Dramatic Technique - George Pierce Baker

The Riverside Press Cambridge

The author acknowledges courteous permission to
quote passages from copyright plays as credited
to various authors and publishers in the footnotes.

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

PREFACE

“The dramatist is born, not made.” This common saying grants the dramatist at least one experience of other artists, namely, birth, but seeks to deny him the instruction in art granted the architect, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Play-readers and producers, however, seem not so sure of this distinction, for they are often heard saying: “The plays we receive divide into two classes: those competently written, but trite in subject and treatment; those in some way fresh and interesting, but so badly written that they cannot be produced.” Some years ago, Mr. Savage, the manager, writing in The Bookman on “The United States of Playwrights,” said: “In answer to the question, ‘Do the great majority of these persons know anything at all of even the fundamentals of dramatic construction?’ the managers and agents who read the manuscripts unanimously agree in the negative. Only in rare instances does a play arrive in the daily mails that carries within it a vestige of the knowledge of the science of drama-making. Almost all the plays, furthermore, are extremely artificial and utterly devoid of the quality known as human interest.” All this testimony of managers and play-readers shows that there is something which the dramatist has not as a birthright, but must learn. Where? Usually he is told, “In the School of Hard Experience.” When the young playwright whose manuscript has been returned to him but with favorable comment, asks what he is to do to get rid of the faults in his work, both evident to him and not evident, he is told to read widely in the drama; to watch plays of all kinds; to write with endless patience and the resolution never to be discouraged. He is to keep submitting his plays till, by this somewhat indefinite method of training, he at last acquires the ability to write so well that a manuscript is accepted. This is “The School of Experience.” Though a long and painful method of training, it has had, undeniably, many distinguished graduates.

Why, however, is it impossible that some time should be saved a would-be dramatist by placing before him, not mere theories of play-writing, but the practice of the dramatists of the past, so that what they have shared in common, and where their practice has differed, may be clear to him? That is all this book attempts. To create a dramatist would be a modern miracle. To develop theories of the drama apart from the practice of recent and remoter dramatists of different countries would be visionary. This book tries in the light of historical practice merely to distinguish the permanent from the impermanent in technique. It endeavors, by showing the inexperienced dramatist how experienced dramatists have solved problems similar to his own, to shorten a little his time of apprenticeship. The limitations of any such attempt I fully recognize. This book is the result of almost daily discussion for some years with classes of the ideas contained in it, but in that discussion there was a chance to treat with each individual the many exceptions, apparent or real, which he could raise to any principle enunciated. Such full discussion is impossible in a book the size of this one. Therefore I must seem to favor an instruction far more dogmatic than my pupils know from me. No textbook can do away with the value of proper classroom work. The practice of the past provides satisfactory principles for students of ordinary endowment. A person of long experience or unusually endowed, however, after grasping these principles, must at times break from them if he is to do his best work. The classroom permits a teacher such adaptations of existing usage. Such special needs no textbook can forestall. This book, then, is meant, not to replace wise classroom instruction, but to supplement it or to offer what it can when such instruction is impossible.

The contents of this book were originally brought together from notes for the classroom as eight lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, in the winter of 1913. They were carefully reworked for later lectures before audiences in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Indeed, both in and out of the classroom they have been slowly revised in the intervening five years. Detailed consideration of the one-act play has been reserved for later special treatment. Otherwise the book attempts to treat helpfully the many problems which the would-be dramatist must face in learning the fundamentals of a very difficult but fascinating art.

I have written for the person who cannot be content except when writing plays. I wish it distinctly understood that I have not written for the person seeking methods of conducting a course in dramatic technique. I view with some alarm the recent mushroom growth of such courses throughout the country. I gravely doubt the advisability of such courses for undergraduates. Dramatic technique is the means of expressing, for the stage, one’s ideas and emotions. Except in rare instances, undergraduates are better employed in filling their minds with general knowledge than in trying to phrase for the stage thoughts or emotions not yet mature. In the main I believe instruction in the writing of plays should be for graduate students. Nor do I believe that it should be given except by persons who have had experience in acting, producing, and even writing plays, and who have read and seen the drama of different countries and times. Mere lectures, no matter how good, will not make the students productive. The teacher who is not widely eclectic in his tastes will at best produce writers with an easily recognizable stamp. In all creative courses the problem is not, “What can we make these students take from us, the teachers?” but, “Which of these students has any creative power that is individual? Just what is it? How may it be given its quickest and fullest development?” Complete freedom of choice in subject and complete freedom in treatment so that the individuality of the artist may have its best expression are indispensable in the development of great art. At first untrained and groping blindly for the means to his ends, he moves to a technique based on study of successful dramatists who have preceded him. From that he should move to a technique that is his own, a mingling of much out of the past and an adaptation of past practice to his own needs. This book will help the development from blind groping to the acquirement of a technique based on the practice of others. It can do something, but only a little, to develop the technique that is highly individual. The instruction which most helps to that must be done, not by books, not by lectures, but in frequent consultation of pupil and teacher. The man who grows from a technique which permits him to write a good play because it accords with historical practice to the technique which makes possible for him a play which no one else could have written, must work under three great Masters: Constant Practice, Exacting Scrutiny of the Work, and, above all, Time. Only when he has stood the tests of these Masters is he the matured artist.