The drama to-day
Andrews, Charlton, 1878-1939
■*•■•■■*•■«■■*•■«• ■*-* ■fc*.4..**^*-*.*.4.*4-^^.*<r 'npIE DRAMA 1 TO-DAY Bt ChARLTON AyiDKEfFS BAN DIEGO ^ cZ^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/dramatodayOOandriala THE DRAMA TO-DAY THE DRAMA TO-DAY BY CHARLTON ANDREWS PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1913 OOPTBIGBT, 1913, BT J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANT FUBLI8BED BBPTEMBEB, I913 PBINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASaiNQTON SQTTABB PBB8S PHILADELPHIA, U. 8. A. TO GEORGE PIERCE BAKER PREFACE INTEREST in the drama as a. distinct art has never been greater than at the present time, and the desire to study it seriously and intelligently has never before been so wide- spread. In spite of this fact, however, there exists no brief separate treatment, in convenient form, of the authors and the plays with which the active theatre now concerns itself. There are collected discussions of certain groups of playwrights, volumes dealing with the drama of individual nations or movements, and in the periodicals innumerable fugitive articles biographical and critical. But there is no brief compendium of the drama to-day, as it is practised, not only in England and America but also upon the Conti- nent. It is to supply the need of such a manual that the present treatise has been written. Little effort has been made to shed new light upon the topics discussed; the attempt has been rather to present in small compass accurate PREFACE general information as to the leaders of the modern stage and their work, and to offer, in passing, some opinions as to the prospects and tendencies of dramatic art in our day. C.A. CONTENTS PAGD I. Definitions 9 II. Realism and the " Literary " Drama 35 III. The Americans 61 IV. The British 105 V. The Continentals 169 VI. Prospective 206 DEFINITIONS THE drama is a species in the genus fiction. Brunetiere, following Hegel, asserts that it differs from the other forms of literature in that it must always deal with some exertion of the human will. The business of the drama is to produce an intense emotional effect, and such an effect is most readily aroused by the spectacle of a struggle. In a play, there is usually a chief character who, desiring some one thing above all else, strives for it with all his power. When Aristotle called tragedy the imita- tion of an action, by "action" he doubtless meant struggle. A play, then, is a fight, a sort of glorified prize fight, wherein the hero is pitted against ad- verse forces, human or otherwise, within or with- out, the reward of victory being the object of his dearest desires. Now, a fight — prize fight, bull fight, cock fight, battle of wits, debate, physical, intellectual, or moral contest of whatsoever sort — 9 THE DRAMA TO-DAY is, to repeat, the thing best adapted in human ex- perience to the excitation of intense emotion. The great battles of Hfe and Hterature have furnished the material for the great drama: Prometheus versus Jupiter; (Edipus versus the Fates; Romeo and Juliet versus their parents; Tartuffe versus Orgon; Lady Teazle versus society; Laura Murdock versus circumstances; Cyrano de Bergerac versus his nose. At the foundation of every drama, then, is a fight. The playwright generally deals with what Stevenson calls *'the great passionate crises of ex- istence, when duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple.'* This, however, is not the material of all fiction. The hero of the novel may be passive; he may be merely the inactive sport of circumstances. The hero of the play must be active. He must contend against the opposition. The playwright, too, works under high pressure, in an atmosphere of rigid limitation. He must tell his story "in such skilfully devised form and order as shall, within the limits of an ordinary theatrical representation, give rise to the greatest possible amount of that peculiar kind of emotional effect, the production 10 DEFINITIONS of which is the one great function of the theatre." A true play cannot be formed of mere passive character analysis. The theatre is distinctively a place for the display of volitional activity. The more energetic a nation, therefore, the greater will be its drama. Lotus eaters furnish forth nothing but lyricism. The drama of any nation flour- ishes in the time of greatest national vitality: in Greece after Salamis; in England after the Armada; in France under Louis XIV. It is obvious that the most effective scenes in a play will be those in which the contending forces are displayed in actual grapple. Shakespeare shows us the Montagues and the Capulets brawling in the street, before he introduces us to the scenes of love-making. The real interest in a drama begins when the emotions are first aroused by the spectacle of conflict, or the strong and immediate prospect of conflict. Plays that are quick to grip our atten- tion convey their preliminary information in terms of struggle, and not merely of conversational nar- rative. Of course, we may have some curiosity as to the drawing up of the articles of agreement and in the arrival of the combatants at the ringside, 11 THE DRAMA TO-DAY but, except for the reaction of expectancy, the chief emotional interest begins only when the first blow is struck. Just as it is impossible to sustain this interest in a ring contest in which the com- .batants spend their time in mere talk and "spar- ring for wind," so in the drama, when action ceases attention begins to flag. The drama is dependent, then, first of all upon action, either physical or spiritual. A play must present primarily a series of happenings. The original mediaeval drama, that tiny four-line trope of the Easter service, presented an occurrence: the Marys went to the tomb, and they found that their Lord had risen. In a play of two hours' duration, it is often necessary to set forth in the beginning certain fundamental facts — the expo- sition. In Cymbeline, two courtiers gossip and so gradually convey the information to the audi- ence. In the opening scene of Chantecler, there is barnyard life that puts the spectator into the strange environment, but delays the action. The ideal exposition is conveyed through an emotional- ized set of conditions. Instead of the mere con- versation of Camillo and Archidamus in A Winter^ s 12 DEFINITIONS TaU, one prefers the combat which opens Romeo and Juliet, or the happening with which the essen- tial situation grips attention in The Case of Rebel- lious Susan. The ideal play proceeds through a rising series of happenings, based on conflict, to a climax and thence to a solution. There are four principal forms of drama, which are often combined and varied to make many other forms. They are Farce, Comedy, Melodrama, and Tragedy. Another division groups all drama under the three self-explanatory heads : the Story Play; the Character Play; and the Play of Ideas. The first emphasizes plot and aims solely to entertain. The second chiefly illustrates character in its inter- action with environment. The third presents thought in terms of action, characterization, and dialogue. Roughly speaking, farce and comedy deal with the less serious, melodrama and tragedy with the more serious phases of life. ^'Primarily," says Professor George Pierce Baker, ''the comic depends on the point of view of the writer, for this determines his selection of material, and on his emphasis, for this is the means by which he makes it serve the ends he has in view." The 13 THE DRAMA TO-DAY same matter may be either comic or tragic, de- pending on how it is viewed or what phases of it are emphasized. The spectacle of Emerson, in premature mental decay, charitably depositing a coin in the hat of Oliver Wendell Holmes, under the impression that his old but unrecognized friend is a beggar, whereas the hat has simply been for the moment removed that the doctor may wipe his perspiring brow — such an incident is humorous or infinitely pathetic, according to how you look at it. To the pessimist, it has been said, life is a tragedy; to the optimist, a comedy. The dramatist must, of course, determine in advance whether his point of view is to be comic or tragic, and then carefully avoid any abrupt shift in empha- sis that might serve to confuse the spectator in this matter. Even so, there will always be play- goers incapable of determining what is really pathetic: ill-timed laughter is likely to punctuate the most solemn tragedy. There are even persons who find downright amusement in, for an extreme example, the awful scene at the end of Ghosts! A familiar illustration of the effect of shifting emphasis upon the comic and the tragic is to be 14 DEFINITIONS found in the character of Shylock. To Elizabethan audiences, with their race prejudices and their love of savage amusements, the Jew in The Mer- chant of Venice was chiefly, if not wholly, a figure to be laughed at. To-day, however, actors like Irving have given Shylock a fairly tragic signifi- cance, so that the other interests of the play are in part lost sight of, while the sympathies of the audience go out to the baffled, heart-broken old man. Similarly, the distinctions between farce and comedy, and between melodrama and tragedy, are matters of emphasis. In farce, the plot is stressed at the expense of the characterization. A climactic series of comic happenings is "farced" or stujffed into the two hours' traffic of the stage, for amusement purposes only. In comedy, the emotional reaction is derived chiefly from the char- acterization, and the mere plot is less obtrusive. In melodrama, again, plot takes the principal stress: a serious drama is formed of thrilling situations heaped up inordinately at the* expense of proper motivation. In tragedy, the character- ization does not suffer, and the motivation is 15 THE DRAMA TO-DAY always adequate. As variants of these principal forms, we have tragi-comedy, comedy of manners, romantic comedy, comedy of humor, comedy of dialogue, farce-comedy, and many other over- lapping classifications. It will be seen that these all too brief and hasty definitions depend largely upon the separation of the three chief ingredients of all drama: plot, characterization, and dialogue. Some explanation of these terms themselves will, accordingly, not be amiss. The plot, of course, is the