Improvisation

“ On a much lower level we distinguish the hyperbole and rapid development in descriptions of persons and events which are lit up by humorous intention in the speaker—we distinguish this charming play of intelligence which resembles musical improvisation on a given motive, where the farthest sweep of curve is looped into relevancy by an instinctive method, from the florid inaccuracy or helpless exaggeration which is really something commoner than the correct simplicity often depreciated as prosaic. ”

“ "Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. ”

“ If improvisation [554] went beyond the gagging of a clown, it was probably only in some exceptional experiment or tour de force. [1764] As exceptional also we may regard Vennar’s spectacular Englands Joy of 1602 and the wager plays, in which actors or even amateurs challenged each other to compete in rendering some ‘part’ of traditional repute. [1765] One would like to know more about the play, apparently a monologue, ‘set out al by one virgin’, at the Theatre in 1583. ”

“ The earlier examples, which succeed the Roland, are unlike that great work in having no plan, no system of composition. They are improvisations which wander on at their own pace, whither accident may carry them. ”

“ We are told that many of the spinning songs are improvisations, the girls all standing in a circle, the best spinner or singer in the centre, and that she begins to improvise a song, which is passed on for continuance with the distaff to any one whom she may select. Doubtless these are on familiar themes and with familiar forms of expression, like all folk-songs, but they show the vital spirit of poetry still existing, and the bulk of more elaborate compositions is probably still being added to. ”

“ The attention has been held too rigid on the one plane instead of following a more flexible, jagged resort. It is to loosen the attention, my attention since I occupy part of the field, that I write these improvisations. Here I clash with Wallace Stevens.
The imagination goes from one thing to another. ”

“ 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? ”

“ You watch it in rehearsal, and during the "breaking in" weeks you cut it here, change it there, make a plot-line do double duty as a laugh-line in this spot, take away a needless word from another—until your playlet flashes a flawless gem from the stage. The final effect in the medium of expression for which you write it is UNITY. Every part—acting, dialogue, action—blends in a perfect whole. Not even one word may be taken away without disturbing the total effect of its vital oneness. ”

“ When all is said and done, this time difficulty caused by the greater vividness of stage presentation remains the chief obstacle in the way of the dramatist who would write of 11 a sequence of historical events or of evolution or devolution in character. Again we foresee probable differences in technique, this time caused by the theatre, the stage, and the intense vividness of the latter.
The novel is, so to speak, the work of an individual; a play is a cooperative effort—of author, actor, producer, and even audience. ”

“ We makers of plays, your grace, often have but a small part in our own contrivances. Many a time have I devised a play in the spirit of comedy, but it is ever the characters themselves who spin the plot. ”

“ An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know how it is done, we conceive the effort that would lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this conception becomes the performance. We imitate the gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us, and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even though we suppress the outward signs. In general, for us to realize an act means that we shall do it, either in outward fact, or through a nascent performance that is not outwardly visible. ”

“ The natural transition from story to play, from narrative to drama, is by way of the monologue. Some discussion with suggestive analysis of this form is necessary in order to impress upon you the difference between suggestive impersonation and actual impersonation or characterization, leading to a clear understanding of the difference between reading a play and acting in one; but the final evolution of interpretative power must come through acted drama,—through taking part in a play. ”

“ Poo, poo! That's foolish now. Why what has a Stage Play to do with Reason and Probability? If a Tragedy makes you laugh and a Comedy makes you cry, as Mr. Heartly said just now, what would you have more? ”

“ Every play which contains a house on fire, a sinking steamer, a railway accident, and a dance in a casino will (if it is liberally placed on the stage) succeed in spite of itself. In point of fact, nothing could wreck such a piece but carefully written dialogue, and a strict attention to probability. Avoid these two stumbling blocks (and nothing is easier than to avoid them) , and your piece will succeed triumphantly. But it is not easy to write a stage-play which, on account of its literary merit, shall deserve to succeed. ”

“ Enthusiasm and inventive power were wearied, and thinking men began to criticize and judge the work that was being done. It was clear to [24] them that there was need of proportion and symmetry, that each act of a play, for example, should do its special part in the development of the plot and in the revelation of the characters. The problem in the scholar's mind was: What is the best possible form or model to follow in making a play, a song, or a speech? ”

“ It goes into rehearsal in a week or ten days. There's a small part in the first act—a stenographer in a law office—a slangy, self-sufficient girl—you might be able to play. As I say, it's small; but it's quite important. It's the fashion nowadays, you know, to write pieces with small casts and no parts that aren't vital to the action. If you should bungle, it would ruin the first act and might kill the play. But I'm willing to try you out at rehearsals—with the distinct understanding that if you don't fit precisely you'll be released and somebody else engaged who we're sure can play it. ”

