Writing for Vaudeville Part 20

1. What Dramatic Instinct Is

When you witness a really thrilling scene in a play you find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat; you clench your hands until the nails sink into your flesh; tears roll down your cheeks at other scenes, until you are ashamed of your emotion and wipe them furtively away; and you laugh uproariously at still other scenes. But your quickened heart-beats, your tears, and your laughter are, however, no evidence that you possess dramatic instinct--they are a tribute to the possession of that gift in the person who wrote the play. So do not confuse appreciation--the ultimate result of another's gift--with the ability to create: they are two very different things.

No more does comprehension of a dramatist's methods--a sort of detached and often cold appreciation--indicate the possession of gifts other than those of the critic.

Dramatic instinct is the ability to see the dramatic moments in real life; to grasp the dramatic possibilities; to pick out the thrills, the tears and the laughter, and to lift these out from the ma.s.s and set them--combined, coherent and convincing--in a story that seems truer than life itself, when unfolded on the stage by characters who are more real than reality. [1]

[1] Arniel in his Journal says: "The ideal, after all, is truer than the real; for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things; it is their type, their sum, their 'raison d'etre,' their formula in the book of the Creator, and therefore at once the most exact and the most condensed expression of them."

Elizabeth Woodbridge in her volume, The Drama, says: "It is in finding the mean between personal narrowness which is too selective, and photographic impersonality that is not selective at all, that the individuality of the artist, his training, and his ideals, are tested. It is this that determines how much his work shall possess of what we may call poetic, or artistic, truth." [end footnote]

Yet, true as it is that dramatic ability inevitably s.h.i.+nes through finished drama when it is well played upon the stage, there are so many determining factors of pleasing theme, acting, production and even of audience--and so many little false steps both in ma.n.u.script and presentation; which might be counted unfortunate accident--that the failure of a play is not always a sure sign that the playwright lacks dramatic instinct. If it were, hardly one of our successful dramatists of today would have had the heart to persevere--for some wrote twenty full-evening plays before one was accepted by a manager, and then plodded through one or more stage failures before they were rewarded with final success. If producing managers could unerringly tell who has dramatic instinct highly developed and who has it not at all, there would be few play failures and the show-business would cease to be a gamble that surpa.s.ses even horse-racing for hazard.

Not only is it impossible for anyone to weigh the quant.i.ty or to a.s.say the quality of dramatic instinct--whether in his own or another's breast--but it is as nearly impossible for anyone to decide from reading a ma.n.u.script whether a play will succeed or fail. Charles Frohman is reported to have said: "A man who could pick out winners would be worth a salary of a million dollars a year."

And even when a play is put into rehearsal the most experienced men in the business cannot tell unerringly whether it will succeed or fail before an audience. An audience--the heart of the crowd, the intellect of the ma.s.s, whatever you wish to call it--is at once the jury that tries a play and the judge who p.r.o.nounces sentence to speedy death or a long and happy life. It is an audience, the "crowd," that awards the certificate of possession of dramatic instinct. [1]

[1] [four paragraphs:]

From three of the ablest critics of the "theatre crowd" I quote a tabloid statement:

"The theatre is a function of the crowd," says Brander Matthews, "and the work of the dramatist is conditioned by the audience to which he meant to present it. In the main, this influence is wholesome, for it tends to bring about a dealing with themes of universal interest. To some extent, it may be limiting and even harmful--but to what extent we cannot yet determine in our present ignorance of that psychology of the crowd which LeBon has a.n.a.lyzed so interestingly."

Here is M. LeBon's doctrine neatly condensed by Clayton Hamilton: "The mental qualities in which men differ from one another are the acquired qualities of intellect and character; but the qualities in which they are one are basic pa.s.sions of the race. A crowd, therefore, is less intellectual and more emotional than the individuals that compose it. It is less reasonable, less judicious, less disinterested, more credulous, more primitive, more partisan; and hence, a man, by the mere fact that he forms a part of an organized crowd, descends several rungs on the ladder of civilization.

Even the most cultured and intellectual of men, when he forms an atom of a crowd, loses consciousness of his acquired mental qualities, and harks back to his primal nakedness of mind. The dramatist, therefore, because he writes for the crowd, writes for an uncivilized and uncultivated mind, a mind richly human, vehement in approbation, violent in disapproval, easily credulous, eagerly enthusiastic, boyishly heroic, and carelessly thinking."

And Clayton Hamilton himself adds that, ". . .both in its sentiments and in its opinions, the crowd is hugely commonplace. It is incapable of original thought and of any but inherited emotion.

