Chapter 12

Mr. Macready’s Bentevole is very fine in its kind. It is natural, easy, and forcible. Indeed, we suspect some parts of it were too natural, that is, that Mr. Macready thought too much of what his feelings might dictate in such circumstances, rather than of what the circumstances must have dictated to him to do. We allude particularly to the half significant, half hysterical laugh and distorted jocular leer, with his eyes towards the persons accusing him of the murder, when the evidence of his guilt comes out. Either the author did not intend him to behave in this manner, or he must have made the other parties on the stage interrupt him as a self-convicted criminal.11

Stevenson clearly recognized this truth:

I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned to death; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But now, on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison and attempt his rescue. They are capable, hardy folks, too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not, then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy if he could with his—But soft! I will betray my secret or my heroine.12

When a scene clogs, don’t hold the pen waiting for the impulse to write: don’t try to write at all. Study the situation, not for itself, but for the people in it. “The Dramatist who depends his characters to his plot,” says Mr. Galsworthy,worthy, “instead of his plot to his characters, ought himself to be depended.”13If a thorough knowledge of the characters in the particular situation does not bring a solution, study them as the scene relates itself to what must precede in characterization. More than once a dramatist has found that he could not compose some scene satisfactorily till he had written carefully the previous history of the important character or characters. The detailed knowledge thus gained revealed whether or not the characters could enter the desired situation, and if so, how. Pailleron, author ofLe Monde où l’on s’ennuiedeclared that, in his early drafts, he always had three or four times the material in regard to hisdramatis personæultimately used by him.

Intimate knowledge of his characters is the only safe foundation for the ambitious playwright. It is well-nigh useless to ask managers and actors to pass finally on a mere statement of a situation or group of situations, without characterization. All they can say is: “Bring me this again as an amplified scenario, or a play, which shows me to what extent the people you have in mind give freshness of interest to this story, which has been used again and again in the drama of different nations, and I will tell you what I will do for you.” Reduce any dramatic masterpiece to simple statement of its plot and the story will seem so trite as hardly to be worth dramatization. For instance: a man of jealous nature, passionately in love with his young wife, is made by the lies and trickery of a friend to believe that his wife has been intriguing with another of his friends. The fact is that the calumniator slanders because he thinks his abilities have not been properly recognized by the husband and he has been repulsed by the wife. In a fury of jealousy the husband kills his innocent wife and then himself. That might be recognized as the story of any one offifty French, German, Italian, English, or American plays of the last hundred years. It is, of course, the story ofOthello—a masterpiece because Shakespeare knew Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio so intimately that by their interplay of character upon character they shape every scene perfectly. In other words, though a striking dramatic situation is undoubtedly dramatic treasure trove, whether it can be developed into anything fresh and contributive depends on a careful study of the people involved. What must they be to give rise to such a situation—not each by himself, but when brought together under the conditions of the scene? Even if a writer knows this, he must work backward into the earlier history of his people before he can either move through the particular scene or go forward into other scenes which should properly result from it.

Far too often plays are planned in this way. A writer thinks of some setting that will permit him a large amount of local color—a barroom, a dance hall, the wharf of an incoming ocean liner. Recognizing or not that most of this local color is unessential to the real action of the play, he does see that one or two incidents which are necessary and striking may be set against this background. Knowing broadly, how he wants to treat the scene, instead of studying the main and minor characters in it till he knows them so intimately that he can select from a larger amount of material than he can possibly use, he moves, not where the characters lead him, but whither,vi et armis, he can drive them. Rarely to him will come the delightful dilemma, so commonly experienced by the dramatist who really cares for character, when he must choose between what he was going to do and the scene as developed by the creatures of his imagination who, as they become real, take the scene away from him and shape it to vastly richer results.14When the dramatist interested only in situation shapes the acts preceding his most important scene, he searches simply for conditions of character which will permit this important scene to follow. Result: earlier acts, largely of exposition and talk, or of illustrative action slight and unconvincing because characters forced into a crucial situation can hardly reveal how they brought themselves to it. There is no middle way for the dramatist who seeks truth in characterization. Given a situation, either it must grow naturally out of the characters in it, or the people originally in the mind of the author must be remodeled till they fit naturally into the situation. In the latter case, all that precedes and follows the central situation must be re-worked, not as the dramatist may wish, but as the remodeled characters permit. A critic met a well-known dramatist on the Strand. The dramatist looked worried. “What’s the matter,” queried the critic, “anything gone wrong?” “Yes. You remember the play I told you about, and that splendid situation for my heroine?” “Yes. Well?” “Well! She won’t go into it, confound her, do the best I can.” “Why make her?” “Why? Because if I don’t there’s an end to that splendid situation.” “Well?” “Oh, that’s just why I’m bothered. I don’t want to give in, I don’t want to lose that situation; but she’s right, of course she’s right, and the trouble is I know I’ve got to yield.”

