As Ibsen says, “Style must conform to the degree of ideality which pervades the representation.”
You are of opinion that the drama ought to have been written in verse, and that it would have gained by this. Here I must differ from you. The play is, as you must have observed, conceived in the most realistic style; the illusion I wished to produce was that of reality. I wished to produce the impression on the reader that what he was reading was something that had really happened. If I had employed verse I should have counteracted my own intention and prevented the accomplishment of the task I had set myself. The many ordinary, insignificant characters whom I have intentionally introduced into the play would have become indistinct, and indistinguishable from one another, if I had allowed all of them to speak in one and the same rhythmical measure. We are no longer living in the days of Shakespeare. Speaking generally, the style must conform to the degree of ideality which pervades the representation. My new drama is no tragedy in the ancient acceptation; what I desired to depict were human beings, and therefore I would not let them talk “the language of the Gods.”[72]
The dramatist who would write dialogue of the highest order should have not only an inborn and highly trained feeling for the emotional significance of the material in hand; a fine feeling for characterization; ability to write dialogue which states facts in character; and the power to bring out whatever charm, grace, irony, wit, or other specially attractive qualities his characters permit; also he should have, or develop, a strong feeling for the nicest use of language. Dumas fils said, “There should be something of the poet, the artist in words, in every dramatist.”
[1] The Far East, June 6, 1914, p. 295.
[2] The Devonshire Hamlets, pp. 1-2.
[3] The Devonshire Hamlets, pp. 26-27.
[4] Act I. Scene 1. Belles-Lettres Series. Austin Dobson, ed. D. C. Heath & Co.
[5] Hindle Wakes, Stanley Houghton. J.W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.
[6] York Plays, p. 363. L. T. Smith, ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford.