In drama, undoubtedly the strongest immediate appeal to the general public is action. Yet if a dramatist is to communicate with his audience as he wishes, command of dialogue is indispensable. The permanent value of a play, however, rests on its characterization. Characterization focuses attention. It is the chief means of creating in an audience sympathy for the subject or the people of the play. “A Lord,” “A Page,” in a pre-Shakespearean play usually was merely a speaker of lines and little, if at all, characterized. When Robert Greene or his contemporaries adapted such sources for their stage, with sure instinct for creating a greater interest in their public, they changed these prefixes to “Eustace,” “Jacques,” “Nano,” etc. Merely changing the name from type to individual called for individualization of character and usually brought it. Indeed, in drama, individualization is always the sign of developing art. In any country, the history of modern drama is a passing, under the influence of the audience, from abstractions and personifications, through type, to individualized character. In the Trope, cited p. 17, one Mary cannot be distinguished from another. In a later form it is not a particular unguent seller who meets the Maries on the way to the tomb, but a type,—Unguent Seller. When a writer of a Miracle Play first departed a little from the exact actions and dialogue of the Bible, it was to add abstractions—Justice, Virtue, etc.—or types: soldiers, shepherds, etc. From these he moved quickly or slowly, as he was more or less endowed dramatically, to figures individualized from types, such as the well-characterized shepherds of the Second Towneley Play. The Morality illustrates this same evolution even more clearly. Beginning with the pure abstractions of Mundus et Infans or Mankind it passes through type characterization in Lusty Juventus or Hyckescorner to as well individualized figures as Delilah and Ishmael in The Nice Wanton.[1] Abstractions permit an author to say what he pleases with the least possible thought for characterization. Type presents characteristics so marked that even the unobservant cannot have failed to discern them in their fellow men. Individualization differentiates within the types, running from broad distinctions to presentation of very subtle differences. Because individualization moves from the known to the less known or the unknown, it is harder for an audience to follow than type characterization, and far more difficult to write. However, he who cannot individualize character must keep to the broader kinds of melodrama and farce, and above all to that last asylum of time-honored types—musical comedy.
Fundamentally, type characterization rests on a false premise, namely, that every human being may be adequately represented by some dominant characteristic or small group of closely related characteristics. All the better recent drama emphasizes the comic or tragic conflict in human beings caused by many contradictory impulses and ideas, some mutually exclusive, some negativing others to a considerable extent, some apparently dormant for a time, yet ready to spring into great activity at unforeseen moments. Ben Jonson carried the false idea to an extreme when he wrote of his “humour” comedies:
| In every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits and his powers, In his confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.[2] |
Were Ben Jonson’s physiology sound, we should have, not occasional cranks and neurotics as now, but a race of nothing else. Today modern medical science has proved the bad physiology of his words, and dramatists have followed its lead.
What gave the type drama its great hold, in the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence, in Ben Jonson and other Elizabethans, what keeps it alive today in the less artistic forms—broad farce, pure melodrama—is fourfold. Type characterization, exhibiting a figure wholly in one aspect, or through a small group of closely related characteristics, is easy to understand. Secondly, it is both easy to create, and, as Ben Jonson’s great following between 1605 and 1750 proves, even easier to imitate. Thirdly, farce and melodrama, indeed all drama depending predominantly on mere situation, may succeed, though lacking individualization of character, with any audience which, like the Roman or the Elizabethan, gladly hears the same stories or sees the same figures handled differently by different writers. Much in the plays of Reade, Tom Taylor, and Bulwer-Lytton[3] which passed, in the mid-nineteenth century, for real life, depending as it did on a characterization which barely rose above type, was only thinly disguised melodrama. The recent increasing response of the public to better characterization in both farce and melodrama has tended to lift the former into comedy, the latter into story-play and tragedy. Just here appears a fourth reason for the popularity of characterization by types. Though entertaining plays may be presented successfully with type characterization only, no dramatist with inborn or acquired ability to characterize, can hold consistently to types. Observation, interpretative insight, or a flash of sympathy will advance him now and again, as Jonson was advanced more than once, to real individualization of character. Contrast the thoroughly real Subtle, Face, and Doll of The Alchemist[4] with the types, Ananias and Sir Epicure Mammon; contrast the masterly, if very brief, characterization of