which adefinite theme can be assigned. If we say that woman's claim to possessa soul of her own, even in marriage, is the theme of _A Doll's House_, then evidently the last great balancing of accounts between Nora andHelmer is an obligatory scene. It would have been quite possible forIbsen to have completed the play without any such scene: he might, forinstance, have let Nora fulfil her intention of drowning herself; but inthat case his play would have been merely a tragic anecdote with thepoint omitted. We should have felt vague intimations of a general ideahovering in the air, but it would have remained undefined andundeveloped. As we review, however, the series of Ibsen's plays, andnotice how difficult it is to point to any individual scene and say, "This was clearly the _scène à faire_, " we feel that, though the phrasemay express a useful idea in a conveniently brief form, there is nopossibility of making the presence or absence of a _scène à faire_ ageneral test of dramatic merit. In _The Wild Duck_, who would not saythat, theoretically, the scene in which Gregers opens Hialmar's eyes tothe true history of his marriage was obligatory in the highest degree?Yet Ibsen, as a matter of fact, does not present it to us: he sends thetwo men off for "a long walk" together: and who does not feel that thisis a stroke of consummate art? In _Rosmersholm_, as we know, he hasbeen accused of neglecting, not merely the scene, but the play, _àfaire_; but who will now maintain that accusation? In _John GabrielBorhman_, if we define the theme as the clash of two devouring egoisms, Ibsen has, in the third act, given us the obligatory scene; but he hasdone it, unfortunately, with an enfeebled hand; whereas the first andsecond acts, though largely expository, and even (in the Foldal scene)episodic, rank with his greatest achievements. 

For abundant examples of scenes rendered obligatory by the logic of thetheme, we have only to turn to the works of those remorselessdialecticians, MM. Hervieu and Brieux. In such a play as _La Course duFlambeau_, there is scarcely a scene that may not be called anobligatory deduction from the thesis duly enunciated, with no smallparade of erudition, in the first ten minutes of the play. It is that, in handing on the _vital lampada_, as Plato and "le bon poète Lucrèce"express it, the love of the parent for the child becomes a devouringmania, to which everything else is sacrificed, while the love of thechild for the parent is a tame and essentially selfish emotion, absolutely powerless when it comes into competition with the passionswhich are concerned with the transmission of the vital flame. Thistheorem having been stated, what is the first obligatory scene?Evidently one in which a mother shall refuse a second marriage, with aman whom she loves, because it would injure the prospects and wound thefeelings of her adored daughter. Then, when the adored daughter herselfmarries, the mother must make every possible sacrifice for her, and thedaughter must accept them all with indifference, as mere matters ofcourse. But what is the final, triumphant proof of the theorem? Why, ofcourse, the mother must kill her mother to save the daughter's life! Andthis ultra-obligatory scene M. Hervieu duly serves up to us. Marie-Jeanne (the daughter) is ordered to the Engadine; Sabine (themother) is warned that Madame Fontenais (the grandmother) must not go tothat altitude on pain of death; but, by a series of violently artificialdevices, things are so arranged that Marie-Jeanne cannot go unlessMadame Fontenais goes too; and Sabine, rather than endanger herdaughter's recovery, does not hesitate to let her mother set forth, unwittingly, to her doom. In the last scene of all, Marie-Jeannelight-heartedly prepares to leave her mother and go off with her husbandto the ends of the earth; Sabine learns that the man she loved andrejected for Marie-Jeanne's sake is for ever lost to her; and, tocomplete the demonstration, Madame Fontenais falls dead at her feet. These scenes are unmistakably _scènes à faire_, dictated by the logic ofthe theme; but they belong to a conception of art in which the freerhythms of life are ruthlessly sacrificed to the needs of ademonstration. Obligatory scenes of this order are mere diagrams drawnwith ruler and compass--the obligatory illustrations of an extravagantlyover-systematic lecture. 

M. Brieux in some of his plays (not in all) is no less logic-ridden thanM. Hervieu. Take, for instance, _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_: everycharacter is a term in a syllogism, every scene is dictated by animperious craving for symmetry. The main theorem may be stated in somesuch terms as these: "The French marriage system is immoral andabominable; yet the married woman is, on the whole, less pitiable thanher unmarried sisters. " In order to prove this thesis in due form, webegin at the beginning, and show how the marriage of Antonin Mairaut andJulie Dupont is brought about by the dishonest cupidity of the parentson both sides. The Duponts flatter themselves that they have cheated theMairauts, the Mairauts that they have swindled the Duponts; whileAntonin deliberately simulates artistic tastes to deceive Julie, andJulie as deliberately makes a show of business capacity in order to takein Antonin. Every scene between father and daughter is balanced by acorresponding scene between mother and son. Every touch of hypocrisy onthe one side is scrupulously set off against a trait of dishonesty onthe other. Julie's passion for children is emphasized, Antonin'saversion from them is underlined. But lest he should be accused ofseeing everything in black, M. Brieux will not make the parentsaltogether detestable. Still holding the balance true, he lets M. Mairaut on the one side, and Madame Dupont on the other, develop amiableimpulses, and protest, at a given moment, against the infamies committedand countenanced by their respective spouses. And in the second andthird acts, the edifice of deception symmetrically built up in the firstact is no less symmetrically demolished. The parents expose and denounceeach other's villainies; Julie and Antonin, in a great scene of conjugalrecrimination, lay bare the hypocrisies of allurement that have broughtthem together. Julie then determines to escape from the loathsomeprison-house of her marriage; and this brings us to the second part ofthe theorem. The title shows that Julie has two sisters; but hithertothey have remained in the background. Why do they exist at all? Why hasProvidence blessed M. Dupont with "three fair daughters and no more"?Because Providence foresaw exactly the number M. Brieux would requirefor his demonstration. Are there not three courses open to a pennilesswoman in our social system--marriage, wage-earning industry, andwage-earning profligacy? Well, M. Dupont must have one daughter torepresent each of these contingencies. Julie has illustrated themiseries of marriage; Caroline and Angèle shall illustrate respectivelythe still greater miseries of unmarried virtue and unmarried vice. WhenJulie declares her intention of breaking away from the house of bondage, her sisters rise up symmetrically, one on either hand, and implore herrather to bear the ills she has than to fly to others that she knows notof. "Symmetry of symmetries, all is symmetry" in the poetics of M. Brieux. But life does not fall into such obvious patterns. Theobligatory scene which is imposed upon us, not by the logic of life, butby the logic of demonstration, is not a _scène à faire_, but a _scèneà fuir_. 

Mr. Bernard Shaw, in some sense the Brieux of the English theatre, isnot a man to be dominated by logic, or by anything else under the sun. He has, however, given us one or two excellent examples of theobligatory scene in the true and really artistic sense of the term. Thescene of Candida's choice between Eugene and Morell crowns the edificeof _Candida_ as nothing else could. Given the characters and theirrespective attitudes towards life, this sententious thrashing-out of thesituation was inevitable. So, too, in _Mrs. Warren's Profession_, thegreat scene of the second act between Vivie and her mother is a superbexample of a scene imposed by the logic of the theme. On the other hand, in Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's finely conceived, though unequal, play, _Michael and his Lost Angel_, we miss what was surely an obligatoryscene. The play is in fact a contest between the paganism of AudrieLesden and the ascetic, sacerdotal idealism of Michael Feversham. In thesecond act, paganism snatches a momentary victory; and we confidentlyexpect, in the third act, a set and strenuous effort on Audrie's part tobreak down in theory the ascetic ideal which has collapsed in practice. It is probable enough that she might not succeed in dragging her loverforth from what she regards as the prison-house of a superstition; butthe logic of the theme absolutely demands that she should make theattempt. Mr. Jones has preferred to go astray after some comparativelyirrelevant and commonplace matter, and has thus left his playincomplete. So, too, in _The Triumph of the Philistines_, Mr. Jonesmakes the mistake of expecting us to take a tender interest in a pair oflovers who have had never a love-scene to set our interest agoing. Theyare introduced to each other in the first act, and we shrewdly suspect(for in the theatre we are all inveterate match-makers) that they aregoing to fall in love; but we have not the smallest positive evidence ofthe fact before we find, in the second act, that misunderstandings havearisen, and the lady declines to look at the gentleman. The actress whoplayed the part at the St. James's Theatre was blamed for failing toenlist our sympathies in this romance; but what actress can make much ofa love part which, up to the very last moment, is all suspicion andjealousy? Fancy _Romeo and Juliet_ with the love-scenes omitted, "byspecial request!"

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In a second class, according to our analysis, we place the obligatoryscene which is imposed by "the manifest exigencies of specificallydramatic effect. " Here it must of course be noted that the conception of"specifically dramatic effect" varies in some degree, from age to age, from generation to generation, and even, one may almost say, fromtheatre to theatre. Scenes of violence and slaughter were banished fromthe Greek theatre, mainly, no doubt, because rapid movement was rendereddifficult by the hieratic trappings of the actors, and was altogetherforeign to the spirit of tragedy; but it can scarcely be doubted thatthe tragic poets were the less inclined to rebel against thisconvention, because they extracted "specifically dramatic effects" of avery high order out of their "messenger-scenes. " Even in the moderntheatre we are thrilled by the description of Hippolytus dragged at hisown chariot wheel, or Creusa and Creon devoured by Medea's veil offire. [2] On the Elizabethan stage, the murder of Agamemnon would nodoubt have been "subjected to our faithful eyes" like the blinding ofGloucester or the suffocation of Edward II; but who shall say that thereis less "specifically dramatic effect" in Aeschylus's method ofmirroring the scene in the clairvoyant ecstasy of Cassandra? I am muchinclined to think that the dramatic effect of highly emotional narrativeis underrated in the modern theatre. 

Again, at one class of theatre, the author of a sporting play--is boundto exhibit a horse-race on the stage, or he is held to have shirked hisobligatory scene. At another class of theatre, we shall have a scene, perhaps, in a box in the Grand Stand, where some Lady Gay Spanker shallbreathlessly depict, from start to finish, the race which is visible toher, but invisible to the audience. At a third class of the theatre, the"specifically dramatic effect" to be extracted from a horse-race isfound in a scene in a Black-Country slum, where a group of working-menand women are feverishly awaiting the evening paper which shall bringthem the result of the St. Leger, involving for some of themopulence--to the extent, perhaps, of a £5 note--and for others ruin. [3]

The difficulty of deciding that any one form of scene is predestined bythe laws of dramatic effect is illustrated in Tolstoy's grisly drama, _The Power of Darkness_. The scene in which Nikita kills Akoulina'schild was felt to be too horrible for representation; whereupon theauthor wrote an alternative scene between Mitritch and Anna, whichpasses simultaneously with the murder scene, in an adjoining room. Thetwo scenes fulfil exactly the same function in the economy of the play;it can be acted with either of them, it might be acted with both; and itis impossible to say which produces the intenser or more "specificallydramatic effect. "

The fact remains, however, that there is almost always a dramatic andundramatic, a more dramatic and a less dramatic, way of doing a thing;and an author who allows us to foresee and expect a dramatic way ofattaining a given end, and then chooses an undramatic or less dramaticway, is guilty of having missed the obligatory scene. For a generaldiscussion of what we mean by the terms "dramatic" and "undramatic" thereader may refer back to Chapter III. Here I need only give one or twoparticular illustrations. 

It will be remembered that one of the _scènes à faire_ which M. Sarceyforesaw in _Les Fourchambault_ was the encounter between the twobrothers; the illegitimate Bernard and the legitimate Leopold. It wouldhave been quite possible, and quite natural, to let the action of theplay work itself out without any such encounter; or to let the encountertake place behind the scenes; but this would have been a patent ignoringof dramatic possibilities, and M. Sarcey would have had ample reason topour the vials of his wrath on Augier's head. He was right, however, inhis confidence that Augier would not fail to "make" the scene. And howdid he "make" it? The one thing inevitable about it was that the truthshould be revealed to Leopold; but there were a dozen different ways inwhich that might have been effected. Perhaps, in real life, Bernardwould have said something to this effect: "Young man, you are makingquestionable advances to a lady in whom I am interested. I beg that youwill cease to persecute her; and if you ask by what right I do so, Ireply that I am in fact your elder brother, that I have saved our fatherfrom ruin, that I am henceforth the predominant partner in his business, and that, if you do not behave yourself, I shall see that your allowanceis withdrawn, and that you have no longer the means to lead an idle anddissolute life. " This would have been an ungracious but not unnaturalway of going about the business. Had Augier chosen it, we should havehad no right to complain on the score of probability; but it would havebeen evident to the least imaginative that he had left the specificallydramatic opportunities of the scene entirely undeveloped. Let us now seewhat he actually did. Marie Letellier, compromised by Leopold's conduct, has left the Fourchambault house and taken refuge with Mme. Bernard. Bernard loves her devotedly, but does not dream that she can seeanything in his uncouth personality, and imagines that she lovesLeopold. Accordingly, he determines that Leopold shall marry her, andtells him so. Leopold scoffs at the idea; Bernard insists; and little bylittle the conflict rises to a tone of personal altercation. At lastLeopold says something slighting of Mile. Letellier, and Bernard--who, be it noted, has begun with no intention of revealing the kinshipbetween them--loses his self-control and cries, "Ah, there speaks theblood of the man who slandered a woman in order to prevent his son fromkeeping his word to her. I recognize in you your grandfather, who was amiserable calumniator. " "Repeat that word!" says Leopold. Bernard doesso, and the other strikes him across the face with his glove. For aperceptible interval Bernard struggles with his rage in silence, andthen: "It is well for you, " he cries, "that you are my brother!"

We need not follow the scene in the sentimental turning which it thentakes, whereby it comes about, of course, that Bernard, not Leopold, marries Mile. Letellier. The point is that Augier has justified Sarcey'sconfidence by making the scene thoroughly and specifically dramatic; inother words, by charging it with emotion, and working up the tension toa very high pitch. And Sarcey was no doubt right in holding that thiswas what the whole audience instinctively expected, and that they wouldhave been more or less consciously disappointed had the author baulkedtheir expectation. 

An instructive example of the failure to "make" a dramaticallyobligatory scene may be found in _Agatha_ by Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mr. Louis Parker. Agatha is believed to be the child of Sir Richard and LadyFancourt; but at a given point she learns that a gentleman whom she hasknown all her life as "Cousin Ralph" is in reality her father. She has amiddle-aged suitor, Colonel Ford, whom she is very willing to marry; butat the end of the second act she refuses him, because she shrinks fromthe idea, on the one hand, of concealing the truth from him, on theother hand, of revealing her mother's trespass. This is not, in itself, a very strong situation, for we feel the barrier between the lovers tobe unreal. Colonel Ford is a man of sense. The secret of Agatha'sparentage can make no real difference to him. Nothing material--no pointof law or of honour--depends on it. He will learn the truth, and allwill come right between them. The only point on which our interest cancentre is the question how he is to learn the truth; and here theauthors go very far astray. There are two, and only two, really dramaticways in which Colonel Ford can be enlightened. Lady Fancourt mustrealize that Agatha is wrecking her life to keep her mother's secret, and must either herself reveal it to Colonel Ford, or must encourage andenjoin Agatha to do so. Now, the authors choose neither of these ways:the secret slips out, through a chance misunderstanding in aconversation between Sir Richard Fancourt and the Colonel. This is atypical instance of an error of construction; and why?--because itleaves to chance what should be an act of will. Drama means a thingdone, not merely a thing that happens; and the playwright who letsaccident effect what might naturally and probably be a result ofvolition, or, in other words, of character, sins against the fundamentallaw of his craft. In the case before us, Lady Fancourt and Agatha--thetwo characters on whom our interest is centred--are deprived of allshare in one of the crucial moments of the action. Whether the actualdisclosure was made by the mother or by the daughter, there ought tohave been a great scene between the two, in which the mother should haveinsisted that, by one or other, the truth must be told. It would havebeen a painful, a delicate, a difficult scene, but it was the obligatoryscene of the play; and had we been allowed clearly to foresee it at theend of the second act, our interest would have been decisively carriedforward. The scene, too, might have given the play a moral relevancewhich in fact it lacks. The readjustment of Agatha's scheme of things, so as to make room for her mother's history, might have been madeexplicit and partly intellectual, instead of implicit, inarticulate andwholly emotional. 

This case, then, clearly falls under our second heading. We cannot saythat it is the logic of the theme which demands the scene, for no thesisor abstract idea is enunciated. Nor can we say that the course of eventsis unnatural or improbable; our complaint is that, without being at allless natural, they might have been highly dramatic, and that in factthey are not so. 

In a very different type of play, we find another example of theignoring of a dramatically obligatory scene. The author of that charmingfantasy, _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_, was long ago guilty of aplay named _The Rise of Dick Halward_, chiefly memorable for havingelicited from Mr. Bernard Shaw one of the most brilliant pages inEnglish dramatic criticism. The hero of this play, after an adventurousyouth in Mexico, has gone to the bar, but gets no briefs, and istherefore unable to marry a lady who announces that no suitor need applywho has less than £5000 a year. One fine day Dick receives from Mexicothe will of an old comrade, which purports to leave to him, absolutely, half a million dollars, gold; but the will is accompanied by a letter, in which the old comrade states that the property is really left to himonly in trust for the testator's long-lost son, whom Dick is enjoined tosearch out and endow with a capital which, at 5 per cent, representsaccurately the desiderated £5000 a year. As a matter of fact (but thisis not to our present purpose), the long-lost son is actually, at thatmoment, sharing Dick's chambers in the Temple. Dick, however, does notknow this, and cannot resist the temptation to destroy the old miner'sletter, and grab the property. We know, of course, that retribution isbound to descend upon him; but does not dramatic effect imperativelyrequire that, for a brief space at any rate, he should be seen--withwhatever qualms of conscience his nature might dictate--enjoying hisill-gotten wealth? Mr. Jerome, however, baulks us of this justexpectation. In the very first scene of the second act we find that thegame is up. The deceased miner wrote his letter to Dick seated in thedoorway of a hut; a chance photographer took a snap-shot at him; and onreturning to England, the chance photographer has nothing more pressingto do than to chance upon the one man who knows the long-lost son, andto show him the photograph of the dying miner, whom he at oncerecognizes. By aid of a microscope, the letter he is writing can bedeciphered, and thus Dick's fraud is brought home to him. Now one wouldsuppose that an author who had invented this monstrous and staggeringconcatenation of chances, must hope to justify it by some highlydramatic situation, in the obvious and commonplace sense of the word. Itis not difficult, indeed, to foresee such a situation, in which DickHalward should be confronted, as if by magic, with the very words of theletter he has so carefully destroyed. I am far from saying that thisscene would, in fact, have justified its amazing antecedents; but itwould have shown a realization on the author's part that he must at anyrate attempt some effect proportionate to the strain he had placed uponour credulity. Mr. Jerome showed no such realization. He made the manwho handed Dick the copy of the letter explain beforehand how it hadbeen obtained; so that Dick, though doubtless surprised and disgusted, was not in the least thunderstruck, and manifested no emotion. Here, then, Mr. Jerome evidently missed a scene rendered obligatory by the lawof the maximum of specifically dramatic effect. 

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The third, or structural, class of obligatory scenes may be more brieflydealt with, seeing that we have already, in the last chapter, discussedthe principle involved. In this class we have placed, by definition, scenes which the author himself has rendered obligatory by seemingunmistakably to lead up to them--or, in other words, scenes indicated, or seeming to be indicated, by deliberately-planted finger-posts. It mayappear as though the case of Dick Halward, which we have just beenexamining, in reality came under this heading. But it cannot actually besaid that Mr. Jerome either did, or seemed to, point by finger-poststowards the obligatory scene. He rather appears to have been blanklyunconscious of its possibility. 

We have noted in the foregoing chapter the unwisdom of plantingmisleading finger-posts; here we have only to deal with the particularcase in which they seem to point to a definite and crucial scene. Anexample given by M. Sarcey himself will, I think, make the matterquite clear. 

M. Jules Lemaître's play, _Révoltée_, tells the story of a would-beintellectual, ill-conditioned young woman, married to a plain andungainly professor of mathematics, whom she despises. We know that sheis in danger of yielding to the fascinations of a seductiveman-about-town; and having shown us this danger, the author proceeds toemphasize the manly and sterling character of the husband. He has thegentleness that goes with strength; but where his affections or hishonour is concerned, he is not a man to be trifled with. This havingbeen several times impressed upon us, we naturally expect that the wifeis to be rescued by some striking manifestation of the husband'smasterful virility. But no such matter! Rescued she is, indeed; but itis by the intervention of her half-brother, who fights a duel on herbehalf, and is brought back wounded to restore peace to themathematician's household: that man of science having been quite passivethroughout, save for some ineffectual remonstrances. It happens that inthis case we know just where the author went astray. Hélène (the wife)is the unacknowledged daughter of a great lady, Mme. De Voves; and thesubject of the play, as the author first conceived it, was the relationbetween the mother, the illegitimate daughter, and the legitimate son;the daughter's husband taking only a subordinate place. But Lemaîtrechose as a model for the husband a man whom he had known and admired;and he allowed himself to depict in vivid colours his strong andsympathetic character, without noticing that he was thereby upsettingthe economy of his play, and giving his audience reason to anticipate aline of development quite different from that which he had in mind. Inadvertently, in fact, he planted, not one, but two or three, misleading finger-posts. 

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We come now to the fourth, or psychological, class of obligatoryscenes--those which are "required in order to justify some modificationof character or alteration of will, too important to be takenfor granted. "

An obvious example of an obligatory scene of this class may be found inthe third act of _Othello_. The poet is bound to show us the process bywhich Iago instils his poison into Othello's mind. He has backedhimself, so to speak, to make this process credible to us; and, by amasterpiece of dexterity and daring, he wins his wager. Had he omittedthis scene--had he shown us Othello at one moment full of sereneconfidence, and at his next appearance already convinced of Desdemona'sguilt--he would have omitted the pivot and turning--point of the wholestructure. It may seem fantastic to conceive that any dramatist couldblunder so grossly; but there are not a few plays in which we observe ascarcely less glaring hiatus. 

A case in point may be found in Lord Tennyson's _Becket_. I am not oneof those who hold Tennyson merely contemptible as a dramatist. I believethat, had he taken to playwriting nearly half-a-century earlier, andstudied the root principles of craftsmanship, instead of blindlyaccepting the Elizabethan conventions, he might have done work as finein the mass as are the best moments of _Queen Mary_ and _Harold_. As awhole, _Becket_ is one of his weakest productions; but the Prologue andthe first act would have formed an excellent first and third act for aplay of wholly different sequel, had he interposed, in a second act, theobligatory scene required to elucidate Becket's character. The historicand psychological problem of Thomas Becket is his startlingtransformation from an easy-going, luxurious, worldly statesman into agaunt ecclesiastic, fanatically fighting for the rights of his see, ofhis order, and of Rome. In any drama which professes to deal (as thisdoes) with his whole career, the intellectual interest cannot but centrein an analysis of the forces that brought about this seeming new-birthof his soul. It would have been open to the poet, no doubt, to take uphis history at a later point, when he was already the full-fledgedclerical and ultramontane. But this Tennyson does not do. He is at painsto present to us the magnificent Chancellor, the bosom friend of theKing, and mild reprover of his vices; and then, without the smallesttransition, hey presto! he is the intransigent priest, bitterlycombating the Constitutions of Clarendon. It is true that in thePrologue the poet places one or two finger-posts--small, conventionalforeshadowings of coming trouble. For instance, the game of chessbetween King and Chancellor ends with a victory for Becket, who says--

 "You see my bishop Hath brought your king to a standstill. You are beaten. "

The symbolical game of chess is a well-worn dramatic device. Becket, moreover, seems to feel some vague disquietude as to what may happen ifhe accepts the archbishopric; but there is nothing to show that he isconscious of any bias towards the intransigent clericalism of the lateract. The character-problem, in fact, is not only not solved, but isignored. The obligatory scene is skipped over, in the interval betweenthe Prologue and the first act. 

One of the finest plays of our time--Sir Arthur Pinero's _Iris_--lacks, in my judgment, an obligatory scene. The character of Iris is admirablytrue, so far as it goes; but it is incomplete. The author seems to haveevaded the crucial point of his play--the scene of her installation inMaldonado's flat. To perfect his psychological study, he was bound tobridge the chasm between the Iris of the third act and the Iris of thefourth. He builds two ends of the bridge, in the incident of thecheque-book at the close of the one act, and in the state of hebetude inwhich we find her at the opening of the other; but there remains a greatgap at which the imagination boggles. The author has tried to throw aretrospective footway across it in Iris's confession to Trenwith in thefifth act; but I do not find that it quite meets the case. It would nodoubt have been very difficult to keep the action within reasonablelimits had a new act taken the place of the existing fourth; but SirArthur Pinero would probably have produced a completer work of art hadhe faced this difficulty, and contrived to compress into a single lastact something like the matter of the existing fourth and fifth. It maybe that he deliberately preferred that Iris should give in narrative thehistory of her decline; but I do not consider this a case in support ofthat slight plea for impassioned narrative which I ventured to put fortha few pages back. Her confession to Trenwith would have been far moredramatic and moving had it been about one-fourth part as long andone-fourth part as articulate. 

