George Pierce Baker

“ A play may start from almost anything: a detached thought that flashes through the mind; a theory of conduct or of art which one firmly believes or wishes only to examine; a bit of dialogue overheard or imagined; a setting, real or imagined, which creates emotion in the observer; a perfectly detached scene, the antecedents and consequences of which are as yet unknown; a figure glimpsed in a crowd which for some reason arrests the attention of the dramatist, or a figure closely studied; a contrast or similarity between two people or conditions of life ”

“ It is well-nigh useless to ask managers and actors to pass finally on a mere statement of a situation or group of situations, without characterization. All they can say is: “Bring me this again as an amplified scenario, or a play, which shows me to what extent the people you have in mind give freshness of interest to this story, which has been used again and again in the drama of different nations, and I will tell you what I will do for you.” Reduce any dramatic masterpiece to simple statement of its plot and the story will seem so trite as hardly to be worth dramatization. ”

“ Why, however, is it impossible that some time should be saved a would-be dramatist by placing before him, not mere theories of play-writing, but the practice of the dramatists of the past, so that what they have shared in common, and where their practice has differed, may be clear to him? That is all this book attempts. To create a dramatist would be a modern miracle. To develop theories of the drama apart from the practice of recent and remoter dramatists of different countries would be visionary. ”

“ We rather expect a novelist to reveal himself in his work. On the other hand, the greatest dramatists, such as Shakespeare and Molière, in their plays reveal singularly little of themselves. It is the poorer dramatists—Dryden, Jonson, Chapman—who, using their characters as mouthpieces, reveal their own personalities. Now that soliloquy and the aside have nearly gone out of use, the dramatist, when compared with the novelist, seems, at first thought, greatly hampered in his expression. He never can use description, narration, analysis, and personal comment as his own. ”

“ She is at first full of affection, mingled with dread of what he may know. He is fighting suspicion, passion for her, and inability to believe her guilty. Seeking her at Crowe Hall, he has followed her thither. At first she is too sincere to play with him. He is too anxious to be able to diplomatize. He shows his fears—that she is intriguing with another, with the Pretender. She is maddeningly incomprehensible—swears she knows no Pretender, but will not say yes or no as to meeting any one in the wood. ”

“ The murder’d, in the agonies of death, weeps for his murderer.—Oh, speak your pious purpose, pronounce my pardon then—and take me with you!—He wou’d, but cannot. O why with such fond affection do you press my murdering hand!—What! will you kiss me! (Kisses him. Uncle groans and dies.) He’s gone forever—and oh! I follow. (Swoons away by his uncle’s body.) Do I still live to press the suffering bosom of the earth? Do I still breathe and taint with my infectious breath the wholesome air! ”

“ Great drama depends on a firm grasp and sure presentation of complicated character, but of course a dramatist has a perfect right to say that, though he knows his hero—Cyrano de Bergerac, for instance—may have had many characteristics, it is enough for the purpose of his play to represent the vanity, the audacity, and the underlying tenderness of the man. It is undeniable, too, that particular characteristics of ours may be so strong that other characteristics will not prevent them from taking us into sufficient dramatic complications to make a good play. ”

“ Is it any wonder, then, that popular vote has declared action the best revealer of feeling and, therefore, that the dramatist, in writing his plays, depends first of all upon action? If any one is disposed to cavil at action as popular merely with the masses and the less cultivated, let him ask himself, “What, primarily in other people interests me—what these people do or why they do it?” ”

“ Patty enters, half supporting Bill. She looks about as if surprised at not seeing any one beside Beatrice. Bill’s clothes are torn and he is covered with dirt. There is blood on his hands where cords have torn the flesh. He looks white and wretched and breathes hard as if from recent running. He should play the whole scene with nervous excitement that suggests a collapse at the end of it. ”

