The greatest masters of dramatic construction that have made their appearance in the present century are probably Bulwer Lytton and Dion Boucicault; and each has left good examples of treatment in both schools. Bulwer, in the "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu," both romantic plays, with the regular villanous element, has used the front scene to advantage wherever he found it necessary. In "Money," on the other hand, a scientific comedy of the very first order, the five pictures succeed each other with no disturbance but that of the curtain. The plot of "Money," be it observed, is quite simple, the characters few, the intention that of the old Greek comedy—a satire on manners.
Boucicault, in his latest success—the "Shaughraun"—and in his other Irish dramas, notably the "Colleen Bawn," uses three and even five scenes in an act, with perfect freedom, while in others, almost as successful in their day, such as "Jessie Brown," "Octoroon," the French form seemed to him to be preferable. Some principle must have guided him in this distinction, as it did Bulwer, and the same elements probably decided both to tell one story in one way, the other in another. It is observable that both treat a romantic and complicated story, with numerous characters and considerable of the villanous element, in numerous scenes, whereas a realistic picture of actual manners, such as "Money," "Octoroon," "Jessie Brown," falls naturally into few scenes. The climax of each of these last mentioned plays, be it observed, is produced by the operation of general causes, the laws of society in "Money" and "Octoroon," the operation of a historical fact in "Jessie Brown," while in the romantic plays the climax depends on the action of the characters, determined by accidental circumstances, irrespective of general laws. The respective rank of "Money" and the "Lady of Lyons" in the lapse of years can hardly, I think, be doubted. The first will hold its own with the "School for Scandal," when the "Lady of Lyons" is forgotten, along with "The Duenna." The recent success of Augustin Daly in adapting the "School for Scandal" to mono-scenic acts shows how readily that form lends itself to the exigencies of legitimate comedy. The single fault of that adaptation is that the first act drags, just as Sardou's first acts always drag, but the audience forgets that as the story progresses. The result of our ramble through the instances mentioned seems to be this canon:
| XIV. | Mono-scenic acts are best for high comedy, realistic and society dramas; multi-scenic acts succeed best with romantic and complicated plots. |
We have now explored, with more or less success, some of the general and broad principles that underlie dramatic construction taken as a whole, without regard to particular forms and instances. It would seem that a brief excursion into the domain of particulars may not be out of place, partly as a recreation, partly to test the accuracy of our past conclusions. Let us take, for instance, the greatest popular successes of late years, and try to find wherein lies their secret, following these by an inquiry into the cause why some stock plays hold the boards while others are dead. What is the secret of the "Black Crook"? Of Boucicault's Irish dramas? Of Bulwer's renowned trio, "Lady of Lyons," "Richelieu," "Money"? Of "School for Scandal" and "Rivals"? Of "Richard III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare comedies? I put out of the question now such plays as the "Dundreary" drama, depending as those do on a different element of success, apart from the drama itself, to which we shall come before we finish.
First, what is the secret of the "Black Crook"? No other drama ever had such a run in the United States, in spite of all sorts of abuse, in spite of numerous literary faults, and it has always succeeded wherever it has been properly put on the stage. What is its secret? The stereotyped answer of the disappointed dramatist and carping newspaper critic used to be "legs"; but that answer will not do now. There have been plenty of "leg" dramas put on since that day, and as far as the display of feminine anatomy is concerned, the "Black Crook" was a paragon of prudery compared with many of its followers; yet they only ran a few weeks, while the "Black Crook" ran nearly three years, all over the Union, with hardly a serious break. It was not the dancing, for we have had better since, as far as gymnastics are concerned; it was not the dresses and scenery, for both have been excelled since that day; it was not the beauty of the tableaux, for they also have been excelled; it was something in the drama itself, quite different from its predecessors and followers. The "Black Crook" was a strong, exaggerated melodrama, with plenty of the weird element in the incantation scene, relieved by the broadest of broad farce in the person of the magician's comic slave. It was full of variety. There was a little of everything, and nothing very long at one time. When it first came out I remember very young gentlemen making learned criticisms on the powerful acting of the man who played the "Black Crook" himself. The same class also raved about the "terrible" incantation scene, which was worked up till the passion was torn to tatters. But I feel convinced that the incantation scene, the dances, the novelty of ladies in tights, would have failed to make the "Black Crook" a success but for the broad humor and farce of that comic slave and the old housekeeper and steward. That humor was so simple, so like the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very acute and learned gentleman—a man of the world too—who actually had never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another. Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace, and thus completed the secret of its success, which was—variety. Its rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground, while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and "went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.
The same secret of variety accounts for the great success of Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists, and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of Berrritish gold, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years—the "Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the "Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The secret of the success of all three plays is found in variety, produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play—any of the three—rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the "Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the comic villain, a new creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and Pantaloon.
If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all—the central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is removed by his sudden accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the art of tantalization.
We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the "Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst dialogue in the "Black Crook"—and God knows it was bad enough—could not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured. To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a class, for we seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart, keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute, Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority for their kindness toward the returning prodigal and their sneers at his eminently respectable brother, Joseph Surface, Esq.
This secret of Sheridan in the "School for Scandal" is the main element of only one modern drama that I now remember—"Rip Van Winkle"—but it is quite common in the "old comedies," as they are called. These old comedies generally make their appearance at least once in two years at such theatres as Wallack's and Daly's of New York and the Arch Street at Philadelphia. I forget the name of the Boston "legitimate" place. When well acted they always "take," and there are so many stage traditions of how to act them that they are seldom badly done. The forgiveness of repentant prodigals, it will be remembered, forms the basis of most of them, an element which has gradually disappeared from the modern drama in deference to the increasing Philistine element, represented by the Y.M.C.A. and the T.A.B.
Ascending from the modern English drama to its parents in the Elizabethan era, we encounter the only dramatist of those times whose works still hold the stage, and ask what is the secret of "Richard III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare comedies. The first general answer that most people will give is—the genius of Shakespeare; his power of drawing character, his wonderful language, his mastery of human passion. All these, it seems to me, are true, but it is to the last element that the success of Shakespeare's plays on the stage is mainly due. No other dramatist, French, English, or German, with the single exception of Goethe in "Faust," has succeeded in making men and women, under the influence of tremendous passion, talk and act so truly, so realistically. We notice this on the stage when we see "Richard III." well acted. The man becomes a real live man, a great scamp no doubt, but an able scamp, so able that he actually excites our sympathy, when a really good actor plays him. The main power of Shakespeare's tragedies to-day, and their superiority to the tragedies of any other dramatist, lies in their realism. Where a modern dramatist like Boucicault confines his realistic treatment to matters with which most of us are familiar, Shakespeare flies at any game, no matter how high, and impresses us with the presence of real men and women, whether they be kings and queens or only common folk. This seems to be Shakespeare's one secret which makes his plays hold the stage to-day in spite of faulty construction, in spite of all the modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches, hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king, and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of atonement. It is truth.