Theory and technique of playwriting

f IHIEOII AMP

OF

with a new introductory essay
on the contemporary theatre

by JOHN HOWARD LAWSON

A DRAMABOQK $1.9X

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

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THEORY
AND TECHNIQUE
OF PLAYWRITING

By John Howard Lawson

Books

Theory and Technique of Playwritinc

The Hidden Heritage

Film in the Battle of Ideas

Film: The Creative Process

Plays

Roger Bloomer
Processional
Nirvana
Loudspeaker

The International
Success Story
Gentlewoman
The Pure in Heart

Marching Song

Motion Pictures

Blockade

Algiers

They Shall Have Music

Earthbound

Four Sons

Sahara

cou nter att ack

Smashup

Action in the North Atlantic

THEORY
AND TECHNIQUE
OF PLAYWRITING

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION

BY
JOHN HOWARD LAWSON

A DRAMABOOK

|g{| HILL AND WANG - New York

Copyright 1936, 1949, © i960 by John Howard Lawson

ISBN 0-8090-0525-5

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-14493

Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced

in any form without permission.

Acknowledgment of permission to quote from Brunetiere's The Laiv of
the Drama is herewith made with thanks to the Brander Matthews
Dramatic Museum of Columbia University; from Maxwell Anderson's
Both Your Houses to Maxwell Anderson through Samuel French, Inc. ;
from Barrett H. Clark's European Theories of the Drama and A Study
of the Modern Drama to Barrett H. Clark.

Manufactured in the United States of America

FIRST DRAMABOOK EDITION AUGUST 1960
789 10 II 12

CONTENTS

Introduction vii

PART r

HISTORY OF DRAMATIC THOUGHT

I. Aristotle 3

II. The Renaissance 10

III. The Eighteenth Century 21

IV. The Nineteenth Century 31
V. Ibsen 63

PART 2

THE THEATRE TODAY

I. Conscious Will and Social Necessity 87

II. Dualism of Modern Thought 98

III. George Bernard Shaw 107

IV. Critical and Technical Trends 1 14
V. Eugene O'Neill 129

VI. The Technique of the Modern Play 142

PART 3

DRAMATIC STRUCTURE

I. The Law of Conflict 163

II. Dramatic Action 168

III. Unity in Terms of Climax 174

IV. The Process of Selection 187
V^. The Social Framework 200

vi Contents

PART 4

DRAMATIC COMPOSITION

I. Continuity 221

II. Exposition 233

III. Progression 244

IV. The Obligatory Scene 262
V. Climax 267

VI. Characterization 279

VII. Dialogue 287

VIII. The Audience 298

Index 303

INTRODUCTION

The Changing Years

THIS study of dramatic theory and technique was first published
in 1936, in the midst of the social and theatrical upheaval that
Harold Clurman calls "The Fervent Years." Today, the arts
display less fervor, and far less interest in "social significance."
The transition in dramatic thought from Waiting for Lefty to
Waiting for Godot is almost as sweeping as the changes that have
taken place among the world's peoples and powers.

There are those who regard the culture of the thirties as dead
and best forgotten. The question need not be debated here —
except insofar as this book offers testimony to the contrary. My
beliefs have not changed, nor has my fervor abated. I can hope
that my understanding has ripened. But I see no need to modify
or revise the theory of dramatic art on which this work is based.

The theory holds that the dramatic process follows certain
general laws, derived from the function of drama and its historical
evolution. A play is a mimed fable, an acted and spoken story.
The tale is presented because it has meaning to its creator. It
embodies a vision, poses an ethical or emotional problem, praises
heroes or laughs at fools. The playwright may not be conscious
of any purpose beyond the telling of a tale. He may be more
interested in box-office receipts than in social values. Nonetheless,
the events taking place on the stage embody a point of view, a
judgment of human relationships. Conceptual understanding is
the key to mastery of dramatic technique. The structure of a
play, the design of each scene and the movement of the action to
its climax, are the means by which the concept is communicated.

The theatre is a difficult art form. No labor of thought can
give talent to the untalented or sensitivity to the insensitive. The
pattern of a play is as subtle and chromatic as the pattern of a
symphony. Theatrical concepts are profoundly, and at best magi-
cally, theatrical, growing out of the culture of the theatre as part
of the culture and history of mankind. Therefore, dramatic crafts-
manship encompasses the past from which it has evolved. The
artist is not bound by traditional styles. He is more likely to be
bound by ignorance, enslaving him to the parochial devices and
cheap inventions of "show business." The true creator turns to
the theatre's heritage in order to attain freedom, to select and

vii

viii Introduction

develop modes of expression suited to his need, to give radiance to
his vision and substance to his dream.

The historj?^ of dramatic thought which constitutes the first part
of this book traces the evolution of European theatre from ancient
Athens to the twentieth century. I must acknowledge my regret
that it deals only with European development, and does not
encompass the riches of theatre culture in other parts of the world.
Today we are beginning to realize that our dramatic heritage is
not limited to the Greeks and Elizabethans and the English and
continental drama of the last three centuries. There is a growing
recognition in the United States of the power and resources of
the theatre in India, China, and Japan. Yet these forms, and
those of other lands, are still regarded as quaint and esoteric.
Brecht is the only modern dramatist who has utilized Oriental
modes as an integral part of his own creative style.

The contemporary stage uses a conglomeration of techniques,
ranging from the banalities of the "well-made play" to the
splendors of musical comedy; but all this is done eclectically, to
achieve an effect, to titillate sensibilities. Broadway uses shreds and
patches of theatre experience and related forms of dance, panto-
mime, and ritual, drawn from all parts of the globe. But there has
been no attempt to consider the order and value of stage tradi-
tions, their relation to contemporary culture, their potential use
in stimulating the theatrical imagination and developing new
modes of dramatic communication.

Let us now turn to a more modest historical task — an appraisal
of the trend of European and American dramatic thought from
the middle thirties to the present. At first glance, we see a
kaleidoscope of contradictory tendencies: wider public interest
in the theatre is manifested in the growth of "Off -Broadway"
production and the activity of community and university theatres;
yet all this stir and effort have not stimulated any movement of
creative writing. The Stanislavsky method has attained con-
siderable prestige, but it is doubtful whether the art of acting
has progressed during these decades. The posthumous presentation
of O'Neill's last plays has added to his reputation; Brecht and
O'Casey exert a growing influence; there is far more interest
in Shakespeare and other classics than there was a quarter-century
ago.

Yet statistical evidence and critical judgment agree that the
theatre is sick. The number of playhouses available for professional
production in the United States dropped from 647 in 192 1 to 234
in 1954. The decline continues. There were sixty-five legitimate

Introduction ix

theatres in New York in 193 1 and only thirty in 1959.* The
Off-Broadway stage is said to have lost one million dollars during
the season of 1958-59.

Each year, critics lament the decline of the art. Early in 1945,
Mary McCarthy wrote: "In 1944, the stage presents such a spec-
tacle of confusion, disintegration and despair that no generaliza-
tion can cover the case." f Fifteen years later, Brooks Atkinson
wrote in the New York Times of January 3, i960: "Last year
was on the whole banal. This season, so far, is worse. . . .
There is nothing creative at the center of things, pushing the
theatre into significant areas of thought or feeling."

On May 14, 1959, President Eisenhower broke ground for
the new seventy-five-million-dollar Lincoln Center for the Per-
forming Arts in New York City. The Shakespeare festivals at
Stratford, Ontario and Stratford, Connecticut attract enthusiastic
crowds. There is apparently a need for living theatre in the
United States. How does this need relate to the decline of the
commercial stage? Why is there "nothing creative at the center
of things?"

Burden of Guilt

A group of European plajr^rights — Giraudoux, Anouilh,
Beckett, lonesco, Genet, Sartre, Camus, Duerrenmatt — have
been honored and praised in the United States in recent years.
Their collective influence goes far beyond Broadway, and is a
major factor in creating the climate of thought that pervades the
drama departments of our universities and the experimental work
of amateur and professional groups. We must turn to these
dramatists for the clearest statement, and often the most imaginative
theatrical realization, of ideas which are more confusingly and
less imaginatively projected in English and American plays.

The turning point in the development of the modern French
theatre is signalized by one play. The Madwoman of Chaillot.
Its author, Jean Giraudoux, who died in 1944, belonged to the
older generation of French intellectuals. His rhetoric and fantasy
are derived from ancient sources, combining elements of Racine
with nineteenth-century sensibility and twentieth-century wit. But
underlying Giraudoux's classicism is his mordant sense of the
failure of bourgeois values in the society of his own time. The

* International Theatre Annual, No. 4, edited by Harold Hobson, New
York, 1958.
tMary McCarthy, Sights and Spectacles, New York, 1957.

X Introduction

action of his plays may take place in Argos or Thebes or Troy.
But the social milieu is always the narrow middle-class life of
the provincial town of Bellac where he was born. There are
always the petty officials, the grubby businessmen, the deadening
routine that destroys the human spirit.

The conflict between the ideal and the real runs through all
of Giraudoux's plays. It is often veiled in fantasy, as in Ondine,
or sentimentalized in terms of a young girl's search for beauty, as
in The Enchanted or The Apollo of Bellac. But finally, in The
Madwoman of Chaillot, the roots of the conflict are exposed. The
Countess, "dressed in the grand fashion of 1885," is a madwoman
because she holds to the old values threatened by the greedy
businessmen who are going to tear down the city to find oil under
the houses. "Little by little," says the Ragpicker, "the pimps have
taken over the world."

The Countess lures the seekers after oil into her cellar, and
sends them down into a sewer from which there is no escape.
Then she closes the trap door. They are gone forever. The vaga-
bonds, and the poor who have retained their humanity, enter:
"The new radiance of the world is now very perceptible. It glows
from their faces." The simplicity of this denouement ("They
were wicked. Wickedness evaporates") indicates the gap between
Giraudoux's hatred of an inhuman society and his dreamlike solu-
tion. The final lines turn to sentiment and irony. The Countess
tells the young lovers to accept love while there is still time. Then
she says : "My poor cats must be starved. What a bore if humanity
had to be saved every afternoon."

The indictment of bourgeois society in The Madwoman of
Chaillot foreshadows the course of European theatre in the years
following World War II. But the ironic twist at the end is even
more revealing of the mood of the period. The intellectual knows
that "the times are out of joint"; the sensitive artist is tortured
by awareness of evil. But the evil seems inexorable, and humanity
cannot be saved every afternoon.

The mad Countess has strength of will and even optimism.
But the will tends to atrophy in the person who sees the immensity
of evil but finds no way of combating it. Inability to act creates
a feeling of guilt, a loss of all rational values. A world without
values is a world in which action — the heart of life and drama —
has lost meaning. According to Camus, human dignity is achieved
through recognition of the "absurdity" of existence: "For one
who is alone, with neither God nor master, the weight of days

Introduction xi

is terrible." * As early as 1938, in Caligula, Camus created a
drama in which nihilism is the motive-force of the action. Caligula
is the symbol of Man without values. In a criminal society, he
can exercise his will only by killing and destroying.

Sartre's existentialist philosophy and his creative work attempt
to resolve the contradiction between the idea that life is absurd
and tragic, and the search for responsibilities that give it purpose.
The contradiction between these two irreconcilable concepts is
strongly, almost absurdly, demonstrated in The Respectful Prosti-
tute. Sartre's unfamiliarity with the small-town life of the Ameri-
can South is evident in the play. But his choice of such a social
setting shows his concern with moral values and also his abstract
approach, his inability to achieve clarity. The characters seem to be
under a spell of absolute evil. Lizzie, the prostitute, tries to save
the Negro from lynching. The white Southerner, Fred, pursues
the Negro and two revolver shots are heard offstage. When Fred
returns to Lizzie, she wants to kill him but cannot. He explains
that the Negro was running too fast and he missed him. Then the
racist embraces the prostitute and tells her he will put her "in a
beautiful house, with a garden" ; as she yields to his embrace, he
says, "Then everything is back to normal again" ; adding as he
reveals his identity to her for the first time, "My name is Fred."

The ironic twist as the curtain descends is characteristic of the
modern drama. But here the irony is heavy-handed. It tells us
that nothing has happened: the threatened violence did not take
place. The Negro is not central to the action ; he is merely a sym-
bol of the decadence which is more fully expressed in the brutal
sensuality of the racist ("Is it true that I gave you a thrill? An-
swer me. Is it true?"),t and the helplessness of the woman.

There is an existentialist link between Caligula and The Respect-
ful Prostitute. In both plays, men accept the absurdity and cruelty
of their existence and absolve themselves of guilt by denying moral
responsibility.

The burden of guilt is carried more gracefully in the plays of

Jean Anouilh. These are sentimental lamentations over the dead

body of love. There is no development of action because the doom

is inescapable. In the plays of youthful passion, such as EurydiceX

or Romeo and Jeannette, the lovers meet and cry out against the

fate that engulfs them at the final curtain. In Romeo and Jean-

* The Fall, New York, 1957.

t It may be noted, as a matter of technical interest, that the repetition
of phrases is often a sign that the emotion is not valid.
t Produced in the United States as Legend of Lovers.

xii Introduction

nette, the only act of will on the part of the lovers is their final
decision to die together. Jeannette's brother and father watch as
the pair walk out across the sands to be engulfed by the tide. Her
brother says: "They're kissing, kissing. With the sea galloping up
behind them." He turns to his father: "You just don't understand
it, do you, you scruffy old Don Juan, you old cuckold, you old
rag bag!"

Here the last twist of irony reveals Anouilh's mode of thought.
The contrast between love's illusion and the "scruffy old Don
Juan" leavens the sentimentality of his more sophisticated plays.
The sophistication is largely strutting and posing, as in Waltz of
the Toreadors. If the drama explodes into action, it is so melo-
dramatic that it tears the fabric of the story. Hero's rape of Lucile
in the third act of The Rehearsal is preceded by a long scene,
punctuated by pauses, hesitations, philosophic comments, as if the
character could not quite bring himself to the violent action that
his creator demands of him.

The recurrent theme of all Anouilh's plays is simply that our
society destroys love and life. The charge that modern civilization
is a criminal enterprise is made more directly in the work of the
Swiss playwright, Friedrich Duerrenmatt. It is instructive to
compare Giraudoux's last play with Duerrenmatt's The Visit.
From the imaginary town of Chaillot to the imaginary town of
Giillen, European dramatic thought has made a significant journey.

In Chaillot, the Madwoman saves the town from corruption
and restores it to decency. In Giillen, Claire Zachannasian finds no
decency ; the immorality of the whole population, so different from
the unassuming virtue of the poor people of Chaillot, is the condi-
tion of the action. From the moment of Claire's arrival, it is clear
that the community is ready to murder Anton Schill for a billion
marks. Therefore, when she makes her offer at the end of the first
act, the play is over. She says, "I can wait" ; the audience can also
wait, but the conclusion is foreordained. There is no suspense,
because all the characters — the rich woman, the victim, the towns-
people— are caught in the same web of corruption.

Loss of Identity

The social criticism which gives some force to Duerrenmatt's
plays is muted and divorced from reality in the work of Samuel
Beckett. An unseen power has destroyed the humanity of the char-
acters, who can do nothing but comment, philosophically and
often with comic vigor, on their fate. This is world's end, and

Introduction xiii

drama's end. The denial of action is the sole condition of the
action. Beckett achieves a sort of theatricalism by the denial of all
theatrical values. In Waiting for Godot, the tw^o hapless way-
farers do not know why they are waiting:

Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for?
Vladimir: Were you not there?
Estragon: I can't have been listening.
Vladimir: Oh, nothing very definite.

Beckett gets an effect by making fun of conventional dramatic
exposition. He also adopts a principle of indeterminacy which
denies all dramatic meaning. The first act ends with the appear-
ance of the boy who reports that Mr. Godot cannot come. The
same news is brought in the same manner at the end of the play.
The action is circular ; the lost figures in the twilight are the same
at the end as they were at the beginning.

The concept of total futility in Beckett's plays is applied to
middle-class life in the work of Eugene lonesco. In directing his
attack against middle-class values, lonesco is less intellectual and
more savage than Beckett. Even the interplay of ideas is lost in
lonesco, because his people are incapable of consistent thought.
They have not only lost their will; they have lost their minds.
Their personalities have disintegrated, so that they do not know
who they are.

The Bald Soprano, which lonesco calls "an anti-play," opens
with Mr. and Mrs. Smith: "We've eaten well this evening. That's
because we live in the suburbs of London and because our name is
Smith." We soon find that time and human identity are hopelessly
scrambled. They do not know whether "Bobby Watson" died yes-
terday or four years ago, and they talk of dozens of people, wives,
husbands, sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, aunts, who are all
named "Bobby Watson." The end is an exact repetition of the
beginning. Another couple, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, "are seated like
the Smiths at the beginning of the play. The play begins again, with
the Martins, who say exactly the same lines as the Smiths in the
first scene, while the curtain softly falls."

Jean Genet portrays people who have lost their identity. But they
are no longer safely encircled by the comforts of the middle-class
milieu. They have lost their innocence. Camus made Caligula con-
scious of his crimes, but Genet's men and women have neither con-
sciousness nor conscience. Even their sex is uncertain. In The
Maids, the author wishes the two sisters, whose personalities are

xiv Introduction

interchangeable, to be played by male actors. In an introduction
to The Maids, Sartre remarks that Genet "has managed to trans-
mit to his thought an increasingly circular movement. . . . Genet
detests the society tha-t rejects him and he wishes to annihilate it."

Genet sees the world as a nightmare charade. In The Balcony,
the visitors to the brothel indulge their perverse desires while they
play at being archbishops, judges, and generals. Outside a revolu-
tion is taking place, and finally the madam of the whorehouse is
installed as queen, with the fake dignitaries as religious, civic, and
military leaders.

In the closed world of the brothel, people seek any illusion to
escape from "the hellish agony of their names." At the end of
The Maids, Solange says that nothing remains of them but "the
delicate perfume of the holy maidens which they were in secret.
We are beautiful, joyous, drunk and free!"

It would require a much more detailed analysis of the plays to
explore the political and social tendencies underlying the weird
concept of freedom which releases the "maids" from their agony.
It is sufficient for our purpose to note the breakdown of dramatic
structure in the "anti-plays" of Beckett, lonesco, and Genet,
lonesco claims that "the comical is tragic, and the tragedy of man,
derisory. . . . Without a new Virginity of spirit, without a
purified outlook on existential reality, there is no theatre; there is
no art either." *

The prophet of this new dramatic dispensation is Antonin Ar-
taud, who issued a series of manifestoes in France in the nineteen-
thirties. He called for "a theatre of cruelty . . . furnishing the
spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his
taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his
Utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out, on
a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior." t

Anger in England

In England the tensions that indicate the breakdown of old
certitudes are not as sharply felt as on the continent. The English
bourgeoisie hold, somewhat doubtfully and with growing uneasi-
ness, to the fading glories of their great past. It follows that the
English theatre is more conventional and less addicted to fantasy
and philosophical despair. But the tendencies which we have noted
in Europe are also present in Britain.

* lonesco, "Discovering the Theatre," Tulane Drama Revieia, Autumn

1959-
t Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, New York, 1958.

Introduction xv

Christopher Fry is a more optimistic Anouilh. While the lovers
in Anouilh are doomed, the lovers in The Lady's not for Burning
escape the execution demanded by the stupid townspeople. They
look at the town, and Thomas says :

There sleep hypocrisy, porcous pomposity, greed,
Lust, vulgarity, cruelty, trickery, sham
And all possible nitwittery . . .

But the lovers have each other. They look forward, with comfort-
able foreboding, to a lifetime together. As the curtain descends,
Thomas says: ". . . And God have mercy on our souls."

T. S. Eliot, grown old and sanctimonious after his wanderings
in the wasteland, has moved from the poetic eloquence of Murder
in the Cathedral to the desiccated language and stilted situations
of his later plays. The faith that illuminates Murder in the Cathe-
dral seems to have lost its potency in the dramas that follow it:
religion has become a remote answer to the desperation of a de-
clining upper class. Violence shadows The Family Reunion: Lord
Monchensey returns to his mother's house to admit that he has
murdered his wife. There is an atmosphere of indeterminate
danger :

Why do we all behave as if the door might suddenly open, the

curtains be drawn.
The cellar make some dreadful disclosure, the roof disappear,
And we should cease to be sure of what is real and unreal?

Harry leaves on a vague mission of expiation, "somewhere on the
other side of despair." But his address will be "Care of the Bank
in London until you hear from me."

Eliot's voluble aristocrats are haunted by the fear that their
society is disintegrating. The fear is more stridently articulated,
from the viewpoint of the lower middle class, in the school of
naturalistic drama inaugurated in 1956 by John Osborne's Look
Back in Anger. Jimmy Porter, like the same author's George Dillon
and all the other angry young men, is caught in a cage of futility.
The cage, the shabby attic apartment, is small and isolated from
the winds of change which are the ultimate cause of Jimmy's
frustration.

Here there is no large speculation on Man's fate, no indictment
of the whole society. Jimmy Porter's hysterical talk is divorced
from action, and tells us only that he is very sorry for himself.

xvi Introduction

He is a sentimentalist, basically interested only in love. The
action is circular. When Jimmy's wife leaves, she is replaced by
Helen. At the beginning of the third act, Helen is leaning over the
ironing board, working with a pile of clothes, in exact duplication
of Alison's activity at the opening of the play. When Alison re-
turns, Helen leaves, and the game of love goes on. Jimmy and
Alison pretend they are a squirrel and a bear (their favorite game),
hiding from unknown dangers: "There are cruel steel traps about
everywhere." As the curtain descends, they embrace, pooling their
despair, hugging their misery.

The first great Greek tragedy that has come down to us shows
Prometheus, tortured and bound to his bleak rock, defying the
power of the Gods. There is no Promethean defiance and there
are no tragic heroes, in Osborne's world. Even despair is reduced
to a small gesture. In The Entertainer, Osborne describes the
people of this nether world : "We're drunks, maniacs, we're crazy.
. . . We have problems that nobody's ever heard of, we're char-
acters out of something that nobody believes in. But we're really
not funny, we're too boring."

The Castrated Hero

It seems strange that Americans, inhabitants of a proud and
prosperous country, can accept the grotesque image of the United
States in the plays of Tennessee Williams. Yet his plays are no
further removed from reality than the ironic extravaganzas of
Anouilh or the nightmares of Genet. The popularity of Williams'
work, reaching a vast public in film adaptations, shows that the
themes of guilt and lost identity, criminal impulses and profitless
despair, evoke an emotional response in the American audience.

Williams' first important play. The Glass Menagerie, produced
in 1945, tells a story of frustrated love with moving simplicity.
The concept that the search for true love is an illusion, harshly
shattered by reality, reminds us of Anouilh. But two years later, in
A Streetcar Named Desire, the conflict between illusion and reality
is projected in violent, almost pathological terms. The climax,
Stanley Kowalski's rape of Blanche while his wife is in the hospital
having a baby, indicates the further course of the author's develop-
ment, leading to the treatment of homosexuality and cannibalism in
Garden District (called Suddenly Last Summer on the screen)
and the frenetic melodrama of Sweet Bird of Youth.

The first act of Sweet Bird of Youth exhibits his style and
technique. The s>ff.ne is a hotel bedroom. The young adventurer.

Introduction xvii

Chance Wayne, has brought an aging Hollywood actress to his
home town on the Gulf, in order to impress the girl who is his only
true love, Heavenly Finley. He intends to force the actress, called
Princess Pazmezoglu, to help him get a film job so that he can
bring Heavenly to the West Coast with him.

We learn that Heavenly had contracted a venereal disease,
which required an operation — making it impossible for her to have
children. Her father and brother, holding Chance responsible, are
determined to castrate him. The exposition conveying this informa-
tion begins with a dialogue between Wayne and a young doctor,
George Scudder, who performed the operation, and who an-
nounces as he leaves that he intends to marry Heavenly. When
George has departed, the actress wakes up. She cannot remember
whom she is with. She calls frantically for oxygen. After she
inhales the oxygen, she demands her pink pills and vodka. Then
she wants dope, which is hidden under the mattress. As they smoke
the stuff, she becomes sentimental. But Chance tells her that their
whole conversation, including the talk of dope, has been taped.
He insists that she sign over all her traveler's checks to him.

She agrees. But first he must make love to her : "When monster
meets monster, one monster has to give way, . . , I have only one
way to forget these things I don't want to remember, and that's
through the act of love-making." As the ritual of sex begins, the
stage goes dark.

There are several points of technical interest in the opening
scene. It is almost all expository, dealing with previous events
and with Chance's elaborate plans. The plot is so fully stated that
the only suspense lies in watching the way in which the predicted
action will unfold. Williams has a habit of exposing the whole
course of his story in the first act. This is due in part to the com-
plicated and retrospective situations with which he deals. In The
Rose Tattoo, in Garden District, in Orpheus Descending, the
present action is determined and made inevitable by past events.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the author's two versions of the final
act reveal his difficulty in achieving a climax after the detailed
presentation of a situation from which there is no escape.*

This aspect of Williams' method is far more than a technical
weakness. It goes to the heart of his meaning. We are foredoomed
to defeat. We thrash about in a net of evil. The innocence of

*The various versions of Williams' plays offer fascinating oppor-
tunities for technical study: Battle of Angels, produced in 1940, contains
the matrix ef Orpheus Descending, presented in 1957; two short plays are
the basis for Baby Doll; the sketch. Time, shows the origin of Sweet
Bird of Youth.

xviii Introduction

young love is in the past: Heavenly was fifteen and Chance was
seventeen when they discovered the wonder of a "perfect" sexual
experience. (In Orpheus Descending, Val tells a curiously similar
story of a girl who appeared to him on the bayou when he was
fourteen; like Heavenly in the photograph shown by Chance
Wayne, she was stark naked and immediately available.)

At the final curtain of Sweet Bird of Youth, when Chance's
enemies have captured him and the castration is about to take
place, Chance comes forward to face the audience : "I don't ask for
your pity, but just for your understanding — not even that! No,
just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us
all!" This is the monstrous message of the play: sexual lust and
greed are the conditions of our lives ; we are all as ambitious, frus-
trated, and amoral as Chance Wayne. The reference to "the enemy,
time," is false sentiment and false philosophy, suggesting that age
and death are the real cause of our defeat. But Chance does not
face old age ; he faces castration, which symbolizes the failure and
degradation of modern man.

Williams tries to give the play a larger social framework by
means of the racist speech delivered by Boss Finley at the end of
the second act. But this political background has no validity in
relation to the central situation, which revolves around Chance and
the Princess.*

Williams' pessimism is visceral and mindless. The Princess is
as ruthless as Claire in The Visit. But Claire is a clever woman
plotting vengeance for a wrong that was done her. The Princess
is a wreck, living on pills, oxygen, and dope. She needs sex and
will buy it on any terms. The scene in which she forces Chance
to come to bed with her is not merely a sensational device. As the
stage darkens, the degradation of both characters is final. He has
nothing except his virility; she has nothing except her need of the
male. Each personality is reduced to its irreducible minimum,
a sex-urge without emotion or joy.

Robert Robinson observes that in Williams' plays "there can be
no intimacy, for intimacy is the act of rewarding identity to an-
other . . . other people simply satisfy an appetite. . . ." He adds
that "Mr. Williams is a doggedly minor artist." f He is minor
because those who deny identity to others lose their own sense of
life; this is true of the playwright as well as of the characters to

•Williams confirms this in a recent statement: he feels that the second
act is ineflFective, because Boss Finley is of no interest to him, and he
has prepared a new second act for the published play {Ne<w York Times,
May I, i960).

"t Netu Statesman, London, September 27, 1958.

Introduction xix

whom he refuses the gift of living.

There is a long descent from Caligula to Chance Wayne. Jimmy
Porter stands between the two. Caligula chooses, consciously and
of his own will, to reject moral responsibility. He learns that life
without responsibility has no human warmth or dignity. Jimmy
Porter, caught in drab frustration, learns the same lesson. The part
of Caligula in the New York production of the Camus play was
assigned, appropriately, to an actor who had played Jimmy Porter.
The new American hero can learn nothing. Even his role as a
phallic symbol is a delusion. Castration is the answer to his claim
to manhood.

Robert Brustein writes that the modern "inarticulate hero" sees
society "as the outside of a prison," which he wishes to enter for
warmth and security. Therefore, "much of the acting and writing
of the inarticulate hero is not only neurotic but conformist." *
Chance Wayne is a thoroughgoing conformist. He is conventional
in his longing for lost love, in his exaggerated toughness, his Holly-
wood ambitions. He wants to belong, and even at the end he is
asking the audience to like him.

Among the many plajrwrights influenced by Williams, conform-
ity is advocated more tenderly, as in the plays of Robert Anderson
or the more recent work of Paddy Chayefsky. William Inge offers
a romantic version of the tough male in Picnic, and a farcical
portrait in Bus Stop. In Inge, the male's aggressiveness is always
tamed by a woman, who finds out in her turn that the man is as
frightened and lonely as she is.f In Come Back, Little Sheba,
Doc gets drunk and violent in order to drown his desire for Marie,
the young boarder. At the end, he and his wife are together in
the love and misery of the bourgeois prison. At the end of The
Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Cora ascends the stairs, where
her husband's naked feet can be seen "in the warm light at the
top."

The theme of acceptance and submission is projected in large
poetic terms in /. B. by Archibald MacLeish. J. B. is a good man
and he is rich. But he must undergo a catalogue of horrors. The
three "comforters" who try to console him represent psychiatry,
religion, and "left-wing materialism." The last, of course, is the
most absurd of the three, but all talk in ridiculous cliches. The
anti-intellectualism inherent in this caricature of contemporary
thought, and the crude violence of the melodrama preceding it,

* Commentary, February 1958.

t See Brustein's "The Man-Taming Women of William Inge,"
Harper's, November 1958.

XX Introduction

remind us less of the Book of Job than of Tennessee Williams. J. B.
discovers that he must accept life blindly. His wife says:

Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we'll see by and by.

There are, of course, other tendencies in the American theatre.
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun opened in March 1958,
on the day following the premiere of Sweet Bird of Youth at a
playhouse a few blocks away. The contrast between the two plays
is fascinating; the fact that both were greeted with equal acclaim
makes one wonder what criteria — if any — determine Broadway
success. The enthusiastic applause for A Raisin in the Sun may be
due in part to the circumstances of its production. Dramas which
deal honestly with Negro themes are a rarity in the New York
theatre.* When such a play is the first work of a Negro woman,
its success has broad meaning, both in the theatre and in the
American life of our time.

Lorraine Hansberry's unusual accomplishment involves unusual
responsibilities, both for the author and for those who venture to
appraise her contribution. The sense of theatre and vivid character-
ization revealed in her first play demand realistic discussion of its
merits and limitations, and its relationship to the further course of
her work.

A Raisin in the Sun is impressive in its simplicity, its respect for
human values. This is the source of its modest strength ; yet it also
indicates a lack of depth, an oversimplification of the dramatic
event. The structure seems old-fashioned, because many plays have
dealt with a similar theme — an inheritance transforms the pros-
pects of a lower-middle-class family, and the money, or part of it,
is wasted by an improvident son.

This theme seems to acquire new vitality when it is applied to
the problems of a Negro family. But the reverse is also true: the
passions and aspirations of the Negro family, the psychological
singularity of each person, are minimized by the triteness of the
structure. Underlying the conventional technique of the play is
a more profound conventionality. The Negro family struggles, as

* Among the few important plays by Negro authors to reach Broadway,
mention must be made of Langston Hughes' Mulatto, and Theodore
Ward's Our Lan'. Of special interest is Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind,
produced oflf Broadway with far less recognition than it deserves.

Introduction xxi

it must, for a better home in a better neighborhood; but there
is no hint that there is anything wrong with the bourgeois world
the family seeks to enter. The monstrous evil of racism shadows
the play, but it has no dimension of horror. It is symbolized in
the only white character, who is an ineffectual racist. But the
emotional life of the family centers on the son's foolish anger, his
bitter dreams.

Conformity to bourgeois values is the key to the play's view-
point. It is embodied in the aimless stupidity of Walter's re-
bellion. It may be unfair to see in him some shreds and patches of
Williams' mindless heroes; but Walter's action, his irresponsible
loss of the money, have meaning only in relation to his mother's
humble common sense, which is rooted in her adherence to an old
value: "In my time," she says, "we was worried about not being
lynched and getting to the North if we could and how to stay alive
and still have a pinch of dignity too."

Thus the difference between Sweet Bird of Youth and A Raisin
in the Sun poses troubling questions. Williams shows bleak de-
cadence, and says there is no escape from it. Miss Hansberry sees
a society of simple virtues, in which conformity is desirable and
inescapable. This may account for the success of A Raisin in the
Sun. It is to be hoped that its author possesses the modesty and
feeling for art to learn from success as others must learn from
failure.

Julian Mayfield has said that many Negro writers are "reluctant
to leap head first into the nation's literary mainstream," because
it means "identifying the Negro with the American image — that
great power face that the world knows and the Negro knows
better. . . ." To be sure, the "great power face" is not the true
image of America, but Mayfield is justified in describing the main-
stream of American culture as characterized by "apathy and either
a reluctance or a fear of writing about anything that matters." *

Miss Hansberry, having become part of the mainstream, runs
the risk of being immersed in it. But her talent, and the position
she has achieved, offer her a unique opportunity to go beyond her
first play to deeper insights and larger themes.

The Testament of Eugene O'Neill

When the first edition of this book was published, O'Neill
seemed to have retired from the theatre. After 1934, he wrote

* The American Negro Writer and His Roots, Selected Papers from
the First Conference of Negro Writers, March 1959, published by the
American Society of African Culture, Nev\r York, i960.

xxii Introduction

nothing that reached the public, except The Iceman Cometh,
finished in 1940 and produced six years later. Yet during this long
period, O'Neill worked feverishly, destroying much of what he
wrote and leaving several plays in manuscript. These plays, staged
after his death in 1953, reveal the intensity of his quest for
dramatic truth. He was tortured by the artist's need to find some
order and reason and beauty in existence.

His conviction that something had gone wrong, in his own
troubled heart and in the life of his time, forced him to turn back
to a crucial year: in 1912, when O'Neill was twenty-four years
old, the world was moving toward a war which would undermine
the foundations of "Western civilization" ; he had returned from
his sea voyages; he had seen the world from the decks of tramp
steamers, from dark forecastles and water-front dives. He returned
to haunt the New York water front, to read Marx for the first
time, to contribute social poems to the old Masses. In December
1912, he was stricken with tuberculosis.

In The Iceman Cometh, O'Neill tried to create a social allegory
of that fateful year. The action is confused and melodramatic, be-
cause the ideas are beyond the author's grasp. O'Neill could not
give order and meaning to his impassioned indictment of a society
that destroys human values. Lack of conceptual clarity tends to
make dramatic action strained and improbable.* Without clarity,
there can be no aesthetic form, no sustained magic.

But O'Neill could understand, with masterful emotion and
depth, the disintegration of his own family. In Long Day's Journey
into Night, he returns again to 1912, to tell, as he has said, "of
old sorrow, written in tears and blood." The play is his testament,
a last monument to his genius. Through his pity and love for "the
four haunted Tyrones," he offers a vision of the whole society
which decreed their suffering.

There is terrifying emotional clarity in the long drunken scene
in the third act of Long Day's Journey into Night, reaching its
climax when the father and his sons are interrupted by the mother's
appearance carrying her old-fashioned wedding gown of white
satin. Under the influence of morphine, she speaks of her girlhood,
her desire to be a nun. The play ends with her simple words:
"That was in the winter of my senior year. Then in the spring
something happened to me. Yes, I remember, I fell in love with
James Tyrone and was so happy for a time." The three men remain
motionless as the curtain comes down.

O'Neill has left the dark jungle of irrational fears to ascend the

♦This is true even in Shakespeare — for exannple, in Timon of Athens.

Introduction xxiii

wintry heights of tragedy. Yet in doing so he acknowledges that
the long sojourn in the jungle defeated the fulfillment of his
genius. Edmund Tyrone, the younger son who is O'Neill himself,
tells his father that he doubts whether he has even "the making
of a poet ... I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now.
I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do. I mean, if I live»
Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native
eloquence of us fog people."

Thus O'Neill acknowledges that the grace and majesty, the
shining clarity of dramatic poetry, would elude him. Edmund Ty-
rone tells his father that he "must always be a little in love with
death!" But is this muted eloquence of the "fog people" — un-
touched by the magic of the sun — the only eloquence of which the
modern theatre is capable?

The Theatrical Imagination

I use the term "theatrical imagination" to describe the quality of
dramatic art that transforms the imitation of an action into a new
creative experience, a vision and revelation shared by the perform-
ers and the audience. Francis Fergusson suggests "study of the
cultural landmarks — the drama of Sophocles and Shakespeare, the
Divina Commedia of Dante — in which the idea of a theatre has
been briefly realized" :

Dante presents his contemporaries with the photographic
accuracy of Ibsen and Chekhov; and he presents all of the
social and political issues of his time. But the literal realities arc
also seen in the round, with all the dimensions of meaning,
historical, moral and final. . . . The perspectives of dream, of
myth, and of the most wakeful reason, which we think of as
mutually exclusive, succeed each other in the movement of his
poem but do not cancel each other out.*

It may be asking too much to propose that our theatre of
Broadway — on and off — aspire to the copious splendor of The
Divine Comedy. But even the idea of such a theatre is foreign
to the contemporary stage.

The two modern playwrights who have done most to restore
the theatrical imagination are Sean O'Casey and Bertolt Brecht.
Their modes of communication are different; they come from
divergent cultures; but they are alike in their sense of history,

• The Idea of a Theatre, Garden City, N. Y., 1953,

xxiv Introduction

their concern with social and political realities, their dissatisfac-
tion with the dry conventions and emasculated language of today's
theatre, their use of forms and techniques derived from the drama's
classic heritage.

O'Casey's early plays, growing out of his youthful experience in
the Dublin slums and the social struggles that culminated in
the 1 91 6 Easter Rebellion, are deceptively simple in plot structure.
But the tragicomic naturalism of Juno and the Paycock and The
Plough and the Stars is illuminated by a Shakespearean largeness
and humanity. O'Casey's response to the uncertainties that shad-
owed the world in the late twenties and thirties demanded a broader
dramatic setting. Beginning with the antiwar play. The Silver
Tassie, in 1927, he uses symbolism and rhetoric, dance and song,
to create an image of our time.

It has been said that these later dramatic murals lack the com-
pact intensity of the earlier domestic portraits. It is true that
O'Casey's exuberant creativity sometimes sets goals that he cannot
attain. But even when his rhetoric and his dreams race beyond the
dramatic moment, he has enlarged the potentialities of the theatre.
In Red Roses for Me, the whole movement of the third act takes
the form of a ballet. The relationship between the spectacle and
the love story of Ayamonn and Sheila is not fully realized, but the
dance and the accompanying lyrics carry the action to a higher
level and give it an extension that could not be otherwise achieved.

While Elizabethan influences, combined with the rhythms of
Irish speech, predominate in O'Casey, Brecht has drawn from a
wide range of classical and romantic sources, and most notably
from the theatre of the Orient. Brecht's idea of Epic drama origi-
nated in the twenties. The best-known and most characteristic work
of this period is The Three-Penny Opera, completed in 1928. In the
early thirties, he became familiar with the No plays of Japan. In
I935> ori his first visit to Moscow, he saw the Chinese actor, Mei
Lan-fang, performing without make-up, costume, or lighting. The
aloofness and purity of the actor's style, combined with theatrical
fervor and controlled emotion, seemed to confirm Brecht's Epic
theory, and to offer a practical technique for its development.*

Brecht was neither an imitator nor a traditionalist. The way
he transmuted his rather limited knowledge of the Oriental theatre
into a new and intensely modern mode of expression is explicitly
shown in The Good Woman of Setzuan and The Caucasian Chalk
Circle. But the influence is implicit in all his later plays.

The ribald wit and picaresque satire of The Three-Penny Opera

•John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht, New York, 1959.

Introduction xxv

do not as yet constitute an integrated style — although many styles
have been imposed on it in various performances. Brecht showed his
dissatisfaction with the play by undertaking a massive reorganiza-
tion of the material as a novel, in which he attempted to deepen
the implications of the story.* The novel is important, because it
shows Brecht's determination to find the roots of human psy-
chology in the whole system of circumstances through which the
individual moves. This is a better key to Brecht's art than his some-
what didactic exposition of the Epic method.