story, the series of unified happenings, having a beginning, a middle, and an end, which forms the framework of the play. It is well known that in Shakespeare's day this element was less regarded than it is at present. The Elizabethan audience was content with a familiar story in a new dress. We to-day insist on novelty of story. Gozzi and Schiller are said to have investigated all the possible combinations of human affairs and concluded that there are but thirty-six fundamental dramatic situations. From these bare three dozen have been compounded all plays, as well as all other fiction. Ibsen is often 16 DEFINITIONS vaunted as strikingly original, yet his plots are usually traceable to venerable sources. In Lady Inger of Ostraat, a mother murders her unknown son, just as in (Edipus the King, the son slaughters his unrecognized father. The same theme, for instance, is found also in Le Roi s^amuse, which is the basis of the opera Rigoletto; in Alfieri^s Merope; in Voltaire's Semiramis; in II Trovatore; and in Eugene Walter's first play. Sergeant James, later known as Boots and Saddles. Take the dramatic situation in which a wife makes heroic sacrifice to save her husband. We find it in the Lady Godiva legend, in Monna Vanna, in Paid in Full, and in countless others. Shakespeare borrowed all his plots ready-made, with the possible exception of Lovers Labour^ s Lost and The Tempest; and Shake- speare's stories have been retold on the stage again and again. As for single scenes, the same one often appears in scores of plays. The interrupted wedding ceremony occurs in so wide a range of authors as that comprising Sardou, Clyde Fitch, Theodore Kremer, and George Bernard Shaw. The fall of man through woman, beginning with the legend of Eve, traces itself through Carmen, 2 17 THE DRAMA TO-DAY La Dame aux Camelias, Thais, Salom^, Parsifal, and hundreds of other dramas descendant from the story of Helen of Troy. The *' eternal tri- angle," composed of two men and one woman, or of two women and one man, is at the bottom of nmnberless plays, including Frou-Frou, Iris, Hedda Gdbler, and Madame X. The doctrine of redemp- tion through woman's love has been preached from time immemorial in such dramas as Faust, Der Fliegende Hollander, G otter dammerung, Peer Gynt, and The Piper. Similar examples of plot resem- blance might be cited ad infinitum, but these will amply serve. If, however, the plot of a play need not — indeed, cannot — ^be precisely original, it must, if effective, possess certain other quahfications. It must not clash with the characterization, to begin with; and this being interpreted simply means that it must be logical throughout its development. The characters in the play must do what they do and say what they say from obvious rational causes implanted within their own personalities or in the surrounding conditions. Plots fail when the inci- dents they comprise occur without clear and ade- 18 DEFINITIONS quate motivation. The audience must constantly understand not only what the character does, but why he does it. Of course, the stress upon logic of plot and motivation varies according as we are dealing with comedy or farce, tragedy or melo- drama. But even in farce and melodrama, where plot license is greatest, the law of cause and efifect must plainly operate throughout. The funda- mental premises may be fantastic in the extreme, but the development of the plot upon these prem- ises once laid down must, from the standpoint of logic, be as irreproachable as in comedy or tragedy. Not only must the development of the plot be logical, but it must be arranged in the emphatic order of climax. Through the skilful revelation little by little of just so much of the story as is necessary for the moment, the playwright arouses the feeling of suspense. Something new and mysterious is ever about to happen. More than that, it must happen; and having happened, it must be followed by something else that is about to, and that does, in due course, occur. And this series of happenings must take place with ever- increasing forcefulness and importance up to a 19 THE DRAMA TO-DAY supreme situation. Then comes, in technical parlance, the '^falling action,'' the "catastrophe," the '' denouement,^ ^ the solution. A play must not only reach a climax, but it must appropriately end. The ending of the play, however, must not be accomplished at the cost of suspense, and so of interest. The "big moment" has come and gone, and yet the play must be concluded with expect- ancy to the last line. It is because plajrwrights are so often negligent of this fact that we have so many feeble last acts. The ability to maintain dramatic interest to the final curtain is even more rare than the gift of creating suspense up to the climax. It has been noted, and it deserves to be empha- sized, that action in the drama, as in life, is of two kinds, physical and spiritual. We have likened the drama to the prize fight, which is its primitive prototjrpe. In the prize fight, however, the con- flict is physical almost to the exclusion of the spiritual element; whereas, in the true drama, physical action often suffers eclipse while spiritual conflict monopolizes attention. Indeed, sheer physical action on the stage is often enough with- out dramatic significance. The mere moving about 20 DEFINITIONS of the actors, the ''crossing" and recrossing, so frequently resorted to in the hope of animating a dull scene, generally fails entirely of its purpose. On the other hand, there may be an utter lack of physical movement; the stage may be held by simply two characters facing each other without so much as a spoken word, or even by but one character face to face with an obvious crisis, and yet the spiritual conflict indicated may mean action in the highest sense of the term. A good play will undoubtedly include much of both sorts of action; but in it, the physical will chiefly supplement and interpret the spiritual conflict. In the notable "big scenes" of Monsieur Bernstein's theatrical pieces, for example, there are usually but two persons on the stage, and there is almost no physi- cal action; however, when the husband learns of the wife's crime, in The Thief; or when the Anti- Semite son learns from his proud mother of his Jewish and illegitimate parentage, in Israel; or when the wife hears from her statesman spouse how he is guilty of the offense charged against him by his enemies, in UAssaut, — we have the most moving mental and spiritual action. 21 THE DRAMA TO-DAY Mr. Augustus Thomas has illustrated this dis- tinction between physical and spiritual action as follows: "Let us suppose that an old man is standing by the mantelpiece, a young man sitting in a chair. They do not move. The old man is talking of heredity, of what a fine thing it is to have had good parents and grandparents. The young man begins to feel that a family line means much, that he is for that reason all the prouder of his father. Then suppose the older man, never moving, tells the boy that the man of whom he is so proud is not his father. There you get in the boy a violent action, mental yet violent. Then if the old man tells him that he himself is his father, you get another action, of a different sort, and perhaps more violent because of the variety. Yet all the time neither of the men has moved from his position." The second of the chief ingredients of drama is characterization. Characters in fiction, as is well understood, may be either types or individuals. There are far more of the former extant than of the latter. Obviously, it is far easier to present a 22 DEFINITIONS type than to create an individual. The typical hypocrite, for example, flourishes in a thousand plays; but there is only one Tartuffe. The typical swash-buckling braggart abounds in the theatre; but there is only one Falstaff. The typical villain is everywhere rampant upon the boards; but there is only one lago. Indeed, so persistent and so permanent are the stock theatrical types that we have been in the habit of classifying all characters unhesitatingly as ''leads," "heavies,'* "eccen- trics," "juveniles," "characters," "emotionals," "soubrettes," "ingenues," and so forth. Heroes and heroines in the older style of drama have usually been referred to as "straight" parts, in contradistinction to "character" parts or "eccen- trics." The tendency nowadays is to make every part in the play a "character" part, and so, in some measure at least, to individuahze the "leads" out of the old wooden Indian manner. Necessarily, the characters in a play reveal themselves and cannot rely, as do the figures in a novel, upon the author's comment for their de- tailed portraiture. Upon what the character says and does, together with what other characters say 23 THE DRAMA TO-DAY about him and his reactions upon them, we base our opinion of him. We take nobody's word for what a character is, not even the word of the character himself. If others give him a definite reputation before he first appears, he must five up to that reputation or promptly lose it. If A describes B as amusing or entertaining, and B turns out to be a bore, we have no alternative but to accept B for what he really is and to regard the original estimate as a reflection on the taste of A. If it then develops that the author really intended B as a wit, we are likely to lose all faith in the characterization as a whole. In spite of the obviousness of this proposition, the characters in many plays fail to measure up to the estimates evidently placed upon them by their creators. The reason for this is to be found often in the exceedingly delicate relationship be- tween the characters and the plot. In writing a play, an author may adopt either of two plans: he may select a group of characters and allow them naturally and logically to evolve a plot; or he may invent a plot and into it insert a set of characters. When the latter course is followed, great vigilance 24 DEFINITIONS must be exercised to prevent the exigencies of the plot from forcing the characters into inconsistent conduct. The author has intended C to be an honest and a simple-hearted man; but unfortu- nately, to carry out the preconceived action, C must be made, abruptly and in violence to his proclaimed nature, to do an underhanded deed. If the playwright, either consciously or uncon- sciously, permits