The play of today; studies in play-structure for the student and the theatre-goer

Front matter

FLAYGr-TODAr

STUDIES IN STRUCTURE •

3 1924 026 079 065

Preface

IN the hope of interesting those who recognize the assthetic and social values of the acted drama, and are willing to be at reasonable pains to grasp its structure and methods of appeal, so that they may meet good plays halfway when they are presented in the theater, this book is offered to the public.

There are playgoers and playgoers. The best playgoer is he whose enjoyment is greatest. To give pleasure is the most logical reason for producing plays ; to get pleasure, the most sensible reason for going to see them. Even the desire to " see something funny " is absolutely rational. The shock of hearty laughter is invigorating and refreshing. It stimulates the circulation and aids digestion. And since, in existing conditions, the usual time for our souls to have their adventures with dramatic masterpieces is the relaxed and digestive interval between dinner and the suburban trains, it is not unaccountable that the amusing play is popular.

It is unfortunate, however, not to enjoy anjrthing but laughter in the theater. For even if the exhausted moderns who profess to care for nothing but fun could see farcical plays continually, they might grow as tired of them as of everything else. But good farce is always so rare as to limit the theatergoing of those who tolerate no other sort of play. Depending solely upon mirth for the restoration of our jaded faculties,

PREFACE we might all perish of fatigue in the course of one theatrical season.

Fortunately there is another kind of enjoyment in the theater which is as rational and beneficial, and ought to be well nigh as universal as the love of laughter. It is the delight which springs from the recognition of points well made, attention economized, and dramatic effects triumphantly brought off — the kind of delight which makes the spectator say to himself or to his neighbor, " Well done ! " and perhaps applaud and cry " Bravo ! "

This demands a certain receptivity and capacity for appreciation. But it is a mistaken notion that to be thus receptive is the exclusive privilege of the student of dramaturgies, or the professional critic, or the man of letters. The drama (we say it again and again) is the most democratic and whole-souled of the arts. The secrets of its power are not locked away from any one. A sound and sane unprofessional knowledge of the means used in good drama to create successful effects is not a matter of high culture or laborious scholarship. The underlying principles of play structure are based on common sense and human nature. Any mind capable of understanding how a house is built can grasp the fundamentals of how a play is made.

Among English speaking people, the greatest obstacle in the way of popular and widespread familiarity with the technique of the play is a certain lurking prejudice. Being of Anglo-Saxon blood, we are heirs and assigns to strange traditions about art. One of the most firmly intrenched of these traditions is that study of method tends to destroy enjoyment of effect.

PREFACE ix

Consciously or subconsciously we are fearful of knowing so much about dramatic technique that our enjoyment in the theater may lose its spontaneity. It is a curious apprehension. Reasoning backward from it, one would expect to find the English speaking audience habitually swept by whirlwinds of enthusiasm. In reality, we take our enjoyment of art in the theater, or elsewhere, rather stoically. Seldom is there any illusion to be dispelled by familiarity with method, or any other casualty. It is the Frenchman, with his minute knowledge of technical devices, who goes into temperamental ecstasies when he is pleased at the play.

The receptivity and appreciation of the theatergoing public is a matter of far-reaching importance. In the development of national drama, the direct and first-hand responsibility of the audience has been recognized at all times and in all lands. Without audi- "ences there would be no plays. A lyrist may sing to disburden his soul; a Pictor Ignotus may paint for endless cloisters and eternal aisles; but the dramatist writes plays for the assembled contemporary audience. The theatergoing public crowds the background of his consciousness while he is working; and it follows, as the night the day, that the finer the appreciation he can count on, the better the quality of the drama he will turn out.

Thus the public, creating the only conditions under which plays can exist, and having power to keep acted plays to the level of its own intelligence and taste, is partaker in the drama, as in no other of the fine arts.

In the wake of the recent revival of dramatic literature, there are many indications that the public is

PREFACE beginning to realize the delights and the obligations of its vital connection with the play of its own day. One indication is that theater audiences are organizing, so as to exert more eifectual influence. The socalled Drama Leagues in this country have grown in a few years to vast proportions.

Leagues and clubs, however, are made up of individuals, each one of whom must do something for himself, if he is to become a creative spectator.

The place to study the drama is in the theater, and the way to study it is not to begin with rules (there are no rules), but to observe how the truly dramatic play is made.

Observation, however, is always and everjrwhere a rare accomplishment. If the present work is to any degree successful in opening the eyes and ears of drama students in the theater, and stimulating their observation so that their reading of plays in the class room or by the fireside may go on more prosperously,' its purpose will be fulfilled.

