Writing for Vaudeville Part 25

In the old days of vaudeville the persons of a playlet were often named to fit their most prominent characteristic; for instance, a sneaky fellow would be named Sam Sly, and a pretty girl Madge Dimples. But with the change in fas.h.i.+on in the long play, the playlet has relegated this symbolical method of naming characters to burlesque and the lurid types of melodrama, and even there it is going out of fas.h.i.+on.

Today, names are carefully chosen to seem as life-like as do the characters themselves. Instead of trying to express characteristics by a name, the very opposite effect is sought, except when the character would in real life have a "monicker," or the naming of the character in the old way would serve to relate the act more closely to its form and awaken pleasing reminiscences. [1] The method today is to select a name that shall fit a character in a general way and yet be so un.o.btrusive that it will not be remarked.

[1] See The System and My Old Kentucky Home, in the Appendix.

Simple names are always the best. The shorter they are the better--usually nicknames, if true to life and the character, have a "homey" sort of sound that is worth securing. Bill, and Jack, and Madge, and Flo, or anyone of a hundred others, sound less formidable than William, and James, and Margaret, and Florence.

Names that are long and "romantic" are usually amusing; merely listen to Algernon, Hortense, and Reginald Montmorency, and you have to smile--and not always with pleasure.

But for a name to be simple or short or unromantic does not solve the problem for all cases. A long "romantic" name might be the very best one you could choose for a certain character. [1] The name you should select depends on what effect you wish to secure.

No one can tell you just what name to choose for a character you alone have in mind.

[1] See The Villain Still Pursued Her in the Appendix.

But do not make the mistake of pondering too long over the naming of your characters. It is not the name that counts, it is the character himself, and behind it all the action that has brought the character into being--your gripping plot.

And now, let us sum up this brief discussion of characters and characterization before we pa.s.s on to a consideration of dialogue.

Because of time-restriction, a playlet must depend for interest upon plot rather than upon character. The average number of persons in a playlet is four. Interesting characters are to be found everywhere, and the playlet writer can delineate those he rubs elbows with better than those he does not know well and therefore cannot fully understand. The same unity demanded of a plot is required of a character--characters must be consistent.

Characterization is achieved by the dramatic method of letting actions speak for themselves, is done in broad strokes growing out of the plot itself, and is conveyed in close partners.h.i.+p with the actor by working on the minds of the audience who take a meagre first impression and instantly build it up into a full portrait.

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 s.h.i.+nes 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. Clothes do not make a man, but the world gives him a readier welcome who wears garments that fit well and are becoming.

This is the whole secret of dialogue--speeches that fit well and are becoming.

1. What is Dialogue?

It has been said that "Romeo and Juliet" played in English in any country would be enjoyed by everyone, even though they could not understand a word of what was said. There is a story told about a Slav in Pennsylvania who could not speak one word of English, but who happened to come up from his work as a laborer in a coal mine just as the people were filing in to the performance of "The Two Orphans," and as he had nothing in particular to do, in he went--and nearly broke up the performance by the loudness of his sobbing. I shall never forget an experience of my own, when I took a good French friend to see David Warfield in "The Music Master"; this young chap could not understand more than a word here and there, but we were compelled to miss the last act because he cried so hard during the famous lost-daughter scene that he was ashamed to enter the theatre after the intermission.

Every great play is, in the last a.n.a.lysis, a pantomime. Words are unnecessary to tell a stage story that has its wellspring deep in the emotions of the human heart. Words can only embellish it. A great pantomimist--a Mlle. Dazie, who played Sir James M. Barrie's "The Pantaloon" in vaudeville without speaking a word; a Pavlowa, who dances her stories into the hearts of her audience; a Joe Jackson, who makes his audiences roar with laughter and keeps them convulsed throughout his entire act, with the aid of a dilapidated bicycle, a squeaky auto horn and a persistently annoying cuff--does not need words to tell a story.

The famous French playwright Scribe--perhaps the most ingenious craftsman the French stage has ever seen--used to say, "When my subject is good, when my scenario (plot) is very clear, very complete, I might have the play written by my servant; he would be sustained by the situation;--and the play would succeed."

Plutarch tells us that Menander, the master of Greek comedy, was once asked about his new play, and he answered: "It is composed and ready; I have only the verses (dialogue) to write." [1]

[1] Reported in A Study of the Drama, by Brander Matthews.