At first sight the problem may seem different in an historical play, for here a writer is not creating incident but is often baffled by the amount of material from which he must select,—happenings that seem equally dramatic, speeches that cry out to be transferred to the stage, and delightful bits of illustrative action. Yet, whether his underlying purpose is to convey an idea, depict a character, or tell a story, how can he decide which bits among his material make the best illustrative action before he has minutely studied the importantfigures? Above all others, the dramatist working with history is subject to the principles of characterization already laid down. Lessing stated the whole case succinctly:

Only if he chooses other and even opposed characters to the historical, he should refrain from using historical names, and rather credit totally unknown personages with well-known facts than invent characters to well-known personages. The one mode enlarges our knowledge or seems to enlarge it and is thus agreeable. The other contradicts the knowledge that we already possess and is thus unpleasant. We regard the facts as something accidental, as something that may be common to many persons; the characters we regard as something individual and intrinsic. The poet may take any liberties he likes with the former so long as he does not put the facts into contradiction with the characters; the characters he may place in full light but he may not change them, the smallest change seems to destroy their individuality and to substitute in their place other persons, false persons, who have usurped strange names and pretend to be what they are not.15

There is, however, a contrasting danger to insufficient characterization. Any one profoundly interested in character may easily fill a scene with delicate touches which nevertheless swell the play to undue length. When careful examination of a play which is too long makes obvious that no act or scene can be spared in whole or in part, and that the dialogue is nowhere wordy or redundant, watch the best characterized scenes to discover whether something has not been conveyed by two strokes rather than one. If so, choose the better. Watch the scenes also lest delicate and sure touches of characterization may have been included which, delightful though they be, are not absolutely necessary to our understanding of the character. If so, select what most swiftly yet clearly gives the needed information. Over-detail in characterization is the reason why certain modernplays have sagged, or hitched their way to a conclusion, instead of producing the effect desired by the author.

For ultimate convincingness no play can rise above the level of its characterization. The playwright who works for only momentary success may doubtless depend upon the onward rush of events, in a play of strong emotion, to blind his audience to lack of motivation in his characters. John Fletcher is the great leader of these opportunists of the theatre. Evadne, inThe Maid’s Tragedy,16killing the King, is a very different woman from the Evadne who gladly became his mistress. Nor are the reproaches and exhortations of her brother Melantius powerful enough to change a woman of her character so swiftly and completely. An audience, absorbed in the emotion of the moment, may overlook such faults of characterization in the theatre. As it reviews the play in calmer mood, however, it ranks it, no matter how poetic as a whole or how well characterized in particular scenes, not as a drama which interprets life, but as mere entertainment. Even perfect characterization of some figures, when the chief are mere puppets, cannot make us accept the play as more than pure fiction. In Thomas Heywood’sA Woman Killed with KindnessandEnglish Traveler,17if the erring wives and their lovers were only as well characterized as the fine-spirited husbands, the servants, and youths like Young Geraldine, the plays might hold the stage today. Doubtless the actor’s art in the days of Elizabeth and James gave to villains like Wendoll and women like Mrs. Frankford enough verisimilitude to make the plays far more convincing than they are in the reading. But try as we may, we cannot understand from the text either of these characters. Their motivation is totally inadequate; that is, their conduct seems not to grow out of theircharacters. Rather, they are the creatures of any situation into which the dramatist wishes to thrust them.

This need of motivation may be fundamental, that is, the characters may seem to an audience unconvincing from the start; or may be evident in some insufficiently explained change, transition in character; or may appear only in the last scene of the play, where characters hitherto consistent are made to act in a way which seems to the audience improbable. When Nathaniel Rowe produced hisAmbitious Stepmotherin 1700, Charles Gildon bitterly attacked it as unconvincing in its very fundamentals.

Mirzais indeed a Person of a peculiar Taste; for a Cunning Man to own himself a Rogue to the Man he shou’d keep in ignorance, and whom he was to work to his ends, argues little pretence to that Name; but he laughs atHonesty, and professes himself a Knave to one he wou’d have honest to him....In the second Act, he talks ofMemnon’shaving recourse to Arms, of which Power we have not the least Word in the first: All that we know is, that he returns from Banishment on a day of Jubilee, when all was Safe and Free....18

In the second Act, he talks ofMemnon’shaving recourse to Arms, of which Power we have not the least Word in the first: All that we know is, that he returns from Banishment on a day of Jubilee, when all was Safe and Free....18

For similar reasons, Mr. Eaton criticises unfavorablyThe Fighting Hope:

One of the best (or the worst) examples of false ethics in such a play is furnished byThe Fighting Hope, produced by Mr. Belasco in the Autumn of 1908, and acted by Miss Blanche Bates. In this play a man, Granger, has been jailed, his wife and the world believe for another man’s crime. The other man, Burton Temple, is president of the bank Granger has been convicted of robbing. A district attorney, hot after men higher up, is about to reopen the case. It begins to look bad for Temple. Mrs. Granger, disguised as a stenographer, goes to his house to secure evidence against him. What she secures is a letter proving that not he, but her husband, was after all the criminal.Of course this letter is a knockout blow for her. She realizes that the “father of her boys” is a thief, that the man she would sendto jail (and with whom you know the dramatist is going to make her finally fall in love) is innocent. Still, in her first shock, her instinct to protect the “father of her boys” persists, and she burns the letter.So far, so good, but Mrs. Granger is represented as a woman of fine instincts and character. That she should persist in cooler blood in her false and immoral supposition that her boys’ name will be protected or their happiness preserved—to say nothing of her own—by the guilt of two parents instead of one, is hard to believe. Yet that is exactly what the play asks you to believe, and it asks you to assume that here is a true dilemma. A babbling old housekeeper, whose chief use in the house seems to be to help the plot along, after the manner of stage servants, tells Mrs. Granger that she must not atone for her act by giving honest testimony in court, that of course she must let an innocent man go to jail, to “save her boys’ name.”It would be much more sensible should Mrs. Granger here strike the immoral old lady, instead of saving her blows for her cur of a husband, in the last act, who, after all, was the “father of her boys.” But she listens to her. She appears actually in doubt not only as to which course she will pursue, but which she should pursue. She is intended by the dramatist as a pitiable object because on the one hand she feels it right to save an innocent man (whom she has begun to love), and on the other feels it her duty to save her sons’ happiness by building their future on a structure of lies and deceit. And she reaches a solution, not by reasoning the tangle out, not by any real thought for her boys, their general moral welfare, not by any attention to principles, but simply by discovering that her husband has been sexually unfaithful to her. Further, he becomes a cad and charges her with infidelity. Then she springs upon him and beats him with her fists, which is not the most effective way of convincing an audience that she was a woman capable of being torn by moral problems.Of course as the play is written, there is no moral problem. The morality is all of the theatre. It belongs to that strange world behind the proscenium, wherein we gaze, and gazing sometimes utter chatter about “strong situations,” “stirring climaxes,” and the like, as people hypnotized. There might have been a moral problem if Mrs. Granger, before she discovered her husband’s guilt, had been forced to fight a rising tide of passion for Temple in her own heart. There might have been a moral problem after thediscovery and her first hasty, but natural, destruction of the letter, if she had felt that her desire to save Temple was prompted by a passion still illicit, rather than by justice. But no such real problems were presented. The lady babbles eternally of “saving her boys’ good name,” while you are supposed to weep for her plight. Unless you have checked your sense of reality in the cloak room, you scorn her perceptions and despise her standards. How much finer had she continued to love her husband! But he, after all, was only the “father of her boys.”19

