The Autobiography of a Play / Papers on Play-Making, II

NOTES

This lecture was originally delivered in March, 1886, in the Sanders Theater, before the Shakspere Society of Harvard University; and it was repeated before the Nineteenth Century Club in New York in December, 1889. On the latter occasion two other dramatic authors were requested to debate the points made by the speaker; and as a result he added a few supplementary remarks:

The Nineteenth Century Club looks for a discussion, I believe, on the subject brought forward in the paper of this evening. If the word "discussion" implies "argument," I fear there is nothing in the mere struggles of a dramatist in his workshop to justify that difference of opinion which is necessary to an argument. My American colleague, Mr. Brander Matthews, must feel like a man whose wife persists from day to day in saying nothing that he can object to, thereby making his home a desert and driving him to the club. As for the great Irish dramatist, this paper leaves him still wishing that some one would tread on the tail of his coat. But, with all true Irishmen, the second party in a quarrel is merely a convenience, not a necessity. Whenever Mr. Boucicault feels that a public discussion is desirable for any reason, he can always tread on the tail of his own coat, and make quite as good a fight of it all by himself as if some one was assisting him.

And he ended with this reference to the constructive skill of Ibsen:

Another thing strikes me in connection with this subject: the praise of Ibsen, the Scandinavian dramatist, is abroad in England; and again, as so often before, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the direction of Boston. But some of the loudest worshippers of this truly great man in both countries either wilfully ignore, or else they know nothing about, his real greatness.

Ibsen holds in his hand the terrible power, in dealing with the evils of society, which dramatic construction gives to a genius like his; he has not laid this power aside and reduced his own stage to a mere lecture platform. A man armed with a sword who should lay it down in the heat of battle and take up a wisp of straw to fight with, would be a fool. Ibsen, like his great predecessors and contemporaries in France, deals his vigorous blows at social wrongs thru dramatic effects and the true dramatic relations of his characters. I know of no writer for the stage, past or present, who depends for his moral power more continuously at all points on the art of dramatic construction than Ibsen does. He, himself, would be the first to smile at those who praise him as if he were a writer of moral dialogs or the self-appointed lecturer for one of those psychological panoramas which are unrolled in acts, at a theater, or in monthly parts in a periodical.

In conclusion: to all who argue that careful construction is unnecessary in literary art, I will say only this: it is extremely easy not to construct.

It may be noted also that Bronson Howard returned to the topic of his lecture in a contribution to the Dramatic Mirror in 1900; he called this

A MERE SUGGESTION.

So much is written in critical notices of plays, about their "construction," that I should like to suggest a few of the considerations which that term involves. It is possible that some of the beginners, who are to become the future dramatists of America, will see the necessity of thinking twice before using the term at all. Some of the more general considerations to be kept in view, when a careful and properly educated critic feels justified in using the word "construction," may be jotted down as follows:

I. The actual strength of the main incident of a play.

II. Relative strength of the main incident, in reference to the importance of the subject; and also to the length of the play.

III. Adequacy of the story in relation to the importance and dignity of the main incident and of the subject.

IV. Adequacy of the original motives on which the rest of the play depends.

V. Logical sequence of events by which the main incident is reached.

VI. Logical results of the story after the main incident is passed.

VII. The choice of the characters by which the sequence of events is developed.

VIII. Logical, otherwise natural, use of motives in these particular characters, in leading from one incident to another.

IX. The use of such human emotions and passions as are universally recognized as true, without those special explanations which belong to general fiction and not to the stage.

X. The relation of the story and incidents to the sympathies of the audience as a collection of human beings.

XI. The relation of the story and incidents to the sympathies of the particular audience for which the play is written; to its knowledge and ignorance; its views of life; its social customs; and to its political institutions, so far as they may modify its social views, as in the case of a democracy or an aristocracy.

Minor matters—such as the use of comic relief, the relation of dialog to action, the proper use of superfluous characters to prevent an appearance of artificiality in the treatment, and a thousand other details belonging to the constructive side of a play—must also be within the critic's view; but a list of them here would be too long for the space available. When the young critic has made a careful study of the standard English drama, with a special view to the proper considerations above indicated, his opinion on the "construction" of a play will be of more or less value to American dramatic literature.

There is, of course, no overt novelty in the theory advanced by Bronson Howard in his address. The same theory was held by Francisque Sarcey, who declared that all the principles of playmaking might be deduced from the fact that a piece is always intended for performance before an audience. And Marmontel, dramatist as well as dramatic theorist, asserted that the first rule the play-wright must obey is "to move the spectators, and the second is to move them only in so far as they are willing to be moved.... This depends on the disposition and the manners of the people to whom appeal is made and on the degree of sensibility they bring to the theater.... This is therefore a point in which tragedy is not invariable."

The same principle underlies George Meredith's statement in regard to Comedy: "There are plain reasons why the comic poet is not a frequent apparition; and why the great comic poet remains without a fellow. A society of cultivated men and women is required wherein ideas are current and the perception quick, that he may be supplied with matter and an audience."

B. M.

OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE COPIES WERE PRINTED FROM TYPE BY CORLIES, MACY AND COMPANY IN NOVEMBER: MCMXIV

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First Series

Papers on Playmaking:

I	THE NEW ART OF WRITING PLAYS. By Lope de Vega. Translated by William T. Brewster. With an Introduction and Notes by Brander Matthews.
II	THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PLAY. By Bronson Howard. With an Introduction by Augustus Thomas.
III	THE LAW OF THE DRAMA. By Ferdinand BrunetiÈre. Translated by Philip M. Hayden. With an Introduction by Henry Arthur Jones.
IV	ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AS A DRAMATIST. By Arthur Wing Pinero. With an Introduction and Bibliographical Appendix by Clayton Hamilton.

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