Chapter III: Part 3

P. S.--Since this paper was written I have found two opinions as to the number of acts a play ought to have which were unknown to me when I undertook the discussion. The first is in the 'Dasarupa,' the Hindu treatise on the craft of play-making: "There are five stages of the action which is set on foot by those that strive after a result: Beginning, Effort, Prospect of Success, Certainty of Success, Attainment of the Result."

The second is in the commentary made by Robert Louis Stevenson during his methodical perusal of the dramas of the elder Dumas. After reading 'Henri III et sa Cour,' Stevenson declares that here in Dumas's first piece "is the cloven foot; a fourth act that has no part or lot in the play; a fourth act that is a mere incubus and interruption--that takes the eye off the action, and between two spirited and palpitating scenes interjects a damned sermon on the history of France. Poor Tribonian had a sore job to make up the fifty books of the Pandects; what was that to the labor of a dramatist bent on filling his five acts? I go as far as this: the natural division of the normal play is four: Act I, exposition; Act II, the problem produced; Act III, the problem argued; Act IV, the way out of it."

(1916.)

V

DRAMATIC COLLABORATION

DRAMATIC COLLABORATION

I

It is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the drama has flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly, we are certain to find a tendency to collaboration, to the partnership of two authors in the composition of one play. In England in the spacious days of good Queen Bess, there is not only the famous association of Beaumont and Fletcher, but also a host of other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher with Shakspere and Massinger, Dekker with Ben Jonson and with Middleton. In Spain Lope de Vega joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In France in the seventeenth century Moliere, once at least called to his aid Corneille and Quinault; and in France again in the nineteenth century we find Augier working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe working with Legouve, and with a score of others, while Dumas the elder was encompassed by a cloud of collaborators, and Dumas the younger was willing on more than one occasion to join various writers in the plays which he included in the separate volumes of his works, called by him the 'Theatre des Autres.' Then also in France there was the long-continued alliance of Meilhac and Halevy, to which we owe 'Froufrou' and the 'Grand Duchess of Gerolstein'; and there was also the almost equally interesting association of MM. Caillavet and de Flers. Sardou had one ally in the composition of 'Divorcons,' and another in the composition of 'Madame Sans Gene.' In Great Britain in recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero unite in writing a book for music; Mr. Bennett and Mr. Knoblauch unite in writing 'Milestones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence Housman unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the United States there was a score of years ago the steady collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C. De Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 'Wife'; and more recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated with Mr. John Luther Long in writing 'Madame Butterfly,' and the 'Darling of the Gods.' Mr. Augustus Thomas was once the partner of Mr. Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard composed one of his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New Amsterdam,' in association with another American man of letters; and Mr. Booth Tarkington and Mr. Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the 'Man from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.

While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration in periods of dramatic productivity is significant, it is equally significant that there is no corresponding prevalence of the practise of collaboration in novel-writing. True it is that there are certain fairly well-known partnerships in the history of prose fiction--that of Erckmann-Chatrain, in French, for instance, and that of Besant and Rice in English. True it is that Dickens and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No Thorofare,' and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were joint authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True it is also, that novels have been written not only by two partners, but by what can fairly be described as a syndicate of associated authors, the 'King's Men' by four, 'Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other' by six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve (including Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Doctor Henry van Dyke). These freakish conglomerates are sporadic only; they seem to be little better than literary "stunts"; and even the union of two writers in the production of a single novel is far less frequently to be observed than the union of two writers in the production of a single play. The former is unusual, whereas the latter seems to be so common as to excite no comment.

Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If the playwrights find it advantageous to double up, and the novelists do not discover any profit in putting on double harness, there ought to be some evident explanation. When we consider more carefully the essentially different conditions of the art of prose fiction and the art of play-writing, it is not difficult to perceive fairly obvious reasons for the varying procedure of the practitioners of these rival arts, which may seem so much alike, but which are really so very different in their methods and in their possibilities.