Of course this letter is a knockout blow for her. She realizes that the “father of her boys” is a thief, that the man she would sendto jail (and with whom you know the dramatist is going to make her finally fall in love) is innocent. Still, in her first shock, her instinct to protect the “father of her boys” persists, and she burns the letter.

So far, so good, but Mrs. Granger is represented as a woman of fine instincts and character. That she should persist in cooler blood in her false and immoral supposition that her boys’ name will be protected or their happiness preserved—to say nothing of her own—by the guilt of two parents instead of one, is hard to believe. Yet that is exactly what the play asks you to believe, and it asks you to assume that here is a true dilemma. A babbling old housekeeper, whose chief use in the house seems to be to help the plot along, after the manner of stage servants, tells Mrs. Granger that she must not atone for her act by giving honest testimony in court, that of course she must let an innocent man go to jail, to “save her boys’ name.”

It would be much more sensible should Mrs. Granger here strike the immoral old lady, instead of saving her blows for her cur of a husband, in the last act, who, after all, was the “father of her boys.” But she listens to her. She appears actually in doubt not only as to which course she will pursue, but which she should pursue. She is intended by the dramatist as a pitiable object because on the one hand she feels it right to save an innocent man (whom she has begun to love), and on the other feels it her duty to save her sons’ happiness by building their future on a structure of lies and deceit. And she reaches a solution, not by reasoning the tangle out, not by any real thought for her boys, their general moral welfare, not by any attention to principles, but simply by discovering that her husband has been sexually unfaithful to her. Further, he becomes a cad and charges her with infidelity. Then she springs upon him and beats him with her fists, which is not the most effective way of convincing an audience that she was a woman capable of being torn by moral problems.

Of course as the play is written, there is no moral problem. The morality is all of the theatre. It belongs to that strange world behind the proscenium, wherein we gaze, and gazing sometimes utter chatter about “strong situations,” “stirring climaxes,” and the like, as people hypnotized. There might have been a moral problem if Mrs. Granger, before she discovered her husband’s guilt, had been forced to fight a rising tide of passion for Temple in her own heart. There might have been a moral problem after thediscovery and her first hasty, but natural, destruction of the letter, if she had felt that her desire to save Temple was prompted by a passion still illicit, rather than by justice. But no such real problems were presented. The lady babbles eternally of “saving her boys’ good name,” while you are supposed to weep for her plight. Unless you have checked your sense of reality in the cloak room, you scorn her perceptions and despise her standards. How much finer had she continued to love her husband! But he, after all, was only the “father of her boys.”19

It is insufficiently motivated characterization which Mr. Eaton censures inThe Nigger:

Obviously, the emotional interest in this play is—or should be, rather—in the tragedy of the proud, ambitious Morrow, who wakes suddenly to find himself a “nigger,” an exile from his home, and hopes, from his sweetheart and his dreams. Yet, as Mr. Sheldon has written it, and as it was played by Mr. Guy Bates Post in the part of Morrow, and by the other actors, the play is most poignant in its moments of sheer theatrical appeal, almost of melodrama, such as the suspense of the cross-examination of the old mammy and her cry of revelation, or the pursuit of the fugitive in act one. Between his interest in the suspense of his story and in the elucidation of the broader aspects of the negro question in the South, Mr. Sheldon neglected too much his chief figure, as a human being. Unless the figures live and suffer for the audience, unless their personal fate is followed, their minds and hearts felt as real, the naturalistic drama of contemporary life can have but little value, after all. That is what makes its technique so difficult and so baffling. From the moment when Morrow learned of his birth, he became a rather nebulous figure, not suffering so much as listening to theories which were only said by the dramatist to have altered his character and point of view.20

Perhaps it would be more strictly accurate to say that the comment onThe Niggerpoints to inadequate treatment of character changing as the play progresses. The favorite place of many so-called dramatists for a change of characteris in their vast silences between the acts. There, the authors expect us to believe that marked and necessary changes take place. They show us in clear-cut dramatic action the good character before he became bad and after he has become bad, but for proof that the changes took place, we must look off stage in theentr’acte. ReadLady Bountifuland note that between the last and the next to the last acts large changes have taken place in the main characters.Iriswould be a far greater play than it is could we have seen how its central figure passes from the taking of the check book to the state of mind which makes her accept Maldonado’s apartment. Contrast with these plays the thoroughly motivated change in the Sergeant ofThe Rising of the Moonor of Nora inA Doll’s House.