this to occur, he weakens, if he does not actually destroy, the audience's faith in all his characterizations. On the other hand, even an interesting and consistent set of characters may be portrayed in a plot that is weak and unattrac- tive. Plays of this nature occasionally succeed, as in the case of Pomander Walk and The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Plays of strong plot and illogical characterization — excepting sheer melo- drama and farce — succeed more rarely. Indeed, right portraiture of human nature is the chief requisite of true drama; though, of course, the great plays are those in which irreproachable characterization is joined with interesting action. The usual recipe for playwriting is to let the story come out of the characters, rather than to 25 THE DRAMA TO-DAY fit the characters into the plot. The aspiring author is told to get hold of a set of human beings, to imagine the things possible in their lives to- gether, and to select only what is dramatic from the material thus gathered, presenting it in the order of climax. Whether this course is always followed by successful dramatists may perhaps be doubted. The characters in Hamlet impress us first of all with their amazing truth to life and their utter consistency; and yet it is more than likely that Shakespeare took the plot of his play ready made and fitted his figures into it. As much may be said for many other dramatic masterpieces. After all, the right inter-relation of characters and story is the prime essential, and the manner of attaining it is of slight importance. The chief medium through which the dramatist unfolds both characters and action is dialogue. Dialogue, however, is not the only medium. Some- times it is entirely lacking, in pantomime, such as UEnfant Prodigue or Sumurun, without corre- sponding loss of dramatic effectiveness. Often the big moments in the action or the character- ization of a play are indebted solely to pantomime 26 DEFINITIONS for their revelation. On the stage, as elsewhere, actions speak louder than words. Miss Kite, in The Passing of the Third Floor Back, stealthily exchanging her half-consumed candles for the new ones in her landlady's candlesticks, tells us more about her character than some pages of conver- sation could do. At the same time, her action has graphically revealed the nature of the boarding- house and also of Mary Jane. In the same manner, the manoeuvring of the various boarders for the easy chair and the evening paper is revelatory of character to a degree beyond the power of mere words. The successful dramatist, like the actor, must know the value of gesture, facial expression, eloquent silences, piercing glances, and all the many resources of skilful and telling pantomime. This is, in fact, chief among the characteristics that distinguish the drama from literature pure and simple, and that make the stage a source of emotions not obtainable from the printed page. Charles Lamb's paradox, declaring that the actual performance of Shakespeare's plays detracts from their potency, must be ascribed to the perversity of a Shavian moment. Dumas fils is nearer the 27 THE DRAMA TO-DAY truth when he relates how a word, a look, a gesture, a silence, a purely atmospheric combination, often held him spellbound. In true drama, both pantomime and dialogue should contribute, not only to the characterization, but also to the action. The ideal dialogue is that in which every line is both characteristic of the speaker and accelerating to the plot. To be all this, dialogue must obviously be selective and condensed. It must be of ninety-nine per cent, efficiency. There must be no excess, no waste, no dead timber. The language chosen, indeed, must be more than merely denotative; it must be con- notative, highly charged with appropriate and illuminating suggestion. Hamlet's first speech, "A little more than kin, and less than kind," characterizes the speaker, adds its mite to the exposition, and so to a certain extent advances the story. Where there is this kind of dialogue mar- ried to concrete illustrative action, there is the foundation for the highest dramatic achievement. Augustus Thomas would require of every bit of dialogue that it should either "advance the story, promote the characterization, or get a laugh." A 28 DEFINITIONS speech that does all three is at least three times better than a speech that accomplishes only one of these aims. A word in passing on this important subject of "getting a laugh" in the theatre. If the sensa- tions accompanying laughter are emotional — some psychologists still regard this as a moot point — then the theatre manifestly fulfils its prime function when it produces a general cachinnation. Meredith tells us that true comedy awakens *' thoughtful laughter"; and we can hardly deny the activity of the intellect in that form of humor which transcends the mere spontaneous guffawing of the rustic at the antics of the slapstick clown. One of Mr. Shaw's critics, in Fanny's First Play, expresses his contempt for the ''crude mediaeval psychology of hearts and brains, this Shakespeare livers and wits"; perhaps we should learnedly assume a similar attitude. At all events, the unthinking laughter at mere horseplay is the least important kind, if the most readily excited. In the difference between thoughtless and thoughtful laughter lies the distinction between low and high comedy. 