If it is true that a great play, being in its final a.n.a.lysis a pantomime, is effective without dialogue, and if some famous dramatists thought so little of dialogue that they considered their plays all written before they wrote the dialogue, then speech must be something that has little _comparative_ value--something primarily employed to aid the idea behind it, to add emphasis to plot--not to exist for itself.

2. The Uses of Dialogue

Dialogue makes the dramatic story clear, advances it, reveals character, and wins laughter--all by five important means:

(a) _Dialogue Conveys Information of Basic Events at the Opening_.

As we saw in the discussion of the structural elements of plot, there are of necessity some points in the basic incidents chosen for the story of a playlet that have their roots grounded in the past. Upon a clear understanding of these prior happenings which must be explained immediately upon the rise of the curtain, depends the effect of the entire sequence of events and, consequently, the final and total effect of the playlet. To "get this information over" the characters are made to tell of them as dramatically as possible. For instance:

Angela Maxwell knocks on Miss Carey's door the instant the curtain rises on "The Lollard," and as soon as Miss Carey opens the door Angela says: "Listen, you don't know me, but I've just left my husband." And the dialogue goes on to tell why she left Harry, clearly stating the events that the audience must know in order to grasp the meaning of those that follow.

At the very beginning of a playlet the dialogue must be especially clear, vividly informing and condensed. By "condensed," I meant the dialogue must be tense, and supported by swift action--it must without delay have done with the unavoidable explanations, and quickly get into the rising movement of events.

(b) _Dialogue Brings out the Incidents Clearly_. Never forgetting that action makes dialogue but that dialogue never makes action, let us take the admirable surprise ending of "The System," for an example:

The Inspector has left, after giving The Eel and Goldie their freedom and advising them to clear out and start life anew. The audience knows they are in hard straits financially. How are they going to secure the money to get away from town? Goldie expresses it concisely: "Well, we're broke again (tearfully). We can't go West now, so there's no use packing." This speech is like a sign-post that points out the condition the events have made them face. And then like a sign-post that points the other way, it adds emphasis to the flash of the surprise and the solution when The Eel, stealthily making sure no one will see him and no one can hear him, comes down to Goldie, sitting forlornly on the trunk, taps her on the shoulder and shows her Dugan's red wallet. Of course, the audience knows that the wallet spells the solution of all their problems, but The Eel clinches it by saying, "Go right ahead and pack."

Out of this we may draw one observation which is at least interesting, if not illuminating: When an audience accepts the premises of a playlet without question, it gives over many of its emotions and most of its reasoning power into the author's hands. Therefore the author must think for his audience and keenly suggest by dialogue that something is about to happen, show it as happening, and make it perfectly clear by dialogue that it has actually happened. This is the use to which dialogue is put most tellingly--bringing out the incidents in clear relief and at the very same time interpreting them cunningly.

(c) _Dialogue Reveals Character Humanly_. Character is tried, developed and changed not by dialogue, but by action; yet the first intimate suggestion of character is shown in dialogue; and its trials, development and change are brought into clear relief--just as events, of which character-change is the vital part, are made unmistakably clear--by the often illuminating word that fits precisely. As J. Berg Esenwein says, "Just as human interest is the heart of the narrative, so human speech is its most vivid expression. In everyday life we do not know a man until we have heard him speak. Then our first impressions are either confirmed, modified, or totally upset." [1]

[1] Writing the Short-Slory, page 247.

It is by making all of his characters talk alike that the novice is betrayed, whereas in giving each character individuality of speech as well as of action the master dramatist is revealed.

While it is permissible for two minor characters to possess a hazy likeness of speech, because they are so unimportant that the audience will not pay much attention to them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word--though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; their speech should show them as not only different from each other, but also different from every other character in the playlet--in the whole world, if possible--and their words should be just the words they and no others would use in the circ.u.mstances.

If you will remember that you must give to the dialogue of your chief characters a unity as complete as you must give to plot and character as shown through action, you will evade many dialogue dangers. This will not only help you to give individuality to each character, but also save you from making a character use certain individual expressions at one time and then at another talk in the way some other character has spoken. Furthermore, strict observance of this rule should keep you from putting into the mouth of a grown man, who is supposed to be most manly, expressions only a "sissy" would use; or introducing a character as a wise man and permitting him to talk like a fool. As in life, so in dialogue--consistency is a test of worth.

Keep your own personality out of the dialogue. Remember that your characters and not you are doing the talking. You have laid down a problem in your playlet, and your audience expects it to fulfill its promise dramatically--that is, by a mimicry of life. So it does not care to listen to one man inhabiting four bodies and talking like a quartet of parrots. It wants to hear four different personalities talk with all the individuality that life bestows so lavishly--in life.