Where American plays too frequently break down is in what may be called the logic of character. Even when actions have been properly motivated up to the last act or scene, this is handled in such a way as rather to please the audience than to grow inevitably out of what has preceded. Rumor has it that whenSecret Servicewas produced in one of the central cities of New York State, the hero at the end chose his country rather than the girl. The public, with that fine disregard in the theatre for the values it places on action outside, disapproved. Promptly, the ending was so changed that the two lovers could be started on that sure road to happiness ever after which all men know an engagement is—upon the stage. In a play such asSecret Service, planned primarily to entertain, such a shift may be pardonable, but even in such a case it must be done with skill if it is not to jar.The Two Gentlemen of Veronain some fifty lines at its close shows Proteus madly in love with Silvia, and Valentine longing for her also; Valentine threatening the life of Proteus when he discovers the latter’s perfidy, but forgiving him instantly when Proteus merely asks pardon;and Proteus, when he discovers that the page who has been following him is Julia, turning instantly away from Silvia to her. Here is faulty characterization in two respects: each change is not sufficiently motived; each does not accord with the characterization of Proteus and Valentine in the earlier scenes.

Proteus.Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving wordsCan no way change you to a milder form,I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arms’ end,And love you ’gainst the nature of love,—force ye.Silvia.O heaven!Pro.I’ll force thee yield to my desire.Valentine.Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch,Thou friend of an ill fashion!Pro.Valentine!Val.Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love,For such is a friend now! Treacherous man,Thou hast beguil’d my hopes! Nought but mine eyeCould have persuaded me. Now I dare not sayI have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me.Who should be trusted now, when one’s right handIs perjured to the bosom? Proteus,I am sorry I must never trust thee more,But count the world a stranger for thy sake.The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst,’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!Pro.My shame and guilt confounds me.Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrowBe a sufficient ransom for offence,I tender’t here; I do as truly sufferAs e’er I did commit.Val.Then I am paid;And once again I do receive thee honest.Who by repentance is not satisfiedIs nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas’d.By penitence the Eternal’s wrath’s appeas’d;And, that my love may appear plain and free,All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.Julia.O me unhappy! (Swoons.)Pro.Look to the boy.Val.Why, boy! why, wag! how now! What’s the matter? Look up; speak.Jul.O good sir, my master charg’d me to deliver a ring to Madame Silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done.Pro.Where is that ring, boy?Jul.Here ’tis; this is it.Pro.How? let me see!Why this is the ring I gave to Julia.Jul.O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook;Pro.But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my departI gave this unto Julia.Jul.And Julia herself did give it me;And Julia herself hath brought it hither.Pro.How! Julia!Jul.Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,And entertain’d ’em deeply in her heart.How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!O Proteus let this habit make thee blush!Be thou asham’d that I have took upon meSuch an immodest raiment, if shame liveIn a disguise of love.It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,Women to change their shapes than men their minds.Pro.Than men their minds! ’tis true. O heaven! were manBut constant, he were perfect. That one errorFills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.What is Silvia’s face, but I may spyMore fresh in Julia’s with a constant eye?Vol.Come, come, a hand from either.Let me be blest to make this happy close;’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.Pro.Bear witness, Heaven, I have my wish for ever.Jul.And I mine.

Proteus.Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving wordsCan no way change you to a milder form,I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arms’ end,And love you ’gainst the nature of love,—force ye.

Silvia.O heaven!

Pro.I’ll force thee yield to my desire.

Valentine.Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch,Thou friend of an ill fashion!

Pro.Valentine!

Val.Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love,For such is a friend now! Treacherous man,Thou hast beguil’d my hopes! Nought but mine eyeCould have persuaded me. Now I dare not sayI have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me.Who should be trusted now, when one’s right handIs perjured to the bosom? Proteus,I am sorry I must never trust thee more,But count the world a stranger for thy sake.The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst,’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!

Pro.My shame and guilt confounds me.Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrowBe a sufficient ransom for offence,I tender’t here; I do as truly sufferAs e’er I did commit.

Val.Then I am paid;And once again I do receive thee honest.Who by repentance is not satisfiedIs nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas’d.By penitence the Eternal’s wrath’s appeas’d;And, that my love may appear plain and free,All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

Julia.O me unhappy! (Swoons.)

Pro.Look to the boy.

Val.Why, boy! why, wag! how now! What’s the matter? Look up; speak.

Jul.O good sir, my master charg’d me to deliver a ring to Madame Silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done.

Pro.Where is that ring, boy?

Jul.Here ’tis; this is it.

Pro.How? let me see!Why this is the ring I gave to Julia.

Jul.O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook;

Pro.But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my departI gave this unto Julia.

Jul.And Julia herself did give it me;And Julia herself hath brought it hither.

Pro.How! Julia!

