Yet there will be found still fewer dramatic offerings in vaudeville that do not conform to some of these principles. Such near-playlets succeed not because they evade the type, but mysteriously in spite of their mistakes. And as they conform more closely to the standards of what a playlet should be, they approach the elements that make for lasting success.
But beyond these "rules"—if rules there really are—and far above them in the heights no rules can reach, lies that something which cannot be defined, which breathes the breath of life into words and actions that bring laughter and tears. Rules cannot build the bridge from your heart to the hearts of your audiences. Science stands abashed and helpless before the task. All that rules can suggest, all that science can point out—is the way others have built their bridges
For this purpose only, are these standards of any value to you.
CHAPTER XI
KINDS OF PLAYLET
The kind of playlet is largely determined by its characters and their surroundings, and on these there are practically no limits. You may have characters of any nationality; you may treat them reverently, or—save that you must never offend—you may make them as funny as you desire; you may give them any profession that suits your purpose; you may place them in any sort of house or on the open hills or in an air-ship high in the sky; you may show them in any country of the earth or on the moon or in the seas under the earth—you may do anything you like with them. Vaudeville wants everything—everything so long as it is well and strikingly done. Therefore, to attempt to list the many different kinds of playlet to be seen upon the vaudeville stage would, indeed, be a task as fraught with hazard as to try to classify minutely the divers kinds of men seen upon the stage of life. And of just as little practical value would it be to have tables showing the scores of superficial variations of character, nationality, time and place which the years have woven into the playlets of the past.
In the "art" of the playlet there are, to be sure, the same three "schools"—more or less unconsciously followed in nearly every vaudeville instance—which are to be found in the novel, the short-story, painting, and the full-length play. These are, of course, realism, romance, and idealism. [1] These distinctions, however, are—in vaudeville—merely distinctions without being valuable differences. You need never give thought as to the school to which you are paying allegiance in your playlet; your work will probably be neither better nor worse for this knowledge or its lack. Your playlet must stand on its own legs, and succeed or fail by the test of interest. Make your playlet grip, that is the thing.
[1] Should you wish to dally with the mooted question of the difference between realism and romanticism—in the perplexing mazes of which many a fine little talent has been snuffed out like a flickering taper in a gust of wind—there are a score or more volumes that you will find in any large library, in which the whole matter is thrashed out unsatisfactorily. However, if you wish to spend a half-hour profitably and pleasantly, read Robert Louis Stevenson's short chapter, A Note on Realism, to be found in his suggestive and all-too-few papers on The Art of Writing. In the collection of his essays entitled Memories and Portraits will be found an equally delightful and valuable paper, A Gossip on Romance. A brief technical discussion will also be found in Writing the Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein, pp. 64-67.
But do not confuse the word "romance," as it is used in the preceding paragraph, with love. Love is an emotional, not a technical element, and consorts equally well with either romance or realism in writing. Love might be the heading of one of those tables we have agreed not to bother with. Into everything that is written for vaudeville love may stray. Or it may not intrude, if your purpose demands that love stay out. Yet, like the world, what would vaudeville be, if love were left out? And now we come to those broad types of playlet which you should recognize instinctively. Unless you do so recognize them—and the varying half-grounds that lie between, where they meet and mingle quite as often as they appear in their pure forms—you will have but little success in writing the playlet.
In considering the broad types of playlet you should remember that words are said to denote definitely the ideas they delineate, and to connote the thoughts and emotions they do not clearly express but arouse in the hearer or reader. For example, what do "farce," "comedy," "tragedy" and "melodrama" connote to you? What emotions do they suggest? This is an important matter, because all great artistic types are more or less fully associated with a mood, a feeling, an atmosphere.