29 THE DRAMA TO-DAY The French speak of a laugh-producing element in the drama as a mot, and they differentiate three principal kinds. A simple witticism, merely adorning the dialogue and amusing in itself, is termed a mot d'esprit. A mot de situation owes its amusing quality to its peculiar position in the play; it would not be funny in itself, if uttered elsewhere. The mot de caractere provokes laughter by expressing something humorous in the indi- viduality of the person that utters it. Thus, when the rude mechanicals are presenting Pynamus and Thishe, we smile at the wit of Theseus as he ob- serves that ''Wall," having been cursed, and ' ' being sensible, ' ' should curse back. Next moment we laugh at Bottom's naive explanation that he was merely delivering ''Thisby's" cue, because the weaver thus reveals his own amusing simplic- ity. The first is mot d' esprit; the second, mot de caractere. On the other hand, when the bewitched Titania awakes and becomes instantly enamored of the grotesque Bottom in the ass's head, our merriment is provoked by neither witticism nor character revelation, but by a ludicrous situation. Obviously, the mot d^esprit is the least, the mot 30 DEFINITIONS de caracthre the most essentially dramatic. Your playwright may readily be conceived of as collect- ing specimens of the former in a convenient note- book, for use wherever they will fit in. The mot de situation^ however, and especially the mot de caract^re, must grow out of the very stuff of drama itself. It seems more than likely that much of the pleasure accompanying laughter springs from the self-satisfaction evoked by one's readiness to grasp a point, to ''see the joke.'' Ability along this line at least causes a pleasing sense of superi- ority that tickles the vanity. Perhaps the clever laugh-getter should always carefully take into account this element of the weakness of human nature, and build his 'mot, whether of wit, situa- tion, or character, accordingly. No chapter of definitions for the drama should close without reference to the conventions of the stage. The theatre, to begin with, is a place of illusion based on many conventions. Since we could not see through it, the fourth wall of the room exhibited on the stage has been removed, but we assume that it is still there. The actors usually face one way, "down," that is, toward the 31 THE DRAMA TO-DAY footlights; though real persons in a real room would do nothing of the sort. When they speak, they raise their voices above the customary pitch, yet we all pretend not to notice this artifice. The suc- cess of the whole enterprise, in fact, depends upon the readiness of the audience to co-operate with the players in assuming that such and such nonen- tities exist and that certain other obvious realities, like the property man in the Chinese drama, have been temporarily excluded from the category of being. Moreover, the play itself, as well as the theatre, is utterly dependent upon a set of acknowledged conventions. It is a picture of life, but not a mere photograph. The principle of selection operates throughout. The trivial is omitted, and only the vital is allowed to remain. Tautologies and irrele- vancies, which make up so much more than half of real life, are stripped away from both action and dialogue on the stage, regardless of the futile efforts of photographers like Granville Barker to include them. The non-essential has no place in the drama: we merely agree not to note its helpful absence. 32 DEFINITIONS All the conventions, all these relationships between players and audience, have been much influenced by the development of the theatre itself. As is well known, in its evolution the play- house has had three or four principal forms. In the roofless Elizabethan theatre, the stage was a bare platform projecting into the midst of the audience. The actors, spouting their scarce- interrupted poetic narratives, were almost sur- rounded by spectators. The tennis-court theatre of MoUere, although the stage was placed at one end of the room, was small and ^'intimate," with free passage between platform and parquet. As for the huge Drury Lane of Sheridan's time, with its broad-arched proscenium, its lamplit apron swept far out into the auditorium. To-day the drama is set in a brilliantly illuminated picture- frame, from which, except in the case of ''freak" performances like Oliver Goldsmith, Sumurun, or The Royal Box, the players never emerge. However, whether or not in our day the actors and the audience ever come into such close per- sonal contact as of yore, their relationship remains vital and established. The fundamental is, always, 3 33 THE DRAMA TO-DAY that those who live to please must please to live; and the players never please, nor are the spectators ever satisfied, except when there is full co-operation between the two. The drama is an essentially democratic institution; aristocratic Weimar, like all other such experiments, was a failure. Author, manager, and actor find it the chief part of their business to organize the whole mass of playgoers into a vital and functioning audience. As Pro- fessor Brander Matthews puts it, the playwright and his coadjutors ''must try to find the greatest common denominator of the throng." The basis of the co-operative relationship is supplied by the many tacit conventions of the theatre upon which is built up the essential illusion of reality. 