Jul.Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,And entertain’d ’em deeply in her heart.How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!O Proteus let this habit make thee blush!Be thou asham’d that I have took upon meSuch an immodest raiment, if shame liveIn a disguise of love.It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

Pro.Than men their minds! ’tis true. O heaven! were manBut constant, he were perfect. That one errorFills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.What is Silvia’s face, but I may spyMore fresh in Julia’s with a constant eye?

Vol.Come, come, a hand from either.Let me be blest to make this happy close;’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.

Pro.Bear witness, Heaven, I have my wish for ever.

Jul.And I mine.

Similar inconsistencies are in many modern plays. A dramatist has a particularly striking scene which he wishes to make the climax of his play. Into it he forces his figures regardless. Lessing made fun of this fault.

... In another still worse tragedy where one of the principal characters died quite casually, a spectator asked his neighbor, “But what did she die of?”—“Of what? Of the fifth act,” was the reply. In very truth the fifth act is an ugly evil disease that carries off many a one to whom the first four acts promised a longer life.21

Or it may be, as in the case of Shakespeare just cited, that a dramatist feels certain changes of character are necessary if the play is to end as promptly as it must. Such changes, therefore, he brings about even if it means throwing character or truth to the winds. English and American plays of the 1880 and 1890 periods show many instances of theatrically effective endings either forced upon the characters or only one of several possible endings—and not the most probable. According to the conventions of the time, any young woman who had parted with her virtue, no matter what the circumstances, must make reparation by death. This usually came from some wasting but not clearly diagnosed disease. There was not always a clear distinction between inanition and inanity. A similar convention usually saved from death the male partners of these “faults,” provided they indulged at the right moment in self-repentant speeches. Sir Arthur Pinero, writing what he regarded as the logical ending ofThe Profligate, was forced by the sentimentality of his public to keep Dunstan Renshaw alive. Here are the two endings:

THE ENDING AS ACTEDDunstan.(He is raising the glass to his lips when he recoils with a cry of horror.) Ah! stop, stop! This is the deepest sin of all my life—blacker than that sin for which I suffer! No, I’ll not! I’ll not! (He dashes the glass to the ground.) God, take my wretched life when You will, but till You lay Your hand upon me, I will live on! Help me! Give me strength to live on! Help me! Oh, help me!(He falls on his knees and buries his face in his hands. Leslie enters softly, carrying a lamp which she places on the sideboard; then she goes to Dunstan.)Leslie.Dunstan! Dunstan!Dunstan.You! You!Leslie.I have remembered. When we stood together at our prayerless marriage, my heart made promises my lips were not allowed to utter. I will not part from you, Dunstan.Dunstan.Not—part—from me?Leslie.No.Dunstan.I don’t understand you. You—will—not—relent? You cannot forget what I am!Leslie.No. But the burden of the sin you have committed I will bear upon my shoulders, and the little good that is in me shall enter into your heart. We will start life anew, always seeking for the best that we can do, always trying to repair the worst that we have done. (Stretching out her hand to him.) Dunstan! (He approaches her as in a dream.) Don’t fear me! I will be your wife, not your judge. Let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of.Dunstan.(He tremblingly touches her hand as she bursts into tears.) Wife! Ah, God bless you! God bless you, and forgive me!(He kneels at her side, and she bows her head down to his.)Leslie.Oh, my husband!THE ENDING AS PRINTEDDunstan.Fool! Fool! Why couldn’t you have died in Florence? Why did you drag yourself here all these miles—to end ithere? I should have known better—I should have known better. (He takes a phial from his pocket and slowly pours some poison into a tumbler.) When I’ve proved that I could not live away from her, perhaps she’ll pity me. I shall never know it, but perhaps she’ll pity me then. (About to drink.) Supposing I am blind! Supposing there is some chance of my regaining her. Regaining her! How dull sleeplessness makes me! How much could I regain of what I’ve lost! Why,she knows me—nothing can ever undo that—she knows me.Every day would be a dreary, hideous masquerade; every night a wakeful, torturing retrospect. If she smiled, I should whisper to myself—“yes, yes, that’s a very pretty pretence, but—she knows you!” The slamming of a door would shout it, the creaking of a stair would murmur it “she knows you!” And when shethought herself alone, or while she lay in her sleep, I should be always stealthily spying for that dreadful look upon her face, and I should find it again and again as I see it now—the look which cries out so plainly “Profligate! you taught one good woman to believe in you, but nowshe knows you!” No, no—no, no! (He drains the contents of the tumbler.) The end—the end. (Pointing towards the clock.) The hour at which we used to walk together in the garden at Florence—husband and wife—lovers. (He pulls up the window-blind and looks out.) The sky—the last time—the sky. (He rests drowsily against the piano.) Tired—tired. (He walks rather unsteadily to the table.) A line to Murray. (Writing.) A line to Murray—telling him—poison—morphine—message—(The pen falls from his hand and his head drops forward.) The light is going out. I can’t see. Light—I’ll finish this when I wake—I’ll rest. (He staggers to the sofa and falls upon it.) I shall sleep tonight. The voice has gone. Leslie—wife—reconciled—(Leslie enters softly and kneels by his side.)Leslie.Dunstan, I am here. (He partly opens his eyes, raises himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie’s face averted.) Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not your Judge—let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of. Dunstan! (She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and reads it.) Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! (She catches him in her arms.) Husband! Husband! Husband!22

THE ENDING AS ACTED

Dunstan.(He is raising the glass to his lips when he recoils with a cry of horror.) Ah! stop, stop! This is the deepest sin of all my life—blacker than that sin for which I suffer! No, I’ll not! I’ll not! (He dashes the glass to the ground.) God, take my wretched life when You will, but till You lay Your hand upon me, I will live on! Help me! Give me strength to live on! Help me! Oh, help me!

