I have not come to Newcastle with a load of coals; and I shall not try to tell the faculty and students of Harvard University anything about the Greek drama or the classical unities. I will remind you of only one thing in that direction; and say even this merely because it has a direct bearing upon some of the practical questions connected with play-writing which I purpose to discuss. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—perhaps we should give the entire credit, as some authorities do, to Aeschylus—taught the future world the art of writing a play. But they did not create the laws of dramatic construction. Those laws exist in the passions and sympathies of the human race. They existed thousands of years before the Father of the Drama was born: waiting, like the other laws of nature, to be discovered and utilized by man.
A lecturer on "Animal Magnetism" failed to make his appearance one night, many years ago, in the public hall of a little town in Michigan, and a gentleman from Detroit consented to fill the vacant place. His lecture began and ended as follows: "Animal magnetism is a great subject, and the less said about it the better; we will proceed to experiments."
I will take that wise man as my own exemplar today, and I will begin by echoing his words: The drama in general is a great subject, and the less I say about it the better; we will proceed to experiments.
It happens that one of my own plays has had a very curious history. It has appeared before the American public in two forms, so radically different that a description of the changes made, and of the reasons for making them, will involve the consideration of some very interesting laws of dramatic construction. I shall ask you to listen very carefully to the story, or plot, of the piece as it was first produced in Chicago in 1873. Then I shall trace the changes that were made in this story before the play was produced in New York five years later. And after that, to follow the very odd adventures of the same play still further, I shall point out briefly the changes which were made necessary by adapting it to English life with English characters, for its production at the Court Theater, London, in 1879. All the changes which I shall describe to you were forced upon me (as soon as I had decided to make the general alterations in the play) by the laws of dramatic construction; and it is to the experimental application of these laws to a particular play that I ask your attention. The learned professors of Harvard University know much more about them than I do, so far as a study of dramatic literature, from the outside, can give them that knowledge; and the great modern authorities on the subject—Hallam, Lessing, Schlegel and many others—are open to the students of Harvard in her library; or, rather, shall I say, they lie closed on its shelves. But I invite you today to step into a little dramatic workshop, instead of a scientific library; and to see an humble workman in the craft, trying, with repeated experiments—not to elucidate the laws of dramatic construction, but to obey them, exactly as an inventor (deficient, it may be, in all scientific knowledge) tries to apply the general laws of mechanics to the immediate necessities of the machine he is working out in his mind. The moment a professor of chemistry has expressed a scientific truth, he must illustrate it at once by an experiment, or the truth will evaporate. An immense amount of scientific truth is constantly evaporating, for want of practical application; the air above every university in the world is charged with it. But what are the laws of dramatic construction? No one man knows much about them. As I have already reminded you, they bear about the same relation to human character and human sympathies as the laws of nature bear to the material universe. When all the mysteries of humanity have been solved, the laws of dramatic construction can be codified and clearly explained; not until then. But every scientific man can tell you a little about nature, and every dramatist can tell you a little about dramatic truth. A few general principles have been discovered by experiment and discussion. These few principles can be brought to your attention. But after you have learned all that has yet been learned by others, the field of humanity will still lie before you, as the field of nature lies before the scientist, with millions of times more to be discovered, by you or by some one else, than has ever yet been known. All I purpose to-night is to show you how certain laws of dramatic construction asserted themselves from time to time as we were making the changes in this play; how they thrust themselves upon our notice; how we could not possibly ignore them. And you will see how a man comes to understand any particular law, after he has been forced to obey it, altho, perhaps, he has never heard of it or dreamed of it before.
And let me say here, to the students of Harvard—I do not presume to address words of advice to the faculty—it is to you and to others who enjoy the high privileges of liberal education that the American stage ought to look for honest and good dramatic work in the future. Let me say to you, then: Submit yourselves truly and unconditionally to the laws of dramatic truth, so far as you can discover them by honest mental exertion and observation. Do not mistake any mere defiance of these laws for originality. You might as well show your originality by defying the law of gravitation. Keep in mind the historical case of Stephenson. When a member of the British Parliament asked him, concerning his newfangled invention, the railroad, whether it would not be very awkward if a cow were on the track when a train came along, he answered: "Very ark'ard, indeed—for the cow." When you find yourself standing in the way of dramatic truth, my young friends—clear the track! If you don't, the truth can stand it; you can't. Even if you feel sometimes that your genius—that's always the word in the secret vocabulary of our own minds—even if your genius seems to be hampered by these dramatic laws, resign yourself to them at once, with that simple form of Christian resignation so beautifully illustrated by the poor German woman on her deathbed. Her husband being asked, afterward, if she were resigned to her death, responded with that touching and earnest recognition of eternal law: "Mein Gott, she had to be!"
The story of the play, as first produced in Chicago, may be told as follows:
Act first—Scene, New York. A young girl and a young man are in love, and engaged to be married. The striking originality of this idea will startle any one who has never heard of such a thing before. Lilian Westbrook and Harold Routledge have a lover's quarrel. Never mind what the cause of it. To quote a passage from the play itself: "A woman never quarrels with a man she doesn't love"—that is one of the minor laws of dramatic construction—"and she is never tired of quarreling with a man she does love." I dare not announce this as another law of female human nature; it is merely the opinion of one of my characters—a married man. Of course, there are women who do not quarrel with any one; and there are angels; but, as a rule, the women we feel at liberty to fall in love with do quarrel now and then; and they almost invariably quarrel with their husbands or lovers first, their other acquaintances must often be content with their smiles. But, when Lilian announces to Harold Routledge that their engagement is broken forever, he thinks she means to imply that she doesn't intend to marry him.
