Plotter

“ The reader is reminded that the schemes of skilled plotters, resorted to for the purpose of defeating the spirit of the law, are, for the most part, too elaborate and too intricate to be made the subject of popular discussion. ”

“ How like a truth sounds a lye from the tongue of a fine woman.
[Aside.
Clink. This, Madam, is Mr. Plotwell; a Gentleman who is so infinitely obliging, as to introduce my play on the theatre, by fathering the unworthy issue of my muse, at the reading it this morning.
Plot. I should be proud, madam, to be a real father to any of your productions. [150]
Clink. Mighty just. Ha, ha, ha. You know, Mr. Plotwell, that both a parrot and a player can utter human sounds, but we allow neither of them to be a judge of wit. ”

“ The novice may attach little or no importance to this initial move in the creation of a photoplay, but study and the experience that comes with practical analysis and the actual work of plot-building will lend emphasis to the statement that no single consideration demands more careful and thoughtful attention. Let us assume that when the drop-curtain rises in a motion picture theatre and the shadow action commences, the audience is looking, not at figures projected upon a screen, but through a window into the private lives of fictitious characters around whom the plot is woven. ”

“ If we have sought an explanation of our poet's gentle foibles in the commentaries to our college texts, we have assuredly been disappointed. Even to the seminarian in Plautus little satisfaction has been vouchsafed. We are often greeted by the enthusiastic comments of German critics, which run riot in elaborate analyses of plot and character and inform us that we are reading Meisterwerke of comic drama.3 Our perplexity has perhaps become focused upon two leading questions; first: "What manner of drama is this after all? Is it comedy, farce, opera bouffe or mere extravaganza?" ”

“ As the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer, those footsteps that sound so loud in that Other-World and come so silently in this, Plattner perceived about him a great multitude of dim faces gathering together out of the darkness and watching the two people in the room. Never before had he seen so many of the Watchers of the Living. A multitude had eyes only for the sufferer in the room, another multitude, in infinite anguish, watched the woman as she hunted with greedy eyes for something she could not find. ”

“ He aptly points out that Plautus in his selection of originals has in the main chosen plots with more vigorous action than Terence. We shall have occasion to quote him at intervals, but desire to develop this topic quite independently.
1. Pointless badinage and padded scenes.
Strong evidence of loose construction and lack of a technical dramatic ideal is contained in the large number of scenes padded out with pointless badinage, often tiresome, often wholly episodical in nature, as the monodies, and putting for a time a complete check on the plot. The most striking of these is Aul. ”

“ We may perhaps think of actors having the right to add something to the poet's words: the drama as it stands is not perfectly filled in, and they are to supply where the Author has left blank spaces here and there; the actors are to be something else as well; they become parts of the poet, who on his side has a foreknowledge of the word they will add, and so is able to bind into one story what the actors bring in and what is to follow. ”

“ A playlet plot is a sequence of events logically developed out of a theme or problem, into a crisis or entanglement due to a conflict of the characters' wills, and then logically untangled again, leaving the characters in a different relation to each other—changed in themselves by the crisis.
Note that a mere series of incidents does not make a plot—the presence of crisis is absolutely necessary to plot. If the series of events does not develop a complication that changes the characters in themselves and in their relations to each other, there can be no plot. ”

“ Will makes a compact with Peele. Promises Anne rare gifts and kissing his mother goes.
The scenario drawn up, the next step is to develop the plot. The plot of a one-act play, to be effective, must be extraordinarily compact. The accepted laws of plot construction for all artistic narratives are the same. The climax must be carefully prepared for, as in Synge's Riders to the Sea, and the various devices used for heightening the suspense should be discovered and applied. ”

“ Plotinus speaks in the same sense under another image in one of his most celebrated passages: “We always move 24round the One, but we do not always fix our gaze upon It. We are like a choir of singers standing round the conductor, who do not always sing in time, because their attention is diverted to some external object. When they look at the conductor, they sing well and are really with him. So we always move round the One. If we did not, we should dissolve and cease to exist. But we do not always look towards the One. ”

“ For if he attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? ”

“ A well constructed playlet plot is one whose Beginning states the premises of its problem clearly and simply, whose Middle develops the problem logically and solves the entanglement in a "big" scene, and whose Ending rounds out the whole satisfyingly— with a surprise, if fitting. ”

“ Plotinus in designating the nous as the creator's son had prepared the way most excellently for Synesius. Plotinus says: “As he who diligently surveys the heavens, and contemplates the splendor of the stars, should immediately think upon and search after their artificer, so it is requisite that he who beholds and admires the intelligible world, should diligently inquire after its author, investigating who he is, where he resides, and how he produces such an offspring as intellect, a son beautiful and pure, and full of his ineffable fire.” ”

“ At that the multitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying began all about him. The woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the candle flame. At the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of wind, icy cold, blew [27] through the host of watchers. They swirled about him like an eddy of dead leaves in the spring, and at the third stroke something was extended through them to the bed. You have heard of a beam of light. This was like a beam of darkness, and looking again at it, Plattner saw that it was a shadowy arm and hand. ”

“ Another value of the detailed study of the point of attack lies in the assistance that it renders in avoiding too complicated subjects. If the author finds that his plot is so complex and intricate that there is great difficulty in getting it started in such a manner that it will be clear and easily comprehended by the audience, he would better either simplify it or sweep it aside and start on an entirely new story. Above all things a photoplay must be understandable to every member of the audience. ”