The French critic Joubert once asserted that "to make in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive one's intellect of all the pleasures of novelty and chance meeting during its execution; it is to make this execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in works calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This is an overstatement--but it is not a misstatement--of a principle of composition which is fundamentally sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The drama demands a well-built story, artfully put together, while a novel need not have a coherent and compact plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each of them a beautifully articulated structure, and so has Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,' to take a later example. But other great novels are frankly more or less haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick Papers,' for instance, and 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much to say that only a very few novels attain to the severity of structure, the regularity of action, the straightforward, unswerving movement which we discover in the dramas of a corresponding rank, and which can be achieved only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan that Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm and imagination.

Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and imagination quite as often and quite as abundantly as can prose fiction, but it must use these precious gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure the story-teller into a host of by-paths not foreseen by him when he set out on his journey; and while he is adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may chance to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and whom the readers of his book will be glad to welcome. But in a drama the story-teller is debarred from these wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, compelling it to do its work within the rigid limits of the artfully devised framework of the plot.

In other words, character is all-important in prose fiction, and the ultimate fame of the novelist depends upon his power of endowing his creatures with life, and upon his ability to let them obey the laws of their being before our eyes. This must the playwright also achieve; but he has the added duty of relating his characters intimately to the main action of his drama. Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this sort; he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to the solitary reader in the study; and experience shows that solitary readers do not insist upon the solidity of structure in a novel which the same individuals desire and demand when they betake themselves to the theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters who do not know their own minds, and who are merely exhibited and put through their paces, without having any vital relation to the story, even if there is anything which can fairly be called a story--and in some novels of high repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' for example, and in Anatole France's 'Histoire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over several volumes, there is little or no story, no main thread, no pretense of a plot.

II

Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel and a play; a novel may have a plot, but a plot is not necessary, and it can get along with a minimum of story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully articulated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it must have a story peopled by persons knowing their own minds, a story set in action by a dominating will, which determines the successive episodes of the action. As the making of a plot, as the putting together of a supporting skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of workmanship, for ingenuity of resource, for adroitness of construction, for the most careful consideration of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two heads are often better than one, because the partners have to talk the thing out to its uttermost details before they decide upon the straight line which is the shortest distance between two points. The technic of play-making is more exacting than the technic of novel-writing, and it requires imperatively the exact and detailed plan which Joubert held to be hampering to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, as he tells us himself, began more than one of his novels not knowing what he was going to put into it, and not knowing from day to day, as he was writing, what his ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to begin a play before he knew with absolute certainty how he intended to end it. In the drama we insist upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the end is implied in the beginning, and the beginning is only what that end makes necessary.

As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to be acquired by a period of apprenticeship; and here is another of the indisputable advantages of collaboration. The more inexperienced of the two collaborators is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert, and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the best possible way, by applying them under the direction, or at the suggestion and by the advice, of an older practitioner, to whom they have become so familiar that they are a second nature, as it were.

Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young playwrights. It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Scribe's multiplied collaborations upon the drama of France in the mid-years of the nineteenth century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread, was the influence of the many collaborations of the elder Dumas. Most of those who were the temporary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued to their more powerful associate, and contributed little or nothing beyond their fundamental suggestions for the several plays, and their incidental suggestions as to details of the working-out. That is to say, most of the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partnership with others have a close similarity to the plays they signed alone. But from this generalization we may except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de Dames,' in which Scribe had Legouve for a partner, and in which we find a greater richness of character delineation than in any of the pieces that Scribe composed alone, as we find also a greater dexterity of construction than in any of the pieces that Legouve composed alone.

To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr. Edward Knoblauch in conjunction, and to the friendly discussion due to their working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. Knoblauch wrote alone, and over the 'Great Adventure,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely responsible. To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two authors, the American and the Englishman, brought his special qualifications, each of them not only stimulating but supplementing the other. So we find the most famous French comedy of the nineteenth century, the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, more equably balanced than any play written alone by either Augier or Sandeau.

