Dramatization

“ 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. ”

“ But dialogue by itself is not drama. The notion of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles between at least two performers. ”

“ The depths of human woe and suffering, or the very heights of joy and attainment, can be pictured in a flash. The dramatic story should consist of a strong and preferably unique plot, simple and direct in its appeal to the heart, and expressed or conveyed to the audience by a logical sequence of episodes or incidents, all having direct bearing on the story, and each one of sufficient strength to hold the attention of the spectators. The story must be human, the characters and their motives and actions human and true to life. The drama is perfect as it reflects a correct imitation of nature. ”

“ Whether or not a play is literature depends not upon the medium of utterance the characters may use, but on whether or not the play sets forth a truthful view of some momentous theme; and whether or not a play is drama depends not upon its trappings and its suits, but on whether or not it sets forth a tense and vital struggle between individual human wills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have yet to realize that, in truly great drama, the foreknowledge possessed by the audience is not a disadvantage with certain incidental mitigations and compensations, but is the source of the highest pleasure which the theatre is capable of affording us. In order to illustrate my meaning, I propose to analyse a particular scene, not, certainly, among the loftiest in dramatic literature, but particularly suited to my purpose, inasmuch as it is familiar to every one, and at the same time full of the essential qualities of drama. ”

“ If the art of the drama, as a great French master of it has said, is above all the art of preparations, that is true only to a less extent of the art of the novel, and true exactly in the degree in which the art of the particular novel comes near that of the drama. The first half of a fiction insists ever on figuring to me as the stage or theatre for the second half, and I have in general given so much space to making the theatre propitious that my halves have too often proved strangely unequal. ”

“ Too much of the drama in the book is theatre rather than drama, and yet the author's gift is essentially dramatic. He knows how to tell a story on his stage that holds you to the fall of the curtain, and makes you almost patient of the muted violins and the limelight of the closing scene. ”

“ As plot is the science of structure, so dramatics is the art of treatment. Plot is a matter of selection; drama one of application of the selected material. We take it for granted that all plot material is inherently—tho crudely, perhaps—dramatic. We hint at both plot and treatment when we state that drama is a supreme human experience interpreted by characters in terms of emotion with piercing effect. ”

“ And it is because of this imperative necessity for integrity of construction that the drama is more difficult than prose fiction. Since a part of our pleasure in any art is derived from our consciousness of the obstacles to be overcome by the artist, and from our recognition of the skill displayed by him in vanquishing them, we have here added evidence in behalf of the belief in the artistic superiority of the play over the novel merely as a form of expression. ”

“ If I think of poetry, must I not remember how to the measure of its lofty music the theatre has in almost all ages set the grandest of dramatic conceptions? If I think of literature, must I not recall that of all the amusements by which men in various states of society have solaced their leisure and refreshed their energies, the acting of plays is the one that has never yet, even for a day, been divorced from literary taste and skill? ”

“ The greatest plays are melodrama by their skeleton, and poetry by the flesh which clothes that skeleton.
The foundation of drama is that part of the action which can be represented in dumb show. Only the essential parts of action can be represented without words, and you would set the puppets vainly to work on any material but that which is common to humanity. The permanence of a drama might be tested by the continuance and universality of its appeal when played silently in gestures. ”

“ In the cold black and white of print and paper, without the accessories of the stage or the personality of actors to help illusion or enforce the story told, the real strength of the drama is most impressive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A statistical writer of the theatre informs us, that for a number of years back the new productions in Tragedy and regular Comedy have been fewest, and that the melo-dramas have in number exceeded all the others put together. They do not mean by melo-drama, as we do, a drama in which the pauses are filled up by monologue with instrumental music, but where actions in any wise wonderful, adventurous, or even sensuous, are exhibited in emphatic prose with suitable decorations and dresses. ”

“ Any one who so analyzes the Dramatic Art as to see what its basis, contents, and uses are, will be astonished to find what a deep and wide feature it is in human nature, and how extensive and important a part it plays in human life. The study of the great spectacle of human existence as a whole, from the point of view of the Stage, in the light of dramatic usages and imagery, imparts to it a keener, more diversified, more comprehensive interest and instructiveness than it can receive in any other way. ”

“ But Drama, as the most concentrated and concrete form of imaginative creation, can never be fully presented in writing or in print; and few readers can even dimly picture to themselves the effect which would be produced on a fit audience by the right performance either of single scenes or of a whole play. ”