34 II REALISM AND THE "LITERARY" DRAMA PRACTICALLY aU fiction, from the begin- ning, has been made up of the struggles of a brave hero, who loves a fair heroine, and who is constantly being thwarted by a deep- dyed villain. It has been so in the drama, as in the novel, the epic, and the short story. The evolution of these forms has proceeded apace, without the loss of either of these three sine qua nons. There has been, however, a distinct change in the nature of these characters, particularly of the protagonist. The hero of olden times was a miracle- worker. He balked at no obstacle; and, though delayed, of course, long enough to furnish forth five acts, he always won a final and glorious tri- umph, even if in death. His bravery, his audacity, and his resources were, as a rule, entirely super- human. Naturally enough, he spoke a language appropriately elevated above the conamonplace. He was, of course, an aristocrat living in aristo- cratic surroundings. 35 THE DRAMA TO-DAY But times change, and the inevitable effect of the rise of democracy was the depression of the hero. When it was demonstrated that in real life the average man is the true hero, the hero quickly became an average man upon the boards. Ibsen portrays ordinary people and everyday life. The tragedy written to-day we scarcely recognize with- out the purple pall. It requires an effort even to classify Ghosts with (Edipus the King, much more to admit that The Easiest Way and Macbeth are specimens of the same genre. Yet they are all tragedy, depicting the violent yet unsuccessful struggle of human beings against impossible odds. The station of the struggler and the circumstances of the contest alone have changed. As Monsieur Maeterlinck expresses it : "Consider the drama that actually stands for the reality of our time, as Greek drama stood for Greek reality, and the drama of the Renaissance for the reality of the Renaissance. Its scene is a modem house; it passes between men and women of to-day. The names of the invisible protagonists — the passions and ideas — are the same, more or less, as of old. We see love, hatred, ambition, 36 LITERARY DRAMA jealousy, envy, greed; the sense of justice and the idea of duty; pity, goodness, devotion, piety, selfishness, vanity, pride, etc. But, although the names have remained the same, how great is the difference we find in the aspect and quality, the ex- tent and influence, of these ideal actors! Of all their ancient weapons, not one is left them, not one of the marvellous moments of olden days. It is seldom that cries are heard now; bloodshed is rare, and tears are not often seen. It is in a small room, round a table, close to the fire, that the joys and sorrows of mankind are decided. We suffer or make others suffer; we love, we die, there in our comer; and it were the strangest chance should a door or a window suddenly, for an in- stant, fly open beneath the pressure of extraordi- nary despair or rejoicing." This is, perhaps, an exaggerated statement of modem conditions, fitting somewhat more closely into Maeterlinck's scheme of things than into the general one. And yet it emphasizes effectively the great change that has come over the drama since Richardson and Fielding, Rousseau and Diderot set forth their doctrine of the democracy 37 THE DRAMA TO-DAY of fiction and the drama. With drama down from the pedestal, the protagonist, seen at close range, proves an ordinary mortal, differing only from his fellows in that he is temporarily singled out by the spotlight. We have cited Shakespeare as illustrating the old aristocratic idea; and yet Hamlet is, broadly speaking, a modern hero. Intro- spection is essentially destructive of heroism. Be- sides, Hamlet is only heroic, like the rest of us, by most infrequent fits and starts. Literary changes are for the most part revolu- tionary and extreme. From the old romantic, miracle-working dragon-slayer and lightning-defier, we have passed abruptly to the helpless and pitiable bourgeois uncomprehendingly foiled by an un- reasonable fate. The protagonist no longer fights with dragons; he "fights with microbes." The old simplicity of life has forever passed. Men can no longer absolutely determine the logic of events. Instead, the complexity of the workings of the law of cause and effect, in modern knowledge, grows apparently more baffling day by day. Naturally, poetic justice, with all its inherent satisfactoriness, is no longer pre-eminent, even in fiction, since it is 38 LITERARY DRAMA mostly inoperative in life. It would seem that the world has turned out to be, after all, a world of triviality, and that little things make up the real comedy and tragedy of existence. The