“ It is the merest common sense so to present characters that a cast of average ability, or a stage manager of no extraordinary imagination may understand and represent them with at least approximate correctness, rather than so to write that only a group of creative artists can do any justice to the play. Clear and definitive characterization never hampers the best actors: for actors not the best it is absolutely necessary unless intended values are to be blurred.
It frequently happens that a writer whose dialogue is good and who has enough dramatic situations finds himself unable to push ahead. ”

“ About all the generalization one may permit one’s self here is: For the public of the United States one can at present feel sure that story increases its interest in characterization, however fine. As we shall see in dealing with character, the latter should never be sacrificed to story, but story often ferries a play from the shore of unsuccess to the shore of success. Even today it is not the great poetry, the subtle characterization nor the fine thinking of Hamlet which give it large audiences: it is the varied story, full of surprises and suspense. ”

“ The interest and the delight of a dramatist in studying people should lie in accurate conveying to others of their contradictions, their deterioration or growth as time passes, the outcropping of characteristics in them for which our observation has not prepared us. Nobody who really cares for characterization wants somebody else to do it for him. Nobody who has really entered into his characters thoroughly will for a moment be satisfied to sketch broad outlines and let the actor fill in details. Rarely, however, does the self-deceived author of such slovenly work deceive his audience. ”

“ It is useless for him to say stoutly that he knows the incident happened just in this way, or that the audience ought to know better than to think it could happen differently. As it is hopeless in life merely to protest that you are telling the truth when everybody is convinced that you are lying, it is wasted time for a dramatist to stand his ground in a matter of motivation if he has not succeeded in making that motivation convincing. For instance, there suddenly appears in the office of the hero of a play a former acquaintance of his, an actress. ”

“ The actress who abandons herself to the emotions of the part she is playing soon exhausts her nervous vitality. It would be the same if audiences listening to the tragic were permitted to feel the scenes as keenly as the figures of the story. On the other hand, in some cases, if the comic figure on the stage felt his comicality as strongly as the audience which is speechless with laughter, he could not go on, and the scene would fail. Evidently, an audience may be made, as the dramatist wills, to feel more or less emotion than the characters of the play. ”

“ If, when a writer certainly is not tired, or when, after rest, he cannot with two or three sustained attempts develop a scene, the difficulty is not far to seek. In real life do we surely find out about people at our first, second, or even third meeting? Only if the people are of the simplest and most self-revelatory kind. The difficulty in these clogged scenes usually is that the author is treating the situation as if it were not the creation of the people in it, and as if a skilful writer could force any group of people into any situation. ”

“ A dramatist should be very careful that what he calls Prologue or Epilogue is not merely an additional act. An act does not cease to be an act, and become a prologue or an epilogue, because its length is shorter than that usual for an act. True it is that most prologues and epilogues are short, but that is not their distinguishing characteristic. If they are brief, it is because the dramatist wants to move as quickly as possible from his induction or prologue to his main story, or knows that when the play proper is ended, he cannot with his epilogue hold his audience long. ”

“ Play-making is an exceedingly difficult art, and in so far as it is in any sense a transcript from life or a beautified presentation of life past, present, or imagined, it grows more difficult as the years pass because of the accumulating mass of dramatic masterpieces. Yet for him who cares for dramatic writing more than any form of self-expression, no time has been more promising than the present. There has been more good drama in the past twenty-five years the world over than at any time in the history of the stage. It has been more varied in subject and form, more individual in treatment. ”

“ To paraphrase a principle of geometry, “A play is the shortest distance from emotions to emotions.” The emotions to be reached are those of the audience. The emotions conveyed are those of the people on the stage or of the dramatist as he has watched the people represented. Just herein lies the importance of action for the dramatist: it is his quickest means of arousing emotion in an audience. Which is more popular with the masses, the man of action or the thinker? The world at large believes, and rightly that, as a rule, “Actions speak louder than words.” ”

“ An intelligent producer who reads the play with comprehension but follows only the letter of the stage directions gives a production no more than adequate at best. An uncomprehending and self-willed producer may easily so confuse the values of a well-written play as to ruin its chances. A thoroughly sympathetic and finely imaginative producer may, like an equally endowed actor, reveal genuine values in the play unsuspected even by the dramatist himself. Surely writing stage directions will differ from the narration and description of a novel. ”

