In curious contradiction to the existing attitude that audiences will like only what they at present like, much advice is given as to novelty. “Find something new in substance or form and your fortune is made” is the implication. Wherein lies novelty of plot has already been explained.[4] Certainly the large amount of experimentation which has been going on in recent years in one-act plays, two-act plays, or groups of one-act pieces bound together by a prologue and an epilogue, has all been well worth while, making as it does for greater flexibility of dramatic form. Yet it is unfortunately true at the present moment that most audiences prefer a three-or four-act play to something in two acts because the uninterrupted attention demanded by the last form asks too much from them. They prefer the three-act or four-act division to a group of one-act plays tied together by a prologue and an epilogue, because mere difference of form has no particular attraction for them and they do not willingly shift their interest as frequently as a group of one-act plays requires. Nevertheless there is nothing completely deterrent for a dramatist in any of these circumstances; merely cause why, in every case, after thinking of the subject in relation to himself, he should ultimately consider it with equal care in relation to the audience for which he intends it. When, too, he is selecting his form he should observe whether though attractive to him, it may not be so difficult or repellent for the general public that another more conventional form is desirable. If he becomes sure that he cannot get his desired effects except in the form first chosen he must work until he makes it acceptable to the public or put aside his subject. The final test is not: “What ordinarily do the public like in a subject like mine and in what form are they accustomed to see my subject treated,” but: “Can I so present the form I prefer as to make the public like equally with me what I find interesting in my subject?” That is, though presentation of a chosen subject should be flexible, the central purposes, human and artistic, of the play, should be maintained inflexibly.
Bearing the audience in mind as one writes may affect the whole play, but more often it affects details—particularly order. The scenario of Kismet[5] has been printed in full chiefly that the many changes it underwent in shaping it for final presentation might be clear. Among the many instances note, in Act II, that in the original form the love passage of Hajji followed plotting for the murder. When the play was in rehearsal, both actor and author felt at once that the sympathy it was necessary to maintain in the audience for Hajji would be lost if he turned immediately from such bloody plotting to the love scene. For this reason the order was changed. Surely there is no harm in such a shifting, for the story develops just as well and the characterization is as humanly true. This is a perfect illustration of persuasive arrangement. Take now the case of the torturing of Hajji, of which much was made in the original scenario. It is changed to the blow with the key because the horror of the scene when acted was too great and everything necessary is accomplished with the key. Here is a change made not to please the author but to make the material as treated produce in the audience the desired results, yet the change in no way interferes with any of the purposes of the dramatist. An illustration of the way in which a dramatist standing his ground because he is sure of the rightness of his psychology may win over his public is found in La Princesse Georges of Dumas fils. So great was the sympathy of the audience with Severine in her mortified wifehood that at the original performance, when she forgave her husband at the end, there were many dissenting cries. Dumas fils had foreseen this, but believing the ending truer to life than any other could be, he insisted on it. Ultimately the ending was accepted by the public as made necessary by the rest of the play.
In all this discussion of the difference between truckling to an audience and necessary regard for its interests and prejudices, of changing public taste, the important point is that until a dramatist has considered his material in relation to the public, his play is by no means ready for production. Just because the persuasive side of dramatic art is so often neglected, play after play goes on the boards in such condition that it must be greatly changed before it can succeed. Often before these ample changes can be made, the public has lost interest in the piece. If a general principle might be laid down here it would be something like this. “If you wish, first write your play so that to you it is something clear and convincing as well as something that moves to laughter or to tears. Before, however, it is tried on the stage, make sure that you have considered it in all details in so detached a way that you have a right to believe that, as a result of your careful revising, it will produce with the public the same interest, and the same emotions to the same degree as the original version did with you.”
Just here arises the ever present query, “Why struggle to write what the public does not readily and quickly accept? Why not study their unthinking likes and dislikes and give them what they want?” Certainly write in that way if it brings contentment, as it surely will bring monetary success if the play thus written really hits popular approval. However, aiming to hit popular taste is like shooting at a shifting target and a play so made may be staged just as the public makes one of its swift changes in theatrical mood. Of course, too, he who writes in this way is in no sense a leader but merely the slave of his public. In any case, his play is but an imitation, not an expression of the author’s individuality.
