Writing for Vaudeville · Chapter 10Part 10
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[1] "The necessity that tragedy and the serious drama shall possess an element of greatness or largeness—call it nobility, elevation, what you will—has always been recognized. The divergence has come when men have begun to say what they meant by that quality, and—which is much the same thing—how it is to be attained. Even Aristotle, when he begins to analyze methods, sounds, at first hearing, a little superficial." Elizabeth Woodbridge, The Drama, pp. 23-24.
Great souls who suffer, either by the hand of Fate, or unjustly through the machinations of their enemies, win our sympathy for their sorrows and our admiration by their noble struggles. If Fate dooms them, there may be no escape, and still we are content; but if they suffer by man's design, there must be escape from sorrow and defeat through happiness to triumph—for, if it were not so, they would not be great. The heart of man demands that those he loves upon the stage succeed, or fail greatly, because the hero's dreams are our dreams—the hero's life is ours, the hero's sorrows are our own, and because they are ours, the hero must triumph over his enemies.
4. The Law of the Drama
Thus, for the very reason that life is a conflict and because man's heart beats quickest when he faces another man, and leaps highest when he conquers him, the essence of the dramatic is—conflict. Voltaire in one of his letters said that every scene in a play should represent a combat. In "Memories and Portraits," Stevenson says: "A good serious play must be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." Goethe, in his "William Meister" says: "All events oppose him [the hero] and he either clears and removes every obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their victim." But it was the French critic, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who defined dramatic law most sharply and clearly, and reduced it to such simple terms that we may state it in this one free sentence: "Drama is a struggle of wills and its outcome."
In translating and expounding Brunetiere's theory, Brander Matthews in his "A Study of the Drama" condenses the French critic's reasoning into these illuminating paragraphs:
"It [the drama] must have some essential principle of its own. If this essential principle can be discovered, then we shall be in possession of the sole law of the drama, the one obligation which all writers for the stage must accept. Now, if we examine a collection of typical plays of every kind, tragedies and melodramas, comedies and farces, we shall find that the starting point of everyone of them is the same. Some one central character wants something; and this exercise of volition is the mainspring of the action. . . . In every successful play, modern or ancient, we shall find this clash of contending desires, this assertion of the human will against strenuous opposition of one kind or another.
"Brunetiere made it plain that the drama must reveal the human will in action; and that the central figure in a play must know what he wants and must strive for it with incessant determination. . . .Action in the drama is thus seen to be not mere movement or external agitation; it is the expression of a will which knows itself.
"The French critic maintained also that, when this law of the drama was once firmly grasped, it helped to differentiate more precisely the several dramatic species. If the obstacles against which the will of the hero has to contend are insurmountable, Fate or Providence or the laws of nature—then there is tragedy, and the end of the struggle is likely to be death, since the hero is defeated in advance. But if these obstacles are not absolutely insurmountable, being only social conventions and human prejudices, then the hero has a chance to attain his desire,—and in this case, we have the serious drama without an inevitably fatal ending. Change this obstacle a little, equalize the conditions of the struggle, set two wills in opposition—and we have comedy. And if the obstacle is of still a lower order, merely an absurdity of custom, for instance, we find ourselves in farce."
Here we have, sharply and brilliantly stated, the sole law of drama—whether it be a play in five acts requiring two hours and a half to present, or a playlet taking but twenty minutes. This one law is all that the writer need keep in mind as the great general guide for plot construction.
Today, of course, as in every age when the drama is a bit more virile than in the years that have immediately preceded it, there is a tendency to break away from conventions and to cavil at definitions. This is a sign of health, and has in the past often been the first faint stirring which betokened the awakening of the drama to greater uses. In the past few years, the stage, both here and abroad, has been throbbing with dramatic unrest. The result has been the presentation of oddities—a mere list of whose names would fill a short chapter—which have aimed to "be different." And in criticising these oddities—whose differences are more apparent than real—critics of the soundness and eminence of Mr. William Archer in England, and Mr. Clayton Hamilton in America, have taken the differences as valid ground for opposing Brunetiere's statement of the law of the drama.