It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little profit in a partnership for play-making when both of the associates are equally inexpert, or when they were both possessed of wrong notions about the art of the drama. In the former case we have the blind leading the blind, and the most lamentable example of this is the long forgotten 'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T. Parsloe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the latter case we have not only the blind leading the blind, but a perverseness in going the wrong way, intensified by the complete sympathy between the two associates; and the most lamentable example of this is the 'Deacon Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley, who not only were ignorant of the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored it of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite the plain sign that there was no thorofare.

III

Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough what ought to be the more evident advantages of collaboration, that it focused "two minds together on the stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration, and invention." Collaboration will probably always produce a greater richness of invention, since each of the partners is likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater richness of consideration only when each is willing both to yield and to oppose. Neither must yield too easily; each of them must stand out for his own suggestions; and each of them must insist on weighing and measuring the suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympathetic, if their two hearts beat as one, then the advantage of their having two heads is diminished. If the two partners always think alike, then there will be no greater richness of purview.

When a play composed by two of his friends failed to find the success on the stage which had been anticipated for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made the shrewd remark that the two authors had probably been "too polite to each other"--that is to say, that they had not insisted upon criticising the successive suggestions made by each in turn. On the other hand, the collaborators must be broad-minded enough not to resent this necessary criticism. Like any other partnership, collaboration is a ticklish experiment, and it can be profitable only when the two partners are willing to give and take. They need more than usual self-control; they must be able, each of them, to preserve his own self-respect while full of regard for the self-respect of the other. It is not surprising that the long collaborations of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Halevy finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt quarrel. That disagreement is likely to arise out of the discussions inherent in any profitable literary partnership is evidenced by a retort credited to the younger Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and who did not always succeed in keeping on good terms with those whose plays he had bettered. A friend once suggested a theme for a play, and invited the collaboration of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel with you?" was answer of the witty dramatist.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control in all the long history of collaboration is that of Theodore Barriere, the author of the once-famous play called the 'Marble Heart,' one of the latest of whose pieces (adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed in collaboration with his mother-in-law!

Sometimes the breach between the two partners is postponed until after the play is completed and produced. Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined forces in the composition of the long-popular comedy called 'Masks and Faces,' and after it had established itself upon the stage, Charles Reade took its plot and its characters and utilized them in his charming novel, 'Peg Woffington,' and as he had taken the liberty of thus making a private profit out of the property of the partnership, it is not to be wondered at that Tom Taylor was distinctly displeased. But Charles Reade, altho he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt, and with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient in the courtesy and consideration that a man ought to possess to fit him for partnership. When he allied himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the novel of 'Foul Play,' the collaborators quarreled so violently that they felt themselves justified in preparing rival dramatizations of the story they had written in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the opportunity of choosing between two different theatrical adaptations of the same tale.

When the two partners are courteous to each other but not too yielding, when they are sympathetic but not too much alike in their characteristics and qualifications, when each of them supplements the weaker points of the other, then collaboration ought to result in plays of more variety of invention, and of more ingenuity of construction than is likely to be possessed by the average play due to a single mind. This much must be admitted; and it is the final justification for collaboration. But altho these partnerships in play-making spread abroad a knowledge of the principles of the art, and altho they raise the probable value of the average play, it must be admitted also, and with equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration are sharply limited.

No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dramatic literature, ancient and modern, is to be credited to collaboration; and the only possible exception to this sweeping statement would be urged by the critics who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier and Sandeau is the masterpiece of French comedy in the nineteenth century. Those who have climbed to the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done so alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by imagination. In spite of the greater "richness of purview, consideration, and invention" that collaboration undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpassing genius, the great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere or Moliere, works best alone. It is true that he may now and again take to himself an ally, as Shakspere condescended to the assistance of Fletcher in 'Henry VIII,' and as Moliere invoked the aid of Corneille in 'Psyche,' but it is true also that these plays, written in collaboration by Shakspere and by Moliere, are not the plays which establish and confirm their fame. Indeed, these plays are not even among the more important pieces of Shakspere and Moliere, and the reputation of the authors would be no lower if these plays had never come into existence.