It has no speculation in its eyes. What it feels was felt before the flood; and what it thinks, its fathers thought before it. The most effective moments in the theatre are those that appeal to commonplace emotions--love of women, love of home, love of country, love of right, anger, jealousy, revenge, ambition, l.u.s.t and treachery."

[end footnote]

2. What "Good Drama" Is

By what standards, then, do producers decide whether a play has at least a good chance of success? How is it possible for a manager to pick a successful play even once in a while? Why is it that managers do not produce failures all the time?

Leaving outside of our consideration the question of changeable fas.h.i.+ons in themes, and the commercial element (which includes the number of actors required, the scenery, costumes and similar factors), let us devote our attention, as the manager does, to the determining element--the story.

Does the story grip? Does it thrill? Does it lure to laughter?

Does it touch to tears? Is it well constructed--that is, does it interest every minute of the time? Is every word, is every action, thoroughly motivated? Is the dialogue fine? Are the characters interesting, lovable, hateable, laughable, to be remembered? Does it state its problem clearly, so that everyone can comprehend it, develop its angle absorbingly, and end, not merely stop, with complete satisfaction? Could one little scene be added, or even one little pa.s.sage be left out, without marring the whole? Is it true to life--truer than life? If it is all this, it is good drama.

Good drama is therefore more than plot. It is more than story plus characters, dialogue, acting, costumes, scenery--it is more than them all combined. Just as a man is more than his body, his speech, his dress, his movings to and fro in the scenes where he plays out his life, and even more than his deeds, so is a play more than the sum of all its parts. Every successful play, every great playlet, possesses a soul--a character, if you like--that carries a message to its audiences by means which cannot be a.n.a.lyzed.

But the fact that the soul of a great play cannot be a.n.a.lyzed does not prevent some other dramatist from duplicating the miracle in another play. And it is from a study of these great plays that certain mechanics of the drama--though, of course, they cannot explain the hidden miracle--have been laid down as laws.

3. What is Dramatic?

These few observations upon the nature of drama, which have scarcely been materially added to since Aristotle laid down the first over two thousand years ago, will be taken up and discussed in their relation to the playlet in the chapter on plot construction. Here they have no place, because we are concerned now not with _how_ the results are obtained, but with _what they are_.

Let us approach our end by the standard definition route. The word "drama" is defined by Webster as, "A composition in poetry or prose, or both, representing a picture of human life, arranged for action, and having a plot, developed by the words and actions of its characters, which culminates in a final situation of human interest. It is usually designed for production on the stage, with the accessories of costumes, scenery, music, etc."

"Dramatic," is defined as, "Of or pertaining to the drama; represented by action; appropriate to or in the form of a drama; theatrical.

Characterized by the force and fidelity appropriate to the drama."

In this last sentence we have the first step to what we are seeking: anything to be dramatic must be forceful, and it also must be faithful to life. And in the preceding sentence, "dramatic. . .

is theatrical," we have a second step.

But what is "forceful," and why does Webster define anything that is dramatic as "theatrical"? To define one shadow by the name of another shadow is not making either clearer. However, the necessary looseness of the foregoing definitions is why they are so valuable to us--they are most suggestive.

If the maker of a dictionary, [1] hampered by s.p.a.ce restrictions, finds it necessary to define "dramatic" by the word "theatrical,"

we may safely a.s.sume that theatrical effect has a foundation in the very heart of man. How many times have you heard someone say of another's action, "Oh, he did that just for theatrical effect"?

Instantly you knew that the speaker was accusing the other of a desire to impress you by a carefully calculated action, either of the fineness of his own character or of the necessity and righteousness of your doing what he suggested so forcefully. We need not go back several thousand years to Aristotle to determine what is dramatic. In the promptings of our own hearts we can find the answer. [2]

[1] Webster's Dictionary was chosen because it is, historically, closely a.s.sociated with American life, and therefore would seem to reflect the best American thought upon the peculiar form of our own drama.

[2] Sh.e.l.ley, in his preface to Cenci, says: "The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching of the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself."

What is dramatic, is not what falls out as things ordinarily occur in life's flow of seemingly disconnected happenings; it is what occurs with precision and purpose, and with results which are eventually recognizable as being far beyond the forces that show upon its face. In an illuminating flash that reveals character, we comprehend what led up to that instant and what will follow.

It is the revealing flash that is dramatic. Drama is a series of revealing flashes.

"This is not every-day life," we say, "but _typical_ life--life as it would be if it were compactly ordered--life purposeful, and leading surely to an evident somewhere."

And, as man's heart beats high with hope and ever throbs with justice, those occurrences that fall out as he would wish them are the ones he loves the best; in this we find the reason for "poetic justice"--the "happy ending." For, as "man is of such stuff as dreams are made of," so are his plays made of his dreams. Here is the foundation of what is dramatic.