Women are often misunderstood by our more grossly practical sex; we are too apt to judge of what they mean by what they say. The relations, if there are any, between a woman's tongue and her thoughts form the least understood section, perhaps, of dramatic law. You will get some idea of the intricacies of this subject, if one of your literary professors will draw you a diagram of what a woman doesn't mean when she uses the English language. Harold Routledge, almost broken-hearted, bids Lilian farewell, and leaves her presence. Lilian herself, proud and angry, allows him to go; waits petulantly a moment for him to return; then, forlorn and wretched, she bursts into the flood of tears which she intended to shed upon his breast. Under ordinary circumstances, those precious drops would not have been wasted. Young girls, when they quarrel with their lovers, are not extravagant with their tears; they put them carefully to the best possible use; and, I dare say, some of Lilian's tears would have fallen on a sheet of notepaper; and the stained lines of a letter would have reached Harold by the next post, begging him to come back, and to let her forgive him for all the spiteful things she had said to him. Unfortunately, however, just at this critical juncture in the affairs of love—while Cupid was waiting, hat in hand, to accompany the letter to its destination and keep an eye on the postman—Lilian's father enters. He is on the verge of financial ruin, and he has just received a letter from Mr. John Strebelow, a man of great wealth, asking him for his daughter's hand in marriage. Mr. Westbrook urges her to accept him, not from any selfish motives, but because he dreads to leave, in his old age, a helpless girl, trained only to luxury and extravagance, to a merciless world. Lilian, on her part, shudders at the thought of her father renewing the struggle of life when years have exhausted his strength. She knows that she will be the greatest burden that will fall upon him; she remembers her dead mother's love for them both; and she sacrifices her own heart. Mr. Strebelow is a man of about forty years, of unquestioned honor, of noble personal character in every way. Lilian had loved him, indeed, when she was a little child, and she feels that she can at least respect and reverence him as her husband. Mr. Strebelow marries her without knowing that she does not love him; much less, that she loves another.
Act second—Paris. Lilian has been married five years, and is residing with her husband in the French capital. As the curtain rises, Lilian is teaching her little child, Natalie, her alphabet. All the warm affection of a woman's nature, suppressed and thrown back upon her own heart, has concentrated itself upon this child. Lilian has been a good wife, and she does reverence her husband as she expected to do. He is a kind, generous and noble man. But she does not love him as a wife. Mr. Strebelow now enters, and, after a little domestic scene, the French nurse is instructed to dress the child for a walk with its mother. Strebelow then tells Lilian that he has just met an old friend of hers and of himself—the American artist, Mr. Harold Routledge, passing thru Paris on his way from his studio in Rome. He has insisted on a visit from Mr. Routledge, and the two parted lovers are brought face to face by the husband. They are afterwards left alone together. Routledge has lived a solitary life, nursing his feelings toward a woman who had heartlessly cast him off, as he thinks, to marry a man merely for his wealth. He is bitter and cruel. But the cruelty to a woman which is born of love for her has a wonderful, an almost irresistible fascination for the female heart. Under the spell of this fascination, Lilian's old love reasserts its authority against that of his will. She forgets everything except the moment when her lover last parted from her. She is again the wayward girl that waited for his return; he has returned!—and she does what she would have done five years before; she turns, passionately, to throw herself into his arms. At this moment, her little child, Natalie, runs in. Lilian is a mother again, and a wife. She falls to her knees and embraces her child at the very feet of her former lover. Harold Routledge bows his head reverently, and leaves them together.
Act third. The art of breaking the tenth commandment—thou shalt not covet they neighbor's wife—has reached its highest perfection in France. One of the most important laws of dramatic construction might be formulated in this way. If you want a particular thing done, choose a character to do it that an audience will naturally expect to do it. I wanted a man to fall in love with my heroine after she was a married woman, and I chose a French count for that purpose. I knew that an American audience would not only expect him to fall in love with another man's wife, but it would be very much surprised if he didn't. This saved much explanation and unnecessary dialog. Harold Routledge overhears the Count de Carojac, a hardened roué and a duellist, speaking of Lilian in such terms as no honorable man should speak of a modest woman. Routledge, with a studio in Rome, and having been educated at a German university, is familiar with the use of the rapier. A duel is arranged. Lilian hears of it thru a female friend, and Strebelow, also, thru the American second of Mr. Routledge. The parties meet at the Château Chateaubriand, in the suburbs of Paris, at midnight, by the light of the moon, in winter. A scream from Lilian, as she reaches the scene in breathless haste, throws Routledge off his guard; he is wounded and falls. Strebelow, too, has come on the field, not knowing the cause of the quarrel; but anxious to prevent a meeting between two of his own personal friends. Lilian is ignorant of her husband's presence, and she sees only the bleeding form of the man she loves lying upon the snow. She falls at his side, and words of burning passion, checked a few hours before by the innocent presence of her child, spring to her lips. The last of these words are as follows: "I have loved you—and you only—Harold, from the first."