However we cannot ignore the claim that Epic constitutes a
new kind of theatre. Brecht argued that Epic discards "plot" in
favor of "narrative"; it makes the spectator a judge and observer,
and thus arouses his power of action, which is lulled by the emo-
tional involvement of conventional drama; it makes the human
being an object of inquiry instead of taking him for granted ; it
regards human nature as alterable rather than unalterable; it
treats each scene for itself instead of relating one scene to another.f

These views reflect the rebellious mood of the German theatre
of the twenties and the rejection of the false values of the com-
mercial stage, with its stuffy emotionalism, its world of bourgeois
illusion behind the glare of the footlights. But Brecht draws a
false distinction between involvement and judgment, between
theatre as magic and theatre as "tribunal." Mordecai Gorelik
defines the real problem: Epic style, he says, "changes the value
of psychology in the drama. To give one example, it alters the
meaning of Stanislavsky's views on character. . . . The Stanislav-
sky system has a tendency to become introspective and even static.
The reason, perhaps, is that the actor's adjustments are in terms
of thoughts rather than in terms of action." %

It is true that the Stanislavsky method, as interpreted by actors
and directors in the United States, has become increasingly psycho-
logical and Freudian. But in the process, American artists have
moved further and further away from Stanislavsky. We can hardly
blame the Moscow Art Theatre for the shoddy emotionalism oi
Kazan's direction.

Brecht's greatest achievement is his probing of character in
terms of action and moral values and the pressures of the environ-
ment. This does not mean that he opposes or supersedes Stanislav<-
sky. Nor does it mean that the spectator is aloof, nor that the
scenes are unrelated. We cannot pause to examine the lessons which

* Three-Penny Novel, translated by Desmond I. Vesey, verse traas-
lated by Christopher Isherwood, New York, n.d.
t "Notes for Mahagonny," cited, Willett, opus cit
XNeiu Theatres for Old, New York, 1940.

XX vi Introduction

Brecht learned from Oriental drama. It would require a treatise
to show how the stylized movement, the lyric S3Tiibolism, the nar-
rative flow, the restrained violence, of the theatre of China and
Japan, brought a flowering of Brecht's imagination. But the Orien-
tal stage is not a "tribunal," nor do the plays of Asia ignore struc-
ture or climactic development. It is a misunderstanding of Japanese
culture to suppose that the great puppet plays of Chikamatsu do
not involve the spectators in the dramatic events.

Brecht's plays also have structure, climax, and an emotional
bond — much closer than the lachrymose "participation" or idle
laughter of the usual commercial show — between the performance
and the audience. The scope and vividness of Brecht's action tend
to assume a narrative aspect; he uses a technique of montage, inter-
cutting moods and events, with abrupt contrasts and poetic flights.
But, as with any work of art, the unity of the whole is the test
of its creative value.

There are weaknesses in Brecht's work as well as in his theory.
At his best, he restores the classic dimensions of meaning — histori-
cal, moral, and personal — that have been lost in the modern
theatre. Mother Courage, toiling through the Thirty Years' War
with her cart and her three children, accepts and is part of the
degradation of her environment. She sings her "Song of Capitula-
tion"; seeking only to survive, she loses one after another of her
children. But at the end, as she pulls her wagon alone, she is an
image of the human spirit, corrupted but indestructible.

Mother Courage has moments of superb drama — for example,
the scene in which she must deny the corpse of her dead son ; or the
scene in which the dumb girl beats the drum to warn the city of
Halle of the impending attack. Above all, Brecht defines the kind
of heroism which is new and yet as old as life — the heroism of
ordinary mortals, vacillating, self-seeking, yet indomitable and
enduring, capable of love and sacrifice, the heroism which is the
hope of the world.

The Dilemma of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's serious contribution to the American theatre
begins with All My Sons in 1947. It was not his first play, but
his eighth or ninth. Miller had been struggling to formulate an
attitude toward American life, growing out of the ferment of the
thirties and the experience of the Second World War. All My
Sons is a social document, in the manner of the thirties. It reminds
us of the two plays by Lillian Hellman which mark the highest

Introduction xxvii

development of dramatic thought in that period — The Little Foxes^
which appeared in 1939, and Watch on the Rhine, produced in

1941.

All My Sons lacks the maturity and theatrical invention of the
Hellman plays. Its power lies in the clarity with which a simple
theme is dramatized. Miller tells us that our society is corrupted
by money: "This is the land of the great big dogs, you don't love
a man here, you eat him." Both Miller's artistic need and the
changing temper of the times in the late forties urged him to go
beyond this simple indictment. The corruption was present and
increasing, but the issues were becoming more complicated and
the democratic fire of the thirties had become a flickering and un-
certain flame.

Miller, writing a decade later, says: "I think now that the
straightforwardness of the All My Sons form was in some part
due to the relatively sharp definition of the social problems it
dealt with." * Miller was right in feeling that the play is too
"straightforward." Joe Keller is not a tragic figure, because his
crime and punishment illustrate a thesis and lack psychological
depth.

In trying to probe more deeply into the heart of man. Miller
found diflliculty in relating subjective factors to objective reality.
Regarding Death of a Salesman, produced in 1949, he says: "The
first image that occurred to me . . . was an enormous face the
height of the proscenium arch which would appear and then open
up, and we would see the inside of a man's head. In fact. The
Inside of His Head was the first title." t

Miller is too much of an artist to deny reality. The illusions
darkening Willy's soul arise from real and destructive social forces.
But a man who lives by illusions becomes interesting and tragic
only when he is brought face to face with the reality he has ignored.
The intensity of the confrontation will determine the tragic element
in the drama.

The essence of Death of a Salesman is Willy's defeat. His failure
as a salesman is established in the first scene; the appearance of
action is maintained by the psychoanalytical elements, the family
relationships, the enmity between father and sons. The action is
retrospective, relating in large part to the past. In abandoning the
"straightforward" form of All My Sons, Miller shows extraor-
dinary skill in developing a technique that substitutes moods and
dreams for external conflict. The finality of illusion is symbolized

•Introduction, Arthur Miller's Collected Plays, New York, 1957.
ilbid.

xxviii Introduction

in the ghostly figure of Uncle Ben. At the end, Ben urges Willy
to come to the jungle: "It's dark there, but full of diamonds. . . ."
Ben disappears, and the stage direction shows that Willy has lost
all contact with reality: "He turns around as if to find his way;
sounds, faces, voices, seem to be swarming in upon him and he
flicks at them, crying, Sh! Sh!" His death, immersed in irrational
dreams, achieves pathos, but it cannot touch tragedy.

Miller could not be content to depict Man lost and helpless in
a psychological maze. His most impressive play. The Crucible,
produced in the evil days of McCarthyism in 1953, portrays a
man who decides to die rather than compromise with his own con-
science.

Yet the conflict between psychological and social factors is un-
resolved in The Crucible. Miller tells us that his "central impulse
for writing" the play "was not the social but the interior psycho-
logical question, which was the question of that guilt residing in
Salem which the hysteria merely unleashed, but did not create."
He says he was puzzled by the existence of "such absolute evil in
men." * Thus Miller gives some measure of support to the view
prevalent in our culture that the criminal conduct of society is an
"interior psychological question." It would be difficult to muster
historical evidence that Cotton Mather, or Danforth, or any of
the other Salem witch-hunters, were motivated by "absolute evil."
But we are at present not so much concerned with the historical
reality as with Miller's concept of reality and its effect on the
structure and meaning of the play.

Miller tells us of his discovery of Abigail Williams' testimony
in the records of the witchcraft trials: "Her apparent desire to
convict Elizabeth and save John made the play possible for
me." It was this aspect of the story that clarified the psychological
problem of evil for the playwright: "Consequently the structure
reflects that understanding, and it centers on John, Elizabeth and
Abigail." t

The triangle does give the play a structure. Abigail, seventeen,
"with an endless capacity for dissembling," has been dismissed as
the couple's bond-servant because she had an affair with Proctor.
When she meets him in the first scene, she is determined to renew
the relationship : "John, I am waiting for you every night." Her
hatred of the wife motivates her false testimony against Elizabeth.
It can be argued that this sexual situation enriches the texture of

* Ibid.
ilbid.

Introduction xxix

the story and avoids the sparse "straightforwardness" of a socially
oriented drama.

In a sense, the argument has some weight. We have seen too
many plays and read too many books in which social issues, di-
vorced from psychological insights, are presented with artless
naivete. It would be rash to suggest that the betrayal of Marguerite
is not central to the first part of Goethe's Faust.

But John Proctor is not Faust, and his wrestling with his con-
science at the climax would not be different if he had never known
Abigail. Yet there is a meaning in Proctor's past sin, and it is
expressed in his final scene with his wife: "I cannot mount the
gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. I am not that man. . . . My
honesty is broke, Elizabeth; I am no good man. Nothing's spoiled
by giving them this lie that were not rotten long before."

Miller wants to show us a man who is not committed, who is
prone to sin, without moral certainties. The point is emphasized
in the contrast between Proctor and Rebecca Nurse ; the old
woman has no problem, because she cannot conceive of compro-
mise: "Why, it is a lie, it is a lie; how may I damn myself? I
cannot, I cannot."

Proctor's dilemma may be regarded as a reflection of Miller's
own inner struggle, between moral conviction and avoidance of
commitment, between the heroism of the true artist and the ignoble
pressures of the time. When Proctor cries out, "I am no saint,"
it seems like an echo of the author's distress.

This is a magnificent theme. If Miller had exposed Proctor's
consciousness in depth, he might have written a great play. But the
study of man's soul demands understanding of the social forces
that press in upon him and test his will. The use of the sub-
plot concerning Abigail is largely responsible for Miller's failure
to give this added dimension. The author's feeling that the story of
the girl "made the play possible" by providing a structure, points
to the structural weakness. Proctor's sin with Abigail is a side-
light on his character, but it cannot give any powerful stimulus to
the action. It merely adds to the impression that some vague "force
of evil" overshadows the Salem community.

Eric Bentley observes that "The Crucible is about guilt yet no-
where in it is there any sense of guilt because the author and the
director have joined forces to dissociate themselves and their hero
from evil." * This is true because the hero has no relationship to
the reality around him; he is merely surprised and eventually

• The Dramatic Event, Boston, 1954.

XXX Introduction

destroyed by it. Since his affair with Abigail cannot supply this
connection, the evil that afflicts the town is a mystic absolute. The
attempt to dramatize this concept in its impact on Proctor brings
down the curtain on the second act. Proctor has learned that his
present bond-servant, Mary Warren, has been prompted by Abigail
to testify falsely against his wife. As he takes Mary by the throat,
almost strangling her. Proctor says:

Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our
old pretense is ripped away — make your peace! (He throws
her to the floor . . . turning to the open door) Peace. It is
a providence, and no great change ; we are only what we always
were, but naked now. (He walks as though toward a great
horror, facing the open sky) Aye, naked! And the wind, God's
icy wind, will blow!

The scene is effective, hysterical, and obscure. Insofar as it re-
lates to Proctor's feeling of horror and unworthiness, the scene
should be between him and Abigail. But the substitution of the
other girl makes the speech more general and dictates its value as
a statement of the condition of the action : Man is "naked" under
"God's icy wind." We are reminded of Maxine Greene's descrip-
tion of the "new hero" of modern literature as a man who has no
faith in the rational world, who has found "the tragic way of
daring to stand up to the uncaring sky." * But this whole idea
is contradicted by the climax. Proctor does not stand up to the
uncaring sky, but to a specific social situation.

The premise that evil is a curse written on man's soul reappears
in A View from the Bridge, produced two years after The Crucible.
We may wonder whether the title suggests the author's suspicion
of commitment, his desire to view the human situation from above
and afar. The ambivalence of The Crucible is repeated in A View
from the Bridge, but the background story of a man's passion for
a young girl has now been brought into the foreground. Eddie Car-
bone's half-incestuous desire for his niece is the focal point of the
action; it motivates the denouement, his death is retribution for
his having become an informer.

The difficulty lies in the concept of an inevitable fate driving
Eddie to his doom. There could be potent tragedy in a man's fixa-
tion on his adopted daughter. But this tragedy of family life is not
contrived by destiny. In attributing Eddie's emotional instability
to a power beyond his control, the author attempts to give him
dignity, but succeeds only in making him absurd.

* "A Return to Heroic Man," Saturday Revieiv, August 22, 1959.

Introduction xxxi

Eddie is an existentialist hero, justifying his passion in a world
that has ceased to have moral meaning to him. His desire to act,
to consummate his love, must make him a criminal. He is related
both to the Caligula of Camus and the mindless symbols of mas-
culinity in the plays of Tennessee Williams. The climate of evil
vrhich is the condition of the action is invalidated in the climax:
we are asked to forgive Eddie for his incestuous love — because he
cannot avoid it; and to blame him for becoming an informer —
because this action relates to society and must be judged in its
social context.

Miller has given us an insight into his conceptual confusion in
two different versions of the final speech of the lawyer, Alfieri.
When the play was produced in New York, the killing of Eddie
by Marco was followed by this epilogue, spoken by the lawyer :

Most of the time we settle for half,

And I like it better.

And yet when the tide is right

And the green smell of the sea

Floats in through my window,

The waves of this bay

Are the waves against Siracusa,

And I see a face that suddenly seems carved ;

The eyes look like tunnels

Leading back toward some ancestral beach

Where all of us once lived.

And I wonder at those times

How much all of us

Really lives there yet.

And when we will truly have moved on,

On and away from that dark place.

That world that has fallen to stones.*

Eddie's fate is explained in Freudian terms : he is driven by im-
pulses going back into the dark past. These inner drives affect all of
us, but the time may come when we escape from the ancestral curse.

In the revised version of the play, printed in the Collected Plays,
Alfieri speaks as follows:

Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better.
But the truth is holy, and even as I know how wrong he was,
and his death useless, I tremble, for I confess that something
jperversely pure calls to me from his memory — not purely good,

•Printed in Theatre Arts, September 1956.

xxxii Introduction

but himself purely, for he allowed himself to be wholly known
and for that I think I will love him more than all my sensible
clients. And yet, it is better to settle for half, it must be! And
so I mourn him — I admit it — ^with a certain . . . alarm.

Miller has escaped from the Freudian myth to invent a contrary
myth of his own : he has reversed the concept of Eddie's guilt and
made him "perversely pure." The reference to "settling for half,"
which appears in the opening line of the earlier version, has been
expanded to make Eddie guiltless, and even, in a sense, an admirable
figure. It is difficult to understand what is meant by settling for
half: would it have been a "compromise" to let his niece marry
and to resume a normal existence with his wife? Did he fulfill
"himself purely" by calling the immigration authorities to arrest
his wife's cousins?

More than five years have passed since the appearance of
A View from the Bridge, and Miller has not yet produced another
play. We may assume that he is wrestling with the problem of
dramatic clarity, so cogently exposed in the two endings of his
last drama. Miller's dilemma is central to the theatrical culture
of our time. Miller has said that pathos comes easily to him, but
he wants to achieve the greatness of tragedy. There is pathos in
the plight of people driven by fate. But there is neither tragic
splendor nor comic vitality in people who have lost their will. False
concepts of man's relation to reality inhibit theatrical inventiveness
and paralyze the creative imagination.

Today the world is being transformed by heroes whose name
is legion. The drama of our time is being enacted by these millions
who refuse to accept the "absurdity" of existence, who live, and if
necessary die, to give life meaning.

The theatre will be restored to creative life when it returns to
the classic function described by Shaw: "The theatre is a factor
of thought, a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of social con-
duct, an armory against despair and darkness, and a temple ci
the ascent of man." *

May, i960 John Howard Lawson

♦ Pref're, Our 'th^nires in the Nineties, 3 vols., London, 19^2.

PART I

HISTORY OF DRAMATIC
THOUGHT

European dramatic thought has its origin in the Greek
theatre. Contemporary theories of technique are still based
to a remarkable degree on Aristotle^ s frinci-ples. Chapter I
undertakes a brief appraisal of the Aristotelian heritage.

Chapter II brings us to the Renaissance flowering of
the drama in the sixteenth century. There is no historical
justification for this hiatus of eighteen centuries. However y
it tnay be justified in dealing with drafnatic theory. For
theory in any formal sense was at a standstill during the
m^iddle ages. Minstrelsy y rural festivals, and cathedral rites
created an enduring theatrical tradition. But the tradition
was not subjected to any critical evaluation until the the-
atre of the Renaissance , and even then theory lagged far
behind practice. While the Elizabethans stormed the
heavens with their poetry y critical thought ignored the
drama or repeated the formal classical rules.

The later seventeenth century , the age of Moliere in
France and Restoration comedy in England, fnay be re-
garded either as the backwash of the Renaissance or as the
beginning of the realistic treatment of sex, marriage, and
money that was to exert a decisive influence on the further
development of the theatre. The change was accompanied
by a new approach to dramatic technique-, the panorama of
Elizabethan action was contracted to ft the picture-frame
stage. We conclude the second chapter with this turning
■point in dramatic thought.

Chapter III deals with the eighteenth century. The
bourgeoisie, driving toward the A'merican and French
revohuions, produced a rational philosophy, an emphasis
on the rights and obligations of the individual, that could

2 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

no longer be satisfied wtih the money-and-sex situations of
seventeenth-century comedy.

The nineteenth century brought the full development
of bourgeois society y with its inescapable contradictions and
deepening class conflicts. The problem of the middle class ^
torn between abstract ideals and practical necessities, was
elaborated in the philosophy of Hegel. The dualism of
Hegel's thought reflected the conflict between the "free**
individual and the conditions imposed by his environment,
between the souPs aspiration and the subjection of the hur-
man will to mean and ignoble ends. The Hegelian dilemma
was dramatized in Goethe*s Faust.

The problem posed with such intellectual power in Faust
cast its shadow across the later years of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The shadow moved across the make-believe world
of the stage, forcing a choice between illusion and reality.

The hopes of the middle class in a period of economic
growth and competitive opportunity were reflected in the
laissez-faire economics and romantic individualism of the
early nineteenth century. As the concentration of economic
power reduced the area of laissez-faire, conflict no longer
appeared as a healthy competition between individuals; it
appeared in a threatening light as the cleavage of social
classes. The area of conflict in which the conscious will
could operate without facing fundamental social issues be-
came constricted. The drama lost passion and conviction.

Since nineteenth-century thought provides the basis for
the technique of the modern play, it is essential to review
the period in some detail. Therefore, a slight variation
in the arrangefnent of the text of Chapter IV, with sub-
divisions under separate headings, seems permissible as a
means of clarifying the presentation.

The dramatic culture of the nineteenth century is most
completely embodied in Ibsen's work. Having considered
the general trend in Chapter IV, Ibsen's specific contribu-
tion is analyzed in Chapter V.

CHAPTER I

ARISTOTLE

ARISTOTLE, the encyclopedist of the ancient world, has exer-
cised a vast influence on human thought. But in no field of thought
has his domination been so complete and so unchallenged as in
dramatic theory. What remains to us of the Poetics is only a frag-
ment; but even in its fragmentary form Aristotle's statement of
the laws of playwriting is remarkable for its precision and breadth.

One of the most famous principles in the Poetics relates to the
purgation of the emotions through pity and terror. The passage, in
spite of its suggestiveness, offers no accurate explanation of the
meaning of "purgation" or how it is brought about. But the passage
is significant, because it is the only point at which Aristotle touches
on the psychological problems (the feelings which bind the writer
to his material and which also seem to create the bond between the
play and the audience) that puzzle the modern student of the
drama. Aristotle's approach is structural: he described tragedy as
"the imitation of an action that is complete and whole and of a
certain magnitude." * The question of magnitude has caused a
great deal of discussion, but Aristotle's explanation is sufficiently
clear: "There may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A
whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end." Dramas
which are properly composed "must neither begin nor end at hap-
hazard." He regarded magnitude as a measure which is neither so
small as to preclude distinguishing the parts nor so large as to
prevent us from understanding the whole. In regard to an object
which is too small, "the view of it is confused, the object being
seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. ... So in the plot,
a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily
embraced by the memory." Thus "magnitude" means architectural
proportion. "Beauty depends on magnitude and order." He de-
scribed the "structural union of the parts being such that, if any
one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed
and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no
visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole."

The unities of time and place are supposed to derive from

* All quotations from Aristotle are from S. H. Butcher's Aristotle's
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York, 1907). Reprinted by permis-
sion of The Macraillan Company.^

%

4 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Aristotle, but this is inaccurate.* He made no mention of unity of
place, and his only reference to time is the following: "Tragedy
endeavors, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution
of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit." The writers of
Greek tragedy frequently failed to observe this limitation. But at a
later period, among the Italian and French classicists, the unities
became a fetish. Corneille, in a mood of wild radicalism, ventured
to say that he "would not scruple to extend the duration of the
action even to thirty hours." Voltaire was very emphatic about
the unities : "If the poet makes the action last fifteen days, he must
account for what passes during these fifteen days, because I am in
the theatre to learn what happens." t

Aristotle defined style as avoiding both the commonplace and
the magniloquent, "to be clear without being mean." He discussed
plausibility, saying that dramatic eiffect derives from what is prob-
able and not from what is possible. He advised the playwright to
construct his plot with consideration for the limitations of the
playhouse.

He associated action with a reversal of fortune, a change in
social relationships. The action must be such that "the sequence of
events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit
of a change from bad fortune to good or from good fortune to
bad." He gave the name of "peripeteia" (revolution) to the sudden
intrusion of an event which affects the life of the hero and turns
the action in a new direction. Another form of reversal of action
is the "anagnorisis" or recognition scene, the finding of friends or
enemies unexpectedly.

Aristotle maintained that action, not character, is the basic
ingredient of drama, and that "character comes in as a subsidiary
to the actions." This is very widely accepted as one of the corner-
stones of technical theory. George Pierce Baker says, "History
shows indisputably that drama, in its beginnings, no matter where
we look, depended most on action." Gordon Craig, rebelling
against the wordy theatre of the nineteen hundreds, says that "the
father of the dramatist was the dancer." Brander Matthews says :
"A wise critic once declared that the skeleton of a good play is a
pantomime." Roy Mitchell remarks that "literature crosses the

*Lodovico Castelvetro, an Italian critic writing In 1570, is responsible
for the first formulation of the triple unities: "The time of the repre-
sentation and that of the action represented must be exactly coincident...
and the scene of the action must be constant." He wrongly attributed
this idea to Aristotle, and began a controversy which continued for
several hundred years.

t From Barrett H. Clark, European Theories of the Drama (New York,
1947)-

Aristotle 5

threshold of the theatre only as the servant of motion." The
turbulent poetry of Shakespeare is an example of literature which
functions admirably as "the servant of motion."

The simple statement that action is the root of drama conveys
an essential truth — but the interpretation of this truth is by no
means simple. The term must be defined ; we cannot suppose that
the theatre deals with any kind of action. We must therefore
distinguish between dramatic action and action in general. Aristotle
made no clear distinction along these lines. Later theorists seem to
take the idea of action for granted, and to assume that it means
whatever the particular writer would prefer to have it mean. One
also finds that action is often viewed in a mechanical, rather than
in a living sense. Those who protest (very properly) against the
idea of mechanical movement as a dramatic value, are apt to go
to the other extreme and insist that character is prior to, and
more vital than, action.

There is probably more confusion on this point than on any
other aspect of technique — a confusion which grows out of an
abstract approach to theatre problems; character and action tend
to become abstractions, existing theoretically on opposite sides of a
theoretical fence. The inter-dependence of character and action
has been clarified by the conception of drama as a conflict of will,
which has played a prominent part in nineteenth century dramatic
thought. Ashley H. Thorndike points out that Aristotle "devoted
much attention to the requirements of the plot. He did not, more-
over, recognize the importance of the element of conflict, whether
between man and circumstance, or between men, or within the
mind of man." * This is true. Aristotle failed to grasp the role
of the human will, which places man in conflict with other men
and with the totality of his environment. He viewed the reversal
of fortune (which is actually the climax of a conflict of will) as
an objective event, neglecting its psychological aspect. He saw that
character is an accessory to action, but his conception of character
was limited and static: "An action implies personal agents, who
necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character
and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves,
and these — thought and character — are the two natural causes from
which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure

depends By character I mean that in virtue of which we

ascribe certain qualities to the agents."

Aristotle's view of character as a collection of qualities made it
impossible for him to study the way in which character functions.

♦Ashley H. Thorndike, Tragedy (New York, 1908).

6 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Instead of seeing character as part of the process of action, he drew
an artificial line between qualities and activities. He also drew a
line between character and thought. From a modern point of view,
this mechanical way of treating the subject is valueless, and must
be attributed to Aristotle's limited knowledge of psychology and
sociology. Psychologists have long been aware that character must
be studied in terms of activity — the action of stimuli upon the sense
organs and the resulting action of ideas, feelings, volitions. This
inner action is part of the whole action which includes the indi-
vidual and the totality of his environment. Aristotle was right
when he said that "life consists in action, and its end is a mode
of action, not a quality." He was therefore right in maintaining
that action is basic, and that "character comes in as a subsidiary
to the actions." His mistake lay in his inability to understand
character as itself a mode of action which is subsidiary to the whole
action because it is a living part of the whole.

The theory of the conflict of wills amends, and in no way con-
tradicts, Aristotle's theory of action. A conflict of wills, whether
it be between man and circumstance, or between men, or inside the
mind of man, is a conflict in which the environment plays an
important part. We cannot imagine a mental conflict which does
not involve an adjustment to the environment. Action covers the
individual and the environment, and the whole interconnection
between them. Character has meaning only in relation to events;
the human will is continually modified, transformed, weakened,
strengthened, in relation to the system of events in which it oper-^
ates. If we describe a play as an action, it is evident that this is a
useful description; but a play cannot be defined as a character,
or a group of characters.

In spite of his wooden treatment of psjThological qualities,
Aristotle put his finger on two fundamental truths which are as
valid today as when the Poetics was written : ( i ) the playwright
is concerned with what people do; he is concerned with what they
think or what they are only insofar as it is revealed in what they
do. (2) The action is not simply an aspect of the construction, but
is the construction itself. Aristotle regarded action as synonymous
with plot — a view which most later theorists have failed to grasp :
"The plot then is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of the
tragedy." This is a valuable key to the problem of unity. Unity
and action are generally considered separately, but Aristotle treated
them as a single concept. Plot is frequently regarded as an artificial
arrangement, the form of events as opposed to their content.
Aristotle ignored such a distinction. In speaking of the whole play

Aristotle 7

as "an action," in regarding the plot (or action, or system of
events) as "the soul of the tragedy," he took the first step toward
an organic theory of the drama.

In considering the later course of dramatic thought, there is one
point in regard to Aristotle which cannot be disregarded, and
which may in some measure account for the unique position which
he occupies. From the fourth century B.C. to the present day,
Aristotle represents the only attempt to analyze the technique of
the drama in conjunction with a comprehensive system of scientific
thought. Many philosophers have written about dramatic art:
David Hume wrote an Essay on Tragedy; Hegel's formulation
of the theory of tragic conflict was of great importance. But these
and other philosophers were interested in the theatre only in rela-
tion to general esthetics, and gave no thought to its more technical
aspects.

The great critics of the drama, in spite of all they have con-
tributed toward our knowledge of its laws, have failed to connect
these laws with the science and thought of their period. Goethe
made extensive investigations in biology, physics, chemistry and
botany; he incorporated the results of these investigations in his
plays; but his views of the drama were emotional, unsystematic,
and quite divorced from scientific thought.

Goethe and most of his contemporaries agreed that art is emo-
tional and mysterious. Such a view would have been inconceivable
to Aristotle, who took the theatre in his stride as part of a rational
inquiry into the processes of man and nature.

Aristotle had the advantage of studying the theatre logically. But
he could not possibly study it sociologically. He made no mention
of the social or moral problems which were dealt with by the
Greek poets. It never occurred to him that a writer's technique
might be affected by his social orientation.

There is a widespread idea that Attic tragedy shows men trapped
and destroyed by blind fate, destructive, unrelenting, unforeseen.
Fate, as personified by the will of the gods or the forces of nature,
plays a major part in Greek drama. But it is not an irrational or
mystic fate; it represents definite social laws. The modern idea of
destiny tends to be either religious or Nihilistic; it is based either
on a belief in the mysterious will of God or on a belief in the
inherent lawlessness and purposelessness of the universe. Either of
these beliefs would have been incomprehensible to the Greek
audience which was moved by the plays of ^schylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides.

These were social problem plays. They dealt with the family

8 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

as the social unit, and with a system of taboos which govern the
family relationship, and whose violation must be punished. A vital
part of the system was the belief that moral guilt can be trans-
mitted or inherited. The taboo, the violation, the punishment,
constitute the moral law on which Greek tragedy rests. This law
does not make the individual helpless or irresponsible ; it emphasizes
his responsibility, forcing him to face the consequences of his own
acts.

In The Furies, the last play of the trilogy of the House of
Atreus, i^schylus shows Orestes, pursued by the Furies, coming to
the Temple of Pallas in Athens, and being judged by the council of
citizens for having murdered his mother. Orestes accepts full
responsibility, saying that he did the deed of his own will. He
defends himself by saying that he was compelled to revenge his
father, who had been killed by his mother. But the chorus tells
him that Clytemnestra was less guilty than he, because the man
she murdered was not of her own blood. The votes of the Athenians
are equally divided for and against Orestes, but Athena casts the
deciding vote and permits him to go free.

There is a more definite irony in Sophocles, and a suggested
questioning of man's responsibility for the unconscious violation of
social laws. In Euripides, we find that the question of justice, and
its relation to problems of the will, has taken on a new and
profound meaning. Gilbert Murray says: "Euripides seems at
times to hate the revenge of the oppressed almost as much as the
original cruelty of the oppressors."

Aristotle took no interest in the development of ideas which led
from i^schylus to Euripides, nor in the technical differences in the
work of these playwrights. He wrote the Poetics one hundred
years after the great period of Greek tragedy, but he made no
comparison between his own ethical ideas and those of the tragic
masterpieces. His approach was thoroughly unhistorical : he men-
tioned the origins of comedy and tragedy; but he was unaware
that these origins determined the form and function of the drama.
The simplicity of Aristotle's analysis is possible largely because of
the simplicity of the Greek dramatic structure, which centers
around a single tragic incident, the climax of a long train of events
which are described but not depicted. The original ritual, from
which the more mature dramatic form was derived, was a recita-
tion in celebration of past events. "A chorus with a leader," writes
Donald Clive Stuart, "sang of a dead hero at his tomb. The fact
that the hero of the ritual was dead explains much of the con-
struction of serious tragedy. . . . Such scenes of narration and

Aristotle 9

lamentation were the nucleus about which other scenes were

grouped in later tragedies It is evident that the point of attack

(the point in the story where the play begins) had to be pushed
back within the play itself." *

This form was historically conditioned ; it perfectly suited the
social basis of Attic tragedy. The Greek dramatist had no desire
to investigate the causes, the prior conflicts of will, which led to
the violation of family law. This would have involved ethical
questions which were outside the thought of the age ; it would have
led to questioning the whole basis of the moral law. We find a hint
of such questioning in Euripides. But the questioning is unde-
veloped and is given no dramatic formulation. The Greeks were
concerned with the effects of breaking the moral law, not with the
causes which led to breaking it.

Being unaware of the underlying social motivation in tragedy,
Aristotle also seems to have had no clear idea of the social signif-
icance of comedy. Only a few phrases in the Poetics refer to
comedy; we are told that its subject-matter is that which is
ridiculous but neither painful nor destructive. Whatever further
comments Aristotle may have made on comic technique have been
lost. But it is evident that he made a sharp division between
comedy and tragedy, regarding the former as a different type of
art, subject to different laws.

"The Aristophanic Comedy," says Georg Brandes, "with its
grand and exact technical structure, is the expression of the artistic
culture of a whole nation." Today we realize that the principles
of construction must be as valid in their application to the plays
of Aristophanes as to those of Euripides. In dealing only with
tragedy, in regarding comedy as a separate field of inquiry, Aristotle
established a precedent which was followed throughout the
Renaissance, and which still strongly colors our ways of thinking
about the drama.f

Aristotle is the Bible of playwriting technique. The few pages of
the Poetics have been mulled over, analyzed, annotated, with
religious zeal. As in the case of the Bible, enthusiastic students
have succeeded in finding the most diverse, contradictory and
fantastic meanings in the Poetics.

♦Donald Clive Stuart, The Development of Dramatic Art (New York,
1928).

t For example, Francisque Sarcey wrote in 1876: "The conclusion is
that the distinction between the comic and tragic rests, not on prejudice,
but on the very definition of drama." Modern critics seldom express the
idea in such a clear form, but comedy is often treated as a distant relative
of the drama, living its own life, and adhering to different (or at least
far less stringent) codes of conduct.

lO Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Most of the misinterpretations are due to lack of historical
perspective, ^y studying the Greek philosopher in connection with
his period, we are able to test the value of his theories, to select and
develop what will serve in the light of later knowledge.

CHAPTER II

THE RENAISSANCE

DURING the middle ages and the first years of the Renaissance,
when interest in the drama was quiescent, there was no direct
knowledge of Aristotle's writings. The few references to the drama
in this period were based on the Ars Poetica of Horace. The
beginning of Aristotle's influence dates from 1498, when Giorgio
Valla's Latin translation of the Poetics appeared at Venice. During
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Horace and Aristotle were
the twin stars of classical tradition. Aristotle was interpreted with
narrow formalism, special emphasis being placed upon the alleged
inviolability of the three unities.

In order to understand the Renaissance idea of tragedy, we must
give some consideration to the work of Horace. The Ars Poetica,
written between 24 and 7 B.C., is the only work on dramatic
theory which has been preserved from ancient Rome. This gives
it an historical value which is greater than the intrinsic importance
of the ideas which it contains. Barrett H. Clark calls it "on the
whole a somewhat arbitrary manual ; the greatest importance must
be attached to the purely formal side of writing, the dramatist
must adhere closely to the five acts, the chorus, and so on ; propor-
tion, good sense, decorum, cannot be neglected." * It was no doubt
this quality which endeared Horace to the theorists of the Renais-
sance, who delighted in dogma and decorum.

Horace was a formalist ; but there is nothing dry or dull in the
presentation of his views. The Ars Poetica is like the Roman age
in which it was written — superficial, entertaining, crowded with
random "practical" observations. Indeed, there is some ground for
regarding Horace as the originator of the narrowly "practical"
idea of art: "To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain
of writing well Poets wish either to profit or to delight; or to

* Clark, opus cit.

The Renaissance II

deliver both the pleasures and the necessaries of life." * Horace's
easy and diverting way of handling fundamentals is shown in his
discussion of unity. He asks whether "a painter should wish to
unite a horse's neck to a human head," or whether it is proper that
"what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly
in a fish below."

However, the essence of Horace's theory is contained in the one
word — decorum. It is evident that the idea of decorum is meaning-
less unless we interpret it in connection with the manners of a
particular period. But Horace used the word with finality, and
drew definite technical conclusions in regard to its application. He
said that actions which are "indecorous" are "fit only to be acted
behind the scenes." "You may take away from view many actions,
which elegant description may soon after deliver."

The idea of decorum was accepted literally during the Renais-
sance. Jean de la Taille wrote in 1572 that a fit subject for tragedy
"is the story of him who was made to eat his own sons, the father,
though unwittingly, being the sepulchre of his own children" ;
but "one must also be careful to do nothing on the stage but what
can easily and decently be performed." t

The insistence on decorum, directly negating Aristotle's prin-
ciple of action, had a painful effect on the technique of French
tragedy. It caused avoidance of direct conflict, fountains of rhetoric,
oceans of dignified lamentation. Corneille, in 1632, rebelled against
the rhetorical technique : "Any one who wishes to weigh the advan-
tages which action has over long and tiresome recitals will not find
it strange that I preferred to divert the eyes rather than importune
the ears." % In spite of these brave words, both Corneille and Racine
continued to "importune the ears." The rule against "indecorous"
actions was so undisputed that it was not until a century after
Corneille that a French dramatist dared to introduce a murder in
view of the audience. Gresset (who was influenced by the English
theatre) accomplished this feat in 1740. His example was followed
by Voltaire, whose Mahomet contained a murder which was visual
— but as carefully lighted and draped as the nude "visions" in a
modern musical revue.

But the living theatre, as it emerged from the womb of the
middle ages and grew to abundant strength in the masterpieces of
Shakespeare and Calderon, was unaffected by the disputes of the

♦Translation by C. Smart, included in Clark's European Theories of
the Drama.
t Clark, opus cif., translation by Clark.
J Translation by Beatrice Stewart MacClintock, in Clark, opus c'tt.

12 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

classicists. One may say that the beginnings of the split between
theory and practice are to be found at the dawn of the Renaissance.
The critics were engrossed in verbal battles over the unities. First
in Italy, later in France, tragedy followed the classical formula.
The critics thought comedy was outside the realm of art. Modern
historians are frequently guilty of the same error, in underestimat-
ing the importance of fifteen and sixteenth century comedy.* Yet
the comedies which grew out of the moralities and farces of the
middle ages contained both the technical and social germs of the
later flowering of dramatic art.

Sheldon Cheney says of the French farce of the fifteenth century:
"It was the early gross form of later French satirical comedy — that
was to bloom so finely when French vulgar comedy and Italian
Commedia dell' Arte together fertilized the genius of Moliere." t
It was also the comedy of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century
which fertilized the genius of the Elizabethans and the golden age
of the Spanish theatre.

The rise of comedy reflected the social forces which were weaken-
ing the structure of feudalism and bringing about the growth of
the merchant class. Maistre Pierre Pathelin, which appeared in
France in 1470, is the first play which may be considered realistic
in the modern sense, dealing directly with the foibles and manners
of the middle class.

But the main development of comedy took place in Italy. The
first great name in the history of the Renaissance theatre is a name
which is generally not associated with the theatre at all — the name
of Machiavelli (1469- 1527). Machiavelli's plays are important,
but his major claim to a place in dramatic history lies in the fact
that he crystallized the morals and sentiments of his time; he
applied this system of ideas to the theatre; his influence spread
throughout Europe, and had a direct effect on the Elizabethans.

Ariosto and Aretino were contemporaries of Machiavelli. All
three helped to free comedy from classical restrictions. Aretino
and Machiavelli depicted the life of their time with a brutality
and irony which seem startlingly modern. "I show men as they

* Modern writers are especially apt to take a moral view toward what
they consider the vulgarity of old comedy. Brander Matthews, in The
Development of the Drama (New York, 1908), dismisses the whole of
Restoration comedy in a few lines, including a pointed reference to "dirt}'
linen." Sheldon Cheney describes Machiavelli and Aretino as a picturesque
"pair of ruffians." Cheney's book. The Theatre (New York, 1929), is by
far the best history available; it covers acting and scenic designs, and
contains a tremendous amount of reliable information. Cheney's judg-
ments, however, are routine and sometimes careless.

t Opus cit.

The Renaissance 13

are," said Aretino, "not as they should be." * This began a new
era in the theatre. The attempt to "show men as they are" follows
a clear line, from Aretino and Machiavelli, to the theatre of Ibsen
and of our ov/n day.

If we examine the system of ideas in Machiavelli's prose works,
we find here too a clear line connecting him with the stream of
later middle-class thought. The myth about Machiavelli as a
cloven-footed sinner preaching deception and immorality need not
concern us here. He believed in ambition, in the ability to get there ;
he took as his model the man who combines audacity and prudence
in the achievement of his aims. The successful men, politicians,
merchants, leaders of the period of industrial expansion, have con-
formed to this model. It is absurd to suggest that Machiavelli
ignored ethics: he was deeply preoccupied with moral problems.
Determined to take what he considered a realistic view, he con-
sciously separated ethics and politics — a policy which has been
followed, often much less consciously, by subsequent political
thinkers. He respected the possibilities of middle-class democracy;
he believed that the people are the real nation, but that they cannot
attain practical control, which must therefore be manipulated by
politicians. His foresight in regard to the modern state may be
illustrated by two of his opinions : he formulated the idea of a
national militia as the main strength of the national state — this
later proved to be the case, both in Germany and in France ; he
eagerly demanded the unification of Italy — a dream which took
more than three hundred years to accomplish.