It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere wrote alone that the Elizabethan stage is made glorious, and not by the dramatic romances that go under the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by the lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole author that we recall the Romanticist revolt in the French theater in 1830, and immediately thereafter, and not by the perfervidly passionate pieces that the elder Dumas put together in partnership with a group of now-forgotten auxiliaries. It is by the comedies that Augier and the younger Dumas wrote, each of them expressing himself in his own fashion, that the drama of France is illumined a score or more years later, and not by the comedies in the composition of which Scribe had the aid of an army of allies.

In any period of abundant fertility we can observe growing together at the same time from the soil, a fairly large number of trees rising above the underbrush, and we can also perceive here and there a tree of conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps of average height. In the luxuriant forest of the drama many of the trees of average height may be ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the wood, those whose tops lift themselves high above their neighbors--these will be found to bear only single signature.

(1914.)

VI

THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS

THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND
THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS

I

In Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study of Prose Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful consideration of the essential distinctions between prose fiction and the drama, in which he makes it plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two different modes of communicating the same fact or truth," because "the different modes of presentation really result in the communication of a different fact." Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist is marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature of the artistic medium which each man employs," and he asserts that the choice of a medium for presenting his story and projecting his characters "depends wholly upon the personality and training of the artist and the nature of the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to the public". And he sums up by insisting that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as a bird is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one into the other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between thing--capable, indeed, of both swimming and flying, but good at neither." In other words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the Irishman once defined it, "can't live on the land, and dies in the water."

The difference between the novel and the play is due to the inexorable fact that one is intended to be read alone in the study, and that the other is intended to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be obvious to all who care to consider the question, and yet there are many who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived by the illusive but superficial similarities between the two forms, each of which contains a story carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. And as a result of this failure to apprehend the vital differences between the two types of story-telling, the narrative to be perused and the action to be witnessed, our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized novels, and our book-stores are now being besieged by novelized plays. In many cases, if not in most of them, the motive for the transformation is simply commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be garnered, the artistic disadvantages of the procedure are overlooked. If hundreds of thousands of readers have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it is possible always that hundreds of thousands of spectators may be lured to behold her adventures when they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a compelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into the theater, it is possible again that this plot may attract book-buyers in equal numbers when it is retold in a narrative for the benefit of those remote from the playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist with the hope of a second crop of fame and fortune, and publishers dangle the same golden bait before the eyes of the dramatist.

Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is more frequent of late than it used to be, it is not at all new--indeed it existed before the rise of prose fiction. The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed episodes from the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances. On the other hand, while it must be admitted that the dramatizing of novels has been far more prevalent in the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter practise, suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was not unknown in the centuries that preceded ours. For example, Le Sage levied upon the Spanish playwrights for many of the characters and the situations he needed, for his rambling, picaresque novels, 'Gil Blas' and its sister stories. Another illustration can be found in England earlier than any in France; and before the play of 'Pericles,' which Shakspere seems to have edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even before it was performed, it was novelized by an obscure writer named Wilkins, who was very probably the author of the original version of the straggling piece that Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction and the drama have struggled with each other for the favor of the public, and each of them has always been willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found material fitted for its own special purpose.

II

But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncommon a century or two ago than the novelizing of plays, neither was frequent and neither of them was in any way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and the play were held to be so different that the novelist could not prevent the dramatist from borrowing his stories, and the playwright could not forbid the writer of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier story-tellers were not moved to protest when they saw their fictions employed by the playwrights; in fact, they were often inclined to accept this as a compliment to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance, in the preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales,' pointed with pride to the fact that one of these prose narratives had been turned into a play, and suggested complacently that there were other stories in his collection worthy of the same fate. Tennyson borrowed the story of his 'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and Charles Reade had no scruple in making a play out of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's attitude was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain when one of his own novels was cut into dialog and put on the stage without his permission, and yet he himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope and by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking their leave, and without heed to their subsequent protests against his high-handed proceeding. Apparently, when he was the aggressor he thought that he was doing a service to his victims.