dominant artistic note in a material age like our own is inevitably the note of realism. Realism has transformed modem literature, just as science and materialistic philosophy have trans- fonned modern life. The drama, once a twin sister of epic poetry, is now divorced from litera- ture in the old-time sense of that word. Scholars and critics often disagree as to the actual relation- ship between the drama and literature. It appears, from the reading of many discussions, that there is much drama that is drama, and a quantity of drama that is really only literature — ^but very little that is both. After all, the fundamental distinction of litera- ture is form. Flawless structure, charming style, and sincere, perfect, individual treatment of the subject-matter are the qualities that differentiate literature from mere writing; and, as a matter of fact, there is much literature that is seriously lacking in the element of structiu-e. The Two 39 THE DRAMA TO-DAY Gentlemen of Verona, even, among plays, or Lovers Labour's Lost, is structurally deficient, yet poetic and ''literary.'^ Style alone often distinguishes literature. If it be so in the case of the drama, in what style should one write a literary play? You must have a good plot, consistent, logical, interesting, climactic. You must have this plot and the characterization — ordinarily — expressed in dialogue. But the characterization determines the form or the style of the dialogue. Your characters, if they are worth while, must say characteristic things in characteristic language. To give this language any unnatural elevation or adornment would be to insure failure in the realistic drama of to-day. Apparently, then, there is nothing that can be done with a modern realistic play that can essentially make it anything more than good acting drama, and that can carry it on over into the realm of ''literature." Of course, stage conversation is highly artificial and not actually real at all; it is a shorn and trimmed verbiage, but yet shorn and trimmed with a view to the closest possible approximation of real-life talk. There is a wide difference between the modem 40 LITERARY DRAMA play and the poetic drama, just as there so often is a wide difference between a play and the opera based on it. Opera is drama with dialogue in music. Poetic drama is drama with dialogue in poetry. The modem realistic play is drama with dialogue in what seems to be the language of real life. The drama is, indeed, an art in itself, one which generally calls to its aid several other arts, but nowadays only rarely the art of letters, or at least of poetry. Now, poetry thrives chiefly on idealism, and the real and the ideal seldom har- monize. Occasionally we find a sporadic effort to combine for the stage the poetic and the realistic, as in the case of Mr. Hagedom's Five in the Morning; but, from the standpoint of the stage, such attempts are significant only as failures. Mr. Percy Mackaye and some of our other writers for the stage whose gifts are in the direction rather of the poetic than of the dramatic, in adorning their plays with rhetorical ornament, usually suc- ceed in producing at best only "closet drama." Such plays are often lyric, idyllic, epic, — but rarely dramatic. As a matter of fact, in the sense of "poetic," 41 THE DRAMA TO-DAY there has been little or no strictly "literary" English drama for nearly two hundred years. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, such drama still survived in the works of Otway, Rowe, and Dryden. Within fifty years, however, it was extinct; spectacle and opera had replaced it. Dr. Johnson, in 1747, explained the transition in the prologue he wrote for Garrick to deliver at the opening of Drury Lane: Then, crushed by rules and weakened as refined, For years the power of Tragedy declined: From bard to bard the frigid caution crept, Till declamation roared whilst passion slept. Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread; Philosophy remained though Nature fled. But, forced at length her ancient reign to quit. She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit: Exulting folly hailed the joyful day. And pantomime and song confirmed her sway. In other words, the excesses of pseudo-classicism finally squeezed the life-blood out of the poetic drama, leaving it a dry, dead husk, which music and the spectacular quickly swept aside. Meanwhile, the writing of plays did not cease. 43 LITERARY DRAMA Instead of poetic drama, however, acting drama was produced — plays intended solely to be per- formed, not at all to be read. These plays drew upon the scene-painter and the costumer, the musician and the producer, as well as upon the actor, for their completeness. Literature was not their object, though occasionally it was their accessory. But good plays, as has been suggested, might be reduced to pantomime without losing their dramatic quality. The litterateur and the playwright have, in the past, sometimes been com- bined in one; but they are usually separate and distinct to-day. History teems with examples of literary men who failed regularly at writing drama, and dramatists wholly devoid of literary gifts. 