A recognition of Machiavelli's significance does not imply that
one accepts his emphasis on the unscrupulous man as the most
decisive factor in his writings or in their later influence. This factor
cannot be entirely ignored, because guile and double-dealing did
play a considerable role in the literature and drama of the cen-
turies following Machiavelli. Maxim Gorki exaggerates this point
when he says of middle-class literature that "its principal hero is a
cheat, thief, detective and thief again, but now a 'gentleman thief.' "
Gorki traces this hero from "the figure of Tyl Eulenspiegel at
the end of the fifteenth century, that of Simplicissimus of the seven-
teenth century, Lazarillio of Tormes, Gil Bias, the heroes of
Smollett and Fielding, up to Dear Friend by Maupassant, Arsene
Lupin, heroes of the 'detective' literature of our days." t There is

* Quoted by Cheney, opus cit.

t Speech at Soviet Writers Congress, 1934, included in Problems of
Soviet Literature (New York, n.d.).

14 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

enough truth in this to make it worth thinking about ; but there is
enough bias to make it misleading.

The moral structure of Elizabethan drama (the first detailed
expression of the ideals of the new era) is not based upon a belief
in guile, but on a boundless faith in man's ability to do, to know
and to feel. This faith dominated three hundred years of middle-
class development; at the end of the nineteenth century, we come
to a breaking point — the split between the real and the ideal,
between politics and ethics, is as complete in Ibsen as in Machia-
velli. But whereas Machiavelli, at the beginning of the era, re-
garded this split as necessary, Ibsen recognized it as a dangerous
contradiction which threatened the stability of the whole social
order.

The connecting link between Italian comedy and the flowering
of Elizabethan culture is to be found in the Commedia dell' Arte,
the theatre of improvisation which grew up in the public squares
of Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century. The robust power
of the Commedia delV Arte affected the dramatic life of every
country in Europe.

In England, the drama had grown from native roots. But it
began to show Continental influences early in the sixteenth century.
This is apparent even in the antiquated comedies of John Heywood.
In a critical essay on Heywood's plays, Alfred W. Pollard points
out that "we can see even in the less developed group of plays
English comedy emancipating itself from the miracle-play and
morality, and in the Pardoner and the Frere and Johan Johan
becoming identical in form with the French fifteenth century
farce." Pollard mentions the fact that both of these plays seem
to be taken directly from French originals, the former from the
Farce d'un Pardonneur and the latter from Pernet qui va au Fin.

The direct Italian influence on Shakespeare and his contem-
poraries is evidenced in their choice of plots, which came largely
from Italian sources. The sudden coming of age of the Elizabethan
theatre coincided exactly, as John Addington Symonds tells us,
with the point at which "the new learning of the Italian Renais-
sance penetrated English society." At the same time, voyages of
discovery were causing the rapid expansion of England's commer-
cial empire. The awakening of science was closely connected with
the awakening of the drama. It is no accident that the first quarto
edition of Hamlet appeared in 1604, and Francis Bacon's Advance-
ment of Learning in 1 605. There was also a close connection
between the changes in religious thought and the growth of art
and science. Alfred North Whitehead says: "The appeals to the

The Renaissance 15

origins of Christianity, and Francis Bacon's appeal to efficient
causes as against final causes, were two sides of one movement of
thought." *

These complex forces created a system of dominant ideas which
determined the technique and social logic of Elizabethan drama.
Shakespeare is often spoken of as the type of the supremely "time-
less" artist; the mirror which he holds up to nature is said to
reflect "an eternity of thought," and also "an eternity of passion."
On the other hand, there are politically-minded writers who accuse
Shakespeare of being "unfair to labor," because he treats members
of the working class as buffoons and clowns. t

These two extremes are equally absurd. In selecting lords and
ladies as his heroes and heroines, Shakespeare expressed the social
viewpoint of his class. These veiy lords and ladies were rebelling
against feudalism and forming the upper layer of a new capitalist
society. To assume that Shakespeare's plays reflect passions or ideas
which are outside or above the class and period reflected, is illogical
■ — and means ignoring the specific material in the plays themselves.
The plays contain a system of revolutionary concepts which were
beginning to cause a profound upheaval in the structure of society.

Shakespeare was intensely occupied with the problem of personal
ambition, both as a driving force and as a danger. This is as vital
in Shakespeare's play as the problem of "idealism" in the plays
of Ibsen — and for the same reason : it is the key to the special social
conditions and relationships with which Shakespeare dealt. He
believed passionately in man's ability to get ahead, to conquer his
environment. He did not believe that this is to be accomplished by
force and guile; he viewed conscience as the medium of adjustment
between the aims of the individual and the social obligations
imposed by the environment.

We find the first, and simplest, expression of ambition as the
dynamo of civilization in Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine the
Great idealizes the theme of conquest :

Is it not passing brave to be a King,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?

Dr. Faustus deals with the ambition to acquire knowledge :

But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretcheth as far as does the mind of man.

* Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New
York, 1925).

t One finds this attitude, in all its naive simplicity, in Upton Sinclair's
Mammonart (Pasadena, Calif., 1925), in which the world's literature is
judged by whether it regards workers as villains or heroes.

1 6 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Allardyce Nicoll stresses the influence of Machiavelli on the
Elizabethans, and points out that this influence is first manifest
in the plays of Marlowe: "Their author had drunk deep of a
source unknown to the preceding dramatists." * Nicoll remarks on
the significant reference to Machiavelli in the prologue to The
Jew of Malta:

And let them know that I am Machiavel,

And weigh not men, and therefor not men's words.

Admired I am of those that hate me most

I count religion but a childish toy.
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

The threads of Machiavelli's ideas run through the whole texture
of Shakespeare's plays, affecting his method of characterization,
his treatment of history, his ideas in regard to morals and politics.
Shakespeare saw the struggle between man and his conscience
(which is essentially a struggle between man and the necessities of
his environment), not only as a struggle between right and wrong,
but as a conflict of will, in which the tendency to act is balanced
against the tendency to escape action. In this he sounded a
peculiarly modern note.

The need to investigate the sources of action, to show both the
changes in men's fortunes and the conscious aims which motivate
those changes, was responsible for the diffuseness of the action in
the Elizabethan theatre. Whereas the Greeks were concerned only
with the effect of breaking an accepted social law, the Elizabethans
insisted on probing the causes, testing the validity of the law in
terms of the individual. For the first time in the history of the
stage, the drama recognized fluidity of character, the making and
breaking of the will. This caused the extension of the plot. Instead
of beginning at the climax, it was necessary to begin the story at
the earliest possible point. Shakespeare's psychology was a clean
break with medievalism, pointing directly toward the responsi-
bilities and relationships which would characterize the new
economic system. He dramatized the specific concepts on which
middle-class life was to be founded : the romantic idea of love in
Romeo and Juliet; the intensely personal relationship between
mother and son in Hamlet. "Shakespedre's women," says Taine,
"are charming children, who feel in excess and love passionately."
These were not "universal" women ; they were the women who
would decorate the homes of the merchants and traders of the new

* Allardyce Nicoll, The Theory of Drama (London, 1931).

The Renaissance IJ

social order. They were very limited women, forced by society to
retain the status of "charming children."

Shakespeare summed up the driving energy of the Renaissance,
which combined the thirst for power and knowledge with the
Protestant idea of moral citizenship. The Elizabethan drama, says
Taine, was "the work and the picture of this young world, as
natural, as unshackled, and as tragic as itself." But this young
world was going in a very definite direction, developing, as Taine
says, "all the instincts which, forcing man upon himself and con-
centrating him within himself, prepare him for Protestantism and
combat." The Protestant idea "forms a moralist, a laborer, a
citizen." *

In the later Elizabethan period, political and economic issues
began to enter the theatre in more concrete terms. Nicoll speaks
of Arden of Feversham and A Woman Killed with Kindness as
"the attempts of unconscious revolutionaries to overthrow the old
conventions. . . . Those plays are to be associated with the gradual
rise of Parliamentary control and the emergence of the middle
classes." t

The great age of the Spanish theatre was contemporary with the
Elizabethans. The plays of Lope de Vega and Calderon differed
in many respects, both in technique and in social direction, from
those of the English dramatists. Since the Spaniards exerted only
an oblique influence on the main stream of European dramatic
thought, we can dispense with a detailed study of their work. But
it is important to note that Spain and England were the only
countries in which the Renaissance attained mature dramatic ex-
pression. These were the most turbulent, the most alive, the richest
nations of the period ; they were bitter commercial rivals, both
reaching out to conquer all the wealth of the known world. But
medievalism had a strong hold on Spain, while England was
destined to follow a more revolutionary course. These factors
accounted both for the similarities, and the variations, in their
dramatic achievements.

We must now turn to the question of dramatic theory. Both in
Spain and England, the theatre developed with no conscious regard
for rules and no formulated body of doctrine. The only important
discussions of the drama in the Elizabethan era are those of Sir
Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson. They attacked the current mode
and demanded a more rigid technique. In Spain, Cervantes took

* H. A. Taine, History of English Literature, translation by H. Van
Loun /'New York, r886).
t Nicoll, opus c'lt.

1 8 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

up the cudgels for classical tradition ; in spite of the gargantuan
exuberance of Don Quixote, its author was bitterly opposed to
what he called the "absurdity and incoherence" of the drama. He
considered the plays of his time "mirrors of inconsistency, patterns
of folly, and images of licentiousness." *

Lope de Vega, in The New Art of Writing Plays in This Age
(1609), defended the right of the dramatist to be independent of
the customs of the past. His opinions are practical and entertaining.
Like many playwrights of the present day, he disclaimed any
knowledge of technique, remarking that plays "are now written
contrary to the ancient rule," and that "to describe the art of
writing plays in Spain ... is to ask me to draw on my experience,
not on art." f

This raises an interesting question: if there was no organized
dramatic theory in the theatre's most creative period, why should
it be needed today? The modern dramatist may well ask: "If
Shakespeare could manage without conscious technique, why not
I?" For the present it is sufficient to point out that the existence
of a conscious technique among the Elizabethans would be a
fantastic historical anachronism. While creative effort flowered,
critical thought was swaddled in scholasticism. In order to analyze
the method of the artist, the critic himself must possess a method
and a system of ideas. The Elizabethan critic was unequipped for
such an analysis, which would have required a knowledge of
science, psychology and sociology several centuries ahead of his
time. To ask why Sir Philip Sidney failed to understand
Shakespeare's technique is like asking why Newton failed to under-
stand the quantum theory.

It was inevitable that Renaissance theory should be restricted to
the exposition of supposedly static laws ; those who rebelled against
the laws had no method by which to rationalize their rebellion.
They were carried along by a dynamic process which was social in
its origin ; they knew nothing about the logic of this process.

In France, seventeenth-century criticism continued the respectful
discussion of Horace and Aristotle. The critical opinions of
Corneille, Boileau and Saint-Evremond are of interest chiefly be-
cause of their attempt to adapt the principles of Aristotle to the
aristocratic philosophy of the time. Corneille (in 1660) declared
that "the sole end of the drama is to please." But it was evident
that the pleasure derived from the tragedy of the period was of a

* From anonymous translation of Don Quixote in Clark, opus cit.
t Translation by William T. Brewster, in Papers on Playmaking, I
(New York, 1914).

Tne Renaissance 19

mild kind. Therefore we find Saint-Evremond (in 1672) deriding
Aristotle's theory of purgation: indeed Saint-Evremond was sure
that the pity and terror occasioned by the violence of Attic tragedy
had a bad effect on the Athenians, causing them to be irresolute in
battle; "Ever since this art of fearing and lamenting was set up at
Athens, all those disorderly passions which they had, as it were
imbibed at their public representations, got footing in their camps
and attended them in their wars." The author concluded that
tragedy should achieve "a greatness of soul well expressed, which
excites in us a tender admiration." *

One can assume that "greatness of soul" was well suited to the
court of Louis XIV, and that the monarch had no desire to set up
an "art of fearing and lamenting" which would produce "dis-
orderly passions" and destroy the morale of his troops.

The tragedies of Corneille and Racine were based on the social
philosophy of the aristocracy. There can be no denying the impres-
siveness of Racine's plays; their power lies in the simplicity with
which static emotions are presented. The structure is a rational
arrangement of abstract qualities. There is no heat of living, no
possibility of change in the lives of the characters. The special
character of the reign of Louis XIV was its absolutism ; he was
his own prime minister from 1661 until his death, and all state
business passed through his own hands. The plays of Corneille and
Racine are a dramatization of absolutism. There is no need of
purgation, because passion is purified by detaching it from reality.

But reality was present — the voice of reality spoke harshly and
gaily in the plays of Moliere. Moliere was a man of the people,
the son of an upholsterer, who came to Paris with a semi-amateur
theatrical company in 1643. His plays grew out of the tradition of
the Commedia dell' Arte. From farces which were fashioned
directly on the old models, he passed to plays of character and
manners. Schlegel indicates Moliere 's importance as the spokesman
of the middle class: "Born and educated in an inferior rank of
life, he enjoyed the advantage of learning by direct experience the
modes of living among the industrious portion of the community —
the so-called Bourgeois class — and of acquiring the talent of imitat-
ing low modes of expression." f Louis XIV, who prided himself
on his paternal interest in the arts, and who liked nothing better
than to take part in a ballet himself, took Moliere under his
protection. But even the King was forced to ban Tartujfe; there

♦From anonymous translation in Clark, opus cit., 165-6, 167.
t All quotations from Schlegel are from his Lectures on Dramatic Art
and Literature, translation by John Black (2nd ed., London, 1914).

20 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

were five years of controversy before this slashing attack on religious
hypocrisy was finally produced.

Restoration comedy in England followed the comedy of Moliere,
but under very different social conditions. A revolution had already
taken place in England (1648). The Royalists, who were exiled
in France while Cromwell was in power, were soothed and
uplifted by the static emotions of French tragedy. When they
returned to England in 1660, "the Royalists," says Edmund Gosse,
"came home with their pockets full of tragedies." The reign of
Charles II was a period of violent social tension. There was noth-
ing absolute about the position of the "Merry Monarch," whose
merriment was always overshadowed by the urgent fear of losing
his throne. Restoration comedy reflected the tension of the time:
the first of these bitter comedies of manners. The Comical Revenge,
or Love in a Tub, by George Etheredge, appeared in 1664. The
next summer the great plague swept the disease-ridden slums of
London, followed by the great fire in the fall of the same year.

The plays of Etheredge, Wycherley, Congreve and Farquhar,
were produced before a restricted upper-class audience. But it is
a mistake to dismiss them as merely examples of the cynicism of a
decadent class. The intellectual currents of the period were so
strong, the social conflict so raw and imminent, that the cynicism
of these plays turned to stinging realism. Their cynicism cut beneath
the surface and exposed the deeper moral issues of the time.
Restoration comedy stands, with Moliere, at a crucial half-way
point between the first stirrings of the Renaissance and the
beginning of the twentieth century.

It is also at this crucial half-way point that we find the first
critical attempt to understand the theatre in living terms. John
Dryden's plays are dry and formalistic, but his critical writings
strike a new note. An Essay of Dramatick Poesie, written in 1668,
is a series of conversations in which the ancient and modern drama
are compared, and the plays of France and Spain are contrasted
with those of England. Thus Dryden instituted a comparative
method of criticism. He pointed out the inaccuracy of attributing
the unities of time and place to the ancients : "But in the first place,
give me leave to tell you, that the unity of place, however it might
be practiced by them, was never any of their rules : we neither find
it in Aristotle, Horace, or any who have written of it, till in our
age the French poets first made it a precept of the stage. The
unity of time, even Terence himself, who was the best and most
regular of them, has neglected." *

* Dryden, An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Oxford, 1896).

The Eighteenth Century 21

Dryden emphasized the need of fuller characterization : he spoke
of plays in which "the characters are indeed the imitation of
nature, but so narrow, as if they had imitated only an eye or a
hand, and did not dare to venture on the lines of a face, or the
proportion of a body."

Dryden made an important, although vague, observation on the
relationship between the theatre and the ideas of the period. "Every
age," he said, "has a kind of universal genius." Thus the writers
of the time need not imitate the classics : "We draw not therefore
after their lines, but those of nature ; and having the life before us,
besides the experience of all they knew, it is no wonder if we hit
some airs and features which they have missed . . . for if natural
causes be more known now than in the time of Aristotle, because
more studied, it follows that poesy and other arts may, with the
same pains, arrive still nearer to perfection,"

This is the first time in dramatic criticism that we find the
suggestion of an historical perspective. In this Dryden marks the
end of an epoch, and points the way to the analj'^sis of "natural
causes" and of "the life before us" which is the function of
criticism.

CHAPTER III

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE progress of dramatic theory in the eighteenth century is
summed up in the work of one man ; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
ranks next to Aristotle for the depth and originality of his con-
tribution to technique.

Exactly one hundred years after Dryden's An Essay of Drama-
tick Poesie, Lessing wrote the Hamburg Dramaturgy ( 1 767-1 769).
The tendency toward a scientific approach, toward applying general
knowledge to the problems of the theatre (which is shown in a
rudimentary form in Dryden's writings) reached fruitful maturity
in the Hamburg Dramaturgy. Lessing did not create a complete
structure of technique; he was not equipped to do so; but he
formulated two vital principles which are closely inter-connected:
( I ) drama must have social validity, it must deal with people
whose station in life and social attitudes are understandable to the

22 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

audience. (2) The laws of technique are psychological, and can
only be understood by entering the mind of the playwright.

In the light of these two principles, Lessing was able to see the
meaning of Aristotle, and to free his theories from the scholastic
dust which had settled heavily upon them. He broke the grip of
French classicism on the German stage and introduced the cult of
Shakespeare — thus being responsible for the succeeding flood of
bad Shakespearian imitations. Historians emphasize Lessing's imme-
diate influence (his fight for naturalness and against French con-
ventions) and pay little or no attention to the ideas which were
inherent in his work.

The Hamburg Dramaturgy is a collection of dramatic criticisms
written during his two years as critic of the new National Theatre
in Hamburg.* He described it as "a critical index of all the plays
performed." There is no attempt at formal organization of the
material. Nevertheless, the two main theses which I have mentioned
form a dominant pattern throughout the work. In regard to social
validity, Lessing argued that the poet must so arrange the action
that "with every step we see his personages take, we must acknowl-
edge that we should have taken it ourselves under the same cir-
cumstances and the same degree of passion." Instead of rejecting or
misinterpreting Aristotle's purgation by pity and terror, he observes
that "we suddenly find ourselves filled with profound pity for those
whom a fatal stream has carried so far, and full of terror at the
consciousness that a similar stream might also thus have borne
ourselves."

We must therefore make "the comparison of such blood-and-
thunder tragedies concerning whose worth we dispute, with human
life, with the ordinary course of the world."

In denying the validity of aristocratic emotions, Lessing also
denied the validity of the aristocrats who were soothed and flattered
by sentimental tragedy. He saw no reason that the dramatis
persona should be kings and queens and princes; he insisted that
the activities and emotions of common people were more important.
"We live in an age when the voice of healthy reason resounds too
loudly to allow every fanatic who rushes into death wantonly,
without need, without regard for all his citizen's duties, to assume
to himself the title of a martyr."

Lessing's psychological approach is closely related to his social

♦The Hamburg Dramaturgy is the first example of journalistic criti-
cism, thus setting a standard of excellence which has not, unfortunately,
been maintained. Quotations from Lessing are from the translation by
E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern (London, 1879).

The Eighteenth Century 23

point of view. Since the drama must possess a recognizable social
logic, this logic must derive from the playwright's approach to his
material : we must examine his purpose. "To act with a purpose is
what raises man above the brutes, to invent with a purpose, to
imitate with a purpose, is that which distinguishes genius from the
petty artists who only invent to invent, imitate to imitate." We
must test the material psychologically; otherwise, "it imitates the
nature of phenomena without in the least regarding the nature of
our feelings and emotions."

Lessing went right to the root of the artificiality of French
tragedy. He saw that the trouble lay in the emphasis on invention
instead of on inner cause and effect. Therefore, instead of avoiding
improbability, the French writers sought after it, delighting in the
marvelous and unexpected. He defined this difference in one of his
greatest critical passages: "Genius is only busied with events that
are rooted in one another, that form a chain of cause and effect.
To reduce the latter to the former, to weigh the latter against the
former, everywhere to exclude chance, to cause everything that
occurs to occur so that it could not have happened otherwise, this

is the part of genius Wit, on the contrary, that does not depend

on matters rooted in each other, but on the similar and dissimilar
. . . detains itself with such events as have not further concern with
one another except that they have occurred at the same time."

It follows that unity of action ceases to be a scholastic term, and
becomes a matter of organic growth and movement, which is deter-
mined by the playwright's selection of his material. "In nature
everything is connected, everything is interwoven, everything
changes with everything, everything merges from one to another.
But according to this endless variety it is only a play for an infinite
spirit. In order that finite spirits may have their share of this
enjoyment, they must have the power to set up arbitrary limits,
they must have the power to eliminate and to guide their attention
at will.

"This power we exercise at all moments of our life; without

this power there would be no feeling for us All in nature that

we might wish to abstract in our thoughts from an object or a
combination of various objects, be it in time or in place, art really
abstracts for us."

Lessing's more superficial comments show him continually fight-
ing for honesty and deriding artifice. He ridiculed the habit of
killing off the characters in the final act: "In very truth, the fifth
act is an ugly disease that carries off many a one to whom the first

24 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

four acts promised longer life." * He brilliantly exposed the weak-
ness of getting an effect solely by surprise: "Whoever is struck
down in a moment, I can only pity for a moment. But how if I
expect the blow, how if I see the storm brewing for some time
about my head or his?"

The two central ideas which form the framework of the Ham-
burg Dramaturgy are part of the two great streams of thought
which flowed through the eighteenth century — the social thought
which led to the American and French revolutions; and the phil-
osophic thought which was turning special attention to the prob-
lems of the mind, and which led from Berkeley and Hume to Kant
and Hegel.

From Lessing's time to our own, the dominant ideas which have
shaped the course of the drama, as well as other forms of literature
and art, have been closely related to the ideas of speculative philoso-
phy. For two centuries, philosophy has endeavored to create sys-
tems which rationalize man's physical and mental being in relation
to the whole of the universe. Perhaps the most exhaustive of these
systems have been those of Kant and Hegel. The importance of
these attempts lies in the fact that they crystallize in a systematic
form the intellectual atmosphere, the habits of mind, the social con-
cepts, which grow out of the life of the period. The same concepts,
ways of thinking, intellectual atmosphere, determine (less sys-
tematically) the theory and practice of the theatre. In order to
understand the playwright's mental habits, we must examine the
mental habits of his generation, which are coordinated, more or
less completely, in systems of philosophy.

The two streams of thought which influenced Lessing were
sharply divergent, although they flowed from the same source.
The intensive speculation which marked the intellectual life of
the eighteenth century grew out of the scientific investigations of
the previous century. The period from 1600 to 1700 was pre-
eminently a time of scientific research, which resulted in a series
of discoveries that laid the groundwork for modern science, and
upon which the whole development of later speculation was based.
Francis Bacon initiated the method of science at the beginning of
the century; he was followed by men who achieved epoch-making
results in various branches of research : Harvey, Descartes, Hobbes,

* This widely quoted observation is not startllngly original. Dryden
had said almost the same thing: "It shew little art in the conclusion of a
dramatick poem, when they who have hindered the felicity during the
four acts, desist from it in the fifth, without some powerful cause to take
them off their design." Also Aristotle: "Many poets tie the knot well but
unravel it ill."

The Eighteenth Century 25

Newton, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and many others. The most definite
achievements of the seventeenth century were in the fields of
physics, mathematics, physiology. Out of this new knowledge of
the physical universe arose the need for a theory of thinking and
being, which would solve the riddle of man's mind in relation to
the reality of the universe.

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, whose Discourse on
Method and Meditations, written in the middle years of the
seventeenth century, present the first thoroughgoing statement of
the point of view of subjectivism or idealism. Descartes argued
that "modes of consciousness" are real in themselves, regardless
of the reality of the physical world which we perceive through our
senses: "But it will be said that these presentations are false, and
that I am dreaming. Let it be so. At all events, it is certain that I
seem to see light, hear a noise, feel heat; this cannot be false, and
this is what in me is properly called perceiving, which is nothing
else than thinking. From this I begin to know what I am with
somewhat greater clearness and distinctness than heretofore." *

Descartes was also a physicist, and his scientific investigations
followed the method of Francis Bacon, and were concerned solely
with objective reality; his analysis of the mechanics of the brain
was untouched by his interest in "modes of consciousness." Thus
Descartes faced in two directions : he accepted the dualism of mind
and matter, and failed to understand the contradiction between
the conception of physical reality and the conception of an inde-
pendent mind or soul whose being is subjective, and whose realness
is of a different order.

Both the idealists and the materialists drew their inspiration
from Descartes. His scientific views were accepted and developed
by John Locke, whose Essay Concerning the Origin of Human
Understanding appeared in 1690. He defined the political and
social implications of materialism, saying that the laws of society
are as objective as the laws of nature, and that the social conditions
of men can be controlled by rational means. Locke laid down the
economic and political principles which have been dominant
through two centuries of middle-class thought. Among his most
noteworthy theories was his belief that the government is the trus-
tee of the people, the state being the outcome of the "social con-
tract." He also believed that the right of property depends on
labor, that taxation should be based solely on land. He also fought
for religious toleration, and a liberal system of education. Almost

•Rene Descartes, Meditations, translated by John Veitch (New York,
I 901).

2p Theory and Technique of Playwriting

a century later, Locke's ideas found concrete expression in the
American Declaration of Independence.

The French materialists of the eighteenth century (Diderot,
Helvetius, Holbach) followed the principles of Locke, "Surely,"
said Holbach, "people do not need supernatural revelation in order
to understand that justice is essential for the preservation of
society." Their theories led directly to the French revolution.

Idealist philosophy also stemmed from Descartes. In the second
half of the seventeenth century, Spinoza endeavored to solve the
dualism of mind and matter by regarding God as the infinite sub-
stance which interpenetrates the whole of life and nature ; accord-
ing to Spinoza, both man's consciousness and the reality which he
perceives or thinks he perceives are modes of God's being.

In the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
(1710), George Berkeley went further and denied the material
world altogether. He held that objects exist only in the "mind,
spirit, soul, or myself." * He regretted that "the tenet of the exist-
ence of Matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of
philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences." And
again : "Matter being once expelled out of nature drags with it
so many skeptical and impious notions, such an incredible number
of disputes and puzzling questions."

But the "disputes and puzzling questions" continued. Being
unable to accept the complete denial of matter, philosophers were
compelled to bridge the gap between the world of spirit and the
world of objective fact in one of two ways: (i) We depend only
on our sense-data, which tells us all that we can know about the
world wc live in, and deny the possibility of attaining knowledge
of absolute or final truth; (2) we frankly accept a dual system of
thought, dividing the facts of experience from the higher order
of facts which are absolute and eternal.

David Hume, in the middle of the eighteenth century, developed
the first of these lines of reasoning. His agnosticism ruled out
metaphysics ; he disapproved of dabbling with the unknowable.
He trusted only the immediate data of sensations and perceptions.
It remained for Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason was pub-
lished in 1 78 1, to formulate a complete system of knowledge and
metaphysics based on the dualism of mind and matter.

It may be objected that the connection between the abstractions
of philosophy and the work of the stage is too tenuous to be of
any genuine interest. But we shall find that the threads which
bind the drama to the general thought of the period are not tenu-

* Chicago, 1928.

The Eighteenth Century 27

ous at all, but are woven into a coherent fabric which reveals the
logic of the theatre's development,

Lessing, like many men of his time, combined elements of the
conflicting currents of thought which were agitating his genera-
tion. He was under the influence of the French materialists, and
especially of Diderot, whose opinions on the theatre had been
published ten years before the Hamburg Dramaturgy. From
Diderot came "the voice of healthy reason," the emphasis on social
validity. But the intellectual atmosphere of Lessing's Germany
was charged with the philosophy of idealism. From this Lessing
drew the richness and subtlety of his psychological approach —
which would have been impossible for the materialists of the period,
whose views on the processes of the mind were undeveloped and
mechanistic.

The question of mind and matter has a direct bearing on the
dramatic treatment of character and environment. This problem
was not clear to Lessing. He considered "the nature of our feelings
and emotions" as apart from "the nature of phenomena." Although
he saw that "in nature everything is connected, everything is inter-
woven," he was unable to apply this idea to the growth and
change of character. The incompleteness of his theory of the the-
atre, the lack of a precise technical formulation of his opinions,
may thus be accounted for: he was unable to solve the contradic-
tion between the emotions of men and the objective world in
which they live. Many of Lessing's essays on theological matters
show this dual approach, drawn from the oflUcial philosophy of
the period.

In summing up and combining these two currents of thought,
Lessing foreshadowed the future development of the theatre. In
Germany, Lessing's demand for social realism and the treatment
of humble themes fell on barren ground; he himself wrote plays
of middle-class life; for example, his Emilia Galotti is a tragic
version of the Cinderella story; but it was the idealist side of
Lessing's thought, his emphasis on psychology and on "the nature
of our feelings and emotions." which transformed the German
stage, leading to the stormy romanticism and nationalism of the
"Sturm und Drang" period — which culminated in the masterpieces
of Schiller and Goethe.

Lessing's psychological approach was only slightly influenced by
transcendentalism. He died in the year in which the Critique of
Pure Reason was published. Kant described his philosophy as
"transcendental idealism." He boldly accepted the contradiction
between "finite" matter and "eternal" mind. He distinguished

28 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

between the facts of experience and the ultimate laws which he
regarded as above experience. On the one hand is the world of
Phenomena (the thing-as-it-appears-to-us ) ; on the other hand, the
world of noumena (the-thing-in-itself ). The world of phenomena
is subject to mechanical laws; in the world of noumena, the soul
of man is theoretically free because the soul freely obeys the "cate-
gorical imperative," which is eternal.

Kant's theories exerted a considerable influence on Schiller and
Goethe, affecting their point of view, their treatment of character,
their interpretation of social cause and eifect. Schiller and Goethe
form a bridge between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries;
in view of their significant role in the development of nineteenth
century thought, they may better be considered in connection with
the later period.

Lessing was not alone in demanding a drama of social realism;
we find the same trend, appearing at approximately the same time,
in England, Italy and France. In England, Oliver Goldsmith
wrote gentle comedies dealing with middle-class life. Goldsmith's
Essay on the Theatre, written in 1772, attacks the unnaturalness
of tragedy in words which seem like an echo of Lessing: "The
pompous train, the swelling phrase, and the unnatural rant, are
displaced for that natural portrait of human folly and frailty, of
which all are judges, because all have sat for the picture." * The
production of George Lillo's play about a London 'prentice,
George Barnwell, marked the first appearance of domestic tragedy ;
both Lessing and Diderot praised George Barnwell and used it
as a model.

In Italy, Carlo Goldoni changed the course of the Italian the-
atre; he combined the example of Moliere with the tradition of
the Commedia delV Arte. He said it was his aim to do away with
"high-sounding absurdities." "We are again fishing comedies out
of the Mare magnum of nature, men find themselves again search-
ing their hearts and identifying themselves with the passion or the
character which is being represented." f Goldoni moved to Paris in
1 761 ; he remained there until his death and wrote many plays in
French.

France was the storm-center of the political disturbances which
were brewing in the last years of the eighteenth century. It was
therefore in France that the theatre was most deeply stirred by the
impact of new ideas. Diderot, the foremost philosopher of ma-
terialism, applied his doctrine to the drama with fiery enthusiasm.

• Ciark, opus cit,

t H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, Goldoni, a Biography (New York, 1913)-

The Eighteenth Century 29

Diderot fought for realism and simplicity; but he went further;
he insisted that the dramatist must analyze the social system; he
demanded a new dramatic form, the "Serious Drama" — "which
should stand somewhere between comedy and tragedy." * He at-
tempted to carry out this theory in his own plays, Le Fils Naturel
(1757) and Le Pere de Famille (1758).

Diderot's dramatic opinions are far less profound than those of
Lessing. But his essay, De la Poesie Dramatique a Monsieur
Grimm, which accompanied the publication of Le Pere de Famille,
is a landmark in the history of the theatre, both because of its in-
fluence on Lessing, and because of the clarity with which the aims
of the middle-class drama are stated: "Who now will give us
powerful portrayals of the duties of man? What is demanded of
the poet who takes unto himself such a task?

"He must be a philosopher who has looked into his own mind
and soul, he must know human nature, he must be a student of the
social system, and know well its function and importance, its advan-
tages and disadvantages."

Diderot then described the basic problem with which he was
dealing in Le Pere de Famille: "The social position of the son and
that of the daughter are the two principal points. Fortune, birth,
education, the duties of fathers toward their children, of the chil-
dren toward their parents, marriage, celibacy — every problem aris-
ing in connection with the existence of the father of a family, is
brought out in my dialogue."

It is curious that these historic lines are almost completely
neglected by historians of the drama : it was to be more than a cen-
tury before Diderot's dream of the middle-class theatre was to be
realized. But we must credit him with having first formulated the
purpose and limitations of the modern stage : the middle-class fam-
ily is the microcosm of the social system, and the range of the the-
atre covers the duties and relationships on which the family is
founded.

Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais joined Diderot in the fight for
the "Serious Drama." He wrote a stinging reply to what he de-
scribed as "the uproarious clamor and adverse criticism" aroused
by the production of his play, Eugenie. He insisted on his right to
show "a truthful picture of the actions of human beings," as
against pictures of "ruins, oceans of blood, heaps of slain," which
"are as far from being natural as they are unusual in the civiliza-
tion of our time." t This was written in 1767, the year

* Clark, opus cit., translation by Clark.
t Clark, opus cit., translation by Clark.

30 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

in which the first papers of the Hamburg Dramaturgy appeared.

Beaumarchais was more precise than Diderot in defining the
social function of the theatre: "If the drama be a faithful picture
of what occurs in human society, the interest aroused in us must
of necessity be closely related to our manner of observing real
objects. . . . Thexe can be neither interest nor moral appeal on the
stage without some sort of connection existing between the subject
of the play and ourselves."

This leads to a political thesis: "The true heart-interest, the
real relationship, is always between man and man, not between
man and king. And so, far from increasing my interest in the char-
acters of tragedy, their exalted rank rather diminishes it. The
nearer the suffering man is to my station in life, the greater is his
claim upon my sympathy." Beaumarchais also said that "a belief
in fatalism degrades man, because it takes his personal liberty
from him."

The serious plays of Diderot and Beaumarchais were failures,
both commercially and artistically. Embittered by public apathy,
and determined to use the theatre as a political weapon, Beaumar-
chais turned to the farce technique of The Barber of Seville and
The Marriage of Figaro. These exuberant attacks upon the foibles
and stupidities of the aristocracy were greeted with great popular
approval. In his dedicatory letter for The Barber of Seville (1775)
Beaumarchais stressed his ironic intention, smiled a little at his
own success, and reaffirmed his faith in the realistic theatre:
"Portray ordinary men and women in difficulties and sorrow?
Nonsense! Such ought to be scoffed at. Ridiculous citizens and un-
happy kings, these are the only fit characters for treatment on the
stage The improbability of the fable, the exaggerated situa-
tions and characters, the outlandish ideas and bombast of speech,
far from being a reason to reproach me, will assure my success."

The political meaning of these plays was clear both to the gov-
ernment and the public. The Barber of Seville was produced after
three years of struggle against censorship. Louis XVI took per-
sonal responsibility for banning The Marriage of Figaro; in this
case, five years elapsed before the censors were forced to permit the
production. When the play was finally presented at the Theatre
Frangais on April 27th, 1784, there was rioting in and around
the theatre.*

* It is characteristic of Beaumarchais that he made a determined stand
for the rights of the dramatist, both to control casting and direction and
to receive an accurate accounting of box office receipts. He began tht
fight which led to the organization of powerful authors' trade unions.

The Nineteenth Century 3^

Thus the theatre played an active, and conscious, part in the
revolutionary rise of the middle-class — which was destined in turn
to revolutionize the theory and practice of the drama.

CHAPTER IV

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Romanticism

"AT the court of Weimar at midnight on the eve of the new
century," writes Sheldon Cheney, "Goethe, Schiller, and a group
of writer-friends drank a toast to the dawn of the new literature." *
One hundred years later, in 1899, Ibsen's last play, When We
Dead Awaken, appeared.

The changes which marked the life and thought of the nine-
teenth century are often presented under the guise of a battle
between romanticism and realism; romanticism being in the ascen-
dant in the early years of the century, realism finally triumphing
and continuing its reign in the popular literature and journalistic
drama of our own day. These terms undoubtedly suggest the align-
ment of the intellectual forces of the period; one may be tempted
to treat them as literary equivalents of the two streams of thought
whose origins we have traced.

However, it is dangerous to adhere too closely to this analogy.
Literary critics have juggled romanticism and realism so expertly,
and have used them for so many sleight-of-hand tricks, that the
two words have become practically interchangeable. This is due
to the habit of mind which has, in general, characterized modern
literary criticism — the tendency to deal with moods rather than
with basic concepts, to ignore the social roots of art, and thus to
regard schools of expression as aggregates of moods, rather than
as social phenomena. Thus the critic is content to suggest the feel-
ing which a work of art seems to convey, and makes no effort to
trace the feeling, to pin it down and dissect it. Romanticism is often
used to describe such a feeling — one might call it an impression of
warmth, of sensuousness, of vigor. But this impression covers a
wide variety of meanings : ( I ) since romanticism developed at the
end of the eighteenth century as a revolt against classicism, it often

* Opus cit.

32 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

indicates freedom from rigid conventions, disregard of form; (2)
but it is also used, in quite a different sense, to describe an elaborate
or artificial style as opposed to a simple mode of expression; (3)
it sometimes denotes works which abound in physical action and
picaresque incident; (4) we also find it used in exactly the opposite
sense to describe escapism, turning away from physical reality,
seeking after romantic illusion; (5) again it denotes a quality of
the mind — imagination, creativeness as opposed to a pedestrian
or pedantic quality; (6) it has a philosophic meaning, indicating
adherence to a metaphysical as opposed to a materialist point of
view; (7) it is also used psychologically, suggesting a subjective
as opposed to an objective approach, an emphasis upon emotion
rather than upon commonplace activity.

It is evident that the aggregate of moods which has become
known as romanticism includes a variety of contradictory elements.
How does it happen that literary criticism has made very little
effort to reconcile these contradictions ? The answer lies in the fact
that the majority of critics are unaware that these contradictions
exist : the critic who regards art as an irrational personal experience
sees nothing surprising in this combination of elements ; he feels
that all art is subjective and metaphysical ; he believes that art is
woven of the stuff of imagination which is distinct from the stuff
of life. Therefore art is necessarily a sublimation, a seeking after
illusion; convinced that reality is drab and unimaginative, he
believes that free action can exist only in a dream world ; therefore
the picaresque material is a means of escape ; since art is irrational
it must escape from conventional forms ; but since it deals with the
subtleties of the soul, it must employ elaborate and subtle language.

Thus we have found a useful key to modern criticism and nine-
teenth-century romanticism. Critical thought (both in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries) has not analyzed romanticism,
because it has inherited the system of thought which constitutes
romanticism. The essence of this system, the principle that unifies
its apparent contradictions, is the idea of the uniqueness of the
individual soul, of personality as a final emotional entity. The
higher nature of man unites him to the thing-in-itself, the idea of
the universe. Art is a manifestation both of man's uniqueness and
of his union with the ultimate idea.

This conception constitutes the main stream of middle-class
thought from the early eighteen-hundreds to the present day. The
realistic school, as it developed in the later years of the nineteenth
century, did not achieve a clean break with romanticism — it was a
new phase of the same system of thought. The realists attempted

The Nineteenth Century 33

to face the increasingly difficult problems of social and economic
life ; but they evolved no integrated conception which would explain
and solve these problems. The devil and the angels fought for the
soul of Goethe's Faust. Ibsen's Master Builder climbed to the very
top of the tower, and as he stood there alone Hilda looked up and
saw him striving with some one and heard harps in the air.

The romantic school developed in Germany as a revolt against
French classicism ; Lessing was chiefly responsible for initiating
this revolt. The word, romanticism, has its origin in the picaresque
stories of the middle ages, which were called romances because
they discarded Latin and used the vulgar languages of France and
Italy, the "romance" languages. This is important, because it
indicates the dual nature of the romantic movement: it wished to
break away from stuffy tradition, to find a fuller and more natural
life ; it therefore suggested comparison with the medieval poets who
broke away from Latin and spoke in the language of the people.
But the fact that the romantic school was based on such a com-
parison also shows its regressive character; it looked for freedom,
but it looked for it in the past. Instead of facing the problem of
man in relation to his environment, it turned to the metaphysical
question of man in relation to the universe.