“ And now I may add intelligibly that the drama of primitive man is performed in an equally dramaturgic spirit, whether seen, as in its merely culminating or final enactment, or unseen and often secret, as in its long-continued preparations. ”

“ For theatrical talent consists in the power of making your characters not only tell a story by means of dialogue but tell it in such skilfully devised 6 form and order as shall, within the limits of an ordinary theatrical representation, give rise to the greatest possible amount of that peculiar kind of emotional effect, the production of which is the one great function of the theatre.”1 Certain underlying differences between the relation of the novelist to his reader and that of the dramatist to his audience reveal why the art of each must be different. ”

“ Since all Traditions must indisputably give place 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 Dramatick Writing, namely, in the Design, Contexture and Result of the Plot. ”

“ Such is the dramatic art, in which the actor makes with his actions and gestures, or several actors make with the combination of their different actions and gestures, a kind of shifting picture, which appeals to the eyes of the witnesses while the sung or spoken words of the drama appeal to their ears; thus making of them spectators and auditors at once, and associating with the pure time art of words the mixed time-and-space art of bodily movements. ”

“ Perhaps foremost among these should be reckoned that of the 'regular' drama--that is of the drama based upon an imitation of the classics, chiefly of the Latin authors. The conception of dramatic art which was in men's minds at the time naturally and inevitably influenced the development of a form of poem which was daily becoming more sensibly dramatic. Next there was the influence of the mythological drama embodying the romantic and ideal elements of classical myth, but in form representing the tradition of the old religious plays. ”

“ After this rapid sketch of what may be called the map of dramatic literature, we return to the examination of its fundamental ideas. Since, as we have already shown, visible representation is essential to the very form of the drama; a dramatic work may always be regarded from a double point of view,—how far it is poetical, and how far it is theatrical. ”

“ The play begins; with the deepest earnestness the audience listen, and, crowded as they are, preserve the utmost quiet. The glorious drama scene by scene unfolds itself, and passage by passage we recognise the beauties of our great poet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The printed drama is like a bubbling and sunlit spring, encountered only by wanderers into the hills and awaiting the bottling process of the theatre to carry its tonic waters far and wide among an expectant and emotionally ill people. ”

“ If at the theatre you see a drama represented, and you feel impelled to judge within yourself whether this or that character is well played—whether the gestures, the expression of face, and the inflections of voice are such as properly belong to the character, and accord with the affections that move him, or the passions which agitate him—then hope. ”

“ And yet there is no drama in the piece, for a drama involves a situation which develops and changes, a plot which works out. The duel between the king and prelate in the play, no less than in our history books, is merely a succession of indecisive encounters. ”

“ It would be useless for me to write down a typical drama, for the reader of to-day would not follow it, nor, for that matter, relish it more than he does those quaint old seventeenth-century plays where women dress up as men, and blood so freely flows. ”

“ There is a form of sonnet called the Shakespearean which differs in its arrangement from the Italian sonnet.
C. Dramatic poetry relates the occurrence of human events, and is designed to be spoken on the stage. If the drama has an unhappy ending, it is a tragedy. As is becoming in such a theme, the language is dignified and impressive, and the whole appeals to our deeper emotions. If the drama has a happy conclusion, it is a comedy. Here the movement is quicker, the language less dignified, and the effort is to make the whole light and amusing. ”

“ The purpose of the Drama is, universally, “to represent human life in the way of action.” But as such representation it made for separate and distinct ENDS, it is, further, distinguished into different species, which we know by the names of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce. ”

“ Similarly, a detached scene must become part of a series of scenes. Get rid of the effect of episodic scenes, that is, give them unity, and lo, we have story of some sort. The bit of dialogue must become part of a larger dialogue belonging to characters of the play; and characterization, as we have seen, results in some story. The artistic or moral idea of the dramatist can be made clear only by human figures, the pawns with which he makes his emotional moves. At once we are on the way to story. ”

“ The drama, in its finished literary and histrionic sense, is seen when a story, instead of being merely described in forms, words, or colors,—as by sculpture, narrative, and painting,—is exhibited by fit personages in living action with all the appropriate accessories of looks, attitudes, tones, articulations, gestures, and deeds. ”

“ Then I re-read them, to judge of them not merely as dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. As acting dramas, it is difficult to conceive anything less practically dramatic. ”

“ For an audience able to look seriously at a serious subject, and not impatient of the foreground of gloom in which, necessarily, the story is enveloped at its beginning, this was a perfect work. The student of drama must go back many years to find a parallel to it, in interest of subject, in balance, in symmetry, and in sympathetic interpretation of character. ”