Mr. Hamilton, in his thought-provoking "Studies in Stage-craft," takes occasion to draw attention to the fact that Brunetiere's statement is not as old as Aristotle's comments on the drama. Mr. Hamilton seemingly objects to the eagerness with which Brunetiere's statement was accepted when first it was made, less than a quarter century ago, and the tenacity with which it has been held ever since; while acknowledging its general soundness he denies its truth, more on account of its youth, it would seem, than on account of the few exceptions that "prove it," putting to one side, or forgetting, that its youth is not a fault but a virtue, for had it been stated in Aristotle's day, Brunetiere would not have had the countless plays from which to draw its truth, after the fruitful manner of a scientist working in a laboratory on innumerable specimens of a species. Yet Mr. Hamilton presents his criticism with such critical skill that he sums it all up in these judicial sentences:
". . .But if this effort were ever perfectly successful, the drama would cease to have a reason for existence, and the logical consequence would be an abolition of the theatre. . . . But on the other hand, if we judge the apostles of the new realism less by their ultimate aims than by their present achievements, we must admit that they are rendering a very useful service by holding the mirror up to many interesting contrasts between human characters which have hitherto been ignored in the theatre merely because they would not fit into the pattern of the well-made play."
As to the foremost critical apostle of the "new realism"—which seeks to construct plays which begin anywhere and have no dramatic ending and would oppose the force of wills by a doubtfully different "negation of wills"—let us now turn to Mr. William Archer and his very valuable definition of the dramatic in his "Play-Making":
"The only really valid definition of the dramatic is: any representation of imaginary personages which is capable of interesting an average audience assembled in a theatre. . . . Any further attempt to limit the term 'dramatic' is simply the expression of an opinion that such-and-such forms of representation will not be found to interest an audience; and this opinion may always be rebutted by experiment."
Perhaps a truer and certainly as inclusive an observation would be that the word "dramatic," like the words "picturesque" and "artistic," has one meaning that is historical and another that is creative or prophetic. To say of anything that it is dramatic is to say that it partakes of the nature of all drama that has gone before, for "ic" means "like." But dramatic does not mean only this, it means besides, as Alexander Black expresses it, that "the new writer finds all the world's dramatic properties gathered as in a storehouse for his instruction. Under the inspiration of the life of the hour, the big man will gather from them what is dramatic today, and the bigger man will see, not only what was dramatic yesterday and what is dramatic today, but what will be dramatic tomorrow and the day after tomorrow."
Now these admirably broad views of the drama and the dramatic are presented because they are suggestive of the unrestricted paths that you may tread in selecting your themes and deciding on your treatment of them in your playlets. True, they dangerously represent the trend of "individualism," and a master of stagecraft may be individual in his plot forms and still be great, but the novice is very likely to be only silly. So read and weigh these several theories with care. Be as individual as you like in the choice of a theme—the more you express your individuality the better your work is likely to be—but in your treatment tread warily in the footprints of the masters, whose art the ages have proved to be true. Then you stand less chance of straying into the underbrush and losing yourself where there are no trails and where no one is likely to hear from you again.
5. The Essence of the Dramatic lies in Meaning, not in Movement or in Speech
But clear and illuminating as these statements of the law of the drama are, one point needs slight expansion, and another vital point, not yet touched upon, should be stated, in a volume designed not for theory but for practice.
The first is, "Action in the drama is thus seen to be not mere movement or external agitation; it is the expression of a will which knows itself." Paradoxical as it may seem, action that is dramatic is not "action," as the word is commonly understood. Physical activity is not considered at all; the action of a play is not acting, but plot—story. Does the story move—not the bodies of the actors, but the merely mental recounting of the narrative? As the French state the principle in the form of a command, "Get on with the story! Get on!" This is one-half of the playwright's action-problem.
The other half—the other question—deals, not with the story itself, but with how it is made to "get on." How it is told in action—still mental and always mental, please note—is what differentiates the stage story from other literary forms like the novel and the short-story. It must be told dramatically or it is not a stage story; and the dramatic element must permeate its every fibre. Not only must the language be dramatic—slang may in a given situation be the most dramatic language that could be used—and not only must the quality of the story itself be dramatic, but the scene-steps by which the story is unfolded must scintillate with the soul of the dramatic—revealing flashes.
To sum up, the dramatic, in the final analysis, has nothing whatever to do with characters moving agitatedly about the stage, or with moving at all, because the dramatic lies not in what happens but in what the happening means. Even a murder may be undramatic, while the mere utterance of the word "Yes," by a paralyzed woman to a paralyzed man may be the most dramatic thing in the world. Let us take another instance: Here is a stage—in the centre are three men bound or nailed to crosses. The man at the left turns to the one in the middle and sneers:
"If you're a god, save yourself and us."