The illustrations are drawn from the drama of recent years, and it has been thought desirable to comment extensively upon a few plays, rather than to make scattering references to many.

In preparing this volume, the author has slightly revised various articles which have appeared during the last four years in the Chicago Record-Herald and Trihume. An article on " Acting Scenery," recently published in The Drama, is also included, as well as several lectures delivered before Woman's Clubs in and about Chicago.

PREFACE XI

Grateful acknowledgment is tendered to the editors of the Record-Herald, the Tribune and The Drama for courteous permission to republish the articles which first appeared in their pages.

Elizabeth B.. Hunt,

Evanston, Illinois,

Contents

Paoe I Drama Study 1'''

Drama and Literature Preliminaries for Study The Subtler Dramatic Qualities Seeing a Play Twice

II The Exposition and the Exciting Foece . 26 Illustrated by " The Servant in, the Home "

II The Exposition And The Exciting Force

Illustrated by " The Servant in the House "

IN modern dramatic art, the introduction or exposition of the action, incorporated as it is in the play and forming part of the first act, has becomes a most interesting study. Its function obviously is to form a link between outside events and those inclosed and set apart in the play.

It seems a simple matter merely to give the audience information enough to make the onset of the action intelligible; but to present the facts dramatically and economically is not so easy. It taxes the ingenuity of the dramatist to the uttermost. Fortunately, at the beginning of the play he has himself and his material in hand, and can do as he pleases. The action has not yet gained the impetus that sweeps everything before it. Three purposes the exposition must always serve: It must look backward, clearing away the mists that hang over the creation of the little world on the stage; it must look forward, especially as the introduction begins to merge into the growth of the action, so as to grapple this part firmly to the rest of the play and make it organic ; and then it must be so interesting as

EXPOSITION AND EXCITING FORCE 27 to beguile and befool the audience into thinking that the action has begun, when it is merely getting ready to begin. At the opening every moment is precious. It is far easier to keep the attention of the audience from the first than to recover it after it has been lost.

In present-day plays, the looking backward is often done by the gossiping servant, who, on the rising of the curtain, is discovered dusting the furniture and talking about the family affairs — as in Sardou's " Divorfons." The stage parlor maid, with her inefficient feather duster, is a frequent apparition. The returned traveller, asking for news, is also familiar to the theatergoer — as in Jones' " Whitewashing Julia." Then there are the two old friends who fall into a don't-you-remember mood and recite their reminiscences at the more or less impatient audience — as in " Hedda Gabler." Sometimes a hotel proprietor describes his guests to a newcomer — as in " The Man From Home." Occasionally a newspaper reporter is employed to draw out useful information in an interview — as in Pinero's " His House in Order." At this point in a play a great deal of information flies about that is more valu-' able to the audience than anyone can suppose it to be to the characters in the play; but we put up with the transparent illusions, because we know that there is one thing in a play worse than artificiality, and that is obscurity.

The looking forward is usually accomplished by touches of description which make the audience curious, so that the chief characters may have good " enters " when they appear on the stage. Hints of what is about to happen are continually thrown out, and important arrivals are announced with great commotion. The audience must at all costs be made anticipatory.

By way of making sure that the attention does not for a moment flag, a little fictitious excitement is often created that comes to nothing at all so far as the real action is concerned. A ball may be in progress — in the wings, of course, A dinner party may have just broken up. A dispute may be going on that threatens to become a quarrel.

Sometimes, at the very outset, a speech is uttered or an incident happens that is inevitably recalled at the far close of the play, thus creating an effect of completeness — a return of the action upon itself. This helps to deepen the central dramatic impression.

Most artistic of all is the employrnent of some device to set the tone of the piece and put the audience at once into the right mood, serious, hilarious, meditative, apprehensive or poetic, as the case may be. It is the highest art to do this artlessly.

An Adequate Exposition

" The Servant in the House " makes an adequate exposition, so that the audience is not puzzled and left in the dark, nor is its attention overtaxed, as often is the case in the too ingenious modern play. It is interesting to note how, here as elsewhere in this play, the commonest of means are adapted to the most uncommon ends.

The curtain rises upon two servants, one of whom is new to the place. Nothing is more ordinary than that. For the first few speeches, Manson keeps his back to the audience, so that when he turns he may achieve something like an entrance. But even before he faces about, the keynote is struck with no uncertain sound. The page boy is sure that he has seen this new

EXPOSITION AND EXCITING FORCE 29

butler somewhere before — thinks perhaps it 's the reincarnation the Daily Mail has been writing about. What could be more admirable than this suggestion of the mystical atmosphere that is to enwrap the whole play?