“ Was it George Cohan who said "a vaudeville audience is of the mental age of a nine-year-old child"?
Theoretically and, of course, practically too, when it is possible, the characters of a playlet should be as interesting as the plot. Each should vitally depend upon the other. But, if you must choose whether to sacrifice plot-interest or character-interest, save the interest of plot every time. ”

“ In the course of it we have insensibly encroached upon the next topic: the relation of public and actor. Who after all is the chief factor in the success or failure of a drama, in spite of the oft misquoted adage, "The play's the thing?" The actor! The actor, who can mouth and tear a passion to tatters, or swing a piece of trumpery into popular favor by the brute force of his dash and personality. That this was true in Plautus' day, no less than in our own, is plainly indicated by the personal allusion inserted in the Bac. ”

“ For a certain Potts, a creature who, in reality, had no existence; “For who is Potts?” said I. “Potts is no more a substance than Caleb Williams or Peregrine Pickle; Potts is the lay figure that the artist dresses in any costume he requires—a Rachero to-day, a Railway Director to-morrow. What an absurdity in the importance we lend to mere names! Here, for instance, I take the label off the port, and I hang it round the neck of the claret decanter: have I changed the quality of the vintage? have I brought Bordeaux to the meridian of Oporto? ”

“ It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his body, and ’tis very likely he had good reason for it,—that his body was a bad servant, and he had not skill in dealing with the material world, as happens often to men of abstract intellect. ”

“ Can anything so thoroughly destroy the phantom of false enthusiasm as establishing the real object of the true? Let us then boldly enlist ourselves under the banners of Plotinus, and, by his assistance, vigorously repel the encroachments of error, plunge her dominions into the abyss of forgetfulness, and disperse the darkness of her baneful night. For indeed there never was a period which required so much philosophic exertion, or such vehement contention from the lovers of Truth. On all sides nothing of philosophy remains but the name, and this is become the subject of the vilest prostitution ”

“ Potter's cove the less likely it seemed to Peter that Mrs. Potter would be much awed by the clothes. By the time he was within half a mile of the cove he was not only sure that Mrs. Potter was not the woman to be awed by anything, but he began to wish he had not bought the clothes. He could imagine her tone as she put her hands on her hips and looked him over and said, “Well, of all the shiftlessness I ever heard tell of! Goin' and dressin' yourself up like a dude, and you not a roof in the world to hide your head under!” ”

“ In doing so, I must needs throw off all disguises and mockeries, and be Potts, the very creature she sneered at, the man whose mere name was enough to suggest a vulgar life and a snob's nature! No matter what misery it may give, I will do it manfully. She may never appreciate—the world at large may never appreciate—what noble motives were hidden beneath these assumed natures, mere costumes as they were, to impart more vigor and persuasiveness to sentiments which, uttered in the undress of Potts, would have carried no convictions with them. ”

“ But a trifle larger—the size of one of Polter's giants—would enable us to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might only be mistaken for Polter's people. And when we got closer we would diminish our size, creep into the boat, get near Babs and Polter and then plan what to do.
Futile plans! All of life is so futile, so wind-swept upon the tossing sea of chance! ”

“ Whenever they looked at him, Plattner was overcome with a strange sense of responsibility. To his mother he ventured to speak; but she made no answer. She looked sadly, steadfastly, and tenderly—a little reproachfully, too, it seemed—into his eyes.
He simply tells this story: he does not endeavour to explain. We are left to surmise who these Watchers of the Living may be, or if they are indeed the Dead, why they should so closely and passionately watch a world they have left for ever. ”

“ Without the plot, the writer's script will remain forever a script, a mere piece of hand- or typewriting; it will never be transformed by the magic wand of the director into a film picture. Remember always that the photoplay is nothing but a series of scenes in action which make up a story. How can you expect to have action without a sufficient cause for every effect shown and the scenes arranged in such order as to produce a complete illusion of a connected, progressive, climax-reaching story? ”

“ No one coins them independently out of his own brain; little by little men are impelled along the path that leads to such conclusions. Plotinus was a careful student of the philosophers that preceded him. He saw that mind must be distinguished from matter, and he saw that what is given a location in space, in the usual sense of the words, is treated like a material thing. On the other hand, he had the common experience that we all have of a relation between mind and body. ”

“ And then it was he discovered, that to almost every human being in our world there pertained some of these drifting heads: that everyone in the world is watched intermittently by these helpless disembodiments.
What are they—these Watchers of the Living? Plattner never learned. But two, that presently found and followed him, were like his childhood's memory of his father and mother. Now and then other faces turned their eyes upon him: eyes like those of dead people who had swayed him, or injured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood. ”

“ All is just and good in the Universe in which every actor is set in his own quite appropriate place, though it be to utter in the Darkness and in Tartarus the dreadful sounds whose utterance there is well.
This Universe is good not when the individual is a stone, but when everyone throws in his own voice towards a total harmony, singing out a life- thin, harsh, imperfect, though it be. ”

“ Indeed, the fate of a soul conforms to her character, and, by going through with her part properly, the soul fulfils her part in the drama managed by universal Reason. The soul sings her part, that is, she does that which is in her nature to do. If her voice and features be beautiful, by themselves, they lend charm to the poem, as would be natural. Otherwise they introduce a displeasing element, but which does not alter the nature of the work.73 The author of the drama reprimands the bad actor as the latter may deserve it, and thus fulfils the part of a good judge. ”