The attitude of romanticism was determined by the alignment
of social forces at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Follow-
ing the stormy upheavals which closed the previous century, the
middle class began to consolidate its power; machine production
introduced the first phase of the industrial expansion which was
to lead to modern trustified industry. The intellectual temper of
the middle class was veering toward moderation, self-expression
and fervent nationalism. In Germany, the middle class developed
less rapidly than in France and England; it was not until 1848
that Germany entered into world competition as an industrial and
political power. In the early eighteen-hundreds, German roman-
ticism was a reflection of this very weakness, combining a desire
for a richer personal life, a desire to explore the possibilities of the
real world, with a tendency to seek a safe refuge, to find a principle
of permanence.

Georg Brandes, in Main Currents in Nineteenth Century
Literature* emphasizes both the nationalism of the period and the
romantic tendency to look back toward the past : "The patriotism
which in 181 3 had driven the enemy out of the country contained
two radically different elements : a historical retrospective tendency,
which soon developed into romanticism, and a liberal-minded

* New York, 1906.

34 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

progressive tendency, which developed into the new liberalism."
But both these tendencies were actually contained within roman-
ticism. We have pointed out the dual character of Kant's
philosophy. This dualism found its dramatic embodiment in the
plays of Goethe and Schiller,

Goethe worked on Faust throughout his life ; he made the first
notes for the project in 1769 at the age of twenty; he completed
the play a few years before his death in 1832. The dualism of
matter and mind is indicated in the technical structure of Faust.
The vivid personal drama of the first part ends in Margaret's
death and the saving of her soul. The vast intellectual complexity
of the second part analyzes the ethical law which transcends the
world of physical phenomena.

It is instructive to compare Goethe's treatment of the legend
with Marlowe's use of the same material. No metaphysical con-
siderations entered the Elizabethan's world. Marlowe's thesis is
simple : knowledge is power ; it may be dangerous, but it is infinitely
desirable. To Goethe, knowledge is suffering, the agony of the
soul's struggle with the limitations of the finite world. Goethe
believed that evil cannot gain complete possession of the soul,
because the soul does not belong to man ; it must, ultimately, be
reunited with the divine will. Marlowe's Helen is an object of
sensual delight. To Goethe, Helen symbolized moral regeneration
through the idea of beauty. At the end of the second part,
Mephistopheles fails to secure Faust's soul, which is carried aloft
by angels. Faust is not saved by his own act of will, but by infinite
law (embodied in the final verses of the Mystic Chorus) which
decrees that the soul is the type of the ideal.*

In a religious sense, this is the doctrine of predestination. One
cannot question the deeply religious character of Goethe's thought.
But his method is scientific and philosophical. He enters all the
complexities of the world of phenomena and the world of noumena.
Faust is a dramatization of Kant's categorical imperative.

Georg Hegel

During Goethe's later years, the range of German thought was
broadened by the philosophic work of Georg Hegel (Hegel died in

* This conception, or anything resembling it, cannot be found in Shake-
speare's plays. Shakespeare often takes life after death for granted, but
he is never concerned with attaining immortality by the release of the
soul. In the soliloquy, "To be or not to be," Hamlet faces death ob-
jectively; he says that the fear of death "puzzles the will" and makes
"cowards of us all." Instead of being an ethical necessity, the thought
of union with the absolute makes cowards of us.

The Nineteenth Century 35

1 83 1, and Goethe in 1832). The second part of Faust is much in-
fluenced by the Hegelian dialectic, the idea of the evolutionary
progression of life and thought.

Hegel's philosophy was also dualistic ; on the transcendental side
he followed in the footsteps of Kant. Kant's "pure reason" resem-
bles Hegel's "absolute idea," which is "the True, the Eternal, the
absolutely powerful essence . . . the World-Spirit — that spirit whose
nature is always one and the same, but which unfolds this its one
nature in the phenomena of the World's existence." * In place of
Kant's "categorical imperative," Hegel offered the "pre-existence
of the logical categories," which are ultimate ideas independent of
physical reality. These categories include : being, becoming, quality,
quantity, essence, appearance, possibility, accident, necessity, reality.

But in studying the unfolding of "the phenomena of the World's
existence," Hegel observed that certain laws of motion are inherent
in the movement of things; and that the same laws of motion
govern the processes of the mind. He noted that phenomena are
not stable and fixed, but are continually in a state of movement, of
growth or decay. Phenomena are in a condition of unstable equili-
brium; movement results from the disturbance of equilibrium and
the creation of a new balance of forces, which is in turn disturbed.
"Contradiction," said Hegel, "is the power that moves things."
And again : "There is nothing which is not becoming, which is not
in an intermediate position between being and not being."

In applying this principle to the movement of thought, Hegel
evolved the method of dialectics,'\ which conceives logic as a series
of movements in the form of thesis, antithesis and synthesis: the
thesis is the original tendency or state of equilibrium; the antith-
esis is the opposing tendency or disturbance of equilibrium ; the
synthesis is the unifying proposition inaugurating a new state of
equilibrium.

Those who are unaccustomed to philosophic inquiry may find it
difficult to estimate the significance of dialectics as a question
of formal logic. But if we turn to its practical effect on the study
of science and history, the change wrought by Hegel's system of
thought is readily apparent. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth

* Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translation by J. Sibree
(New York, 1902).

t The term dialectic did not originate with Hegel: Plato used the terra
to signify the process of argument by which the presentation of two
opposing points of view results in bringing to light new elements of
truth. But the Platonic idea involved merely the formal presentation of
opinions; Hegel's formulation of the laws of the movement of thought
constitutes a revolutionary change in philosophic method.

36 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

century, science had been concerned solely with the analysis of
fixed objects; regardless of whether the object was in movement
or at rest, it was studied as a detached thing. Newton's Principia
had served as a model of the scientific method : the collection and
cataloguing of separate facts. In the past hundred years, science
has been devoted to the analysis of processes. The fact that matter
is motion^ that there is a continuity of moving and becoming, has
been very generally accepted. One cannot say that Hegel suc-
ceeded single-handed in tearing down the rigidity of the universe}
this was due to a whole series of scientific discoveries. But Hegel
played a major part in creating a system of thinking, by which
these discoveries could be understood in relation to the life of man
and the world in which he lives. For several generations, science
and philosophy had been feeling their way toward some compre-
hension of the fluidity of matter. Lessing had expressed this thought
fifty years before, when he said that "everything in nature is
connected, everything is interwoven, everything changes with
everything, everything merges from one to another."

The Hegelian dialectic established the principle of continuity,
both factually and rationally. This had an electrifying effect, not
only upon the methods of science, but in all fields of inquiry.
Georg Brandes speaks of Hegel's method with lyrical enthusiasm:
"Logic . . . came to life again in the doctrine of the thoughts of
existence in their connection and their unity. . . . The method, the
imperative thought-process, was the key to earth and to Heaven." *

Neither Hegel nor his contemporaries were able to use his
doctrine satisfactorily as "the key to earth and to Heaven." But
looking back over a period of one hundred years, we can estimate
the importance of the Hegelian method. His Philosophy of History
is the first attempt to understand history as a process, to view the
underlying causes behind disturbances of equilibrium. Earlier his-
torians had seen only a disconnected assortment of phenomena,
motivated by the personal whims and ambitions of prominent indi-
viduals. There had been no perspective, no tendency to estimate
the forces behind the individual wills ; human motives were repre^
sented as static; events which took place in Greece or Rome or
in the middle ages were treated simply as events — discontinuous^
springing from fixed causes, motivated by fixed emotions.

Hegel substituted the dynamic for the static method of investiga-
tion. He studied the evolution of human society. Many of his
historical opinions and conclusions are outmoded today; but the
historical research of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has
• Opus cit.

The Nineteenth Century 37

been based on the dialectic method. Today the historian is not
content with the description of events, the presentation of a
sequence of wars, conquests, diplomatic negotiations and political
maneuvers. History attempts, with greater or less success, to show
the inner continuity, the changing equilibrium of social forces, the
ideas and purposes which underly the historical process.

Since the theatre deals with the logic of human relationships, a
new approach to logic must have a definite effect upon the drama.
Hegel applied the dialectic method to the study of esthetics. His
belief that "contradiction is the power that moves things" led him
to evolve the principle of tragic conflict as the moving force in
dramatic action : the action is driven forward by the unstable
equilibrium between man's will and his environment — the wills
of other men, the forces of society and of nature. Hegel's interest
in esthetics was general rather than specific; he made no effort to
analyze the technical factors in the dramatic process; he failed to
see the vital implications of his own theory.

But the conception of tragic conflict stands with Aristotle's laws
of action and of unity as a basic contribution to the theory of the
theatre. Aristotle's laws had been based on the view that an action
is simply an arrangement of events in which the participants have
certain fixed qualities of character. Lessing realized that action and
unity are organic, that events "are rooted in one another." But
Lessing offered no indication of the manner in which this organic
process takes place. The law of conflict points the way to an
understanding of the process : we can agree with Aristotle that
action is basic, that character is "subsidiary to the actions" ; but
we can see that the actions are a complex movement in which the
wills of individuals and the social will (the environment) are con-
tinually creating a new balance of forces ; this in turn reacts upon
and modifies the wills of individuals; the characters cease to be
embodiments of fixed qualities, and become living beings who shift
and grow with the shifting and growing of the whole process.

Thus the idea of conflict leads us to examine the idea of will:
the degree to which the will is consciously directed, and the ques-
tion of free will and necessity, become urgent dramatic problems.
Hegel analyzed free will and necessity as aspects of historical
development. Seen in this light, it is clear that, as man increases
his knowledge of himself and his environment, he increases his
freedom through the recognition of necessity. Thus Hegel anni-
hilated the old idea that free will and necessity are fixed opposites
— which is contrary to reason and to the facts of our daily expe-
rience. Hegel saw free will and necessity as a continually shifting

38 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

system of relationships— the shifting balance of forces between the
will of man and the totality of his environment.

Another philosopher of Hegel's time based his theory of the
universe entirely on the idea of a universal will. Schopenhauer's
principal work, The World as JVill and Idea, appeared in 1 8 19.
He held that blind will operates throughout nature, and that all
the movements of inanimate objects and of men are due to the
striving of the will: this is a new version of the "pre-existence of
the logical categories" ; Schopenhauer substituted the ultimate will
for Hegel's ultimate idea. But this is an important difference, and
was destined to have a serious effect on future thought. While
Hegel believed in a rational universe, Schopenhauer regarded the
will as emotional and instinctive. Since man's will is not based on
rational purpose, it is not free, but is an uncontrolled expression
of the universal will.

The two most important dramatic critics of the early eighteenth
century formulated the theory of tragic conflict and its relation to
the human will in terms which were very similar to Hegel's. The
idea appears in the writings of both Schlegel and Coleridge. In
the last decade of the nineteenth century, Ferdinand Brunetiere
clarified the meaning of the law of conflict as the basis of dramatic
action.

The idea of conflict is only one side of our indebtedness to Hegel
in the study of technique. The dialectic method provided the social
logic on which Ibsen's technique is grounded. Instead of showing
a chain of cause and effect, Ibsen showed a complex movement, a
system of checks and balances between the individual and the
environment. Disturbances of equilibrium furnish the moving force
of the action. Ibsen's logic does not depend on qualities of char-
acter ; the motives which activize his characters are woven through
the whole fabric of their environment. This is a fundamental
change in dramatic construction. We have already observed that
Georg Brandes regarded Hegel's logic as "the key to earth and to
Heaven." Both Brandes as a literary critic and Ibsen as a dramatic
craftsman, derived their method from Hegel's "imperative thought-
process."

Hegel made another vital contribution to technical theorj'^; he
brushed aside the foggy notions concerning form and content. This
question played a big part in the lengthy sham battles between the
classicists and the romanticists. Since Hegel regarded art and life
as a process, he was able to see the fallacy of the customary dis-
tinction between form and content. In commenting on the idea that
classical form might be imposed on unclassical material, he said:

The Nineteenth Century 39

"In a work of art, form and subject-matter are so closely united
that the former can only be classical to the extent to which the

latter is so. With a fantastic, indeterminate material the form

becomes measureless and formless, or mean and contracted." *

Since Hegel's philosophy is dualistic, his influence on his con-
temporaries was also dualistic. The contradiction between his
method and his metaphysics expressed the contradictions in the
thought of his era. Heine hailed Hegel's philosophy as a revolu-
tionary doctrine. But at the same time, Hegel was the official
philosopher of the German state. The official side of his philosophy
was the metaphysical side, expressing the need for permanence, the
desire for the "absolute idea." Although he said that contradiction
is "the power that moves things," Hegel believed that his own age
marked the end of contradiction and the realization of the "absolute
idea."

In both Kant and Hegel, we find metaphysics closely allied with
a belief in the permanence of the existing order. In 1784, Kant
had written an essay entitled What is Enlightenment, in which he
declared that the age of P'rederick the Great contained the final
answer to this question. Forty years later, Hegel said that the
Germany of Frederick William III represented the triumph of
the historical process: "Feudal obligations are abolished, for free-
dom of property and of person have been recognized as funda-
mental principles. Offices of state are open to every citizen, talent
and adaptation being of course necessary conditions." f

Hegel's dual influence continued after his death. The years
preceding the revolution of 1848 (in which the vestiges of feu-
dalism were finally destroyed) were years of increasing political
tension. Hegel's philosophy furnished the ammunition for both
sides of the quarrel. The defenders of conservatism and privilege
cited Hegel as authority for their claims. But another group of
Hegel's disciples led the fight against the existing state. In 1842,
the Rhenische Zeitung made a considerable stir as the organ of the
so-called "Young Hegelians." One of the editors of this newspaper,
who was then twenty-four years old, was Karl Marx.

The English Romantic Poets

In these years, the romantic movement in literature and the
theatre developed, and, to a large extent, disintegrated. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge studied philosophy and physiology at the Uni-

* Opus cito
t Ibid.

40 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

versity of Gottingen in 1798 and 1799; he drank deep of German
metaphysics. On his return to England he translated Schiller (in
1800) ; and later became the great critical exponent of the romantic
school. English romanticism is associated with the names of Byron,
Shelley and Keats, all of whom died in the early eighteen-twenties.
Byron and Shelley made important contributions to the theatre;
but their special significance, in connection with the general trend
of thought, lies in the rebellious, romantic individualism to which
they dedicated themselves.* Here too we find that the dominant
idea is the idea of the unique soul. The freedom so passionately
desired is to be achieved by transcending the environment. In
Prometheus Unbound, Shelley's thought is closely related to the
theme of Goethe's Faust — the individual escapes the chains of
reality by union with the ultimate idea; man must leave himself,
"leave Man, even as a leprous child is left," in order to enter the
metaphysical world, the region of

"Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul.
Whose nature is its own divine control."

In her notes on Prometheus Unbound, Mary Shelley says: "That
man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his
own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the
cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell
on was the image of one warring with the Evil Principle." t This
was also the image which Goethe immortalized. In The Cenci,
the soul "warring with the Evil Principle" is embodied in the
superb figure of Beatrice Cenci.

The romantic poets were magnificently sincere in their love of
liberty. Byron joined the campaign for Greek independence and
died at Missolonghi in 1824. In Germany, Heine proclaimed his
revolutionary faith with deep fervor. But the idea of freedom
remained metaphysical, a triumph of mind over matter. The con-
tact with social reality was vague and lacked perspective. Brandes
says of Heine: "The versatile poet's temperament made the momen-
tous struggle for a political conviction hard for him, and he was,
as we have already shown, drawn two ways and rendered vague

* Shelley and Byron were deeply influenced by the French revolution.
Byron's political enthusiasm was chiefly emotional. But Shelley's relation-
ship to William Godwin gave him a thorough familiarity with the ideas
of the French philosophers who preceded the revolution. Godwin's most
important work, the Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) is in
large part an elaboration of the ideas of Helvetius.

t Shelley's Poetical Works, edited by Mrs. Shelley (Philadelphia, 1847).

The Nineteenth Century 41

in his utterances by feeling himself to be at one and the same time
a popular revolutionist and an enthusiastic aristocrat." *

It was natural that the romantic assault on society should be
directed far more fiercely against morals and conventions than
against property rights. The revolt against the middle-class moral
code was ot great importance; the fight against narrowness and
hypocrisy has continued to our own day; the period of emancipa-
tion following the world war echoed the ideas of the dawn of the
romantic movement. The battle against convention was waged
both in England and Germany; Byron and Shelley refused to
accept the restrictions which they considered false and degrading;
Goethe and Schiller and their friends made the little town of
Weimar the "Athens of Germany" ; they also made it a center of
sex freedom, sentimental excesses and experimental revisions of the
moral code.

Dramatic Criticism

Dramatic theory in the early years of the nineteenth century
dealt chiefly with abstractions, and only incidentally with concrete
problems of craftsmanship. The reason for this may be found in the
nature of romanticism : if one believes in the uniqueness of genius,
a veil is cast over the creative process ; the critic does not wish to
pierce this veil ; indeed he has a veil of his own, which suggests the
uniqueness of his own genius. We find no attempt to continue the
comprehensive analysis of dramatic principles begun by Lessing.

The first critical spokesman of the romantic school was Johann
Gottfried Herder, who was an intimate member of the Weimar
circle and died in 1803. Brandes says that Herder was "the origina-
tor of a new conception of genius, of the belief namely, that genius
is intuitive, that it consists in a certain power of conceiving and
apprehending without any resort to abstract ideas." f

Friederich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling developed the same theory
and gave it a more philosophic form. He held that the activity of
the mind is mystic, and that there is a special gift of "intellectual
intuition" which enables genius to transcend reason.

But one figure towers far above the German critical thought of
the period. August Wilhelm Schlegel delivered his famous lectures
on dramatic art in Vienna in 1808. Schlegel's survey of the history
of the theatre is still of abundant interest to the student of the
drama; his analysis of Shakespeare is especially penetrating. But

' Opus cit.
t Ibid.

42 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the shadow of the unique soul lies across his work. He expressed
the philosophy of romanticism with great clarity: in tragic poetry,
"we contemplate the relations of our existence to the extreme limit
of possibilities." These possibilities lead us to the infinite: "Every-
thing finite and mortal is lost in the contemplation of infinity."
Thus we come to the customary dualism of matter and mind:
poetry endeavors to solve this "internal discord," "to reconcile
these two worlds between which we find ourselves divided, and to
blend them indissolubly together. The impressions of the senses
are to be hallowed, as it were, by a mysterious connexion with
higher feelings ; and the soul, on the other hand, embodies its fore-
bodings, or indescribable intuitions of infinity, in types and s}'mbols
borrowed from the visible world." *

This theory deserves very careful attention: first, we observe
that it is necessarily subjective. In Schlegel's words, "The feeling
of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward, their fancy more
incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative." Second, we
note the reference to "types and symbols," suggesting the later
methods of expressionism. Third, there is the suggestion that the
playwright deal with "higher feelings," and not with immediate
social problems. Schlegel criticized Euripides for failing adequately
to depict the "inward agony of the soul" : "He is fond of reducing
his heroes to the condition of beggars, of making them suffer
hunger and want." Schlegel disapproved of Lessing's precision and
of his social orientation. He accused Lessing of wanting art to be
"a naked copy of nature" : "His lingering faith in Aristotle, with
the influence which Diderot's writings had had on him, produced
a strange compound in his theory of the dramatic art." Schlegel
regarded Goethe's Werther as a welcome antidote to the influence
of Lessing, "a declaration of the rights of feeling in opposition to
the tyranny of social relations."

Schlegel had very little use for Aristotle, but his discussion of
the Poetics contains the most important thing he ever wrote. He
disliked what he called Aristotle's "anatomical ideas." In objecting
to mechanical notions of action, he made a profound observation
on the role of the will : "What is action ? ... In the higher, proper
signification, action is an activity dependent on the will of man.
Its unity will consist in its direction toward a single end; and to
its completeness belongs all that lies between the first determination
and the execution of the deed." Thus he explained the unity of
ancient tragedy: "Its absolute beginning is the assertion of free
will, with the acknowledgment of necessity its absolute end."

* These and succeeding quotations ivava Schlegel, oirns cit.

The Nineteenth Century 43

It fs unfortunate that Schlegel failed to continue the analysis
of unity along these lines; it might have led to a valid technical
application of the theory of tragic conflict. But Schlegel's meta-
physics was at odds with his technique. Having opened the door
to a discussion of unity, he closed it again with surprising abrupt-
ness, with the statement that "the idea of One and Whole is in
no way whatever derived from experience, but arises out of the
primary and spontaneous activity of the human mind ... I require
a deeper, more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity than that with
which most critics are satisfied."

The critical utterances of Coleridge resemble those of Schlegel ;
his comments are wise and creative, but every clear-cut issue dis-
solves in generalizations: "The ideal of earnest poetry consists in
the union and harmonious melting down, and fusion of the sensual
into the spiritual — of man as an animal into man as a power of
reason and self-government." * But the power of reason is only
attained "where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and
spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent sub-
stance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether
a vehicle and fixture of light." Coleridge also touched on the ques-
tion of free will and necessity, but concluded that the solution lay
in "a state in which those struggles of inward free will with out-
ward necessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian, shall
be reconciled and solved."

Victor Hugo

In 1827, romanticism made a belated, but sensational, entry into
the French theatre. Victor Hugo became the standard-bearer of
the new movement. His conversion was sudden and was announced
with smashing vigor in the preface to his play, Cromwellj in
October, 1827. Hugo and the playwrights who rallied round him,
built their plays more or less on the Shakespearian model, and
dominated the French theatre of their generation. The romantic
movement in Germany had already passed its prime, and had
become artificial and bombastic. Hugo reflected this tendency; his
dramas lacked Goethe's depth, and possessed little of Shelley's
fervor. But he represents an important link in the romantic tradi-
tion ; he tried to bring it down to earth, to water down the meta-
physical content. He tried to make it naturalistic ; he begap the
Cromwell preface with a bold announcement: "Behold, then, a

* Coleridge, Notes and Lectures, edited by Mrs. H. N. Coleridge (New
York, 1853).

44 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

new religion, a new society; upon this twofold foundation there
must inevitably spring up a new poetry. . . . Let us throw down the
old plastering that conceals the fagade of art. There are neither
rules nor models; or rather there are no other rules than the
general laws of nature." *

But the focal point in Hugo's conception of the romantic drama
is the idea of the grotesque: "The fact is, then, that the grotesque
is one of the supreme beauties of the drama." But the grotesque
cannot exist alone. We must achieve "the wholly natural com-
bination of two types, the sublime and the grotesque, which meet
in the drama as they meet in life and in creation." It is evident that
the grotesque and the sublime are simply other names for the
worlds of matter and spirit. Hugo tells us that "the first of these
two types represents the human beast, the second the soul." Hugo's
thought is precisely that of Schlegel and of Coleridge : the drama
projects "that struggle of every moment, between two opposing
principles which are ever face to face in life, and which dispute
possession of man from the cradle to the tomb."

Hugo is the bridge between romanticism and realism : he shows
that one merged into the other without any change of fundamental
concept.! This is even more evident in his epic novels than in his
cramped and somewhat operatic plays. His idea that it is the func-
tion of art to represent the grotesque has had an important bearing
on the technique of realism — later this idea was torn from the
realists and revived again in the neo-romantic movement of ex-
pressionism. Hugo's emphasis on local color is also noteworthy:
"The local color should not be on the surface of the drama, but
in its substance, in the very heart of the work."

Hugo's political ideas were more concrete than those of the
earlier romantic groups. Events were moving rapidly; the align-
ment of social forces was becoming more definite — Hugo's belief
in the rights of man led him into the political arena. During the
events following the revolution of 1848, his democratic views
clashed with the wave of reaction which swept in after the
suppression of the revolution. He was banished from France, and

* Clark, opus cit., translation by George Burnham Ives.

t George Sand illustrates the way in which the ideas of romanticism
were carried forward and transformed into the rebellious and somewhat
sentimental individualism of the middle years of the century. In her early
years, George Sand took a great interest in socialism, and played an
active part on the side of the extreme Republicans in the revolution of
1848. She dramatized many of her novels, but her sentimental approach
to characters and situations did not lend itself to successful dramatic
treatment. The brilliant plays of Alfred de Musset also constitute a bridge
between romanticism and realism.

The Nineteenth Century 45

remained abroad from 1851 until the fall of the Empire in 1870
permitted his return.

Mid-Century

The period of Hugo's exile marked the final consolidation of
capitalism, the victory of large-scale industry, the growth of world
commerce which was to lead to modem Imperialism. At the same
time, there was a rapid growth in labor organization and a
sharpening of class lines. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels pub-
lished the Communist Manifesto in 1848. In the same year, there
were revolutions in France and in Grermany, and the Chartist
movement created serious disturbances in England. The French
and German revolutions resulted in strengthening middle-class
rule, but in both cases the working class played a vital role. In
France the downfall of Louis Philippe in February, 1848, led to
the forming of a "social" republic; in June the attempt of the
government to disarm the Paris workers and banish the unem-
ployed from the city led to the insurrection of the workers which
was crushed after five days of bloody fighting.

In the next twenty years, the American civil war abolished
slavery, and made the United States not only a united nation, but
a nation whose supply of labor power and raw material were
destined to give her world-wide industrial supremacy. Italy also
achieved unity. Meanwhile, Prussia under Bismarck was taking
the leadership of the German states; the North-German Con-
federation was organized, and Bismarck prepared methodically
for the inevitable war with France.

In these same years, scientific discoveries revolutionized man's
knowledge of himself and his environment. Darwin's Origin of
Species appeared in 1859.

Marx and Engels

In these twenty years, Marx and Engels were shaping the
world-philosophy which was to guide the course of the working-
class movement. It is often assumed that Marxism is a mechanical
dogma, and attempts to reduce man and nature to a narrow
economic determinism. Those who hold this view are evidently
not familiar with the extensive philosophic works of Marx and
Engels, nor with the basis of their economic thought. Marx
adopted the method of Hegelian dialectics, but rejected Hegel's
metaphysics. It was necessary, according to Marx, to "discover

46 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the rational kernel within the mystical shell." Instead of con-
sidering the phenomena of the real world as manifestations of
the absolute idea, he said that "the ideal is nothing other than the
material when it has been transposed and translated inside the
human head." * This means the consistent denial of final truth :
Engels said: "Dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of
final, absolute truth, and of a final absolute state of humanity
corresponding to it. For it nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It
reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything." f
At the same time, dialectical materialism rejects the mechanistic
approach of earlier materialism, which, being unequipped with the
dialectic method, had regarded phenomena as fixed and unfluid.

The revolutionary character of this philosophy lies in the denial
of permanence, in the insistence on investigation of the processes
of society as well as those of nature.

Marxism has exerted a profound influence on nineteenth and
twentieth century thought, and has affected every aspect of litera-
ture and the drama — occasioning a vast amount of dispute, vilifica-
tion and mystification. Those who identify the doctrines of Marx
with economic fatalism, are naturally led to conclude that these
doctrines tend to place culture in an economic strait jacket. Joseph
Wood Krutch goes so far as to maintain that Marxism is not
content to control culture, but aims to abolish it. Krutch says:
"It is assumed that to break with the economic organization of the
past is to break at the same time with the whole tradition of
human sensibility." % The Marxist must reach the conclusion, ac-
cording to Krutch, that "poetry and science and metaphysics — how-
ever precious they may once have appeared — are, in fact, mere self-
indulgence, and the time devoted to them is time wasted."

If we turn to the writings of Marx and Engels, we find a
marked insistence on the importance and diversity of culture. But
they vigorously reject metaphysical or transcendental theories of
culture; they insist that culture is not a means of attaining union
with an absolute idea; it is not a "pre-existent category"; on the
contrary, it exists only as a product of human relationships.
According to Marx, "It is not the consciousness of human beings
that determines their existence, but, conversely, it is their social
existence that determines their consciousness." § If we deny the

*Karl Marx, Capital, Preface to second German edition, translation
by Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1929).

fFriedrich Engels, Feuerhach, edited by C. P. Dutt (London, 1934).

^Joseph Wood Krutch, Was Europe a Success? (New York, 1934).

§ Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, translation by N. I. Stone (Chicago, 1904).

The Nineteenth Century 47

metaphysical first cause, we must necessarily assume that all our
cultural processes grow out of the totality of our environment.
Marx is well aware of the complexity of man's consciousness:
"Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions
of existence, as foundation, there is built a superstructure of diversi-
fied and characteristic sentiments, illusions, habits of thought, and
outlooks on life in general." * It is obvious that this superstructure
cannot be reduced to a mechanical formula. Furthermore, both
social existence and consciousness are a continually inter-acting
process : "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circum-
stances and upbringing and that, therefore, changed men are prod-
ucts of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that
circumstances are changed precisely by men and that the educator
must himself be educated." f

Thus men's ideas, which find expression in philosophy and art
and literature, are a vital factor in the historical process. "Men
make their own history," said Engels, "whatever its outcome may
be, in that each person follows his consciously desired end, and it
is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different
directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that
constitutes history." But Engels pointed out that these "many
wills," however individual they may appear, are not wills in a
vacuum, but are the result of specific social conditions. We must
ask: "What are the historical causes which transform themselves
into these motives in the brains of the actors?" %

The success of the Russian revolution, and the rapid economic

and cultural growth of the Soviet Union, have centered the world's

attention on the theories of Marx. The recent achievements of the

Russian theatre and motion picture have involved the application

of the principles of dialectical materialism to the specific problems

of esthetics and technique. As a result, the principle of socialist

realism has been formulated. Socialist realism is opposed to either a

subjective or a naturalistic method : the artist cannot be content

with an impression or with superficial appearances — with fragments

and odds and ends of reality. He must find the inner meaning of

events; but there is nothing spiritual about this inner meaning; it

is not subjective and is not a reflection of the moods and passions

of the soul ; the inner meaning of events is revealed by discovering

the real connections of cause and effect which underlie the events ;

the artist must condense these causes; he must give them their

*Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, translation
by Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1926).

t Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, in appendix to Engels, opus cit.
X Engels, opus cit.

48 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

proper color and proportion and quality; he must dramatize the
"superstructure of diversified and characteristic sentiments, illu-
sions, habits of thought, and outlooks on life in general."

Realism

The realism of the nineteenth century was not founded on any
integrated philosophy or system of social causation. The realists
were not, in the main, concerned with the underlying trend and
historical significance of events; their methods tended more toward
documentation, naturalism, classification of appearances.

The father of realism, the greatest, and perhaps least romantic,
of realists, was Honore de Balzac, whose work was done between
1830 and 1850. Only a few years after Hugo proclaimed "a new
religion, a new society," Balzac undertook to examine this new
society with methodical thoroughness and with a pen dipped in
acid. Balzac exposed the decay and corruption of his period. La
Comedie Humaine reveals the instability of the social order, the
contradictions which were leading to the upheavals of the sixties
and seventies. Balzac regarded himself as a scientist: "The his-
torians of all countries and ages have forgotten to give us a history
of morals." But his science was one of classification rather than of
evolution. His attempt to view life with completely dispassionate
detachment led to his overwhelming preoccupation with factual de-
tail; his failure to find any integrated social meaning or purpose
in the relationships which he analyzed made much of his work
descriptive rather than climactic; although he was deeply drawn
to the theatre, he seemed unable to use the dramatic form success-
fully. This is indicated in a striking technical characteristic of his
novels — the exposition is intricately elaborated, and is often longer
than the story itself. Joseph Warren Beach notes that the point at
which Balzac's stories begin is "sometimes actually more than half-
way through the book." * Beach remarks that the author is clearly
aware of this, and quotes the passage from JJrsule Mirouet in
which Balzac announces that the actual plot is beginning: "If one
should apply to the narrative the Xscws of the stage, the arrival of
Savinien, in introducing to Nemours the only personage who was
still lacking of those who should be present at this little drama,
here brings the exposition to an end."

The shadow of Balzac lies across the whole course of later
realism. His scientific method, his meticulous naturalism, his ret-

* Beach's The Tiuentieth Century Novel (New York, 1932) is a valu-
able and exhaustive study of the technique of fiction.

The Nineteenth Century 49

respective analysis, were imitated both in fiction and in the drama.

But the last thirty years of the century witnessed a serious
change in the social atmosphere : the structure of society became
increasingly rigid, and at the same time the inner stress became
more intense. The one open break in the structure was the Paris
Commune, which was drowned in a sea of blood on May 2ist,
1871.

The triumphant power of capitalism, the vastness of its achieve-
ments, and the inner contradictions which it necessarily produced,
determined the character of the culture of the era. The fears and
hopes of the romanticists were no longer inspiring ; their intemperate
craving for emotional expression and personal freedom seemed far
removed from an age which had apparently achieved permanence,
and had crystallized certain limited but definite forms of personal
and political freedom. Thought necessarily turned to a more real-
istic investigation of the environment. This took the form both
of an appraisal of what had been accomplished, and an attempt to
reconcile the dangerous inconsistencies which were revealed tc
even the most superficial observer of the social order.

Emile Zola

In 1873, Emile Zola, who was greatly influenced by the example
of Balzac, issued a vivid plea for naturalism in the theatre, in the
preface to his play, Therese Raquin. Curiously enough, there is a
striking similarity between what Zola wrote in 1873 and Hugo's
romantic proclamation in 1828. "We have come," said Zola, "to
the birth of the true, that is the great, the only force of the
century." * Where Hugo had spoken of "the old plastering that
conceals the faqade of art," Zola said that "the decayed scaffoldings
of the drama of yesterday will fall of their own accord." Hugo had
said that the poet must choose "not the beautiful, but the char-
acteristic." Zola said of Therese Raquin: "The action did not con-
sist in any story invented for the occasion, but in the inner struggles
of the characters; there was no logic of fact, but a logic of sensation
and sentiment." Hugo defended the grotesque, and demanded local
color. Zola said : "I laid the play in the same room, dark and damp,
in order not to lose relief and the sense of impending doom."

The similarities in these statements are interesting. But there is
also a vital difference. Hugo's ideas of the grotesque and of local
color were generalizations. Zola went beyond this — he was willing,
not only to talk about the real world, but to look at it. On the

* Clark, opus cit., translation by Clark.

50 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

other hand, his statement that there is "no logic of fact, but a logic
of sensation and sentiment" shows that his mode of thought is
romantic rather than realistic. We also hear echoes of romanticism
in Zola's announcement that there are "no more formulae, no
standards of any sort ; there is only life itself."

Zola's dramatic work was far less vital than his novels. This
was partly due, as in the case of Balzac, to the tendency toward
journalistic documentation, and the lack of a defined social philos-
ophy. Nevertheless, Therese Raquin marks a turning point in the
history of the theatre. Matthew Josephson says, "It is admitted
now that Zola's efforts to reach the stage stimulated and shook up
the theatre of his time, and form the original if crude source of the
modern French drama of Brieux, Becque, Hervieu, Henri Bern-
stein, Battaille, which covers nearly forty years of our time." *

This is true; but it is an understatement. Therese Raquin does
much more than crudely suggest the course of later drama; it
embodies the scheme of moral and ethical ideas which were to find
expression in the twentieth century theatre, and shows the origin
of these ideas. In the first place, there is Zola's awareness of social
issues, his feeling that something is wrong with society. This is in-
evitable, when we consider that Therese Raquin was written as a
novel four years before the Paris Commune, and done as a play
two years after that event. Yet Zola moved through the days of
the Commune without attaching any deep historical significance
to the disorders which he witnessed. On the whole, he was puzzled
and annoyed. Josephson tells us that "the whole period seems to
have filled Zola with revulsion, instead of having fired his imagina-
tion."

We can readily understand this if we examine Zola's ideas at the
time. Here is what he wrote in his notes for the Rougon-Macquart
series: "The time is troubled; it is the trouble of the time that I
am painting. I must absolutely stress this: I do not deny the
grandeur of the modern effort, I do not deny that we can move
more or less toward liberty and justice. I shall even let it be
understood that I believe in these words, liberty, justice, although
my belief is that men will always be men, good and bad animals
according to circumstances. If my characters do not arrive at good,
it is because we are only beginning in perfectibility." t

Liberty and justice are therefore not a matter of the immediate
moment, but of the ultimate perfectibility of man. Thus he turned,

* Josephson, Zola and His Time (New York, 1928).
t Quoted by Josephson, ofus cit. The present discussion is based largely
on the data presented by Josephson.

The Nineteenth Century 51

as the romantics had turned at the dawn of the century, to the
analysis of the heart of man. In Therese Raquin, his interest is
less in the poverty of the poor than in their emotions. He spoke of
Therese Raquin as an "objective study of the emotions." What did
Zola mean by an objective study? Josephson points to the im-
pression made upon Zola by the experiments of Dr. Claude Ber-
nard, whose studies in the physiology of the nervous system were
causing a sensation. Zola was also influenced by Lamarck and
Darwin. He wanted to dissect the soul scientifically. But what he
shows us is the romantic soul, tortured by animal passions, upheld
by the hope of ultimate perfectibility.

Zola believed that the physiology of the nerves determines our
actions; this physiology is hereditary; it is impossible to struggle
against it. Therese Raquin is a story of violent sexual emotion.
Therese is obsessed, her doom is foreordained by her own "blood
and nerves." Thus passion is an expression of the ego ; but passion
is also the primary stuff of life. It contains in itself both cause and
effect. It is both good and evil. Men are not to attain perfectibility
by destroying emotion, but by purifying it. The "absolute idea"
reappears as absolute feeling. This conception is derived directly
from Schopenhauer's philosophy of the emotional will. But Zola
avoided Schopenhauer's pessimism — because he combined the idea
of blind will with the idea of a benevolent life force which would
eventually transform the wayward emotions of men into a pure,
eternal emotion.*

There is abundant proof that this was the essential direction of
Zola's thought: the Rougon-Macquart series, begun in 1868 as a
clinical stud}^ ended in 1893 as a hymn to the "eternally fecundat-
ing breath of life."

Zola considered himself a materialist ; he used a scientific method

which he inherited from Balzac. But his view of science was

clouded and sentimental ; his physiology and heredity were merely

symbols of the universal power of which the soul of man is a

fragment. Although he insisted that emotion is "a purely physical

phenomena," he treated emotion as being outside body and mind,

controlling both. This led him, as Josephson says, to consider "the

all-powerful role of the sexual act, as the origin and continued

*This aspect of Zola's thought shows the influence of Saint-Simon and
his followers: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Saint-Simon
advocated a controlled industrial society; he also attacked religious as-
ceticism, maintaining the value of physical emotion, and stating that man
and woman constitute the "social individual." Some of Saint-Simon's
followers developed this side of his thought to a semi-religious philosophy
of emotion. This is especially trxie of the sensual mysticism preached by
Earthekroy Enfantin (i794-'t864).

52 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

achievement of the act of life. ... In Madeleine Ferat he showed
'the nostalgia for adultery by a supposed irresistible attraction
which swayed all women during their natural lives toward the
man who had first revealed to them the destinies of their sex.' "
It would have been instructive to hear Dr. Claude Bernardj
working in his laboratory at the College de France, comment on
the physiological value of this passage. However banal the passage
may appear, it reveals the type of thinking which, from Zola's
time to our own, has dominated literature and the drama.

Zola's system of ideas, derived from romanticism with natural-
istic trimmings, found its dramatic formulation in Therese Raquin.
Since these ideas underlie the technique and social orientation of
the modern drama, it may be well to sum them up briefly: (i)
awareness of social inequality; (2) use of a drab milieu presented
uncompromisingly; (3) use of sharp contrasts between dullness of
conventional lives and scenes of sudden physical violence; (4)
marked influence of current scientific ideas; (5) emphasis on blind
emotion rather than on conscious will; (6) concentration on sex
as practically the sole "objective" expression of emotion; (7) idea
of sex as a means of escape from bourgeois restrictions ; ( 8 ) fatal-
ism— the outcome is foreordained and hopeless.

Therese is the forerunner of many modern heroines. Although the
social milieu is very different, Hedda Gabler is closely related to
her, and so are all of O'Neill's heroines. Zola turned the scientific
discoveries of Dr. Bernard to his own account, using them to ex-
press an unscientific conception of sex fatalism. We find O'Neill
using an equally unscientific version of psychoanalysis for the same
purpose.