 * * * * *

Of the scene imposed by history or legend it is unnecessary to say verymuch. We saw in Chapter IX that the theatre is not the place forexpounding the results of original research, which cast a new light onhistoric character. It is not the place for whitewashing Richard III, orrepresenting him as a man of erect and graceful figure. It is not theplace for proving that Guy Fawkes was an earnest Presbyterian, that NellGwynn was a lady of the strictest morals, or that George Washington wasincapable of telling the truth. The playwright who deals with Henry VIIIis bound to present him, in the schoolboy's phrase, as "a greatwidower. " William the Silent must not be a chatterbox, Torquemada ahumanitarian, Ivan the Terrible a conscientious opponent of capitalpunishment. And legend has its fixed points no less than history. In thetheatre, indeed, there is little distinction between them: history islegend, and legend history. A dramatist may, if he pleases (though it isa difficult task), break wholly unfamiliar ground in the past; but wherea historic legend exists he must respect it at his peril. 

From all this it is a simple deduction that where legend (historic orotherwise) associates a particular character with a particular scenethat is by any means presentable on the stage, that scene becomesobligatory in a drama of which he is the leading figure. The fact thatShakespeare could write a play about King John, and say nothing aboutRunnymede and Magna Charta, shows that that incident in constitutionalhistory had not yet passed into popular legend. When Sir Herbert Treerevived the play, he repaired the poet's omission by means of aninserted tableau. Even Shakespeare had not the hardihood to let Caesarfall without saying, "The Ides of March are come" and "Et tu, Brute!"Nero is bound to fiddle while Rome burns, or the audience will know thereason why. [4] Historic criticism will not hear of the "Thou hastconquered, Galilean!" which legend attributes to Julian the Apostate;yet Ibsen not only makes him say it, but may almost be said to find inthe phrase the keynote of his world-historic drama. Tristram and Iseultmust drink a love-philtre or they are not Tristram and Iseult. It wouldbe the extreme of paradox to write a Paolo-and-Francesca play and omitthe scene of "Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante. "

The cases are not very frequent, however, in which an individualincident is thus imposed by history or legend. The practical point to benoted is rather that, when an author introduces a strongly-markedhistorical character, he must be prepared to give him at least one goodopportunity of acting up to the character which legend--the best ofevidence in the theatre--assigns to him. When such a personage ispresented to us, it ought to be at his highest potency. We do notwant to see--

 "From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow, And Swift expire, a driveller and a show. "

If you deal with Napoleon, for instance, it is perfectly clear that hemust dominate the stage. As soon as you bring in the name, the idea, ofNapoleon Bonaparte, men have eyes and ears for nothing else; and theydemand to see him, in a general way, acting up to their generalconception of him. That was what Messrs. Lloyd Osbourne and AustinStrong forgot in their otherwise clever play, _The Exile_. It is uselessto prove, historically, that at a given moment he was passive, supine, unconscious, while people around him were eagerly plotting his escapeand restoration. That may have been so; but it is not what an audiencewants to see. It wants to see Napoleon Napoleonizing. For anomalies anduncharacteristic episodes in Napoleon's career we must go to books; theplayhouse is not the place for them. It is true that a dramatist likeMr. Bernard Shaw may, at his own risk and peril, set forth to give us anew reading of Caesar or of Napoleon, which may or may not bedramatically acceptable. [5] But this is not what Messrs. Osbourne andStrong tried to do. Their Napoleon was the Napoleon of tradition--onlyhe failed to act "in a concatenation according. "

There are a few figures in history--and Napoleon is one of them--whichso thrill the imagination that their mere name can dominate the stage, better, perhaps, than their bodily presence. In _L'Aiglon_, by M. Rostand, Napoleon is in fact the hero, though he lies dead in hisfar-off island, under the Southern Cross. Another such figure is AbrahamLincoln. In James Herne's sadly underrated play, _Griffith Davenport_, we were always conscious of "Mr. Lincoln" in the background; and the actin which Governor Morton of Indiana brought the President's instructionsto Davenport might fairly be called an obligatory scene, inasmuch as itgave us the requisite sense of personal nearness to the master-spirit, without involving any risk of belittlement through imperfections ofrepresentation. There is a popular melodrama, passing in Palestine underthe Romans, throughout the course of which we constantly feel theinfluence of a strange new prophet, unseen but wonder-working, who, if Iremember rightly, is personally presented to us only in a final tableau, wherein he appears riding into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of themultitude. The execution of _Ben Hur_ is crude and commonplace, but theconception is by no means inartistic. Historical figures of the highestrank may perhaps be best adumbrated in this fashion, with or without onepersonal appearance, so brief that there shall be no danger ofanti-climax. 

The last paragraph reminds us that the accomplished playwright shows hisaccomplishment quite as much in his recognition and avoidance of the_scène à ne pas faire_ as in his divination of the obligatory scene. There is always the chance that no one may miss a scene demanded bylogic or psychology; but an audience knows too well when it has beenbored or distressed by a superfluous, or inconsequent, or wantonlypainful scene. 

Some twenty years ago, in criticizing a play named _Le Maître d'Armes_, M. Sarcey took the authors gravely to task, in the name of "Aristotleand common sense, " for following the modern and reprehensible tendencyto present "slices of life" rather than constructed and developeddramas. Especially he reproached them with deliberately omitting the_scène à faire_. A young lady is seduced, he says, and, for the sake ofher child, implores her betrayer to keep his promise of marriage. Herenews the promise, without the slightest intention of fulfilling it, and goes on board his yacht in order to make his escape. She discovershis purpose and follows him on board the yacht. "What is the scene, "asks M. Sarcey--here I translate literally--"which you expect, you, thepublic? It is the scene between the abandoned fair one and her seducer. The author may make it in a hundred ways, but make it he must!" Insteadof which, the critic proceeds, we are fobbed off with a storm-scene, arescue, and other sensational incidents, and hear no word of what passesbetween the villain and his victim. Here, I think, M. Sarcey is mistakenin his application of his pet principle. Words cannot express ourunconcern as to what passes between the heroine and the villain on boardthe yacht--nay, more, our gratitude for being spared that painful andthreadbare scene of recrimination. The plot demands, observe, that thevillain shall not relent. We know quite well that he cannot, for if hedid the play would fall to pieces. Why, then, should we expect or demanda sordid squabble which can lead to nothing? We--and by "we" I mean thepublic which relishes such plays--cannot possibly have any keen appetitefor copious re-hashes of such very cold mutton as the appeals of thepenitent heroine to the recalcitrant villain. And the moral seems to bethat in this class of play--the drama, if one may call it so, offoregone character--the _scène à faire_ is precisely the scene tobe omitted. 

In plays of a more ambitious class, skill is often shown by theindication, in place of the formal presentment, even of an importantscene which the audience may, or might, have expected to witness infull. We have already noted such a case in _The Wild Duck_: Ibsen knewthat what we really required to witness was not the actual process ofGregers's disclosure to Hialmar, but its effects. A small, but quitenoticeable, example of a scene thus rightly left to the imaginationoccurred in Mr. Somerset Maugham's first play, _A Man of Honour_. In thefirst act, Jack Halliwell, his wife, and his sister-in-law call upon hisfriend Basil Kent. The sister-in-law, Hilda Murray, is a rich widow; andshe and Kent presently go out on the balcony together and are lost toview. Then it appears, in a scene between the Halliwells, that theyfully believe that Kent is in love with Mrs. Murray and is now proposingto her. But when the two re-enter from the balcony, it is evident fromtheir mien that, whatever may have passed between them, they are notaffianced lovers; and we presently learn that though Kent is in factstrongly attracted to Mrs. Murray, he considers himself bound in honourto marry a certain Jenny Bush, a Fleet Street barmaid, with whom he hasbecome entangled. Many playwrights would, so to speak, have dotted thei's of the situation by giving us the scene between Kent and Mrs. Murray; but Mr. Maugham has done exactly right in leaving us to divineit. We know all that, at this point, we require to know of the relationbetween them; to have told us more would have been to anticipate anddiscount the course of events. 

A more striking instance of a scene rightly placed behind the scenesoccurs in M. De Curel's terrible drama _Les Fossiles_. I need not gointo the singularly unpleasing details of the plot. Suffice it to saythat a very peculiar condition of things exists in the family of the Ducde Chantemelle. It has been fully discussed in the second act betweenthe Duke and his daughter Claire, who has been induced to accept it forthe sake of the family name. But a person more immediately concerned isRobert de Chantemelle, the only son of the house--will he also accept itquietly? A nurse, who is acquainted with the black secret, misbehavesherself, and is to be packed off. As she is a violent woman, Robertinsists on dismissing her himself, and leaves the room to do so. Therest of the family are sure that, in her rage, she will blurt out thewhole story; and they wait, in breathless anxiety, for Robert's return. What follows need not be told: the point is that this scene--the sceneof tense expectancy as to the result of a crisis which is taking placein another room of the same house--is really far more dramatic than thecrisis itself would be. The audience already knows all that the angryvirago can say to her master; and of course no discussion of the meritsof the case is possible between these two. Therefore M. De Curel isconspicuously right in sparing us the scene of vulgar violence, andgiving us the scene of far higher tension in which Robert's father, wifeand sister expect his return, their apprehension deepening with everymoment that he delays. 

We see, then, that there is such a thing as a false _scène à faire_--ascene which at first sight seems obligatory, but is in fact much bettertaken for granted. It may be absolutely indispensable that it should besuggested to the mind of the audience, but neither indispensable noradvisable that it should be presented to their eyes. The judiciousplaywright will often ask himself, "Is it the actual substance of thisscene that I require, or only its repercussion?"

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: For example, in his criticism of Becque's _La Parisienne(Quarante Ans de Théâtre_, VI, p. 364), he tells how, at the end of thesecond act, one of his neighbours said to him, "Eh! bien, vous voilàbien attrapé! Où est la _scène à faire_?" "I freely admit, " hecontinues, "that there is no _scène à faire_; if there had been no thirdact I should not have been greatly astonished. When you make it yourbusiness to recite on the stage articles from the _Vie Parisienne_, itmakes no difference whether you stop at the end of the second article orat the end of the third. " This clearly implies that a play in whichthere is no _scène à faire_ is nothing but a series of newspapersketches. Becque, one fancies, might have replied that the scene betweenClotilde and Monsieur Simpson at the beginning of Act III was preciselythe _scène à faire_ demanded by the logic of his cynicism. ]

[Footnote 2: I need scarcely direct the reader's attention to Mr. Gilbert Murray's noble renderings of these speeches. ]

[Footnote 3: Such a scene occurs in that very able play, _The Way theMoney Goes_, by Lady Bell. ]

[Footnote 4: In Mr. Stephen Phillips's play he does not actually play onthe lyre, but he improvises and recites an ode to the conflagration. ]

[Footnote 5: And, after all, Mr. Shaw does not run counter to thelegend. He exhibits Caesar and Napoleon "in their well-known attitudes":only, by an odd metempsychosis, the soul of Mr. Shaw has somehow enteredinto them. ]

_CHAPTER XIV_

THE PERIPETY

In the Greek theatre, as every one knows, the _peripeteia_ or reversalof fortune--the turning of the tables, as we might say--was aclearly-defined and recognized portion of the dramatic organism. It wasoften associated with the _anagnorisis_ or recognition. Mr. GilbertMurray has recently shown cause for believing that both these dramatic"forms" descended from the ritual in which Greek drama took itsorigin--the ritual celebrating the death and resurrection of the seasonof "mellow fruitfulness. " If this theory be true, the _peripeteia_ wasat first a change from sorrow to joy--joy in the rebirth of thebeneficent powers of nature. And to this day a sudden change from gloomto exhilaration is a popular and effective incident--as when, at the endof a melodrama, the handcuffs are transferred from the wrists of thevirtuous naval lieutenant to those of the wicked baronet, and, throughthe disclosure of a strawberry-mark on his left arm, the lieutenant isrecognized as the long-lost heir to a dukedom and £50, 000 a year. 

But when, as soon happened in Greece, the forms appropriate to acelebration of the death and resurrection of Dionysus came to be blentwith the tomb-ritual of a hero, the term _peripeteia_ acquired a specialassociation with a sudden decline from prosperity into adversity. In theMiddle Ages, this was thought to be the very essence and meaning oftragedy, as we may see from Chaucer's lines:

 "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, As oldë bokës maken us memorie, Of him that stood in gret prosperitee, And is y-fallen out of heigh degree Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly. "

Aristotle cites a good instance of a peripety--to Anglicize theword--"where, in the _Lynceus_, the hero is led away to execution, followed by Danaus as executioner; but, as the effect of theantecedents, Danaus is executed and Lynceus escapes. " But here, as in somany other contexts, we must turn for the classic example to the_Oedipus Rex_. Jocasta, hearing from the Corinthian stranger thatPolybus, King of Corinth, the reputed father of Oedipus, is dead, sendsfor her husband to tell him that the oracle which doomed him toparricide is defeated, since Polybus has died a natural death. Oedipusexults in the news and triumphs over the oracles; but, as the sceneproceeds, the further revelations made by the same stranger lead Jocastato recognize in Oedipus her own child, who was exposed on MountKithairon; and, in the subsequent scene, the evidence of the oldShepherd brings Oedipus himself to the same crushing realization. Nocompleter case of _anagnorisis_ and _peripeteia_ could well beconceived--whatever we may have to say of the means by which it isled up to. [1]

Has the conception of the peripety, as an almost obligatory element indrama, any significance for the modern playwright? Obligatory, ofcourse, it cannot be: it is easy to cite a hundred admirable plays inwhich it is impossible to discover anything that can reasonably becalled a peripety. But this, I think, we may safely say: the dramatistis fortunate who finds in the development of his theme, withoutunnatural strain or too much preparation, opportunity for a great scene, highly-wrought, arresting, absorbing, wherein one or more of hischaracters shall experience a marked reversal either of inwardsoul-state or of outward fortune. The theory of the peripety, in short, practically resolves itself for us into the theory of the "great scene, "Plays there are, many and excellent plays, in which some one scenestands out from all the rest, impressing itself with peculiar vividnesson the spectator's mind; and, nine times out of ten, this scene will befound to involve a peripety. It can do no harm, then, if the playwrightshould ask himself: "Can I, without any undue sacrifice, so develop mytheme as to entail upon my leading characters, naturally and probably, an experience of this order?"

The peripeties of real life are frequent, though they are apt to be toosmall in scale, or else too fatally conclusive, to provide material fordrama. One of the commonest, perhaps, is that of the man who enters aphysician's consulting-room to seek advice in some trifling ailment, andcomes out again, half an hour later, doomed either to death or to somecalamity worse than death. This situation has been employed, notineffectively, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the first act of a romanticdrama, _The Fires of Fate_; but it is very difficult to find anydramatic sequel to a peripety involving mere physical disaster. [2] Themoral peripety--the sudden dissipation of some illusion, or defeat ofsome imposture, or crumbling of some castle in the air--is a no lesscharacteristic incident of real life, and much more amenable to theplaywright's uses. Certainly there are few things more impressive indrama than to see a man or woman--or a man and woman--come upon thestage, radiant, confident, assured that

 "God's in his heaven, All's right with the world, "

and leave it crushed and desperate, after a gradual and yet swiftdescent into Avernus. Such a scene is of the very marrow of drama. It isa play within a play; a concentrated, quintessentiated crisis. 

In the third act of _Othello_ we have a peripety handled with consummatetheatrical skill. To me--I confess it with bated breath--thecraftsmanship seems greatly superior to the psychology. Othello, when welook into it, succumbs with incredible facility to Iago's poisonedpin-pricks; but no audience dreams of looking into it; and there liesthe proof of Shakespeare's technical mastery. In the Trial Scene in _TheMerchant of Venice_ we have another great peripety. It illustrates theobvious principle that, where the drama consists in a conflict betweentwo persons or parties, the peripety is generally a double one--thesudden collapse of Shylock's case implying an equally sudden restorationof Antonio's fortunes. Perhaps the most striking peripety in Ibsen isStockmann's fall from jubilant self-confidence to defiant impotence inthe third act of _An Enemy of the People_. Thinking that he has the"compact majority" at his back, he assumes the Burgomaster's insignia ofoffice, and lords it over his incensed brother, only to learn, by blowon blow of disillusionment, that "the compact majority" has ratted, thathe is to be deprived of his position and income, and that the commonestfreedom of speech is to be denied him. In _A Doll's House_ there are twoperipeties: Nora's fall from elation to despair in the first scene withKrogstad, and the collapse of Helmer's illusions in the last sceneof all. 

A good instance of the "great scene" which involves a marked peripetyoccurs in Sardou's _Dora_, once famous in England under the title of_Diplomacy_. The "scene of the three men" shows how Tékli, a Hungarianexile, calls upon his old friend André de Maurillac, on the day ofAndré's marriage, and congratulates him on having eluded the wiles of adangerous adventuress, Dora de Rio-Zarès, by whom he had once seemed tobe attracted. But it is precisely Dora whom André has married; and, learning this, Tékli tries to withdraw, or minimize, his imputation. Fora moment a duel seems imminent; but André's friend, Favrolles, adjureshim to keep his head; and the three men proceed to thrash the matter outas calmly as possible, with the result that, in the course ofhalf-an-hour or so, it seems to be proved beyond all doubt that thewoman André adores, and whom he has just married, is a treacherous spy, who sells to tyrannical foreign governments the lives of politicalexiles and the honour of the men who fall into her toils. The crushingsuspicion is ultimately disproved, by one of the tricks in which Sardoudelighted; but that does not here concern us. Artificial as are itscauses and its consequences, the "scene of the three men, " while itlasts, holds us breathless and absorbed; and André's fall from thepinnacle of happiness to the depth of misery, is a typical peripety. 

Equally typical and infinitely more tragic is another postnuptialperipety--the scene of the mutual confession of Angel Clare and Tess inMr. Hardy's great novel. As it stands on the printed page, this scene isa superb piece of drama. Its greatness has been obscured in the Englishtheatre by the general unskilfulness of the dramatic version presented. One magnificent scene does not make a play. In America, on the otherhand, the fine acting of Mrs. Fiske secured popularity for a versionwhich was, perhaps, rather better than that which we saw in England. 

I have said that dramatic peripeties are not infrequent in real life;and their scene, as is natural, is often laid in the law courts. It isunnecessary to recall the awful "reversal of fortune" that overtook oneof the most brilliant of modern dramatists. About the same period, another drama of the English courts ended in a startling and terribleperipety. A young lady was staying as a guest with a half-pay officerand his wife. A valuable pearl belonging to the hostess disappeared; andthe hostess accused her guest of having stolen it. The young lady, whohad meanwhile married, brought an action for slander against her quondamfriend. For several days the case continued, and everything seemed to begoing in the plaintiff's favour. Major Blank, the defendant's husband, was ruthlessly cross-examined by Sir Charles Russell, afterwards LordChief Justice of England, with a view to showing that he was the realthief. He made a very bad witness, and things looked black against him. The end was nearing, and every one anticipated a verdict in theplaintiff's favour, when there came a sudden change of scene. The stolenpearl had been sold to a firm of jewellers, who had recorded the numbersof the Bank of England notes with which they paid for it. One of thesenotes was produced in court, and lo! it was endorsed with the name ofthe plaintiff. [3] In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the wholeedifice of mendacity and perjury fell to pieces. The thief was arrestedand imprisoned; but the peripety for her was less terrible than for herhusband, who had married her in chivalrous faith in her innocence. 

Would it have been--or may it some day prove to be--possible to transferthis "well-made" drama of real life bodily to the stage? I am inclinedto think not. It looks to me very much like one of those "blind alley"themes of which mention has been made. There is matter, indeed, for mostpainful drama in the relations of the husband and wife, both before andafter the trial; but, from the psychological point of view, one can seenothing in the case but a distressing and inexplicable anomaly. [4] Atthe same time, the bare fact of the sudden and tremendous peripety isirresistibly dramatic; and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has admitted that itsuggested to him the great scene of the unmasking of Felicia Hindemarshin _Mrs. Dane's Defence. _

It is instructive to note the delicate adjustment which Mr. Jones foundnecessary in order to adapt the theme to dramatic uses. In the firstplace, not wishing to plunge into the depths of tragedy, he left theheroine unmarried, though on the point of marriage. In the second place, he made the blot on her past, not a theft followed by an attempt toshift the guilt on to other shoulders, but an error of conduct, due toyouth and inexperience, serious in itself, but rendered disastrous bytragic consequences over which she, Felicia, had no control. Thus Mr. Jones raised a real and fairly sufficient obstacle between his lovers, without rendering his heroine entirely unsympathetic, or presenting herin the guise of a bewildering moral anomaly. Thirdly, he transferred thescene of the peripety from a court of justice, with its difficultadjuncts and tedious procedure, to the private study of a great lawyer. At the opening of the scene between Mrs. Dane and Sir Daniel Carteret, she is, no doubt, still anxious and ill-at-ease, but reasonablyconfident of having averted all danger of exposure. Sir Daniel, too(like Sir Charles Russell in the pearl suit), is practically convincedof her innocence. He merely wants to get the case absolutely clear, forthe final confounding of her accusers. At first, all goes smoothly. Mrs. Dane's answers to his questions are pat and plausible. Then she makes asingle, almost imperceptible, slip of the tongue: she says, "We hadgovernesses, " instead of "I had governesses. " Sir Daniel pricks up hisears: "We? You say you were an only child. Who's we?" "My cousin and I, "she answers. Sir Daniel thinks it odd that he has not heard of thiscousin before; but he continues his interrogatory without serioussuspicion. Then it occurs to him to look up, in a topographicaldictionary, the little town of Tawhampton, where Mrs. Dane spent heryouth. He reads the bald account of it, ending thus, "The living is aVicarage, net yearly value £376, and has been held since 1875 by"--andhe turns round upon her--"by the Rev. Francis Hindemarsh! Hindemarsh?"

 Mrs. Dane: He was my uncle. 

 Sir Daniel: Your uncle?

 Mrs. Dane: Sir Daniel, I've done wrong to hide from you that Felicia Hindemarsh was my cousin. 

 Sir Daniel: Felicia Hindemarsh was your cousin!

 Mrs. Dane: Can't you understand why I have hidden it? The whole affair was so terrible. 

And so she stumbles on, from one inevitable admission to another, untilthe damning truth is clear that she herself is Felicia Hindemarsh, thecentral, though not the most guilty, figure in a horrible scandal. 

This scene is worthy of study as an excellent type of what may be calledthe judicial peripety, the crushing cross-examination, in which it ispossible to combine the tension of the detective story with no smallpsychological subtlety. In Mr. Jones's scene, the psychology is obviousenough; but it is an admirable example of nice adjustment without anyobtrusive ingenuity. The whole drama, in short, up to the last act is, in the exact sense of the word, a well-made play--complex yet clear, ingenious yet natural. In the comparative weakness of the last act wehave a common characteristic of latter-day drama, which will have to bediscussed in due course. 

In this case we have a peripety of external fortune. For aclearly-marked moral peripety we may turn to the great scene betweenVivie and her mother in the second act of _Mrs. Warren's Profession. _Whatever may be thought of the matter of this scene, its movement isexcellent. After a short, sharp opening, which reveals to Mrs. Warrenthe unfilial dispositions of her daughter, and reduces her to whimperingdismay, the following little passage occurs:

 Mrs. Warren: You're very rough with me, Vivie. 

 Vivie: Nonsense. What about bed? It's past ten. 

 Mrs. Warren (passionately): What's the use of my going to bed? Do you think I could sleep?

 Vivie: Why not? I shall. 

Then the mother turns upon the daughter's stony self-righteousness, andpours forth her sordid history in such a way as to throw a searchlighton the conditions which make such histories possible; until, exhaustedby her outburst, she says, "Oh, dear! I do believe I am getting sleepyafter all, " and Vivie replies, "I believe it is I who will not be ableto sleep now. " Mr. Shaw, we see, is at pains to emphasize his peripety. 

Some "great scenes" consist, not of one decisive turning of the tables, but of a whole series of minor vicissitudes of fortune. Such a scene isthe third act of _The Gay Lord Quex_, a prolonged and thrilling duel, inwhich Sophy Fullgarney passes by degrees from impertinent exultation toabject surrender and then springs up again to a mood of recklessdefiance. In the "great scene" of _The Thunderbolt_, on the otherhand--the scene of Thaddeus's false confession of having destroyed hisbrother's will--though there is, in fact, a great peripety, it is notthat which attracts and absorbs our interest. All the greedy Mortimorefamily fall from the height of jubilant confidence in their new-foundwealth to the depth of disappointment and exasperation. But this is notthe aspect of the scene which grips and moves us. Our attention iscentred on Thaddeus's struggle to take his wife's misdeed upon himself;and his failure cannot be described as a peripety, seeing that it sinkshim only one degree lower in the slough of despair. Like the scene inMrs. Dane's Defence, this is practically a piece of judicial drama--ahard-fought cross-examination. But as there is no reversal of fortunefor the character in whom we are chiefly interested, it scarcely ranksas a scene of peripety. [5]

Before leaving this subject, we may note that a favourite effect ofromantic drama is an upward reversal of fortune through therecognition--the _anagnorisis_--of some great personage in disguise. Victor Hugo excelled in the superb gestures appropriate to such a scene:witness the passage in _Hernani_, before the tomb of Charlemagne, wherethe obscure bandit claims the right to take his place at the head of theprinces and nobles whom the newly-elected Emperor has ordered off toexecution:

 Hernani:

 Dieu qui donne le sceptre et qui te le donna M'a fait duc de Segorbe et duc de Cardona, Marquis de Monroy, comte Albatéra, vicomte De Gor, seigneur de lieux dont j'ignore le compte. Je suis Jean d'Aragon, grand maître d'Avis, né Dans l'exil, fils proscrit d'un père assassiné Par sentence du tien, roi Carlos de Castille. 

