Writing for Vaudeville Part 22

Let us now determine definitely what a playlet plot is, consider its structural elements and then take one of the fine examples of a playlet in the Appendix and see how its plot is constructed.

The plot of a playlet is its story. It is the general outline, the plan, the skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters and clothed by their words. If the theme or problem is the heart that beats with life, then the scenery amid which the animated body moves is its habitation, and the dramatic spirit is the soul that reveals meaning in the whole.

To hazard a definition:

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. If this is so, let us now take the sequence of events that compose the story of "The Lollard" [1] and see what const.i.tutes them a plot. I shall not restate its story, only repeat it in the examination of its various points [2].

[1] Edgar Allan Woolf's fine satirical comedy to be found in the Appendix.

[2] As a side light, you see how a playlet theme differs from a playlet plot. You will recall that in the chapter on "The Germ Idea," the theme of The Lollard was thus stated in terms of a playlet problem: "A foolish young woman may leave her husband because she has 'found him out,' yet return to him when she discovers that another man is no better than he is." Compare this brief statement with the full statement of the plot given hereafter.

The coming of Angela Maxwell to Miss Carey's door at 2 A.M.--unusual as is the hour--is just an event; the fact that Angela has left her husband, Harry, basic as it is, is but little more than an event; the entrance of the lodger, Fred Saltus, is but another event, and even Harry Maxwell's coming in search of his wife is merely an event--for if Harry had sat down and argued Angela out of her pique, even though Fred were present, there would have been no complication, save for the cornerstone motive of her having left him. If this sequence of events forms merely a mildly interesting narrative, what, then, is the complication that weaves them into a plot?

The answer is, in Angela's falling in love with Fred's broad shoulders, wealth of hair and general good looks--this complication develops the crisis out of Harry's wanting Angela. If Harry hadn't cared, there would have been no drama--the drama comes from Harry's wanting Angela when Angela wants Fred; Angela wants something that runs counter to Harry's will--_there_ is the clash of wills out of which flashes the dramatic.

But still there would be no plot--and consequently no playlet--if Harry had acknowledged himself beaten after his first futile interview with Angela. The entanglement is there--Harry has to untangle it. He has to win Angela again--and how he does it, on Miss Carey's tip, you may know from reading the playlet. But, if you have read it, did you realize the dramatic force of the unmasking of Fred--accomplished without (explanatory) words, merely by making Fred run out on the stage and dash back into his room again? _There_ is a fine example of the revealing flas.h.!.+ This incident--made big by the dramatic--is the ironical solvent that loosens the warp of Angela's will and prepares her for complete surrender. Harry's entrance in full regimentals--what woman does not love a uniform?-- is merely the full rounding out of the plot that ends with Harry's carrying his little wife home to happiness again.

But, let us pursue this examination further, in the light of the preceding chapter. There would have been no drama if the _meaning_ of these incidents had not--because Angela is a "character" and Harry one, too--been inherent in them. There would have been no plot, nothing of dramatic spirit, if Harry had not been made by those events to realize his mistake and Angela had not been made to see that Harry was "no worse" than another man. It is the _change_ in Harry and the _change_ in Angela that changes their relations to each other--therein lies the essence of the plot. [1]

[1] Unfortunately, the bigger, broader meaning we all read into this satire of life, cannot enter into our consideration of the structure of plot. It lies too deep in the texture of the playwright's mind and genius to admit of its being plucked out by the roots for critical examination. The bigger meaning is there--we all see it, and recognize that it stamps The Lollard as good drama.

Each playwright must work out his own meanings of life for himself and weave them magically into his own playlets; this is something that cannot be added to a man, that cannot be satisfactorily explained when seen, and cannot be taken away from him.

Now, having determined what a plot is, let us take up its structural parts and see how these clearly understood principles make the construction of a playlet plot in a measure a matter of clear thinking.

