Dramatic Technique

An almost similar situation in a play set in a remote part of the West, Believe Me, Xantippe, is more convincing. A loutish beast agrees to gamble for a woman he is kidnapping with a young adventurer who sees at the moment no other way to save her from the other man’s clutches. The scene is not at all improbable for either man. In The Princess and the Butterfly, all the preceding acts are but a preparation for what the world will call the unreason, in the last act, of the marriages of Sir George and the Princess Pannonia,—of middle age with youth. Their final conduct would seem unplausible were it not entirely in keeping with their characters as carefully developed in the earlier parts of the play. The Rising of the Moon of Lady Gregory shows a final situation for the Police Sergeant which, at the opening of the play, would seem impossible for him. In a few pages, however, the dramatist so develops the character that we are perfectly ready to accept his sacrifice of the “hundred pounds reward” which he so coveted at the outset.

Motivation should not, however, be allowed to obtrude itself, but should be subordinated to the emotional purpose of the scene. The modern auditor prefers to gather it almost unconsciously as the action of the play proceeds rather than to have it emphasized for him, as does Iago, at the end of several acts of Othello. Another instance of this frank motivation among the Elizabethans may be found in the soliloquy from The Duchess of Malfi:

Good motivation, then, must be clear; either plausible naturally or made so by the art of the dramatist; should in each particular instance comport with the preceding actions and speech of the character; and should not be so stressed as to draw attention away from the emotional significance of the scene.

It is by well-motived characterization that drama passes from melodrama to story-play and so to tragedy; or, from the broadest farce or extravaganza through low comedy to high. As long as we care little what the people in our play are, and greatly for comic or serious happenings, we may string situations together almost at will. The moment that our figures come alive, as has been pointed out, selection in our possible material has begun. Some of the incidents in our melodrama or broad farce will drop out as wholly impossible for these figures which have come to life. Others must be modified if the figures are to take part in them. Give a melodrama sustaining, convincing characterization and it must at least turn into a story-play, something which after a mingling of the serious and the comic does not end tragically. So characterize in a story with a serious ending that the tragic result develops inevitably from the sequence of preceding scenes, and tragedy is born. Watch the way in which Shakespeare lifts the Hubert and Arthur scene of the old play of King John by the infused characterization. In the old play the author presents us with puppets depending for their effect on the contained horror of the scene. Shakespeare creates a winsome, brave young prince, and a very human Hubert. The scene moves us, not, simply from our dread of physical torture, but because of our growing intense sympathy for the lad who is fighting for his life.

For further illustration of Shakespeare’s clear understanding that the emotions of well-characterized figures are better means of controlling an audience than a merely horrific situation, study his handling of the ghost scene in Richard III or Julius Cæsar in contrast with similar places in Hamlet. What most transmuted the Ur-Hamlet of Thomas Kyd into one of the greatest tragedies of all time was the characterization Shakespeare put into it. Certainly, characterization makes for dramatists the stepping-stones on which they may rise from dead selves to higher things.

How may all this needed characterization best be done? A dramatist should not permit himself to describe his characters, for in his own personality he has no proper place in the text. There the characters must speak and act for themselves. There has been, however, an increasing tendency lately to describe the dramatis personæ of the play in programs, either in the list of characters or in a summary of the plot. Some writers apparently assume that every auditor reads his program carefully before the curtain goes up. Such an assumption is false: more than that it is lazy, incompetent, and thoroughly vicious, putting a play on the level with the motion pictures, which cannot depend wholly on themselves but would often be wholly vague without explanatory words thrown upon the canvas. Nor can the practice of the older dramatists like Wycherley and Shadwell, who often prefixed to their printed plays elaborate summaries describing the dramatis personæ, be cited as a final defense.

It is more than doubtful if anything so elaborate could be found in the manuscripts of Wycherley and Shadwell. Their purpose was doubtless the same as that of certain modern dramatists who, with a view to making plays less difficult for those unaccustomed to reading them, greatly amplify the stage directions before their plays go to print. Mr. Granville Barker in the manuscripts of his plays is particularly frugal of stage directions, but in the printed form of The Madras House,38 practically the whole history of Julia is given in the opening stage direction:

Such characterizing is an implied censure on the ability of most readers to see the full significance of deft touches in the dialogue. If not, then it is necessary because some part of it is not given in the text as it should be, or it is wholly unnecessary and undesirable, for the text, repeating all this detail, will be wearisome to an intelligent reader. The safest principle is, in preparing a manuscript for acting, to keep stage directions to matters of setting, lighting, essential movements, and the intonations which cannot, by the utmost efforts of the author, be conveyed by dialogue.39 In this last group belong certain every-day phrases susceptible of so many shadings that the actor needs guidance. In the last line of this extract from the opening of Act III of Mrs. Dane’s Defence, the “tenderly” is necessary.

