Mr. Macready’s Bentevole is very fine in its kind. It is natural, easy, and forcible. Indeed, we suspect some parts of it were too natural, that is, that Mr. Macready thought too much of what his feelings might dictate in such circumstances, rather than of what the circumstances must have dictated to him to do. We allude particularly to the half significant, half hysterical laugh and distorted jocular leer, with his eyes towards the persons accusing him of the murder, when the evidence of his guilt comes out. Either the author did not intend him to behave in this manner, or he must have made the other parties on the stage interrupt him as a self-convicted criminal.[11]
Stevenson clearly recognized this truth:
I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned to death; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But now, on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison and attempt his rescue. They are capable, hardy folks, too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not, then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy if he could with his—But soft! I will betray my secret or my heroine.[12]
When a scene clogs, don’t hold the pen waiting for the impulse to write: don’t try to write at all. Study the situation, not for itself, but for the people in it. “The Dramatist who depends his characters to his plot,” says Mr. Galsworthy, worthy, “instead of his plot to his characters, ought himself to be depended.”[13] If a thorough knowledge of the characters in the particular situation does not bring a solution, study them as the scene relates itself to what must precede in characterization. More than once a dramatist has found that he could not compose some scene satisfactorily till he had written carefully the previous history of the important character or characters. The detailed knowledge thus gained revealed whether or not the characters could enter the desired situation, and if so, how. Pailleron, author of Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie declared that, in his early drafts, he always had three or four times the material in regard to his dramatis personæ ultimately used by him.
Intimate knowledge of his characters is the only safe foundation for the ambitious playwright. It is well-nigh useless to ask managers and actors to pass finally on a mere statement of a situation or group of situations, without characterization. All they can say is: “Bring me this again as an amplified scenario, or a play, which shows me to what extent the people you have in mind give freshness of interest to this story, which has been used again and again in the drama of different nations, and I will tell you what I will do for you.” Reduce any dramatic masterpiece to simple statement of its plot and the story will seem so trite as hardly to be worth dramatization. For instance: a man of jealous nature, passionately in love with his young wife, is made by the lies and trickery of a friend to believe that his wife has been intriguing with another of his friends. The fact is that the calumniator slanders because he thinks his abilities have not been properly recognized by the husband and he has been repulsed by the wife. In a fury of jealousy the husband kills his innocent wife and then himself. That might be recognized as the story of any one of fifty French, German, Italian, English, or American plays of the last hundred years. It is, of course, the story of Othello—a masterpiece because Shakespeare knew Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio so intimately that by their interplay of character upon character they shape every scene perfectly. In other words, though a striking dramatic situation is undoubtedly dramatic treasure trove, whether it can be developed into anything fresh and contributive depends on a careful study of the people involved. What must they be to give rise to such a situation—not each by himself, but when brought together under the conditions of the scene? Even if a writer knows this, he must work backward into the earlier history of his people before he can either move through the particular scene or go forward into other scenes which should properly result from it.
Far too often plays are planned in this way. A writer thinks of some setting that will permit him a large amount of local color—a barroom, a dance hall, the wharf of an incoming ocean liner. Recognizing or not that most of this local color is unessential to the real action of the play, he does see that one or two incidents which are necessary and striking may be set against this background. Knowing broadly, how he wants to treat the scene, instead of studying the main and minor characters in it till he knows them so intimately that he can select from a larger amount of material than he can possibly use, he moves, not where the characters lead him, but whither, vi et armis, he can drive them. Rarely to him will come the delightful dilemma, so commonly experienced by the dramatist who really cares for character, when he must choose between what he was going to do and the scene as developed by the creatures of his imagination who, as they become real, take the scene away from him and shape it to vastly richer results.[14] When the dramatist interested only in situation shapes the acts preceding his most important scene, he searches simply for conditions of character which will permit this important scene to follow. Result: earlier acts, largely of exposition and talk, or of illustrative action slight and unconvincing because characters forced into a crucial situation can hardly reveal how they brought themselves to it. There is no middle way for the dramatist who seeks truth in characterization. Given a situation, either it must grow naturally out of the characters in it, or the people originally in the mind of the author must be remodeled till they fit naturally into the situation. In the latter case, all that precedes and follows the central situation must be re-worked, not as the dramatist may wish, but as the remodeled characters permit. A critic met a well-known dramatist on the Strand. The dramatist looked worried. “What’s the matter,” queried the critic, “anything gone wrong?” “Yes. You remember the play I told you about, and that splendid situation for my heroine?” “Yes. Well?” “Well! She won’t go into it, confound her, do the best I can.” “Why make her?” “Why? Because if I don’t there’s an end to that splendid situation.” “Well?” “Oh, that’s just why I’m bothered. I don’t want to give in, I don’t want to lose that situation; but she’s right, of course she’s right, and the trouble is I know I’ve got to yield.”