II. THE VITAL PARTS OF THE PLOT

We must swerve for a moment and cut across lots, that we may touch every one of the big structural elements of plot and relate them with logical closeness to the playlet, summing them all up in the end and tying them closely into--what I hope may be--a helpful definition, on the last page of this chapter.

The first of the structural parts that we must consider before we take up the broader dramatic unities, is the seemingly obvious one that _a plot has a beginning, a middle and an ending_.

There has been no clearer statement of this element inherent in all plots, than that made by Aristotle in his famous twenty-century old dissection of tragedy; he says:

"Tragedy is an imitation of an action, that is complete and whole, and of a certain magnitude (not trivial). . . . A whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity or in the regular course of events, but has nothing to follow it. A middle is that which naturally follows something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to the type here described." [1]

[1] Aristotle, Poetics VII.

Let us state the first part of the doctrine in this way:

1. The Beginning Must State the Premises of the Problem Clearly and Simply

Although life knows neither a beginning nor an end--not your life nor mine, but the stream of unseparate events that make up existence--a work of art, like the playlet, must have both. The beginning of any event in real life may lie far back in history; its immediate beginnings, however, start out closely together and distinctly in related causes and become more indistinctly related the farther back they go. Just where you should consider the event that is the crisis of your playlet has its beginning, depends upon how you want to tell it--in other words, it depends upon you. No one can think for you, but there are one or two observations upon the nature of plot-beginnings that may be suggestive.

In the first place, no matter how carefully the dramatic material has been severed from connection with other events, it cannot be considered entirely independent. By the very nature of things, it must have its roots in the past from which it springs, and these roots--the foundations upon which the playlet rises--must be presented to the audience at the very beginning.

If you were introducing a friend of yours and his sister and brother to your family, who had never met them before, you would tell which one was your particular friend, what his sister's name was, and his brother's name, too, and their relations.h.i.+p to your friend.

And, if the visit were unexpected, you would--naturally and unconsciously--determine how they happened to come and how long you might have the pleasure of entertaining them; in fact, you would fix every fact that would give your family a clear understanding of the event of their presence. In other words, you would very informally and delicately establish their status, by outlining their relations to you and to each other, so that your family might have a clear understanding of the situation they were asked to face.

This is precisely what must be done at the very beginning of a playlet--the friends, who are the author's characters, must be introduced to his interested family, the audience, with every bit of information that is necessary to a clear understanding of the playlet's situation. These are the roots from which the playlet springs--the premise of its problem. Precisely as "The Lollard"

declares in its opening speeches who Miss Carey is and who Angela Maxwell is, and that Angela is knocking at Miss Carey's door at two o'clock in the morning because she has left Harry, her husband, after a quarrel the roots of which lie in the past, so every playlet must state in its very first speeches, the "whos" and "whys"--the premises--out of which the playlet logically develops.

The prologue of "The Villain Still Pursued Her" is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of this point. When this very funny travesty was first produced, it did not have a prologue. It began almost precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did not know whether to take it seriously or not. The instant he watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed the problem he had to face. He knew, then, that he would have to tell the next audience and every other that the playlet is a farce, a roaring travesty, to get the full value of laughter that lies in the situations. He pondered the matter and saw that if the announcement in plain type on the billboards and in the program that his playlet was a travesty was not enough, he would have to tell the audience by a plain statement from the stage before his playlet began. So he hit upon the prologue that stamps the act as a travesty in its very first lines, introduces the characters and exposes the roots out of which the action develops so clearly that there cannot possibly be any mistake. And his reward was the making over of an indifferent success into one of the most successful travesties in vaudeville.

This conveying to the audience of the knowledge necessary to enable them to follow the plot is technically known as "exposition." It is one of the most important parts of the art of construction--indeed, it is a sure test of a playwright's dexterity. While there are various ways of offering preliminary information in the long drama--that is, it may be presented all at once in the opening scene of the first act, or homeopathically throughout the first act, or some minor bits of necessary information may be postponed even until the opening of the second act--there is only one way of presenting the information necessary to the understanding of the playlet: It must all be compressed into the very first speeches of the opening scene.