(He falls on his knees and buries his face in his hands. Leslie enters softly, carrying a lamp which she places on the sideboard; then she goes to Dunstan.)

Leslie.Dunstan! Dunstan!

Dunstan.You! You!

Leslie.I have remembered. When we stood together at our prayerless marriage, my heart made promises my lips were not allowed to utter. I will not part from you, Dunstan.

Dunstan.Not—part—from me?

Leslie.No.

Dunstan.I don’t understand you. You—will—not—relent? You cannot forget what I am!

Leslie.No. But the burden of the sin you have committed I will bear upon my shoulders, and the little good that is in me shall enter into your heart. We will start life anew, always seeking for the best that we can do, always trying to repair the worst that we have done. (Stretching out her hand to him.) Dunstan! (He approaches her as in a dream.) Don’t fear me! I will be your wife, not your judge. Let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of.

Dunstan.(He tremblingly touches her hand as she bursts into tears.) Wife! Ah, God bless you! God bless you, and forgive me!

(He kneels at her side, and she bows her head down to his.)

Leslie.Oh, my husband!

THE ENDING AS PRINTED

Dunstan.Fool! Fool! Why couldn’t you have died in Florence? Why did you drag yourself here all these miles—to end ithere? I should have known better—I should have known better. (He takes a phial from his pocket and slowly pours some poison into a tumbler.) When I’ve proved that I could not live away from her, perhaps she’ll pity me. I shall never know it, but perhaps she’ll pity me then. (About to drink.) Supposing I am blind! Supposing there is some chance of my regaining her. Regaining her! How dull sleeplessness makes me! How much could I regain of what I’ve lost! Why,she knows me—nothing can ever undo that—she knows me.Every day would be a dreary, hideous masquerade; every night a wakeful, torturing retrospect. If she smiled, I should whisper to myself—“yes, yes, that’s a very pretty pretence, but—she knows you!” The slamming of a door would shout it, the creaking of a stair would murmur it “she knows you!” And when shethought herself alone, or while she lay in her sleep, I should be always stealthily spying for that dreadful look upon her face, and I should find it again and again as I see it now—the look which cries out so plainly “Profligate! you taught one good woman to believe in you, but nowshe knows you!” No, no—no, no! (He drains the contents of the tumbler.) The end—the end. (Pointing towards the clock.) The hour at which we used to walk together in the garden at Florence—husband and wife—lovers. (He pulls up the window-blind and looks out.) The sky—the last time—the sky. (He rests drowsily against the piano.) Tired—tired. (He walks rather unsteadily to the table.) A line to Murray. (Writing.) A line to Murray—telling him—poison—morphine—message—(The pen falls from his hand and his head drops forward.) The light is going out. I can’t see. Light—I’ll finish this when I wake—I’ll rest. (He staggers to the sofa and falls upon it.) I shall sleep tonight. The voice has gone. Leslie—wife—reconciled—

(Leslie enters softly and kneels by his side.)

Leslie.Dunstan, I am here. (He partly opens his eyes, raises himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie’s face averted.) Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not your Judge—let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of. Dunstan! (She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and reads it.) Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! (She catches him in her arms.) Husband! Husband! Husband!22

It is of course true, as M. Brieux maintains in regard to the two endings of his early play,Blanchette,23that sometimes more than one ending may be made plausible. Consequently he changed a tragic close to something more pleasing to his audience. Belief grows, however, that when a play has been begun and developed with a tragic ending in mind, this cannot with entire convincingness be changed to something else unless the play is rewritten from the start. There is inevitableness in the conduct on the stage of the creatures of our brains even as with people of real life. So strongly does Sir Arthur Pinero feel this as theresult of his long experience that, though he changed the ending ofThe Big Drumin 1915 in accordance with public demand, he restored the original version when printing the play. He says in his Preface:

The Big Drumis published exactly as it was written, and as it was originally performed. At its first representation, however, the audience was reported to have been saddened by its “unhappy ending.” Pressure was forthwith put upon me to reconcile Philip and Ottoline at the finish, and at the third performance of the play the curtain fell upon the picture, violently and crudely brought about, of Ottoline in Philip’s arms.I made the alteration against my principles and against my conscience, and yet not altogether unwillingly. For we live in depressing times; and perhaps in such times it is the first duty of a writer for the stage to make concessions to his audience and, above everything, to try to afford them a complete, if brief, distraction from the gloom which awaits them outside the theatre.My excuse for having at the start provided an “unhappy” ending is that I was blind enough not to regard the ultimate break between Philip and Ottoline as really unhappy for either party. On the contrary, I looked upon the separation of these two people as a fortunate occurrence for them both; and I conceive it as a piece of ironic comedy which might not prove unentertaining that the falling away of Philip from his high resolves was checked by the woman he had once despised and who had at last grown to know and to despise herself.But comedy of this order has a knack of cutting rather deeply, of ceasing, in some minds, to be comedy at all; and it may be said that this is what has happened in the present instance. Luckily it is equally true that certain matters are less painful, because less actual, in print than upon the stage. The “wicked publisher” therefore, even when bombs are dropping round him, can afford to be more independent than the theatrical manager; and for this reason I have not hesitated to ask my friend Mr. Heinemann to publishThe Big Drumin its original form.24

I made the alteration against my principles and against my conscience, and yet not altogether unwillingly. For we live in depressing times; and perhaps in such times it is the first duty of a writer for the stage to make concessions to his audience and, above everything, to try to afford them a complete, if brief, distraction from the gloom which awaits them outside the theatre.