At first sight the problem may seem different in an historical play, for here a writer is not creating incident but is often baffled by the amount of material from which he must select,—happenings that seem equally dramatic, speeches that cry out to be transferred to the stage, and delightful bits of illustrative action. Yet, whether his underlying purpose is to convey an idea, depict a character, or tell a story, how can he decide which bits among his material make the best illustrative action before he has minutely studied the important figures? Above all others, the dramatist working with history is subject to the principles of characterization already laid down. Lessing stated the whole case succinctly:
Only if he chooses other and even opposed characters to the historical, he should refrain from using historical names, and rather credit totally unknown personages with well-known facts than invent characters to well-known personages. The one mode enlarges our knowledge or seems to enlarge it and is thus agreeable. The other contradicts the knowledge that we already possess and is thus unpleasant. We regard the facts as something accidental, as something that may be common to many persons; the characters we regard as something individual and intrinsic. The poet may take any liberties he likes with the former so long as he does not put the facts into contradiction with the characters; the characters he may place in full light but he may not change them, the smallest change seems to destroy their individuality and to substitute in their place other persons, false persons, who have usurped strange names and pretend to be what they are not.[15]
There is, however, a contrasting danger to insufficient characterization. Any one profoundly interested in character may easily fill a scene with delicate touches which nevertheless swell the play to undue length. When careful examination of a play which is too long makes obvious that no act or scene can be spared in whole or in part, and that the dialogue is nowhere wordy or redundant, watch the best characterized scenes to discover whether something has not been conveyed by two strokes rather than one. If so, choose the better. Watch the scenes also lest delicate and sure touches of characterization may have been included which, delightful though they be, are not absolutely necessary to our understanding of the character. If so, select what most swiftly yet clearly gives the needed information. Over-detail in characterization is the reason why certain modern plays have sagged, or hitched their way to a conclusion, instead of producing the effect desired by the author.
For ultimate convincingness no play can rise above the level of its characterization. The playwright who works for only momentary success may doubtless depend upon the onward rush of events, in a play of strong emotion, to blind his audience to lack of motivation in his characters. John Fletcher is the great leader of these opportunists of the theatre. Evadne, in The Maid’s Tragedy,[16] killing the King, is a very different woman from the Evadne who gladly became his mistress. Nor are the reproaches and exhortations of her brother Melantius powerful enough to change a woman of her character so swiftly and completely. An audience, absorbed in the emotion of the moment, may overlook such faults of characterization in the theatre. As it reviews the play in calmer mood, however, it ranks it, no matter how poetic as a whole or how well characterized in particular scenes, not as a drama which interprets life, but as mere entertainment. Even perfect characterization of some figures, when the chief are mere puppets, cannot make us accept the play as more than pure fiction. In Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness and English Traveler,[17] if the erring wives and their lovers were only as well characterized as the fine-spirited husbands, the servants, and youths like Young Geraldine, the plays might hold the stage today. Doubtless the actor’s art in the days of Elizabeth and James gave to villains like Wendoll and women like Mrs. Frankford enough verisimilitude to make the plays far more convincing than they are in the reading. But try as we may, we cannot understand from the text either of these characters. Their motivation is totally inadequate; that is, their conduct seems not to grow out of their characters. Rather, they are the creatures of any situation into which the dramatist wishes to thrust them.