The clever playlet writer is advertised by the ease--the simplicity--with which he condenses every bit of the exposition into the opening speeches. You are right in the middle of things before you realize it and it is all done so skillfully that its straightforwardness leaves never a suspicion that the simplicity is not innate but manufactured; it seems artless, yet its artlessness is the height of art. The beginning of a playlet, then, must convey to the audience every bit of information about the characters and their relations to each other that is necessary for clear understanding. Furthermore, it must tell it all compactly and swiftly in the very first speeches, and by the seeming artlessness of its opening events it must state the problem so simply that what follows is foreshadowed and seems not only natural but inevitable.

2. The Middle Must Develop the Problem Logically and Solve the Entanglement in a "Big" Scene

For the purpose of perfect understanding, I would define the "middle" of a playlet as that part which carries the story on from the indispensable introduction to and into the scene of final suspense--the climax--in which the chief character's will breaks or triumphs and the end is decided. In "The Lollard" this would be from the entrance of Fred Saltus and his talk with Angela, to Miss Carey's exposure of Fred's "lollardness," which breaks down Angela's determination by showing her that her husband is no worse than Fred and makes it certain that Harry has only to return to his delightful deceptions of dress to carry her off with him home.

(a) _The "Exciting Force."_ The beginning of the action that we have agreed to call the middle of a playlet, is technically termed "the exciting force." The substance of the whole matter is this: Remember what your story is and tell it with all the dramatic force with which you are endowed.

Perhaps the most common, and certainly the very best, place to "start the trouble"--to put the exciting force which arouses the characters to conflict--is the very first possible instant after the clear, forceful and foreshadowing introduction. The introduction has started the action of the story, the chief characters have shown what they are and the interest of the audience has been awakened. Now you must clinch that interest by having something happen that is novel, and promises in the division of personal interests which grow out of it to hold a punch that will stir the sympathies legitimately and deeply.

(b) _The "Rising Movement."_ This exciting force is the beginning of what pundits call "the rising movement"--in simple words, the action which from now on increases in meaning vital to the characters and their destinies. What happens, of course, depends upon the material and the treatment, but there is one point that requires a moment's discussion here, although closely linked with the ability to seize upon the dramatic--if it is not, itself, the heart of the dramatic. This important point is, that in every story set for the stage, there are certain

(c) _Scenes that Must be Shown_. From the first dawn of drama until today, when the motion pictures are facing the very same necessity, the problem that has vexed playwrights most is the selection of what scenes must be shown. These all-important scenes are the incidents of the story or the interviews between characters that cannot be recounted by other characters. Call them dramatic scenes, essential scenes, what you will, if they are not shown actually happening, but are described by dialogue--the interest of the audience will lag and each person from the first seat in the orchestra to the last bench in the gallery will be disappointed and dissatisfied. For instance:

If, instead of Fred Saltus' appearing before the audience and having his humorously thoughtless but nevertheless momentous talk with Angela _in which Angela falls in love with him_, the interview had been told the audience by Miss Carey, there would have been no playlet. Nearly as important is the prologue of "The Villian Still Pursued Her"; Mr. Denvir found it absolutely necessary to show those characters to the audience, so that they might see them with their own eyes in their farcical relations to each other, before he secured the effect that made his playlet. Turn to "The System" and try to find even one scene there shown that could be replaced by narrative dialogue and you will see once more how important are the "scenes that must be shown."

One of the all-rules-in-one for writing drama that I have heard, though I cannot now recall what playwright told me, deals with precisely this point. He expressed it this way: "First tell your audience what you are going to do, then show it to them happening, and then tell 'em it has happened!" You will not make a mistake, of course, if you show the audience those events in which the dramatic conflict enters. The soul of a playlet is the clash of the wills of the characters, from which fly the revealing flashes; a playlet, therefore, loses interest for the audience when the scenes in which those wills clash and flash revealingly are not shown.