You will find little difficulty in keeping your individuality out of dialogue if you will only remember that you cannot write intelligently of characters you do not know. Make use of the characters nearest you, submerge yourself in their individualities, and you will then be so interested in them that you will forget yourself and end by making the characters of your playlet show themselves in their dialogue as individual, enthrallingly entertaining, new, and--what is the final test of all dialogue--convincing.

(d) _Dialogue Wins Laughter_. There are three sources from which laughter rises out of dialogue. First, from the word that is a witticism, existing for its own sake. Second, from the word that is an intensely individual expression of character--the character-revealing phrase. Third, the word that is funny because it is spoken at the right instant in the action. All three have a place in the playlet, but the last, the dialogue that rises out of and illuminates a situation, is productive of the best results.

This is but another way of saying what cannot be too often repeated, that the playlet is plot. [1]

[1] See Chapter V, in which humor was discussed in relation to the monologue.

Even in dialect, dialogue does not bother with anything much but plot-expression of character. Indicate the odd twist of a character's thoughts as clearly as you can, but never try to reproduce all his speech phonetically. If you do, you will end disastrously, for your ma.n.u.script will look like a scrambled alphabet which n.o.body can decipher. In writing dialect merely suggest the broken English here and there--follow the method so clearly shown in "The German Senator." Remember that the actor who will be engaged to play the part has studied the expression of that particular type all his life. His method of conveying what you intend is likely to be different from your method. Trust him--for you must.

(e) _Dialogue Advances the Action and Rounds Out the Plot_.

Precisely in the way that incidents are brought out clearly by dialogue, dialogue advances the action and rounds out the plot at the curtain. Clear as I hope the method has been made, I wish to point out two dialogue peculiarities which come with the rise of emotion.

First, as the action quickens, there inevitably occurs a compression inherent in the dramatic that is felt by the dialogue. Joe Maxwell's epitome of vaudeville as he once expressed it to me in a most suggestive discussion of the two-a-day, ill.u.s.trates this point better, perhaps, than a chapter would explain: "Vaudeville is meat," he said, "the meat of action, the meat of words." There is no _time_ in vaudeville climaxes for one word that does not point out, or clinch home the action. Here action speaks louder than words. Furthermore, in the speed of bodily movement there is actually no time for words. If two men are grappling in a life and death struggle they can't stop for speech.

And second, as the playlet nears its ending there is no _need_ for explanatory words--if the preceding action has been dramatic.

Every new situation rises out of the old, the audience knows it all now, they even foresee the climax, and, in a well constructed playlet, they feel the coming-to-an-end thrill that is in the air.

What need is there for dialogue? Only a need for the clearing, clinching kind, and for

_The Finish Line_. While the last-speech of a playlet is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of plot, the finish line is peculiarly a part of dialogue. It is here, in the last line, that the tragic has a strangely illuminating force and the comic must be given full play. Indeed, a comedy act that does not end in a "scream" is hardly worth anything. And, as comedy acts are most in demand in vaudeville, I shall relate this discussion solely to the comic ending. Here it is, then, in the last line of a comedy act, that the whole action is rounded neatly off with a full play of fancy--with emphasis on the use of wit.

Of course I do not mean that the last line may be permitted to stray away from the playlet and crack an unrelated joke. But the last line, being a completing line, may return to some incident earlier than the closing action. It may with full profit even go back to the introduction, as "The Lollard's" last line takes Miss Carey back to her interrupted sleep with, "Now, thank Gawd, I'll get a little sleep."

Or it may be merely a quaint line, like that which ended a very successful playlet which has stuck in my memory, but whose t.i.tle I have forgotten. Here the sweethearts were brought together, they flew into each other's arms, they kissed. Naturally the curtain was on that kiss, but no--they drew apart and the girl rubbed her lips with the back of her hand. "Aw," said the boy, "what you rubbing it off for?" And the girl, half-crying, half-laughing, answered, "I ain't rubbing it off; I'm rubbing it _in!_"

Or the last line may be a character line, rounding back to the opening, perhaps, but having its mainspring in character, like the last line of "The Village Lawyer": "Well," he sighs--as he watches the money with which he could have satisfied his longing to buy a clarionet, disappear--"Maybe I couldn't play the darned thing anyway!" [1]

[1] Chapter XV, section I.