When Reade was guilty of this offense against the developing literary morals of the nineteenth century, he was probably within his legal rights, since the British law had not then advanced to the point of recognizing the author's complete ownership of the fiction he had created. This defect has been remedied at last, and in the existing copyright and stage-right legislation of Great Britain and the United States authors are assumed to reserve to themselves every privilege which they do not specifically deprive themselves of; and they need no longer announce that they desire to retain all rights for their own profit. Both in the British code and in the American the novelist has now the sole privilege of making a play out of his story, and the dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out of his play. _Dramatization_ is a word of respectable antiquity, and the corresponding word, _novelization_, has now been legally recognized as a distinctive term. The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally make money out of a plot they had invented; and they asserted a moral right to control their own works whatever might be the form of presentation. The progress of legal reform was slow, as it usually is, but it was also certain. The moral right has now become a legal right of which the original author may avail himself or not, as he pleases. He may, if he chooses, dramatize his own novel and novelize his own play; or, if he prefers, he can sell the permission to rehandle his material to a professional playwright or to a professional storyteller.

III

There is one peculiar distinction between the novel and the play which Professor Bliss Perry did not emphasize. A novel may please long, and please many when it is only a study of character, like the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is only the record of a series of adventures and misadventures passing before the eyes of the chief personage, like the 'Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play, on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences in the theater unless it sets before the spectators a clearly defined struggle, a conflict of desires, a stark assertion of the human will. That is to say, the drama must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not. The drama must be dynamic and the novel may be static--if these scientific terms may be employed without pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new public, if the task is skilfully accomplished, only those novels can be successfully dramatized which happen to present an essential struggle and to display the collision of contending volitions. Any dramatization of the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry Finn,' of 'Gil Blas' or of the 'Pickwick Papers,' is foredoomed to failure, for these prose fictions do not contain the stuff out of which a vital play could be made. But 'Jane Eyre,' for example, and the 'Tale of Two Cities,' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' do possess this necessary dramatic element, and they can be made into plays with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater.

Even when the novel chances to have the essential struggle which the drama demands, the task of adapting it to the stage is not so easy as the non-expert supposes. At first sight it may seem as if there ought to be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play. There is a story ready-made, situations in abundance, and characters endowed with the breath of life. Yet as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play out of a novel than it is to write an original play. The immediate danger before the theatrical adapter is that he may be tempted to serve up the story merely as a panorama of successive episodes instead of casting out resolutely everything, however good in itself, which does not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict. This is one reason why the novelist had better leave the work of dramatization to an experienced playwright, who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In fact, it is hard even for the expert adapter to disentangle the special situations of a novel which alone are available in a play, and he is often tempted to retain much that he had better leave out.

Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest that a prose fiction is most likely to be made into a good play when the playwright has not read the book he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord with the conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard the special developments chosen by the novelist in accord with the very different conditions of narrative art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East Lynne' is the French play, 'Miss Multon,' by Adolphe Belot and Eugene Nus; and neither of the French collaborators knew any more about the English novel than its bare story, which was told to one of them by a French actress, who could read English. Now and again a clever playwright, even when he has the disadvantage of complete familiarity with the novel, can break loose from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and this is what Mr. George M. Cohan was able to do in the play wherein he presented the leading characters of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford' in a set of situations very different from those in the original story.

Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to be dramatized, and that even these are often dramatized ineffectively because the playwright has followed the story-teller too closely instead of putting the plot back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystallize in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger liberty since every play contains a story and characters capable of being transferred to prose fiction. But his task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the narrative may be content merely to tread in the footsteps of the dramatist, and to do no more than write out more amply the dialog and the stage business, instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it more in accord with the divergent principles of the art of prose fiction. The limitations of time to "the two hours' traffic of the stage" compel the dramatist to extreme compression; his dialogs must be far compacter and more pregnant than is becoming in the more leisurely novel, where the author can take all the time there is. Moreover, the playwright often does no more than allude to episodes which it would profit the novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the adroit novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of this sort to amplify into chapters containing interesting material for which the original play supplied only the most summary suggestion.

IV

The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in America in these early years of the twentieth century; and it had been attempted infrequently even in the seventeenth century. Yet only one of these novelized plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for itself in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of theatrical life in the eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,' which Charles Reade made out of the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration with Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing this comedy without asking Taylor's permission, and even without consulting his collaborator; and all the comment that need be made is that the procedure was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly attitude toward others--an attitude taken by him on many other occasions. But whatever injustice he did to his fellow worker, he did none to the joint product of their invention; he transmuted a play into a novel with due appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he produced a fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, which has been read by thousands who have had no suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally figured in a comedy.

Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because he was more skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist, altho he fancied himself rather as a maker of plays than as a writer of stories. More than once did he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two prizes with the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de Paris' of Brisebarre and Nus--the same play which Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of New York'--and made a version which he called 'Gold,' under which name it had a few performances. He had materially modified the French plot in his English play; and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus, when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,' a matter-of-fact romance. Later he dramatized this novel of his, and the resulting play did not bear any close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'

Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry Pettitt in a piece called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,' which he promptly proceeded to novelize--again without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy, swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being then unprotected by copyright in the United States, was immediately dramatized by Messrs. George H. Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually that another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward dramatized by him, had been originally novelized from a French play called the 'Chateau de Grantier,' written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 'Three Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a little surprising that a man like Reade, who prided himself on his originality, and who even went so far as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should have been willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators, and to derive so much of his material from foreign sources.

The only other author who has ventured to turn a play into a novel, and then back into a play varying widely from the original piece, is Sir James Barrie, and what he did was not quite what Reade had done. Sir James wrote a charming story, called the 'Little White Bird,' and he found in his own prose fiction part of the material out of which he was moved later to make a charming play, called 'Peter Pan.' For reasons best known to himself, but deplored by all who are interested in the progress of the English drama, Sir James Barrie has chosen to publish only a few of his comedies. Yet he met the demands of a multitude of readers by borrowing from his fantastic piece a part of the material which he made into a delightful tale, called 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.' These successive rehandlings of an idea, first in prose fiction, then in dramatic form, and finally again in prose fiction, were possible only to a novelist who was also a dramatist--to an author who had mastered the secrets of two different methods of story-telling, the method of the theater and the method of the library.

V

The novelist-dramatist of this type is a comparatively new figure in literature. Formerly there was a sharp line of cleavage between the man who wrote novels and the man who wrote plays, altho one or the other might be lured on occasion into a sporadic raid into the territory of the other. During three-quarters of the nineteenth century prose fiction reigned supreme in every modern literature except that of France, and the novelists were rather inclined to look down on the playwrights, and to dismiss the drama as an inferior form, likely to be absolutely superseded by prose fiction. But toward the end of the century there began to be visible signs of an awakening interest in the drama, and also of a slackening interest in prose fiction. The novelists of the twentieth century, so far from holding the drama to be an inferior form, are discovering that it is at least a more difficult form, and therefore artistically more attractive. As a result of this discovery not a few novelists have turned playwrights, taking the pains to learn the principles of the more dangerous art of play-making. Sir James Barrie in England, M. Paul Hervieu in France, Herr Sudermann in Germany, and Signor d'Annunzio in Italy may not have abandoned altogether the prose fiction in which they first won fame, but at least they now devote the major part of their energies to the drama. It may be recalled that Clyde Fitch began his literary career as a writer of short stories, and that Mr. Bernard Shaw originally emerged to view as the author of a novel.

