That realism is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in "Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated "advice to the players." This being the only passage on record in which Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school from tearing a passion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old age into a model Othello, and constitutes the secret that has placed Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial principle of action. This was to take a given passion and treat it with the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the motive of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.
This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was filial ingratitude, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the moral obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as in the stories of an old-fashioned primer, and I cannot help thinking that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play would have gained in unity and nature.
In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling passion, treated in the same realistic fashion, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman; afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling passion in "Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to analyze than the rest, but I think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it more clearly than any other part of the play. It is fear. Fear appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to the death of Ophelia—an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck—gets savage and breaks things, and so works poetical justice.
If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their principal secret to be the realistic treatment of master passions, what shall we say to such comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories, their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret. The first two, I think, owe their beauty principally to the dissection of that passion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet." The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the love-making, but after all it is Benedick and Beatrice, making fun of love and getting caught in its toils, that make the charm of the piece, and the same device, minute analysis of love, makes "Twelfth Night" what it is. When we come to look below the surface we find, in the comedies as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, that the realistic treatment of some ruling passion forms the ultimate secret on which he works.
To sum up in the aphoristic form the secrets affecting the motives of the greatest dramatic successes of the English stage, we can, I think, partially agree on one more canon:
| XV. | Variety, suspense, satire, and realistic analysis of human passion are the secrets, so far discovered, of lasting dramatic successes. |
The subject of dramatic success, however, has one more very important branch, still to be considered. As an artist cannot work without colors and brushes, so a dramatist cannot work without actors. Good actors cannot permanently lift a bad play out of the mud, but bad actors can murder the best drama ever written, and even the best actor cannot make a hit if his part does not fit him and his physical appearance. I remember once a ludicrous instance of this, with Boucicault's "Flying Scud," which I happened to see in Buffalo. Nat Gosling, the venerable jockey, was there played by a man weighing at least a hundred and eighty pounds, in the dress of an old farmer; and the absurdity was so glaring that the whole play fell as dead as ditchwater, though by no means badly played. The same play in New York was first fitted exactly with Young for its Nat Gosling—a little, dried-up, weazen-faced man, who identified himself so perfectly with the character that the piece became quite a furore. It is a very common superstition among actors that a good actor can act anything, and can "make up" to look like anything, and no doubt this is partially, but only partially, true. There are actors, with flat, commonplace faces, figures of medium size, voices of no particular character, who, by dint of a little paint and pomatum, some false hair, some padding, and considerable study, can adapt themselves to play almost any character after a fashion; but it is a significant fact that such men are not to be found among the leaders of their profession, but only in the second rank. Great actors take a line and stick to it, one that exactly suits their individuality, and such find their mark. If they leave it, they deteriorate, if they stick to it, they become identified with it, and no one can rival them in their specialty. They become real "stars." Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his fit, and has been wise enough never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester Wallack has his own recognized line, the blasé man of the world, which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Othello, and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The greatest success Barrett ever made was in Cassius, because the part fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's Cassius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray, Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, Fanny Davenport's Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie Mitchell's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."
In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P. Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh Chalcote, Barrett in Dundreary, Sothern in Cassius, Booth as Monsieur Tourbillon or Solon Shingle, Owens as Iago, he will have the salient points of our argument in strong light. The best example of a well fitted play I ever saw was Lester Wallack's "Veteran," as first acted, with James W. Wallack for Colonel Delmar, Mrs. Hoey for Amina, Mary Gannon for the other young woman, Mrs. Vernon for Mrs. MacShake. Every part, down to the very slaves, was perfectly fitted, and nothing has since come near it in completeness except Boucicault's plays, written at different times for the same theatre, "Jessie Brown" and the "Shaughraun." The full consideration of all these facts, and especially a retrospect of the relative rank of versatile actors and of specialists, has led to the following further aphorism:
| XVI. | If the actors fit the play, expect success; if they do not, disaster. |
The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic canons, which is the qualifications required by the dramatist to secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our task—the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook," "Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are constantly making their appearance at minor and first-class theatres, their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted, we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must, however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he possesses it not. This something is stage experience. He may be an actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years, but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage. The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling, almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack, whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is, that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights, actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights entitled to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Molière to Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting Shakespeare and Molière as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once on a time.