The Well-Made Play

Zola, was miles in advance of the theatre of his time. He knew it.
He predicted the changes which would take place, and for which
he was in no small measure responsible. Meanwhile, French play-
wrights devoted themselves with skill and energy to the develop-
ment of the well-made play. As soon as capitalism became solidly
entrenched, there rose the need for a type of drama which would
reflect the outward rigidity of the social system, which would give
orderly expression to the emotions and prejudices of the upper
middle class. The plays of Eugene Scribe, Alexandre Dumas fils
and Victorien Sardou presented prevailing conventions in a fixed
form. Their function was similar to that of French tragedy at
the court of Louis XIV.

Scribe's smoothly contrived dramas were turned out with

The Nineteenth. Century 53

amazing speed in the daj's of Louis Philippe, and were symotomatic
of the increasing prosperity and mediocrity of the era. Dumas fils,
writing in the time of Napoleon III, catered to a society which
was not content with the facile sentimentalities of Scribe. He
brought the well-made play to maturity, giving it more emotional
depth and social meaning. His technique combined the artificiality
of Scribe with the analytic method of Balzac. He said that he
wanted to "exercise some influence over society." But his analysis
was superficial and his ideas were the dregs of romanticism.
Montrose J. Moses says of Camille that its author "had injected
into the romantic play of intrigue and infidelity a species of emo-
tional analysis which was somehow mistaken for an ethical pur-
pose." * This was a real accomplishment ; the technique perfected
by Dumas fils is used extensively today ; it combines an escape into
a realm of unbridled sentimentality with an appearance of serious
ethical meaning.

Victorien Sardou was a contemporary of Zola's. His first suc-
cessful play appeared in 1861, the year in which Scribe died. He
carried on the Scribe tradition of skillful shallowness. But he also
made an essential contribution in emphasizing naturalness and
journalistic vitality. While Dumas fils created a theatrical ethics,
Sardou was busy creating a theatrical naturalness — which was as
fictitious as the ethics of Dumas fils, but which served the same
purpose, serving to cloak the escape from reality.

The school of the well-made play produced one critic who has
earned an honored place in the history of the theatre. Francisque
Sarcey, who was the leader of Parisian criticism from i860 to
1899, "W'ss what may be described as a well-made critic. His
opinions, like the plays he admired, were conventional and shallow.
But he hit upon one principle of dramatic construction which has
made him famous, and which has a bearing, not only on the
mechanical works of Scribe and Sardou, but upon the fundamentals
of technique. This was the theory of the "scene a faire," which
William Archer translates as the "obligatory scene" — a scene made
necessary by the logic of the plot. As Archer describes it, "an
obligatory scene is one which the audience (more or less clearly
and consciously) foresees and desires, and the absence of which it
may with reason resent." f The dramatist's task lies, to a great
degree, in the preparation of such a scene, in arousing the expecta-
tion of the audience and maintaining the right amount of un-
certainty and tension.

•Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston, 1917).

t Archer, Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship (New York, 1928).

54 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Sarcey's theory has received a great deal of attention. But it has
been treated rather vaguely, and its full value in the analysis of
play construction has not been understood. The idea that the plot
leads in a foreseen direction, toward a clash of forces which is
obligatory, and that the dramatist must give double consideration
to the logic of events and to the logic of the spectator's expectation,
is far more than a mechanical formula. It is a vital step toward
understanding the dramatic process

Gustav Freytag

We have traced the course of romanticism from Goethe and
Schiller, through Hugo, to Zola's emotional realism. This was, in
general, a progressive course, building toward the dramatic
renaissance at the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time,
we must consider another tendency — the tendency to turn back, to
cling to the most reactionary aspects of romanticism. Zola faced
life with many delusions, but he attacked it crudely and vora-
ciously. There was a parallel movement which turned away from
reality altogether, which sought refuge and dignity in a glorifica-
tion of the soul. Gustav Freytag's Technique of the Drama, pub-
lished in 1863, gave a definite technical formulation to the
metaphysical aspect of romanticism. German philosophy at this
time was immersed in Kantian "pure reason" and Hegelian
idealism. Freytag was an idealist in the dramatic field; he took
the official philosophy of Bismarck's Germany, and applied it to
the theatre with rigid precision. There is nothing vague about
Freytag's metaphysics; he regarded the drama as a static frame-
work in which the romantic soul struts and suffers ; his romanticism
is narrow, formal and scholastic; he separated form and content,
as one might separate the structure of the established church from
the ideal which it embodies.

Freytag referred to the soul continually; he spoke of "the rush-
ing forth of will power from the depths of man's soul toward
the external world," and "the coming into being of a deed and 'ts
consequences on the human soul." * But the soul to which he
referred was not the tortured seeking soul of early romanticism.
Frej^ag's soul had money in the bank. The hero, he said, must be
an aristocrat, possessing "a rich share of culture, manners and
spiritual capacity." He must also "possess a character whose force
and worth shall exceed the measure of the average man." The

* All Freytag quotations are taken from Elias J. MacEwan's transIatioD
of Technique of the Drama (sth edition, Chicago, 1908).

The Nineteenth Century 55

lower classes are outside the realm of art: "If a poet would com-
pletely degrade his art, and turn to account . . . the social perver-
sions of real life, the despotism of the rich, the torments of the
oppressed ... by such work he would probably excite the sympathy
of the audience to a high degree ; but at the end of the play, this
sympathy would sink into a painful discord. . . . The muse of art
is no sister of mercy."

This raises the old question of the Aristotelian purgation of the
emotions. Freytag interpreted Aristotle in a way which enabled
him to reconcile the idea of purgation with the avoidance of "pain-
ful discord." According to Freytag, the spectator is purified, not
by direct contact with pity and terror, but by release from these
emotions. The spectator does not share the emotions ; on the con-
trary, he feels "in the midst of the most violent emotions, the
consciousness of unrestricted liberty ... a feeling of security." He
discovers as he leaves the playhouse that "the radiance of broader
views and more powerful feelings which has come into his soul,
lies like a transfiguration upon his being."

These are almost the same words used two hundred years earlier
by the French critic, Saint-Evremond, in discussing the idea of
purgation. Saint-Evremond spoke of "a greatness of soul well-
expressed, which excites in us a tender admiration. By this sort
of admiration our minds are sensibly ravished, our courage elevated,
and our souls deeply affected." *

Freytag agreed with Saint-Evremond that the function of the
theatre is to uplift and soothe ; but he added a new note — the idea
of esthetic escape. At the court of Louis XIV, the world was
smaller and more absolute. In nineteenth century Europe, "the
social perversions of real life" pressed close around the theatre;
"the consciousness of unrestricted liberty" was more difficult to
attain.

Freytag's book is important in two respects: in the first place,
it is the earliest modern attempt to deal comprehensively with
play-construction as a whole, in technical terms. Freytag had no
feeling for the living quality of a play, because he believed that
this quality is outside the jurisdiction of technique ; but he believed
that the form of a play can be defined, and he set about this task
methodically, and with considerable success. In the second place,
Freytag's dual preoccupation with technical form and spiritual con-
tent led him to regard dramatic conflict in a purely subjective light.
He realized that the drama must deal with action; but the play-
wright's purpose should be to project "the inner processes which
*From anonymous translation in Clark, opus cit.

56 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

man experiences from the first glow of perception to passionate
desire and action, as well as the influence which one's own and
others' deeds exert upon the soul." Thus his emphasis is on feeling
and psychological stress, rather than on logical cause and effect.
In approaching craftsmanship from this point of view, and in
regarding action as a symbol of the "processes of man's nature,"
Freytag laid the groundwork for German expressionism.

The Denial of Action

The emphasis on subjective processes does not spring from a
desire to investigate the psychological roots of human conduct. We
have observed that Freytag's interest in the soul was directly con-
nected with a desire to ignore "the social perversions of real life."
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a school of dramatic
thought developed which carried the theory of subjective drama
to the point of altogether denying the value of action. In The
Treasure of the Humble (1896), Maurice Maeterlinck said that
"the true tragic element of life only begins at the moment when
so-called adventures, sorrows and dangers have disappeared. . . .
Indeed when I go to the theatre I feel as though I were spending a
few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life as something that
was primitive, arid and brutal." * Allardyce Nicoll quotes this
opinion with the comment that "this, probably, is the most im-
portant piece of creative criticism on the drama that has appeared
for the last century." t

The source of Maeterlinck's thought is clear: he wants to
present "I know not what intangible and unceasing striving of the
soul toward its own beauty and truth." % But, since this striving is
intangible, it brings us into the realm of pure metaphysics, where
the soul ceases to strive: "In most cases, indeed, you will find that
psychological action — infinitely loftier in itself than mere material
action, and truly, one might think, well-nigh indispensable — that
psychological action even has been suppressed, or at least vastly
diminished, in a truly marvelous fashion, with che result that the
interest centers solely and entirely in the individual, face to face
with the universe."

Leonid Andreyev expressed a similar point of view. Barrett H.
Clark says that "Andreyev, adopting a transcendental outlook,
treats normal and abnormal people from a position of almost

* From Alfred Sutro's translation (New York, 1925).
t Opus cit.
i^.Opus cit.

The Nineteenth Century 57

unearthly aloofness." * Andreyev asked : "Is action, in the senss
of movements and visual achievements on the stage, necessary to
the theatre ?"t

The Dramatic Renaissance

At the very time that Maeterlinck wrote of a drama in which
even "psychological action has been suppressed," the great plays
of the reawakened theatre were being written and produced.
Among the plays which had appeared before 1893 were Ibsen's
Hedda Gabler, Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness, Hauptmann's
The Weavers, August Strindberg's The Father, George Bernard
Shaw's Widowers' Houses, Frank Wedekind's Spring's Awaken-
ing, and many others.

Andre Antoine, who was a clerk at the gas company, founded
the Theatre Libre in a tiny improvised playhouse in Paris in 1887.
Here Ibsen's and Strindberg's plays were performed ; here the
work of Frangois de Curel and Eugene Brieux was produced for
the first time. A similar Free Stage Society was started in Berlin
in 1889, and in England in 1891.

The first and great figure of the dramatic renaissance was
Henrik Ibsen, whose work covers the whole last half of the cen-
tury. His first play was written in 1850, Peer Gynt appeared in
1867, and A Doll's House in 1879. Ibsen was the storm center of
the new movement which changed the course of the drama in every
country in Europe. In the deepest sense, this was a realistic move-
ment; it faced reality with vigor and despairing honesty. But it
also included a generous portion of the obscurantism which found
extreme expression in Maeterlinck's theories. The Weavers ap-
peared in 1892; in the next year, Hauptmann wrote The Assump-
tion of Hannele, in which a child's vision of immortality is
contrasted with the reality of the world. In Tolstoy, in Wedekind,
above all in Ibsen himself, there is a similar unresolved struggle
between the real and the ideal.

In order to understand the new movement in the theatre, we
must see it as the climax of two centuries of middle-class thought.
It grew out of the contradiction which was inherent in the intel-
lectual life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which
was at the heart of the social structure. This contradiction, in a
dialectical sense, was the driving force which moved society for-
ward ; the explosive inner disturbances of equilibrium were moving

* Clark, A Study of the Modern Drama (New York, 1928}.
t Quoted by Clark, ibid.

58 Theory and Technique of Playwriting
at increasing tempo toward imperialism and world war. Men who
thought sensitively and deeply were aware of the conflicting forcei
which were threatening their world. But the conflict was also in
themselves, it was rooted in their ways of thinking and believing.

It was natural that great drama should rise out of this conflict.
It rose at a time when middle-class society was still vital, moving
ahead, able, to some extent, to see itself objectively. But the
smoldering tension was near the surface. The theatre reflected
both the objective vitality, and the dangerous inner tension.

This gives us a perspective, both on the greatness of the drama
in the late nineteenth century, and on its inevitable limitations.
The contradiction is sharply indicated in the person of Maeterlinck,
who was both a mystic and an accomplished scientist. The dread
of action, which Maeterlinck expressed in metaphysical terms, also
found expression in the plays of the most consistent realist of the
time — ^Anton Chekhov. Mysticism and realism were not merely
matters of literary mood : both sprang from the imperative thought
processes of the era. Chekhov gave objective expression to the same
forces which dictated Maeterlinck's philosophy.

We have seen that the romantic contradiction was at the bottom
of Zola's naturalism. In many ways, Zola typified the spirit of the
century, the direction in which it was moving. The increasing
pressure of events led Zola to participate in the Dreyfus case, and
brought him to the most courageous moment of his career. He was
middle-aged and tired; he had wandered aimlessly through the
scenes of the Paris Commune; he had preached naturalism and
faith in science and the life force; on January 13, 1898, Zola
shouted "I accuse" to the President of France and the general
staff of the French army and the whole state apparatus. He was
tried, and sentenced to prison, and escaped to England — ^but his
voice echoed round the world.

Zola was one of those who were mainly responsible for the
awakening of the theatre in the nineties. He had predicted this
awakening for twenty years. He was active in the founding of
Antoine's free theatre ; Antoine testifies that Zola's theories inspired
him and determined the policy of the playhouse. A one-act adapta-
tion of one of Zola's stories was on the first bill; it was through
Zola that Ibsen's plays were first brought to Antoine's stage.

Ferdinand Brunetiere

Here we face another enlightening contradiction. The most im-
;)ortant contribution to modern dramatic theory was made by

The Nineteenth Century 59

Ferdinand Brunetiere, who was a sworn enemy of Zola's natural-
ism. Brunetiere was a philosopher as well as a critic ; he was deeply
conservative ; his philosophy tended toward fideism, and led him to
embrace the Catholic religion in 1894. As early as 1875, when
Brunetiere was twenty-six, he attacked Zola for "his brutal style,

his repulsive and ignoble preoccupations Is humanity composed

only of rascals, madmen and clowns?" *

But Brunetiere was an original thinker: his opposition to
naturalism was far more than a plea for a return to classical
tradition. While Freytag merely embalmed the traditions of meta-
physical thought, Brunetiere proceeded to analyze the problem
of free will and necessity. He was right in holding that Zola's
materialism was incomplete, that Zola's faith in science was
romantic and unscientific, and therefore led to a mechanical
fatalism. Brunetiere held that fatalism makes drama impossible;
drama lies in man's attempt to dominate his surroundings : "Our
belief in our freedom is of no small assistance in the struggle that
we undertake against the obstacles which prevent us from attaining
our object." t

On this basis, Brunetiere developed the law of conflict, which
had been suggested by Hegel, and applied it to the actual work
of the theatre : "What we ask of the theatre is the spectacle of the
will striving toward a goal, and conscious of the means which it
employs. . . . Drama is the representation of the will of man in
conflict with the mysterious powers or natural forces which limit
and belittle us ; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there
to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his
fellow mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions,
the interests, the prejudices, the folly, the malevolence of those
who surround him."

Brunetiere's historical perspective was limited — but he made a
remarkable analogy between the development of the theatre and
periods of expanding social forces. He showed that Greek tragedy
reached its heights at the time of the Persian wars. He said of the
Spanish theatre: "Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, belong to
the time when Spain was extending over all of Europe, as well as
over the New World, the domination of her will." Writing in
1894, he felt that the theatre of his time was threatened because
"the power of will is weakening, relaxing, disintegrating. People
no longer know how to exert their will, they say, and I am afraid

* Quoted by Josephson, opus clt.

t Brunetiere, The Law of the Drama, translated by Philip M. Hayden
(New York, 1914).

6o Theory and Technique of Playwriting

they have some right to say It. We are broken-winded, as the poet
says. We are abandoning ourselves. We are letting ourselves drift
with the current." *

Taine and Brandes

Brunetiere is among the few dramatic critics who have hinted
at the connection between social and dramatic development. It is
curious that other writers on the theatre have almost completely
neglected its social implications,! One of the most impressive
aspects of general criticism in the nineteenth century was the use
of a new method, based on the analysis of modes of thought, eco-
nomic conditions, cultural and political trends. The two greatest
exponents of this school were Hippolyte Taine and Georg Brandes,
whose method stemmed directly from Hegel. Both dealt extensively
with the theatre as a part of general literature ; but they made no
attempt to deal with it specifically, as a separate creative form.

Both Taine and Brandes studied literature as a social process.
"Looked at from the historical point of view," wrote Brandes, "a
book, even though it may be a perfect, complete work of art, is
only a piece cut out of an endlessly continuous web." :j: Taine
started with the assumption that there is "a system in human
sentiments and ideas." He believed that this system is conditioned
by three primordial forces, race, surroundings and epoch:
"Whether the facts be physical or moral, matters little; they
always have their causes." Taine's analysis of causes was colored
by the hang-over of romanticism ; like other thinkers of his century,
his materialism was the servant of the unique soul. He therefore
decided that "history is a problem in psychology." Instead of
studying the inter-action of race, surroundings and epoch, he
studied only what he believed to be the psychological effect of
these elements; each epoch, he thought, produced a special domi-
nant type, a unique soul; he discovered "a certain ideal model of
man ; in the middle ages, the knight and the monk ; in our classic
age, the courtier, the man who speaks well." §

Taine and Brandes (and other critics who followed in their

*Ibid.

t One example of this type of unhistorical thinking may be cited from
Brander Matthews' The Development of the Drama. He observes that
romanticism tended "to glorify a selfish and lawless egotism." He con-
cludes that one may assume that there is some connection between
romanticism and the Paris Commune, both being characterized by "un-
sound and unstable" ideas.

XOpus cit.

§ Taine, opus cit.

The Nineteenth Century 6i

footsteps) provided much of the Intellectual stimulation for the
revival of the theatre. Brandes influenced Ibsen. Zola was Taine's
disciple; his search for causes, "physical and moral," his con-
centration on emotional psychology and upon hereditary types,
were largely acquired from Taine.

Spencer and Bergson

During the greater part of the nineteenth century, German
philosophic thought had been dominated by Hegelianism. The
metaphysical side of his vast dual system of mind and matter had
been in the ascendant; but the sj^stem had been flexible enough
to swallow Darwin's theory of evolution and all the wonders of
modern science, all of which were accepted as the physical un-
folding of the "absolute idea." In France and England, the tradi-
tion of Locke, Hume, Montesquieu and Saint-Simon had con-
tinued to exert a profound influence, giving a liberal and social
direction to the trend of philosophic thought.

In the last years of the nineteenth century, a marked change
took place in the dominant trend of European philosophy. The
new movement, which was destined to play a large part in
twentieth-century thought, was by no means new. It was, to a
considerable extent, a return to the agnosticism of Hume, who
had maintained that rational knowledge is "metaphysical," and
that we can rely only on our immediate sense-data. In the nine-
teenth century, there were many variations of Humean thought;
among these was the positivism of Auguste Comte, who died in
1857. Herbert Spencer carried on the tradition of positivism. He
accepted the positive aspects of modern science; in 1855, four
years before the appearance of The Origin of Species^ he pub-
lished Principles of Psychology, which was based on the theory of
evolution. But he agreed with Hume in accepting the doctrine of
the unknowable; he called his system "synthetic philosophy."

In the eighteen-nineties, the movement of thought which awak-
ened the drama also caused a disturbance in the philosophic
equilibrium ; this in turn reacted upon general thought, and caused
changes in dramatic logic and method. As long as philosophy
remained within the framework of idealism, it was impossible to
annihilate the dualism of mind and matter. Men were desperately
seeking for a new way of freeing the unique soul from the bondage
of reality — ^which at the same time would justify and explain the
immediate maladjustments between themselves and their environ-
ment. Hegel's absolute was too remote and final for the modern

62 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

world; Spencer's "synthetic philosophy" was too narrow and
limited.

Henri Bergson filled this need. He combined agnosticism and
positivism with Schopenhauer's idea of the world as the expression
of dynamic and irrational will. Bergson's philosophy was both
immediate and mystical; it was agnostic and emotional; it was
both skeptical and absolute. Instead of the absolute idea, Bergson
spoke of the elan vital, "the original principle of life."

In Time and Free IVill,^ Bergson expounded the old dualism
of mind and matter in a form which brilliantly corresponded to
new scientific ideas of time and space. He said that there are two
aspects of self: the fundamental self which exists in time, and the
self "refracted, broken to pieces," which is the "special and social
representation" of the self. "The greater part of the time," said
Bergson, "we live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything
of ourselves but our own ghost, a colorless shadow which pure

duration projects into homogeneous space To act freely is to

recover possession of oneself and to get back to pure duration."

The importance of this lies, not in what it means (for I con-
fess that I do not know), but in the fact that it clearly projects
the idea of escape by transcending reality: "to act freely" in a
world of "pure duration." Our life on earth is a "colorless
shadow" of the freedom which might exist in the flow of time.

Bergson's philosophy also had its experimental, realistic side;
he dealt with the world of immediate sensation (the world of
space), as a world of fragments of experience which have only
temporary value. In this he followed Hume's agnosticism; his
conception of reality as something temporarily perceived and hav-
ing no absolute rational meaning paralleled the pragmatism of
William James.

Both in glorifying the elan vital, and in emphasizing reliance
on sensation, Bergson's position was anti-intellectual. We have
seen that Zola's interest in physiology led him to regard emotion
as a thing-in-itself ; from this it was a short step to Zola's con-
ception of the "eternally fecundating breath of life." Friedrich
Nietzsche, writing in the eighteen-eighties, took up the same cry,
extravagantly proclaiming the unique soul. Nietzsche held that
reason is valueless; we achieve strength only through passionate
intuition. Moral values have no meaning, because they imply the
possibility of rational judgments. The life force is "beyond good
and evil."

Bergson coordinated these tendencies, divested them of their

* Translation by F. L. Pogson (New York, 1910).

Ibsen 63

poetic vagueness, covered the contradictions with scientific phrase-
ology, evaded the dangerous social implications, and built a shrine
to the elan vital behind an impressive philosophic facade.

Bergson's most immediate effect on the literature of his day
was upon the symbolists, Mallarme, de Gourmont and others.
But his influence was pronounced in the drama at the turn of the
century. The Bergsonian philosophy was clearly reflected in Ibsen's
final plays.

It is manifestly impossible to make a detailed examination of
the thought-content, the forms and variations, the twists and
turns and changes and contradictions, which are revealed in the
theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. I have tried
to trace these dominant ideas in their broadest outlines; especially
to show their historical origins, and the way in which they have
been carried over into the theatre of the present.

We shall examine what the theatre was, and what it had learned
in 1900, only through the plays of one man, who stood head and
shoulders above his time, and whose work came to a close with the
close of the century.

CHAPTER V

IBSEN

IBSEN'S work summarizes and concludes the cycle of middle-
class development. His genius mirrored his time so clearly that a
brief survey of his plays must seem like a repetition of the ten-
dencies which have been traced in the previous chapter. The
threads of all these dominant ideas are woven through his plays;
he succeeded in dramatizing these tendencies, in making them
objective. Being a master craftsman, he exposed the instability of
society at its points of maximum tension ; he showed the complicated
pressure between the apparent rigidity of the environment and the
sensibilities and perplexities of individuals.

Ibsen's shadow lies across the modern theatre. His analysis of
the middle-class dilemma is so final that it has been impossible
to go beyond the limits of his thought — to step beyond these
limits would mean to step beyond the boundaries of society as it
is now constituted.

The drama today depends chiefly on Ibsen both for its system

64 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

of ideas and for the technique which is the structural embodiment
of those ideas. The student of the contemporary theatre must
therefore turn to Ibsen's plays, and to his very revealing note-
books, as a constant point of reference, by w^hich one's study of the
modern drama may be checked and guided.

Ibsen was born at Skien, Norway, in 1828. His dramatic out-
put covers the last half of the century and falls into three divi-
sions: the first phase begins in 1850, and ends with Peer Gynt
in 1867; the second phase begins with The League of Youth in
1869, and ends with Hedda G abler in i8go; the final phase in-
cludes the four plays beginning with The Master Builder (1892)
and ending with When We Dead Awaken (1899).

In the first period of seventeen years, ten plays were written.
But the two last of these. Brand and Peer Gynt, represent the
culmination of Ibsen's formative years. Brand was written only a
year before Peer Gynt; both plays show the inner struggle in the
author's mind, and indicate the course of his later development.

In Brand, the action takes place in a village in the northern
mountains ; the symbolism of the snowy heights and the threatened
avalanche is precisely the same as in Ibsen's last play. When We
Dead Awaken. The first scene of Brand shows a wild highland :
"The mist lies thick and heavy; it is raining and nearly dark."
Brand meets a peasant who warns him of the danger: "A stream
has hollowed out a channel under us ; we are standing over a gulf,
no one knows how deep; it will swallow us up, and you too!" But
Brand expresses the deep determination which moves through all
of Ibsen's plays — he must go on, he must be unafraid. At the end
of the play (as at the end of When We Dead Awaken) the
avalanche sweeps down and Brand is destroyed : "The avalanche
buries him ; the whole valley is filled."

In Brand we find the nostalgia for the south, as a symbol of
warmth and a sort of sensual escape, which recurs in many of
Ibsen's plays, and especially in Ghosts. Brand says, "At home I
never saw the sun from the fall of the leaf until the cuckoo's
cry." Brand's child dies because he sticks to his duty in the village,
and refuses to return to the south to save the boy's life. But these
are the outward manifestations of Ibsen's thought. The essence of
Brand is the unique soul seeking to transcend life. In the first act,
Brand says that ever since boyhood he has had "a vague conscious-
ness of the variance there is between a thing as it is, and a thing
as it ought to be; between being obliged to bear and finding the
burden too heavy."

Ibsen's philosophy is based on the dual philosophy of Hegel.

Ibsen 65

Brand echoes the idea of the dialectical movement and fluidity of
the universe: "Every created thing, we icnow, has 'finis' written
after it ; it gets tainted by moth and worm, and in accordance
with all law and rule, must give way to a new form." But the
answer is furnished by the Hegelian absolute: "But there is
something which lasts; the Spirit which was not created, which
was rescued at its lowest ebb in the first fresh spring of time,
which by confident human faith threw a bridge from the flesh to
the spirit's source." It is interesting to note the dualism which
enters even into Ibsen's conception of the absolute. Though he
says that "the Spirit . . . was not created," he offers the curious idea
that it was dormant, "rescued at its lowest ebb," by man's faith.

Ibsen demands that the wholeness of personality be found,
that the bridge between the ideal and the real be created : "Out
of these fragments of Soul, out of these lumpish trunks of spirit,
out of these heads and hands, a Whole shall arise."

In Brandj the struggle is intensely subjective. "Within, within!
That is the word! Thither is the way. There is the track." But
Ibsen sees that inward peace can only be achieved by an adjust-
ment between man and his environment : "A place on the whole
earth's circuit, whereon to be wholly himself, that is the lawful
right of man, and I ask no other!"

Therefore Ibsen sees what Zola, in spite of his physiology and
materialism, was unable to see at the same period : that the ques-
tion of the soul is tied up with property relations. Brand's mother
is rich, and she tells him : "You'll get all I have ever possessed ;
it lies told and measured and weighed."

BRAND: On what conditions?

THE mother: On this one, that you don't squander your life
away. Keep up the family, son by son ; I don't ask any other
reward . . . keep your inheritance — if you like, dead and unpro-
ductive, provided it's in the possession of the family!

brand: And if, on the contrary, I took it into my head to
scatter it to the winds?

THE mother: Scatter what has bent my back and bleached
my hair during years of toil !

BRAND {?!odding slowly) : Scatter it.

the mother: Scatter it? If you do that, you scatter my soul
to the winds.

Brand answers her with a terrible denunciation. When he was
a child he crept into the room where his father lay dead, and he
saw his mother steal into the room: "She went straight up to the

66 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

bed. She set to work routing and rummaging; first she moved the
dead man's head, then she pulled out a bundle, then several more:
she counted, whispering: 'More, more!'... She wept, she prayed,
she wailed, she swore ; she got scent of the treasure track — and she
found, she swooped like a falcon in an agony of delight, straight
upon her prey."

This indicates the direction which Ibsen was to take in his later
plays: he saw that social relationships are based on property; again
and again he pointed to the corrupting influence of money. But
the question of money is a family matter between Brand and his
mother; it has only a general connection with the life of the com-
munity. It is treated as a corruption which springs from the evil
which is in the family itself. It is a part of an hereditary taint.

In Brand the dominant theme which is repeated again and again
is the will — man can save himself by his own will. "First you must
will, not merely what is possible in great or small, not merely
where the action carries with it its complement of pain and trouble
— no, you must boldly and gladly will through a whole series of
horrors." Again Brand says: "Rich or beggar, I will with all my
might; and this one thing suffices." In the final act, when he is
bruised and bleeding, he says : "The Will hides itself, weak and
afraid." At the end, as the avalanche destroys him, he shouts his
question to God : does not "man's Will merit a particle of re-
demption ?"

Ibsen's general emphasis on the will shows the influence of
Schopenhauer. This leads to a dual treatment of the will : the
problem of social will, the definite struggle with the environment,
becomes merged in the problem of redemption, the metaphysical
will which exists throughout the universe. Thus we find in Brand
a strain of anti-intellectualism, of uncertainty, and of the ideas
which Nietzsche was later to embody in his superman. Agnes,
Brand's wife, suggests that intuition is more potent than reason :
"Can I gather all the reasons together, reasonably? Does not a
current of feeling come like a scent on a current of wind ?" In
his final loneliness, Brand feels that he is a superior soul: "A
thousand people followed me from the valley; not one has gained
the heights."

In later plays, and especially in the work of his final years, we
shall find Ibsen repeating the uncertainty of Brand: "When I
stand before the individual soul and put to him the demand that
he should rise, I feel as if I were floating on a fragment of
wreckage, storm-tossed on the seas."

But the emphasis on the conscious will also runs through all

Ibsen 67

of Ibsen's work, giving it direction and courage. Brand's will is
semi-religious; but since it is really will, and not faith, it keeps
forcing him back to reality, back to the struggle with the stubborn
world of facts. In the final act, alone before the avalanche over-
takes him, Brand faces in a vision the whole world of his time:
"I see enemies sally forth to the fight — I see brethren sit meek
and cringing under the cap of invisibility. And I see still more —
all their shuddering wretchedness — the whimpering of women and

the cries of men, and ears deaf to prayer and entreaty Worse

times, worse visions, flash like lightning through the night of the
future! The suffocating British coal-smoke sinks black over the
land, smirches all the fresh green, stifles all the fair shoots, sweeps
low over the land, mingled with poisonous matter. . . . The wolf of
cunning howls and yelps, menacing the sun of Wisdom upon the
earth ; a cry of distress sounds northward and summons to arms

along the fjord " The vision of Agnes appears to him and begs

him to go with her, to seek the sun and summer, but he refuses:
he must "live what until now I dreamt — make real, what is still
delusion." The vision tries to hold him back: "That terrible ride
amid the mists of dreams — wilt thou ride it free and awake?"
And he answers: "Free and awake."

Ibsen remained true to this resolve. He never faltered in the
bitter struggle to see reality "free and awake." In the next year
he wrote Peer Gynt, which represents a different aspect of the
problems treated in Brand. Peer Gynt is far more vital, more
imaginatively realized. While Brand deals largely in abstract dis-
cussion. Peer goes out into the world, testing reality in a series of
picaresque adventures. But what Peer seeks is "to be wafted dry-
shod down the stream of time, wholly, solely, as oneself." Like
Goethe's Faust, Peer gains all the wonders of the world ; he be-
comes rich and finances wars. Then he decides that "my business
life is a finished chapter; my love-sports too are a cast-off gar-
ment." So it might be a good idea to "study past ages and time's
voracity." He asks the Sphinx for its riddle ; in answer Professor
Begriffenfeldt, a German philosopher, pops up from behind the
Sphinx; the professor is "an exceedingly gifted man; almost all
that he says is beyond comprehension." Begriffenfeldt leads him to
the club of wise men in Cairo, which turns out to be a madhouse.
The professor whispers to Peer dramatically: "The Absolute Rea-
son departed this life at eleven last night." The professor shows
him the assembly of lunatics: "It's here. Sir, that one is oneself
with a vengeance; oneself and nothing whatever besides. Each
one shuts himself up in a barrel of self, in the self-fermentation

68 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

he dives to the bottom — and with the self-bung he seals it her-
metically, and seasons the staves in the well of self."

Thus Ibsen paid his respects to the unique soul. But in the end
Peer must face himself; on the barren heath there are voices
around him: "We are thoughts; you should have thought us...
We should have soared up like clangorous voices . . . We are a
watchword ; you should have proclaimed us . . . We are songs ;
you should have sung us... We are tears unshed forever." He
meets the Button-Molder with a box of tools and a casting-ladle ;
the Button-Molder tells him he must be melted up, return to the
casting-ladle, "be merged in the mass." Peer refuses to be deprived
of himself, but the Molder is amused: "Bless me, my dear Peer,
there is surely no need to get so wrought up about trifles like this.
Yourself you never have been at all."

Alone, Peer sees a shooting star; he calls out, "Brother Starry-
flash ! To flash forth, to go out and be nought at a gulp." . . . He
goes deeper among the mists . . . "Is there no one, no one in all the
turmoil, in the void no one, no one in Heaven — !"

But the answer which Ibsen provides in Peer Gynt is neither
the lonely courage of Brand nor the infinite grace which rescued
Faust. Peer returns to the home he had left and to the woman
who has been waiting: he asks Solveig if she can tell him where
he has been "with his destiny's seal on his brow?" She answers:
"In my faith, in my hope, in my love." He clings to her as both
mother and wife; he hides his face against her, as she sings, "The
boy has been h'ing close to my heart all the life-day long. He is
weary now!"

The man escapes, hides away in the womb of the mother-wife.
This is a new idea of escape; the woman-symbol typifies the life-
force; man finds salvation at his own hearthstone. In the plays
of Eugene O'Neill, we shall find the woman-symbol has become
absolute; she engulfs the man and negates action ; she is both evil
and good, love and hate; she is both the harlot and the mother of
holiness.

Thus Ibsen exposed the contradiction which turns the life-force
into the negation of life.

This was as far as Ibsen could go in studying man in relation
to the generalities of his environment. If he had clung to the
woman-symbol, it would have led him to a negation. But he re-
membered Brand's determination: "Free and awake!" He made
a clean break with the mood of Brand and Peer Gynt. Two years
later (one year before the Paris Commune) he wrote The League
of Youth. Instead of the mists and snowy mountains, "the action

Ibsen 69

takes place in the neighborhood of the iron-works, not far from a
market town in southern Norway." Ibsen turned from philosophy
to politics with enormous gusto. Stensgard describes a dream: "I
could see the whole curve of the hemisphere. There was no sun,
only a vivid storm-light. A tempest arose; it came rushing from
the west and swept everything before it: first withered leaves,
then men ; but they kept on their feet all the time, and their gar-
ments clung fast to them, so that they seemed to be hurried along
sitting. At first they looked like townspeople running after their
hats in a wind; but when they came nearer they were emperors
and kings; and it was their crowns and orbs they were chasing
and catching at, and seemed always on the point of grasping, but
never grasped. Oh, there were hundreds of them, and none of
them understood in the least what was happening."

In The League of Youth, Ibsen shows the extraordinary skill
with which he analyzes character in terms of social pressures. Dr.
Fieldbo says of Stensgard : "His father was a mere rag of a man,
a withered weed, a nobody. He kept a little huckster's shop and
eked things out with pawn-broking; or rather his wife did it for
him. She was a coarse-grained woman, the most unwomanly I ever
knew. She had her husband declared incapable ; she had not an
ounce of heart in her." But Fieldbo points proudly to his own
conservatism: "My lot has been one that begets equilibrium and
firmness of character. I was brought up amid the peace and har-
mony of a modest middle-class home. My mother is a woman of
the finest type; in our home we had no desires that outstripped
our opportunities, no cravings that were wrecked on the rocks of
circumstances."

The last scene of The League of Youth is a biting satire on
political compromise. Stensgard tries to marry the storekeeper's
widow: "I found on my path a woman of ripened character who
could make a home for me. I have put off the adventurer, gentle-
men, and here I stand in your midst as one of yourselves." But
it is all a mistake ; the widow marries someone else, and Stensgard
leaves in disgrace:

lundestad: You'll see, gentlemen! In ten or fifteen 5'ears,
Stensgard will either be in Parliament or in the Ministry —
perhaps in both at once.

fieldbo: In ten or fifteen years? Perhaps; but then he can
scarcely stand at the head of the League of Youth.

heire: Why not?

fieldbo: Why, because by that time his youth will be —
questionable.

70 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

heire: Then he can stand at the head of the Questionable
League, sir.

BRATSBERG {the owner of the iron-works) : I think so too,
my friends ; for truly we have been groping and stumbling in
darkness ; but good angels guided us.

lundestad: Oh, for that matter, I think the angels were
only middling.

In this play, we observe the rudiments of Ibsen's social philos-
ophy: awareness of impending change combined with distrust of
political methods. He knows that man is a product of his environ-
ment, but he cannot see how the environment can be changed
without changing the heart of man. He therefore comes back to
the theme of Brand: the will itself must be intensified; but how
can this be accomplished when the will is subject to all these
corrupting influences? He has cast aside his faith in an eternal
life- force; he no longer offers the woman-symbol as an escape.
But he finds the conflict between the ideal and the real insoluble,
because, like Peer Gynt, he clings to the inner self. He wants to
find the solution inside the man. Ibsen is never fatalistic, because
his belief in the power of the will is too strong ; when he finds the
social contradictions too difficult to face, he turns to mysticism;
but even this (in the final plays) is achieved by the will rather
than by faith. In The League of Youth he shows his cynicism in
regard to group action, a predilection for Rousseau's natural man,
and hatred for the complexities of industrial civilization — "the
suffocating British coal-smoke" of which Brand had spoken.

Ibsen was deeply stirred by the events following the war of
1870. He wrote in a letter on December 20, 1870:* "Historic
events are claiming a large share of my thoughts. The old illusory
France is all slashed to pieces ; and when the modern matter-of-fact
Prussia shall also be cut into fragments we shall have made a leap
into the midst of a growing epoch. Oh, how ideas will then come
tumbling about our heads. All we have had to live upon up to the
present date are crumbs from the revolutionary table of the past
century." But his conclusion turns back to the soul: "What is
needed is a revolting of the human spirit."

After The League of Youth, Ibsen wrote two plays. Emperor
and Galilean and The Pillars of Society, which marked a period
of transition. He was feeling his way toward a new orientation.

* Quoted by Georg Brandes in Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, translation by Rasmus B. Anderson (New York, 1923).

Ibsen 71

Ten years after The League of Youth, the great cycle of the
middle period begins with A Doll's House.

I have given special attention to Ibsen's early plays, because in
these plays we find the elements which attain mature expression in
A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler and The Wild Duck.
The earlier probings of character, the search for the whole man,
for the integrated will, lead directly to these plays. Peer Gynt
looked at the night sky where stars were falling and turned in
fear to the protecting arms of the wife-mother. But this was another
death ; in Europe the rushing wind was sweeping kings and
emperors before it. Ibsen tried to understand these forces, but it
seemed to him that the root of the trouble lay in the corruption
of personal relationships. Since the family was the unit of middle-
class society, he turned to dissecting the structure of the family
with surgical vigor. It was inevitable that he should turn in this
direction : to save the family from destruction, to renew its in-
tegrity, was the only road to freedom within the limits of middle-
class society. The human spirit could not be reborn in a vacuum ;
if the broad framework of society were to continue unaltered,
the individual must find honor and libert}^ in his most intimate
relationships; he must rebuild his own home.

This was infinitely more profound than Zola's emotional ma-
terialism. Ibsen knew that people could not be saved by belief
in science, or belief in emotion. If they were to be saved at all,
they must be saved by their own will operating under definite
conditions imposed by their environment — but here again he faced
an insoluble contradiction. He could find no honest outlet for the
will that would hold the heart and mind within the structure of
the family; the life which he analyzed offered no constructive
values. All that he was able to show us was bitterness, inertia,
moral confusion.

The people of Ibsen's plays are the people of the suburbs of
industrial cities. Shaw remarked in 1 896 that Ibsen households
dot all the suburbs of London: "Jump out of a' train anywhere
between Wimbledon and Haslemere; walk into the first villa you
come to, and there you are !"