On the other hand, it must be noted as significant that the playwrights are not tempted to turn novelists; they seem to be satisfied with their own art as the more exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M. Rostand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. Augustus Thomas have not been lured from the drama into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which makes only lax demands on its practitioners, and which does not require an artist always to do his best. The play has a severe technic, and it tolerates no carelessness of construction. The more gifted a story-teller may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is that in the immediate future he will seek to express himself in the drama, even if he is also moved now and again to return to the easier path of prose fiction.

And this raises another interesting point. Now that the drama is rising again into rivalry with prose fiction, is not the playwright who allows his piece to be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact, confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the novel? Apparently this is the attitude taken by the more prominent dramatists of the day; most of them publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow these plays to be novelized--altho they might find a superior profit if they descended to this. It is an unfortunate fact that the public which is eager to read prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the dearth of dramatic literature in our language during the nineteenth century, the public lost the habit of reading plays, a habit possessed by the public of the eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel had been established in consequence of the overwhelming popularity of Scott, followed speedily by that of Dickens and Thackeray.

Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly recovering the ability to find pleasure in the perusal of a play. The social dramas of Ibsen have, most of them, been performed here and there in the theaters of Great Britain and the United States; but they have been read by thousands who have had no opportunity to see them on the stage. So it is with the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared in our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. Maeterlinck, only a few of which have been produced in the American theater. In time, it seems highly probable that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome to a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington as to one of their novels. But this happy state can be brought about only if the dramatists resolutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves, and from authorizing novelization by others.

(1913.)

VII

WOMEN DRAMATISTS

WOMEN DRAMATISTS

I

To some of the more ardent advocates of the theory that women are capable of rivaling men in every one of the arts it is a little surprising, not to say disconcerting, that there are so few female playwrights. The drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women have been abundantly productive from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. And as performers on the stage women have achieved indisputable eminence; in fact, acting is probably the earliest of the arts (as possibly it is still the only one) in which women have won their way to the very front rank; and in the nineteenth century there were two tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly not inferior in power and in elevation to the most distinguished of tragic actors. Why is it, then, that women story-tellers have not thrust themselves thru the open stage door to become more effective competitors of the men playwrights?

Before considering this question, it may be well to record that women playwrights have appeared sporadically both in French literature and in English. In France Madeleine Bejart, whose sister Moliere married, was credited with the authorship of more than one play; and in the last hundred years George Sand and Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and dramas, several of which succeeded in establishing themselves in the repertory of the Comedie-Francaise. In England at one time or another plays of an immediate popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs. Bateman's 'Self,' and Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held the stage for several seasons, while few of recent successes in the New York theaters had a more delightful freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's 'Poor Little Rich Girl,' and few of them have dealt more boldly with a burning question than Miss Ford's 'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence to compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the ordeal by fire before the footlights are evidence that if there exists any prejudice against the female dramatist it can be overcome. They are evidence, also, that women are not debarred from the competition; and fairness requires the record here that, when Mr. Winthrop Ames proffered a prize for an American play, this was awarded to a woman.

But to grant equality of opportunity is not to confer equality of ability, and when we call the roll of the dramatists who have given luster to French literature and to English, we discover that this list is not enriched by the name of any woman. The fame of George Sand is not derived from her contributions to dramatic literature, and the contributions of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald, of Mrs. Bateman and Mrs. Mowatt, entitle them to take rank only among the minor playwrights of their own generations; and to say this is to say that their plays are now familiar only to devoted specialists in the annals of the stage, and that the general reader could not give the name of a single piece from the pen of any one of these enterprising ladies. In other words, the female playwrights are so few and so unimportant that a conscientious historian of either French or English dramatic literature might almost neglect them altogether without seriously invalidating his survey. Perhaps the only English titles that are more than mere items in a barren catalog are Mrs. Centlivre's 'Wonder' and Mrs. Cowley's 'Belle's Stratagem'; and the French pieces of female authorship which might protest against exclusion are almost as few--Mme. de Girardin's 'La Joie fait Peur,' and George Sand's 'Marquis de Villemer' and 'Mariage de Victorine.'