My excuse for having at the start provided an “unhappy” ending is that I was blind enough not to regard the ultimate break between Philip and Ottoline as really unhappy for either party. On the contrary, I looked upon the separation of these two people as a fortunate occurrence for them both; and I conceive it as a piece of ironic comedy which might not prove unentertaining that the falling away of Philip from his high resolves was checked by the woman he had once despised and who had at last grown to know and to despise herself.

But comedy of this order has a knack of cutting rather deeply, of ceasing, in some minds, to be comedy at all; and it may be said that this is what has happened in the present instance. Luckily it is equally true that certain matters are less painful, because less actual, in print than upon the stage. The “wicked publisher” therefore, even when bombs are dropping round him, can afford to be more independent than the theatrical manager; and for this reason I have not hesitated to ask my friend Mr. Heinemann to publishThe Big Drumin its original form.24

What Ibsen thought of the ultimate effect of changing an ending to accord with public sentiment, these words aboutA Doll’s Houseshow:

At the time whenA Doll’s Housewas quite new, I was obliged to give my consent to an alteration of the last scene for Frau Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, who was to play the part of Nora in Berlin. At that time I had no choice. I was entirely unprotected by copyright law in Germany, and could, consequently, prevent nothing. Besides, the play in its original, uncorrupted form was accessible to the German public in a German edition which was already printed and published. With its altered ending it had only a short run. In its unchanged form it is still being played.25

Dumas fils was even more severe in his strictures:

If at the second performance you are ready to modify your central idea, your development or your conclusion to please the public whom the night before you were pretending to teach something fresh, you may be, perhaps, an ingenious worker in the theatre, an adroit impresario, a facile inventor; you will never be a dramatist. You can make mistakes in details of execution; you have no right to make a mistake in the logic of your play, its correlations of emotions and acts, and least of all, in their outcome.26

Characterization, then, should be watched carefully in its fundamentals, all changes, and especially for its logical outcome. Long ago, Diderot summed up the subject thus:

One can form an infinitude of plans on the same subject and developed around the same characters. But the characters being once settled, they can have but one manner of speaking. Your figures will have this or that to say according to the situation in which you may have placed them, but being the same human beings in all the situations, they will not, fundamentally, contradict themselves.27

How may we know whether our motivation is good or not? First of all, it must be clear. If an audience cannot make out why one of our characters does what he is doing, from that moment the play weakens. It is on this ground that William Archer objected to theBecketof Tennyson:

“Some gents,” says the keeper, inPunch, to the unsuccessful sportsman, “goes a-wingin’ and a-worritin’ the poor birds; but you, sir—you misses ’em clane and nate!” With the like delicate tact criticism can only compliment the poet on the “clane and nate” way in which he has missed the historical interest, the psychological problem, of his theme. What was it that converted the Becket of Toulouse into the Becket of Clarendon—the splendid warrior-diplomatist into the austere prelate? The cowl, we are told, does not make the monk; but in Lord Tennyson’s psychology it seems that it does. Of the process of thought, the development of feeling, which leads Becket, on assuming the tonsure, to break with the traditions of his career, with the friend of his heart and with his own worldly interest—of all this we have no hint. The social and political issues involved are left equally in the vague. Of the two contending forces, the Church and the Crown, which makes for good, and which for evil? With which ought we to sympathize? It might be argued that we have no right to ask this question, and that it is precisely a proof of the poet’s art that he holds the balance evenly, and does not write as a partisan. But as a matter of fact this is not so. The poet is not impartial; he is only indefinite. We are evidently intended to sympathize, and wedosympathize, with Becket, simply because we feel that he is staking his life on a principle; but what that principle precisely is, and what its bearings on history and civilization, we are left to find out for ourselves. Thus the intellectual opportunity, if I may call it so, is missed “clane and nate.”28

Contrast the third, fourth, and fifth acts ofMichael and His Lost Angel29with the first and second. So admirable is the characterization of Acts I and II that a reader understands exactly what Audrie and Michael are doing and why. In the other acts, though what they are doing is clear, why the Audrie and Michael of the first two acts behaved thus is by no means clear and plausible. Indeed, plausibility and clearness go hand in hand as tests of motivation. Accounting for the deeds of any particular character is easy if the conduct rests on motives which any audience will immediatelyrecognize as both widespread and likely to produce the situation. It is just here, however, that national taste and literary convention complicate the work of the dramatist. An American, watching a performance ofSimone30by M. Brieux, hardly understood the loud protests which burst from the audience when the heroine, at the end of the play, sternly denounced her father’s conduct. To him, it seemed quite natural that an American girl should assume this right of individual judgment. The French audience felt that a French girl, because of her training, would not, under the circumstances, thus attack her father. M. Brieux admitted himself wrong and changed the ending. It is this fact, that conduct plausible for one nation is not always equally plausible for another, which makes it hard for an American public to understand a goodly number of the masterpieces of recent Continental dramatic literature.