“ Whether a dance, parade, or tableau is a genuine climax depends on whether it illustrates attainment of that in regard to which suspense has been created. No mere dance in costume, no spectacular parade or brilliant tableau is ever an adequate substitute for a climax which brings to the greatest intensity emotionalized interest already awakened in an audience. Such climax by action may, then, be as purely theatrical as in revues, much musical comedy, or pure melodrama, or as simple and true as in Heijermans’ The Good Hope. ”

“ In all this discussion of the difference between truckling to an audience and necessary regard for its interests and prejudices, of changing public taste, the important point is that until a dramatist has considered his material in relation to the public, his play is by no means ready for production. Just because the persuasive side of dramatic art is so often neglected, play after play goes on the boards in such condition that it must be greatly changed before it can succeed. Often before these ample changes can be made, the public has lost interest in the piece. ”

“ The general movement of drama in the past ten years has been toward better and better characterization in plays of all kinds. The newer melodrama and farce show us, not the mere comic puppets of the past, but people as real as the form represented—be it comedy, farce, tragedy, or melodrama—will permit. This new tendency has largely driven out the soliloquy and the aside. We should not, however, go to extremes, for occasionally we do swear under our breath or comment in asides, and as long as people do either, such people should be so represented. ”

“ In the centre and in the deep of the night, a very old priest is sitting, wrapped in a great black cloak. The chest and the head, gently upturned and deathly motionless, rest against the trunk of a giant hollow oak. The face is fearsome pale and of an immovable waxen lividness, in which the purple lips fall slightly apart. The dumb, fixed eyes no longer look out from the visible side of Eternity and seem to bleed with immemorial sorrows and with tears. ”

“ Even when reading some story aloud, do we not often find troublesome full directions as to just how the speakers delivered their lines? If given by us, they provide an awkward standard by which to judge our reading. If we wish to suppress them, they are not, in rapid reading, always seen in time. As was pointed out very early in this book, gesture, facial expression, movement about the stage, and above all, the voice, aid the dramatist as they cannot aid the novelist. These aids and the time limits of a play have, as we shall see, very great effect on dialogue. ”

“ The ambitious but inexperienced writer of plays worries himself much in hunting a novel subject,—and in vain. Far afield he goes, seeking the sensational, the bizarre, the occult, for new emotions and situations, failing to recognize that the emotional life of yesterday, today, and tomorrow can differ little fundamentally. Civilization refines or deteriorates, kingdoms rise and fall, languages develop and pass, but love of man and woman, of friend for friend, ambition, jealousy, envy, selfishness,—these emotions abide. ”

“ In drama, undoubtedly the strongest immediate appeal to the general public is action. Yet if a dramatist is to communicate with his audience as he wishes, command of dialogue is indispensable. The permanent value of a play, however, rests on its characterization. Characterization focuses attention. It is the chief means of creating in an audience sympathy for the subject or the people of the play. “A Lord,” “A Page,” in a pre-Shakespearean play usually was merely a speaker of lines and little, if at all, characterized. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then begins the second stage, when he learns what can be taught him of technique in his chosen field. It is bound to be a time when consciousness of rules first learned and limitations first perceived make writing far less attractive and often so irksome that the worker is tempted to throw his task aside for good. He who does not really love his art will cast away his work. He who really cares cannot do this. He may from the hampering of these newly recognized rules become irritable, have his moments of self-doubt and despair, but he cannot stop practicing his art. ”

“ An uncritical audience responding to the best characterization in a play, overlooks the merely typical quality of the other figures. That is, the long vogue of types upon the stage rests upon ease of comprehension, entire adequacy for some crude dramatic forms, ease of imitation, and a constant tendency in a dramatist of ability to rise to higher levels of characterization. Now that we are more and more dissatisfied with types in plays making any claim to realism, the keen distinction first laid down by Mr. William Archer in his Play-Making becomes essential. ”