Modern plays which constitute pale echoes of Ibsen often show
the middle class as hopelessly defeated. Ibsen saw them trying to
save themselves. He analyzed the ways in which money pressure
reacts upon ethical standards; he showed that the cheap conven-
tions which pass for moral law are not final; but are dictated by
the property interests of the community. Ibsen's characters fight
for their integrity; but their fight is ethical rather than social;

72 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

they fight against conventions, but not against the conditions from
which the conventions are derived. In considering Ibsen, one must
consider the close tie which binds him to the romantic individualists
of the early nineteenth century. Goethe and Schiller, Heine and
Shelley, believed that the freedom of the individual could be
attained by the destruction of false moral values. To them this
was a general truth. Ibsen endeavored to apply this idea with
painstaking honesty, to make it work in the rigid community life
of his time.

The first of these plays, A Doll's House, sounds the most definite
note of hope. But the hope is not immediate ; it lies in the ultimate
results which may be achieved through Nora's courage in leaving
her husband and her home: "I am going to find out which is
right: society or mj^self," says Nora. She has discovered that her
husband is a stranger: "It dawned upon me that for eight years
I had been living here with a strange man and had borne him three
children." Nora's parting words are hopeful ; both she and Helmer
believe that some day they may be reunited in "a real wedlock."

But neither in A Doll's House nor in the dramas which follow
it is there more than a hint of how this new life can be achieved.

Ghosts (1881) is often spoken of as a play in which heredity is
projected as a blind fate, mercilessly destructive. Critics suggest
that this destructive force resembles the Fate which broods over
Greek tragedy. This is entirely inaccurate. We have noted that the
idea of fate in this mystic sense is foreign to Greek tragedy. It is
also foreign to Ibsen. Zola believed in heredity ; he visualized it as
an external force, driving people against their will. There is not
a line in Ibsen to suggest acceptance of a hereditary fate — or of
any other kind of fate or Nemesis or external force. Ghosts is a
study of disease and insanity in terms of objective social causation.
The sick nostalgia of the middle class echoes in Oswald's terrify-
ing cry: "Mother, give me the sun." Ibsen was far less interested
in fate than in the character of Mrs. Alving, and in her heroic
struggle to control events. Her failure is due to specific social
conditions. Ibsen has very little to say about heredity, and a great
deal to say about the immediate causes of the situation. These
causes are both external and internal: externally there is money
pressure; internally there are lies and illusions. In no play has
Ibsen shown the inter-connection of these forces so clearly as in
Ghosts. Money was the root of Mrs. Alving's loveless marriage;
money kept her tied to a life of torture. She says: "I could never
have gone through with it if I had not had my work. Indeed I
can boast that I have worked. All the increase in the value of the

Ibsen 73

property, all the improvements, all the useful arrangements that
my husband got the honor and glory of — do you suppose that he
troubled himself about any of them?" Mrs. Alving compares her
own case to that of the girl whom her husband betrayed and who
was married off by a payment of seventy pounds :

PARSON MANDERS : The two cases are as different as day from
night —

MRS. alving: Not so different after all. It is true there was
a great difference in the price paid, between a paltry seventy
pounds and a whole fortune.

Mrs. Alving tries to save herself by building an orphanage to
her husband's memory: "I do not wish Oswald, my own son, to
inherit a penny that belonged to his father. . . . The sums of money
that, year after year, I have given toward this Orphanage, make
up the amount of the property — I have reckoned it carefully —
which in the old days made Lieutenant Alving a catch."

This is the essence of Ibsen's thought in regard to property: the
individual tries to achieve integrity by an ethical act. Ibsen does
not stop at this ; he sees that the ethical act is itself insufficient :
the orphanage burns down. This brings the problem to a head :
the burning of the orphanage, at the end of Act II, destroys the
social equilibrium for which Mrs. Alving has fought so desperately.
In Act III, the question must be faced: why has she failed? The
answer must either go to the foundations of the property S5^stem,
or endeavor to explain the situation in terms of personal character.
Ibsen's answer is a compromise which is an exact repetition of the
theme of A Doll's House. The tragedy is not the fault of individuals
nor of the property system; the family is at fault; the solution lies
in "a real wedlock." Mrs. Alving tells her son that both she and
Alving were to blame: "This boy, full of the joy of life — for he
was just like a boy, then — had to make his home in a second-rate
town which had none of the joy of life to offer him, : but only dissi-
pations. . . . And I brought no holiday spirit into his home either. . . .
I had been taught about duty, and the sort of thing that I believed
in so long here. Everything seemed to turn upon duty — my duty, or
his duty."

Here again the social basis is indicated — but sentiments and
beliefs are stressed: "a real wedlock" can be accomplished by free-
ing the individual from a false idea of duty. The title of the play
refers to "dead beliefs." Mrs. Alving says: "They are not actually
alive in us, but they are dormant all the same, and we can never
be rid of them. Whenever I pick up a newspaper and read it, I
fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines." Again, Oswald

74 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

speaks of "those beliefs that are put into circulation in the world,"
and Mrs. Alving answers, "Ghosts of beliefs!"

Ghosts may be regarded as the climax of Ibsen's career. Whether
or not one regards it as his greatest play, there can be no question
that it is his clearest play, his nearest approach to a constructive
social conception. His determination to see reality "free and
awake" had carried him to a dangerous crossroads. As Mrs, Alving
says: "I only intended to meddle with a single knot, but when
that was untied, everything fell to pieces. And then I became
aware that I was handling machine sewing."

Ibsen's concern with the structure of the family made him aware
of the special poignancy of the woman's problem. In his notes for
Ghosts he says: "These women of the present day, ill-used as
daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated according to their
gifts, prevented from following their inclinations, deprived of their
inheritance, embittered in temper — it is these who furnish the
mothers of the new generation. What is the result?"*

The plays which follow Ghosts show an increasing preoccupa-
tion with the psychological analysis of the modern woman. An
Enemy of the People (1882) returns to politics; but following
this the plays of the next eight years deal less with the totality of
the environment and more with emotional tensions inside the
family. The reason for this is evident in Ghosts: Ibsen had gone
as far as he dared to go in undermining the foundations of
society. He turned away from this to the analysis of the emotional
superstructure.

In The Wild Duck (1884) we again see the integrity of the
family destroyed by false ideals and illusions. Relling says : "Don't
use that foreign word, ideals. We have the excellent native word,
lies." Gregers asks: "Do you think the two things are related?"
Relling: "Yes, just about as closely as typhus and putrid fever."
It is the stupidity and selfishness of the male which destroys the
Ekdal family. Hialmar Ekdal is of the same breed as Helmer in
A Doll's House, but he is depicted far more venomously; at the
end, after he has driven his sensitive daughter to her death, the
conclusion is hopeless. Relling says: "Before a year is over, little
Hedvig will be nothing to him but a pretty theme for declama-
tion . . . then you'll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment
and self-admiration and self-pity."

In Rosmersholm (1886), Rebecca West can find integrity only
in death. Her love for Rosmer leads them both to throw them-

* The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, v. 12, ed. by William Archer
(New York, 1909-12).

Ibsen 75

selves from the bridge across the mill-race. Here we observe the
beginnings of the mysticism v\^hich became dominant in Ibsen's
final period. The mother-vs^ife of Peer Gynt reappears. But she
has none of Solveig's holy innocence; she too is trying to save
herself by her will. She is no longer Nora, the child-w^ife grown
up and going blithely into the world. She is embittered, driven by
sex. Rebecca says that she came to Rosmersholm deliberately to
get what she could get out of it: "I knew no scruples — I stood in
awe of no human tie." She broke up Rosmer's home and his wife
killed herself. She wanted him to be "a free man, both in circum-
stances— and in spirit." But when this is accomplished, she finds
that her "will is crippled." Her love has become "self-denying,"
and the two lovers follow the wife to their doom.

In the last play of his middle period, Hedda Gabler (1890),
Ibsen makes a brutally honest analysis of the socially maladjusted
woman. He says in his notes for Hedda Gabler that "it is the want
of an object in life that torments her." It was also "the want of
an object in life" that tormented Rebecca West, but in Rosmer-
sholm Ibsen had neglected to dramatize this factor.

Hedda's intense sexuality, her lack of scruple, her dependence
on convention, her fear of anything "ludicrous and mean," her
thwarted idealism, her despairing selfishness, make her the arch-
type of the women whose instability and charm are the chief decora-
tions of the modern drama. Few contemporary plaj^wrights draw
the portrait either honestly or accurately. Hedda's bitter tragedy
has become what she herself most feared — "ludicrous and mean."
Nevertheless, her features are clearly discernible in the pale replica :
she is the restless Gilda in Noel Coward's Design for Living; she
is the furiously romantic Nina in Strange Interlude. She is a dozen
other heroines who have no object in life besides the pursuit of men
and ideals.

The thing that lifts Hedda above the "ludicrous and mean" is
the quality of will; like all of Ibsen's characters, she knows that
she must make her own destiny. When Judge Brack tells her that
Lovborg is dead, she says : "It gives me a sense of freedom to know
that a deed of deliberate courage is still possible in this world — a
deed of spontaneous beauty." What horrifies her (and really destroys
her will) is the fact Lovborg did not shoot himself voluntarily. In
the twentieth century theatre, the Heddas have lost this distinctive
quality. They seek "spontaneous beauty" through feeling, through
emotion without will. Ibsen's Hedda shows that she is drifting in
this direction, that, like Rebecca in Rosmersholm, her will is be-
coming crippled. And this is the direction of Ibsen's own thought.

76 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

William Archer quotes a letter written by Ibsen to Count
Prozor in March, igoo: "You are essentially right when you say
that the series which closes with the Epilogue {When We Dead
Awaken) began with Master Solness." It is interesting that,
through the whole period from Brand to Hedda Gabler, Ibsen had
lived in Germany (from 1864 to i8gi), with occasional visits to
Italy. The final cycle of four plays was written after his return
to Christiania.

In The Master Builder (1892), the first and most powerful of
these pla5'^s, Ibsen exposed the dilemma which he was facing:
Hilda, like Rebecca West and Hedda, is again the woman who
seeks emotional freedom for herself, by her own will, regardless
of the cost. Solness, the aging master builder, says to her: "Don't
you agree with me, Hilda, that there exist special chosen people
who have been endowed with the power and faculty of desiring
a thing, craving for a thing, willing a thing — so persistently and
so — so inexorably — that at last it has to happen?" The scene
continues :

SOLNESS : You are the younger generation, Hilda.

HILDA {smiles) : That younger generation that you are so
afraid of.

solness: And which, in my heart, I yearn toward so deeply.
Hilda tells him that he must climb to the top of the tower which
he has built; she says she also wants to go up in a tremendously
high tower, where she can "stand and look down on the other
people — on those that are building churches and homes for mother
and father and the troop of children . . . and then we will build

the loveliest — the very loveliest — thing in the world castles in

the air . . . they are so easy to take refuge in — and so easy to build
too," Solness says that the castle in the air must be real, it must
have "a firm foundation under it." A little later he tells Hilda:
"Men have no use for these homes of theirs — to be happy in. . . .
See, that is the upshot of the whole affair, however far back I look.
Nothing really built; nor anything sacrificed for the chance of
building. Nothing, nothing ! The whole is nothing. ... I believe
there is only one possible dwelling place for human happiness—
and that is what I am going to build now."

HILDA: You mean our castle?

solness : The castles in the air. Yes.

HILDA: I am afraid you would turn dizzy before we got
half-way up.

His last words to Hilda as he goes to climb to the top of the
tower are also Ibsen's valedictorj^ : "On a firm foundation." Hilda

Ibsen 77

sees him at the top of the tower "great and free again," and at the
end she says: "He mounted right to the top. And I heard harps
in the air."

In The Master Builder, Ibsen surveyed his own work and con-
fessed his own confusion. He had analyzed the middle-class family,
and he had found decay and bitterness: "Men have no use for
these homes of theirs — to be happy in." But he was convinced that
happiness is "the lawful right of man." Man must conquer by his
will, but in the modern community the will tends to atrophy and
become sterile. Ibsen had said in 1870 that "what is needed is a
revolting of the human spirit." He had tried to find a way in
which the human spirit could conquer its environment, but he had
found no solution. So the will must transcend the environment,
must achieve the "spontaneous beauty" of which Hedda had spoken.
Ibsen realized that this solution is really an escape: "castles in
the air... are so easy to take refuge in." He saw that Hilda, like
Hedda Gabler, is herself a product of an unhealthy environment.
Hilda is described as like "a bird of prey" ; she is seeking emotional
thrills.

Mrs. Solness is one of the most tragic figures in the whole course
of Ibsen's work. She chokes with tears as she speaks of her "nine
lovely dolls," which she had cherished from childhood and had
retained after her marriage, and which were destroyed when their
home was destroyed by fire. (The fire which destroyed the Solness
home is the same fire which destroyed the orphanage in Ghosts.)
"All the old portraits were burnt on the walls," says Mrs. Solness,
"and all the old silk dresses were burnt, that had belonged to the
family for generations and generations. And all mother's and
grandmother's lace — that was burnt too. And only think — the
jewels, too! And then all the dolls — ." Solness says of her: "She
too had a talent for building . . . for building up the souls of little
children, Hilda. For building up children's souls in perfect bal-
ance, and in noble and beautiful forms. For enabling them to soar
up into erect and full-grown human souls. That was Aline's
talent. And there it all lies now — unused and unusable forever —
of no earthly service to anyone — just like the ruins left by a fire."

So the Master Builder turns to "castles in the air," to an act of
will which he recognizes as emotional and irrational: and as he
climbs to his death, his last despairing words are: "On a firm
foundation."

So the cycle of thought which began with Brand returns to its
point of departure: in When We Dead Awaken, we are again lost
in the northern mists"; again the avalanche sweeps down to destruc-

78 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

tion. Brand's will to desert dreams and to see life "free and awake,"
ends in a dream which escapes life. The personal will ends in
Bergson's elan vital which is impersonal and outside the world of
space. At the end of When We Dead Awaken, Rubek and Irene
face the dual universe: "All the powers of light may freely look
on us — and all the powers of darkness too." But even here, Ibsen's
powerful sense of the continuity of life is present: "Both in us and
around us life is fermenting and throbbing as fiercely as ever!"
So they climb higher:

rubek: We must first pass through the mists, Irene, and
then —

IRENE : Yes, through all the mists and then right up to the
summit of the tower that shines in the sunrise.

As the thunder of ice and snow engulf them, the voice of Maia,
the earth spirit, is heard singing triumphantly below in the valley.

In all the later plays, we note the emphasis on sexual emotion;
love is "beyond good and evil" ; it heals and destroys. The triangle
situation becomes the central theme. The social forces in this situa-
tion are disregarded, and the emotional aridity of the home, the
need for emotional inspiration, are stressed.

The modern theatre owes an especially large debt to Ibsen's final
period: the triangle treated not as a situation, but as a psychic
problem; the intense sexuality partially sublimated; the bitter
aridity of family life; the weakened will, the sense of foreboding;
the idea of the superior man and woman who have special feelings
and special potentialities; the mystic solution, to gain one's life
by losing it — these concepts find unlimited repetition in the drama
today. However, these ideas grow out of the whole range of
Ibsen's development; the threads which we have traced through
the course of his work are the threads of which modern dramatic
thought is woven.

These thoughts were not peculiarly Ibsen's; they were the
dominant ideas of an epoch, which he dramatized and carried
forward. But he went forward to the brink of an abyss — because
the epoch was one of increasing instability. Historically and
philosophically, the nineteenth century was moving toward a
breakdown of equilibrium. This is essential to any understanding
of Ibsen's influence. In a recent essay,* Joseph Wood Krutch
assumes that Ibsen and Shaw represent, not the end, but the
beginning of a movement, intellectually and dramatically. Krutch
says of the new drama: "From having constituted a stagnant back-

* The Nation, September, 1935.

Ibsen 79

water it was to become a roaring torrent in which the most

advanced and vertiginous ideas were to sweep onward The

premises of a newer drama had been established and, logically, the
next task of the dramatist was to create that drama." This is an
example of literary wish-fulfillment. Splendid technical lessons are
to be derived from Ibsen, but a forward movement of the drama
based on Ibsen's ideas is a logical impossibility, because his ideas
do not "sweep onward." The use of material derived from Ibsen
was bound to become increasingly repetitious and uncreative — and
this is exactly what has happened.

Ibsen's social philosophy never went beyond the limits of early
nineteenth-century romanticism; he searched for the right to
happiness and for the triumph of the individual will ; this led
him to a devastating analysis of social decay. But there is not a
socially constructive idea in the vast range of his work. He attacked
conventions and narrow moral standards; but as a substitute he
offered time-worn generalities : we must be true to ourselves, we
must expose lies, we must fight hypocrisy and sentimentality and
stupidity. Ibsen saw the world he lived in with blinding clarity —
but what he wrote, in the last analysis, was its epitaph,

Ibsen inevitably evolved a technique which is the counterpart
of his social philosophy. His method of thinking is the method of
Hegelian dialectics. The references to Hegel in his work are
numerous. In Brandj the contradictions which the hero faces are
dramatized in terms of a variable balance of forces breaking and
reestablishing equilibrium. This accounts for the surprising
dramatic power of a play which is basically a discussion of abstract
ideas. But even as early as Brand, we discover that Ibsen made
only a limited use of this method ; he used it to present the flow
of social forces which react upon the characters; but the char-
acters themselves are not fluid. The reason for this is obvious;
the dominant idea of the unique soul prevented Ibsen from seeing
the whole inter-connection between character and environment.
The integrity of personality for which he was seeking was static;
if it were achieved (in the terms in which Ibsen conceived it), it
would be achieved by conquering the fluidity of the environment.
In Peer Gyntj Peer's adventures cover a life-time ; yet in all his
seeking it is only the fluid world around him which changes. The
reason that Peer is never able to be himself is because the cclf for
which he is looking is an abstraction.

In The League of Youth, Ibsen adopted a method which he
followed throughout his career: he accepted the fact that man's
consciousness is determined by his environment and investigated

8o Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the environment with meticulous care. But he continued to assume
that, once the character has been formed, it must seek its own
integrity in the fulfillment of itself. Thus, in all the plays follow-
ing The League of Youth, the characters are produced by the
environment, but they undergo no change or growth during the
course of the drama.

This determines the distinctive technical feature of the great
plays of the middle period. Instead of developing the action
gradually, the plays begin at a crisis. The period of preparation
and increasing tension is omitted. The curtain rises on the very
brink of catastrophe. Clayton Hamilton says: "Ibsen caught his
story very late in its career, and revealed the antecedent incidents
in little gleams of backward looking dialogue. . . . Instead of com-
pacting his exposition in the first act — according to the formula of
Scribe — he revealed it, little by little, throughout the progress of
the play." *

This constituted a break, not only with the formula of Scribe,
but with the whole romantic tradition. It seems like a truism to
say that the playwright's selection of a point of departure (and
also the number and kind of events which he selects for inclusion
in the dramatic framework) is of prime importance in the study
of technique. Yet this truism is very generally neglected.

Ibsen was not the first dramatist to begin the action at a crisis.
This had been characteristic of Attic tragedy, and of the Renais-
sance drama which imitated the Greeks. In each case, the form
selected was historically conditioned. Greek tragedy was retro-
spective and dealt with the crisis resulting from the violation of
fixed laws. In the Renaissance, the living theatre, growing out
of the turbulent new life of the period, immediately broke away
from this form. But the aristocratic theatre continued retrospective:
Corneille and Racine dealt with eternal emotions, and had no
interest in the social causes which might condition these emotions.

Shakespeare viewed social causation objectively. He was pas-
sionately interested in why men did what they did. He therefore
spread the action over a wide chain of events. Goethe used the
same method to narrate the subjective adventures of the soul. In
Peer Gynt, the romantic soul is still free and adventurous in
seeking its own salvation ; the action covers a whole life from
youth to old age. But the social dramas deal with the final psycho-
logical crisis within the middle class family. This forced Ibsen to
create a more compressed technique. He was dealing with people
fighting against a fixed environment ; laws and customs had become

•Hamilton, Problems of the Playiuright (New York, 1917).

Ibsen 8l

rigid. Ibsen limited himself chiefly to investigating the effects of
this environment. He v/as interested in causes — but to investigate
these causes thoroughly, to dramatize them before his own eyes
and the eyes of the audience, w^ould be to accept a responsibility
which he could not accept. In dealing only with the crisis, Ibsen
evaded the danger of a too close examination of the forces which
made the crisis inevitable.

We therefore find that the play in which Ibsen approached a
direct attack upon the social system is the play in which the events
leading up to the crisis are most graphically dramatized (in dia-
logue and description). In Ghosts, these retrospective crises are
almost as impressive as the play itself. Mrs. Alving's desperate
attempt to escape from her husband in the first year of their
marriage, the scene in which she offered herself to Manders and
was forced to return to her home, her fight to save her child,
Alving's afFair with the servant girl — these incidents are as power-
fully and carefully constructed as the scenes of the play.

If Ibsen had continued the social analysis begun in Ghosts, one
can predict with certainty that the construction of the next play
would have been broadened to include a wider range of events.
A further analysis of causes would have been impossible without a
broader technique. But Ibsen turned to subjective psychology; he
continued to present only the final crisis, to show the balance of
forces only at a moment of maximum strain.

Ibsen's conception of character as static, endeavoring to impose
its will on a fluid environment, is the chief technical fault in his
plays. This may be described as a failure to strike a correct balance
between free will and necessity. In the last mystic period, free
will and necessity dissolve into one another, and both are lost.
Ibsen's nearest approach to a character that grows is Nora in
A Doll's House. But Nora's development is toward a knowledge
of herself rather than toward a change in herself. In the later
dramas, the characters become increasingly detached from their
environment, and increasingly fixed. In John Gabriel Borkman
and When We Dead Awaken, the environment has faded to a
twilight grey.

The retrospective technique tends to weaken the force of action ;
this is especially true of French classical tragedy, in which oratory
and narrative took the place of movement. In Ibsen's middle
period, the driving force of the will and the movement of social
contradictions keep the t-Ction full-blooded and vigorous. But in
the last plays, the crisis itself is diluted ; introspection takes the
place of retrospection.

Sz Theory and Technique of Playwriting

In following Ibsen's system of thought, the modern theatre has
also followed his technique. His ideas and methods have not been
taken over integrally or with conscious purpose, but piecemeal and
often unconsciously. His compression of the action, beginning at
the denouement and revealing the past in brief flashes, has not
been followed by contemporary plaj^wrights. It requires a master
craftsman to handle this construction effectively; and its tightness
and concentration of emotion are foreign to the mood of the
modern theatre. Ibsen dealt with the disintegration of society;
therefore he was forced to limit himself to as much of the social
pattern as he could handle. The modern drama accepts Ibsen's
mood and philosophy, but often neglects his deeper implications. It
accepts his mysticism — which it decorates with ethical comments
taken from his earlier plays, much as one might select a towering
pine tree in a lonely forest and hang it with brittle Christmas tree
ornaments.

Since the playwright today tends to deal with superficial emo-
tions, and since it is assumed that these emotions have no social
roots, the action tends to be diffuse; the movement has none of
the fulness of the Elizabethan action ; since the commercial theatre
is both an escape and a sedative, it serves somewhat the same
purpose as the theatre of Scribe and Sardou; to some extent, the
modern play resembles the synthetic pattern invented by Scribe
and amplified by Sardou. But the intellectual atmosphere has
changed greatly since the middle of the nineteenth century. There-
fore the old pattern has been modified and its inner construction
renovated. Ibsen provided the technical basis for this change;
his way of building a scene, the dry naturalness of his dialogue, his
method of characterization, his logical counter-balancing of points
of view, his use of under-statement and abrupt contrast, his sharp
individualization of minor characters, his use of humor in tragic
situations, his trick of making the drabness of middle-class life dra-
matic— these are only a few of the many aspects of Ibsen's method
which have become the stock-in-trade of the modern craftsman.

In Ibsen the course of dramatic thought which began with
Machiavelli, reached completion. But Ibsen himself looked toward
the future. Even in the cold mists which shroud the end of When
We Dead Awaken, he felt life "fermenting and throbbing as
fiercely as ever." In the theatre of the twentieth century we shall
find superficial polish, intellectual aridity, stale emotions; but we
shall also find new trends, new creative forces. The theatre is not
unmindful of the tradition to which Ibsen devoted his life — to
see reality "free and awake."

PART 2

THE THEATRE TODAY

The etghteen-mneties witnessed the emergence of inde-
fendent theatre movements in a number of Eurofean
cities. Antoine^s Theatre Libre in Paris y the Freie BUhne
in Berlin^ the Independent Theatre in London, the Abbey
in Dublin, the Moscow Art Theatre, "proclaimed a new
faith in the drama's integrity and social function.

These groups described themselves as free or independ-
ent, because they were determined to escape from the cheap
conventions and tawdry standards of the professional stage:
^^The movem^ent which includes the reform of the modern
theatre and the revival of the drama in five European
countries— and more recently in America — found its origin
outside the established commercial playhouses?'^ *

The fact that the movement developed outside the com-
mercial domain provides a clue to its origin and character.
It received its most potent stimulus from Ibsen; Ghosts
was the opening play at three of the theatres of protest,
and it was among the early productions at a fourth. The
dramatic revolt did not have deep roots among the people.
It refected the growing social awareness of the more sen-
sitive and perceptive members of the middle class. The
regular stage appealed chiefly to a middle-class audience:
the well-fed gentry in the more expensive seats and the
suburban families and clerks and students in the galleries
came to the playhouse for surcease and illusion. Ibsen cut
through the web of illusion, and exposed the rotten founda-
tions on which the family life of the bourgeoisie was built.
Ghosts was bitterly attacked and reviled, but it created an

* Anna Irene Miller, The Independent Theatre in Europe (New York,
1931).

83

84 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

intellectual ferment that was given direction by the increas-
ing social tensions of the last decade of the nineteenth
century. The emergence of the little theatres coincided
with the economic crisis that began in 18 go and the growth
of im^ferialist rivalries among the European "powers.

The dramatic revolt achieved its greatest vitality in Ire-
land and Russia. In these countries^ the discontent of the
bourgeoisie 77^erged in deep currents of social protest: the
group in Dublin becam,e the custodians of a revitalized
national culture, reaching maturity in the plays of Synge
and O'Casey. In Russia, the Moscow Art Theatre drew
strength and inspiration from, the resistance to Czarist
oppression, asserting a creative realism that exerted a salu-
tary influence on the development of the Soviet theatre
and film.

The fears and uncertainties that gripped European in-
tellectuals did not have their full impact on Ainericans
until the outbreak of the flrst world war. The news of
the European holocaust brought the independent theatre
movement to America, with the almost simultaneous for-
mation in 191 S of the Provincetown Players, the Neigh-
borhood Playhouse, and the Washington Square Players.
The last of these, effecting an adroit combination of art
and business, became the Theatre Guild in 191 9.

The basic problem that confronts modern man is the
efficacy of the conscious will. We have noted that the prob-
lem was at the root of Ibsen^s thought: in his last years,
which were the dying years of the century, Ibsen m^ourned
the death of the will; the creative spirit seemed to dissolve
in dreams that "lose the name of action?^

As Ibsen wrote his valedictory — "When we dead
awaken, what do we really see then? . . . We see that we
have never lived" — the world stood at the threshold of
an era of war and destruction without parallel in history.
What could the theatre offer, what could it say of man's
will and fate, as the years thundered their warning? Could

The Theatre Today 85

k do nothing more than report^ frosalcally , without the
hope and passion of true tragedy^ that man^s will had
atrophied, that his capacity for ^^enterprises of great pith
and fnomenf'^ had turned to brutality and confusion?

Chapter I deals with certain influential trends in modern
thought that deny man'*s ability to exert any rational con-
trol over the conditions of his existence. One of the early
and widely popularised formulations of the trend is to be
found in the pragmatism of William James. The cultural
influence of pragmatism is most clearly indicated in the
novel. Ja7nes^s ^^world of pure experience*^ is the world of
fragmentary sensation and irrational impulse that we find
in the work of Dos Passos, Farrell, Faulkner, Saroyan, and
many other modern writers. In these stories, as Charles
Humboldt observes, "the individual 'ynakes his appearance
on the stage of the novel in full retreat from the demands
of reality. . . .One can ultimately reconstruct him from the
scattered fragments of his sighs, 7nemories, interests and
reactions.** *

The contemporary theatre resembles the novel in its
acceptance of a "world of pure experience** in which moods
and fears replace courage and consistent struggle to achieve
rational goals.

Chapter II continues the study of the pattern of m^odern
thought, showing that the dualism of spirit and matter,
subjective and objective, has a long history. In the period
of expanding capitalism, the conflict between the individual
and his environment was dynamic and seemed to hold the
possibility of ulti?nate adjustfnent. But today the social
situation forbids a partial escape or temporary retirement
into the sanctuary of the spirit. The negation of the will
moves to mystic absolutes — or to cowardly acceptance of
life as a via dolorosa of suffering and despair.

Having defned the pattern of ideas, we return, in
Chapter III, to the specific application of these ideas to the

*"The Novel of Action," in Mainstream (New York, Fall, 194.7).

86 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

technique of flaywr'uing. George Bernard, Shaw is selected
as the most important transitional figure in the course of
dramatic development from Ibsen to Eugene O^Neill. In
ShaWy the social conscience seeks meaningful expression.
But his characters cannot translate the demands of con-
science into action^ and the will is exhausted in conversation.

It would give a misleading impression of the complexity
of the theatre^ s twentieth century growth to jumf directly
from Shaw to O^Neill. Chapter IV endeavors to bring to-
gether the main threads of critical thought and technical
practice y indicating the close relationship between the domi-
nant social fhilosofhies of the time and the development
of dramatic theory.

Chapter V considers O'Neill as the m^ost distinguished y
and in a fundamental sense the most tyficaly dramatist of
the contemporary American stage. We are especially con-
cerned with O'NeilPs conception of the conscious willy
and its effect on the structure and technique of his work.
O'NeiWs genius y his integrity y his determination to go to
the heart of life give him impressive stature. Yet his work
is the symbol of a defeat which goes far beyond the play-
wright's personal problem, to the problem of his age. In
ig26y a play by John Dos Passos showed death as a garbage
man collecting tortured humanity as refuse. Two decades
later y O'Neill's portrayal of death as an ice m,an repeated
the adolescent pessimism of the earlier Dos Passos play.

The study of O'Neill enables us to reach certain conclu-
sions regarding the technique of the m,odern Am,erican
drama. These conclusions are summarised in Chapter VI.
Four plays by different authorSy with different themes and
backgrounds, are selected for analysis. We find that the
underlying m-odes of thought are similar and thus produce
striking simUaritie£ in structure and dramatic organization.

CHAPTER I

CONSCIOUS WILL AND
SOCIAL NECESSITY

THE law of tragic conflict, as formulated by Hegel, and devel-
oped by Brunetiere, lays special emphasis upon the exercise of
the will. Brunetiere demanded "the spectacle of the will striving
toward a goal"; at the same time, the greatest dramatist of the
nineteenth century used the conscious will as the basis of his
philosophy and technique. In 1894, the year in which Ibsen wrote
John Gabriel Borkman, Brunetiere complained that "the power
of will is weakening, relaxing, disintegrating."

An understanding of the role of the conscious will in the
dramatic process is necessary to an understanding of the trend
of the modern theatre. In seeking the precise meaning of the term
conscious willj we receive very little assistance either from
Brunetiere or from those who have discussed his theory. It is
assumed that we all know what is meant by the exercise of con-
scious willj and that deeper implications of the idea need not
concern the student of the drama. Brander Matthews notes that
Brunetiere "subordinates the idea of struggle to the idea of voli-
tion." William Archer touches lightly on the philosophic prob-
lem: "The champions of the theory, moreover, place it on a
metaphysical basis, finding in the will the essence of human
personality, and therefore of the art which shows human per-
sonality raised to its highest power. It seems unnecessary, how-
ever, to apply to Schopenhauer for an explanation of whatever
validity the theory may possess." *

From what we know of Brunetiere's philosophic opinions,
there can be no doubt that he was influenced by Schopenhauer,
and that his conception of the will had metaphysical implications.
But there is nothing metaphysical about his statement of the
theory — "to set up a goal, and to direct everything toward it, to
strive to bring everything into line with it," is what men actually
do in their daily activity. This is as far as Brunetiere goes ; indeed,
he remarked, in outlining the theory, that he had no desire to
"dabble in metaphysics." It would be convenient if we could
follow his example. But we have already proved that there is a close

•Archer, opus cit.

87

88 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

connection between philosophy and dramatic thought ; if we are to
get to the root of the dramatic process, we must examine this
connection as closely as possible.

If we use the phrase, exercise of conscious will, simply as a
fancy way of describing the manner in which men habitually carry
on their activities, it would be much better not to use it at all.
Dramatic and literary criticism are saturated with terms derived
from science and philosophy and applied in a vaguely human way
which devitalizes them. Exercise of conscious will has a deceptively
scientific ring: are we using it to give a scientific flavor to a loose
definition of the drama, or has it a precise meaning which limits
and clarifies our knowledge of dramatic laws ?

Broadly speaking, philosophers are concerned with how far the
will is free; psychologists endeavor to determine how far the will
is conscious. (In both cases, the question of what the will iSj or
whether there is any such thing, must also be faced.) The main task
of experimental psychology has been to ascertain how consciousness
receives stimuli, and how consciousness produces activity. In recent
years, the whole approach to the subject has undergone startling
changes. This has affected the theatre ; the modern drama lays less
emphasis on conscious will than the drama of any previous epoch:
by this I mean that character is not studied primarily from the
point of view of setting up a goal and striving toward it, but from
the point of view of emotional drift, subconscious determinants,
psychic influences, etc.

This puts the conscious will in a new light. The crux of the
matter is the word, conscious. It is curious that Brunetiere seems
to think this word is self-explanatory. To be sure, the idea of will
suggests awareness of an aim toward which the exercise of will is
directed. But if this is self-evident, why should the idea of con-
sciousness be introduced as a special adjunct of the will? If con-
scious will means anything, it means that there is a distinction
between voluntary and involuntary acts, and that dramatic con-
flict deals with acts which are voluntary. But what are voluntary
acts ? How accurately can they be distinguished ? What about acts
which spring from subconscious or unrealized desires ? What about
the Freudian complexes? What about behaviorism? What about
conditioned and unconditioned responses?

The modern stage has taken for its special province the actions
of people who don't know what they want. Hamlet is aware of
his own vaccilation ; TartufE e seems to be aware of his own deceit.
But the drama today deals very generally with the psychic prob-
lems of people who are not aware. In Sidney Howard's The Silver

Conscious Will and Social Necessity 89

Cord, Mrs. Phelps tries to destroy her sons' lives under the guise
of mother love; in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing, Henny is in
love with Moe, but she thinks she hates him. Eugene O'Neill
deals vi^ith psychic motives and influences vi^hich spring from the
subconscious. One cannot say that these plays exclude conscious
will ; but the conflict does not seem to be based primarily on
striving toward a known and desired end.

Viewed historically, the conceptions of will and consciousness
have been closely associated with the general stream of thought
as it has already been traced from the Renaissance to the nineteenth
century. The philosophers who have contributed most vitally to
the discussion of free will and necessity are Spinoza, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer. William James points out that Spinoza's pantheism
bears a very close relationship to modern conceptions of monism —
an emotional acceptance of the substantial oneness of the universe.
Spinoza regarded all activity, subjective and objective, as a direct
manifestation of God's being. Since he was one of the most logical
of thinkers, Spinoza carried this belief to its logical conclusion : he
made no compromise with the unique consciousness. If God is
everything, there can be no will opposed to God. Man is part of
nature and the necessity to which he is subject is absolute. "A
child believes it desires milk of its own volition, likewise the
angry boy believes he desires revenge voluntarily, while the timid
man believes he voluntarily desires to flee." There can be no
accident: "A thing is called accidental merely through lack of
inner understanding." Spinoza's statement of determinism is
logical and final — unlike later philosophers, Spinoza had no hesita-
tion in accepting his own conclusions.

In Hegel, we find for the first time the idea that free will and
necessity are not fixed opposites, but are continually in a state of
unstable equilibrium. History shows that man seldom achieves
what he wills; even when he thinks he has achieved his aim, the
newly established state of equilibrium is temporary, and a new
disturbance of equilibrium brings results which are contrary to the
original intention. On the other hand, there is no final necessity^
because the various and contradictory aims which men pursue cause
continuous changes and modifications in their environment.

This conception corresponds fairly obviously to at least the out-
ward facts of experience. But it gives no comfort to the meta-
physicians: it denies both the unique soul (which implies absolute
free will) and eternal truth (which implies absolute necessity).
We have seen that neither Hegel nor the men of his period were

90 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

able to dispense with the soul and the hope of its ultimate union
with a higher power.

In maintaining that the will is universal and irrational, Schopen-
hauer formed a link between Spinoza and Bergson. Instead of
following Spinoza's single-minded logic, Schopenhauer used the
will as a means of denying logic: will is divorced from conscious-
ness; impulse is more dynamic than thought. In Bergson we find
this idea developed in the elan vital. In Zola, in Nietzsche, in
the last plays of Ibsen, and in a large portion of the drama and
fiction of the late nineteenth century, we find the literary develop-
ment of this idea. Instead of religious mysticism, we have a
mysticism of sensation, a mysticism with a physiological shape.

It is significant that Schopenhauer's emphasis on emotion as a
thing-in-itself led him to the most bitter pessimism: he held that
"the will to be, the will to live, is the cause of all struggle, sorrow,
and evil in the world. . . . The life of most men is but a continuous
struggle for existence, — a struggle in which they are bound to lose

at last Death must conquer after all." * He therefore felt that

the only way to happiness is inertia, the passive contemplation of
the futility of things: "The best way is total negation of the will
in an ascetic life." This combination of pessimism and emotionalism
is a characteristic feature of modern culture.

At this point we must turn from philosophy to psychology —
which is exactly what the main stream of modern thought has
done: William James' essay. Does Consciousness Exist? was pub-
lished in 1904. Alfred North Whitehead says with some reason
that this essay "marks the end of a period which lasted for about
two hundred and fifty years." f James began that famous essay
by saying: "I believe that 'consciousness' when once it has evap-
orated to this estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of dis-
appearing altogether. It is the name of a non-entity, and has no
right to a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it
are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor left behind by the
disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy." James maintained
that there is "no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted
with that of which material objects are made, out of which our
thoughts of them are made." | Consciousness, he said, is not an
entity, but a function.

This is a tremendously vital contribution to psychology. It estab-

* Quoted by Walter T. Marvin, in The History of European Philosophy
(New York, 1917).
t Whitehead, opus cit.
:j: William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York, 191a).

Conscious Will and Social Necessity 91

lishes a new method of psychological study. It seems to make a
direct attack upon the romantic idea of the unique soul. But when
we examine what James means by consciousness as a function, we
find that this function without entity is all-inclusive : "Our normal
waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but
one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from
it by the film.iest of screens, there lie potential forms of conscious-
ness entirely different." *

These "potential forms of consciousness" sound suspiciously like
Bergson's elan vital; having saluted "the disappearing 'soul,' "
James created a function which is a fluid sort of soul, part of "that
distributed and strung along and flowing sort of reality we finite
beings swim in." Instead of a dual universe, we have a pluralistic
universe : the world, said James, is "a pluralism of which the unity
is not fully experienced yet." How can this unity conceivably be
experienced? Here the unique soul makes its reappearance. In a
"world of pure experience," the feeli?ig of uniqueness or of oneness
is just as valid and useful as other feelings. In The Varieties of
Religious Experience, James speaks of the value of the mystic
sense of union : "The man identifies his real being with the
germinal higher part of himself. . . . He becomes conscious that this
higher part is conterminous and continuous with a More of the
same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him,
and which he can keep in touch with, and in a fashion get on board
of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces
in the wreck."

The only thing which holds this "world of pure experience" to-
gether is "the will to believe." James is vigorously anti-intellectual:
"I found mj^self compelled to give up logic, fairly, squarely irrev-
ocably. ... I prefer bluntly to call reality if not irrational, then
at least non-rational, in its constitution." f If reality is non-
rational, the finite beings who swim in reality have no real need of
reason to keep them afloat. They feel, but they can neither plan
nor foresee.