What literary convention may do in twisting conduct from the normal, the pseudo-classic French drama of Corneille and Racine, and its foster child, the Heroic Drama of England, illustrate. Dryden himself points out clearly the extent to which momentary convention among the French deflected the characters in their tragedies from the normal:

The French poets ... would not, for example, have suffer’d Cleopatra and Octavia to have met; or, if they had met, there must only have passed betwixt them some cold civilities, but no eagerness of repartee, for fear of offending against the greatness of their characters, and the modesty of their sex. This objection I foresaw, and at the same time contemn’d; for I judg’d it both natural and probable that Octavia, proud of her new-gain’d conquest, would search out Cleopatra to triumph over her; and that Cleopatra, thus attack’d, was not of a spirit to shun the encounter: and ’tis not unlikely that two exasperated rivals should use such satire as I have put into their mouths; for, after all, tho’ the one were a Roman, and the other a queen, they were both women.··········Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency that he will rather expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my critics I am sure will commend him for it: but we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was good manners with a vengeance; and the audience is like to be much concern’d at the misfortunes of this admirable hero; but take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse, and choose rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken, honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain. In the meantime we may take notice that where the poet ought to have preserv’d the character as it was deliver’d to us by antiquity, when he should have given us the picture of a rough young man, of the Amazonian strain, a jolly huntsman, and both by his profession and his early rising a mortal enemy to love, he has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolyte.31

··········

Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency that he will rather expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my critics I am sure will commend him for it: but we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was good manners with a vengeance; and the audience is like to be much concern’d at the misfortunes of this admirable hero; but take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse, and choose rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken, honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain. In the meantime we may take notice that where the poet ought to have preserv’d the character as it was deliver’d to us by antiquity, when he should have given us the picture of a rough young man, of the Amazonian strain, a jolly huntsman, and both by his profession and his early rising a mortal enemy to love, he has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolyte.31

One of the chief elements in the genius of Shakespeare is his power to transcend momentary conventions, fads, and theories, and to discern in his material, whether history or fiction, eternal principles of conduct. Thus he wrote for all men and for all time. InLove’s Labor’s Losthe wrote for a special audience, appealing to its ideas of style and humor. InTwelfth Nighthe let his characters have full sway. Which is the more alive today?

Nor is it only the literary conventions of an audience which affect the problem of plausibility set an author. The French public of 1841 which came to the five-act play of Eugène Scribe,Une Chaine,32asked, not a convincing picture of life, but mere entertainment. Therefore they accepted insufficient motivation and artificiality in handling the scenes. Louise, the wife, discovering from words of herhusband as she enters the room that her former lover, Emmeric, now prefers Aline to her, sits down and dashes off a signed letter releasing him. Just why is not clear. In order that she may do this writing unobserved of her husband, two characters must, for some time, be so managed as to stand between him and her. In order that the husband may never know she has been in love with Emmeric, the letter must be kept out of his hands, and read only by the guardian of Aline, Clerambeau. All this requires constant artifice. Sidney Grundy made a one-act adaptation ofUne ChainecalledIn Honor Bound.33In this, Lady Carlyon, waking from sleep on the divan in her husband’s study, hears, unobserved by Philip and Sir George, the young man’s admission that he no longer cares for her. When her cry reveals her, Sir George, her husband, thinking her unwell, goes to bring her niece, Rose, to her aid. Lady Carlyon learns promptly from Philip that the guardian of the girl he is engaged to demands a letter releasing him from any former entanglement. Lady Carlyon, to cover her chagrin, with seeming willingness writes and signs a letter. Thus the writing takes place when the husband is off stage, and the evident chagrin of Lady Carlyon motivates it better. The relation of the husband to the letter is also handled better than in the original. He, unlike St. Geran, strongly suspects that his wife has cared for the younger man. Lady Carlyon is unaware that Sir George is the guardian in question and that the girl is her niece, Rose. Consequently she lets slip that Philip possesses the desired letter. Sir George demands it as his right, noting her disturbance when she learns that her husband is involved in the situation. When Philip refuses to surrender the letter, Sir George courteously permits him to read it aloud. Just before the signature is reached, he stops Philip, asking him if the letter is signed. When Philipadmits that it is, Sir George insists on having the letter, then, without looking at it, burns it at the lamp with words of sympathy for the writer. All this turns the husband in this scene from a mere lay figure into a character, and greatly lessens the artificiality of the original. By means of better characterization a motivation fundamentally more plausible is provided. Why? Because an English audience of 1880-90 expected much more probability in a play than did a French or English audience of 1841.

Of course, conduct initially unconvincing may be so treated as to become entirely satisfactory. One of the delights in characterization is so preparing for an exhibition of character likely to seem unreal of itself that when it is presented it is accepted either at once or before the scene closes. Any motive which a dramatist can make acceptable to his audience is ultimately just as good as one accepted unquestioningly. Shylock’s demand for the pound of flesh is in itself unplausible enough—the act of one demented or insane. But Shakespeare’s emphasis on his racial hate lends it possibility. His presentation of the other people in the play as accepting the bond with the minimum of question makes it seem probable. If a would-be dramatist were to rule out as material not to be treated whatever at the outset seems improbable or impossible, think what our drama would lose: such plays asFaust,Midsummer Night’s Dream,The Blue Bird, and evenHamlet.

Repeatedly in treating plausibility it has been implied or stated that what is said or done must be “in character.” This suggests another test of good motivation. What happens must be plausible, not only in that it accords with known human experience, but with what has been done by the character in preceding portions of the play. InThe Masqueraders, when Sir Brice and David stake Dulcie and her child against the fortune of the latter, andlet all turn upon a game of cards, a reader is skeptical, for even if it be admitted that Sir Brice might do this, it does not accord with what we know of David from the earlier scenes of the play.

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