Yet, the dramatic ending may be unhappy, if it rounds the play out with big and logical design. Death is not necessarily poignantly sad upon the stage, because death is life's logical end. And who can die better than he who dies greatly? [1] Defeat, sorrow and suffering have a place as exquisitely fitting as success, laughter and gladness, because they are inalienable elements of life. Into every life a little sadness must come, we know, and so the lives of our stage-loves may be "draped with woe," and we but love them better.

[1] "The necessity that tragedy and the serious drama shall possess an element of greatness or largeness--call it n.o.bility, elevation, what you will--has always been recognized. The divergence has come when men have begun to say what they meant by that quality, and--which is much the same thing--how it is to be attained. Even Aristotle, when he begins to a.n.a.lyze methods, sounds, at first hearing, a little superficial." Elizabeth Woodbridge, The Drama, pp. 23-24.

Great souls who suffer, either by the hand of Fate, or unjustly through the machinations of their enemies, win our sympathy for their sorrows and our admiration by their n.o.ble struggles. If Fate dooms them, there may be no escape, and still we are content; but if they suffer by man's design, there must be escape from sorrow and defeat through happiness to triumph--for, if it were not so, they would not be great. The heart of man demands that those he loves upon the stage succeed, or fail greatly, because the hero's dreams are our dreams--the hero's life is ours, the hero's sorrows are our own, and because they are ours, the hero must triumph over his enemies.

4. The Law of the Drama

Thus, for the very reason that life is a conflict and because man's heart beats quickest when he faces another man, and leaps highest when he conquers him, the essence of the dramatic is--conflict.

Voltaire in one of his letters said that every scene in a play should represent a combat. In "Memories and Portraits," Stevenson says: "A good serious play must be founded on one of the pa.s.sionate cruces of life, where duty and inclination come n.o.bly to the grapple." Goethe, in his "William Meister" says: "All events oppose him [the hero] and he either clears and removes every obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their victim." But it was the French critic, Ferdinand Brunetiere, who defined dramatic law most sharply and clearly, and reduced it to such simple terms that we may state it in this one free sentence: "Drama is a struggle of wills and its outcome."

In translating and expounding Brunetiere's theory, Brander Matthews in his "A Study of the Drama" condenses the French critic's reasoning into these illuminating paragraphs:

"It [the drama] must have some essential principle of its own.

If this essential principle can be discovered, then we shall be in possession of the sole law of the drama, the one obligation which all writers for the stage must accept. Now, if we examine a collection of typical plays of every kind, tragedies and melodramas, comedies and farces, we shall find that the starting point of everyone of them is the same. Some one central character wants something; and this exercise of volition is the mainspring of the action. . . . In every successful play, modern or ancient, we shall find this clash of contending desires, this a.s.sertion of the human will against strenuous opposition of one kind or another.

"Brunetiere made it plain that the drama must reveal the human will in action; and that the central figure in a play must know what he wants and must strive for it with incessant determination.

. . .Action in the drama is thus seen to be not mere movement or external agitation; it is the expression of a will which knows itself.

"The French critic maintained also that, when this law of the drama was once firmly grasped, it helped to differentiate more precisely the several dramatic species. If the obstacles against which the will of the hero has to contend are insurmountable, Fate or Providence or the laws of nature--then there is tragedy, and the end of the struggle is likely to be death, since the hero is defeated in advance. But if these obstacles are not absolutely insurmountable, being only social conventions and human prejudices, then the hero has a chance to attain his desire,--and in this case, we have the serious drama without an inevitably fatal ending.

Change this obstacle a little, equalize the conditions of the struggle, set two wills in opposition--and we have comedy. And if the obstacle is of still a lower order, merely an absurdity of custom, for instance, we find ourselves in farce."

Here we have, sharply and brilliantly stated, the sole law of drama--whether it be a play in five acts requiring two hours and a half to present, or a playlet taking but twenty minutes. This one law is all that the writer need keep in mind as the great general guide for plot construction.

Today, of course, as in every age when the drama is a bit more virile than in the years that have immediately preceded it, there is a tendency to break away from conventions and to cavil at definitions. This is a sign of health, and has in the past often been the first faint stirring which betokened the awakening of the drama to greater uses. In the past few years, the stage, both here and abroad, has been throbbing with dramatic unrest. The result has been the presentation of oddities--a mere list of whose names would fill a short chapter--which have aimed to "be different."

And in criticising these oddities--whose differences are more apparent than real--critics of the soundness and eminence of Mr.