Plaything

“ Like the cards which form a child's plaything palace, our pleasures are nicely balanced one upon the other. ”

“ She is like a pretty fresh plaything to him, and they go about together just like big Towzer and little Frisk at home. He is very much amused with her, and she thinks him the finest possession that ever came in her way. ”

“ You talk as if they were schoolboys, and you really are old enough to know better."
"But do you mean to say, Edgar," asked Joanna, "that you would let any woman make a plaything or a door-mat of you?"
"By all means, if I loved her and she was so minded. If I really cared for her, you see, I should think it the greatest honour to be elevated to the uses of her playthings and her door-mats, and I should count myself unworthy to be adapted to such purposes."
"I call that unmanly," remarked Paul. "Even if a man does love a woman, he owes a duty to himself as well as to her." ”

“ Heavens! are all men alike that they think a girl is only made to be their plaything? I hate them. Yes, I hate them all.”
The fierce bitterness of her tone was so incisive, so genuine, that most men under the circumstances would have felt extremely foolish, and looked correspondingly abject. Into Kenneth Kershaw’s very heart her words seemed to cut like so many whip lashes. By a mighty effort he restrained himself from pleading provocation, feeling, any mitigation whatever; which would have been the worst line he could possibly have taken. ”

“ By this rather inelegant but expressive term we designate a kind of play which belongs to early childhood. 96From the grasping impulse the tendency is developed in the second quarter to push and pull things about in all directions, to shake and test them with hands and lips, to seize and to push away. External objects are all playthings to the child, says Perez, all objects of his investigating tendencies. ”

“ From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,
Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands,—
Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart,
Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,
Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way. ”

“ They call for affection and solicitude, and the kind of play into which they fit is more limited in scope, less stirring to the imagination, but more usual in the experience of children, because play material of this type is more plentifully provided than is any other and, centering attention as it does on the furnishings and utensils of the home, requires less contact with or information about, the world outside and its activities to provide the mental content for interesting play. ”

“ This toy world would not be here, this play could not go on, if we were knowing players. We must play blindfolded. Some of us have taken the part of the rogue of the play, some heroic — never mind, it is all play. ”

“ Then there is the conception of play as the utilisation in art of the superfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; this enlarging and harmonising function of play, while in the lower ranges it may be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production of the most magnificent human achievements. But there is yet a third conception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internal influence—health-giving, developmental, and balancing—on the whole organism of the player himself. ”

“ Alas! when we betake ourselves to our intellectual form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed, we rouse many hot feelings for which we can find no outlet. Substitutes are not acceptable to the mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even to rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one's enemy, although it is perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play still left within our reach, is not entirely satisfying, and is even apt to lead to a visit and an interview which may be the reverse of triumphant after all.
In the child's world of dim sensation, play is all in all. ”

“ But the phrase of “play” meant more to him than all this. Play is diversion: exertion of the mind as well as of the body. There is such a thing as mental play as well as physical play. We ask of play that it shall rest, refresh, exhilarate. ”

“ Some day there will be a demand for a play made up of flaws—not a play with a mere incidental flaw flecked in here and there, but a play that is composed of one strong flaw superimposed on another, and that on another, and so on. Then I shall take my comedy out from the bottom tray of my trunk, where it now lies under a dress-suit which my waist-measure has outgrown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In many cases, indeed, our pleasure consists of a delicate blending of surprise with realized anticipation. We foresaw, and are pleased to recognize, the art of the whole achievement, while details which had grown dim to us give us each its little thrill of fresh admiration. Regarded in this aspect, a great play is like a great piece of music: we can hear it again and again with ever-new realization of its subtle beauties, its complex harmonies, and with unfailing interest in the merits and demerits of each particular rendering. ”

“ They will share the spirit of adventure in the matter of obtaining or contriving the most difficult things in the way of costumes, scenery, and properties. Their inventiveness will be quickened, their hands will grow skillful, and their triumphant enjoyment of success in these preliminary labors will stimulate them to greater success in the acting of the story. In this, they will be quick to appreciate hints—frequently to offer them—as to the best ways of expressing the meaning and spirit of the play, and work with them becomes an inspiration to all alike. ”

“ Viewed on this side, child play may be described as the working out into actual visible shape of an inner fancy. In many cases, no doubt, the actual surroundings may supply the starting point; the child, for example, sees the sand, the shingle, and shells, and says, Let us play keeping a shop. Yet this suggestion by something present is accidental. The root impulse of play is to realize a bright, pretty idea; hence its close kinship with art as a whole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We now often really transform play into work; and our minds are so constituted that what is one person's work is another person's play. What a backwoodsman would call his horse-like labor, a foremost statesman may call his light of pleasure. How shall we define it? What is play or recreation?
Men differ, I think, on the definition of work and play more than on almost any other subject: differ in practice as much as in theory in regard to it. I have had the acquaintance, and I may say the friendship, of a man who lives, it is said, for nothing but recreation, or pleasure, or play. ”