Pragmatism is partly responsible for the greatness of William
James as a psychologist. This was exactly what was needed at the
beginning of the twentieth century to free psychology from pre-
vious superstitions. Pragmatism led James to concentrate brilliantly
on the immediate sense-data. But it also led him to a curious
mechanical spiritualism which has affected psychology ever since

* William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York,
1928).

t William James, A Pluralistic Uni<verse (New York, 1909).

92 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

his time. On the mechanical side, James sees that the sense-data
are physiological: he says of the body, that "certain local changes
and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings. Its breathing
is my 'thinking,' its sensorial adjustments are my 'attention,' its
kinesthetic alterations are my 'efforts,' its visceral perturbations are
my 'emotions.' " * But pragmatically, what we actually seem to ex-
perience is thinking, attention, efforts, emotions. Therefore prag-
matic psychology is based on "spiritual happenings" (because this
is the way experience feels) ; these "spiritual happenings" are really
"kinesthetic alterations" and "visceral perturbations" which are not
directly experienced. The realm of our experience has only a fleet-
ing, temporary contact with causation ; and real causation is out-
side our experience. For pragmatic purposes, causality "is just
what we feel it to be." Since James takes this view of causality, he
must inevitably take the same view of the human will.

What we feel is a sensation of will: "In this actual world of
ours, as it is given, a part at least of the activity comes with definite
direction; it comes with desire and sense of goal; it comes com-
plicated with resistance which it overcomes or succumbs to ; and
with efforts which the feeling of resistance so often provokes." t
Activity includes "the tendencj'^, the obstacle, the will, the strain,
the triumph or the passive giving up."

James speaks of "a belief that causality must be exerted in
activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made." He gives no
answer to this question ; whatever this causality might be, it has
no connection with free will : "As a matter of plain history, the
only 'free will' I have ever thought of defending is the character
of novelty in fresh activity-situations," Even if there were a prin-
ciple of free will, he says, "I never saw, nor do I now see, what
the principle could do except rehearse the phenomena beforehand,
or why it ever should be invoked." %

In modern psychology, we have the absolutely mechanical point
of view represented in behaviorism, and the psychic approach
represented in psychoanalysis. Although they seem to be irrecon-
cilably opposed, these two schools have important points of
resemblance.

The attempt to discover the machinery of emotions and sensa-
tions is by no means new. Early in the seventeenth century, Thomas
Hobbes defined sensation as "a mode of motion excited in the
physiological organism." In the middle of the nineteenth century,

* Essays in Radical Empiricism.

t Ihid.

ilbid.

Conscious Will and Social Necessity 93

Wilhelm Wundt held that voluntary actions are the complex or
developed form of involuntary acts. The great Russian scientist,
I. P. Pavlov, has contributed greatly to the knowledge of con-
ditioned responses. Slowly, by painstaking experimentation on ani-
mals, Pavlov is working toward what he describes as "a general
system of the phenomena in this new field — in the physiology of
the cerebral hemispheres, the organs of the highest nervous ac-
tivity." Pavlov suggests that "the results of animal experimentation
are of such a nature that they may at times help to explain the
hidden processes of our own inner world." * Pavlov's method is
scientific, seeking to reveal facts without mixing them with beliefs
or illusions.

Behaviorism, however, is both pragmatic and narrowly mechan-
ical. Without adequate experimental data along physiological lines,
John B. Watson denies both consciousness and instinct, and ar'
bitrarily selects behavior as the subject of psychology. What we cal)
instinct, says Watson, is simply "learned behavior." f "What the
psychologists have hitherto called thought is in short nothing but
talking to ourselves." Our activities consist of stimulus and re-
sponse. There are internal and external responses. "Personality is
the sum of activities that can be discovered by actual observation
of behavior over a long enough period to give reliable informa-
tion."

The trouble with all this is that no observation of human be-
havior along these lines has ever been undertaken. One cannot
draw conclusions in regard to stimulus and response, one cannot
decide that thought is "nothing but talking to ourselves," unless
these assumptions are proved through experimental study of the
physiology of the nervous system. The work accomplished by
Pavlov on animal reflexes is merely a tentative beginning. Watson
offers us, not a science, but a belief. Knowing that the mind is
matter organized in a certain way, he takes a leap in the dark and
jumps to the conclusion that mind does not exist. This corresponds
to one aspect of pragmatism — the dependence on immediate ex-
perience. Although he is dealing with the mechanics of the brain,
Watson pays only scant attention to mechanicsj and is chiefly pre-
occupied with habits — because this is the appearance of our be-
havior, the way it looks and feels, as we experience it pragmatically.

It would seem evident that the will can have no part in a
psychological system which deals only with stimuli and responses.
Watson goes a step further than James : he not only abolishes the

•Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes (London, 1927).
t Watson, Behaviorism (New York, 1925).

94 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

will, but also abolishes responsibility. To be sure, he holds out the
hope that we may eventually control behavior by changing the
stimuli ; but this would have to be done by thought ; if thought is
an automatic response, it is impossible to change the thought until
the stimulus is changed. Thus we find ourselves in the charmed
circle of fruitless experience.

Behaviorism is mechanized pragmatism. Psychoanalysis is emo-
tional pragmatism. Here too there is a groundwork of genuine
scientific research in a difficult and little explored field. Freud's
experiments in psychopathology are epoch-making. But psycho-
analysis takes us from rational experiment to a world which bears
an interesting resemblance to William James' "world of pure ex-
perience." "Consciousness," says Freud, "cannot be the most gen-
eral characteristic of psychic processes, but merely a special function
of them." The essence of psychoanalysis, according to Freud, is
"that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by
'the pleasure principle': that is to say we believe that any given
process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon
determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides
with a relaxation of this tension ; i.e., with avoidance of pain or
production of pleasure." * There is obviously no will in this ; tension
and the avoidance of pain are automatic; they are nothing more
nor less than stimulus and response. However, according to the
Freudian theory, pleasure and pain not only strike the consciousness
from the outer world, but also from within, from the subconscious
in which memory-records are accumulated. These memory-traces
cover not only the history of the individual, but go back to primitive
racial memories, "the savage's dread of incest," ancient taboos and
tribal customs. "Faulty psychic actions, dreams and wit are products
of the unconscious mental activity. . ." says A. A. Brill. "The afore-
mentioned psychic formations are therefore nothing but manifesta-
tions of the struggle with reality, the constant effort to adjust
one's primitive feelings to the demands of civilization." f

This gives us the key to psychoanalysis as a system of thought:
man's soul (the subconscious) is no longer a manifestation of the
absolute idea, or of the life-force; it is a reservoir into which are
poured the feelings and sentiments of himself and his ancestors.
This is a "world of pure experience" which is well-nigh infinite;
the unique soul, which sought union with the universe, has now
succeeded in swallowing a large part of the universe.

* Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, translated by C J.
M. Hubback (London, 1922).

t In his introduction to Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, translation
by A. A. Brill (New York, 1931).

Conscious Will and Social Necessity 95

The important feature of this conception is its retrospective
character. Instinct turns back to the past; not only is the will
inoperative, but the primitive feelings must be controlled and ad-
justed. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud accepts this
backward-looking tendency as his main thesis: "An instinct would
be a tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it toward
jeinstatement of an earlier condition. ... If then all organic instincts
are conservative, historically acquired, and are directed toward
regression, toward reinstatement of something earlier, we are
obliged to place all the results of organic development to the credit
of external, disturbing and distracting influences." It is the "re-
pression of instinct upon which what is most valuable in human
culture is built."

This is a complete reversal of all previous theories of the rela-
tionship between man and his environment. The environment is
creative, the man is conservative; the external influences build, the
man tears down. The unique soul can reach no further indignity
than this; its fight for freedom has turned to a fight for its own
dissolution. The subconscious is the last refuge of the unique soul,
the ultimate hiding place in which it can still pretend to find some
scientific justification.

What has here been said does not constitute a sweeping indict-
ment of the discoveries of psychoanalysis. On the contrary, it seems
certain that elements of the psychoanalytic theory of the subcon-
scious are provably true. One may say the same thing, with even
greater certainty, of the theory of behaviorism. In both fields, ex-
perimental work, in a scientific sense, has been tentative, feeling
its way toward clearer knowledge. One must distinguish between
the experimental value of these theories and their meaning as
systems of thought* We are dealing with them here as systems.
It is in this form that they enter the general consciousness and
affect man's conception of his own will and of the social necessity
with which his will is in conflict.

Behaviorism and psychoanalysis offer a specialized and one-sided
interpretation of the relationship between man and his environment.
In one case, reflexes occupy the whole stage; in the other case,
memory-records are placed in a spotlight. But both systems are
similar in important respects : ( I ) they are anti-intellectual ; reason
might conceivably sort out the reflexes or memory-records (al-
though it is hard to see how this jibes with the fundamentals of

* This is true in many fields of modern speculation. For example, one
must distinguish between Bertrand Russell as a mathematician and Ber-
trand Russell as a philosopher.

96 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

either scheme), but the process is emotional or mechanical, and
reason, if it enters into the system at all, enters as a wily but
unimpressive servant of emotions or reflexes; (2) both systems
place a Chinese wall between man and the totality of his environ-
ment; the wall can be scaled or broken through; but meanwhile
there can be no satisfactory contact betAveen man and the realities
which may lie on the other side of the wall, because his "learned
behavior" or his inhibitions and complexes make his will powerless ;
since "learned behavior" or inhibitions and complexes are obviously
conditioned by the total environment, the only way in which
anything can happen to these elements is by lively inter-action
between them and the environment. But the terms of both psycho-
analysis and behaviorism prohibit this inter-action. In apparently
attempting to create an adjustment with the environment, these
sj^stems prevent any successful conflict with it. (3) Both systems
use what William James called "the principle of pure experience"
as "a methodical postulate." Conclusions are based on a certain
grouping of observed experiences (dreams or responses to stimuli)
and not on any general examination of causation. For example,
psychoanalj'^sis examines the mental life of man at a certain period
in a certain environment by studying the man's "world of pure
experience" at this point ; historical or social causation is considered
only as it achieves a fleeting contact with this point of experience ;
a wider system of causation is ruled out because it would introduce
factors outside the immediate sense-data. This seems strange in a
theory based on the analysis of subconscious traces of personal and
racial history. But Freud specifically tells us that these traces are
unhistorical: "We have found by experience that unconscious
mental processes are in themselves 'timeless ' They are not ar-
ranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor can the
idea of time be applied to them." * The subconscious resembles
Bergson's realm of "pure duration."

One point stands out sharply in this discussion: consciousness
and will are linked together. To undervalue rational consciousness
means to undermine the will. Whatever consciousness m-ay or may
not be, it functions as the point of contact between man and his
environment. The brain is matter organized in a certain manner.
Man is a part of reality, and continually acts and is acted upon
by the total reality of which he is a part. It needs no metaphysics
to explain this real relationship, nor to lend dignity to man's rok
as a conscious entitv, Man's success in changing and controlling hi?

* Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Conscious Will and Social Necessity 97

world is sufficient evidence of his capacity. In this sense, such terms
as consciousness, or soul, or ego, are both proper and useful.

In conventional psychology, a distinction is often made between
three aspects of will : conation, will and volition. Conation is the
broadest term, covering the theoretical element from which the
will is supposed to originate, such as "the will to live." Will, in
the narrower sense, is the combination of intellectual and emotional
elements which bring the desire to act to the level of consciousness.
Volition describes the im.mediate impulse which initiates bodily
activity.

The distinction is not entirely satisfactory; but it may serve to
illustrate what is meant by will in the dramatic sense. Conscious
will, as exercised in dramatic conflict, is to be distinguished from
conation or simple volition. Conation (at least as it is at present
understood) is more metaphysical than scientific. The immediate
impulse is a matter of the connection between the brain and the
nervous system. But the dramatist is concerned with the emotional
and mental organization of which the activity is the end-state.
This supplies the social and psychological logic which gives the
drama meaning. Where the organization of the conscious will is
not dramatized, the action is merely action-at-any-price, the writh-
ing and twitching and jumping and bowing of dummy figures.

As the link with reality, the conscious will performs a double
function : the consciousness receives impressions from reality, and
the will reacts to these impressions. Every action contains these
two functions: man's consciousness (including both emotion and
intellect) forms a picture of reality; his will works in accordance
with this picture. Therefore his relationship to reality depends on
the accuracy of his conscious impression and the strength of his
will. Both these factors are variable, just as there is a continuous
variation in the strength and quality of the forces with which the
individual is in contact. No one would be so rash as to suggest
that men ever achieve anything approaching full knowledge of the
reality in which they move ; the possible web of cause and effect is
as wide as the world and as long as history. Every action is a part
of this web of cause and effect; the action can have no separate
meaning outside of reality; its meaning depends on the accuracy
of the picture of reality which motivated the action, and on the
mtensity of the effort exerted.

At this point the playwright's conscious will must also be con-
sidered; his emotional and intellectual picture of reality, the judg-
ments and aims which correspond to this picture, the intensity
of his will in seeking the realization of these aims, are the deter-

98 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

minants in the creative process. The dramatist is no more able to
draw a final picture of reality than are the characters in his play.
The total environment which surrounds the characters is not as
wide as the world or as long as history; it is exactly as wide and
as long as the playwright's conscious will can make it. Even this
is only an approximation of the whole process: the conscious wills
of all those who take collective part in the production of a play
modify the dramatic content; then the conscious will of the audi-
ence comes into the process, further changing the content, applying
its own judgment of reality and its own will to accept or reject
the whole result.

We cannot undertake to explore this labyrinth of difficulties;
we are dealing here with the playwright's task in selecting and
developing his material. His material is drawn from the world he
lives in. He attempts to present this world in action. The play is a
series of actions, which the playwright attempts to unite in a single
organic action. These actions grow out of the relationship between
individuals and their environment — in other words, the relationship
between conscious will and social necessity. The playwright's ex-
perience in conflict with his own environment determines his way
of thinking; his experience and his thought are associated with
the group-experience and group-thought of his class and time.
Changes in the social structure produce changed conceptions of will
and necessity. These are changes in the basic thought-pattern by
which men seek to explain and justify their adjustment to their
environment. These patterns constitute the playwright's dramatic
logic, his means of explaining and justifying the lives of his
characters.

CHAPTER II

DUALISM OF MODERN THOUGHT

THE movements of thought discussed in the foregoing chapter are
a continuation of the old dualism of mind and matter. So far, we
have summed up this dualism in terms of behaviorism and psycho-
analysis : one system conceives of human conduct in terms of
mechanical necessity ; the other system depends on subconscious and
psychic determinants. It has been pointed out that both systems
are based on similar postulates. But it is also evident that they

Dualism of Modern Thought 99

represent divergent tendencies; many thinkers regard this contra-
diction as the eternally unsolvable problem of philosophy. The
problem appears throughout the course of European thought — but
the form in which the issue is presented changes radically with
every change in the structure of society. In the middle ages, the
dualism of mind and matter was regarded serenely as fixed and
irrevocable. The destruction of feudalism destroyed this conception.
In the early days of the Renaissance, the expansion of new social
and economic forces caused the problem to be temporarily forgotten.
In the period of Shakespeare and Bacon, the dualism of body and
spirit played very little part either in scientific or philosophic
thought. The problem reappears — in its modern dress — in the work
of Descartes in the middle of the seventeenth century. Its reap-
pearance coincided with the growth of new class alignments which
were to cause serious dislocations in the existing social order. Poets
and philosophers have presented this dualism in the guise of a
struggle between man and the universe. But the real conflict has
been between man's aspirations and the necessities of his environ-
ment. The dualism of mind and matter, and the accompanying
literary dualism of romanticism and realism, has reflected this
conflict.

The modern form of this dualism must therefore be examined,
not only in psychological terms, but in its broadest social meaning.

The modes of thought with which we are dealing are those of
the urban rniddle class. This class, more than any other group in
modern society, combines reliance on immediate sensation with
spiritual aspirations. Commercial and moral standards, although
they vary widely for individuals, are low for the group. But money
provides leisure-time in which to cultivate esthetic other-worldli-
ness. A double system of ideas is therefore a natural development
simply as a matter of convenience. Practical, or pragmatic, thought
provides a partial adjustment to the needs of the everyday world,
including business and personal morality. Spiritual esthetic thought
offers (or seems to offer) a means of escape from the sterility of
the environment. These systems of thought are contradictory — but
when we examine them, not as logical abstractions, but as expres-
sions of the needs of human beings, we find that both systems are
necessary in order to live at all under the given conditions, and
that their inter-dependence is complete. The trend toward mechan-
ical materialism is continually balanced by the trend toward escape-
at-any-price from the very conditions which are the product of
narrow materialism. When this attempted escape is thwarted, when
freedom of the will cannot be achieved under the specific circum-

lOO Theory and Technique of Playwriting

stances, an unreal escape must be invented. Mysticism, in one of its
many manifestations, provides such a means.

We find the root of twentieth century dualism in William James.
He presents the contradiction in a form which especially corre-
sponds to the mental habits created by the needs and pressures of
modern civilization. James' belief in reality as "created temporarily
day by day" necessarily led him to imagine a deeper reality "not
fully experienced yet." In The Varieties of Religious Experience,
he described mystic experience as a sensation of unity: "It is as
if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict
make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity."
Since "contradictoriness and conflict" are aspects of reality, it is
evident that mystic experience transcends reality. Since it solves
"our difficulties and troubles," the sense of unity also conveys a
sense of security, a sense of balance between ourselves and our
environment, which is not offered by empirical experience. This
explains the double movement of modern thought toward a nar-
rower materialism and toward a more remote spiritualism ; as men
attempt to adjust themselves pragmatically to an increasingly
chaotic environment, they inevitably seek refuge in a mysticism
which is increasingly emotional and fatalistic.

It may be objected that I am here using mysticism in a vague
sense. James warns against employing the term as one "of mere
reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and
vast and sentimental, and without a basis in either fact or logic." *

The Baldwin Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology t gives a
similar warning: "M^'^sticism is sometimes used, by writers of an
empirical or positivistic bias, as a dislogistic term or opprobrious
epithet." This authority defines mysticism as "those forms of
speculative and religious thought which profess to attain an imme-
diate apprehension of the divine essence, or the ultimate ground of
existence." From the same source, we learn that "thinkers like
Novalis, Carlyle and Emerson, whose philosophic tenets are reached
by vivid insight rather than by 'the labour of the notion,' often
exhibit a mystical tendency." Writing in the twelfth century, Hugo
of St. Victor said : "Logic, mathematics, physics teach some truth,
yet do not reach that truth wherein is the soul's safety, without
which whatever is is vain." :j:

It is precisely in this sense that mysticism may be described as a
dominant trend of modern thought. Mysticism is characterized by

* Varieties of P^eligious Experience.

t New York, 1905.

% Quoted in H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, v. 2 (London, 1927).

Dualism of Modern Thought lOl

the immediacy of apprehension, by the dependence on vivid insight
rather than on logic, and by the finality of the truth so apprehended.
Mystical tendencies need not be confused with a system of thought
based exclusively on "immediate apprehension" of truth — no such
system could exist or be imagined, because it would deny the basic
laws of thought. Mystical tendencies may be found in many periods
and in many kinds of speculation. These tendencies must be ex-
amined critically in order to determine their living value under
specific conditions. Twentieth century mysticism is not to be re-
proached because it is "vague and vast and sentimental." On the
contrary, its apparent vagueness and vastness must be brushed aside
in order to understand its social meaning.

Ibsen's genius revealed the social groundwork of modern mysti-
cism. He showed how it originated from earlier religious and
philosophic speculations (in Brand and Peer Gynt), how it is
molded by social necessity (in the plays of the middle period), and
how it reappears in a new form as an emotional compulsion (in
When We Dead Awaken). In other words, Ibsen began with
metaphysics ; then he realized that the conflict between the real and
the ideal must be fought in the social arena. Appalled by the gap
between man's will and the world he lives in, unable to find a
rational solution and unable to find comfort in the doctrines of
earlier philosophy or religion, Ibsen was forced to create a solution
to meet his need. Since the need grew out of his psychic confusion,
the mysticism which he created was the image of his own mental
state.

The dominant ideas of the twentieth century show a repetition
and acceleration of this process. The instability of the social order
makes a successful escape impossible; it is only in periods of com-
parative calm that men can find genuine satisfaction in the con-
templation of eternity. Medieval mysticism reflected the security
and wealth of monastic life in the middle ages. Today what is
required is not reflection, but immediate emotional relief from an
intolerable situation. The denial of reality is not sufficient — some-
thing must be substituted for reality. The substitution naturally
takes the form of wish-fulfillment, a dream world in which emotion
is raised to the nth power and achieves its own liberation. But the
emotions which fill this dream world are the emotions which
constitute the middle-class man's real experience: sexual desire,
the feeling of personal and racial superiority, the need for per-
manent property relationships, the sense of the necessity (and there-
fore the holiness) of pain and suffering. This is the truth which
is attained by the "immediate apprehension" of the mystic. "Imme-

I02 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

diate apprehension" simply means that the emotions are not tested
by the logic of reality.

In its extreme form, this process is pathological. Psychic dis-
orders spring from a maladjustment to reality; the maladjustment
is accentuated when the patient tries to make his misconception
work in terms of the real world. The mystic's escape from reality
brings him right back to reality in terms of a distorted social
philosophy. Historically, this tendency developed throughout the
nineteenth century. In the eighteen-eighties, Nietzsche spoke of the
world as the dream of "a suffering and tortured God." Nietzsche's
view of life as "an immense physiological process" and his emphasis
on pure emotion, cover ground with which we are already familiar :
"It is true we love life ; not because we are wont to live, but be-
cause we are wont to love." But Nietzsche went further than this :
he attempted to apply the idea of pure emotion to the real problems
of the society in which he lived; he showed that this meant the
destruction of ethics and all standards of value — except force. The
future would belong to "exceptional men of the most dangerous
and attractive qualities." Whatever these qualities might be, they
would require neither reason nor self-control: "Considered phy-
siologically, moreover, science rests on the same basis as does the
ascetic idea; a certain impoverishment of life is the presupposition
of the latter as of the former — add, frigidity of the emotions,
slackening of the tempo, the substitution of dialectic for instinct.
. . . Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned man
comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often
of sunset, of decay." '* This is the complete reversal of the struggle
for learning, the growth of reasoning, which has guided and in-
spired the development of civilization. Machiavelli's man of guile
and force becomes the Nietzschean superman, who is an emotional
fool.

Modern mysticism could not go beyond this : it simply remained
to elaborate the social implications of the idea in ominously prac-
tical terms. This has been accomplished by Oswald Spengler whose
monumental work. The Decline of the Westj\ purports to show
"the forms and movements of the world in their depth and final
significance." He correctly describes contemporary middle class
society as "Faustian civilization." He echoes the cliches of meta-
physics: "The bright imaginative Waking-Being submerges itself
in the silent service of Being." He reminds us of Bergson when he

* The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by O. Levy
(New York, 1911-34).
t Translation by Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, 1932).

Dualism of Modern Thought 103

says that "Time triumphs over Space." But the essence of Spengler
lies in the way in which he presents the old conflict between the
real and the ideal; he describes it as "the conflict between money
and blood." This is a new version of the contradiction between
pragmatism and emotional mysticism. "Money is overthrown and
abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic onflow
in microcosmic form." This, according to Spengler, is "the meta-
physic and mysticism which is taking the place of rationalism to-
day." It is a mysticism of blood, of force, of callous fatalism:
"Masses are trampled on in the conflicts of conquerors who contend
for the power and the spoil of this world, but the survivors fill up
the gaps with a primitive fertility and suffer on. . . ." "It is a drama
noble in its aimlessness, noble and aimless as the course of the
stars." He says that "the very elite of the intellect that is now
concerned with the machine comes to be overpowered by a growing
sense of its Satanism (it is the step from Roger Bacon to Bernard
of Clairvaux)."

Spengler's work is striking because of the extreme brutality with
which he states his case. No such brutal (and obviously political)
formulation is accepted by the majority of modern thinkers. Yet
the direction is the same; the drama of man's fate is aimless — as
long as very definite aims are assured by the "primitive fertility"
of the masses. "For what are we, my brother?" asks Thomas
Wolfe, "We are the phantom flare of grieved desire, the ghostling
and phosphoric flickers of immortal time, a brevity of days haunted
by the eternity of the earth . . . the strange dark burden of our heart
and spirit." *

In Wolfe's novels, the leading characters are exceptional people,
whose emotions and sensitivities are above those of the average
person. Being haunted by the "brevity of days," they think and act
pragmatically, dominated by their immediate impulse. They make
no attempt to justify themselves rationally, but explain their con-
duct in terms of eternity. They follow the "phantom flare of
grieved desire" because they live for the moment and have no
rational purpose in life. But this is never admitted ; neurotic con-
duct due to specific social conditions is explained as a "strange dark
burden." t

* Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel (New York, 1930).

t It must be emphatically pointed out that Wolfe is not here being
accused of agreement with Spengler or with the brutalities of fascism.
Wolfe's emphasis on "immortal time" and "the eternity of the earth"
shows his intense desire to avoid social issues, his unwillingness to accept
the cruelty and decadence of his environment. But this mode of thought
has social origins and social implications which must be faced.

I04 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Thus ideas which appear "vague and vast" turn out to serve a
very useful purpose — in justifying irrational, brutal or impulsive
conduct. The conception of impulse as the basis of human behavior
is elaborately intellectualized in the philosophy of Pareto. He
analyzes sociology as the "undulations in the various elements con-
stituting social phenomena." The pattern of these undulations is
based on sentiments vi^hich take the form of six residues. Pareto's
residues are preconceived categories similar to the categorical im-
peratives devised by Kant. But Kant's imperatives were forms of
"pure reason." Pareto's residues turn out to be forms of non-logical
conduct. In short they are nothing more nor less than an attempt
to systematize the "phantom flare of grieved desire" in the modern
man's "brevity of days." This brings Pareto, by a circuitous route,
to the point reached by Spengler: the sum-total of non-logical
conduct is a drama of blood and force, sublime, timeless — and
financed by international bankers.

Patterns of ideas are designed to meet definite needs. The laws
of thought are so rational that the mind is forced to invent a double
pattern in order to conceal and justify maladjustments which would
otherwise appear crudely illogical. The most amazing thing about
the human mind is that it simply cannot tolerate lack of logic*
Whenever a method of reasoning is inadequate, men devise what
they call a primary law to cover the inconsistency. Today a large
section of society depends on a pragmatic method of thinking.f
This forces the mind to turn to mysticism for a more complete
explanation. As soon as the mystic explanation is accepted, the laws
of thought drive the mind to apply this explanation, to make it
work — which brings us right back to pragmatism again.

The special character of pragmatism as a method is its acceptance
of the immediate perception of contradictions as absolute. The
dialectic method follows the movement of contradictions in their
change and growth. The movement is continuous, and results from
the inter-action of causes and effects which can be traced and
understood. To the pragmatist, no system of causation can have

* This is not as amazing as it seems, because our conception o£ logic is
based on the way we think.

t In The History of European Philosophy, Walter T. Marvin says of
pragmatism that "it has made its presence felt in almost every depart-
ment of western intellectual life. In art and literature it makes its
presence evident in a rebellion against any fixed principles such as
formalism and in the general artistic doctrine that the individual should
throw off the authority of tradition and frankly put in the place of this

authority his own likes and dislikes Other places in which pragmatism

is nowadays especially noticeable are in moral theory, jurisprudence,
politics and educational theory."

Dualism of Modern Thought 105

more than an immediate perceptual value. From this point of view,
Pareto is right in saying that "non-logical conduct" must be ac-
cepted at its face value ; if we ignore a wider system of causation,
our perception of conduct reveals only its non-logical aspect ; it
looks non-logical. But we also perceive that "non-logical conduct"
always has two sides to it; it always represents a contradiction.
Since the pragmatist fails to investigate the prior conditions which
led to this contradiction, or the changes which will bring about a
solution, he must accept the contradiction at its face value ; he must
make himself as comfortable as he can on the horns of a perpetual
dilemma.

The pragmatic tendency in contemporary liberalism is responsible
for the charge that liberals vacillate and straddle on all issues.
This is by no means true of the great tradition of liberalism, nor
is it altogether true of its more distinguished modern representa-
tives. John Dewey may be cited as an example of the influence
of pragmatic methods on modern liberalism. Dewey's principle
of sensationalism (a philosophy based on the validity of the imme-
diate sense-data) descends directly from the radical empiricism of
William James. Dewey courageously faces what he calls "the con-
fusion of a civilization divided against itself." He analyzes this
conflict in terms of the immediate balance of forces ; he tries to
construct a solution out of the elements as he perceives them at a
given moment of time ; he discusses "the problem of constructing
a new individuality consonant with the objective conditions under
which we live." *

But he can reach no conclusion, because he sees individuality as
consisting of certain elements, and objective conditions as consisting
of certain other elements — which constitute our immediate experi-
ence. But the relationship of these elements changes before Dewey
can finish writing a book about them. He then proceeds to analyze
them again in terms of immediate experience. But his method gives
him no adequate means of analyzing the wider system of causation
which governs these changes.

The acceptance of opposites as final can be found in all depart-
ments of contemporary thought. The ideas which have here been
traced in their philosophic form, can also be traced in scientific
thought, or in business and advertising, or on the editorial pages of
American newspapers. For example, yellow journalism echoes the
philosophy of Spengler; liberal journalism adheres strictly to prag-
matism. Editorials are devoted to formulating accepted contradic-
tions : on the one hand, democracy is a perfect form of government ;

•John Dewey, Individualism Old and Neiv (New York, 1930).

I06 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

on the other hand, democracy cannot be expected to work; on the
one hand, war is destructive ; on the other hand, war is inevitable ;
on the one hand, all men are created free and equal ; on the other
hand, certain races are manifestly inferior ; on the one hand, money
destroys spiritual values; on the other hand, money-success is the
only reliable test of character.

The dual system of ideas, of which pragmatism and mysticism
constitute as it were the positive and negative poles, expresses a
basic contradiction which includes a complex system of major and
minor contradictions throughout the social structure. The modern
man uses this double system in order to achieve a partial adjustment
to the world in which he lives ; his pragmatic experience continually
upsets his adjustment; but mj'^sticism gives him the illusion of
permanence.

It would be absurd to assume that the modern man simply accepts
this mode of thought in a fixed form. Thought is dynamic; it ex-
presses the continually changing balance of forces between man
and his environment.

This is important in considering the theatre. The drama reflects
the pattern of contemporary ideas. But the playwright does not
conform to this pattern automatically; the pattern is fluid, and the
playwright's use of it is fluid. To conceive of the acceptance of
ideas as static or final would be an example of the absolutism we
have been discussing. A system of ideas is not a "strange dark
burden," which men carry against their will. The playwright, like
any other human being, fights to adjust himself to his environment.
His scheme of thought is the weapon he uses in this fight. He
cannot change his ideas as he would change a suit of clothes. But
insofar as his ideas prove unsatisfactory in the course of the
struggle, he endeavors to modify or discard them. The conflict is
also within himself ; he is trying to find ideas that work, to achieve
a more realistic adjustment to the world he lives in.

A play embodies this process. If the playwright's scheme of
thought is irrational, it distorts the laws of the drama, and inhibits
his will to create meaningful action. He must either conceal this
weakness by obscurantism or pretense; or he must overcome it by
the slow labor of thought. This conflict proceeds in the mind of
the playwright and in the world of the theatre. It leads to a new
balance of forces, and a new creative direction.

George Bernard Shaw 107

CHAPTER III

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

SHAW is both the most eminent critic and the most important
English-speaking dramatist of the period following Ibsen. A num-
ber of his finest plays (including Candida, The Devil's Disciple
and Mrs. Warren s Profession) were written in the last decade
of the nineteenth century. His most serious critical work also be-
longs to this period. It is often said that Shaw uses the drama
merely as "a means to an end." The end to which Shaw dedicates
the drama is the end to which Ibsen proclaimed his allegiance, and
to which all great drama has invariably been dedicated — to see
reality "free and awake." Shaw understood the greatness of Ibsen's
plays ; he saw that dramatic conflict is necessarily social conflict ;
he realized that if the theatre of his time were to live and grow,
it must deal uncompromisingly with the struggle between man's
conscious will and his environment. This was contrary to the
popular and critical opinion of the nineties, which associated art
with esthetic moods and emotions. Writing in 1902, Shaw ex-
plained that he was aiming at deeper and more fundamental emo-
tional values: "The reintroduction of problem, with its remorseless
logic and iron framework of fact, inevitably produces at first an
overwhelming impression of coldness and inhuman rationalism. But
this will soon pass away ... it will be seen that only in the problem
play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up
of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the
conflict between Man's will and his environment." * It follows
that it is the "resistance of fact and law to human feeling which
creates drama. It is the deux ex machina who, by suspending that
resistance, makes the fall of the curtain an immediate necessity,
since drama ends exactly where resistance ends." f

These passages illustrate Shaw's clarity as a critic. Considered
in the light of his later life and work, his statement of the law of
conflict becomes a tragic admission of his own failure. The myth
has been widely circulated that Shaw's preoccupation with social
problems has caused him to neglect the problems of dramatic art.

* Shaw, Apology from Mrs. Warren's Profession (New York, 1905).
t Ibid.

io8 Theory and Technique of Playwritinq

This is consoling to neo-romantic critics ; but if we examine Shaw's
plays, we find that his difficulty lies in his inability to achieve a
rational social philosophy. Unable to face or solve the contradic-
tions in his own mind, he has been unable to dramatize the "re-
morseless logic and iron framework of fact" which he described as
the conditions of dramatic conflict.

In his earliest, and most creative, period, the influence of Ibsen is
most pronounced. Shaw depicted the maladjustments of English
middle-class life in terms which were borrowed from Ibsen's social
dramas. But even in these plays, Shaw's limitations are manifest.
Ibsen's remorseless logic shows the enormous power and complexity
of the social structure. Shaw's tendency is to look for an easy
solution, to suggest that immediate reforms can be accomplished
through man's inherent honesty. In Widowers' Houses (1892) and
in Mrs. Warrens Profession (1898), we are shown the social
forces which underlie specific evils; but we are reassured by the
suggestion that these forces can be controlled as soon as men are
aroused to combat the evil. The problem is not so much the release
of the will, as simply the exercise of the will in the proper direction.

Shaw's position is clearly shown in his critical discussions of
Ibsen. "The Quintessence of Ibsenism," according to Shaw, is "that
conduct must justify itself by its effect upon happiness and not by
conformity to any rule or ideal ; and since happiness consists in the
fulfillment of the will, which is constantly growing, and cannot be
fulfilled today under the conditions which secured it yesterday,
he [Ibsen] claims afresh the old Protestant right of private judg-
ment in questions of conduct." * This passage throws more light on
Shaw's social philosophy than on Ibsen's. Ibsen exposed the false-
ness of the ideals which ruled the society of his age; he looked
desperately for a solution which would permit the fulfillment of the
will. But only in Ibsen's earliest plays (particularly in Brand) do
we find the idea that the exercise of the will is its own justification.
In Peer Gyntj he went forward to the realization that to be oneself
is insufficient. Shaw's statement that "happiness consists in the
fulfillment of the will" reminds us of Peer Gynt's fevered search
for happiness in terms of his own ego; it suggests that the will is
not a means, but an end. The root of Shaw's philosophy lies in the
assertion of "the old Protestant right of private judgment in ques-
tions of conduct." The retrospective phrasing of this thought, "the
old Protestant right," is by no means accidental ; the essence of the
thought is retrospective ; it goes back to the early days of the bour-
geois revolution, when the attainment of middle class freedom was

* Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (New York, 1913).

George Bernard Shaw 109

regarded as an absolute conquest, guaranteeing the fulfillment of
the unique soul. Shaw demands, as Shelley demanded at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, that this guarantee be made good
without further delay. He assumes that all that is needed is the
destruction of false moral values. Ibsen also began with this
assumption ; but he went beyond it. Shaw accepts the assumption
as final.

This means the substitution of good will for free will. In Ibsen's
social plays, the essence of the tragedy lies in the fact that good
will is not enough, and that "private judgment in questions of
conduct" cannot function apart from social determinants. Hedda
Gabler and Rebecca West are women of strong will, who endeavor
as best they can to exercise their "right of private judgment." This
leads them to inevitable disaster. Shaw says of Hedda that "she is a
pure sceptic, a typical nineteenth century figure," and that she "has
no ideals at all." How can this be reconciled with Hedda's neurotic
hatred of the "ludicrous and mean," her seeking after "spontaneous
beauty," her idealizing "a deed of deliberate courage"? Shaw mis-
understands Hedda because he is chiefly impressed by her per-
sonality, and only slightly concerned with the "iron framework of
fact" which surrounds her. He regards her (at least potentially,
insofar as she wishes to be so) as a free luoinan; he mistakes what
Ibsen himself called "want of an object in life" for "pure scepti-
cism." This indicates an important difference in dramatic method :
want of an object in life is a dramatic problem which goes to the
root of the relationship between man and his environment; the
conscious will must face the real world, must find an object in life
or die. On the other hand, pure scepticism is an abstract quality
of the mind which has no meaning until it is brought into conflict
with the real world.

In Candida (1895), Shaw gives us the first of his remarkable
portraits of women. Ibsen's women (as Ibsen tells us in his notes)
are "prevented from following their inclinations, deprived of their
inheritance, embittered in temper." Candida, like all of Shaw's
women, is genuinely free; not only is she able to follow her in-
clinations, but she has an instinctive rightness of judgment and
emotion which transcends the problems with which she is faced.
Forced to choose between two men, Candida turns to her husband
because he is the man who needs her most. It is significant that her
choice, although it may be assumed that it is not based on "con-
formity to any rule or ideal," is strictly conventional.

In Man and Superman (1903), Ann Whitefield is instinctively
right in her biological urge toward the man of her choice; there

no Theory and Technique of Playwriting

IS no insurmountable obstacle between her will and the world in
which she lives. She is not, like Hilda in The Master Builder, a
"bird of prey," because she is free to conquer circumstance and
fulfill her desires within the framework of society.

The vitality of Shaw's early work springs from his early insist-
ence on the theatre's historic function — the presentation of man's
struggle against the "fact and law" of his environment. His em-
phasis on social factors did not lead him to ignore dramatic laws.
On the contrary, his critical writings in the eighteen-nineties are
rich in detailed technical observation. He held no brief for an
abstract theatre ; he knew that dramatic conflict must be emotional
and alive. In 1898, he wrote of the crude melodramas of the
period: "All the same these bushwhacking melodramatists have im-
agination, appetite and heat of blood ; and these qualities, suddenly
asserting themselves in our exhausted theatre, produce the effect
of a stiff tumbler of punch after the fiftieth watering of a pot of
tea."* This observation may be applied with equal truth to the
dexterous and rowdy dramas of the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-
thirties — Broadway^ Chicago, The Front Page, and many others.

Shaw said of James M. Barrie: "He has apparently no eye for
human character ; but he has a keen sense of human qualities. . . . He
cheerfully assumes, as the public wishes him to assume, that one
endearing quality implies all endearing qualities, and one repulsive
quality all repulsive qualities." t This exposes the core of Barrie's
weakness as a dramatist. It also exposes the basic weakness in the
technique of characterization in the modern theatre. Character can
only be understood in terms of an active relationship between the
individual and the world in which he moves. As soon as character
is detached from environment, it becomes a quality or group of
qualities which are assumed to imply a series of other qualities.

This is the essential defect in Shaw's work. He understood
Barrie's weakness, but he failed to realize that he himself dealt
only in qualities.

Shaw's treatment of character is based on his belief that the best
qualities of human nature must, in the long run, triumph over the
environment. In philosophic parlance, the best qualities of human
nature correspond to Kant's ethical imperatives, or Hegel's pre-
existent categories. We have observed that both these philosophers
derived their conception of absolute truth from contemporary social
and ethical values. Shaw's best qualities of human nature, which
he accepts as imperative, are the qualities of the English upper

* Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays (New York, 1907).
t Ibid.

George Bernard Shaw 1 1 1

middle class. He endeavors to show us these qualities in conflict
with the environment. But these qualities have been made by the
environment ; a change in the environment can only be accomplished
in conjunction with a change in accepted standards of conduct.
Here Shaw faces a dilemma : the essential faith of the English upper
middle class is faith in its ability to control the environment, and
in the ultimate perfectibility of human nature in terms of upper
middle-class values. Shaw shares this faith; at the same time, he
sees that the environment is hopelessly decadent. Shaw has re-
peatedly attacked the stupidities of the English social system; he
has bitingly satirized the men and women who tolerate these
stupidities. But his most revolutionary demand has been that these
people be true to themselves, that they return to the ethical impera-
tives which they themselves have invented.