It is out of such revealing scenes that the rising movement grows, as Freytag says, "with a progressive intensity of interest." But, not only must the events progress and the climax be brought nearer, but the scenes themselves must broaden with force and revealing power. They must grow until there comes one big scene--"big" in every way--somewhere on the toes of the ending, a scene next to the last or the last itself.

(d) _The Climax_. Here is where the decisive blow is struck in a moment when the action becomes throbbing and revealing in every word and movement. In "The Lollard" it is when Fred makes his revealing dash through the room--this is the dramatic blow which breaks Angela's infatuation. It is the crowning point of the crowning scene in which the forces of the playlet culminate, and the "heart wallop"--as Tom Barry calls it [1]--is delivered and the decision is won and made.

[1] Vaudeville Appeal and the "Heart Wallop," by Tom Barry, author of The Upstart and Brother Fans, an interesting article in The Dramatic Mirror of December 16, 1914. For this and other valuable information I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and to express my thanks to The Dramatic Mirror and its courteous Vaudeville Editor, Frederick James Smith.

Whatever this decision may be and however it is won and made, the climax must be first of all a real climax--it must be "big," whether it be a comedy scream or the seldom-seen tragic tear. Big in movement and expression it must be, depending for effect not on words but on the revealing flash; it must be the summit of the action; it must be the event toward which the entire movement has been rising; it must be the fulfillment of what was foreshadowed; it must be keen, quick, perfectly logical and _flash_ the illuminating revelation, as if one would say, "Here, this is what I've kept you waiting for--my whole reason for being." Need I say that such a climax will be worth while?

And now, as the climax is the scene toward which every moment of the playlet--from the first word of the introduction and the first scene-statement of the playlet's problem--has been motivated, and toward which it has risen and culminated, so also the climax holds within itself the elements from which develops the ending.

3. The Ending Must Round the Whole Out Satisfyingly.

For the purpose of clearness, let me define the ending of a playlet as a scene that lies between the climax or culminating scene--in which the audience has been made to feel the coming-to-an-end effect--and the very last word on which the curtain descends. If you have ever watched a sailor splicing a rope, you will know what I mean when I say that the worker, reaching for the loose ends to finish the job off neatly, is like the playlet writer who reaches here and there for the playlet's loose ends and gathers them all up into a neat, workmanlike finish. The ending of a playlet must not leave unfulfilled any promises of the premise, but must fulfill them all satisfyingly.

The characteristics of a good playlet ending--besides the completeness with which the problem has been "proved" and the satisfyingness with which it all rounds out--are terseness, speed and "punch."

If the climax is a part of the playlet wherein words may not be squandered, the ending is the place where words--you will know what I mean--may not be used at all. Everything that must be explained must be told by means which reach into the spectator's memory of what has gone before and make it the positive pole of the battery from which flash the wireless messages from the scene of action. As Emerson defined character as that which acts by mere presence without words, let me define the ending of a playlet as that which acts without words by the simple bringing together of the characters in their new relations.

The climax has said to the audience, "Here, this is what I've kept you waiting for--my whole reason for being," therefore the ending cannot dally--it must run swiftly to the final word. There is no excuse for the ending to linger over anything at all--the shot has been fired and the audience waits only for the smoke to clear away, that it may see how the bull's-eye looks. The swifter you can blow the smoke away, show them that you've hit the bull's-eye dead in the centre, and bow yourself off amid their pleased applause, the better your impression will be.

Take these three examples:

When Fred Saltus dashes revealingly across the stage and back into his room again, "The Lollard's" climax is reached; and as soon as Angela exclaims "What 'a lollard' _that_ is!" there's a ring at the door bell and in comes Harry to win Angela completely with his regimentals and to carry her off and bring the curtain down-- _in eight very short speeches_.

In "The System," the climax arrives when the honest Inspector orders Dugan arrested and led away. Then he gives "The Eel" and Goldie their freedom and exits with a simple "Good Night"--and the curtain comes down--_all in seven speeches_.