“ This is the normal form of novel dialogue. The variations occur in the relative amount of this description or comment—of this stage-direction, as I have called it. And I call it that because this comment or description takes the place of what they call ‘business’ on the stage. The actor’s task is divided between his words and his ‘business’, and the playwright is entitled to rely on the ‘business’ to help out the words, just as the novelist describes or comments on the actions and gestures of his speakers, in order to assist and elucidate the meaning of the actual words they use. ”

“ No matter what you say about a performance you can hardly be sure that you have hit upon the right explanation. Let us suppose that there has been an evening of inspiring success. Some golden lead of the imagination has sprung up and overshot one performance—paused, passed and vanished—leaving audience and actors, and even critics, to account for it as they may. ”

“ These plays may be classed as the Old Comedy, the distinguishing features of which are unscrupulous attacks upon living men, and a chorus of which the leader addresses the audience in the name of the poet in a long speech called the para- basis full of contemporary allusions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Historically, a figure from the play just ended, or an entirely new figure, strove, often in lines not written by the dramatist, to point the story or, at least, to win for it the final approval of the audience. Today, when a dramatist wishes to point the meaning of a play which he seems to have brought to a close, or to include it in some larger scheme, he writes what he prefers to call, not an additional act, but an Epilogue. ”

“ Watch a child making his first attempt at play-writing. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the play will contain little except action. There will be slight characterization, if any, and the dialogue will be mediocre at best. The young writer has depended almost entirely upon action because instinctively, when he thinks of drama, he thinks of action.
Nor, if we paused to consider, is this dependence of drama upon action surprising. “From emotions to emotions” is the formula for any good play. ”

“ That was why plays with few words were better than plays with many words, as in the latter case the number of gestures became very tiring both to the eyes of the audience and the muscles of the actors. ”

“ The Elizabethan drama put such a spell upon the imagination of English-speaking peoples that until recently the idea was accepted: “Five is dignity, with a trailing robe, whereas one, two, or three acts would be short skirts, and degrading.”1 Today a dramatist may plan for a play of three, four, or five acts, as seems to him best.
Why, if no change of scene be required, is not a play of one long act desirable? At first sight, there would seem to be a gain in the unbroken movement. The power of sustained attention in audiences is, however, distinctly limited. ”

“ Following the example of the illustrious model, whose style we consider it no humility, but rather an audacity, to imitate, we will suppose the recital to be made some time after the event has occurred, and we will imagine some veteran stage manager giving directions for, or superintending the rehearsal of, a grand dramatic representation of one of the grandest and—if we may be allowed the privilege of a literary smasher in coming a word—the dramaticest battles in English history. ”

“ That which in this world-around presents itself to our contemplation—and therefore contains meaning for our feelings—as movement, we render by movement. Hence all imitation is in the broadest sense dramatic; drama is presented in the movement of the brush-stroke or the chisel, the melodic curve of the song, the tone of the recitation, the line of poetry, the description, the dance. ”

“ The plays written for them, though no genuine dramas, are not without value as spectacle, and the opportunity, however lame, gives freer play to the actor’s powers, than would the simple recitation, by which some have thought any attempt at acting whole plays should be superseded. ”

“ But those who work day by day in the theatre sometimes find, as the rehearsals advance, that this ill-lit, unfurnished void can on a sudden be transformed into a world of enchantment. The actor and the author together are as yet undisturbed in their task, and what is still to come in the way of added illusion their imagination can readily supply. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These traps of scene, of situation, of climax, of acts and tableaux or of whatever they are, require to be set and adjusted with the utmost nicety and skill so that they will spring at the precise instant and in the precise manner to seize and hold the admiration—sympathy—interest—or whatever they may be intended to capture, of an audience. ”

“ In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the impulse to write some play--any play--exists, so to speak, in the abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to work, and invent a story. ”

“ While you must have wordless pantomime at the basis of every play, it is those plays which exhibit in high degree the use of action in the form of dialogue that are the more comfortable reading; and, always postulating that a play is a play—not necessarily a playwright's play, the admiration of his brother craftsmen, but a thing practicable, actable and effective on the stage—the more physical action is subordinated to character, to the exploration of the springs of human motive, the better it is for reading purposes and the better for all purposes. ”

“ Understand clearly the audience for which you intend your play; create in it the sympathetic relation toward your characters you wish; then you may be sure that what seems to you a climax for your scene will be so for your audience.
Movement depends, then, on clearness, unity, emphasis, and a right feeling for suspense and climax. This movement may be steadily upward, as in the last scene of Hamlet, or it may have the wave-like advance found in Sigurjónsson’s Eyvind of the Hills65 or Sir Arthur Pinero’s The Gay Lord 233 Quex. ”

“ These sentences mean that at its very best acting is but a shadow or simulation of life, and that acting at its very worst is likewise a shadow or simulation. But the imagination of the audience is supreme controller of the theatre, and can, if it be of adequate intensity, even cause inferior acting to yield effects hardly distinguishable from those of the best. ”