Ursula in Bartholomew Fair[5] with the mere type of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. An uncritical audience responding to the best characterization in a play, overlooks the merely typical quality of the other figures. That is, the long vogue of types upon the stage rests upon ease of comprehension, entire adequacy for some crude dramatic forms, ease of imitation, and a constant tendency in a dramatist of ability to rise to higher levels of characterization. Now that we are more and more dissatisfied with types in plays making any claim to realism, the keen distinction first laid down by Mr. William Archer in his Play-Making becomes essential. If type presents a single characteristic or group of intimately related characteristics, “character drawing is the presentment of human nature in its commonly recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension.”[6] Mr. Galsworthy in The Silver Box and Justice Mr. Archer regards as a drawer of character; in Strife[7] as a psychologist. He holds Sir Arthur Pinero a characterizer of great versatility who becomes a psychologist in some of his studies of feminine types—in Iris, in Letty, in the heroine of Mid-Channel.[8] By this distinction, most good drama shows character drawing; only the great work, psychology.
Drama which does not rise above interest in its action rests, as has been said, on the idea that most people are simple, uncomplicated, and easy to understand. Great drama depends on a firm grasp and sure presentation of complicated character, but of course a dramatist has a perfect right to say that, though he knows his hero—Cyrano de Bergerac, for instance—may have had many characteristics, it is enough for the purpose of his play to represent the vanity, the audacity, and the underlying tenderness of the man. It is undeniable, too, that particular characteristics of ours may be so strong that other characteristics will not prevent them from taking us into sufficient dramatic complications to make a good play. In such a case, the dramatist who is not primarily writing for characterization will present the characteristics creating his desired situations, and let all others go. Conversely, he who cares most for characterization will try so to present even minor qualities that the perfect portrait of an individual will be recognized. Often, however, the happenings of a play may seem to an audience incompatible, that is, the character in one place may seem to contradict himself as presented elsewhere. Just here is where the psychologist in the dramatist, stepping to the front, must convince his audience that there is only a seeming contradiction. Otherwise, the play falls promptly to the level of simple melodrama or farce. That is, the character-drawer paints his portrait, knowing that, if it is well done, its life-likeness will at once be recognized. The psychologist, knowing that the life-likeness will not be readily admitted, by illustrative action throws light on his character till his point is won. Our final judgment of characterization must depend on whether the author is obviously trying to present a completely rounded figure or only chosen aspects.
Thus the old statement, “Know thyself,” becomes for the dramatist “Know your characters as intimately as possible.” Too many beginners in play-writing who care more for situation than for character, sketch in a figure with the idea that they may safely leave it to the actor to “fill out the part.” When brought to book they say: “I felt sure the actor in his larger experience, catching my idea—you do think it was clearly stated, don’t you?—would fill it out perfectly, and be glad of the freedom.” Were modesty the real basis for this kind of work, there might be good in it; but what really lies behind it are two great foes of good dramatic writing: haste or incompetence. The interest and the delight of a dramatist in studying people should lie in accurate conveying to others of their contradictions, their deterioration or growth as time passes, the outcropping of characteristics in them for which our observation has not prepared us. Nobody who really cares for characterization wants somebody else to do it for him. Nobody who has really entered into his characters thoroughly will for a moment be satisfied to sketch broad outlines and let the actor fill in details. Rarely, however, does the self-deceived author of such slovenly work deceive his audience. It meets at their hands the condemnation it deserves. Such an author assumes that in all the parts of his play, actors of marked ability and keen intelligence will be cast. Only in the rarest cases does that happen. Many actors may not see the full significance of the outlines. Others, whether they see them or not, will develop a character so as to get as swiftly as possible effects not intended by the author but for which they, as actors, are specially famous. Such a playwright must, then, contend, except in specially fortunate circumstances, against possible dullness, indifference, and distortion. It is the merest common sense so to present characters that a cast of average ability, or a stage manager of no extraordinary imagination may understand and represent them with at least approximate correctness, rather than so to write that only a group of creative artists can do any justice to the play. Clear and definitive characterization never hampers the best actors: for actors not the best it is absolutely necessary unless intended values are to be blurred.
