Many of the greatest novelists, both of the past and the present, have failed utterly when they tried to write for the theater. Often they were far better writers than any dramatist I know. They knew as much about moods and character as any of us—but their words won’t play, no one can act their scenes.
Few persons realize how vital this instinctive timing is to a play. Bartley Campbell, a dramatist of the old school, was a master of it. His old drama, THE WHITE SLAVE, was quite as lyric as any song. The late Charles Kline could time a climax so deftly that, although “the big scene” of THE LION AND THE MOUSE hardly makes sense when you read the words, it was impossible not to be thrilled by them when you heard them spoken.
The writer of the old school was more dependent upon this instinctive timing than the writer of to-day, but even now the man or woman who writes for the theater must write “good theater” no matter how sound may be his philosophy. Instinct and emotion will, I think, always be more vital to success than literary style or even good sense and logic.
To-day a writer must avoid the conventions just as yesterday he had to abide by them, and in this difference lies the distinction between the old school and the new. In the days of which I am writing, the characters of our popular-priced plays were as sturdily founded upon a conventional mold as the most dogmatic creed of the most narrow-minded religious fanatics of the day, and any stepping aside upon a more flowery path was sternly frowned upon. The good play maker of the popular-priced theater was supposed to know what a proper list of characters for a play must be and any departure from that accepted list was taken as a sign of the bad workman.
In my day the list ran as follows:
1. Hero.
The hero was either poor or else very young and very drunk. If sober and wealthy he automatically became a villain. Wild young men with wealthy fathers might do in a pinch—they could be reformed by the heroine in the third act, and in this lady’s company, in the last act, they could receive the father’s blessing and the keys to the cellar, or whatever best represented the family fortune. I was, however, never very strong for the rich young man type of hero, well knowing how much closer to the hearts of the audience the honest working man type was sure to be. Brave this hero must always be, and strong and kind, but it was unfortunately difficult for him to be wise, as the burden of troubles it was necessary to load upon this poor man’s shoulders, by way of dramatic suspense, would never have been carried by any one but a terrible sap.
2. Heroine.
If the hero was extremely poor, it was possible for her to be extremely wealthy, but by far the safest bet was to make her the daughter of an honest working man. In these days the young girls who went to the popular-priced theaters were not themselves employed to any extent as clerks or stenographers, and they knew more about factory life and the experience of the day laborer and less about the white collar workers than they know to-day. Our heroine must be pure at any cost, or else she must die. There could be no temporizing with the “the wages of sin are death” slogan. In all my experience I never once saw it successfully defied. The heroine must, of course, always marry the hero. Our audiences would not stand for any but a happy ending with love and wealth bestowed upon the girl. This was bad art, but it always seemed to me to be pretty good sense, as the theater to them meant not life as it was but life as they wanted it to be, and the young girl in our audiences who thrilled for an hour over the wealth and luxury and the ideal love that always came to the fictitious character she had for a time exchanged places with had little chance of remaining in this fairyland for long.
3. The Heavy Man.