Even would-be dramatists who do not hold the opportunist ideas just considered may draw back after reading what has been stated in this book, saying: “How difficult and painstaking is this art of the drama which I have thought so fascinating and spontaneous.” Of course, it is a difficult art. A good many years ago Sir Arthur Pinero said of it:
“When you sit in your stall at the theatre and see a play moving across the stage, it all seems so easy and so natural, you feel as though the author had improvised it. The characters, being, let us hope, ordinary human beings, say nothing very remarkable, nothing, you think (thereby paying the author the highest possible compliment) that might not quite well have occurred to you. When you take up a play-book (if you ever do take one up) it strikes you as being a very trifling thing—a mere insubstantial pamphlet beside the imposing bulk of the latest six-shilling novel. Little do you guess that every page of the play has cost more care, severer mental tension, if not more actual manual labor, than any chapter of a novel, though it be fifty pages long. It is the height of the author’s art, according to the old maxim, that the ordinary spectator should never be clearly conscious of the skill and travail that have gone to the making of the finished product. But the artist who would achieve a like feat must realize that no ingots are to be got out of this mine, save after sleepless nights, days of gloom and discouragement, and other days, again, of feverish toil the result of which proves in the end to be misapplied and has to be thrown to the winds.”
Nevertheless, this difficult art remains fascinating; and in practice, if rightly understood, it rapidly grows easier. In the understanding of any art there must be two stages. First comes the spontaneous doing of work very encouraging to the author and sufficiently good to warrant a person more experienced in encouraging him to proceed. Then begins the second stage, when he learns what can be taught him of technique in his chosen field. It is bound to be a time when consciousness of rules first learned and limitations first perceived make writing far less attractive and often so irksome that the worker is tempted to throw his task aside for good. He who does not really love his art will cast away his work. He who really cares cannot do this. He may from the hampering of these newly recognized rules become irritable, have his moments of self-doubt and despair, but he cannot stop practicing his art. With each new effort, the rules which have been so troublesome will become more and more a matter of habit. Little by little the writer will gain a curious subconscious power of using almost unthinkingly the principles he needs, giving no thought to those not needed. Then, and then only, will he write with the art that conceals art; and it is only when he has attained to delight in the difficulties of the art he practices that he is in any true sense an artist.
What ultimately happens is probably this. The critical attitude is strong in the scenario period, perhaps predominant as the dramatist works out construction, emphasis, proportion, etc., but when, with the scenario before him, he takes his pen in hand, he lets the creative impulse swamp completely the critical sense and loses himself in his task. Or he reverses the process. He writes in pure creative abandon, until at least an act of a play lies completed before him. Then, with his critical training brought to the front, he goes over and over the manuscript until what was a pure creative effort has been chastened and sublimated by his trained critical sense. The main point is: Don’t stultify your creative instincts by trying to use critical training at the same time. As far as possible, let one precede the other. Write creatively. Then correct. Or write with the critical instinct strongly to the front until all plans are made. Then forget everything except the spirit of creation. Where dramatists in training waste their nervous energy and often stultify their best desires is in keeping critical tab upon themselves as they create. Writing something with pure delight, they are suddenly blocked by the critical spirit saying: “This or that is bad. You cannot keep this or that as you have written it,” and presto! no more creative work that day. Unless the critical and creative faculties interwork sympathetically and coöperatively, keep them separate.
Whoever aims to write plays chiefly or wholly because he would like fame or money or because he wishes to show that he is as strong in one fictional art as another,—the story, the essay, the poem, whatever it may be,—in fact he who writes plays for any other reason than that he cannot be happy except in writing plays, better give over such writing. Play-making is an exceedingly difficult art, and in so far as it is in any sense a transcript from life or a beautified presentation of life past, present, or imagined, it grows more difficult as the years pass because of the accumulating mass of dramatic masterpieces. Yet for him who cares for dramatic writing more than any form of self-expression, no time has been more promising than the present. There has been more good drama in the past twenty-five years the world over than at any time in the history of the stage. It has been more varied in subject and form, more individual in treatment. The drama is today more flexible, more daring and experimental, than ever before. It is in closer relation to all the subtlest and most advanced of man’s thinking. It has been breaking new ways for itself, and it has new ways yet to break. All that has been said in this book concerns merely the historic foundations of this very great art. Accept these principles as stated or quarrel with most of them; but realize that any principles, whether accepted from others or self-taught, should be but the beginning of a life-long training by which the individual will pass from what he shares of general dramatic experience to what is peculiarly his own expression.