“ But this is the setting of my drama—the scenery of the play, not the play itself. It is its human contacts that give life its vivacity and intensity. And it is the ear and tongue that are the channels of the cheerful interplay of mind with mind. ”

“ Whatever be the correct theory of play—that it is practice in the line of future methods of conduct, that it is simply the discharge of the surplus energy of the young, or that it is for the purpose of relaxation and recreation only—whatever theory be adopted, the inestimable value of play to the child and to the nation cannot be gainsaid. Play is an irrepressible method of self-expression.... ”

“ Sometimes, late at night, even after a long day of play—those violent and never-pausing exertions that we call play, in boyhood—I would still try to read, hiding the light, until my eyes closed in spite of me. ”

“ The entire play would serve as a fine unification of the child's work in nature, in construction, in physical education, in music, in composition, and in literature. Everything he does in the play will be full of vital interest to him; and his daily tasks will seem of more worth to him when he sees how he can use them with so much pleasure to himself and to others. This play is an example of the organizing of ideas which a good tale may exercise in the mind of the child and the part the tale as an organized experience may play in his development. ”

“ Coming now to active play, we find here, too, in the region which seems to owe its very existence to the childish instinct of enjoyment, traces of the same seriousness. For most children, one suspects, play would become a tame thing were there not the fearful to conjure with. The favourite play-haunts, the dark corners under the table, behind the curtains, and so forth, show what a vital element of play is supplied by the excitement of the state of half-dread. ”

“ If we do not emphasize this play element, it is not from failure to realize the difference between a work of art and an essay, a sermon, a speech or a mathematical demonstration; it is merely because the play element in art is recognized by everyone, to the exclusion of the element of rational thought and purpose, which is no less essential.
Let us ask: what is play? The answer is: play is nature’s device whereby the young train themselves for reality. Two puppies pretending to bite each other’s throats, learn to fight without having their throats torn in the process. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX. THE PLAY.
The first night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno ”

“ There is a large class of plays--or rather, there are several classes of plays, some of them not at all to be despised--the charm of which resides, not in probability, but in ingenious and delightful improbability. ”

“ There is no better play material in the world than words. They surround us, go with us through our work-a-day tasks, their sound is always in our ears, their rhythms on our tongue. Why do we leave it to special occasions and to special people to use these common things as precious play material? ”

“ CHAPTER XVI DIALOGUE IN THE PLAYLET We have now come to one of the least important elements of the playlet—yet a decorative element which wit and cleverness can make exceedingly valuable.
If it is true that scenery is the habitation in which the playlet moves, that its problem is the heart beating with life, that the dramatic is the soul which shines with meaning through the whole, that plot is the playlet's skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters—then the dialogue is, indeed, merely a playlet's clothes. ”

“ To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and of sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words. A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. ”

“ We feel that the playwright is, so to speak, inventing as he goes along--that the action, like the child's fantastic serpentine of blocks, might at any moment take a turn in any possible direction without falsifying its antecedents or our expectations. No part of it is necessarily involved in any other part. If the play were found too long or too short, an act might be cut out or written in without necessitating any considerable readjustments in the other acts. ”

“ We must not, however, forget that action itself is language. What is called the action of a play is simply a story told by the movements of the players. But when we see a man stabbed, or a woman kissed, our curiosity is excited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am not speaking of any particular man. I do not mean all playwrights when I say that I found playwrights as a class, not literary workers—but literary tricksters. I am not speaking of The Thing, nor of its author, of whom I have heard excellent word—when I say that plays are not written, but rewritten by elementals, who, through their sheer coarseness, sense the slow vibrations of the mob, and feculate the original lines to suit. ”

“ I have chuckled over many a farce situation that never got a laugh. A playwright’s words and his situations must have that strange power that will project them over the footlights. This projecting force is made up of instinct, experience, sincerity and a queer sense of rhythm, the timing of the dramatist.
When I am asked how much play writing may be taught I always hesitate. ”

“ The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course, in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood. ”

“ Finally, if every other investigation has failed to develop the needed punch, go over your playlet again to see if it is possible that you have erred in the first principle of the art. If you have permitted even one tiny scene to creep in that does not hold a vital meaning to the single point of your climax, you have lost by so much the possibility of the punch. Remember, here, that a great playlet can be played without a single word being spoken and still be vividly clear to everyone. ”