The scene between the servants gives the exposition a backward look which is prolonged in the colloquy between Mary (who is a variation upon the familiar kigerme of so many modern plays) and the new butler. This conversation between the young girl and the newcomer finally culminates in the first dramatic revelation of the piece — Mary's recognition of her long-lost uncle, the Bishop of India, in the person of the servant Manson. Thus the audience is fully prepared for the fine irony of many subsequent speeches.

By way of looking backward again, the boy throws out an intimation that his master has not always been so high in the world. At this moment the vicar comes in, and to give matters a forward movement, remarks that he is expecting a visitor. Then he starts in surprise at the new butler, and is sure that he has seen him somewhere before. By the time it is made clear that the expected guest is the vicar's brother, the Bishop of India, and incidentally, that Mary is the daughter of another brother, the audience is pretty well prepared for the opening of the action.

As is frequently the case, however, the exposition overlaps the scene that introduces the exciting force. The audience has yet to learn that the vicar's wife's brother, the Bishop of Lancashire, is also expected to luncheon. This information is held back till after Mary and Manson have had their confidential talk, in the course of which the child describes the noisome condition of that drain which is impairing the usefulness at once of the pulpit and the vicar's study, and which, since it has much to do with assembling the characters and giving the action a vigorous forward impulse, may be considered the strange, exciting force of the play.

All this time there is a slight bustle of preparation for that luncheon which, as the vicar's wife puts it, is to be quite a church congress, two bishops being expected. The fact that the play rounds itself to a conclusion just before luncheon time does not interfere with the enlivening effect of the preparations upon the expositional part of the action.

The speech at the beginning that is destined to be recalled at the end is Manson's " Then — Brother ! " as he proffers his hand to be taken by the surprised vicar. The. last speech of the play is in reply to the vicar's question: "In God's name, who are you.'"' Manson's answer is, " In God's name — your brother." Then the vicar clasps his hand as before, but this time sinks to his knees.

Thus the wheel turns full circle, and the central idea of brotherhood is firmly emphasized.

The Exciting Force

It is a temptation to linger over the art of making the exposition, because what it chiefly employs is ingenuity; and that is comparatively easy to explain and to understand. But when the action sets in, and events begin to happen inevitably, and the stress and strain begin to be felt, then even those who are fondest of taking the craftsman's view of a play are apt to be daunted, and to own themselves inadequate to do more than observe and wonder.

The exposition, however, must always be short and

EXPOSITION AND EXCITING FORCE 31

shortened, and there is no avoiding the plunge into the action.

Two points are always discoverable in a good play, no matter what other technicalities are slighted or dispensed with altogether. There must somewhere emerge from the complications an exciting force to set the action in motion, and a climactic point or scene for the culmination of the plot.

The exciting or disturbing force is anything that operates to change the condition of affairs from balance or repose to that action or struggle which makes the play. In a thoroughly unified plot the effect of the disturbing force is plainly to be seen upon each of the principal characters in turn, and upon all the events as they succeed one another in the rise or growth of the action. The most elaborate dramatic mechanism may thus be set in motion by one and the same impulse or series of impulses.

In " The Servant in the House " the condition of the drain beneath the church and the vicar's study may be considered the starting point of the action, although that hardly brings the disturbing force within the narrow time limit of the play. The sequence of events is something like this :

1. The old church has fallen into a terrible state of decay.

2. The vicar starts a restoration fund and tries everything — all his rich friends, bazaars, jumble sales, special intercessions — everything !

S. The vicar's appeal to the public brings a letter from the Bishop of India, who promises to restore the church if anyone will help him.

4. The proviso " if anyone will help me " inspires the vicar's wife to summon her brother, the rich Bishop of Lancashire, who, though he has always ignored the vicar, is now ambitious to be associated with the farfamed Bishop of India.

6. The vicar, meantime, has received another unexpected letter, this one from his reprobate brother Robert, who, after a silence of fifteen y^ars, announces himself for a visit. The vicar telegraphs that he cannot entertain him (Robert), because the drains are up in the study. Robert inclines to believe it all a lie, but, since drains are in his line, comes to have a look at the vicarage in case there is really anything wrong.

So the bad drainage (which in its dramatic quality has, it must be admitted, an amusing side) not only starts up the action vigorously all through the play, but assembles the characters, by bringing upon the scene first Manson, then Robert and finally the Bishop of Lancashire.