It frequently happens that a writer whose dialogue is good and who has enough dramatic situations finds himself unable to push ahead. He knows broadly what he wants a scene to be, but somehow cannot make his characters move freely and naturally in it. Above all, the minor transitional scenes prove strangely difficult to write. Of course a scene or act may be thus clogged because the writer is mentally fagged. If, when a writer certainly is not tired, or when, after rest, he cannot with two or three sustained attempts develop a scene, the difficulty is not far to seek. In real life do we surely find out about people at our first, second, or even third meeting? Only if the people are of the simplest and most self-revelatory kind. The difficulty in these clogged scenes usually is that the author is treating the situation as if it were not the creation of the people in it, and as if a skilful writer could force any group of people into any situation. As Mr. Galsworthy has pointed out, “character is situation.”[9] The latter exists because someone is what he is and so has inner conflict, or clashes with another person, or with his environment. Change his character a little and the situation must change. Involve more people in it, and immediately their very presence, affecting the people originally in the scene, will change the situation. In the left-hand column of what follows, the Queen, though she has one speech, in no way affects the scene: the situation is treated for itself, and barely. In the right-hand column, the Queen becomes an individual whose presence affects the speeches of the King and Hamlet. Because she is what she is, Hamlet addresses to her some of the lines which in the first version he spoke to the King: result, a scene far more effective emotionally.
| King. And now princely Sonne Hamlet, What meanes these sad and melancholy moodes? For your intent going to Wittenberg, Wee hold it most unmeet and unconvenient, Being the Joy and halfe heart of your mother. Therefore let mee intreat you stay in Court, All Denmarkes hope our coosin and dearest Soone | King. But now my Cosin Hamlet, and my sonne. |
| Ham. A little more than kin, and lesse then kind. | |
| King. How is it that the clowdes still hang on you. | |
| Ham. Not so much my Lord, I am too much in the sonne. | |
| Queene. Good Hamlet cast thy nighted colour off And let thine eye looke like a friend on Denmarke, Doe not forever with thy vailed lids Seeke for thy noble Father in the dust, Thou know'st 'tis common all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternitie. | |
| Ham. I Maddam, it iscommon. | |
| Quee. If it be Why seemes it so perticuler with thee. | |
| Ham. My lord, 'tis not the sable sute I weare: No nor the teares that still stand in my eyes, Nor the distracted haviour in the visage, Nor all together mixt with outward semblance, Is equall to the sorrow of my heart, Him have I lost I must of force forgoe, These but the ornaments and sutes of woe. | Ham. Seemes Maddam, nay it is, I know not seemes, Tis not alone my incky cloake coold mother Nor customary suites of solembe blacke Nor windie suspiration of forst breath No, nor the fruitfull river in the eye, Nor the dejected havior of the visage Together with all formes, moodes, chapes of griefe That can denote me truely, these indeede seeme, For they are actions that a man might play But I have that within which passes showe These but the trappings and the suites of woe. |
| King. This shewes a loving care in you, Sonne Hamlet, But you must thinke your father lost a father, That father dead, lost his, and so shalbe untill the Generall ending. Therefore cease laments, It is a fault gainst heaven, fault gainst the dead, A fault gainst nature, and in reasons Common course most certaine, None lives on earth, but hee is borne to die. | King. Tis sweete and commendable in your nature Hamlet, |
| Que. Let not thy mother loose her praiers Hamlet, Stay here with us, go not to Wittenberg. | Quee. Let not thy mother loose her prayers Hamlet, I pray thee stay with us, goe not to Wittenberg. |
| Ham. I shall in all my best obay you madam. | Ham. I shall in all mybest obay you madam.[10] |
Inexperienced dramatists too often forget that a character who is simply one of several in a scene may not act as he would alone.