Notice that the statement just formulated as to stage directions reads, “cannot be conveyed,” not “may not.” Cross the line, and differences between the novel and the play are blurred, for the author runs a fair chance of omitting exposition needed in the text and of writing colorless dialogue. A recently published play prefaces not only every speech, but even parts of the speeches with careful statements as to how they should be given, even when the text is perfectly clear. Nothing is left to the imagination, and the text is often emotionally colorless.

Let it be remembered, then, that the stage direction is not a pocket into which a dramatist may stuff whatever explanation, description, or analysis a novelist might allow himself, but is more a last resort to which he turns when he cannot make his text convey all that is necessary.

The passing of the soliloquy and the aside40 makes the dramatist of today much more limited than were his predecessors in letting a character describe itself. Today everything depends on the naturalness of the self-exposition. The vainglorious, the self-centered, the garrulous will always talk of themselves freely. The reserved, the timid, and persons under suspicion will be sparing of words. When the ingenuity of the dramatist cannot make self-exposition plausible, the scene promptly becomes unreal. The point to be remembered is, as George Meredith once said, that “The verdict is with the observer.” Not what seems plausible to the author but what, as he tries it on auditors, proves acceptable, may stand.

Description of one character by another is usually more plausible than the method just treated. Even here, however, the test remains plausibility. It requires persuasive acting to make the following description of Tartuffe perfectly natural. There is danger that it will appear more the detailed picture the dramatist wishes to place in our minds than the description the speaker would naturally give his listeners:

The scene in which Melantius draws from his friend Amintor (The Maid’s Tragedy, Act III, Scene 2) admission of his wrongs, shows admirable use of both kinds of description—of oneself and of another person.

The cry with which Electra turns to her peasant husband in the play of Euripides is perhaps as fine an instance as there is of natural description by one person of her relations to another.

Unquestionably, however, the best method of characterization is by action. In the first draft of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Krogstad uses with his employer Helmar, because he is an old school fellow, the familiar “tu.” This under the circumstance illustrates his tactlessness better than any amount of description. When Helmar is irritated by this familiarity, his petty vanity is perfectly illustrated. Any one who recalls the last scene of Louis XI as played by the late Sir Henry Irving remembers vividly the restless, greedily moving fingers of the praying King. They told far more than words. The way in which Mrs. Lindon, throughout the opening scene of Clyde Fitch’s The Truth,44 touches any small article she finds in her way perfectly indicates her fluttering nervousness.

Does not the action of this extract from Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside help most in depicting the greed and dishonesty of Yellowhammer, as well as the humor and ingenuity of the suitor?

Could any description or analysis by the author or another character paint as perfectly as does the action of the following lines the wistful grief of the child pining for his mother?

In brief, then, understand your characters thoroughly, but do not, in your own personality, describe them anywhere. Let them describe themselves, or let other people on the stage describe or analyze them, when this is naturally convincing or may be made plausible by your skill. Trust, however, above all, to letting your characters live before your audience the emotions which interest you, thus making them convey their characters by the best means of communication between actor and audience—namely, action.

In the chapter (VI) dealing with clearness in exposition the extreme importance of identifying the characters for the audience has been carefully treated.47 Closely connected with this identifying is the matter of entrances and exits.

The characterizing value of exits and entrances is usually little understood by the inexperienced dramatist. Yet in real life, men and women cannot enter or leave a room without characterization. Watch the people in a railroad car as it nears the terminus. The people who rise and stand in the aisles are clearly of different natures from those who remain quietly seated till the train reaches its destination. The twenty or thirty standing wait differently and leave the car with different degrees of haste, nervousness or anticipation. Those who remain seated differ also. Some are absorbed in conversation, oblivious of the approaching station; others, somewhat ostentatiously, watch the waiters in the aisles with amused contempt. Study, therefore, exits and entrances. Very few will be found negative in the sense that they add nothing to the knowledge of the characters. How did Claude enter in the following extract from a recent play? Claude, it should be said, has been mentioned just in passing, as a suitor of Marna. Other matters, however, have been occupying attention.