The one at the left interrupts,
"Keep quiet! We're guilty, we deserve this, but this Man doesn't."
And the Man in the centre says,
"This day shalt thou be with me in paradise."
Could there be anything more dramatic than that? [1]
[1] Do not attempt to stage this sacred scene. However, Ran Kennedy, who wrote The Servant in the House, did so at Winthrop Ames' Little Theatre, New York, in an evening of one-act plays, with surprising results.
To carry this truth still further, let me offer two examples out of scores that might be quoted to prove that the dramatic may not even depend upon speech.
In one of Bronson Howard's plays, a man the police are after conspires with his comrades to get him safely through the cordon of guards by pretending that he is dead. They carry him out, his face covered with a cloth. A policeman halts them—not a word is spoken—and the policeman turns down the cover from the face. Dramatic as this all is, charged as it is with meaning to the man there on the stretcher and to his comrades, there is even more portentous meaning in the facial expression of the policeman as he reverently removes his helmet and motions the bearers to go on—the man has really died.
The movements are as simple and unagitated as one could imagine, and not one word is spoken, yet could you conceive of anything more dramatic? Again, one of the master-strokes in Bulwer-Lytton's "Richelieu" is where the Cardinal escapes from the swords of his enemies who rush into his sleeping apartments to slay him, by lying down on his bed with his hands crossed upon his breast, and by his ward's lover (but that instant won to loyalty to Richelieu) announcing to his fellow conspirators that they have come too late—old age has forestalled them, "Richelieu is dead."
6. Comedy is Achieved in the Same Dramatic Way
The only difference between the sublime and the ridiculous is the proverbial step. The sad and the funny are merely a difference of opinion, of viewpoint. Tragedy and comedy are only ways of looking at things. Often it is but a difference of to whom the circumstance happens, whether it is excruciatingly funny or unutterably sad. If you are the person to whom it happens, there is no argument about it—it is sad; but the very same thing happening to another person would be—funny.
Take for example, the everyday occurrence of a high wind and a flying hat: If the hat is yours, you chase it with unutterable thoughts—not the least being the consciousness that hundreds may be laughing at you—and if, just as you are about to seize the hat, a horse steps on it, you feel the tragedy of going all the way home without a hat amid the stares of the curious, and the sorrow of having to spend your good money to buy another.
But let that hat be not yours but another's and not you but somebody else be chasing it, and the grins will play about your mouth until you smile. Then let the horse step on the hat and squash it into a parody of a headgear, just as that somebody else is about to retrieve it—and you will laugh outright. As Elizabeth Woodbridge in summing up says, "the whole matter is seen to be dependent on perception of relations and the assumption of a standard of reference."
Incidentally the foregoing example is a very clear instance of the comic effect that, like the serious or tragic effect, is achieved without words. Any number of examples of comedy which secure their effect without action will occur to anyone, from the instance of the lackadaisical Englishman who sat disconsolately on the race track fence, and welcomed the jockey who had ridden the losing horse that had swept away all his patrimony, with these words: "Aw, I say, what detained you?" [1] to the comedy that was achieved without movement or words in the expressive glance that the owner of the crushed headgear gave the guileless horse.
[1] It would seem needless to state categorically that the sources of humor, and the technical means by which comedy is made comic, have no place in the present discussion. We are only concerned with the flashes by which comedy, like tragedy, is revealed.
Precisely as the tragic and the serious depend for their best effects upon character-revealing flashes and the whole train of incidents which led up to the instant and lead away from it, does the comic depend upon the revealing flash that is the essence of the dramatic, the veritable soul of the stage.
7. Tragedy, the Serious, Comedy, and Farce, all Depend on their Dramatic Meaning in the Minds of the Audience
No matter by what technical means dramatic effect is secured, whether by the use of words and agitated movement, or without movement, or without words, or sans both, matters not; the illuminating flash which reveals the thought behind it all, the meaning to the characters and their destiny—in which the audience is breathlessly interested because they have all unconsciously taken sides—is what makes the dramatic. Let me repeat: It is not the incident, whatever it may be, that is dramatic, but the illuminating flash that reveals to the minds of the audience the meaning of it.