 * * * * *

 (_Aux autres conjurés_) Couvrons nous, grands d'Espagnol (_Tous les Espagnols se couvrent_) Oui, nos têtes, ô roi! Ont le droit de tomber couvertes devant toi!

An effective scene of this type occurs in _Monsieur Beaucaire_, wherethe supposed hairdresser is on the point of being ejected with contumelyfrom the pump-room at Bath, when the French Ambassador enters, drops onhis knee, kisses the young man's hand, and presents him to the astoundedcompany as the Duc d'Orléans, Comte de Valois, and I know not whatbesides--a personage who immeasurably outshines the noblest of hisinsulters. Quieter, but not less telling, is the peripety in _The LittleFather of the Wilderness_, by Messrs. Lloyd Osbourne and Austin Strong. The Père Marlotte, who, by his heroism and self-devotion, has added vastterritories to the French possessions in America, is summoned to thecourt of Louis XV, and naturally concludes that the king has heard ofhis services and wishes to reward them. He finds, on the contrary, thathe is wanted merely to decide a foolish bet; and he is treated with thegrossest insolence and contempt. Just as he is departing in humiliation, the Governor-General of Canada arrives, with a suite of officers andIndians. The moment they are aware of Père Marlotte's presence, they allkneel to him and pay him deeper homage than they have paid to the king, who accepts the rebuke and joins in their demonstration. 

A famous peripety of the romantic order occurs in _H. M. S. Pinafore_, where, on the discovery that Captain Corcoran and Ralph Rackstraw havebeen changed at birth, Ralph instantly becomes captain of the ship, while the captain declines into an able-bodied seaman. This is one ofthe instances in which the idealism of art ekes out the imperfectionsof reality. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: That great spiritual drama known as the Book of Job opens, after the Prologue in Heaven, with one of the most startling ofperipeties. ]

[Footnote 2: The first act of Mr. Gilbert Murray's _Carlyon Sahib_contains an incident of this nature; but it can scarcely be called aperipety, since the victim remains unconscious of his doom. ]

[Footnote 3: For the benefit of American readers, it may be well tostate that the person who changes a Bank of England note is often askedto write his or her name on the back of it. It must have been in amoment of sheer aberration that the lady in question wrote herown name. ]

[Footnote 4: M. Bernstein, dishing up a similar theme with a piquantsauce of sensuality, made but a vulgar and trivial piece of work of it. ]

[Footnote 5: One of the most striking peripeties in recent English dramaoccurs in the third act of The Builder of Bridges, by Mr. Alfred Sutro. ]

_CHAPTER XV_

PROBABILITY, CHANCE, AND COINCIDENCE

Aristotle indulges in an often-quoted paradox to the effect that, indrama, the probable impossible is to be preferred to the improbablepossible. With all respect, this seems to be a somewhat cumbrous way ofstating the fact that plausibility is of more importance on the stagethan what may be called demonstrable probability. There is no time, inthe rush of a dramatic action, for a mathematical calculation of thechances for and against a given event, or for experimental proof thatsuch and such a thing can or cannot be done. If a thing seem plausible, an audience will accept it without cavil; if it, seem incredible on theface of it, no evidence of its credibility will be of much avail. Thisis merely a corollary from the fundamental principle that the stage isthe realm of appearances; not of realities, where paste jewels are atleast as effective as real ones, and a painted forest is far more sylvanthan a few wilted and drooping saplings, insecurely planted uponthe boards. 

That is why an improbable or otherwise inacceptable incident cannot bevalidly defended on the plea that it actually happened: that it is onrecord in history or in the newspapers. In the first place, thedramatist can never put it on the stage as it happened. The bare factmay be historical, but it is not the bare fact that matters. Thedramatist cannot restore it to its place in that intricate plexus ofcause and effect, which is the essence and meaning of reality. He canonly give his interpretation of the fact; and one knows not how tocalculate the chances that his interpretation may be a false one. Buteven if this difficulty could be overcome; if the dramatist could provethat he had reproduced the event with photographic and cinematographicaccuracy, his position would not thereby be improved. He would stillhave failed in his peculiar task, which is precisely that ofinterpretation. Not truth, but verisimilitude, is his aim; for the stageis the realm of appearances, in which intrusive realities become unreal. There are, as I have said, incalculable chances to one that theplaywright's version of a given event will not coincide with that of theRecording Angel: but it may be true and convincing in relation to humannature in general, in which case it will belong to the sphere of greatart; or, on a lower level, it may be agreeable and entertaining withoutbeing conspicuously false to human nature, in which case it will do noharm, since it makes no pretence to historic truth. It may be objectedthat the sixteenth-century public, and even, in the next century, thegreat Duke of Marlborough, got their knowledge of English history fromShakespeare, and the other writers of chronicle-plays. Well, I leave itto historians to determine whether this very defective and, in greatmeasure, false vision of the past was better or worse than none. Thedanger at any rate, if danger there was, is now past and done with. Evenour generals no longer go to the theatre or to the First Folio for theirhistory. The dramatist may, with an easy conscience, interpret historicfact in the light of his general insight into human nature, so long ashe does not so falsify the recorded event that common knowledge criesout against him. [1]

Plausibility, then, not abstract or concrete probability, and still lessliteral faithfulness to recorded fact, is what the dramatist is bound toaim at. To understand this as a belittling of his art is tomisunderstand the nature of art in general. The plausibility of bad artis doubtless contemptible and may be harmful. But to say that good artmust be plausible is only to say that not every sort of truth, or everyaspect of truth, is equally suitable for artistic representation--or, inmore general terms, that the artist, without prejudice to his allegianceto nature, must respect the conditions of the medium in which he works. 

Our standards of plausibility, however, are far from being invariable. To each separate form of art, a different standard is applicable. Inwhat may roughly be called realistic art, the terms plausible andprobable are very nearly interchangeable. Where the dramatist appeals tothe sanction of our own experience and knowledge, he must not introducematter against which our experience and knowledge cry out. A very smallinaccuracy in a picture which is otherwise photographic will often havea very disturbing effect. In plays of society in particular, thecriticism "No one does such things, " is held by a large class ofplaygoers to be conclusive and destructive. One has known people despisea play because Lady So-and-so's manner of speaking to her servants wasnot what they (the cavillers) were accustomed to. On the other hand, onehas heard a whole production highly applauded because the buttons on aparticular uniform were absolutely right. This merely means that when aneffort after literal accuracy is apparent, the attention of the audienceseizes on the most trifling details and is apt to magnify theirimportance. Niceties of language in especial are keenly, and oftenunjustly, criticized. If a particular expression does not happen to becurrent in the critic's own circle, he concludes that nobody uses it, and that the author is a pedant or a vulgarian. In view of thisinevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of hisdialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to useonly what may be called everybody's English, or the language undoubtedlycurrent throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs. 

It may be here pointed out that there are three different planes onwhich plausibility may or may not, be achieved. There is first thepurely external plane, which concerns the producer almost as much as theplaywright. On this plane we look for plausibility of costume, ofmanners, of dialect, of general environment. Then we have plausibilityof what may be called uncharacteristic event--of such events as areindependent of the will of the characters, and are not conditioned bytheir psychology. On this plane we have to deal with chance andaccident, coincidence, and all "circumstances over which we have nocontrol. " For instance, the playwright who makes the "Marseillaise"become popular throughout Paris within half-an-hour of its having leftthe composer's desk, is guilty of a breach of plausibility on thisplane. So, too, if I were to make my hero enter Parliament for the firsttime, and rise in a single session to be Prime Minister ofEngland--there would be no absolute impossibility in the feat, but itwould be a rather gross improbability of the second order. On the thirdplane we come to psychological plausibility, the plausibility of eventsdependent mainly or entirely on character. For example--to cite a muchdisputed instance--is it plausible that Nora, in _A Doll's House_, should suddenly develop the mastery of dialectics with which she crushesHelmer in the final scene, and should desert her husband and children, slamming the door behind her?

It need scarcely be said that plausibility on the third plane is vastlythe most important. A very austere criticism might even call it the onething worth consideration. But, as a matter of fact, when we speak ofplausibility, it is almost always the second plane--the plane ofuncharacteristic circumstance--that we have in mind. To plausibility ofthe third order we give a more imposing name--we call it truth. We saythat Nora's action is true--or untrue--to nature. We speak of the truthwith which the madness of Lear, the malignity of Iago, the race hatredof Shylock, is portrayed. Truth, in fact, is the term which we use incases where the tests to be applied are those of introspection, intuition, or knowledge sub-consciously garnered from spiritualexperience. Where the tests are external, and matters of commonknowledge or tangible evidence, we speak of plausibility. 

It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that because plausibility ofthe third degree, or truth, is the noblest attribute of drama, it istherefore the one thing needful. In some forms of drama it is greatlyimpaired, or absolutely nullified, if plausibility of the second degree, its necessary preliminary, be not carefully secured. In the case aboveimagined, for instance, of the young politician who should become PrimeMinister immediately on entering Parliament: it would matter nothingwith what profundity of knowledge or subtlety of skill the character wasdrawn: we should none the less decline to believe in him. Somedramatists, as a matter of fact, find it much easier to attain truth ofcharacter than plausibility of incident. Every one who is in the habitof reading manuscript plays, must have come across the would-beplaywright who has a good deal of general ability and a considerablepower of characterization, but seems to be congenitally deficient in thesense of external reality, so that the one thing he (or she) can by nomeans do is to invent or conduct an action that shall be in the leastlike any sequence of events in real life. It is naturally difficult togive examples, for the plays composed under this curious limitation areapt to remain in manuscript, or to be produced for one performance, andforgotten. There is, however, one recent play of this order which holdsa certain place in dramatic literature. I do not know that Mr. GranvilleBarker was well-advised in printing _The Marrying of Anne Leete_ alongwith such immeasurably maturer and saner productions as _The VoyseyInheritance_ and _Waste_; but by doing so he has served my present purposein providing me with a perfect example of a play as to which we cannottell whether it possesses plausibility of the third degree, soabsolutely does it lack that plausibility of the second degree which isits indispensable condition precedent. 

Francisque Sarcey was fond of insisting that an audience would generallyaccept without cavil any postulates in reason which an author chose toimpose upon it, with regard to events supposed to have occurred beforethe rise of the curtain; always provided that the consequences deducedfrom them within the limits of the play were logical, plausible, andentertaining. The public will swallow a camel, he would maintain, in thepast, though they will strain at a gnat in the present. A classicalexample of this principle is (once more) the _Oedipus Rex_, in whichseveral of the initial postulates are wildly improbable: for instance, that Oedipus should never have inquired into the circumstances of thedeath of Laius, and that, having been warned by an oracle that he wasdoomed to marry his mother, he should not have been careful, beforemarrying any woman, to ascertain that she was younger than himself. There is at least so much justification for Sarcey's favouriteprinciple, that we are less apt to scrutinize things merely narrated tous than events which take place before our eyes. It is simply a specialinstance of the well-worn

 "Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus. "

But the principle is of very limited artistic validity. No one wouldnowadays think of justifying a gross improbability in the antecedents ofa play by Ibsen or Sir Arthur Pinero, by Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. GranvilleBarker, on the plea that it occurred outside the frame of the picture. Such a plea might, indeed, secure a mitigation of sentence, but never averdict of acquittal. Sarcey, on the other hand, brought up in theschool of the "well-made" play, would rather have held it a feather inthe playwright's cap that he should have known just where, and just how, he might safely outrage probability [2]. The inference is that we nowtake the dramatist's art more seriously than did the generation of theSecond Empire in France. 

This brings us, however, to an important fact, which must by no means beoverlooked. There is a large class of plays--or rather, there areseveral classes of plays, some of them not at all to be despised--thecharm of which resides, not in probability, but in ingenious anddelightful improbability. I am, of course, not thinking of sheerfantasies, like _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, or _Peter Pan_, or _TheBlue Bird_. They may, indeed, possess plausibility of the third order, but plausibility of the second order has no application to them. Itswrits do not run on their extramundane plane. The plays which appeal tous in virtue of their pleasant departures from probability are romances, farces, a certain order of light comedies and semi-comic melodramas--inshort, the thousand and one plays in which the author, withoutaltogether despising and abjuring truth, makes it on principlesubsidiary to delightfulness. Plays of the _Prisoner of Zenda_ typewould come under this head: so would Sir Arthur Pinero's farces, _TheMagistrate_, _The Schoolmistress_, _Dandy Dick_; so would Mr. Carton'slight comedies, _Lord and Lady Algy_, _Wheels within Wheels_, _LadyHuntworth's Experiment_; so would most of Mr. Barrie's comedies; sowould Mr. Arnold Bennett's play, _The Honeymoon_. In a previous chapterI have sketched the opening act of Mr. Carton's _Wheels within Wheels_, which is a typical example of this style of work. Its charm lies in asubtle, all-pervading improbability, an infusion of fantasy so delicatethat, while at no point can one say, "This is impossible, " the totaleffect is far more entertaining than that of any probable sequence ofevents in real life. The whole atmosphere of such a play should beimpregnated with humour, without reaching that gross supersaturationwhich we find in the lower order of farce-plays of the type of_Charlie's Aunt_ or _Niobe_. 

 * * * * *

Plausibility of development, as distinct from plausibility of theme orof character, depends very largely on the judicious handling of chance, and the exclusion, or very sparing employment, of coincidence. This is amatter of importance, into which we shall find it worth while to looksomewhat closely. 

It is not always clearly recognized that chance and coincidence are byno means the same thing. Coincidence is a special and complex form ofchance, which ought by no means to be confounded with the everydayvariety. We need not here analyse chance, or discuss the philosophicvalue of the term. It is enough that we all know what we mean by it incommon parlance. It may be well, however, to look into the etymology ofthe two words we are considering. They both come ultimately, from theLatin "cadere, " to fall. Chance is a falling-out, like that of a diefrom the dice-box; and coincidence signifies one falling-out on the topof another, the concurrent happening of two or more chances whichresemble or somehow fit into each other. If you rattle six dice in a boxand throw them, and they turn up at haphazard--say, two aces, a deuce, two fours, and a six--there is nothing remarkable in this falling out. But if they all turn up sixes, you at once suspect that the dice arecogged; and if that be not so--if there be no sufficient cause behindthe phenomenon--you say that this identical falling-out of six separatepossibilities was a remarkable coincidence. Now, applying theillustration to drama, I should say that the playwright is perfectlyjustified in letting chance play its probable and even inevitable partin the affairs of his characters; but that, the moment we suspect him ofcogging the dice, we feel that he is taking an unfair advantage of us, and our imagination either cries, "I won't play!" or continues the gameunder protest. 

Some critics have considered it a flaw in Shakespeare's art that thecatastrophe of _Romeo and Juliet_ should depend upon a series ofchances, and especially on the miscarriage of the Friar's letter toRomeo. This is not, I think, a valid criticism. We may, if we are sominded, pick to pieces the course of action which brought these chancesinto play. The device of the potion--even if such a drug were known tothe pharmacopoeia--is certainly a very clumsy method of escape from theposition in which Juliet is placed by her father's obstinacy. But whenonce we have accepted that integral part of the legend, the interventionof chance in the catastrophe is entirely natural and probable. Observethat there is no coincidence in the matter, no interlinking ordovetailing of chances. The catastrophe results from the hot-headedimpetuosity of all the characters, which so hurries events that there isno time for the elimination of the results of chance. Letters doconstantly go astray, even under our highly-organized system ofconveyance; but their delay or disappearance seldom leads to tragicresults, because most of us have learnt to take things calmly and waitfor the next post. Yet if we could survey the world at large, it ishighly probable that every day or every hour we should somewhere orother find some Romeo on the verge of committing suicide because of achance misunderstanding with regard to his Juliet; and in a certainpercentage of cases the explanatory letter or telegram would doubtlessarrive too late. 

We all remember how, in Mr. Hardy's _Tess_, the main trouble arises fromthe fact that the letter pushed under Angel Clare's door slips alsounder the carpet of his room, and so is never discovered. This is anentirely probable chance; and the sternest criticism would hardly callit a flaw in the structure of the fable. But take another case: Madame Xhas had a child, of whom she has lost sight for more than twenty years, during which she has lived abroad. She returns to France, andimmediately on landing at Bordeaux she kills a man who accompanies her. The court assigns her defence to a young advocate, and this youngadvocate happens to be her son. We have here a piling of chance uponchance, in which the long arm of coincidence[3] is very apparent. Thecoincidence would have been less startling had she returned to the placewhere she left her son and where she believed him to be. But no! sheleft him in Paris, and it is only by a series of pure chances that hehappens to be in Bordeaux, where she happens to land, and happens toshoot a man. For the sake of a certain order of emotional effect, acertain order of audience is willing to accept this piling up ofchances; but it relegates the play to a low and childish plane of art. The _Oedipus Rex_, indeed--which meets us at every turn--is founded onan absolutely astounding series of coincidences; but here the conceptionof fate comes in, and we vaguely figure to ourselves some malignantpower deliberately pulling the strings which guide its puppets into suchabhorrent tangles. On the modern view that "character is destiny, " theconception of supernatural wire-pulling is excluded. It is true thatamazing coincidences do occur in life; but when they are invented toserve an artist's purposes, we feel that he is simplifying his taskaltogether beyond reason, and substituting for normal and probabledevelopment an irrelevant plunge into the merely marvellous. 

Of the abuse of coincidence, I have already given a specimen in speakingof _The Rise of Dick Halward_ (Chapter XII). One or two more examplesmay not be out of place. I need not dwell on the significance of thefact that most of them occur in forgotten plays. 

In _The Man of Forty_, by Mr. Walter Frith, we find the followingconjuncture of circumstances: Mr. Lewis Dunster has a long-lost wife anda long-lost brother. He has been for years in South Africa; they havemeanwhile lived in London, but they do not know each other, and haveheld no communication. Lewis, returning from Africa, arrives in London. He does not know where to find either wife or brother, and has not theslightest wish to look for them; yet in the first house he goes to, thehome of a lady whose acquaintance he chanced to make on the voyage, heencounters both his wife and his brother! Not quite so startling is thecoincidence on which _Mrs. Willoughby's Kiss_, by Mr. Frank Stayton, isfounded. An upper and lower flat in West Kensington are inhabited, respectively, by Mrs. Brandram and Mrs. Willoughby, whose husbands haveboth been many years absent in India. By pure chance the two husbandscome home in the same ship; the two wives go to Plymouth to meet them, and by pure chance, for they are totally unacquainted with each other, they go to the same hotel; whence it happens that Mrs. Willoughby, meeting Mr. Brandram in a half-lighted room, takes him for her husband, flies to his arms and kisses him. More elaborate than either of these isthe tangle of coincidences in Mr. Stuart Ogilvie's play, _TheWhite Knight_--

Giulietta, the ward of David Pennycuick, goes to study singing at Milan. Mr. Harry Rook, Pennycuick's most intimate friend, meets her by chancein Milan, and she becomes his mistress, neither having the least ideathat the other knows Pennycuick. Then Viscount Hintlesham, likePennycuick, a dupe of Rook's, meets her by chance at Monte Carlo andfalls in love with her. He does not know that she knows Rook orPennycuick, and she does not know that he knows them. Arriving inEngland, she finds in the manager, the promoter, and the chairman of theElectric White Lead Company her guardian, her seducer, and her lover. When she comes to see her guardian, the first person she meets is herseducer, and she learns that her lover has just left the house. Up tothat moment, I repeat, she did not know that any one of these men knewany other; yet she does not even say, "How small the world is!"[4]Surely some such observation was obligatory under the circumstances. 

Let us turn now to a more memorable piece of work; that interesting playof Sir Arthur Pinero's transition period, _The Profligate_. Here thegreat situation of the third act is brought about by a chain ofcoincidences which would be utterly unthinkable in the author's maturerwork. Leslie Brudenell, the heroine, is the ward of Mr. Cheal, asolicitor. She is to be married to Dunstan Renshaw; and, as she has nohome, the bridal party meets at Mr. Cheal's office before proceeding tothe registrar's. No sooner have they departed than Janet Preece, who hasbeen betrayed and deserted by Dunstan Renshaw (under an assumed name)comes to the office to state her piteous case. This is not in itself apure coincidence; for Janet happened to come to London in the same trainwith Leslie Brudenell and her brother Wilfrid; and Wilfrid, seeing inher a damsel in distress, recommended her to lay her troubles before arespectable solicitor, giving her Mr. Cheal's address. So far, then, thecoincidence is not startling. It is natural enough that Renshaw'smistress and his betrothed should live in the same country town; and itis not improbable that they should come to London by the same train, andthat Wilfrid Brudenell should give the bewildered and weeping youngwoman a commonplace piece of advice. The concatenation of circumstancesis remarkable rather than improbable. But when, in the next act, not amonth later, Janet Preece, by pure chance, drops in at the Florentinevilla where Renshaw and Leslie are spending their honeymoon, we feelthat the long arm of coincidence is stretched to its uttermost, and thateven the thrilling situation which follows is very dearly bought. Itwould not have been difficult to attenuate the coincidence. What hasactually happened is this: Janet has (we know not how) become a sort ofmaid-companion to a Mrs. Stonehay, whose daughter was a school-friend ofLeslie's; the Stonehays have come to Florence, knowing nothing ofLeslie's presence there; and they happen to visit the villa in order tosee a fresco which it contains. If, now, we had been told that Janet'sengagement by the Stonehays had resulted from her visit to Mr. Cheal, and that the Stonehays had come to Florence knowing Leslie to be there, and eager to find her, several links would have been struck off thechain of coincidence; or, to put it more exactly, a fairly coherentsequence of events would have been substituted for a series ofincoherent chances. The same result might no doubt have been achieved inmany other and neater ways. I merely indicate, by way of illustration, aquite obvious method of reducing the element of coincidence in the case. 

The coincidence in _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, by which Ellean meetsand falls in love with one of Paula's ex-lovers, has been very severelycriticized. It is certainly not one of the strong points of the play;but, unlike the series of chances we have just been examining, it placesno excessive strain on our credulity. Such coincidences do occur in reallife; we have all of us seen or heard of them; the worst we can say ofthis one is that it is neither positively good nor positively bad--apiece of indifferent craftsmanship. On the other hand, if we turn to_Letty_, the chance which, in the third act, leads Letchmere's party andMandeville's party to choose the same restaurant, seems to me entirelyjustified. It is not really a coincidence at all, but one of thoseeveryday happenings which are not only admissible in drama, butpositively desirable, as part of the ordinary surface-texture of life. Entirely to eliminate chance from our representation of life would be avery unreasonable austerity. Strictly speaking, indeed, it isimpossible; for even when we have worked out an unbroken chain ofrational and commensurate causes and effects, it remains a chance, andan unlikely chance, that chance should not have interfered with it. 

All the plays touched upon in the last four paragraphs are in intentionrealistic. They aim, that is to say, at a literal and soberrepresentation of life. In the other class of plays, which seek theireffect, not in plodding probability, but in delightful improbability, the long arm of coincidence has its legitimate functions. Yet even hereit is not quite unfettered. One of the most agreeable coincidences infiction, I take it, is the simultaneous arrival in Bagdad, fromdifferent quarters of the globe, of three one-eyed calenders, all blindof the right eye, and all, in reality, the sons of kings. But it is tobe noted that this coincidence is not a crucial occurrence in a story, but only a part of the story-teller's framework or mechanism--a devicefor introducing fresh series of adventures. This illustrates theSarceyan principle above referred to, which Professor Brander Matthewshas re-stated in what seems to me an entirely acceptable form--namely, that improbabilities which may be admitted on the outskirts of anaction, must be rigidly excluded when the issue is joined and we are inthe thick of things. Coincidences, in fact, become the more improbablein the direct ratio of their importance. We have all, in our ownexperience, met with amazing coincidences; but how few of us have evergained or lost, been made happy or unhappy, by a coincidence, asdistinct from a chance! It is not precisely probable that threebrothers, who have separated in early life, and have not heard of oneanother for twenty years, should find themselves seated side by side atan Italian _table-d'hôte_; yet such coincidences have occurred, and arecreditable enough so long as nothing particular comes of them. But if adramatist were to make these three brothers meet in Messina on the eveof the earthquake, in order that they might all be killed, and thusenable his hero (their cousin) to succeed to a peerage and marry theheroine, we should say that his use of coincidence was not strictlyartistic. A coincidence, in short, which coincides with a crisis isthereby raised to the _n_th power, and is wholly inacceptable in seriousart. Mr. Bernard Shaw has based the action of _You Never Can Tell_ onthe amazing coincidence that Mrs. Clandon and her children, coming toEngland after eighteen years' absence, should by pure chance runstraight into the arms, or rather into the teeth, of the husband andfather whom the mother, at any rate, only wishes to avoid. This is nobad starting-point for an extravaganza; but even Mr. Shaw, though adespiser of niceties of craftsmanship, introduces no coincidences intoserious plays such as _Candida_ or _The Doctor's Dilemma_. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: The malignant caricature of Cromwell in W. G. Wills'_Charles_ I did not, indeed, prevent the acceptance of the play by themid-Victorian public; but it will certainly shorten the life of the oneplay which might have secured for its author a lasting place in dramaticliterature. It is unimaginable that future generations should accept arepresentation of Cromwell as

 "A mouthing patriot, with an itching palm, In one hand menace, in the other greed. "]

[Footnote 2: It is only fair to say that Sarcey drew a distinctionbetween antecedent _events_ and what he calls "postulates of character. "He did not maintain that an audience ought to accept a psychologicalimpossibility, merely because it was placed outside the frame of thepicture. See _Quarante Ans de Théâtre_, vii, p. 395. ]

[Footnote 3: This phrase, which occurs in Mr. Haddon Chambers's romanticmelodrama, _Captain Swift_, was greeted with a burst of laughter by thefirst-night audience; but little did we then think that Mr. Chambers wasenriching the English language. It is not, on examination, aparticularly luminous phrase: "the three or four arms of coincidence"would really be more to the point. But it is not always the mostaccurate expression that is fittest to survive. ]

[Footnote 4: The abuse of coincidence is a legacy to modern drama fromthe Latin comedy, which, again, was founded on the Greek New Comedy. Itis worth noting that in the days of Menander the world really was muchsmaller than it is to-day, when "thalassic" has grown into "oceanic"civilization. Travellers in those days followed a few main routes; halfa dozen great seaports were rendezvous for all the world; theslave-trade was active, and kidnappings and abductions with thecorresponding meetings and recognitions were no doubt frequent. Thussuch a plot as that of the _Menaechmi_ was by no means the sheerimpossibility which Shakespeare made it by attaching indistinguishableDromios to his indistinguishable Antipholuses. To reduplicate acoincidence is in fact to multiply it by a figure far beyond mymathematics. It may be noted, too, that the practice of exposingchildren, on which the _Oedipus_, and many plays of Menander, arefounded, was common in historic Greece, and that the hapless childrenwere generally provided with identification-tokens _gnorismata_. ]

_CHAPTER XVI_

LOGIC

The term logic is often very vaguely used in relation to drama. Frenchwriters especially, who regard logic as one of the peculiar faculties oftheir national genius, are apt to insist upon it in and out of season. But, as we have already seen, logic is a gift which may easily bemisapplied. It too often leads such writers as M. Brieux and M. Hervieuto sacrifice the undulant and diverse rhythms of life to a stiff andsymmetrical formalism. The conception of a play as the exhaustivedemonstration of a thesis has never taken a strong hold on theAnglo-Saxon mind; and, though some of M. Brieux's plays are much morethan mere dramatic arguments, we need not, in the main, envy the Frenchtheir logician-dramatists. 

But, though the presence of logic should never be forced upon thespectator's attention, still less should he be disturbed and baffled byits conspicuous absence. If the playwright announces a theme at all: ifhe lets it be seen that some general idea underlies his work: he isbound to present and develop that idea in a logical fashion, not toshift his ground, whether inadvertently or insidiously, and not towander off into irrelevant side-issues. He must face his problemsquarely. If he sets forth to prove anything at all, he must prove thatthing and not some totally different thing. He must beware of thered-herring across the trail. 

For a clear example of defective logic, I turn to a Frenchplay--Sardou's _Spiritisme_. Both from internal and from externalevidence, it is certain that M. Sardou was a believer inspiritualism--in the existence of disembodied intelligences, and theirpower of communicating with the living. Yet he had not the courage toassign to them an essential part in his drama. The spirits hover roundthe outskirts of the action, but do not really or effectually intervenein it. The hero's _belief_ in them, indeed, helps to bring about theconclusion; but the apparition which so potently works upon him is anadmitted imposture, a pious fraud. Earlier in the play, two or threetrivial and unnecessary miracles are introduced--just enough to hint atthe author's faith without decisively affirming it. For instance:towards the close of Act I Madame d'Aubenas has gone off, nominally totake the night train for Poitiers, in reality to pay a visit to herlover, M. De Stoudza. When she has gone, her husband and his guestsarrange a séance and evoke a spirit. No sooner have preliminaries beensettled than the spirit spells out the word "O-u-v-r-e-z. " They open thewindow, and behold! the sky is red with a glare which proves to proceedfrom the burning of the train in which Madame d'Aubenas is supposed tohave started. The incident is effective enough, and a little creepy; butits effect is quite incommensurate with the strain upon our powers ofbelief. The thing is supposed to be a miracle, of that there can be nodoubt; but it has not the smallest influence on the course of the play, except to bring on the hurry-scurry and alarm a few minutes earlier thanmight otherwise have been the case. Now, if the spirit, instead ofmerely announcing the accident, had informed M. D'Aubenas that his wifewas not in it--if, for example, it had rapped out "Gilberte chezStoudza"--it would have been an honest ghost (though indiscreet), and weshould not have felt that our credulity had been taxed to no purpose. Asit is, the logical deduction from M. Sardou's fable is that, thoughspirit communications are genuine enough, they are never of theslightest use; but we can scarcely suppose that that was what heintended to convey. 

It may be said, and perhaps with truth, that what Sardou lacked in thisinstance was not logic, but courage: he felt that an audience wouldaccept episodic miracles, but would reject supernatural interference ata determining crisis in the play. In that case he would have done betterto let the theme alone: for the manifest failure of logic leaves theplay neither good drama nor good argument. This is a totally differentmatter from Ibsen's treatment of the supernatural in such plays as _TheLady from the Sea_, _The Master Builder_ and _Little Eyolf_. Ibsen, likeHawthorne, suggests without affirming the action of occult powers. Heshows us nothing that is not capable of a perfectly natural explanation;but he leaves us to imagine, if we are so disposed, that there may beinfluences at work that are not yet formally recognized in physics andpsychology. In this there is nothing illogical. The poet is merelyappealing to a mood, familiar to all of us, in which we wonder whetherthere may not be more things in heaven and earth than are crystallizedin our scientific formulas. 

It is a grave defect of logic to state, or hint at, a problem, and thenillustrate it in such terms of character that it is solved in advance. In _The Liars_, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, there is an evidentsuggestion of the problem whether a man is ever justified in rescuing awoman, by means of the Divorce Court, from marital bondage which hersoul abhors. The sententious Sir Christopher Deering argues the matterat great length: but all the time we are hungering for him to say theone thing demanded by the logic of the situation: to wit: "Whatever theabstract rights and wrongs of the case, this man would be an imbecile toelope with this woman, who is an empty-headed, empty-hearted creature, incapable either of the passion or of the loathing which alone couldlend any semblance of reason to a breach of social law. " Similarly, in_The Profligate_, Sir Arthur Pinero no doubt intended us to reflect uponthe question whether, in entering upon marriage, a woman has a right toassume in her husband the same purity of antecedent conduct which hedemands of her. That is an arguable question, and it has been arguedoften enough; but in this play it does not really arise, for the husbandpresented to us is no ordinary loose-liver, but (it would seem--for thecase is not clearly stated) a particularly base and heartless seducer, whom it is evidently a misfortune for any woman to have married. Theauthors of these two plays have committed an identical error of logic:namely, that of suggesting a broad issue, and then stating such a set ofcircumstances that the issue does not really arise. In other words, theyhave from the outset begged the question. The plays, it may be said, were both successful in their day. Yes; but had they been logical theirday might have lasted a century. A somewhat similar defect of logicconstitutes a fatal blemish in _The Ideal Husband_, by Oscar Wilde. Intentionally or otherwise, the question suggested is whether a singleflaw of conduct (the betrayal to financiers of a state secret) ought toblast a political career. Here, again, is an arguable point, on theassumption that the statesman is penitent and determined never to repeathis misdeed; but when we find that this particular statesman is preparedto go on betraying his country indefinitely, in order to save his ownskin, the question falls to the ground--the answer is too obvious. 

It happened some years ago that two plays satirizing "yellow journalism"were produced almost simultaneously in London--_The Earth_ by Mr. JamesB. Fagan, and _What the Public Wants_ by Mr. Arnold Bennett. In point ofintellectual grasp, or power of characterization, there could be nocomparison between the two writers; yet I hold that, from the point ofview of dramatic composition, _The Earth_ was the better play of thetwo, simply because it dealt logically with the theme announced, insteadof wandering away into all sorts of irrelevances. Mr. Bennett, to beginwith, could not resist making his Napoleon of the Press a native of the"Five Towns, " and exhibiting him at large in provincial middle-classsurroundings. All this is sheer irrelevance; for the type of journalismin question is not characteristically an outcome of any phase ofprovincial life. Mr. Bennett may allege that Sir Charles Worgan had tobe born somewhere, and might as well be born in Bursley as anywhereelse. I reply that, for the purposes of the play, he need not have beenborn anywhere. His birthplace and the surroundings of his boyhood havenothing to do with what may be called his journalistic psychology, whichis, or ought to be, the theme of the play. Then, again, Mr. Bennettshows him dabbling in theatrical management and falling inlove--irrelevances both. As a manager, no doubt, he insists on doing"what the public wants" (it is nothing worse than a revival of _TheMerchant of Venice_) and thus offers another illustration of the resultsof obeying that principle. But all this is beside the real issue. Thetrue gravamen of the charge against a Napoleon of the Press is not thathe gives the public what it wants, but that he can make the public wantwhat _he_ wants, think what _he_ thinks, believe what _he_ wants them tobelieve, and do what _he_ wants them to do. By dint of assertion, innuendo, and iteration in a hundred papers, he can create an apparentpublic opinion, or public emotion, which may be directed towards themost dangerous ends. This point Mr. Bennett entirely missed. What hegave us was in reality a comedy of middle-class life with a number ofincidental allusions to "yellow" journalism and kindred topics. Mr. Fagan, working in broader outlines, and, it must be owned, in crudercolours, never strayed from the logical line of development, and took usmuch nearer the heart of his subject. 

A somewhat different, and very common, fault of logic was exemplified inMr. Clyde Fitch's last play, _The City_. His theme, as announced in histitle and indicated in his exposition, was the influence of New Yorkupon a family which migrates thither from a provincial town. But theaction is not really shaped by the influence of "the city. " It mighthave taken practically the same course if the family had remained athome. The author had failed to establish a logical connection betweenhis theme and the incidents supposed to illustrate it. [1]

Fantastic plays, which assume an order of things more or less exemptfrom the limitations of physical reality, ought, nevertheless, to belogically faithful to their own assumptions. Some fantasies, indeed, which sinned against this principle, have had no small success. In_Pygmalion and Galatea_, for example, there is a conspicuous lack oflogic. The following passage from a criticism of thirty years ago putsmy point so clearly that I am tempted to copy it:

 As we have no scientific record of a statue coming to life, the probable moral and intellectual condition of a being so created is left to the widest conjecture. The playwright may assume for it any stage of development he pleases, and his audience will readily grant his assumption. But if his work is to have any claim to artistic value, he must not assume all sorts of different stages of development at every second word his creation utters. He must not make her a child in one speech, a woman of the world in the next, and an idiot in the next again. Of course, it would be an extremely difficult task clearly to define in all its bearings and details the particular intellectual condition assumed at the outset, and then gradually to indicate the natural growth of a fuller consciousness. Difficult it would be, but by no means impossible; nay, it would be this very problem which would tempt the true dramatist to adopt such a theme. Mr. Gilbert has not essayed the task. He regulates Galatea's state of consciousness by the fluctuating exigencies of dialogue whose humour is levelled straight at the heads of the old Haymarket pit. 

To indicate the nature of the inconsistencies which abound in everyscene, I may say that, in the first act, Galatea does not know that sheis a woman, but understands the word "beauty, " knows (though Pygmalionis the only living creature she has ever seen) the meaning of agreementand difference of taste, and is alive to the distinction between anoriginal and a copy. In the second act she has got the length of knowingthe enormity of taking life, and appreciating the fine distinctionbetween taking it of one's own motive, and taking it for money. Yet thenext moment, when Leucippe enters with a fawn he has killed, it appearsthat she does not realize the difference between man and the brutecreation. Thus we are for ever shifting from one plane of convention toanother. There is no fixed starting-point for our imagination, nological development of a clearly-stated initial condition. The play, itis true, enjoyed some five-and-twenty years of life; but it certainlycannot claim an enduring place either in literature or on the stage. Itis still open to the philosophic dramatist to write a logical _Pygmalionand Galatea_. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: I am here writing from memory, having been unable to obtaina copy of _The City_; but my memory is pretty clear. ]

_CHAPTER XVII_

KEEPING A SECRET

It has been often and authoritatively laid down that a dramatist must onno account keep a secret from his audience. Like most authoritativemaxims, this one seems to require a good deal of qualification. Let uslook into the matter a little more closely. 

So far as I can see, the strongest reason against keeping a secret isthat, try as you may, you cannot do it. This point has already beendiscussed in Chapter IX, where we saw that from only one audience can asecret be really hidden, a considerable percentage of any subsequentaudience being certain to know all about it in advance. The morestriking and successful is the first-night effect of surprise, the morecertainly and rapidly will the report of it circulate through all strataof the theatrical public. But for this fact, one could quite wellconceive a fascinating melodrama constructed, like a detective story, with a view to keeping the audience in the dark as long as possible. Apistol shot might ring out just before the rise of the curtain: a man(or woman) might be discovered in an otherwise empty room, weltering inhis (or her) gore: and the remainder of the play might consist in thetracking down of the murderer, who would, of course, prove to be thevery last person to be suspected. Such a play might make a greatfirst-night success; but the more the author relied upon the mystery forhis effect, the more fatally would that effect be discounted at eachsuccessive repetition. 

One author of distinction, M. Hervieu, has actually made the experimentof presenting an enigma--he calls the play _L'Enigme_--and reserving thesolution to the very end. We know from the outset that one of twosisters-in-law is unfaithful to her husband, and the question is--which?The whole ingenuity of the author is centred on keeping the secret, andthe spectator who does not know it in advance is all the time in theattitude of a detective questing for clues. He is challenged to guesswhich of the ladies is the frail one; and he is far too intent on thisgame to think or care about the emotional process of the play. I myself(I remember) guessed right, mainly because the name Giselle seemed to memore suggestive of flightiness than the staid and sober Leonore, wherefore I suspected that M. Hervieu, in order to throw dust in oureyes, had given it to the virtuous lady. But whether we guess right orwrong, this clue-hunting is an intellectual sport, not an artisticenjoyment. If there is any aesthetic quality in the play, it can onlycome home to us when we know the secret. And the same dilemma willpresent itself to any playwright who seeks to imitate M. Hervieu. 

The actual keeping of a secret, then--the appeal to the primarycuriosity of actual ignorance--may be ruled out as practicallyimpossible, and, when possible, unworthy of serious art. But there isalso, as we have seen, the secondary curiosity of the audience which, though more or less cognizant of the essential facts, instinctivelyassumes ignorance, and judges the development of a play from that pointof view. We all realize that a dramatist has no right to trust to ourprevious knowledge, acquired from outside sources. We know that a play, like every other work of art, ought to be self-sufficient, and even if, at any given moment, we have, as a matter of fact, knowledge whichsupplements what the playwright has told us, we feel that he ought notto have taken for granted our possession of any such external andfortuitous information. To put it briefly, the dramatist must formally_assume_ ignorance in his audience, though he must not practically _relyupon_ it. Therefore it becomes a point of real importance to determinehow long a secret may be kept from an audience, assumed to have nooutside knowledge, and at what point it ought to be revealed. 

When _Lady Windermere's Fan_ was first produced, no hint was given inthe first act of the fact that Mrs. Erlynne was Lady Windermere'smother; so that Lord Windermere's insistence on inviting her to hiswife's birthday reception remained wholly unexplained. But after a fewnights the author made Lord Windermere exclaim, just as the curtainfell, "My God! What shall I do? I dare not tell her who this womanreally is. The shame would kill her. " It was, of course, said that thischange had been made in deference to newspaper criticism; and OscarWilde, in a characteristic letter to the _St. James's Gazette_, promptlyrepelled this calumny. At a first-night supper-party, he said--

 "All of my friends without exception were of the opinion that the psychological interest of the second act would be greatly increased by the disclosure of the actual relationship existing between Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne--an opinion, I may add, that had previously been strongly held and urged by Mr. Alexander. .. . I determined, consequently, to make a change in the precise moment of revelation. "

It is impossible to say whether Wilde seriously believed that"psychology" entered into the matter at all, or whether he was laughingin his sleeve in putting forward this solemn plea. The truth is, Ithink, that this example cannot be cited either for or against thekeeping of a secret, the essential fact being that the secret was such abad and inacceptable one--inacceptable, I mean, as an explanation ofLord Windermere's conduct--that it was probably wise to make a cleanbreast of it as soon as possible, and get it over. It may be said withperfect confidence that it is useless to keep a secret which, whenrevealed, is certain to disappoint the audience, and to make it feelthat it has been trifled with. That is an elementary dictate ofprudence. But if the reason for Lord Windermere's conduct had beenadequate, ingenious, such as to give us, when revealed, a little shockof pleasant surprise, the author need certainly have been in no hurry todisclose it. It is not improbable (though my memory is not clear on thepoint) that part of the strong interest we undoubtedly felt on the firstnight arose from the hope that Lord Windermere's seemingly unaccountableconduct might be satisfactorily accounted for. As this hope was futile, there was no reason, at subsequent performances, to keep up the pretenceof preserving a secret which was probably known, as a matter of fact, tomost of the audience, and which was worthless when revealed. 

In the second act of _The Devil's Disciple_, by Mr. Bernard Shaw, wehave an instance of wholly inartistic secrecy, which would certainly becondemned in the work of any author who was not accepted in advance as alaw unto himself. Richard Dudgeon has been arrested by the Britishsoldiers, who mistake him for the Reverend Anthony Anderson. WhenAnderson comes home, it takes a very long time for his silly wife, Judith, to acquaint him with a situation that might have been explainedin three words; and when, at last, he does understand it, he calls for ahorse and his boots, and rushes off in mad haste, as though his onedesire were to escape from the British and leave Dudgeon to his fate. Inreality his purpose is to bring up a body of Continental troops to therescue of Dudgeon; and this also he might (and certainly would) haveconveyed in three words. But Mr. Shaw was so bent on letting Judithcontinue to conduct herself idiotically, that he made her sensiblehusband act no less idiotically, in order to throw dust in her eyes, and(incidentally) in the eyes of the audience. In the work of any otherman, we should call this not only an injudicious, but a purposeless andfoolish, keeping of a secret. Mr. Shaw may say that in order to developthe character of Judith as he had conceived it, he was forced to makeher misunderstand her husband's motives. A development of characterobtained by such artificial means cannot be of much worth; but evengranting this plea, one cannot but point out that it would have beeneasy to keep Judith in the dark as to Anderson's purpose, withoutkeeping the audience also in the dark, and making him behave like afool. All that was required was to get Judith off the stage for a fewmoments, just before the true state of matters burst upon Anthony. Itwould then have been perfectly natural and probable that, not foreseeingher misunderstanding, he should hurry off without waiting to explainmatters to her. But that he should deliberately leave her in herdelusion, and even use phrases carefully calculated to deceive both herand the audience, [1] would be, in a writer who professed to place reasonabove caprice, a rather gross fault of art. 

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's light comedy, _Whitewashing Julia_, proves thatit is possible, without incurring disaster, to keep a secret throughouta play, and never reveal it at all. More accurately, what Mr. Jones doesis to pretend that there is some explanation of Mrs. Julia Wren'srelations with the Duke of Savona, other than the simple explanationthat she was his mistress, and to keep us waiting for this"whitewashing" disclosure, when in fact he has nothing of the sort uphis sleeve, and the plain truth is precisely what the gossips ofShanctonbury surmise. Julia does not even explain or justify her conductfrom her own point of view. She gives out that "an explanation will beforthcoming at the right moment"; but the right moment never arrives. All we are told is that she, Julia, considers that there was neveranything degrading in her conduct; and this we are asked to accept assufficient. It was a daring policy to dangle before our eyes anexplanation, which always receded as we advanced towards it, and provedin the end to be wholly unexplanatory. The success of the play, however, was sufficient to show that, in light comedy, at any rate, a secret maywith impunity be kept, even to the point of tantalization. [2]

Let us now look at a couple of cases in which the keeping of a secretseems pretty clearly wrong, inasmuch as it diminishes tension, anddeprives the audience of that superior knowledge in which lies the ironyof drama. In a play named _Her Advocate_, by Mr. Walter Frith (foundedon one of Grenville Murray's _French Pictures in English Chalk_), a K. C. Has fallen madly in love with a woman whose defence he has undertaken. He believes passionately in her innocence, and, never doubting that sheloves him in return, he is determined to secure for her a triumphantacquittal. Just at the crucial moment, however, he learns that she lovesanother man; and, overwhelmed by this disillusion, he has still to facethe ordeal and plead her cause. The conjuncture would be still moredramatic if the revelation of this love were to put a differentcomplexion on the murder, and, by introducing a new motive, shake theadvocate's faith in his client's innocence. But that is another matter;the question here to be considered is whether the author did right inreserving the revelation to the last possible moment. In my opinion hewould have done better to have given us an earlier inkling of the truestate of affairs. To keep the secret, in this case, was to place theaudience as well as the advocate on a false trail, and to deprive it ofthe sense of superiority it would have felt in seeing him marchingconfidently towards a happiness which it knew to be illusory. 

The second case is that of _La Douloureuse_, by M. Maurice Donnay. Through two acts out of the four an important secret is so carefullykept that there seems to be no obstacle between the lovers with whom(from the author's point of view) we are supposed to sympathize. Thefirst act is devoted to an elaborate painting of a somewhat revoltingphase of parvenu society in Paris. Towards the end of the act we learnthat the sculptor, Philippe Lauberthie, is the lover of Hélène Ardan, amarried woman; and at the very end her husband, Ardan, commits suicide. This act, therefore, is devoted, not, as the orthodox formula goes, toraising an obstacle between the lovers, but rather to destroying one. Inthe second act there still seems to be no obstacle of any sort. Hélène'syear of widowhood is nearly over; she and Philippe are presently to bemarried; all is harmony, adoration, and security. In the last scene ofthe act, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand appears on the horizon. Wefind that Gotte des Trembles, Hélène's bosom friend, is also in lovewith Philippe, and is determined to let him know it. But Philipperesists her blandishments with melancholy austerity, and when thecurtain falls on the second act, things seem to be perfectly safe and inorder. Hélène a widow, and Philippe austere--what harm can Gottepossibly do?

The fact is, M. Donnay is carefully keeping a secret from us. Philippeis not Hélène's first lover; her son, Georges, is not the child of herlate husband; and Gotte, and Gotte alone, knows the truth. Had we alsobeen initiated from the outset (and nothing would have been easier ormore natural--three words exchanged between Gotte and Hélène would havedone it) we should have been at no loss to foresee the impending drama, and the sense of irony would have tripled the interest of theintervening scenes. The effect of M. Donnay's third act is not a whitmore forcible because it comes upon us unprepared. We learn at thebeginning that Philippe's austerity has not after all been proof againstGotte's seductions; but it has now returned upon him embittered byremorse, and he treats Gotte with sternness approaching to contumely. She takes her revenge by revealing Hélène's secret; he tells Hélène thathe knows it; and she, putting two and two together, divines how it hascome to his knowledge. This long scene of mutual reproach and remorsefulmisery is, in reality, the whole drama, and might have been cited inChapter XIV as a fine example of a peripety. Hélène enters Philippe'sstudio happy and serene, she leaves it broken-hearted; but the effect ofthe scene is not a whit greater because, in the two previous acts, wehave been studiously deprived of the information that would have led usvaguely to anticipate it. 

To sum up this question of secrecy: the current maxim, "Never keep asecret from your audience, " would appear to be an over-simplification ofa somewhat difficult question of craftsmanship. We may agree that it isoften dangerous and sometimes manifestly foolish to keep a secret; but, on the other hand, there is certainly no reason why the playwrightshould blurt out all his secrets at the first possible opportunity. Thetrue art lies in knowing just how long to keep silent, and just theright time to speak. In the first act of _Letty_, Sir Arthur Pinerogains a memorable effect by keeping a secret, not very long, indeed, butlong enough and carefully enough to show that he knew very clearly whathe was doing. We are introduced to Nevill Letchmere's bachelorapartments. Animated scenes occur between Letchmere and hisbrother-in-law, Letchmere and his sister, Letchmere and Letty, Marionand Hilda Gunning. It is evident that Letty dreams of marriage withLetchmere; and for aught that we see or hear, there is no just cause orimpediment to the contrary. It is only, at the end of the very admirablescene between Letchmere and Mandeville that the following littlepassage occurs:

 MANDEVILLE: . .. At all events I _am_ qualified to tell her I'm fairly gone on her--honourably gone on her--if I choose to do it. 

 LETCHMERE: Qualified?

 MANDEVILLE: Which is more than you are, Mr. Letchmere. I _am_ a single man; you ain't, bear in mind. 

 LETCHMERE: (_imperturbably_): Very true. 

This one little touch is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. It would havebeen the most natural thing in the world for either the sister or thebrother-in-law, concerned about their own matrimonial difficulties, tolet fall some passing allusion to Letchmere's separation from his wife;but the author carefully avoided this, carefully allowed us to make ourfirst acquaintance with Letty in ignorance of the irony of her position, and then allowed the truth to slip out just in time to let us feel thewhole force of that irony during the last scene of the act and thegreater part of the second act. A finer instance of the delicate gradingof tension it would be difficult to cite. 

One thing is certain; namely, that if a secret is to be kept at all, itmust be worth the keeping; if a riddle is propounded, its answer must bepleasing and ingenious, or the audience will resent having been led tocudgel its brains for nothing. This is simply a part of the largerprinciple, before insisted on, that when a reasonable expectation isaroused, it can be baffled only at the author's peril. If the crux of ascene or of a whole play lie in the solution of some material difficultyor moral problem, it must on no account be solved by a mere trick orevasion. The dramatist is very ill-advised who sets forth with pomp andcircumstance to perform some intellectual or technical feat, and thenmerely skirts round it or runs away from it. A fair proportion shouldalways be observed between effort and effect, between promise andperformance. 

"But if the audience happens to misread the playwright's design, andform exaggerated and irrational expectations?" That merely means thatthe playwright does not know his business, or, at any rate, does notknow his audience. It is his business to play upon the collective mindof his audience as upon a keyboard--to arouse just the right order andmeasure of anticipation, and fulfil it, or outdo it, in just the rightway at just the right time. The skill of the dramatist, as distinct fromhis genius or inspiration, lies in the correctness of his insight intothe mind of his audience. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: For instance: "If you can get a word with him by pretendingthat you are his wife, tell him to hold his tongue until morning; _thatwill give me all the start I need_. "]

[Footnote 2: In _The Idyll_, by Herr Egge, of which some account isgiven in Chapter X, the author certainly does right in not allowing theaudience for a moment to share the hero's doubts as to the heroine'spast. It would have been very easy for him to have kept the secret; buthe takes the earliest opportunity of assuring us that her relations withRingve were quite innocent. ]

_BOOK IV_

THE END

_CHAPTER XVIII_

CLIMAX AND ANTICLIMAX

If it were as easy to write a good last act as a good first act, weshould be able to reckon three masterpieces for every one that we canname at present. The reason why the last act should offer specialdifficulties is not far to seek. We have agreed to regard a play asessentially a crisis in the lives of one or more persons; and we allknow that crises are much more apt to have a definite beginning than adefinite end. We can almost always put our finger upon the moment--not, indeed, when the crisis began--but when we clearly realized its presenceor its imminence. A chance meeting, the receipt of a letter or atelegram, a particular turn given to a certain conversation, even themere emergence into consciousness of a previously latent feeling orthought, may mark quite definitely the moment of germination, so tospeak, of a given crisis; and it is comparatively easy to dramatize sucha moment. But how few crises come to a definite or dramatic conclusion!Nine times out of ten they end in some petty compromise, or do not endat all, but simply subside, like the waves of the sea when the storm hasblown itself out. It is the playwright's chief difficulty to find acrisis with an ending which satisfies at once his artistic conscienceand the requirements of dramatic effect. 

And the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we approach to reality. Inthe days when tragedy and comedy were cast in fixed, conventionalmoulds, the playwright's task was much simpler. It was thoroughlyunderstood that a tragedy ended with one or more deaths, a comedy withone or more marriages; so that the question of a strong or a weak endingdid not arise. The end might be strongly or weakly led up to, but, initself, it was fore-ordained. Now that these moulds are broken, and bothmarriage and death may be said to have lost their prestige as the be-alland end-all of drama, the playwright's range of choice is unlimited, andthe difficulty of choosing has become infinitely greater. Our comediesare much more apt to begin than to end with marriage, and death has cometo be regarded as a rather cheap and conventional expedient for cuttingthe knots of life. 

From the fact that "the difficulty becomes greater the nearer weapproach to reality, " it further follows that the higher the form ofdrama, the more probable is it that the demands of truth and therequirements of dramatic effect may be found to clash. In melodrama, thecurtain falls of its own accord, so to speak, when the handcuffs aretransferred from the hero's wrists to the villain's. In anadventure-play, whether farcical or romantic, when the adventure is overthe play is done. The author's task is merely to keep the interest ofthe adventure afoot until he is ready to drop his curtain. This is apoint of craftsmanship in which playwrights often fail; but it is apoint of craftsmanship only. In plays of a higher order, on the otherhand, the difficulty is often inherent in the theme, and not to beovercome by any feat of craftsmanship. If the dramatist were to eschewall crises that could not be made to resolve themselves withspecifically dramatic crispness and decisiveness, he would veryseriously limit the domain of his art. Many excellent themes would bedistorted and ruined by having an emphatic ending forced upon them. Itis surely much better that they should be brought to their naturalunemphatic ending, than that they should be either falsified or ignored. 

I suggest, then, that the modern tendency to take lightly Aristotle'sdemand that the drama should have a "beginning, a middle, _and an end_, "arises from the nature of things, and implies, not necessarily, nor evenprobably, a decline in craftsmanship, but a new intimacy of relation tolife, and a new sincerity of artistic conscience. I suggest that the"weak last act, " of which critics so often complain, is a naturaldevelopment from which authors ought not, on occasion, to shrink, and ofwhich critics ought, on occasion, to recognize the necessity. To elevateit into a system is absurd. There is certainly no more reason fordeliberately avoiding an emphatic ending than for mechanically forcingone. But authors and critics alike should learn to distinguish thethemes which do, from the themes which do not, call for a definite, trenchant solution, and should handle them, and judge them, inaccordance with their inherent quality. 

Let us, however, define our terms, and be sure that we know what we aretalking about. By an "unemphatic ending" I am far from meaning amakeshift ending, an ending carelessly and conventionally huddled up. Nor do I mean an indecisive ending, where the curtain falls, as thesaying goes, on a note of interrogation. An unemphatic ending, as Iunderstand it, is a deliberate anticlimax, an idyllic, or elegiac, orphilosophic last act, following upon a penultimate act of very muchhigher tension. The disposition to condemn such an ending off-hand iswhat I am here pleading against. It is sometimes assumed that theplaywright ought always to make his action conclude within five minutesof its culmination; but for such a hard-and-fast rule I can find nosufficient reason. The consequences of a great emotional or spiritualcrisis cannot always be worked out, or even foreshadowed, within sobrief a space of time. If, after such a crisis, we are unwilling to keepour seats for another half-hour, in order to learn "what came of itall, " the author has evidently failed to awaken in us any real interestin his characters. 

A good instance of the unemphatic ending is the last act of Sir ArthurPinero's _Letty_. This "epilogue"--so the author calls it--has beendenounced as a concession to popular sentimentality, and an unpardonableanticlimax. An anticlimax it is, beyond all doubt; but it does notfollow that it is an artistic blemish. Nothing would have been easierthan not to write it--to make the play end with Letty's awakening fromher dream, and her flight from Letchmere's rooms. But the author has setforth, not merely to interest us in an adventure, but to draw acharacter; and it was essential to our full appreciation of Letty'scharacter that we should know what, after all, she made of her life. When Iris, most hapless of women, went out into the dark, there wasnothing more that we needed to know of her. We could guess the sequelonly too easily. But the case of Letty was wholly different. Her exitwas an act of will, triumphing over a form of temptation peculiarlyalluring to her temperament. There was in her character precisely thatgrit which Iris lacked; and we wanted to know what it would do for her. This was not a case for an indecisive ending, a note of interrogation. The author felt no doubt as to Letty's destiny, and he wanted to leavehis audience in no doubt. From Iris's fate we were only too willing toavert our eyes; but it would have been a sensible discomfort to us to beleft in the dark about Letty's. 

This, then, I regard as a typical instance of justified anticlimax. Another is the idyllic last act of _The Princess and the Butterfly_, inwhich, moreover, despite its comparatively subdued tone, the tension ismaintained to the end. A very different matter is the third act of _TheBenefit of the Doubt_, already alluded to. This is a pronounced case ofthe makeshift ending, inspired (to all appearance) simply by the factthat the play must end somehow, and that no better idea happens topresent itself. Admirable as are the other acts, one is almost inclinedto agree with Dumas that an author ought not to embark upon a themeunless he foresees a better way out of it than this. It should be noted, too, that _The Benefit of the Doubt_ is a three-act play, and that, in aplay laid out on this scale, a whole act of anticlimax is necessarilydisproportionate. It is one thing to relax the tension in the last actout of four or five; quite another thing in the last act out of three. In other words, the culminating point of a four-or five-act play may beplaced in the penultimate act; in a three-act play, it should come, atearliest, in the penultimate scene. [1]

In the works of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones we find several instances of theunemphatic last act--some clearly justified, others much less so. Amongthe former I unhesitatingly reckon the fourth act of _Mrs. Dane'sDefence_. It would not have been difficult, but surely most inartistic, to huddle up the action in five minutes after Mrs. Dane's tragiccollapse under Sir Daniel Carteret's cross-examination. She might havetaken poison and died in picturesque contortions on the sofa; or Lionelmight have defied all counsels of prudence and gone off with her inspite of her past; or she might have placed Lionel's hand in Janet's, saying: "The game is up. Bless you, my children. I am going into thenearest nunnery. " As a matter of fact, Mr. Jones brought his action toits natural close in a quiet, sufficiently adroit, last act; and I donot see that criticism has any just complaint to make. 

In recent French drama, _La Douloureuse_, already cited, affords anexcellent instance of a quiet last act. After the violent andheartrending rupture between the lovers in the third act, we feel that, though this paroxysm of pain is justified by the circumstances, it willnot last for ever, and Philippe and Hélène will come together again. This is also M. Donnay's view; and he devotes his whole last act, quitesimply, to a duologue of reconciliation. It seems to me a fault ofproportion, however, that he should shift his locality from Paris to theRiviera, and should place the brief duologue in a romantic woodlandscene. An act of anticlimax should be treated, so to speak, asunpretentiously as possible. To invent an elaborate apparatus for it isto emphasize the anticlimax by throwing it into unnecessary relief. 

This may be a convenient place for a few words on the modern fashion ofeschewing emphasis, not only in last acts, but at every point where theold French dramaturgy demanded it, and especially in act-endings. _Punch_ has a pleasant allusion to this tendency in two suggestedexamination-papers for an "Academy of Dramatists":

 A--FOR THE CLASSICAL SIDE ONLY. 1. What is a "curtain"; and how should it be led up to?

 B--FOR THE MODERN SIDE ONLY. 1. What is a "curtain"; and how can it be avoided?

Some modern playwrights have fled in a sort of panic from the old"picture-poster situation" to the other extreme of always dropping theircurtain when the audience least expects it. This is not a practice to becommended. One has often seen an audience quite unnecessarily chilled bya disconcerting "curtain. " There should be moderation even in theshrinking from theatricality. 

This shrinking is particularly marked, though I do not say it is carriedtoo far, in the plays of Mr. Galsworthy. Even the most innocent tricksof emphasis are to him snares of the Evil One. He would sooner die thandrop his curtain on a particularly effective line. It is his chiefambition that you should never discern any arrangement, any intention, in his work. As a rule, the only reason you can see for his doing thusor thus is his desire that you should see no reason for it. He does notcarry this tendency, as some do, to the point of eccentricity; but hecertainly goes as far as any one should be advised to follow. A littlefurther, and you incur the danger of becoming affectedly unaffected, artificially inartificial. 

I am far from pleading for the conventional tableau at the end of eachact, with all the characters petrified, as it were, inpenny-plain-twopence-coloured attitudes. But it is certainly desirablethat the fall of the curtain should not take an audience entirely bysurprise, and even that the spectator should feel the moment to berightly chosen, though he might be unable to give any reason for hisfeeling. Moreover--this may seem a super-subtlety, but one has seen itneglected with notably bad effect--a playwright should never let hisaudience expect the fall of a curtain at a given point, and then balktheir expectancy, unless he is sure that he holds in reserve a more thanadequate compensation. There is nothing so dangerous as to let a play, or an act, drag on when the audience feels in its heart that it isreally over, and that "the rest is silence"--or ought to be. The end ofMr. Granville Barker's fine play, _The Voysey Inheritance_, was injuredby the fact that, several minutes before the curtain actually fell, hehad given what seemed an obvious "cue for curtain. " I do not say thatwhat followed was superfluous; what I do say is that the author ought tohave been careful not to let us imagine that the colloquy between Edwardand Alice was over when in fact it had still some minutes to run. Aneven more remarkable play, _The Madras House_, was ruined, on its firstnight, by a long final anticlimax. Here, however, the fault did not liein awakening a premature expectation of the close, but in the fact thatwe somehow were more interested in the other characters of the play thanin the pair who held the stage throughout the long concluding scene. 

Once more I turn to _La Douloureuse_ for an instance of an admirableact-ending of the quiet modern type. The third act--the terribleperipety in the love of Philippe and Hélène--has run its agonizingcourse, and worked itself out. The old dramaturgy would certainly haveended the scene with a bang, so to speak--a swoon or a scream, a tableauof desolation, or, at the very least, a piece of tearful rhetoric. M. Donnay does nothing of the sort. He lets his lovers unpack their heartswith words until they are exhausted, broken, dazed with misery, and havenothing more to say. Then Hélène asks: "What o'clock is it?" Philippelooks at his watch: "Nearly seven. " "I must be going"--and she dries hereyes, smoothes her hair, pulls herself together, in a word, to face theworld again. The mechanical round of life re-asserts its hold upon them. "Help me with my cloak, " she says; and he holds her mantle for her, andtucks in the puffed sleeves of her blouse. Then he takes up the lamp andlights her out--and the curtain falls. A model "curtain"!

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: The fact that a great poet can ignore such precepts withimpunity is proved by the exquisite anticlimax of the third act ofD'Annunzio's _La Gioconda_. ]

_CHAPTER XIX_

CONVERSION

The reader may have noticed, possibly with surprise, that some of thestock terms of dramatic criticism occur but rarely in these pages, ornot at all. One of them is _dénouement_. According to orthodox theory, Iought to have made the _dénouement_ the subject of a whole chapter, ifnot of a whole book. Why have I not done so?

For two reasons. The lesser, but not negligible, reason is that wepossess no convenient English word for the unknotting or disentanglingof a complication. Dénouement itself cannot be plausibly Anglicized, andno native word has as yet, by common consent, been accepted as itsequivalent. I sometimes wish we could adopt, and print without italics, the excellent and expressive Greek word "lusis"; but I cannot, on my ownresponsibility, attempt so daring an innovation. The second anddetermining reason for not making the _dénouement_ one of the heads ofmy argument, is that, the play of intrigue being no longer the dominantdramatic form, the image of disentangling has lost some of its specialfitness. It is only in a somewhat strained and conventional sense thatthe term _nodus_, or knot, can be applied to the sort of crisis withwhich the modern drama normally deals; and if we do not naturally thinkof the crisis as a knot, we naturally do not think of its close as anunknotting. 

Nevertheless, there are frequent cases in which the end of a playdepends on something very like the unravelling of a tangled skein; andstill more often, perhaps, is it brought about through the loosening ofsome knot in the mind of one or more of the characters. This was thecharacteristic end of the old comedy. The heavy father, or cantankerousguardian, who for four acts and a half had stood between the lovers, suddenly changed his mind, and all was well. Even by our ancestors thiswas reckoned a rather too simple method of disentanglement. Lisideius, in Dryden's dialogue, [1] in enumerating the points in which the Frenchdrama is superior to the English notes that--

 You never see any of their plays end with a conversion, or simple change of will, which is the ordinary way which our poets use to end theirs. It shew little art in the conclusion of a dramatick poem, when they who have hindered the felicity during the four acts, desist from it in the fifth, without some powerful cause to take them off their design. 

The remark of Lisideius is suggested by a passage in Corneille, whoinstances, as an apt and artistic method of bringing about theconversion of a heavy father, that his daughter's lover should earn hisgratitude by rescuing him from assassination!

Conversions, closely examined, will be found to fall into two classes:changes in volition, and changes in sentiment. It was the former classthat Dryden had in mind; and, with reference to this class, theprinciple he indicates remains a sound one. A change of resolve shouldnever be due to a mere lapse of time--to the necessity for bringing thecurtain down and letting the audience go home. It must always berendered plausible by some new fact or new motive: some hitherto untriedappeal to reason or emotion. This rule, however, is too obvious torequire enforcement. It was not quite superfluous so long as the oldconvention of comedy endured. For a century and a half after Dryden'stime, hard-hearted parents were apt to withdraw their opposition totheir children's "felicity" for no better reason than that the fifth actwas drawing to a close. But this formula is practically obsolete. Changes of will, on the modern stage, are not always adequately motived;but that is because of individual inexpertness, not because of anyfailure to recognize theoretically the necessity for adequatemotivation. 

Changes of sentiment are much more important and more difficult tohandle. A change of will can always manifest itself in action but it isvery difficult to externalize convincingly a mere change of heart. Whenthe conclusion of a play hinges (as it frequently does) on a conversionof this nature, it becomes a matter of the first moment that it shouldnot merely be asserted, but proved. Many a promising play has gone wrongbecause of the author's neglect, or inability, to comply with thiscondition. 

It has often been observed that of all Ibsen's thoroughly mature works, from _A Doll's House_ to _John Gabriel Borkman_, _The Lady from the Sea_is the loosest in texture, the least masterly in construction. The factthat it leaves this impression on the mind is largely due, I think, to asingle fault. The conclusion of the play--Ellida's clinging to Wangeland rejection of the Stranger--depends entirely on a change in Wangel'smental attitude, _of which we have no proof whatever beyond his bareassertion_. Ellida, in her overwrought mood, is evidently inclining toyield to the uncanny allurement of the Stranger's claim upon her, whenWangel, realizing that her sanity is threatened, says:

 WANGEL: It shall not come to that. There is no other way of deliverance for you--at least I see none. And therefore--therefore I--cancel our bargain on the spot. Now you can choose your own path, in full--full freedom. 

 ELLIDA (_Gazes at him awhile, as if speechless_): Is this true--true--what you say? Do you mean it--from your inmost heart?

 WANGEL: Yes--from the inmost depths of my tortured heart, I mean it. .. . Now your own true life can return to its--its right groove again. For now you can choose in freedom; and on your own responsibility, Ellida. 

 ELLIDA: In freedom--and on my own responsibility? Responsibility? This--this transforms everything. 

--and she promptly gives the Stranger his dismissal. Now this isinevitably felt to be a weak conclusion, because it turns entirely on acondition of Wangel's mind of which he gives no positive and convincingevidence. Nothing material is changed by his change of heart. He couldnot in any case have restrained Ellida by force; or, if the law gave himthe abstract right to do so, he certainly never had the slightestintention of exercising it. Psychologically, indeed, the incident isacceptable enough. The saner part of Ellida's will was always onWangel's side; and a merely verbal undoing of the "bargain" with whichshe reproached herself might quite naturally suffice to turn the scaledecisively in his favour. But what may suffice for Ellida is not enoughfor the audience. Too much is made to hang upon a verbally announcedconversion. The poet ought to have invented some material--or, at thevery least, some impressively symbolic--proof of Wangel's change ofheart. Had he done so, _The Lady from the Sea_ would assuredly havetaken a higher rank among his works. 

Let me further illustrate my point by comparing a very small thing witha very great. The late Captain Marshall wrote a "farcical romance" named_The Duke of Killiecrankie_, in which that nobleman, having been againand again rejected by the Lady Henrietta Addison, kidnapped the obduratefair one, and imprisoned her in a crag-castle in the Highlands. Havingkept her for a week in deferential durance, and shown her that he wasnot the inefficient nincompoop she had taken him for, he threw open theprison gate, and said to her: "Go! I set you free!" The moment she sawthe gate unlocked, and realized that she could indeed go when and whereshe pleased, she also realized that she had not the least wish to go, and flung herself into her captor's arms. Here we have Ibsen's situationtransposed into the key of fantasy, and provided with the material"guarantee of good faith" which is lacking in _The Lady from the Sea_. The Duke's change of mind, his will to set the Lady Henrietta free, isvisibly demonstrated by the actual opening of the prison gate, so thatwe believe in it, and believe that she believes in it. The play was atrivial affair, and is deservedly forgotten; but the situation waseffective because it obeyed the law that a change of will or of feeling, occurring at a crucial point in a dramatic action, must be certified bysome external evidence, on pain of leaving the audience unimpressed. 

This is a more important matter than it may at first sight appear. Howto bring home to the audience a decisive change of heart is one of theever-recurring problems of the playwright's craft. In _The Lady from theSea_, Ibsen failed to solve it: in _Rosmersholm_ he solved it by heroicmeasures. The whole catastrophe is determined by Rosmer's inability toaccept without proof Rebecca's declaration that Rosmersholm has"ennobled" her, and that she is no longer the same woman whoserelentless egoism drove Beata into the mill-race. Rebecca herself putsit to him: "How can you believe me on my bare word after to-day?" Thereis only one proof she can give--that of "going the way Beata went. " Shegives it: and Rosmer, who cannot believe her if she lives, and will notsurvive her if she dies, goes with her to her end. But the cases are notvery frequent, fortunately, in which such drastic methods of proof areappropriate or possible. The dramatist must, as a rule, attain his endby less violent means; and often he fails to attain it at all. 

A play by Mr. Haddon Chambers, _The Awakening_, turned on a suddenconversion--the "awakening, " in fact, referred to in the title. Aprofessional lady-killer, a noted Don Juan, has been idly making love toa country maiden, whose heart is full of innocent idealisms. Shediscovers his true character, or, at any rate, his reputation, and ishorror-stricken, while practically at the same moment, he "awakens" tothe error of his ways, and is seized with a passion for her as singleminded and idealistic as hers for him. But how are the heroine and theaudience to be assured of the fact? That is just the difficulty; and theauthor takes no effectual measures to overcome it. The heroine, ofcourse, is ultimately convinced; but the audience remains sceptical, tothe detriment of the desired effect. "Sceptical, " perhaps, is not quitethe right word. The state of mind of a fictitious character is not asubject for actual belief or disbelief. We are bound to accepttheoretically what the author tells us; but in this case he has failedto make us intimately feel and know that it is true. [2]

In Mr. Alfred Sutro's play _The Builder of Bridges_, Dorothy Faringay, in her devotion to her forger brother, has conceived the ratherdisgraceful scheme of making one of his official superiors fall in lovewith her, in order to induce him to become practically an accomplice inher brother's crime. She succeeds beyond her hopes. Edward Thursfielddoes fall in love with her, and, at a great sacrifice, replaces themoney the brother has stolen. But, in a very powerful peripety-scene inthe third act, Thursfield learns that Dorothy has been deliberatelybeguiling him, while in fact she was engaged to another man. The truthis, however, that she has really come to love Thursfield passionately, and has broken her engagement with the other, for whom she never trulycared. So the author tells us, and so we are willing enough tobelieve--if he can devise any adequate method of making Thursfieldbelieve it. Mr. Sutro's handling of the difficulty seems to me fairly, but not conspicuously, successful. I cite the case as a typical instanceof the problem, apart from the merits or demerits of the solution. 

It may be said that the difficulty of bringing home to us the reality ofa revulsion of feeling, or a radical change of mental attitude, is onlya particular case of the playwright's general problem of convincinglyexternalizing inward conditions and processes. That is true: but thespecial importance of a conversion which unties the knot and brings thecurtain down seemed to render it worthy of special consideration. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: _Of Dramatic Poesy_, ed. Arnold, 1903, p. 51. ]

[Footnote 2: In Mr. Somerset Maugham's _Grace_ the heroine undergoes asomewhat analogous change of heart, coming to love the husband whom shehas previously despised. But we have no difficulty in accepting herconversion, partly because its reasons are clear and fairly adequate, partly because there is no question of convincing the husband, who hasnever realized her previous contempt for him. ]

_CHAPTER XX_

BLIND-ALLEY THEMES--AND OTHERS

A blind-alley theme, as its name imports, is one from which there is noexit. It is a problem incapable of solution, or, rather, of which allpossible solutions are equally unsatisfactory and undesirable. Theplaywright cannot too soon make sure that he has not strayed into such ano-thoroughfare. Whether an end be comic or tragic, romantic or ironic, happy or disastrous, it should satisfy something within us--our sense oftruth, or of beauty, or of sublimity, or of justice, or of humour, or, at the least or lowest, our cynical sense of the baseness of humannature, and the vanity of human aspirations. But a play which satisfiesneither our higher nor our lower instincts, baffles our sympathies, andleaves our desires at fault between equally inacceptablealternatives--such a play, whatever beauties of detail it may possess, is a weariness of the spirit, and an artistic blunder. 

There are in literature two conspicuous examples of the blind-alleytheme--two famous plays, wherein two heroines are placed in somewhatsimilar dilemmas, which merely paralyse our sympathies and inhibit ourmoral judgment. The first of these is _Measure for Measure_. If everthere was an insoluble problem in casuistry, it is that whichShakespeare has here chosen to present to us. Isabella is forced tochoose between what we can only describe as two detestable evils. If sheresists Angelo, and lets her brother die, she recoils from an act ofself-sacrifice; and, although we may coldly approve, we cannot admire ortake pleasure in her action. If, on the other hand, she determines atall costs to save her brother's life, her sacrifice is a thing fromwhich we want only to avert the mind: it belongs to the region of whatAristotle calls to _miaron_, the odious and intolerable. Shakespeare, indeed, confesses the problem insoluble in the fact that he leaves itunsolved--evading it by means of a mediaeval trick. But where, then, wasthe use of presenting it? What is the artistic profit of letting theimagination play around a problem which merely baffles and repels it?Sardou, indeed, presented the same problem, not as the theme of a wholeplay, but only of a single act; and he solved it by making Floria Toscakill Scarpia. This is a solution which, at any rate, satisfies ourcraving for crude justice, and is melodramatically effective. Shakespeare probably ignored it, partly because it was not in hissources, partly because, for some obscure reason, he supposed himself tobe writing a comedy. The result is that, though the play contains somewonderful poetry, and has been from time to time revived, it has nevertaken any real hold upon popular esteem. 

