Playwrights on playmaking

by Brander Matthews

II

The first thing we discover when we compare the opinions of the professional playwrights is that they agree in accepting the judgment of the audience as decisive and final. As their plays were composed for the delight of the spectators, they all feel that they are bound to accept the verdict rendered in the theater. They know better than any one else how vain is the hope of an appeal to any other tribunal. They were seeking success on the stage, not in the study; they desired to arouse and retain the interest of their own contemporaries in their own country. They gave no thought to posterity or to foreign nations. They recognized that they had no right to complain if they could not win over the jury by which they had chosen to be tried. In so far as the dramatists have expressed their opinion on this point they are unanimous.

In Professor William Lyon Phelps’s lively little book on the ‘Twentieth Century Theater,’ he has told us about an unnamed author, who “profoundly influenced not only the stage but also modern thought” and who nevertheless maintained that the “true dramatist must not think of the box-office while he is writing his plays. He must express himself, which is the only reason for writing at all. If what he writes happens to be financially successful, so much the better. But he must not think of popular success while at work.” We cannot doubt the sincerity of these sentiments, since Professor Phelps has frankly informed us that the majority of this author’s pieces “have been failures on the stage.”

The practise of this unnamed author is in sharp opposition to that of Shakspere and Molière, who were shrewd men of business, both of them. Shakspere was susceptible to every veering shift in popular taste, giving the public sex-plays, ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘All’s Well That Ends Well,’ when other playwrights had stimulated the taste for that type of piece, and following the footsteps of Beaumont and Fletcher after these collaborators had won the favor of playgoers with their more or less spectacular dramatic-romances. Molière made haste to bolster the bill with a robust farce when the box-office receipts revealed to him that the ‘Misanthrope’ was not financially successful. Goethe displayed his customary insight when he told Eckermann that the greatest of English dramatists and the greatest of French dramatists, “wished, above all things, to make money by their theaters.”

This wish of theirs did not interfere with the ability of Shakspere and of Molière “to express himself.” Of course, the dramatic poet desires to express himself; but if he is a born playwright, he never thinks of trying to express himself except in conformity to the conditions of the dramatic art with its triple dependence on the playhouse itself, the players and the playgoers. Professor Phelps’s unnamed author may have “profoundly influenced” both the stage and modern thought, but he was not a born playwright or he would have ever had “popular success” in mind while he was at work. If he did not value the winning of the suffrages of his constituents, why did he present himself at the polls? There are abundant facilities for self-expression in the novel and in the lyric. In the drama self-expression must take thought of the public, of its likes and its dislikes, of its many-headedness and of the variety of its tastes.

The opinions enunciated by this unnamed author are contrary to the practise of Shakspere and Molière, and they are also contrary to the precepts of Lope de Vega and Corneille, who also profoundly influenced both the stage and what in their own day was “modern thought.” Lope de Vega proclaimed his deference to the Italian theorists of the theater, regretting only that the playwrights who worked according to their precepts died “without fame and guerdon.” Then he tells us (with his tongue in his cheek) that “when I have to write a play I lock in the precepts with six keys ... and I write in accordance with that art which they devised who aspired to the applause of the crowd, for since the crowd pays for the plays, it is fitting to talk foolishly to it to satisfy its taste.” Less than a quarter of a century later Corneille said almost exactly the same thing, perhaps sadly but certainly not ironically:

Since we write plays to be performed, our first object is to please the court and the people, and to attract many to the performances. We must, if we can, obey the precepts, so as not to displease the learned and to receive unanimous applause; but above all we must win the vote of the people.

And Molière less than thirty years later is equally plain-spoken:

I am willing to trust the decision of the multitude, and I hold it as difficult to combat a work which the public approves as to defend one which it condemns.

It may be noted that Corneille desired to gain, if possible, the good opinion of the learned, while he held it essential to gain that of the crowd. The younger Dumas once imagined his father replying to those who had asked him if he would not be satisfied if he had achieved the commendation of the best judges only: “No, the approbation of these judges would not amply indemnify me for the coldness of the others, because the drama, which appeals to the many, cannot be satisfied with the approval of the few.” In putting this opinion into the mouth of the elder Dumas, his son was but expressing the belief of every successful playwright who has been moved to discuss the art of the drama; and it may be well to recall the fact that in their own day all the great dramatists were only successful playwrights, their popularity being beyond question even if their greatness was still in doubt.