Did you ever stand in front of a newspaper office and watch the board on which a baseball game, contested perhaps a thousand miles away, is being played with markers and a tiny ball on a string? There is no playing field stretching its cool green diamond before that crowd, there are no famous players present, there is no crowd of adoring fans jamming grand stand and bleachers; there is only a small board, with a tiny ball swaying uncertainly on its string, an invisible man to operate it, markers to show the runs, and a little crowd of hot, tired men and office boys mopping their faces in the shadeless, dirty street. There's nothing pretty or pleasant or thrillingly dramatic about this.
But wait until the man behind the board gets the flashes that tell him that a Cravath has knocked the ball over the fence and brought in the deciding run in the pennant race! Out on the board the little swaying ball flashes over the mimic fence, the tiny piece of wood slips to first and chases the bits of wood that represent the men on second and third—home! "Hurray! Hurray!! Hurray!!!" yell those weary men and office boys, almost bursting with delight. Over what? Not over the tiny ball that has gone back to swaying uncertainly on its string, not over the tiny bits of board that are now shoved into their resting place, not even over those runs—but over what those runs mean!
And so the playlet writer makes his audience go wild with delight— not by scenery, not by costumes, not by having famous players, not by beautifully written speeches, not even by wonderful scenes that flash the dramatic, but by what those scenes in the appealing story mean to the characters and their destiny, whereby each person in the audience is made to be as interested as though it were to him these things were happening with all their dramatic meaning of sadness or gladness.
However, it is to the dramatic artist only that ability is given to breathe nobility into the whole and to charge the singleness of effect with a vitality which marks a milestone in countless lives.
In this chapter we have found that the essence of drama is conflict— a clash of wills and its outcome; that the dramatic consists in those flashes which reveal life at its significant, crucial moments; and that the dramatic method is the way of telling the story with such economy of attention that it is comprehended by means of those illuminating flashes which both reveal character and show in an instant all that led up to the crisis as well as what will follow.
Now let us combine these three doctrines in the following definition, which is peculiarly applicable to the playlet:
Drama—whether it be serious or comic in tone—is a representation of reality arranged for action, and having a plot which is developed to a logical conclusion by the words and actions of its characters and showing a single situation of big human interest; the whole is told in a series of revealing flashes of which the final illuminating revelation rounds out the entire plot and leaves the audience with a single vivid impression.
Finally, we found that the physical movements of the characters often have nothing to do with securing dramatic effect, and that even words need not of necessity be employed. Hence dramatic effect in its final analysis depends upon what meaning the various minor scenes and the final big situation have for the characters and their destinies, and that this dramatic effect depends, furthermore, upon the big broad meaning which it bears to the minds of the audience, who have taken sides and feel that the chief character's life and destiny represent their own, or what they would like them to be, or fear they might be. In the next chapter we shall see how the dramatic spirit is given form by plot structure.
In the chapter on the germ idea we saw that the theme or subject of a playlet is a problem that must be solved with complete satisfaction. In this chapter we shall see how the problem—which is the first creeping form of a plot—is developed and expanded by the application of formal elements and made to grow into a plot. At the same time we shall see how the dramatic element of plot—discussed in the preceding chapter—is given form and direction in logical expression.
You will recall that our consideration of the germ idea led us farther afield than a mere consideration of a theme or subject, or even of the problem—as we agreed to call the spark that makes the playlet go. In showing how a playlet writer gets an idea and how his mind works in developing it, we took the problem of "The System" and developed it into a near-plot form. It may have seemed to you at the time that the problem we assumed for the purpose of exposition was worked out very carefully into a plot, but if you will turn back to it now, you will realize how incomplete the elaboration was—it was no more complete than any germ idea should be before you even consider spending time to build it into a playlet.
Let us now determine definitely what a playlet plot is, consider its structural elements and then take one of the fine examples of a playlet in the Appendix and see how its plot is constructed.
The plot of a playlet is its story. It is the general outline, the plan, the skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters and clothed by their words. If the theme or problem is the heart that beats with life, then the scenery amid which the animated body moves is its habitation, and the dramatic spirit is the soul that reveals meaning in the whole.
To hazard a definition:
A playlet plot is a sequence of events logically developed out of a theme or problem, into a crisis or entanglement due to a conflict of the characters' wills, and then logically untangled again, leaving the characters in a different relation to each other—changed in themselves by the crisis.