Indeed, the women playwrights of the past and of the present might be two or three times more numerous than they are, and two or three times more important without even treading upon the heels of the male play-makers. This is an incontrovertible fact; yet it is equally indisputable that as performers in the theater women are competitors whom men respect and with whom they have to reckon, and that as story-tellers women are as popular and as prolific as men. And here we are brought back again to the question with which this inquiry began: Why is it then that women have not been as popular and as prolific in telling stories on the stage? Why cannot they write a play as well as they can act in it?

One answer to this question has been volunteered by a woman who succeeded as an actress, and who did not altogether fail as a dramatic poetess, altho she came in later life to have little esteem for her earlier attempts at play-writing. It is in her 'Records of a Girlhood' that Fanny Kemble expressed the conviction that it was absolutely impossible for a woman ever to be a great dramatist, because "her physical organization" was against it. "After all, it is great nonsense saying that intellect is of no sex. The brain is, of course, of the same sex as the rest of the creature; beside the original female nature, the whole of our training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common life and general human nature, and the various experiences of existence from which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably against it"--that is, against the possibility of a really searching tragedy, or of a really liberal comedy ever being composed by a woman. To this rather sweeping denial of the dramaturgic gift to women Fanny Kemble added an apt suggestion, that "perhaps some of the manly, wicked queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have written plays--but they lived their tragedies instead of writing of them."

II

At first sight it may seem as if one of Fanny Kemble's assertions--that no woman can be a dramatist because of her inevitable ignorance of life and of the experiences of existence from which she is debarred--is disproved by the undeniable triumphs of women in acting, and by the indisputable victories won by women in the field of prose fiction, achieved in spite of these admitted limitations. But on a more careful consideration it will appear that as an actress woman is called upon only to embody and to interpret characters conceived by man with the aid of his wider and deeper knowledge of life. And when we analyze the most renowned of the novels by which women have attained fame, we discover that the best of these deal exclusively with the narrower regions of conduct, and with the more restricted areas of life with which she is most familiar as a woman, and that when she seeks to go outside her incomplete experience of existence she soon makes us aware of the gaps in her equipment.

One of the strongest stories ever written by a woman is the 'Jane Eyre' of Charlotte Bronte; and the inexperience of the forlorn and lonely spinster is almost ludicrously made manifest in her portrayal of Rochester, a superbly projected figure, not sustained by intimate knowledge of the type to which he belongs. Charlotte Bronte knew Jane Eyre inside and out; but she did not know even the outside of Rochester. Because women are debarred with the most sedulous care from various experiences of existence they can never know men as men can know women. This is the basis for the shrewd remark that in dealing with affairs of the heart men novelists rarely tell all they know, whereas women novelists are often tempted to tell more than they know. Even women like George Eliot and George Sand, who have more or less broken out of bounds, are still more or less confined to their individual associations with the other sex; and they lack the inexhaustible fund of information about life which is the common property of men.

Women have most satisfactorily displayed their special endowment for fiction not in what must be called the dramatic novel, not in soul-searching studies like the 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Anna Karenine,' but rather in less solidly supported inquiries into the interrelation of character and social convention, as in 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Castle Rackrent.' It would be unfair to assert that Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen are superficial; yet it is not unfair to say that they do not explore deeply, and that they do not deal with what Stevenson called the great passionate crises of existence, "when duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." This is the essential struggle of the drama; and the authoress of 'Jane Eyre' sought to present it boldly, even if she was handicapped by insufficient information; and this essential struggle was what Charlotte Bronte herself missed in Jane Austen: "The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, tho hidden, what the blood rushes thru, what is the unseen seat of life, and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores."