Dramatist

“ The fact that the drama had had for centuries in England and elsewhere a fecund history before the novel as a form took shape at all would intimate that the drama is a different and independent art from that of the novel or the short story. When novelists and would-be playwrights recognize that it is, has been, and ought to be an independent art, we shall be spared many bad plays.
It is undeniable that the novelist and the dramatist start with common elements—the story, the characters, and the dialogue. ”

“ It is in the seizure and presentation of the essential and distinguishing marks of a character, of a scene, of a passion, of a society, of a phase of life, of a movement of national thought—it is in the seizure and vivid treatment of some of these, to the exclusion or falsification of non-essentials, that the dramatist must lay his claim to sincerity and being “true to nature.” ”

“ Perhaps it will come from the hand of some great dramatist, with the dramatist’s art that can revive great figures, great moments; can purge the occasion of what was merely peevish and fortuitous, and remind us of truths and visions we lost in the hurly-burly of the time. ”

“ With his purpose clearly in mind, the dramatist, as he passes from point of departure through story to plot, selects, and selects, and selects. Among all the possible people who might be the main figure in accomplishing his purpose, he picks the one most interesting him, or which he believes will most interest his public. From all the people who might surround his central figure he chooses the few who will best accomplish his purpose. ”

“ In the past few years, however, the drama of mental states and the drama which has revealed emotional significance in seeming or real inaction, has been proving that “nothing human is foreign” to the drama. A dramatist may see in the so-called undramatic material emotional values. If so, he will develop a technique which will create in his public a satisfaction equal to that which the so-called undramatic story, character, or idea could give in story form. ”

“ Surely so great a difference will affect the technique of his art. The novel, then, may be, and often is, highly personal; the best drama is impersonal.
The theatre in which the play is presented also produces differences between the practice of the dramatist and that of the novelist. No matter how small the theatre or its stage, it cannot permit the intimacy of relation which exists between reader and book. ”

“ The dramatic poet, as well as the epic, represents external events, but he represents them as real and present. In common with the lyric poet he also claims our mental participation, but not in the same calm composedness; the feeling of joy and sorrow which the dramatist excites is more immediate and vehement. ”

“ An artistic, poetic work, particularly a drama, must first of all excite in the reader or spectator the illusion that whatever the person represented is living through, or experiencing, is lived through or experienced by himself. For this purpose it is as important for the dramatist to know precisely what he should make his characters both do and say as what he should not make them say and do, so as not to destroy the illusion of the reader or spectator. ”

“ On what scenes does the romance writer dwell with transport—where does he paint with force and minuteness but in those incidents, generally few and far between in his volumes, which form the fit subject of dramatic composition? The stage alone is relieved from the necessity of portraying the prosaic adjunct to poetic interest; the dramatist only is permitted to select the decisive crisis—the burning incident of life—and present it with all the additions of poetry, music, scenery, and personation. ”

“ Instead, it is the art that, drawing to its aid all its sister fine arts, in splendid cooperation, moves the masses of men as does no other art. As Sir Arthur Pinero has said, “The art—the great and fascinating and most difficult art—of the modern dramatist is nothing else than to achieve that compression of life which the stage undoubtedly demands, without falsification.”4
1 Robert Louis Stevenson: The Dramatist, p. ”

“ Why, however, should men or women who have already written stories long or short declared by competent people to be “dramatic,” make any special study of the technique of plays? Like the dramatist, they must understand characterization 5 and dialogue or they could not have written successful stories. Evidently, too, they must know something about structure. Above all, they must have shown ability so to represent people in emotion as to arouse emotional response in their readers, or their work would not be called dramatic. ”

“ In most novels, the reader is, so to speak, personally conducted, the author is our guide. In the drama, so far as the dramatist is concerned, we must travel alone. In the novel, the author describes, narrates, analyzes, and makes his personal comment on circumstance and character. ”

“ One should no more look for a chapter on the drama in a book like this dealing with poetry than for a treatise on the novel. A drama, considered merely as a series of scenes bound together by a plot in a fit manner to be presented on the stage to move people, and based on rules that relate to economy of words, concentration of facts and strikingness of action, is a performance that has a technique of its own; the dramatist is a poet only by virtue of the ecstasy he puts in the work. ”

“ We have already agreed that the dramatist works ever under the sway of three influences which are not felt by exclusively literary artists like the poet and the novelist. The physical conditions of the theatre in any age affect to a great extent the form and structure of the drama; the conscious or unconscious demands of the audience, as we have observed in the preceding chapter, determine for the dramatist the themes he shall portray; and the range or restrictions of his actors have an immediate effect upon the dramatist's great task of character-creation. ”

“ The classical dramatist is too sensitive to the beautiful, the sublime, the essential, and the universal to admit into his conception of fine art either moral and physical deformity or the accidental and particular aspects of life. ”

“ But owing to the clumsy, intractable nature of the material in which he works, the dramatist can stimulate this central idea or feeling in us only by a most roundabout process. He cannot plunge at once into his subject. ”

“ So closely is the dramatist bound within the limited sphere of his audience's thoughts and feelings, so completely does he depend on their average associations and the degree of social evolution they have attained. ”

“ In all these general ways the work of the dramatist is affected by the fact that he must devise his story to be presented by actors. The specific influence exerted over the playwright by the individual performer is a subject too extensive to be covered by a mere summary consideration in the present context ”

“ In the first place, by the fact that the dramatist is devising his story for the use of actors, he is definitely limited both in respect to the kind of characters he may create and in respect to the means he may employ in order to delineate them. ”

“ Except in our recent revival of Moralities for the delectation of moral Broadway, we are growing away dramatically from mere contrasting of types of character and from plays in which a serious and a comic plot are but loosely connected. Yet dramatists will always find contrast highly useful in emphasizing points of characterization and important values in the story. Moreover, any trained dramatist knows that when his audience has been somewhat exhausted by laughter 204 or tears, a scene of contrasting emotional value is of the highest importance. ”

“ For while we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance. ”

“ The orator or poet joined with his speech or song the appropriate actions, or else these were simultaneously given by some other celebrant. And then, when further developments brought representations of more complex incidents, in which the victories of the hero and his companions over enemies were shown, the leading actor, having to direct the doings of subordinates, became a dramatist. ”

“ Here, in point of evolution, is the human basis of poetry, the foundation courses of the pyramid."
2. Lyrical Element in Drama
We cannot here attempt to trace, even in outline, the course of this historic evolution of genres. But in contemporary types of both dramatic and narrative poetry, there may still be discovered the influence of lyric form and mood. We have already noted how the dramatist, for all of his supposed objectivity, cannot refrain from coloring certain persons and situations with the hues of his own fancy. ”

“ I have said that many who, in a healthful condition of our stage, would be dramatists, become novelists. But there are some material distinctions between the dramatic art and the narrative—distinctions as great as those between the oratorical style and the literary. Theatrical effects displease in a novel. In a novel much more than in a drama must be explained and accounted for. ”

“ It appears well calculated to succeed in representation. The characters, however, and many of the incidents, show little invention or imagination; and the whole drama presents greater evidence of the playwright than the dramatist. ”

“ So long as the dramatists were not hampered by demands from the audience to have its social, political, or æsthetic fancies humoured, and from the actor to have his egotism flattered, the drama flourished as an art as well as a business. ”

“ Why, as to dramatic genius, sir, the fact is this—to give a true picture of life, a man should enter into all its scenes,—should follow nature, sir—but modern authors plunder from one another—the mere shades of shadows.—Now, sir, for my part, I dive into the world—I search the heart of man;—'tis true I'm called a rake—but, upon my soul, I only game, drink, and intrigue, that I may be better able to dramatize each particular scene. ”

“ And here I will observe, by the bye, that you will often meet with characters in nature so extravagant, that a discreet dramatist would not venture to set them upon the stage in their true and high coloring. ”

“ Here are the dramatic poets, which are, in my opinion, the best of all, and the masters of passion. There are two kinds: the comic dramatists, who move us so agreeably, and the tragic dramatists, who rouse our passions and shake our dispostions. ”

“ Dramatists, when they write their plays, have a delightful privilege of prefixing a list of their personages;—and the dramatists of old used to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. ”

“ Throughout the present discussion, I have insisted on the point that the great dramatists have always written primarily for the many. Yet now I must add that when once they have fulfilled this prime necessity, they may also write secondarily for the few. ”

“ The dramas as a whole are audacious in plot and vigorous in characterization. In the handling of the blank verse, in the witty scenes of the sub-plots, in the splendor of the phrasing, in the strong undercurrent of reflection, and, above all, in their spiritual uplift and noble emotion, these dramas give evidence of a remarkably gifted playwright who not only possesses a deep feeling for art at its highest and best, but who also has command of all the varied resources of dramatic expression. ”

“ After very judiciously observing, that there is the same relation between romances and novels as between tragedy and comedy, he proceeds thus: ‘Since all traditions must indisputably give glace to the drama, and since there is no possibility of giving that life to the writing, or repetition of a story, which it has in the action; I resolved in another beauty to imitate dramatic writing, namely, in the design, contexture, and result in the plot. I have not observed it before in a novel. ”

“ The modern interest in the drama, and the ever-growing desire to see literature once more wedded to the stage, will, it can hardly be doubted, lead to a revival of dramatic poetry. This will not, of course, have any relation to the feeble lycean plays of the hour—spectacular romances enshrined in ambling blank verse—but will, in its form and substance alike, offer entertainment to other organs than the eye. ”

“ This is a point of view which is rarely taken by those who are accustomed to consider the drama only in its literary aspects, and who like to think of the dramatic poet as a remote and secluded artist, scornful of all adventitious assistance, seeking to express his own vision of the universe, and intent chiefly, if not solely, on portraying the human soul. ”

“ In the first, ideas are expressed in words; this is literature. In the second, ideas are expressed in the sounds of the scale; this is music. In the third, ideas are expressed in rigid forms either round, as in sculpture, or flat, as in p. 225painting. We may call this third art painting, that being its most popular phase.”
“I see your difficulty,” said I. “If drama is not one of the arts, the procession cannot be a branch of drama. But I think the drama is one of the arts all the same.” ”

“ DRAMATIC POWER. Dramatic power, in general, means the presentation of life with the vivid active reality of life and character which especially distinguishes the acted drama. It is, of course, one of the main things to be desired in most narrative; though sometimes the effect sought may be something different, as, for instance, in romance and poetry, an atmosphere of dreamy beauty. In a drama, and to some extent in other forms of narrative, dramatic power culminates in the ability to bring out the great crises with supreme effectiveness. ”