Note that a mere series of incidents does not make a plot—the presence of crisis is absolutely necessary to plot. If the series of events does not develop a complication that changes the characters in themselves and in their relations to each other, there can be no plot. If this is so, let us now take the sequence of events that compose the story of "The Lollard" [1] and see what constitutes them a plot. I shall not restate its story, only repeat it in the examination of its various points [2].
[1] Edgar Allan Woolf's fine satirical comedy to be found in the Appendix.
[2] As a side light, you see how a playlet theme differs from a playlet plot. You will recall that in the chapter on "The Germ Idea," the theme of The Lollard was thus stated in terms of a playlet problem: "A foolish young woman may leave her husband because she has 'found him out,' yet return to him when she discovers that another man is no better than he is." Compare this brief statement with the full statement of the plot given hereafter.
The coming of Angela Maxwell to Miss Carey's door at 2 A.M.—unusual as is the hour—is just an event; the fact that Angela has left her husband, Harry, basic as it is, is but little more than an event; the entrance of the lodger, Fred Saltus, is but another event, and even Harry Maxwell's coming in search of his wife is merely an event—for if Harry had sat down and argued Angela out of her pique, even though Fred were present, there would have been no complication, save for the cornerstone motive of her having left him. If this sequence of events forms merely a mildly interesting narrative, what, then, is the complication that weaves them into a plot?
The answer is, in Angela's falling in love with Fred's broad shoulders, wealth of hair and general good looks—this complication develops the crisis out of Harry's wanting Angela. If Harry hadn't cared, there would have been no drama—the drama comes from Harry's wanting Angela when Angela wants Fred; Angela wants something that runs counter to Harry's will—there is the clash of wills out of which flashes the dramatic.
But still there would be no plot—and consequently no playlet—if Harry had acknowledged himself beaten after his first futile interview with Angela. The entanglement is there—Harry has to untangle it. He has to win Angela again—and how he does it, on Miss Carey's tip, you may know from reading the playlet. But, if you have read it, did you realize the dramatic force of the unmasking of Fred—accomplished without (explanatory) words, merely by making Fred run out on the stage and dash back into his room again? There is a fine example of the revealing flash! This incident—made big by the dramatic—is the ironical solvent that loosens the warp of Angela's will and prepares her for complete surrender. Harry's entrance in full regimentals—what woman does not love a uniform?— is merely the full rounding out of the plot that ends with Harry's carrying his little wife home to happiness again.
But, let us pursue this examination further, in the light of the preceding chapter. There would have been no drama if the meaning of these incidents had not—because Angela is a "character" and Harry one, too—been inherent in them. There would have been no plot, nothing of dramatic spirit, if Harry had not been made by those events to realize his mistake and Angela had not been made to see that Harry was "no worse" than another man. It is the change in Harry and the change in Angela that changes their relations to each other—therein lies the essence of the plot. [1]
[1] Unfortunately, the bigger, broader meaning we all read into this satire of life, cannot enter into our consideration of the structure of plot. It lies too deep in the texture of the playwright's mind and genius to admit of its being plucked out by the roots for critical examination. The bigger meaning is there—we all see it, and recognize that it stamps The Lollard as good drama. Each playwright must work out his own meanings of life for himself and weave them magically into his own playlets; this is something that cannot be added to a man, that cannot be satisfactorily explained when seen, and cannot be taken away from him.
Now, having determined what a plot is, let us take up its structural parts and see how these clearly understood principles make the construction of a playlet plot in a measure a matter of clear thinking.
We must swerve for a moment and cut across lots, that we may touch every one of the big structural elements of plot and relate them with logical closeness to the playlet, summing them all up in the end and tying them closely into—what I hope may be—a helpful definition, on the last page of this chapter.
The first of the structural parts that we must consider before we take up the broader dramatic unities, is the seemingly obvious one that a plot has a beginning, a middle and an ending.
There has been no clearer statement of this element inherent in all plots, than that made by Aristotle in his famous twenty-century old dissection of tragedy; he says:
"Tragedy is an imitation of an action, that is complete and whole, and of a certain magnitude (not trivial). . . . A whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity or in the regular course of events, but has nothing to follow it. A middle is that which naturally follows something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to the type here described." [1]