The second glaring instance of a blind-alley theme is that of _MonnaVanna_. We have all of us, I suppose, stumbled, either as actors oronlookers, into painful situations, which not even a miracle of tactcould possibly save. As a rule, of course, they are comic, and the agonythey cause may find a safety-valve in laughter. But sometimes thereoccurs some detestable incident, over which it is equally impossible tolaugh and to weep. The wisest words, the most graceful acts, are of noavail. One longs only to sink into the earth, or vanish into thin air. Such a situation, on the largest possible scale, is that presented in_Monna Vanna_. It differs from that of _Measure for Measure_ in the factthat there can be no doubt as to the moral aspect of the case. It isquite clear that Giovanna ought to sacrifice herself to save, not onepuling Claudio, but a whole city full of men, women, and children. Whatshe does is absolutely right; but the conjuncture is none the less agrotesque and detestable one, which ought to be talked about and thoughtabout as little as possible. Every word that is uttered is a failure intact. Guido, the husband, behaves, in the first act, with a violentegoism, which is certainly lacking in dignity; but will any one tell mewhat would be a dignified course for him to pursue under thecircumstances? The sage old Marco, too--that fifteenth-centuryRenan--flounders just as painfully as the hot-headed Guido. It is thefatality of the case that "he cannot open his mouth without putting hisfoot in it"; and a theme which exposes a well-meaning old gentleman tothis painful necessity is one by all means to be avoided. The fact thatit is a false alarm, and that there is no rational explanation forPrinzivalle's wanton insult to a woman whom he reverently idolizes, inno way makes matters better. [1] Not the least grotesque thing in theplay is Giovanna's expectation that Guido will receive Prinzivalle withopen arms because he has--changed his mind. We can feel neither approvalnor disapproval, sympathy nor antipathy, in such a deplorableconjunction of circumstances. All we wish is that we had not been calledupon to contemplate it. [2] Maeterlinck, like Shakespeare, was simplydallying with the idea of a squalid heroism--so squalid, indeed, thatneither he nor his predecessor had the courage to carry it through. 

Pray observe that the defect of these two themes is not merely that theyare "unpleasant. " It is that there is no possible way out of them whichis not worse than unpleasant: humiliating, and distressing. Let theplaywright, then, before embarking on a theme, make sure that he hassome sort of satisfaction to offer us at the end, if it be only thepessimistic pleasure of realizing some part of "the bitter, old andwrinkled truth" about life. The crimes of destiny there is some profitin contemplating; but its stupid vulgarities minister neither to profitnor delight. 

 * * * * *

It may not be superfluous to give at this point a little list ofsubjects which, though not blind-alley themes, are equally to beavoided. Some of them, indeed, are the reverse of blind-alley themes, their drawback lying in the fact that the way out of them is tootediously apparent. 

At the head of this list I would place what may be called the "whitemarriage" theme: not because it is ineffective, but because itseffectiveness is very cheap and has been sadly overdone. It occurs intwo varieties: either a proud but penniless damsel is married to awealthy parvenu, or a woman of culture and refinement is married to a"rough diamond. " In both cases the action consists of the transformationof a nominal into a real marriage; and it is almost impossible, in thesedays, to lend any novelty to the process. In the good old _Lady ofLyons_ the theme was decked in trappings of romantic absurdity, whichsomehow harmonized with it. One could hear in it a far-off echo ofrevolutionary rodomontade. The social aspect of the matter wasemphasized, and the satire on middle-class snobbery was cruellyeffective. The personal aspect, on the other hand--the unfulfilment ofthe nominal marriage--was lightly and discreetly handled, according toearly-Victorian convention. In later days--from the time of M. GeorgeOhnet's _Maître de Forges_ onwards--this is the aspect on whichplaywrights have preferred to dwell. Usually, the theme shades off intothe almost equally hackneyed _Still Waters Run Deep_ theme; for there isapt to be an aristocratic lover whom the unpolished but formidablehusband threatens to shoot or horsewhip, and thereby overcomes the lastremnant of repugnance in the breast of his haughty spouse. In _TheIronmaster_ the lover was called the Duc de Bligny, or, more commonly, the Dook de Bleeny; but he has appeared under many aliases. In the chiefAmerican version of the theme, Mr. Vaughn Moody's _Great Divide_, thelover is dispensed with altogether, being inconsistent, no doubt, withthe austere manners of Milford Corners, Mass. In one of the recentFrench versions, on the other hand--M. Bernstein's _Samson_--thearistocratic lover is almost as important a character as the virile, masterful, plebeian husband. It appears from this survey--which might belargely extended--that there are several ways of handling the theme; butthere is no way of renewing and deconventionalizing it. No doubt it hasa long life before it on the plane of popular melodrama, but scarcely, one hopes, on any higher plane. 

Another theme which ought to be relegated to the theatrical lumber-roomis that of patient, inveterate revenge. This form of vindictiveness is, from a dramatic point of view, an outworn passion. It is too obviouslyirrational and anti-social to pass muster in modern costume. The actualvendetta may possibly survive in some semi-barbarous regions, andGrangerfords and Shepherdsons (as in Mark Twain's immortal romance) maystill be shooting each other at sight. But these things are relics ofthe past; they do not belong to the normal, typical life of our time. Itis useless to say that human nature is the same in all ages. That is oneof the facile axioms of psychological incompetence. Far be it from me todeny that malice, hatred, spite, and the spirit of retaliation are, andwill be until the millennium, among the most active forces in humannature. But most people are coming to recognize that life is too shortfor deliberate, elaborate, cold-drawn revenge. They will hit back whenthey conveniently can; they will cherish for half a lifetime a passive, an obstructive, ill-will; they will even await for years an opportunityof "getting their knife into" an enemy. But they have grown chary of"cutting off their nose to spite their face"; they will very rarelysacrifice their own comfort in life to the mere joy of protracted, elaborate reprisals. Vitriol and the revolver--an outburst of rage, culminating in a "short, sharp shock"--these belong, if you will, tomodern life. But long-drawn, unhasting, unresting machination, with noend in view beyond an ultimate unmasking, a turn of the tables--in aword, a strong situation--this, I take it, belongs to a phase ofexistence more leisurely than ours. There is no room in our crowdedcentury for such large and sustained passions. One could mentionplays--but they are happily forgotten--in which retribution was delayedfor some thirty or forty years, during which the unconscious object ofit enjoyed a happy and prosperous existence. These, no doubt, areextreme instances; but cold-storage revenge, as a whole, ought to be asrare on the stage as it is in real life. The serious playwright will dowell to leave it to the melodramatists. 

A third theme to be handled with the greatest caution, if at all, isthat of heroic self-sacrifice. Not that self-sacrifice, like revenge, isan outworn passion. It still rages in daily life; but no audience ofaverage intelligence will to-day accept it with the uncriticaladmiration which it used to excite in the sentimental dramas of lastcentury. Even then--even in 1869--Meilhac and Halévy, in theirever-memorable _Froufrou_, showed what disasters often result from it;but it retained its prestige with the average playwright--and with somewho were above the average--for many a day after that. I can recall aplay, by a living English author, in which a Colonel in the Indian Armypleaded guilty to a damning charge of cowardice rather than allow a ladywhom he chivalrously adored to learn that it was her husband who was thereal coward and traitor. He knew that the lady detested her husband; heknew that they had no children to suffer by the husband's disgrace; heknew that there was a quite probable way by which he might have clearedhis own character without casting any imputation on the other man. Butin a sheer frenzy of self-sacrifice he blasted his own career, andthereby inflicted far greater pain upon the woman he loved than if hehad told the truth or suffered it to be told. And twenty yearsafterwards, when the villain was dead, the hero still resolutely refusedto clear his own character, lest the villain's widow should learn thetruth about her wholly unlamented husband. This was an extravagant andchildish case; but the superstition of heroic self-sacrifice stilllingers in certain quarters, and cannot be too soon eradicated. I do notmean, of course, that self-sacrifice is never admirable, but only thatit can no longer be accepted as a thing inherently noble, apart from itscircumstances and its consequences. An excellent play might be writtenwith the express design of placing the ethics of self-sacrifice in theirtrue light. Perhaps the upshot might be the recognition of the simpleprinciple that it is immoral to make a sacrifice which the personsupposed to benefit by it has no right to accept. 

Another motive against which it is perhaps not quite superfluous to warnthe aspiring playwright is the "voix du sang. " It is only a few yearssince this miraculous voice was heard speaking loud and long in HisMajesty's Theatre, London, and in a play by a no less modern-mindedauthor than the late Clyde Fitch. It was called _The Last of theDandies_, [3] and its hero was Count D'Orsay. At a given moment, D'Orsaylearned that a young man known as Lord Raoul Ardale was in reality hisson. Instantly the man of the world, the squire of dames, went off intoa deliquium of tender emotion. For "my bo-ô-oy" he would do anything andeverything. He would go down to Crockford's and win a pot of money topay "my boy's" debts--Fortune could not but be kind to a doting parent. In the beautiful simplicity of his soul, he looked forward with eagerdelight to telling Raoul that the mother he adored was no better thanshe should be, and that he had no right to his name or title. Not for amoment did he doubt that the young man would share his transports. Whenthe mother opposed his purpose of betraying her secret, he wept withdisappointment. "All day, " he said, "I have been saying to myself: Whenthat sun sets, I shall hear him say, 'Good-night, Father!'" Hepostulated in so many words the "voix du sang, " trusting that, even ifthe revelation were not formally made, "Nature would send the boy someimpulse" of filial affection. It is hard to believe--but it is thefact--that, well within the present century, such ingenuous nonsense asthis was gravely presented to the public of a leading theatre, by anauthor of keen intelligence, who, but for an unhappy accident, would nowbe at the zenith of his career. There are few more foolish conventionsthan that of the "voix du sang. " Perhaps, however, the rising generationof playwrights has more need to be warned against the opposite orShawesque convention, that kinship utters itself mainly in wrangling andmutual dislike. 

Among inherently feeble and greatly overdone expedients may be reckonedthe oath or promise of secrecy, exacted for no sufficient reason, andkept in defiance of common sense and common humanity. Lord Windermere'sconduct in Oscar Wilde's play is a case in point, though he has not evenan oath to excuse his insensate secretiveness. A still clearer instanceis afforded by Clyde Fitch's play _The Girl with the Green Eyes_. Inother respects a very able play, it is vitiated by the certainty thatAustin ought to have, and would have, told the truth ten times over, rather than subject his wife's jealous disposition to the strain heputs upon it. 

It would not be difficult to prolong this catalogue of themes andmotives that have come down in the world, and are no longer presentablein any society that pretends to intelligence. But it is needless toenter into further details. There is a general rule, of sovereignefficacy, for avoiding such anachronisms: "Go to life for your themes, and not to the theatre. " Observe that rule, and you are safe. But it iseasier said than done. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: I have good reason for believing that, in M. Maeterlinck'soriginal scheme, Prinzivalle imposed no such humiliating condition. Giovanna went of her own motive to appeal to his clemency; and hersuccess was so complete that her husband, on her return, could notbelieve that it had been won by avowable means. This is a really fineconception--what a pity that the poet departed from it!]

[Footnote 2: Much has been made of the Censor's refusal to license_Monna Vanna_; but I think there is more to be said for his action inthis than in many other cases. In those countries where the play hassucceeded, I cannot but suspect that the appeal it made was not whollyto the higher instincts of the public. ]

[Footnote 3: I am not sure what was the precise relationship of thisplay to the same author's _Beau Brummel_. D'Orsay's death scene wascertainly a repetition of Brummel's. ]

_CHAPTER XXI_

THE FULL CLOSE

In an earlier chapter, I have tried to show that a certain tolerance foranticlimax, for a fourth or fifth act of calm after the storm of thepenultimate act, is consonant with right reason, and is a practicallyinevitable result of a really intimate relation between drama and life. But it would be a complete misunderstanding of my argument to supposethat I deny the practical, and even the artistic, superiority of thosethemes in which the tension can be maintained and heightened to thevery end. 

The fact that tragedy has from of old been recognized as a higher formthan comedy is partly due, no doubt, to the tragic poet's traditionalright to round off a human destiny in death. "Call no man happy till hislife be ended, " said Sophocles, quoting from an earlier sage; and itneeded no profundity of wisdom to recognize in the "happy ending" ofcomedy a conventional, ephemeral thing. But when, after all theperipeties of life, the hero "home has gone and ta'en his wages, " wefeel that, at any rate, we have looked destiny squarely in the face, without evasion or subterfuge. Perhaps the true justification of tragedyas a form of art is that, after this experience, we should feel life tobe, not less worth living, but greater and more significant than before. 

This is no place, however, for a discussion of the aesthetic basis oftragedy in general. [1] What is here required, from the point of view ofcraftsmanship, is not so much a glorification of the tragic ending, as awarning against its facile misuse. A very great play may, and oftenmust, end in death; but you cannot make a play great by simply killingoff your protagonist. Death is, after all, a very inexpensive means ofavoiding anticlimax. Tension, as we saw, is symbolized in the sword ofDamocles; and it can always be maintained, in a mechanical way, byletting your hero play about with a revolver, or placing an overdose ofchloral well within your heroine's reach. At the time when the Englishdrama was awaking from the lethargy of the 'seventies, an idea gotabroad that a non-sanguinary ending was always and necessarilyinartistic, and that a self-respecting playwright must at all hazardskill somebody before dropping his curtain. This was an extravagantreaction against the purely commercial principle that the public wouldnot, on any terms, accept a tragic ending. As a matter of fact, themortality was not very great; for managers were resolute in the oldbelief, and few dramatists had the courage or authority to stand upagainst them. But I have often heard playwrights lamenting theirinability to massacre the luckless children of their fancy, who, ninetimes out of ten, had done nothing to incur such a doom. The realtrouble was that death seemed to be the only method of avoidinganticlimax. 

It is a very sound rule that, before you determine to write a tragedy, you should make sure that you have a really tragic theme: that you canplace your hero at such odds with life that reconciliation, or mereendurance, would be morally base or psychologically improbable. Moreover, you must strike deep into character before you are justifiedin passing capital sentence on your personages. Death is adisproportionate close for a commonplace and superficially-studied life. It is true that quite commonplace people do die; indeed, theypreponderate in the bills of mortality; but death on the stage confers asort of distinction which ought not to be accorded without due andsufficient cause. To one god in particular we may apply the Horatianmaxim, "Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus. "

In German aesthetic theory, the conception _tragische Schuld_--"tragicguilt"--plays a large part. It descends, no doubt, from the Aristotelianmaxim that a tragic hero must neither be too good nor too bad; but italso belongs to a moralizing conception, which tacitly or explicitlyassumes that the dramatist's aim ought to be "to justify the ways of Godto man. " In these days we look at drama more objectively, and do notinsist on deciding in what degree a man has deserved death, if only wefeel that he has necessarily or probably incurred it. But in order thatwe may be satisfied of this, we must know him intimately and feel withhim intensely. We must, in other words, believe that he dies because hecannot live, and not merely to suit the playwright's convenience andhelp him to an effective "curtain. "

As we review the series of Ibsen's modern plays, we cannot but feelthat, though he did not shrink from death, he never employed it, exceptperhaps in his last melancholy effort, as a mere way of escape from adifficulty. In five out of his thirteen modern plays, no one dies atall. [2] One might even say six: for Oswald, in _Ghosts_, may live foryears; but I hold it as only fair to count the death of his mind as morethan equivalent to bodily death. Solness, on the plane of literal fact, dies by an accident; on the plane of symbolic interpretation, he dies ofthe over-great demands which Hilda makes upon his "sickly conscience. "Little Eyolf's death can also be regarded from a symbolic point of view;but there is no substantial reason to think of it otherwise than as anaccident. John Gabriel Borkman dies of heart seizure, resulting fromsudden exposure to extreme cold. In the case of Solness and Borkman, death is a quite natural and probable result of the antecedentconditions; and in the case of Eyolf, it is not a way out of the action, but rather the way into it. There remain the three cases of suicide:Rebecca and Rosmer, Hedda Gabler, and Hedvig. I have already, in ChapterXIX, shown how the death of Rebecca was the inevitable outcome of thesituation--the one conclusive proof of her "ennoblement"--and how it wasalmost equally inevitable that Rosmer should accompany her to her end. Hedda Gabler was constitutionally fated to suicide: a woman of lowvitality, overmastering egoism, and acute supersensitiveness, placed ina predicament which left her nothing to expect from life but tedium andhumiliation. The one case left--that of Hedvig--is the only one in whichIbsen can possibly be accused of wanton bloodshed. Björnson, in a verymoving passage in his novel, _The Paths of God_, did actually, thoughindirectly, make that accusation. Certainly, there is no moreheartrending incident in fiction; and certainly it is a thing that onlyconsummate genius can justify. Ibsen happened to possess that genius, and I am not far from agreeing with those who hold _The Wild Duck_ to behis greatest work. But for playwrights who are tempted to seek foreffects of pathos by similar means, one may without hesitation lay downthis maxim: Be sure you are an Ibsen before you kill your Hedvig. 

This analysis of Ibsen's practice points to the fact--for such I believeit to be--that what the modern playwright has chiefly to guard againstis the temptation to overdo suicide as a means of cutting the dramaticknot. In France and Germany there is another temptation, that of theduel;[3] but in Anglo-Saxon countries it scarcely presents itself. Death, other than self-inflicted, is much less tempting, and less apt tobe resorted to in and out of season. The heroine, whether virtuous orerring, who dies of consumption, has gone greatly out of vogue. A brokenheart is no longer held to be necessarily fatal. The veriest tyrorealizes that death by crude accident is inadmissible as a determiningfactor in serious drama; and murder is practically (though notabsolutely) relegated to the melodramatic domain. The one urgentquestion, then, is that of the artistic use and abuse of suicide. 

The principle is pretty plain, I think, that it ought to be theartist's, as it is the man's, last resort. We know that, in mostcivilized countries, suicide is greatly on the increase. It cannot becalled an infrequent incident in daily life. It is certain, too, thatthe motives impelling to it are apt to be of a dramatic nature, andtherefore suited to the playwright's purposes. But it is, on the otherhand, such a crude and unreasoning means of exit from the tangle ofexistence that a playwright of delicate instincts will certainly employit only under the strongest compulsion from his artistic conscience. 

Sir Arthur Pinero has three suicides on his record, though one of themwas, so to speak, nipped in the bud. In _The Profligate_, as presentedon the stage, Dunstan Renshaw changed his mind before draining the fatalgoblet; and in this case the stage version was surely the right one. Thesuicide, to which the author still clings in the printed text, practically dates the play as belonging to the above-mentioned period ofrebellion against the conventional "happy ending, " when the ambitiousBritish dramatist felt that honour required him to kill his man on thesmallest provocation. [4] Nearly a quarter of a century has passed sincethen, and the disproportion between such a play and such a catastropheis now apparent to everyone. It is not that we judge Renshaw'sdelinquencies to be over-punished by death--that is not the question. The fact is simply that the characters are not large enough, trueenough, living enough--that the play does not probe deep enough intohuman experience--to make the august intervention of death seem otherthan an incongruity. The suicide of Paula Tanqueray, though it, too, hasbeen much criticized, is a very different matter. Inevitable it cannotbe called: if the play had been written within the past ten years, SirArthur would very likely have contrived to do without it. But it is, initself, probable enough: both the good and the bad in Paula's charactermight easily make her feel that only the dregs of life remained to her, and they not worth drinking. The worst one can say of it is that it sinsagainst the canon of practical convenience which enjoins on the prudentdramatist strict economy in suicide. The third case, Zoe Blundell's leapto nothingness, in that harsh and ruthless masterpiece, _Mid-Channel_, is as inevitable as anything can well be in human destiny. Zoe has madea miserable and hopeless muddle of her life. In spite of her goodness ofheart, she has no interests and no ideals, apart from the personalsatisfactions which have now been poisoned at their source. She hasintervened disastrously in the destinies of others. She is ill; hernerves are all on edge; and she is, as it were, driven into a corner, from which there is but one easy and rapid exit. Here is a case, if everthere was one, where the end is imposed upon the artist by the wholedrift of his action. It may be said that chance plays a large part inthe concatenation of events--that, for instance, if Leonard Ferris hadnot happened to live at the top of a very high building, Zoe would nothave encountered the sudden temptation to which she yields. But this, asI have tried to show above, is a baseless complaint. Chance is aconstant factor in life, now aiding, now thwarting, the will. Toeliminate it altogether would be to produce a most unlifelike world. Itis only when the playwright so manipulates and reduplicates chance as tomake it seem no longer chance, but purposeful arrangement, that we havethe right to protest. 

Another instance of indisputably justified suicide may be found in Mr. Galsworthy's _Justice_. The whole theme of the play is nothing but thehounding to his end of a luckless youth, who has got on the wrong sideof the law, and finds all the forces of society leagued against him. InMr. Granville Barker's _Waste_, the artistic justification for Trebell'sself-effacement is less clear and compulsive. It is true that the playwas suggested by the actual suicide, not of a politician, but of asoldier, who found his career ruined by some pitiful scandal. But theauthor has made no attempt to reproduce the actual circumstances of thatcase; and even if he had reproduced the external circumstances, thepsychological conditions would clearly have eluded him. Thus the appealto fact is, as it always must be, barred. In two cases, indeed, muchmore closely analogous to Trebell's than that which actually suggestedit--two famous cases in which a scandal cut short a brilliant politicalcareer--suicide played no part in the catastrophe. These real-lifeinstances are, I repeat, irrelevant. The only question is whether Mr. Barker has made us feel that a man of Trebell's character wouldcertainly not survive the paralysing of his energies; and that questionevery spectator must answer for himself. I am far from answering it inthe negative. I merely suggest that the playwright may one day comeacross a theme for which there is no conceivable ending but suicide, andmay wish that he had let Trebell live, lest people should come to regardhim as a spendthrift of self-slaughter. 

The suicide which brings to a close Mr. Clyde Fitch's very able play, _The Climbers_, stands on a somewhat different level. Here it is not theprotagonist who makes away with himself, nor is his destiny the maintheme of the play. Mr. Fitch has painted a broad social picture, inwhich, if there is any concentration of interest, it is upon Blanche andWarden. Sterling's suicide, then, though it does in fact cut the chiefknot of the play, is to be regarded rather as a characteristic andprobable incident of a certain phase of life, than as the culmination ofa spiritual tragedy. It has not the artistic significance, either goodor bad, that it would have if the character and destiny of Sterling wereour main concernment. 

 * * * * *

The happy playwright, one may say, is he whose theme does not force uponhim either a sanguinary or a tame last act, but enables him, withouttroubling the coroner, to sustain and increase the tension up to thevery close. Such themes are not too common, but they do occur. Dumasfound one in _Denise_, and another in _Francillon_, where the famous "Ilen a menti!" comes within two minutes of the fall of the curtain. In_Heimat_ (Magda) and in _Johannisfeuer_, Sudermann keeps the tension atits height up to the fall of the curtain. Sir Arthur Pinero's _Iris_ isa case in point; so are Mr. Shaw's _Candida_ and _The Devil's Disciple_;so is Mr. Galsworthy's _Strife_. Other instances will no doubt occur tothe reader; yet he will probably be surprised to find that it is notvery easy to recall them. 

For this is not, in fact, the typical modern formula. In plays which donot end in death, it will generally be found that the culminating sceneoccurs in the penultimate act, and that, if anticlimax is avoided, it isnot by the maintenance of an unbroken tension, by its skilful renewaland reinforcement in the last act. This is a resource which theplaywright will do well to bear in mind. Where he cannot place his"great scene" in his last act, he should always consider whether it benot possible to hold some development in reserve whereby the tension maybe screwed up again--if unexpectedly, so much the better. Some of themost successful plays within my recollection have been those in whichthe last act came upon us as a pleasant surprise. An anticlimax hadseemed inevitable; and behold! the author had found a way out of it. 