It may be observed in passing that the outcome of the telegram to Robert is a perfect illustration of that reversal or recoil of action which has been a successful dramatic device ever since there were plays in the world. A time-honored means by which the action may be forced to rise toward a climax or swiftly fall to a catastrophe is to make a given expedient not only useless to bring about the result intended, but productive of exactly the opposite eflfect, thus recoiling upon itself. The vicar's excuse about the drains not only fails to stand off the undesirable brother, but serves to bring him speedily to the vicarage ; a typical case of dramatic reversal.

It is perhaps wide of the mark to add that the style of plumbing at the vicarage is unfamiliar and somewhat startling. Any method of repair that would require the sewer pipes to be dragged out and displayed upon

EXPOSITION AND EXCITING FORCE 33

the study carpet — however, it is probably a highly dramatic, not to say romantic, kind of plumbing, and that is doubtless better for stage purposes than anything more sanitary and convenient.

Ill

THE RISE OR GROWTH OF THE ACTION

Illustrated hy " El Gram Galeoto "

Bt Jose Echegarat

BEFORE the action begins to develop, the exposition is partly or entirely finished, the chief characters have made their " enters " upon the stage, and the exciting force has been exerted. The situation at this point may be summed up by saying " Something must be done about it ! " The decks are cleared for action, and the excitement begins to mount.

This sounds interesting; but no organic part of a play is more difficult to handle from the craftsman's standpoint than that vrhich extends from the exciting force to the climactic point or scene. Doubtless the fact that this is, as far as the dramatists have deposed and testified, the hardest part to write, may account for the difficulties which oppose themselves to even the most patient analysis. " The dreadful second act ! " cries the hapless wight who has a play on his mind, " If only I can manage that I shall be all right."

After William Archer's recent visit to this country he wrote : " I am credibly assured that at some universities the form of morning greeting among undergraduates is no longer ' How are you? ' but 'How is your second act getting on? ' I remarked that interest

RISE OR GROWTH OF THE ACTION 35

might better be centered on the welfare of the last act, and was told that the undergraduate play seldom got so far as that."

The exposition is made; then the action grows. Vast is the difference between construction and development, and fortunate the dramatist or the novelist whose play, or novel, having been well born and well brought up, throws off restraint and gets away from him altogether. The good effect of such constructive independence upon the novel or the play itself we realize by contrast when we are bored to extinction by drama or fiction (and there is plenty of both) in which to the dreary end every character is pushed and pulled and dragged about by the officious author, and every incident is a contraption and a contrivance.

We have arrived, then, at one of the difficulties met by the critic in observing this part of a play — namely, that here the action has begun to grow by natural laws based deep in human nature, so that even the dramatist himself is a trifle extraneous to his own creation. How fearfully he must watch the work of his own hands as it begins to move of itself! How he must dread to give the despoiling touch or make the awkward interposition ! In fact, what he does, if he is honestly artistic, is mostly in the way of grading the movement, conserving the effect, and practicing the devices of retardation and delay, so that the climax may not be too quickly reached; for often the mere story from exposition to climax can be told in a few sentences.

To let the action go forward and yet hold it back, to spur it on and yet rein it in so that it may keep a natural pace — this it is, more than anything else in the making of a play, that stimulates the dramatic artist to his very highest endeavor.

In one sense it is more descriptive to say that the action repeatedly rises and falls than that it grows, because the advance is hardly ever steady. A zigzag line would represent the way in which the excitement now moiuits and then is quieted, mounts still higher and is again restrained, till we have a series of situations and crises. All the time, too, there must be a cautious prevision of the later scenes in the play, in which it is always difficult to maintain the suspense. After the climax there must be a drawing together of all the loose threads in the earlier part of the play, else there will be at the close that impression of unfinished lines of action which distracts and antagonizes an audience, even though few people in the house may realize what is the matter.

It is perhaps overstatement to say that the growth of the action is more difficult to manage than the climax^ It is, however,, less inevitable ; and then, in the modern play, which has forsworn the soliloquy and the tirade, the carrying power of the climax must depend very much upon the strength of the dramatic pressure back of it. The denouement, too, which tries the very soul of the artist, depends closely upon the earlier scenes. It is far easier to untie a neatly made knot than to loosen ajid straighten out a wild tangle.

