Many of the manuscripts that are sent to the New York managers are such impossible oddities that few readers would regard a description of them as really accurate. It was the privilege of the writer to look over a collection of “plays” that have been mailed recently to several of the theatrical offices, and, among the number, he came across a dozen that were each about fifteen to twenty pages in length. This included the scenic descriptions and stage directions. Such “plays,” if enacted, would be of about ten to eleven minutes’ duration instead of two and a quarter hours. Three manuscripts called for from ninety to one hundred characters, and from nine to fourteen different scenes. Eight manuscripts were divided into nine acts each and, judging from their thickness, would have run on for days, after the fashion of a Chinese drama. One “play” was laid in the year 2200 A.D., and called for twelve actors to portray “the new race of men”—each man to be at least seven feet tall. These characters were to make all their entrances and exits in airships. Several manuscripts that the writer examined would have required professional strong men in their enactment, so difficult were the physical feats outlined for some of the actors. A great number of “modern dramas” included a ream of colloquialisms and anachronisms intermixed with Louis XV situations. And one manuscript, entitled “Love in All Ages” called for twelve different acts with a new group of nine differently built actors in each.[29]
A stage direction which ran something like this is the most naïve in the experience of the writer. “Germs of a locomotive, a cathedral, etc., detach themselves in an unknown manner from the walls and float airily, merrily about the room.” Impossible? Possibly not for a genius of a stage manager. Likely to recommend the play to a manager trying to judge from a manuscript the dramatic sense of its unknown author? Hardly.
Granted then that a would-be playwright has acquired ordinary common sense about the theatre and has some point of departure, how does he move from it to plot? First, by taking time enough, by avoiding hurry. Let any would-be dramatist get rid promptly of the idea that good plays are written in a rush. It is perfectly true that the mere writing out of a play has often been done in what seems an amazingly short time,—a few weeks, days, or even hours. However, in every case of rapid composition, as for instance Sheridan’s Rivals, which was put on paper in very brief time, the author has either mulled his material for a long time or was so thoroughly conversant with it that it required no careful thinking out at the moment of composition. In The Rivals Sheridan drew upon his intimate knowledge for many years of the people and the gossip of the Pump Room at Bath. Mr. H. A. Jones has more than once testified, “I mull long on my plot, sometimes a year, but when I have it, the rest (the mere writing out) is easy.” Sardou turned out a very large number of plays. Nor are his plays, seemingly, such as to demand the careful preparation required for the drama of ideas or the drama more dependent on characterization than incident. Yet he worked very carefully at all stages, from point of departure to final draft. “Whenever an idea occurred to Sardou, he immediately made a memorandum of it. These notes he classified and filed. For example, years before the production of Thermidor he had the thought of one day writing such a play. Gradually the character of Fabienne shaped itself; Labussière was devised later to fit Coquelin. Everything that he read about that epoch of the French Revolution, and the ideas which his reading inspired, he wrote down in the form of rough notes. Engravings, maps, prints, and other documents of the time he carefully collected. Memoirs and histories he annotated and indexed, filing away the index references in his file cases, or dossiers. At the time of his death, Sardou had many hundreds of these dossiers, old and new. Some of the older ones had been worked up into plays, while the newer ones were merely raw material for future dramas. When the idea of a play had measurably shaped itself in his mind he wrote out a skeleton plot which he placed in its dossier. There it might lie indefinitely. In this shape Thermidor remained for nearly twenty years, and Theodora for ten. When he considered that the time was ripe for one of his embryonic plays, Sardou would take out that particular dossier, read over the material, and lay it aside again. After it had fermented in his brain for a time, he would, if the inspiration seized him, write out a scenario. After this, he began the actual writing of the play.”[30]
Late in the seventeenth century, one of the most prolific of English playwrights, John Dryden, contracted to turn out four plays a year. He failed completely to carry out his promise. Some dramatists of a much more recent day should attribute to the speed with which they have turned out plays their repeated failures, or, after early successes, their waning hold on the public. Every dramatist should keep steadily in mind the words of the old French adage: “Time spares not that on which time hath been spared.” Time, again time, and yet again time is the chief element in successful writing of plays.
A wandering, erratic career is forbidden the dramatist. Back in the eighteenth century Diderot stated admirably the qualities a dramatist must have if he is to plot well. “He must get at the heart of his material. He must consider order and unity. He must discern clearly the moment at which the action should begin. He must recognize the situations which will help his audience, and know what it is expedient to leave unsaid. He must not be rebuffed by difficult scenes or long labor. Throughout he must have the aid of a rich imagination.”[31] Selection, Proportion, Emphasis, Movement,—all making for clearness,—these as the words of Diderot suggest, are what the dramatist studies in developing his play from Subject, through Story, to Plot.
[1] Auteurs Dramatiques, Pailleron. A. Binet and J. Passey. L’Année Psychologique, 1894, pp. 98-99.
[2] Sardou and the Sardou Plays, p. 127. Jerome A. Hart. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia.
[3] Auteurs Dramatiques, Dumas fils, p. 77.
[4] Five Plays, p. 86. Lord Dunsany. Mitchell Kennerley, New York.