_An Enemy of the People_ may perhaps be placed in this class, though, asbefore remarked, the last act is almost an independent comedy. Had theplay ended with the fourth act, no one would have felt that anything waslacking; so that in his fifth act, Ibsen was not so much grappling withan urgent technical problem, as amusing himself by wringing the lastdrop of humour out of the given situation. A more strictly appositeexample may be found in Sir Arthur Pinero's play, _His House in Order_. Here the action undoubtedly culminates in the great scene between Ninaand Hilary Jesson in the third act; yet we await with eager anticipationthe discomfiture of the Ridgeley family; and when we realize that it isto be brought about by the disclosure to Filmer of Annabel's secret, themanifest rightness of the proceeding gives us a little shock ofpleasure. Mr. Somerset Maugham, again, in the last act of _Grace_, employs an ingenious device to keep the tension at a high pitch. Thematter of the act consists mainly of a debate as to whether Grace Insoleought, or ought not, to make a certain painful avowal to her husband. Asthe negative opinion was to carry the day, Mr. Maugham saw that therewas grave danger that the final scene might appear an almost ludicrousanticlimax. To obviate this, he made Grace, at the beginning of the act, write a letter of confession, and address it to Claude; so that allthrough the discussion we had at the back of our mind the question "Willthe letter reach his hands? Will the sword of Damocles fall?" This mayseem like a leaf from the book of Sardou; but in reality it was aperfectly natural and justified expedient. It kept the tension alivethroughout a scene of ethical discussion, interesting in itself, butpretty clearly destined to lead up to the undramatic alternative--apolicy of silence and inaction. Mr. Clyde Fitch, in the last act of _TheTruth_, made an elaborate and daring endeavour to relieve themawkishness of the clearly-foreseen reconciliation between Warder andBecky. He let Becky fall in with her father's mad idea of working uponWarder's compassion by pretending that she had tried to kill herself. Only at the last moment did she abandon the sordid comedy, and so proveherself (as we are asked to suppose) cured for ever of the habit offibbing. Mr. Fitch here showed good technical insight marred byover-hasty execution. That Becky should be tempted to employ her oldmethods, and should overcome the temptation, was entirely right; but theactual deception attempted was so crude and hopeless that there was noplausibility in her consenting to it, and no merit in her desistingfrom it. 

In light comedy and farce it is even more desirable than in seriousdrama to avoid a tame and perfunctory last act. Very often a seeminglytrivial invention will work wonders in keeping the interest afoot. InMr. Anstey's delightful farce, _The Brass Bottle_, one looked forwardrather dolefully to a flat conclusion; but by the simple device ofletting the Jinny omit to include Pringle in his "act of oblivion, " theauthor is enabled to make his last scene quite as amusing as any of itspredecessors. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in _The Honeymoon_, had the audacityto play a deliberate trick on the audience, in order to evade ananticlimax. Seeing that his third act could not at best be very good, hepurposely put the audience on a false scent, made it expect anabsolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam), and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at leastingenious and unforeseen. Thus, by defeating the expectation of asuperlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seemcomparatively good. Such feats of craftsmanship are entertaining, buttoo dangerous to be commended for imitation. 

In some modern plays a full close is achieved by the simple expedient ofaltogether omitting the last act, or last scene, and leaving the end ofthe play to the imagination. This method is boldly and (I understand)successfully employed by Mr. Edward Sheldon in his powerful play, _TheNigger_. Philip Morrow, the popular Governor of one of the SouthernStates, has learnt that his grandmother was a quadroon, and thatconsequently he has in him a much-attenuated strain of African blood. Inthe Southern States, attenuation matters nothing: if the remotestfilament of a man's ancestry runs back to Africa, he is "a nigger allright. " Philip has just suppressed a race-riot in the city, and, fromthe balcony of the State Capitol, is to address the troops who haveaided him, and the assembled multitude. Having resolutely parted fromthe woman he adores, but can no longer marry, he steps out upon thebalcony to announce that he is a negro, that he resigns theGovernorship, and that henceforth he casts in his lot with his blackbrethren. The stage-direction runs thus--

 The afternoon sun strikes his figure. At his appearance a shout goes up--long, steady, enthusiastic cheering; and, after a moment, the big regimental band begins playing, very slowly, "My Country, 'tis of Thee. " . .. All the people in the room are smiling and applauding enthusiastically; and--as Phil in vain raises his hand for silence, and the band crashes through the National Anthem, and the roar of voices still rises from below--

 THE CURTAIN FALLS. 

One does not know whether to praise Mr. Sheldon for having adroitlyavoided an anticlimax, or to reproach him with having unblushinglyshirked a difficulty. To my sense, the play has somewhat the air of ahexameter line with the spondee cut off. [5] One _does_ want to see theperipety through. But if the audience is content to imagine the sequel, Mr. Sheldon's craftsmanship is justified, and there is no more to besaid. M. Brieux experienced some difficulty in bringing his early play, _Blanchette_, to a satisfactory close. The third act which he originallywrote was found unendurably cynical; a more agreeable third act wascondemned as an anticlimax; and for some time the play was presentedwith no third act at all. It did not end, but simply left off. No doubtit is better that a play should stop in the middle than that it shoulddrag on tediously and ineffectually. But it would be foolish to make asystem of such an expedient. It is, after all, an evasion, not asolution, of the artist's problem. 

An incident which occurred during the rehearsals for the firstproduction of _A Doll's House_, at the Novelty Theatre, London, illustrates the difference between the old, and what was then the new, fashion of ending a play. The business manager of the company, a man ofripe theatrical experience, happened to be present one day when MissAchurch and Mr. Waring were rehearsing the last great scene between Noraand Helmar. At the end of it, he came up to me, in a state of highexcitement. "This is a fine play!" he said. "This is sure to be a bigthing!" I was greatly pleased. "If this scene, of all others, " Ithought, "carries a man like Mr. Smith off his feet, it cannot fail tohold the British public. " But I was somewhat dashed when, a day or twolater, Mr. Smith came up to me again, in much less buoyant spirits. "Imade a mistake about that scene, " he said. "They tell me it's the end ofthe _last_ act--I thought it was the end of the _first_!"

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: The reader who wishes to pursue the theme may do so toexcellent advantage in Professor Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_. ]

[Footnote 2: It is true that in _A Doll's House_, Dr. Rank announces hisapproaching demise: but he does not actually die, nor is his fate anessential part of the action of the play. ]

[Footnote 3: The duel, even in countries whose customs permit of it, isessentially an inartistic end; for it leaves the catastrophe to bedecided either by Chance or Providence--two equally inadmissiblearbiters in modern drama. Alexandre Dumas _fils_, in his preface to_Héloïse Paranquet_, condemns the duel as a dramatic expedient. "Not tomention, " he says, "the fact that it has been much over-done, we arebound to recognize that Providence, in a fit of absence of mind, sometimes suffers the rascal to kill the honest man. Let me recommend myyoung colleagues, " he proceeds, "never to end a piece which pretends toreproduce a phase of real life, by an intervention of chance. " Therecommendation came rather oddly from the dramatist who, in_L'Etrangère_, had disposed of his "vibrion, " the Duc de Septmonts, bymaking Clarkson kill him in a duel. Perhaps he did not reckon_L'Etrangère_ as pretending to reproduce a phase of real life. A duelis, of course, perfectly admissible in a French or German play, simplyas part of a picture of manners. Its stupid inconclusiveness may be thevery point to be illustrated. It is only when represented as a moralarbitrament that it becomes an anachronism. ]

[Footnote 4: I am glad to see, from Mr. Malcolm Salaman's introductionto the printed play, that, even in those days of our hot youth, my ownaesthetic principles were less truculent. ]

[Footnote 5: This image is sometimes suggested by an act-ending whichleaves a marked situation obviously unresolved. The curtain should neverbe dropped at such a point as to leave the characters in a physical ormental attitude which cannot last for more than a moment, and mustcertainly be followed, then and there, by important developments. Inother words, a situation ought not to be cut short at the very height ofits tension, but only when it has reached a point of--at any ratemomentary--relaxation. ]

_BOOK V_

EPILOGUE

_CHAPTER XXII_

CHARACTER AND PSYCHOLOGY

For the invention and ordering of incident it is possible, if not to laydown rules, at any rate to make plausible recommendations; but the powerto observe, to penetrate, and to reproduce character can neither beacquired nor regulated by theoretical recommendations. Indirectly, ofcourse, all the technical discussions of the previous chapters tend, orought to tend, towards the effective presentment of character; forconstruction, in drama of any intellectual quality, has no other end. But specific directions for character-drawing would be like rules forbecoming six feet high. Either you have it in you, or you have it not. 

Under the heading of character, however, two points arise which may beworth a brief discussion: first, ought we always to aim at developmentin character? second, what do we, or ought we to, mean by "psychology"?

It is a frequent critical complaint that in such-and-such a characterthere is "no development": that it remains the same throughout a play;or (so the reproach is sometimes worded) that it is not a character butan invariable attitude. A little examination will show us, I think, that, though the critic may in these cases be pointing to a real fault, he does not express himself quite accurately. 

What is character? For the practical purposes of the dramatist, it maybe defined as a complex of intellectual, emotional, and nervous habits. Some of these habits are innate and temperamental--habits formed, nodoubt, by far-off ancestors. [1] But this distinction does not hereconcern us. Temperamental bias is a habit, like another, only somewhatolder, and, therefore, harder to deflect or eradicate. What do we imply, then, when we complain that, in a given character, no development hastaken place? We imply that he ought, within the limits of the play, tohave altered the mental habits underlying his speech and actions. But isthis a reasonable demand? Is it consistent with the usual and desirabletime-limits of drama? In the long process of a novel, there may be timefor the gradual alteration of habits: in the drama, which normallyconsists of a single crisis, any real change of character would have tobe of a catastrophic nature, in which experience does not encourage usto put much faith. It was, indeed--as Dryden pointed out in a passagequoted above[2]--one of the foibles of our easy-going ancestors to treatcharacter as practically reversible when the time approached for ringingdown the curtain. The same convention survives to this day in certainforms of drama. Even Ibsen, in his earlier work, had not shaken it off;witness the sudden ennoblement of Bernick in _Pillars of Society_. Butit can scarcely be that sort of "development" which the critics considerindispensable. What is it, then, that they have in mind?

By "development" of character, I think they mean, not change, but ratherunveiling, disclosure. They hold, not unreasonably, that a dramaticcrisis ought to disclose latent qualities in the persons chieflyconcerned in it, and involve, not, indeed, a change, but, as it were, anexhaustive manifestation of character. The interest of the highest orderof drama should consist in the reaction of character to a series ofcrucial experiences. We should, at the end of a play, know more of theprotagonist's character than he himself, or his most intimate friend, could know at the beginning; for the action should have been such as toput it to some novel and searching test. The word "development" might bevery aptly used in the photographic sense. A drama ought to bring outcharacter as the photographer's chemicals "bring out" the forms latentin the negative. But this is quite a different thing from development inthe sense of growth or radical change. In all modern drama, there isperhaps no character who "develops, " in the ordinary sense of the word, so startlingly as Ibsen's Nora; and we cannot but feel that the poet hascompressed into a week an evolution which, in fact, would have demandedmany months. 

The complaint that a character preserves the same attitude throughoutmeans (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but amere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fullydisplayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeatingthemselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can beproduced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of"humors. " But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a charactershould be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at all)capable of classification under this type or that. It is a littlesurprising to find Sarcey, so recently as 1889, laying it down that "acharacter is a master faculty or passion, which absorbs all the rest. .. . To study and paint a character is, therefore, by placing a man in acertain number of situations, to show how this principal motive force inhis nature annihilates or directs all those which, if he had beenanother man, would probably have come into action. " This dogma of the"ruling passion" belongs rather to the eighteenth century than to theclose of the nineteenth. 

 * * * * *

We come now to the second of the questions above propounded, which Iwill state more definitely in this form: Is "psychology" simply a morepedantic term for "character-drawing"? Or can we establish a distinctionbetween the two ideas? I do not think that, as a matter of fact, anydifference is generally and clearly recognized; but I suggest that it ispossible to draw a distinction which might, if accepted, proveserviceable both to critics and to playwrights. 

Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. In _Bella Donna_, by Messrs. Robert Hichens and James B. Fagan, we have a murder-story of a notuncommon or improbable type. A woman of very shady reputation marries anamiable idealist who is infatuated with her. She naturally finds hisidealism incomprehensible and his amiability tedious. His position asheir-presumptive to a peerage is shattered by the birth of anheir-apparent. She becomes passionately enamoured of an Egyptianmillionaire; and she sets to work to poison her husband withsugar-of-lead, provided by her oriental lover. How her criminal purposeis thwarted by a wise Jewish physician is nothing to the presentpurpose. In intent she is a murderess, no less than Lucrezia Borgia orthe Marquise de Brinvilliers. And the authors have drawn her charactercleverly enough. They have shown her in the first act as ashallow-souled materialist, and in the later acts as a vain, irritable, sensual, unscrupulous creature. But have they given us any insight intoher psychology? No, that is just what they have not done. They haveassigned to her certain characteristics without which cruel andcold-blooded murder would be inconceivable; but they have afforded us noinsight into the moral conditions and, mental processes which make it, not only conceivable, but almost an everyday occurrence. For the averagehuman mind, I suppose, the psychology of crime, and especially offiendish, hypocritical murder-by-inches, has an undeniable fascination. To most of us it seems an abhorrent miracle; and it would interest usgreatly to have it brought more or less within the range of ourcomprehension, and co-ordinated with other mental phenomena which we canand do understand. But of such illumination we find nothing in _BellaDonna_. It leaves the working of a poisoner's mind as dark to us asever. So far as that goes, we might just as well have read the report ofa murder-trial, wherein the facts are stated with, perhaps, somesuperficial speculation as to motive, but no attempt is made topenetrate to underlying soul-states. Yet this is surely the highestprivilege of art--to take us behind and beneath those surfaces of thingswhich are apparent to the detective and the reporter, the juryman andthe judge. 

Have we not here, then, the distinction between character-drawing andpsychology? Character-drawing is the presentment of human nature in itscommonly-recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, asit were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hithertounsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension. In other words, character-drawing is synthetic, psychology analytic. This does not mean that the one is necessarily inferior to the other. Some of the greatest masterpieces of creative art have been achieved bythe synthesis of known elements. Falstaff, for example--there is no morebrilliant or more living character in all fiction; yet it is impossibleto say that Shakespeare has here taken us into previously unplumbeddepths of human nature, as he has in Hamlet, or in Lear. No doubt it isoften very hard to decide whether a given personage is a mere projectionof the known or a divination of the unknown. What are we to say, forexample, of Cleopatra, or of Shylock, or of Macbeth? Richard II, on theother hand, is as clearly a piece of psychology as the Nurse in _Romeoand Juliet_ is a piece of character-drawing. The comedy of typesnecessarily tends to keep within the limits of the known, andMolière--in spite of Alceste and Don Juan--is characteristically acharacter-drawer, as Racine is characteristically a psychologist. Ibsenis a psychologist or he is nothing. Earl Skule and Bishop Nicholas, Hedda Gabler and John Gabriel Borkman are daring explorations ofhitherto uncharted regions of the human soul. But Ibsen, too, was acharacter-drawer when it suited him. One is tempted to say that there isno psychology in Brand--he is a mere incarnation of intransigentidealism--while Peer Gynt is as brilliant a psychological inspiration asDon Quixote. Dr. Stockmann is a vigorously-projected character, HialmarEkdal a piece of searching psychology. Finally, my point could scarcelybe better illustrated than by a comparison--cruel but instructive--between Rebecca in _Rosmersholm_ and the heroine in _BellaDonna_. Each is, in effect, a murderess, though it was a moral, not amineral, poison that Rebecca employed. But while we know nothingwhatever of Mrs. Armine's mental processes, Rebecca's temptations, struggles, sophistries, hesitations, resolves, and revulsions of feelingare all laid bare to us, so that we feel her to be no monster, but aliving woman, comprehensible to our intelligence, and, howeverblameworthy, not wholly beyond the range of our sympathies. There arefew greater achievements of psychology. 

Among the playwrights of to-day, I should call Mr. Granville Barkerabove all things a psychologist. It is his instinct to venture intountrodden fields of character, or, at any rate, to probe deeply intophenomena which others have noted but superficially, if at all. Hencethe occasional obscurity of his dialogue. Mr. Shaw is not, primarily, either a character-drawer or a psychologist, but a dealer in personifiedideas. His leading figures are, as a rule, either his mouthpieces or hisbutts. When he gives us a piece of real character-drawing, it isgenerally in some subordinate personage. Mr. Galsworthy, I should say, shows himself a psychologist in _Strife_, a character-drawer in _TheSilver Box_ and _Justice_. Sir Arthur Pinero, a character-drawer ofgreat versatility, becomes a psychologist in some of his studies offeminine types--in Iris, in Letty, in the luckless heroine of_Mid-Channel_. Mr. Clyde Fitch had, at least, laudable ambitions in thedirection of psychology. Becky in _The Truth_, and Jinny in _The Girlwith the Green Eyes_, in so far as they are successfully drawn, reallydo mean a certain advance on our knowledge of feminine human nature. Unfortunately, owing to the author's over-facile and over-hasty methodof work, they are now and then a little out of drawing. The moststriking piece of psychology known to me in American drama is the FaithHealer in William Vaughn Moody's drama of that name. If the last act of_The Faith Healer_ were as good as the rest of it, one might safely callit the finest play ever written, at any rate in the English language, beyond the Atlantic. The psychologists of the modern French stage, Itake it, are M. De Curel and M. De Porto-Riche. MM. Brieux and Hervieuare, like Mr. Shaw, too much concerned with ideas to probe very deepinto character. In Germany, Hauptmann, and, so far as I understand him, Wedekind, are psychologists, Sudermann, a vigorous character-drawer. 

It is pretty clear that, if this distinction were accepted, it would beof use to the critic, inasmuch as we should have two terms for twoideas, instead of one popular term with a rather pedantic synonym. Butwhat would be its practical use to the artist, the craftsman? Simplythis, that if the word "psychology" took on for him a clear and definitemeaning, it might stimulate at once his imagination and his ambition. Messrs. Hichens and Fagan, for example, might have asked themselves--oreach other--"Are we getting beneath the surface of this woman's nature?Are we plucking the heart out of her mystery? Cannot we make thespecific processes of a murderess's mind clearer to ourselves and to ouraudiences?" Whether they would have been capable of rising to theopportunity, I cannot tell; but in the case of other authors one notinfrequently feels: "This man could have taken us deeper into thisproblem if he had only thought of it. " I do not for a moment mean thatevery serious dramatist should always be aiming at psychologicalexploration. The character-drawer's appeal to common knowledge andinstant recognition is often all that is required, or that would be inplace. But there are also occasions not a few when the dramatist showshimself unequal to his opportunities if he does not at least attempt tobring hitherto unrecorded or unscrutinized phases of character withinthe scope of our understanding and our sympathies. 

 * * * * *

[Footnote 1: If this runs counter to the latest biological orthodoxy, Iam sorry. Habits are at any rate transmissible by imitation, if nototherwise. ]

[Footnote 2: Chapter XIX. ]

_CHAPTER XXIII_

DIALOGUE AND DETAILS

The extraordinary progress made by the drama of the English languageduring the past quarter of a century is in nothing more apparent than inthe average quality of modern dialogue. Tolerably well-written dialogueis nowadays the rule rather than the exception. Thirty years ago, theidea that it was possible to combine naturalness with vivacity andvigour had scarcely dawned upon the playwright's mind. He passed andrepassed from stilted pathos to strained and verbal wit (often merepunning); and when a reformer like T. W. Robertson tried to come a littlenearer to the truth of life, he was apt to fall into babyish simplicityor flat commonness. 

Criticism has not given sufficient weight to the fact that Englishdramatic writing laboured for centuries--and still labours to somedegree--under a historic misfortune. It has never wholly recovered fromthe euphuism--to use the word in its widest sense--of the late sixteenthcentury. The influence of John Lyly and his tribe is still traceable, despite a hundred metamorphoses, in some of the plays of to-day and inmany of the plays of yesterday. From the very beginnings of Englishcomedy, it was accepted as almost self-evident that "wit"--a factitious, supererogatory sparkle--was indispensable to all dialogue of anon-tragic order. Language was a newly discovered and irresistiblyfascinating playground for the fancy. Conversation must be thick-strewnwith verbal quibbles, similes, figures, and flourishes of everydescription, else it was unworthy to be spoken on the stage. We all knowhow freely Shakespeare yielded to this convention, and so helped toestablish it. Sometimes, not always, his genius enabled him to render itdelightful; but in most of the Elizabethans--though it be heresy to sayso--it is an extremely tedious mannerism. After the Restoration, whenmodern light talk came into being in the coffee-houses, the fashion ofthe day, no doubt, favoured a straining after wit; so that theplaywrights were in some measure following nature--that very smallcorner of nature which they called "the town"--in accepting and making alaw of the Elizabethan convention. The leading characters of Restorationcomedy, from Etherege to Vanbrugh, are consciously and almostprofessionally wits. Simile and repartee are as indispensable a part ofa gentleman's social outfit as his wig or his rapier. In Congreve theword "wit" is almost as common as the thing. When Farquhar made somemovement towards a return to nature, he was rewarded with Pope's line, which clings like a burr to his memory--

 "What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ. "

If eighteenth-century comedy, as a whole, is not brilliantly written, itis for lack of talent in the playwrights, not for lack of desire orintention. Goldsmith, like Farquhar and Steele, vaguely realized thesuperiority of humour to wit; but he died too early to exercise muchinfluence on his successors. In Sheridan the convention of witreasserted itself triumphantly, and the scene in which Lady Teazle, Mrs. Candour, and the rest of the scandalous college sit in a semicircle andcap malicious similes, came to be regarded as an unapproachable model ofcomedy dialogue. The convention maintained itself firmly down to thedays of _Money_ and _London Assurance_, the dullness of the interveningperiod being due, not to any change of theory, but to sheer impotence ofpractice. T. W. Robertson, as above mentioned, attempted a return tonature, with occasional and very partial success; but wit, with a dashof fanciful sentiment, reasserted itself in James Albery; while in H. J. Byron it degenerated into mere punning and verbal horse-play. I shouldnot be surprised if the historian of the future were to find in theplays of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones the first marked symptoms of areaction--of a tendency to reject extrinsic and fanciful ornament indialogue, and to rely for its effect upon its vivid appropriateness tocharacter and situation. In the early plays of Sir Arthur Pinero thereis a great deal of extrinsic ornament; especially of thatmetaphor-hunting which was one of the characteristic forms of euphuism. Take this, for example, from _The Profligate_. Dunstan Renshaw hasexpressed to Hugh Murray the opinion that "marriages of contentment arethe reward of husbands who have taken the precaution to sow their wildoats rather thickly"; whereupon the Scotch solicitor replies--

 HUGH MURRAY: Contentment! Renshaw, do you imagine that there is no autumn in the life of a profligate? Do you think there is no moment when the accursed crop begins to rear its millions of heads above ground; when the rich man would give his wealth to be able to tread them back into the earth which rejects the foul load? To-day you have robbed some honest man of a sweet companion!

 DUNSTAN RENSHAW: Look here, Mr. Murray--!

 HUGH MURRAY: To-morrow, next week, next month, you may be happy--but what of the time when those wild oats thrust their ears through the very seams of the floor trodden by the wife whose respect you will have learned to covet! You may drag her into the crowded streets--there is the same vile growth springing up from the chinks of the pavement! In your house or in the open, the scent of the mildewed grain always in your nostrils, and in your ears no music but the wind's rustle amongst the fat sheaves! And, worst of all, your wife's heart a granary bursting with the load of shame your profligacy has stored there! I warn you--Mr. Lawrence Kenward!

If we compare this passage with any page taken at random from_Mid-Channel_, we might think that a century of evolution lay betweenthem, instead of barely twenty years. 

The convention of wit-at-any-price is, indeed, moribund; but it isperhaps not quite superfluous, even now, to emphasize the differencebetween what the French call the "mot d'auteur" and the "mot desituation. " The terms practically explain themselves; but a third classought to be added--the "mot de caractère. " The "mot d'auteur" is thedistinguishing mark of the Congreve-Sheridan convention. It survives infull vigour--or, shall one say, it sings its swan-song?--in the works ofOscar Wilde. For instance, the scene of the five men in the third act of_Lady Windermere's Fan_ is a veritable running-fire of epigrams whollyunconnected with the situation, and very slightly related, if at all, tothe characters of the speakers. The mark of the "mot d'auteur" is thatit can with perfect ease be detached from its context. I could fill thispage with sayings from the scene in question, all perfectlycomprehensible without any account of the situation. Among them would beone of those; profound sayings which Wilde now and then threw off in hislightest moods, like opals among soap-bubbles. "In the world, " saysDumby, "there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, andthe other is getting it. " This may rank with Lord Illingworth's speechin _A Woman of No Importance_: "All thought is immoral. Its very essenceis destruction. If you think of anything you kill it. Nothing survivesbeing thought of. " When we hear such sayings as these--or the immortal"Vulgarity is the behaviour of other people"--we do not enquire toocuriously into their appropriateness to character or situation; but nonethe less do they belong to an antiquated conception of drama. 

It is useless to begin to give specimens of the "mot de caractère" and"mot de situation. " All really dramatic dialogue falls under one head orthe other. One could easily pick out a few brilliantly effectiveexamples of each class: but as their characteristic is to fade whenuprooted from the soil in which they grow, they would take up space tovery little purpose. 

But there is another historic influence, besides that of euphuism, whichhas been hurtful, though in a minor degree, to the development of asound style in dialogue. Some of the later Elizabethans, and notablyWebster and Ford, cultivated a fashion of abrupt utterance, whereby animmensity of spiritual significance--generally tragic--was supposed tobe concentrated into a few brief words. The classic example isFerdinand's "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young, " in _TheDuchess of Malfy_. Charles Lamb celebrated the virtues of this pregnant, staccato style with somewhat immoderate admiration, and thus helped toset a fashion of spasmodic pithiness in dialogue, which too oftenresulted in dense obscurity. Not many plays composed under thisinfluence have reached the stage; not one has held it. But we find insome recent writing a qualified recrudescence of the spasmodic manner, with a touch of euphuism thrown in. This is mainly due, I think, to theinfluence of George Meredith, who accepted the convention of wit as theinforming spirit of comedy dialogue, and whose abnormally rapid facultyof association led him to delight in a sort of intellectual shorthandwhich the normal mind finds very difficult to decipher. Meredith was aman of brilliant genius, which lent a fascination to his verymannerisms; but when these mannerisms are transferred by lesser men to amedium much less suited to them--that of the stage--the result is apt tobe disastrous. I need not go into particulars; for no play of which thedialogue places a constant strain on the intellectual muscles of theaudience ever has held, or ever will hold, a place in living dramaticliterature. I will merely note the curious fact that English--my ownlanguage--is the only language out of the three or four known to me inwhich I have ever come across an entirely incomprehensible play. I couldname English plays, both pre-Meredithian and post-Meredithian, whichmight almost as well be written in Chinese for all that I can makeof them. 

Obscurity and precocity are generally symptoms of an exaggerated dreadof the commonplace. The writer of dramatic prose has, indeed, a verydifficult task if he is to achieve style without deserting nature. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the difficulty lies ingetting criticism to give him credit for the possession of style, without incurring the reproach of mannerism. How is one to giveconcentration and distinction to ordinary talk, while making it stillseem ordinary? Either the distinction will strike the critics, and theywill call it pompous and unreal, or the ordinariness will come home tothem, and they will deny the distinction. This is the dramatist'sconstant dilemma. One can only comfort him with the assurance that if hehas given his dialogue the necessary concentration, and has yet kept itplausibly near to the language of life, he has achieved style, and maysnap his fingers at the critics. Style, in prose drama, is the siftingof common speech. 

It is true, however, that, with equal concentration and equalnaturalness, one man may give his work a beauty of cadence and phrasingwhich another man may entirely miss. Two recent writers of Englishdramatic prose have stood out from their fellows in respect of the sheerbeauty of their style--I need scarcely name Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge. But Wilde's dialogue can by no means be called free from mannerism, [1]while Synge wrote in a language which had a music of its own, evenbefore his genius took hold of it. 

It does not seem very profitable to try to concentrate into a definitionthe distinctive qualities of dramatic dialogue. The late Mrs. Craigie("John Oliver Hobbes") attempted to do so in the preface to a charmingplay, _The Ambassador_; and the result at any rate the sequel--was thather next play, _The Wisdom of the Wise_, was singularly self-consciousand artificial. She found in "emotion" the test of dramatic quality inany given utterance. "Stage dialogue, " she says, "may or may not havemany qualities, but it must be emotional. " Here we have a statementwhich is true in a vague and general sense, untrue in the definite andparticular sense in which alone it could afford any practical guidance. "My lord, the carriage waits, " may be, in its right place, a highlydramatic speech, even though it be uttered with no emotion, and arouseno emotion in the person addressed. What Mrs. Craigie meant, I take it, was that, to be really dramatic, every speech must have some bearing, direct or indirect, prospective, present, or retrospective, uponindividual human destinies. The dull play, the dull scene, the dullspeech, is that in which we do not perceive this connection; but whenonce we are interested in the individuals concerned, we are so quick toperceive the connection, even though it be exceedingly distant andindirect, that the dramatist who should always hold the fear of Mrs. Craigie's aphorism consciously before his eyes would unnecessarilyfetter and restrict himself. Even the driest scientific proposition may, under special circumstances, become electrical with drama. The statementthat the earth moves round the sun does not, in itself, stir our pulses;yet what playwright has ever invented a more dramatic utterance thanthat which some one invented for Galileo: "E pur si muove!"? In allthis, to be sure, I am illustrating, not confuting, Mrs. Craigie'smaxim. I have no wish to confute it, for, in the largest interpretation, it is true; but I suggest that it is true only when attenuated almostbeyond recognition, and quite beyond the point at which it can be of anypractical help to the practical dramatist. He must rely on his instinct, not numb and bewilder it by constantly subjecting it to the dictates ofhard-and-fast aesthetic theory. 

We shall scarcely come much nearer to helpful truth than the point wehave already reached, in the principle that all dialogue, except themerely mechanical parts--the connective tissue of the play--shouldconsist either of "mots de caractère" or of "mots de situation. " But ifwe go to French critics for this principle, do not let us go to Frenchdramatists for models of practice. It is part of the abiding insularityof our criticism that the same writers who cannot forgive an Englishdramatist what they conceive to be a stilted turn of phrase, will passwithout remark, if not with positive admiration, the outrageouslyrhetorical style which is still prevalent in French drama. Here, forinstance, is a quite typical passage from _Le Duel_, by M. HenriLavedan, an author of no small repute; and it would be easy to find evenmore magniloquent tirades in the works of almost any of hiscontemporaries. I translate from the concluding scene between the Abbéand the Duchess:

 THE ABBÉ: "In our strange life, there are sometimes unexpected and decisive moments, sovereign, though we know not why. We feel it, that is all!--fulgurant moments, which throw, as it were, a flash of lightning upon our destinies, like those meteors which shine forth from time to time in the heavens, and of which none can say what their purple signifies, whether it be a cataclysm or an apotheosis. Well, it appears to me that we, you and I, are now face to face with one of these moments!"

 THE DUCHESS: "So I, too, believe. "

 THE ABBÉ: "We must take care, then, that it be an apotheosis. That is why I want--Mon Dieu, madame! how shall I say it to you? Where shall I go to find the chosen words, the words of pure gold, of diamonds, the immaculate words that are worthy of us? All that you are, all that you are worth, I know, and I alone know. You have opened, that I might read it, the book of hours that is your mind. I am in no wise disquieted about you or your future; yet, that I may be fully reassured before we part, I wish, I wish you to tell me, to declare to me, that you are at this very moment in absolute repose, calm as a lake. "

And so Monsieur l'Abbé goes on for another page. If it be said that thisornate eloquence is merely professional, I reply that his brother, theatheist doctor, and the Duchess herself, are quite as copious in theirrhetoric, and scarcely less ornate. 

It is a mistake to suppose that "literary merit" can be imparted todrama by such flagrant departures from nature; though some critics havenot yet outgrown that superstition. Let the playwright take to heart ananecdote told by Professor Matthews in his _Inquiries and Opinions_--ananecdote of a New England farmer, who, being asked who was the architectof his house, replied: "Oh, I built that house myself; but there's a mancoming down from Boston next week to put on the architecture. " Better nostyle at all than style thus plastered on. 

 * * * * *

What is to be said of the possibilities of blank verse as a dramaticmedium? This is a thorny question, to be handled with caution. One cansay with perfect assurance, however, that its possibilities areproblematical, its difficulties and dangers certain. 

To discuss the question whether drama in verse is in its very naturenobler than drama in prose would lead us away from craftsmanship intothe realm of pure aesthetics. For my own part, I doubt it. I suspectthat the drama, like all literature, took its rise in verse, for thesimple reason that verse is easier to make--and to memorize--than prose. Primitive peoples felt with Goethe--though not quite in the samesense--that "art is art because it is not nature. " Not merely foremotional, but for all sorts of literary, expression, they demanded amedium clearly marked off from the speech of everyday life. The drama"lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. " Even of so modern a writer(comparatively) as Shakespeare, it would scarcely be true to say that he"chose" verse as his medium, in the same sense in which Ibsen choseprose. He accepted it just as he accepted the other traditions andmethods of the theatre of his time. In familiar passages he broke awayfrom it; but on the whole it provided (among other advantages) aconvenient and even necessary means of differentiation between the mimicpersonage and the audience, from whom he was not marked off by theproscenium arch and the artificial lights which make a world apart ofthe modern stage. 

And Shakespeare so glorified this metrical medium as to give it anoverwhelming prestige. It was extremely easy to write blank verse aftera fashion; and playwrights who found it flow almost spontaneously fromtheir pens were only too ready to overlook the world-wide differencebetween their verse and that of the really great Elizabethans. Justafter the Restoration, there was an attempt to introduce the rhymedcouplet as the medium for heroic plays; but that, on the other hand, wastoo difficult to establish itself in general use. Tragedy soon fell backupon the fatally facile unrhymed iambic, and a reign of stilted, stodgymediocrity set in. There is nothing drearier in literature than thecentury-and-a-half of English tragedy, from Otway to Sheridan Knowles. One is lost in wonder at the genius of the actors who could infuse lifeand passion into those masterpieces of turgid conventionality. Theworship of the minor Elizabethans, which began with Lamb and culminatedin Swinburne, brought into fashion (as we have seen) a spasmodic ratherthan a smoothly rhetorical way of writing, but did not really put newlife into the outworn form. It may almost be called an appalling factthat for at least two centuries--from 1700 to 1900--not a singleblank-verse play was produced which lives, or deserves to live, [2] onthe stage of to-day. 

I have thus glanced at the history of the blank-verse play because Ibelieve that it can never revive until we clearly realize and admit thatit is, and has been for a century, thoroughly dead, while, for a centurybefore that again, it was only galvanized into a semblance of life by agreat school of rhetorical acting. The playwright who sets forth withthe idea that, in writing a poetical drama, he is going to continue thegreat Elizabethan tradition, is starting on a wild-goose chase. Thegreat Elizabethan tradition is an incubus to be exorcised. It wasbecause Mr. Stephen Phillips was not Elizabethanizing, but clothing avital and personal conception of drama in verse of very appealinglyrical quality, that some of us thought we saw in _Paolo and Francesca_the dawn of a new art. Apparently it was a false dawn; but I stillbelieve that our orientation was right when we looked for the daybreakin the lyric quarter of the heavens. The very summits of Shakespeare'sachievement are his glorious lyrical passages. Think of the exquisiteelegiacs of Macbeth! Think of the immortal death-song of Cleopatra! Ifverse has any function on the stage, it is that of imparting lyricbeauty to passionate speech. For the mere rhetorical "elevation" ofblank verse we have no use whatever. It consists in saying simple thingswith verbose pomposity. But should there arise a man who combineshighly-developed dramatic faculty with great lyric genius, it is quitepossible that he may give us the new poetic drama for which ouridealists are sighing. He will choose his themes, I take it, fromlegend, or from the domain of pure fantasy--themes which can be steepedfrom first to last in an atmosphere of poetry, as _Tristan und Isolde_is steeped in an atmosphere of music. Of historic themes, I wouldcounsel this hypothetical genius to beware. If there are any which canfittingly be steeped in a lyric atmosphere, they are to be sought on theoutskirts of history, or in the debatable land between history andlegend. The formula of Schiller can no more be revived than the formulaof Chapman or of Rowe. That a new historic drama awaits us in thefuture, I have little doubt; but it will be written in prose. The ideathat the poetry of drama is to be sought specifically in verse has longago been exploded by Ibsen and Maeterlinck and D'Annunzio and Synge. Butthere are, no doubt, themes which peculiarly lend themselves tolyrico-dramatic treatment, and we shall all welcome the poet whodiscovers and develops them. 

One warning let me add, in no uncertain voice. If you choose to write ablank-verse play, write it in blank verse, and not in some nondescriptrhythm which is one long series of jolts and pitfalls to the sensitiveear. Many playwrights have thought by this means to escape from themonotony of blank verse; not one (that I ever heard of) has achievedeven temporary success. If you cannot save your blank verse frommonotony without breaking it on the wheel, that merely means that youcannot write blank verse, and had better let it alone. Again, in spiteof Elizabethan precedent, there is nothing more irritating on the modernstage than a play which keeps on changing from verse to prose and backagain. It gives the verse-passages an air of pompous self-consciousness. We seem to hear the author saying, as he shifts his gear, "Look you now!I am going to be eloquent and impressive!" The most destructive fault adramatist can commit, in my judgment, is to pass, in the same work ofart, from one plane of convention to another. [3]

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We must now consider for a moment the question--if question it can becalled--of the soliloquy and the aside. The example of Ibsen has gonefar towards expelling these slovenlinesses from the work of allself-respecting playwrights. But theorists spring up every now and thento defend them. "The stage is the realm of convention, " they argue. "Ifyou accept a room with its fourth wall removed, which nothing short ofan earthquake could render possible in real life, why should you jib atthe idea--in which, after all, there is nothing absolutelyimpossible--that a man should utter aloud the thoughts that are passingthrough his mind?"

It is all a question, once more, of planes of convention. No doubt thereis an irreducible minimum of convention in all drama; but how strange isthe logic which leaps from that postulate to the assertion that, if weadmit a minimum, we cannot, or ought not to, exclude a maximum! Thereare plays which do not, and there are plays which do, set forth to giveas nearly as possible an exact reproduction of the visual and auditoryrealities of life. In the Elizabethan theatre, with its platform stageunder the open sky, any pictorial exactness of reproduction was clearlyimpossible. Its fundamental conditions necessitated very nearly[4] amaximum of convention; therefore such conventions as blank verse and thesoliloquy were simply of a piece with all the rest. In the theatre ofthe eighteenth century and early nineteenth, the proscenium arch--theframe of the picture--made pictorial realism theoretically possible. Butno one recognized the possibility; and indeed, on a candle-lit stage, itwould have been extremely difficult. As a matter of fact, theElizabethan platform survived in the shape of a long "apron, " projectingin front of the proscenium, on which the most important parts of theaction took place. The characters, that is to say, were constantlystepping out of the frame of the picture; and while this visualconvention maintained itself, there was nothing inconsistent or jarringin the auditory convention of the soliloquy. Only in the last quarter ofthe nineteenth century did new methods of lighting, combined with newliterary and artistic influences, complete the evolutionary process, andlead to the withdrawal of the whole stage--the whole dramaticdomain--within the frame of the picture. It was thus possible to reducevisual convention to a minimum so trifling that in a well-set "interior"it needs a distinct effort of attention to be conscious of it at all. Infact, if we come to think of it, the removal of the fourth wall isscarcely to be classed as a convention; for in real life, as we do nothappen to have eyes in the back of our heads, we are never visuallyconscious of all four walls of a room at once. If, then, in a room thatis absolutely real, we see a man who (in all other respects) strives tobe equally real, suddenly begin to expound himself aloud, in good, setterms, his own emotions, motives, or purposes, we instantly plump downfrom one plane of convention to another, and receive a disagreeable jarto our sense of reality. Up to that moment, all the efforts of author, producer, and actor have centred in begetting in us a particular orderof illusion; and lo! the effort is suddenly abandoned, and the illusionshattered by a crying unreality. In modern serious drama, therefore, thesoliloquy can only be regarded as a disturbing anachronism. [5]

The physical conditions which tended to banish it from the stage werereinforced by the growing perception of its artistic slovenliness. Itwas found that the most delicate analyses could be achieved without itsaid; and it became a point of honour with the self-respecting artist toaccept a condition which rendered his material somewhat harder ofmanipulation, indeed, but all the more tempting to wrestle with andovercome. A drama with soliloquies and asides is like a picture withinscribed labels issuing from the mouths of the figures. In that way, any bungler can reveal what is passing in the minds of his personages. But the glorious problem of the modern playwright is to make hischaracters reveal the inmost workings of their souls without saying ordoing anything that they would not say or do in the real world. [6]

There are degrees, however, even in the makeshift and the slovenly; andnot all lapses into anachronism are equally to be condemned. One thingis so patent as to call for no demonstration: to wit, that the aside isten times worse than the soliloquy. It is always possible that a manmight speak his thought, but it is glaringly impossible that he shouldspeak it so as to be heard by the audience and not heard by others onthe stage. In French light comedy and farce of the mid-nineteenthcentury, the aside is abused beyond even the license of fantasy. A manwill speak an aside of several lines over the shoulder of another personwhom he is embracing. Not infrequently in a conversation between twocharacters, each will comment aside on every utterance of the other, before replying to it. The convenience of this method of proceeding ismanifest. It is as though the author stood by and delivered a runningcommentary on the secret motives and designs of his characters. But itis such a crying confession of unreality that, on the English-speakingstage, at any rate, it would scarcely be tolerated to-day, even infarce. In serious modern drama the aside is now practically unknown. Itis so obsolete, indeed, that actors are puzzled how to handle it, andaudiences what to make of it. In an ambitious play produced at a leadingLondon theatre about ten years ago, a lady, on leaving the stage, announced, in an aside, her intention of drowning herself, and severalcritics, the next day, not understanding that she was speaking aside, severely blamed the gentleman who was on the stage with her for notfrustrating her intention. About the same time, there occurred one ofthe most glaring instances within my recollection of ineptconventionalism. The hero of the play was Eugene Aram. Alone in his roomat dead of night, Aram heard Houseman breaking open the outside shuttersof the window. Designing to entrap the robber, what did he do? He wentup to the window and drew back the curtains, with a noise loud enough tobe heard in the next parish. It was inaudible, however, to Houseman onthe other side of the shutters. He proceeded with his work, opened thewindow, and slipped in, Aram hiding in the shadow. Then, while Housemanpeered about him with his lantern, not six feet from Aram, and actuallybetween him and the audience, Aram indulged in a long and loud monologueas to whether he should shoot Houseman or not, ending with a prayer toheaven to save him from more blood-guiltiness! Such are the childishexcesses to which a playwright will presently descend when once hebegins to dally with facile convention. 

An aside is intolerable because it is _not_ heard by the other person onthe stage: it outrages physical possibility. An overheard soliloquy, onthe other hand, is intolerable because it _is_ heard. It keeps withinthe bounds of physical possibility, but it stultifies the only logicalexcuse for the soliloquy, namely, that it is an externalization ofthought which would in reality remain unuttered. This point is so clearthat I need not insist upon it. 

Are there, in modern drama, any admissible soliloquies? A few briefejaculations of joy, or despair, are, of course, natural enough, and noone will cavil at them. The approach of mental disease is often markedby a tendency to unrestrained loquacity, which goes on even while thesufferer is alone; and this distressing symptom may, on rare occasions, be put to artistic use. Short of actual derangement, however, there arecertain states of nervous surexcitation which cause even healthy peopleto talk to themselves; and if an author has the skill to make us realizethat his character is passing through such a crisis, he may risk asoliloquy, not only without reproach, but with conspicuous psychologicaljustification. In the third act of Clyde Fitch's play, _The Girl withthe Green Eyes_, there is a daring attempt at such a soliloquy, whereJinny says: "Good Heavens! why am I maudling on like this to myself outloud? It's really nothing--Jack will explain once more that he can'texplain"--and so on. Whether the attempt justified itself or not woulddepend largely on the acting. In any case, it is clear that the author, though as a rule somewhat lax in his craftsmanship, was here aiming atpsychological truth. 

A word must be said as to a special case of the soliloquy--the letterwhich a person speaks aloud as he writes it, or reads over to himselfaloud. This is a convention to be employed as sparingly as possible; butit is not exactly on a level with the ordinary soliloquy. A letter hasan actual objective existence. The words are formulated in thecharacter's mind and are supposed to be externalized, even though theactor may not really write them on the paper. Thus the letter has, so tospeak, the same right to come to the knowledge of the audience as anyother utterance. It is, in fact, part of the dialogue of the play, onlythat it happens to be inaudible. A soliloquy, on the other hand, has noreal existence. It is a purely artificial unravelling of motive oremotion, which, nine times out of ten, would not become articulate atall, even in the speaker's brain or heart. Thus it is by many degrees agreater infraction of the surface texture of life than the spokenletter, which we may call inadvisable rather than inadmissible. 

Some theorists carry their solicitude for surface reality to such anextreme as to object to any communication between two characters whichis not audible to every one on the stage. This is a very idle pedantry. The difference between a conversation in undertones and a soliloquy oraside is abundantly plain: the one occurs every hour of the day, theother never occurs at all. When two people, or a group, are talkingamong themselves, unheard by the others on the stage, it requires aspecial effort to remember that, as a matter of fact, the othersprobably do hear them. Even if the scene be unskilfully arranged, it isnot the audibility of one group, but the inaudibility of the others, that is apt to strike us as unreal. 

 * * * * *

This is not the only form of technical pedantry that one occasionallyencounters. Some years ago, a little band of playwrights and would-beplaywrights, in fanatical reaction against the Sardou technique, triedto lay down a rule that no room on the stage must ever have more thanone door, and that no letter must ever enter into the mechanism of aplay. I do not know which contention was the more ridiculous. 

Nothing is commoner in modern house-planning than rooms which have atleast two doors and a French window. We constantly see rooms or hallswhich, if transported to the stage, would provide three or fourentrances and exits; and this is even more true of the "central heated"houses of America than of English houses. The technical purists usedespecially to despise the French window--a harmless, agreeable and verycommon device. Why the playwright should make "one room one door" aninexorable canon of art is more than human reason can divine. There arecases, no doubt, in which probability demands that the dramatist shouldbe content with one practicable opening to his scene, and should planhis entrances and exits accordingly. This is no such great feat as mightbe imagined. Indeed a playwright will sometimes deliberately place aparticular act in a room with one door, because it happens to facilitatethe movement he desires. It is absurd to lay down any rule in thematter, other than that the scene should provide a probable locality forwhatever action is to take place in it. I am the last to defend the oldFrench farce with its ten or a dozen doors through which the characterskept scuttling in and out like rabbits in a warren. But the fact that weare tired of conventional laxity is no good reason for rushing to theother extreme of conventional and hampering austerity. 

Similarly, because the forged will and the lost "marriage lines" havebeen rightly relegated to melodrama, is there any reason why we shouldbanish from the stage every form of written document? Mr. Bernard Shaw, in an article celebrating the advent of the new technique, once wrote, "Nowadays an actor cannot open a letter or toss off somebody else'sglass of poison without having to face a brutal outburst of jeering. "What an extravagance to bracket as equally exploded absurdities theopening of a letter and the tossing off of the wrong glass of poison!Letters--more's the pity--play a gigantic part in the economy of modernlife. The General Post Office is a vast mechanism for the distributionof tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and farce throughout the country andthroughout the world. To whose door has not Destiny come in the disguiseof a postman, and slipped its decree, with a double rat-tat, into theletter-box? Whose heart has not sickened as he heard the postman'sfootstep pass his door without pausing? Whose hand has not trembled ashe opened a letter? Whose face has not blanched as he took in itsimport, almost without reading the words? Why, I would fain know, shouldour stage-picture of life be falsified by the banishment of the postman?Even the revelation brought about by the discovery of a forgotten letteror bundle of letters is not an infrequent incident of daily life. Whyshould it be tabu on the stage? Because the French dramatist, fortyyears ago, would sometimes construct a Chinese-puzzle play around somestolen letter or hidden document, are we to suffer no "scrap of paper"to play any part whatever in English drama? Even the Hebrew sense ofjustice would recoil from such a conclusion. It would be a case of "Thefathers have eaten sour grapes, and other people's children must pay thepenalty. " Against such whimsies of reactionary purism, the playwright'ssole and sufficient safeguard is a moderate exercise of common sense. 

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[Footnote 1: So, too, with the style of Congreve. It is much, andjustly, admired; but who does not feel more than a touch of mannerism insuch a passage as this?--

 MILLAMANT: ". .. Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together; but let us be very strange and well-bred: let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as if we were not married at all. "

 MIRABELL: "Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto your demands are pretty reasonable. "

 MILLAMANT: "Trifles!--as liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what I please; and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don't like because they are your acquaintances; or to be intimate with fools because they may be your relatives. .. . These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife. "

This is very pretty prose, granted; but it is the prose of literature, not of life. ]

[Footnote 2: From the fact that I do not make an exception in favour of_The Blot in the Scutcheon_ or _Stratford_, I must leave the reader todraw what inference he pleases. On the other hand, I believe that areconstruction of Tennyson's _Queen Mary_, with a few connecting linkswritten in, might take a permanent place in the theatre. ]

[Footnote 3: Mr. Israel Zangwill, in his symbolic play, _The War-God_, has put blank verse to what I believe to be a new use, with noteworthysuccess. He writes in very strict measure, but without the leastinversion or inflation, without a touch of Elizabethan, orconventionally poetic, diction. He is thus enabled to use the mostmodern expressions, and even slang, without incongruity; while at thesame time he can give rhetorical movement to the speeches of hissymbolic personages, and, in passages of argument, can achieve thatclash of measured phrase against measured phrase which the Greeks called"stichomythy, " and which the French dramatist sometimes produces inrapid rapier play with the Alexandrine. Mr. Zangwill's practice is inabsolute contradiction of the principle above suggested that blankverse, to be justified in drama, ought to be lyrical. His verse is aproduct of pure intellect and wit, without a single lyric accent. It ismeasured prose; if it ever tries to be more, it fails. I think, then, that he has shown a new use for blank verse, in rhetorico-symbolicdrama. But it is no small literary feat to handle the measure ashe does. ]

[Footnote 4: Not quite. The drama of some Oriental peoples recognizesconventions which the Elizabethans did not admit. ]

[Footnote 5: A conversation on the telephone often provides a convenientand up-to-date substitute for a soliloquy; but that is an expedientwhich ought not to be abused. ]

[Footnote 6: The soliloquy is often not only slovenly, but a gratuitousand unnecessary slovenliness. In _Les Corbeaux_, by Henry Becque, produced in 1889, there occur two soliloquies--one by Teissier (Act ii, Scene 3), the other by Madame de Saint-Genis (Act in, Scene 10)--eitheror both of which could be omitted without leaving any sensible gap. Thelatter is wholly superfluous, the former conveys some information whichmight have been taken for granted, and could, in any case, have beenconveyed without difficulty in some other way. Yet Becque was, in hisday, regarded as a quite advanced technician. ]