Then there is the mode of presentation — the direction or indirection with which the audience is made acquainted with the events that form the plot. This is a more intricate problem here than later in the play. The action cannot all take place on the stage. What parts then shall be acted before the audience, what parts shall be supposed to take place out of sight and then be related on the stage by some character, and what parts is it safe to let the audience guess at or infer? This, withal, precipitates the subtle question of values ;

RISE OR GROWTH OF THE ACTION 37

because what the audience sees will necessarily have a higher dramatic value than what it hears or overhears at second hand. And the preservation of the right scale of values is complicated today as never before by the ambition to limit the number of characters, and make as few changes of scene as possible.

Another complication arises from the fact that, always when a play has four or five acts, and sometimes when it has only three, one entire act is comprised in the growth of the plot. That is, the action generally gets under way in the first act and does not come to a climax tiU somewhere in the third or later ; and so its " reach " completely overspreads the second act. Now, an act must achieve, for ends more theatrical than dramatic, some arrangement of its own, irrespective of its relation to the play. It must have a beginning, a middle and an end ; and the end must have a certain cumulative effect. To preserve these constructive qualities within the act, and yet not allow it to obstruct or divert the pressure toward the climax, is another difficulty.

It goes without saying that the true craftsman, knowing, as he usually does, everything about his art, and something about everything else under the sun, has a serene mastery over this, as over all other parts of his work. But it is easy to figure to oneself the distraction of the mere dramatic tinker while he is knocking together this first half of his unsteady construction.

It is an endless theme, this growth of the earlier parts of a play ; and only a few points can be illustrated.

Growth of Action Illustrated

In " The Great Galeoto " we have the familiar Paoloand-Francesca or Launcelot-and-Guinevere situation, in-

38 . THE FL AY OF THE DAY

volving the elderly husband, the young wife and the young lover, between whom and the husband there is a strong attachment. The old material seems to have undying interest, perhaps because it mingles so inextricably the direst tragedy and the deepest pathos. It makes the exposition rather easy, although the usual preliminaries are always necessary, whether the story be old or new. Moreover, in the present play the point of departure is not quite that of the old legends. We are given to understand that the young wife and the adopted son are not only innocent of any thought of evil, but would have remained so had they not been driven to desperation by the torture of the merest small talk — not slander, but hstless, aimless, dispassionate gossip.

In this connection it must be observed that no play has more adroitly achieved the difficult task to which the modern drama so often addresses itself — that of keeping the world out, and yet letting it come in. The interest is narrowed and centered, and the attention of the audience is strictly economized ; for even in the new version there are only seven characters, and two stage settings. It is all very different from the old plays, in which the characters swarmed, or roamed in and out on the slightest pretense, and where there was a new setting for every scene. Yet there is none of the vague feeling of isolation, of being swung out into space away from all social environment, which detracts from so many works of the Ibsenic school. The world presses in on all sides, and the atmosphere is deep and rich and vital — deplorably vital, it is true ; but that is unavoidable with the chosen motive. It is high art to create a complex effect by means so simple and uncomplicated.

Aside from the idle gossip there is almost no ex-

RISE OR GROWTH OF THE ACTION 39

citing force, unless the plan of the secretaryship may be said to give a forward impulse. The action, then, begins with a situation of perfect balance and repose, in which the principal characters (described as an innocent woman and two honest men) are quite harmonious. In less than two acts it culminates in the total wreck of the household. Two lives are blighted and the third is terminated in a duel. What could be a finer effect than to give this rapid and stupendous growth any appearance of probability, any semblance of the inevitable.'' It is too long to trace the steps; but there are forward and backward movements even in the swiftness of its stealthy advance. Seldom is dramatic art, in this part of a play, so severely tested and tried.

But strangest and best of all, considering the southern origin of the play, is the indirection of the action. The two duels, both of which result fatally, are kept off the stage. Even the cafe scene (it would mean a crowd), with its quarrel and challenge, is present in description merely. There is no villain, for Don Severo, who comes nearest, is not at all the old stage type, in mantle and sombrero.

Now when a Spanish dramatist resolutely banishes the cloak-and-dagger scenes of his play to the wings, and denies himself the consolation of creating a blackbrowed villain, he is bound to do something desperate to make up for it.

It is a thrilling outcome of this artistic self-denial in keeping the crowds and fights out of view of the audience, that the restrained power of the tragic force falls upon gossip, the despicable Galeoto of the play. So intensely catastrophic is the culmination that it overtops all earlier effects. To give a mere abstraction like idle talk such potency of life, to make it terrible enough in its might to turn the action of a convincing tragedy, and then to pursue it swiftly and vindictively to a direful catastrophe — this is to triumph over difficulties.