This accounts for the progressive weakening of dramatic con-
flict in Shaw's later plays, for the increasing lack of "imagina-
tion, appetite and heat of blood." Shaw assumes that his characters
can change their environment if their conscious will is sufficiently
aroused. He therefore shows them planning and discussing, ex-
changing opinions about possible changes which do not happen.
This makes a technique of pure talk — and the consequent nega-
tion of action — inevitable. There is not a grain of truth in the
idea that the long conversations in Shaw's plays are designed to
elucidate complex ideas. What the talk actually accomplishes is to
blur very simple ideas. The characters talk at random in order to
conceal their inability to talk or act with definite purpose. The
juxtaposition of contradictory ideas in Shaw's essays and plays
springs from the contradiction in his own position: he attacks
conventions and demands that people be more conventional; he
attacks ideals and indulges in flights of pure idealism.

In Shaw's later plays, the gap between character and reality
widens. The more diffuse technique shows an increasing lack of
precision in social thought. At the same time, the author becomes
less interested in dramatic thefory : the prefaces become increasingly
concerned with generalities. The customary dualism of the modern
mind becomes more pronounced. Non-logical conduct is em-
phasized; the characters move according to whim; immediate im-
pulse takes the place of logic. At the same time, a final solution
which transcends logic is suggested ; the individual will must be
merged in the will-to-live, the life-force.

Peer Gynt asked the riddle of the sphinx, and was answered
by an insane German professor. In Caesar and Cleopatra (1899),
Shaw's Caesar faces the sphinx and discovers the inscrutable

112 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

guile of the child-woman, Cleopatra. The first period of Shaw's
development ends with Man and Superman in 1903. His portraits
of women show his changing point of view. Candida's grave sim-
plicity is intuitive; but it also has intellectual scope. Cleopatra is
depicted as a child; but Shaw's treatment of the character as
having universal feminine qualities of childishness and guile is ex-
tremely significant. In Man and Superman, we see the results
of this tendency: Ann Whitefield thinks physiologically; her pur-
suit of Jack Tanner is dictated by her "blood and nerves."

In Man and Superman, we also find the beginning of technical
disintegration. Shaw says that the third act of this play, "how-
ever fantastic its legendary framework may appear, is a careful
attempt to write a new book of Genesis for the Bible of the
Evolutionists." * He also describes this act as a discussion of "the
merits of the heavenly and hellish states, and the future of the
world. The discussion lasts more than an hour, as the parties, with
eternity before them, are in no hurry." f Shaw's interest in the
soul leads him to neglect the fundamentals of dramatic conflict.

Getting Married (1908) is a pragmatic discussion of the prac-
tical problems of marriage ; the technique is pure conversation,
without a trace of conflict between the individuals and their en-
vironment. The plays of the next few years are more conventional
in form: Fanny's First Play, Androcles and the Lion, Pygmalion,
Great Catherine. The social content is also more conventional,
and indicates acceptance of the contemporary world of experience.
The dramatic conflict is definite, but lacks depth.

The world war shattered Shaw's illusions, forced him to recon-
sider the principles of hum^an conduct which he had taken for
granted, and brought him new inspiration. In Heartbreak House
(1919) he confesses the bankruptcy of his world, and faces the
"iron framework of fact" with bitter courage. But in Back to
Methuselah (1921), he regresses to an exact repetition of the
point of view presented in Man and Superman (in the discursive
discussion of the philosophy of evolution in the third act) eighteen
years earlier: the whole course of history is covered, not as a con-
flict between man's will and the iron necessities of his environ-
ment, but as a gradual unfolding of the human spirit; evolution
is an instinctive process; the life-force moves toward a future in
which action and accomplishment are no longer necessary; the
future, as Shaw sees it, fulfills Schopenhauer's idea of happiness

* Quoted by Clark in A Study of the Modern Drama.

t From a printed note written by Shaw, and quoted by Clark, ibid.

George Bernard Shaw 1 13

m the denial of the will, the passive contemplation of truth and
beauty.*

In Saint Joan (1923), the child-woman is guileless, divinely
inspired, defying the pragmatic reasoning of men who trust
worldly experience. In this play, the "old Protestant right of pri-
vate judgment" is completely identified with the purity and depth
of Joan's instinct. Like Peer Gynt, Shaw returns to the woman-
symbol.

From this point, the break with reality is inevitably accelerated,
and the technical disintegration is also rapid. In Too True To Be
Good and The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, the structure
of the action is entirely pragmatic; the characters follow their
immediate whim, and any system of causation outside the momen-
tary impulse is disregarded. In these plays, Shaw for the first
time accepts mysticism, not in the form of an evolutionary life-
force, but as an immediate irrational means of salvation. The
negation of the will is no longer a matter of future development ;
man's will is inoperative here and now; man cannot be saved by
his own efforts, because his efforts are aimless ; even his instinct
is no longer to be trusted ; he is literally a simpleton lost in the
unexpected isles ; his only hope lies in childlike faith, in an emo-
tional denial of reality.

The extreme confusion of Shaw's final plays is by no means
characteristic of the modern theatre. But the basic tendencies which
have led to this confusion are in evidence in the great majority
of contemporary plays. Many of the lessons which the modern
playwright has learned from Ibsen have been learned by way of
Shaw. The modern dramatist admires Ibsen's concentrated tech-
nique, his social analysis, his method of characterization. But he
transforms these elements much as Shaw transformed them : the
technique is diluted, events are watered down so as to include a
variety of generalized comment; at the same time, abstract social
awareness is substituted for specific social meaning. In place of
the presentation of social cause and effect in action, we have a
running commentary covering social and ethical observations which
are detached from the events. In place of Ibsen's analysis of the
conscious will, we have the presentation of character in terms of
qualities.

* Shaw's conception of social change is based on the theories of Fabian
socialism, which he was largely instrumental in elaborating. The im-
mediate source of these theories may be found in the opinions of Samuel
Butler and Sidney Webb, which in turn are derived to a considerable
extent from Lamarck.

114 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

CHAPTER IV

CRITICAL AND TECHNICAL
TRENDS

BEFORE proceeding to a more detailed study of the theatre
today, it may be well to review the trend of dramatic theory.
The critical thought of the twentieth century has produced nothing
which can compare with the vigor and precision of Shaw's critical
writing in the eighteen-nineties. In general, modern criticism is
based on the theory that the drama deals with qualities of charac-
ter. These qualities have final value, and are the only moving
force in dramatic conflict. The environment is the arena in which
these qualities are displayed. A man is a bundle of characteristics,
which are intuitive rather than rational. The playwright's skill is
also intuitive, and gives him an intuitive insight into the qualities
of human nature. Man's deepest and most spiritual values are
those which most completely transcend the environment. The
great artist shows us men with timeless emotions.

This theory appears in various forms throughout contemporary
critical thought — and has also been formulated in technical meth-
ods and systems. Its most creative development is to be found in
the method of Constantin Stanislavski. V. Zakhava, Director of
the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, says that "Stanislavski's
theatre concentrated all its intention and art upon the inner life
of the acting characters, upon the psychologic, subjective, side of
their behavior. The soul of the hero, his inner world, his psyche,
his 'inner experiences,' his 'spiritual essence' — this is what absorbed

the actors and directors of that theatre The actor in such a

theatre is indifferent as to the occasions which employ his feel-
ing." * The aim of art is "an idealistic individualism which views
the human psyche as an insulated and self-sufficient value ; a 'uni-
versally human' morality as the ethical base out of which character
is built." Zakhava points to the influence of Bergson's philosophy
upon Stanislavski's theory.

Yet Stanislavski was tremendously successful in developing a
"natural-psychological" technique of acting. This was due to the
fact that his actual system of discovering the "spiritual essence"

•V. Zakhava, "Stanislavski's Method" in Ne^ Theatre (August, 1935).

Critical and Technical Trends 115

of his characters was neither intuitive nor spiritual ; but was based
on scientific experimentation and analysis. In practice he found
that "to work upon a role is to seek for a relation." This means
that the actor must find the point of contact between his subjective
feeling and objective experience. Stanislavski also discovered, says
Zakhava, "that feeling will not come of itself; that the more an
actor orders or pleads with himself to cry, the less chance there
is of his doing it. 'Feeling has to be enticed.' The decoy for feeling,
he finds, is thought, and the trap is action. 'Don't wait for feeling,
act at once.' Feeling will come in the process of action, in the
clashes with the environment. If you ask for something, and you
do it with an awareness that you really need it, and then you are
turned down — the feeling of offense and vexation will come to
you spontaneously. Don't worry about feeling — forget it." *

Thus feeling becomes a meaningless abstraction, and the core
of Stanislavski's work becomes the analysis of the conscious will.
The relation which determines the feeling is the actor's conscious-
ness of reality; the actor must think, and what he thinks about is
his environment; his awareness of a need causes action, which is
an act of will.

Stanislavski developed his method largely in conjunction with
the production of the plays of Anton Chekhov at the Moscow* Art
Theatre. Chekhov's plays served as the laboratory in which Stanis-
lavski's experiments were carried out. Chekhov dramatized the
tragic futility and aimlessness of the Russian intelligentsia at the
turn of the century; the action of his plays seems aimless; the
neurotic intensity of Ibsen's characters seems to be replaced by
neurotic inertia. But the power of Chekhov lies in the precision
with which he exposes the social roots of this inertia. One may
say that Chekhov's interest is rather in character than in society
as a whole. But his interest in character is an interest in how it
works. No playwright has ever been less concerned with qualities
of character, or less respectful of the "spiritual essence" of per-
sonality. In dealing with diseased wills, he probes to the core of
the disease ; just as a physician may study the inefficient operation
of the patient's physical organs, Chekhov studies the inefficient
operation of the will. Just as the physician must find the causes
of physical maladjustment, Chekhov seeks out the social causes of
psychic maladjustment.

For this reason, the conversation in Chekhov's plays is never
discursive in the manner of Shaw. Shaw's characters discuss the
social system; Chekhov's characters are the social system. Like

*Ibid.

Ii6 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Shaw's people, they are almost incapable of action. But the play-
wright enters their conscious will and shows us the causes,
the experiences and pressures, which determine their inactivity.
The past lives of the characters are presented in detail. We are
shown the exact degree to which they are conscious of their prob-
lem, and the direction in which the sick will seeks a solution. In
The Cherry Orchard, Ephikhedof says: "I am a man of cultiva-
tion ; I have studied various remarkable books, but I cannot fathom
the direction of my preferences ; do I want to live or do I want to
shoot myself, so to speak. But in order to be ready for all con-
tingencies, I always carry a revolver in my pocket. Here it is."

All the characters in The Cherry Orchard are shown attempt-
ing to express their will. The drama lies in the inadequacy of their
acts in relation to the rigidity of the environment. Madame
Ranevsky counts the money in her purse: "I had a lot of money
yesterday, but there's hardly any left now. Poor Barbara tries to
save money by feeding us all on m.ilk soup ; the old people in the
kitchen get nothing but peas, and yet I go on squandering aim-
lessly... {dropping her purse and scattering gold coins; vexed).
There, I've dropped it all!" When the tramp enters slightly
drunk, she hastily gives him the remaining money. It is evident
that Chekhov has made Madame Ranevsky's aimlessness objective,
and has exposed the exact degree of will and consciousness of
which she is capable.

Chekhov resembles Proust in his ability to objectivize moods
and sensibilities in terms of social meaning. Both writers show that
exceptional sensibilities and emotions do not transcend the environ-
ment, but are directly caused by the environment and are the
product of exceptional maladjustnjents.

Chekhov provided Stanislavski with perfect material for psy-
chological study; the creative interpretation of Chekhov's charac-
ters could not proceed along subjective or idealistic lines. The
author's indication of social determinants is so precise that it offers
a broad field for the analysis of relations of character and events.
Stanislavski had the painstaking honesty of the great artist. Care-
fully testing and comparing the data obtained in the work of pro-
duction, he succeeded in formulating many of the elements of a
definitive acting technique. But each step in this process brought
him farther away from the esthetic subjectivism which had been
his starting point. Unable to solve this contradiction, Stanislavski
was unable to reach an integrated conception of the theory and
practice of his art. The split between theory and practice, between
the esthetic aim and the practical result, tended to widen. This

Critical and Technical Trends 117

is evident in the modern use of the "natural-psychological" method.
The practical aspects of the method become increasingly narrow
and unimaginative ; the interpretation of character becomes a
matter of accumulating factual details ; these details tend to be-
come illustrative rather than dynamic; since the accumulation of
minor data fails to reveal the "spiritual essence" of character, it
is assumed that the inner life of the character transcends the sum
of its activities and must be realized by esthetic intuition.

The methods of Chekhov and of Stanislavski, both in writing
and in production, were valid only for a limited range of social
relationships. Chekhov's technique expressed the life of a section
of the Russian middle class; his detailed analysis revealed the
possibilities of action, the furtive and incomplete actions, of people
whose existence had become largely negative. Today the American
and English drama deals with a vastly different environment, a
world of complex emotionalism and febrile contradictions. When
the modern pla3^wright approaches this material in terms of minor
incidents and nuances, the result is to obscure rather than illu-
minate the meaning of the action. This is especially true when
the minor incidents are used simply to pile up qualities of charac-
ter, which are unrelated to the total environment. {Craig's Wife
by George Kelly, illustrates this tendency.) A world of unim-
portant detail can be as unreal as a world of vast and foggy
aspirations.

The main movement of twentieth century dramatic thought fol-
lows a middle course between the naturalism of Chekhov and the
abstract treatment of character which v/e find in Shaw. Both in
his plays and his critical writings, John Galsworthy represents
this conservative middle course. Galsworthy declares emphatically
that the portrayal of character is the sole aim of dramatic art :
"The dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of
hanging his plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin." * Gals-
worthy's emphasis on character is similar to Shaw's ; it springs from
his belief in the permanence and final value of the standards of char-
acter which are accepted in his own class and time. But the technical
structure of Galsworthy's plays is solid and economical ; this is due
to the solidity and economy of Galsworthy's own opinions ; he is
serenely unaware of the contradictions exposed by Ibsen and others.
The actions of his characters are direct, because the author sees no
difficulties which obstruct or paralyze the will.

The majority of critical opinion regards Galsworthy's plays as
remarkable examples of unprejudiced observation. Clayton Hamil-
* Galsworthy, The Inn of Tranquillity (New York, 1912).

Il8 Theory and Technique of Play writing

ton speaks of his "Olympian impartiality of mind in considering a
social thesis — that God-like lack of special sympathy in regard to
his characters." * This simply means that Galsworthy gives honest
expression to the prejudices of his own class; it happens that his
critics share these prejudices, and are eager to agree that "Olym-
pian impartiality" is on the side of their own social point of view.
Barrett H. Clark praises Strife for its impartiality: "Through-
out the first scene of the second act, the characters are laid bare
with admirable clear-sightedness and detachment of vision. If the
poor are in a bad condition, it is to a certain extent the fault of
their pride and dogged tenacity." f Galsworthy's thesis in Strife is
that industrial conflict can and must be solved by the good will
and sportsmanship of the parties concerned ; both sides are at fault
in failing to exercise these qualities. The strike has resulted in
futile waste, which has no social cause beyond the stubbornness of
individuals. This is made clear in the final lines :

HARNESS : A woman dead, and the two best men broken !

TENCH {Staring at him, suddenly excited) : D'you know. Sir
— those terms, they're the very same we drew up together, you
and I, and put to both sides before the fight began? All this —
and — and what for?

HARNESS {in a slow grim voice) : That's where the fun

comes m

In Loyalties, Galsworthy consistently applauds the Tightness
and delicacy of the aristocratic loyalties which operate against the
Jew, De Levis. De Levis is falsely accused of theft and ostracised,"
but in the final act, when the real thief has been discovered, the
settlement with De Levis is treated merely as a legal matter, while
the last and most emotional scene in the play is between the thief,
Dancy, and his wife, Isabel, showing the decency of his motives
and the intensity of his suffering. De Levis is simply eliminated,
while Dancy commits suicide rather than face dishonor.

Faced with the storm and stress of the modern period, Gals-
worthy turns back to the settled system of property relations
which marked the Victorian era. The definiteness, the technical
austerity of his plays, springs from the depth of his conservatism.
The action is concentrated ; there are no loose ends and no un-
solved problems. There is careful avoidance of colorful details or
of emotional excesses. William Archer says of Galsworthy that

* Opus cit.

t Clark, A Study of the Modern Drama.

Critical and Technical Trends 119

"even the most innocent tricks of emphasis are to him snares of
the evil one." *

Galsworthy's work is the most mature example of the major
tendency in dramatic theory and practice during the first two
decades of the twentieth century: the more conventional drama
depended on retrospective values and a restrained technique.
But since dramatic conflict has a social origin and social meaning,
it has become increasingly difficult to project this conflict in terms
which no longer correspond to contemporary realities. The attempt
to create new dramatic values has led to a series of disturbances
and experiments. Most of these have lacked clarity, and have
attempted to change the theatre by a sort of "palace revolution" —
to dictate new policies by decree, rather than in response to popu-
lar needs and demands.

Expressionism is a blanket term which covers a variety of ex-
perimental movements. In a technical sense, expressionism is de-
fined by Barrett H. Clark as follows: "It is not enough to record
what seems to be the actual words and acts of A ; his thoughts, his
subconscious soul, and his acts are summarily presented by means
of a symbolic speech or act — aided by scenery or lighting." t This
indicates the essentially neo-romantic character of expressionism.
The general tendency of the experiments of recent years has been
retrospective; in a loose sense, one may speak of all these experi-
ments as containing elements of expressionism, because all have
characteristics derived from early nineteenth century romanticism:
moral freedom, social justice, emotional release, are not seen as
problems involving an adjustment to the environment, but as
visions of the unique soul. In the more subjective expressionist
plays, symbols take the place of action — the twentieth century soul
is emotional, witless, neurotic and introspective.

But expressionism also contains progressive elements — a pas-
sionate assertion of will, a defiant attempt to find more genuine
ethical values and to rebel against an oppressive code of social
laws. The expressionist has frequently re-discovered the real world,
and shown us flashes of a new joy and honesty in the drama. The
technique of expressionism reflects the confusion of a rebellion
without a defined objective. In most cases, the construction is
loose, based on pragmatic reasoning, substituting non-logical con-
duct for progressive action, symbolized moods taking the place of
rational acts. But here the expressionist finds himself at a difficult
crossroads : having cut loose from the safe limitations of the draw-

* Opus cit.

t A Study of the Modern Drama.

120 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

ing room play (which represents an accepted form of pragmatic
reasoning), he finds he must throw away even the pretense of
logic — or else fight his way to a logic which covers the wider
range of character and incident to which he has committed himself.
In the former case, the treatment of the expressionistic symbols
becomes psychopathically personal or foolishly vast (as in Him,
by E. E. Cummings, or Beyond by Walter Hasenclever). The
latter course leads to a new analysis of the expressionistic symbol ;
the symbol can no longer be vague, it must prove itself in terms
of actuality; it must summarize the real relationship between the
individual and understandable social forces.

O'Neill's adoption of a free technique was the result of a
rebellion against his environment, which led him to mysticism —
which in turn brought him back to a ponderous but conventional
technique. Other writers (notably, Ernst Toller and Berthold
Brecht in Germany) have developed the method of expressionism
in the direction of increased social awareness.

A similar rebellion of a mixed character and with ill-defined
objectives, has taken place in the scenic structure of the stage.
Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig are chiefly responsible
for the birth of a genuine art of stage design. This has not only
changed the appearance of the stage, but has wrought a corre-
sponding change in the life and movement of the drama. The
actor moving in the crudely painted settings of the nineteenth
century w^as necessarily influenced by his background; the setting
constitutes the immediate environment of the persons on the stage ;
as characters, their consciousness and will are conditioned by this
environment. In creating a world of light and shadow, of solid
masses and integrated structural forms, Appia and Craig have
given the actor a new personality. But their attempt to release
the actor is unsuccessful, because the freedom which they demand
is an esthetic freedom which has no dramatic meaning. The
actor's new personality is the unique soul, softly lighted and
projected against a background of beautiful abstractions. Craig
regards art as a categorical imperative; the artist is, at least
potentially, the whole man capable of transcending his environ-
ment by the uniqueness of his gifts.

Craig's esthetic confusion has made his career both tragic and
impressive. His integrity has led him to fight consistently for a
living theatre. His estheticism is akin to Stanislavski's ; but he
lacks Stanislavski's scientific open-mindedness. He has been unable
to understand the forces which prevent the fulfillment of his pur-
pose, and which operate both in himself and his environment. His

Critical and Technical Trends I2i

designs remain sombre and abstract, avoiding what Freytag called
"the social perversions of real life." Craig's approach has never
been metaphysical ; he has been aware that the drama must deal
with phj^sical action; he has therefore tried to achieve an esthetic
reality; he has tried to objectivize beauty as an independent
phenomena. Since this task is impossible, it has led him to regard
beauty as an emotional experience. He wrote in 191 1 : "The
Beautiful and the Terrible. Which is which will never be put
into words." * One might suppose that Craig would take the next
step — acceptance of "the Beautiful and the Terrible" as mystic
substitutes for action. But his intense and practical love of the
theatre has prevented his acceptance of a mystic escape. In 1935,
we find him undaunted in his fight for "the only true and healthy
theatre," which he still conceives unrealistically as "the theatre
where nature dictates and interprets life through the genuine and
noble artist." His dreams remain unrealized, but he can look at
Russia and see that there the fulfillment of these dreams is being
attempted. "The Russian Theatre," he says, "seems to be years in
advance of all other theatres. It is the one theatre that does not
sulk or put out its tongue at art or progress." t

Many of Craig's ideas of design have been adopted by the
modern theatre. Since these ideas do not go to the root of the
dramatic problem, they have not brought truth and health to the
ailing theatre. But they have enriched the stage, and have indi-
cated the possibilities which are as yet untouched. American scenic
designers devote vast technical facility and imagination to the
service of retrospective romanticism and stuffy illusion. When
these talents are turned to genuinely creative tasks, to the presen-
tation of the world of men and things in all its beauty and power,
the theatre will live again.

While workers in the theatre have made chaotic attempts at
experimentation and reform, dramatic theory has remained pe-
culiarly aloof, accepting the dramatic status quo as inevitable, and
expressing neither fears nor hopes in regard to the development of
the art. Modern criticism is largely pragmatic — which means that
it is largely uncritical. The pragmatic approach precludes either
historical or contemporary comparison. The critic may have a
scholarly awareness of the traditions of the stage, but he cannot
consider the possibilities of the modern drama in the light of these
traditions. He is concerned with what is. He notes the sensations

* Edward Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Modern Theatre (Boston,
t Neix} York Times, February 3, 1935.
1911).

122 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

produced by a work of art; as long as he remains pragmatic, he
cannot be expected to form a judgment either of craftsmanship or
of ethical purpose. These are matters which, as the critic often
observes, can be settled only by time. The critic apparently means
finite time, and not the "pure duration" of which Bergson spoke.
If art can really be rationally understood within finite time, one
would suppose that the best way to understand it would be by
historical study of its development. But we discover that the
critic's conception of history is also pragmatic: time tests the
permanence of the impression produced by a work of art; this is
simply an extension of the first impression, forming a stream of
impressions which show that the work retains its appeal. This is
a pragmatic proof of value; but the real value, according to the
accepted view of modern criticism, is timeless; it exists only in a
world of "pure duration." This is, obviously, outside the sphere
of the critic's speculations.

Many of the more thoughtful contemporary critics endeavor to
create a system of esthetic values by a frank return to the ideals
of the past century. Joseph Wood Krutch and Stark Young ex-
press opinions which are comparable with those expressed by
Schlegel and Coleridge a century ago. Like the earlier critics
their approach is untechnical ; they are sympathetic toward art
which expresses a social point of view, but they believe it is the
function of the artist to uncover the eternal aspirations which
underlie the specific social content.

In these writers we observe the trend toward a denial of
reality in a liberal and restrained form, combined with many
elements of culture and liberalism which are still valid. But the
emphasis on timeless values and the confused hatred of the
machine age lead many modern thinkers to a more extreme posi-
tion. John Masefield believes that "tragedy at its best is a vision
of the heart of life," by which "a multitude can be brought to
the passionate knowledge of things exalted and eternal." * This is
an echo of Maeterlinck's "striving of the soul toward its own
beauty and truth." f But Masefield adds a new factor — the idea
of violence: "The heart of life can only be laid bare in the agony
and exaltation of dreadful acts. The vision of agony, of spiritual
contest, pushed beyond the limits of dying personality, is exalting
and cleansing." X Ludwig Lewisohn's belief in emotion as a final
value leads him in the same direction. He complains that "Modern

*MasefieId's note in The Tragedy of Nan (New York, 1909).
t Opus cit.
t Opus cit.

Critical and Technical Trends 123

tragedy does not deal with wrong and just vengeance, which are
both, if conceived absolutely, pure fictions of our deep-rooted
desire for superiority and violence." *

Spenglerian mysticism takes a more practical form in the dra-
matic opinions of George Jean Nathan. Nathan regards art as an
emotional experience which only the privileged few are able to
enjoy. He derides the taste of the mob; he discusses the presence'
day theatre with brutal cynicism. The essence of art, he believes,
is irrational : "All fine art, as a matter of fact, not only insults the
intelligence, it deliberately spits in the eye of intelligence. . . . Noth-
ing is so corruptive of drama as hard logic." f Nathan's cynicism
melts to sentimentality when he talks of the beauty of true art:
"Great drama is the rainbow born when the sun of reflection
and understanding smiles anew upon an intelligence and emotion
which that drama has respectively shot with gleams of brilliant
lightning and drenched with the rain of brilliant tears. Great
drama, like great men and great women, is always just a little
sad." i

We turn with relief from this world of sentiment and un-
reason, to the saner atmosphere of technical discussion. Con-
temporary studies of the drama are sharply divided between
esthetic criticism of a general nature and works which deal with
the problems of craftsmanship. This division is unsatisfactory:
general criticism becomes a collection of random impressions or
metaphysical opinions ; at the same time, technical analysis becomes
narrow, divorced from general culture.

Modern studies of technique make no attempt to develop a
broad theoretical groundwork or historical perspective. George
Pierce Baker begins his Dramatic Technique with the statement
that "It does not deal with theories of what the drama, present
or future, might or should be. It aims to show what successful
drama has been in different countries, at different periods, as
written by men of highly individual gifts." In the course of his
work. Baker makes no distinction between these periods ; the ulti-
mate truth of art lies in the "highly individual gifts" which defy
analysis. The only test of drama, according to Baker, is pragmatic
— the ability to arouse "responsive emotion." As far as deeper
values are concerned, he tells us that "the permanent value of a
play, however, rests on its characterizations." §

*Lewisohn, The Drama and the Stage (New York, 1922).
t Nathan, House of Satan (New York, 1926).
t Nathan, The Critic and the Drama (New Yoik, i92'2).
§ Baker^ Dramatic Technique (New York, 1919).

124 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Brander Matthews says: "The rules laid down tentatively or
arbitrarily by the theorists of the theatre are but groping efforts
to grasp the undying principles which we can seize only unsatis-
factorily, which exist in the passions and sympathies of the human
race." * If this is true, one can reasonably demand that the theorist
at least attempt to analyze the rules of the drama in terms of human
passions and sympathies. Matthews makes no such effort, because he
accepts these principles as fixed and requiring no discussion. He
is more concerned with the history of the theatre than with modern
playwriting. His point of view is more retrospective than prag-
matic; he resembles Freytag, both in the definiteness of his tech^
nical opinions, and in his feeling that beauty is associated with
ethical purpose and nobility of soul. In dealing with the history
of the drama, his only reference to social forces is the occasional
mention of shocking disorders or loose morals.

William Archer is emphatic in his denial of basic values in art :
"The only really valid definition of the 'dramatic' is: any repre-
sentation of imaginary personages which is capable of interesting
an average audience in a theatre. . . . Any further attempt to limit
the content of the term 'dramatic' is simply the expression of an
opinion that such-and-such form of representation will not be
found to interest an audience; and this opinion may always be
rebutted by experiment. In all that I have said, then, as to the
dramatic and the non-dramatic, I must be taken as meaning:
'Such and such forms and methods have been found to please and
will probably please again. They are, so to speak, safer and easier
than other forms and methods.' " t This, as always in pragmatic
reasoning, involves the acceptance of an immediate contradiction
as absolute. In our experience, we know that a third-rate moving
picture may reach a wider average audience (if one can admit
that there is such a thing as an average audience) and receive a
more enthusiastic response, than a play of Chekhov's. The methods
used in creating the motion picture are undoubtedly "safer and
easier" than those used by Chekhov. There is no strictly experi-
mental way of judging between the two works of art; in order
to make a distinction between them, one must "limit the content
of the word 'dramatic' "

The technical approach of these writers is rhetorical rather than
functional. The play is not treated as a creative process which
must be investigated, but as an exercise in composition concerning
which certain tentative rules of grammar and syntax may be sug-

* Matthews, The Principles of Playmahing (New York, 1919).
t Opus cit.

Critical and Technical Trends 125

gested. Baker treats "number and length of acts," "arrangement
for clearness, emphasis, movement," much as these subjects are
treated in text books on composition. Archer's treatment of "the
routine of composition," "dramatis personae," " 'curiosity' and 'in-
terest,' " is very similar.

Realizing that these rhetorical formulations lack precision,
theorists have occasionally attempted to build practical systems of
playwriting with the aid of rigid mechanical rules. An Italian
writer, Georges Polti, has decided with aggressive finality to limit
the drama to "thirty-six dramatic situations." The theory is said
to have been originated by Carlo Gozzi in the eighteenth century.
Polti bases his contention on "the discovery that there are in life
but thirty-six emotions." * The most interesting thing about the
theory is the reference to emotions as if they were identical with
situations: instead of attempting to classify tj'^pes of action, Polti
offers us a crude catalogue of types of "non-logical conduct."
The emotions which he mentions are so vague and contradictory
that he might as well have decided on only six emotions, or upon
thirty-six thousand. Among the thirty-six brands which he selects
are the following: (number 18) "involuntary crimes of love";
(number 20) "self-sacrificing for an ideal"; (number 21) "self-
sacrificing for kindred" ; (number 22) "all sacrificed for passion." t

A far more significant attempt to study play-architecture as an
engineering problem, has been made by W. T. Price, whose work
has been amplified and clarified by his pupil, Arthur Edwin Krows.
The latter's book, Playwriting For Profit, X is one of the ablest
modern works on dramatic technique. This is due to the fact that
the author's approach, within narrow limits, is thoroughly logical.
But it is a dry logic, based on preconceived rules ; it is simply an
elaboration of what Archer calls "the routine of composition."

Krows feels that the theory on which his book is based is an all-
important contribution to the craft of playmaking. He gives Price
full credit for the theory, describing him as "one of the greatest
dramatic theorists who ever lived." When one turns to Price's
work, one finds it difficult to understand this enthusiastic estimate.
His books. The Technique of the Drama, and The Analysis of
Play Construction and Dramatic Principles, are honest, long, care-
ful, and singularly pedestrian. He maintains that a play is a
proposition: "Proposition is the touchstone of structure., .it is the

* Georges Polti, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, translated by
Lucile Ray (Franklin, Ohio, 1924).

^ Ibid.

X New York, 1928.

126 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

only way to obtain Unity." Price describes a proposition as "a
statement in terms to be demonstrated. You have its counterpart

in any proposition in Euclid. Q. E. D the proposition is the

least common denominator of the action." It is, he says again,
"a brief logical statement or syllogism of that which has to be
demonstrated by the complete action of the play." *

Krows' treatment of this idea is basically the same — but it is
much less stilted. "Proposition is the microcosm of a play; and it
is therefore possible to work out from it the required elements."
He regards "the required elements" as the three clauses into which
a proposition is divided : conditions of the action, causes of the
action, and result of the action. His study of the law of conflict is
extremely instructive; he especially emphasizes the way in which
the conflict begins, because "whichever side was the first aggressor
would sacrifice sympathy." The nature of the "precipitating act"
must therefore be carefully considered.

This exposes the weakness of the method: as soon as Krows
raises the question of sympathy, he confronts problems which are
outside the scope of his theory. One is faced with the necessity of
examining standards of conduct, variations in these standards, and
the movement of social forces by which these standards are deter-
mined. Without such an examination, the suggestion that we in-
vestigate the "precipitating act" is merely a phrase. Krows offers
no satisfactory definition of the beginning, development or end, of
a dramatic conflict. His conception of the three required elements
is confused : there is no clear distinction between the conditions
of the action and the causes of the action. In analyzing Romeo
and Juliet, he describes the conditions of the action as follows:
Romeo and Juliet, whose families are in deadly strife, meet and
fall in love. The cause of the action is their marriage. The result
of the action is a problem; will their marriage turn out happily
and reunite their families? It is evident here that all three of the
elements of the proposition are muddled : the cause of the action is
the result of the conditions ; the result is a question, and throws
no light on the movement of events by which this question is
solved.

In general, the Euclidean proposition is valid as far as it goes.
It bears at least a superficial resemblance to the framework of
thesis, antithesis and synthesis which underlies the dialectic process.
But the essence of the dialectic method is the study of the move-
ment of contradictions. The Euclidean proposition is static, and

*W. T. Price, The Analysis of Play Construction and Dramatic Prin-
ciples (New York, 1908).

Critical and Technical Trends 127

therefore does not touch the Hvingness of the play. To attempt
to solve the life of a play in terms of proposition is like attempting
to solve the life of a man by saying that he is an atheist and
beats his wife. This information may be of value; but its value
depends on a variety of conditions and results. In order to under-
stand the simplest human action, we must understand the system
of social causation in which it is placed.

In emphasizing the logic of construction, Price and Krows per-
form a useful service. But they fail because they assume that the
playwright's mind is empty of content, that he has no prejudices
or aims — and that the material with which he deals is also empty
of content, unrelated to time or place. They accept the con-
temporary theatre at its face value and offer advice in regard to
contemporary problems; but since the modern playwright's logic
is not Euclidean, and since his technique is based entirely on his
prejudices and sentiments, their theory turns out to be extremely
abstract, and only distantly related to the practical work of the
dramatist.

This brings us back to the truth proclaimed by Shaw in the
first years of the twentieth century: now, as then, the stale theatre
of irrational sentiment and nostalgic repetition can only be saved
by "the reintroduction of problem, with its remorseless logic and
iron framework of fact." Critical and technical thought has been
uncreative during the twentieth century, because it has ignored the
traditional function of dramatic art. In the nineteen-thirties, in-
creased social tension has increased the confused and erratic trends
in the middle-class theatre. At the same time, the drama has been
stirred by the rise of a new social consciousness, a determination
to deal with the living world of conflict and change.

To many critics, this seems like a destructive movement; to the
jugglers of riddles and dealers in platitudes, the world of illusion
is more precious than the world of reality. Clinging to the roman-
tic idea of the unique artist, they ignore the nineteenth century
origins of this idea, and maintain that it has been the eternal func-
tion of art to transcend reality.

It is natural that the critic should cling to this idea — because
it is his means of maintaining his adjustment to his environment.
An art which creates conflict out of the lives and passions of living
men does much more than invade the privacy of soul which the
critic cherishes: it also upsets his relationship to his environment,
and forces a revaluation of the social beliefs on which that rela-
tionship is based.

In What is Artf, Leo Tolstov wrote: "We think the feelings

1 28 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

of people of our day and class are very important and varied; but
in reality all the feelings of people of our class amount to but
three very insignificant and simple feelings — the feeling of pride,
the feeling of sexuality, and the feeling of weariness of life."
Tolstoy pointed to "the impoverishment of subject-matter" which
has resulted. Art, "having only a small circle of people in view,
lost its beauty of form and became aiffected and obscure Be-
coming ever poorer in subject-matter and more and more unintel-
ligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest produc-
tions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been
replaced by imitations of art." *

In Individualism Old and New, John Dewey endeavors to
analyze the relationship between the modern man and his environ-
ment. I think the analysis is unsatisfactory, due to the limitations
of the author's method, and his lack of historical perspective. But
the final paragraphs of this book contain a richly suggestive state-
ment of the problem — which applies directly to the modern the-
atre : " 'The connection of events,' and 'the society of your con-
temporaries' as formed of moving and multiple associations, are
the only means by which the possibilities of individuality can be
realized.

"Psychiatrists have shown how many disruptions and dissipa-
tions of the individual are due to his withdrawal from reality
into a merely inner world. There are, however, many subtle forms
of retreat, some of which are erected into systems of philosophy
and are glorified in current literature. 'It is in vain,' said Emerson,
'that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts;
it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary
facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill.' To gain an
integrated individuality, each of us needs to cultivate his own
garden. But there is no fence about this garden: it is no sharply
marked-off enclosure. Our garden is the world, in the angle at
which it touches our own manner of being." f

* London, 1930.

tl have omitted the final sentence of Dewey's book, and have therefore
been guilty of changing his meaning. The final sentence, which follows
what I nave quoted, indicates his pragmatic acceptance of the immediate
present, and the accompanying denial of a system of causation which
can be known and guided: "By accepting the corporate and industrial
world in which we live, and by thus fulfilling the precondition for
interaction with it, we, who are also parts of the moving present, create
ourselves as we create an unknown future."

i

Eugene O'Neill 129

CHAPTER V

EUGENE O'NEILL

EUGENE O'NEILL'S career is of special significance, both be-
cause of the abundant vigor and poetic richness of his earlier
dramas, and because of the confusion which devitalizes his later
Vi^ork. In a sense, O'Neill's case is not typical, because his pre-
occupation with the subconscious and with the destiny of the soul
seems to be of a special kind and intensity. But this also accounts
for the special importance of his work: he reveals the ideas which
affect the modern theatre in their most intense form.

Shaw's social thought is based primarily on the liberalism of
the days prior to 1914. O'Neill's philosophy reflects the period
which followed the world war. This has caused him to ignore,
to a remarkable extent, the role of conscious will in dramatic
conflict. This is of great interest from a technical point of view.
O'Neill has made a consistent and impassioned attempt to drama-
tize subconscious emotions. He frequently uses the terminology of
psychoanalysis, and this terminology is often employed in dis-
cussions of his work.

But psychoanalysis as a method of psychological investigation
has no bearing on O'Neill's plays. His interest in character is
metaphysical rather than psychological. He attempts a complete
escape from reality; he tries to sever contact with the world by
setting up an inner kingdom which is emotionally and spiritually
independent.

If we enter O'Neill's inner world and examine it critically, we
find ourselves on very familiar ground. O'Neill's philosophy is a
repetition of past ideas. In this, he follows the line suggested bv
Freud, the line of regression, a flight to the past. There is no co-
ordinated system in O'Neill's thought; but it is not difficult to
trace the origin of his ideas and to establish their general trend.
His plays bear a definite resemblance to the plays of Ibsen's final
period. The conception of emotion as an ultimate force is re-
peatedly stressed. But there is a difference: in the last and most
mystical of Ibsen's plays, When We Dead Awaken, he shows us
man and woman facing the universe with unbroken courage; their
will has become impersonal and universal; but the man and

130 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

woman are still together and still determined to join their will to
the universal will ; to climb "right up to the summit of the tower
that shines in the sunrise."

O'Neill's mysticism goes beyond this. There is no drama of
O'Neill's in which an intense love relationship between man and
woman is presented as creative or satisfying. The deepest emo-
tional drive in his plays is always based on the father-daughter,
mother-son relationship. His use of the Freudian formula serves
to negate any conscious struggle on the part of his characters.
Their passion is necessarily evil, because it is incestuous; yet it is
unavoidable, because it is the condition upon which they are born.
His characters are emotional but sterile. In Ibsen's When We
Dead Awaken, Rubek and Irene face the dual universe with cour-
age and consciousness. O'Neill's later plays contain no character
who possesses either of these qualities.

While Ibsen presents emotion as a means of salvation, O'Neill
can find no salvation outside of religion. At the close of Days
Without End, John kills his disbelieving self: "Life laughs with
God's love again." In other plays, emotion is shown as destruc-
tive (as in Mourning Becomes Electro)^ or as a mad struggle
against the power of the machine (as in Dynamo).

This gives us a somewhat confused picture of O'Neill's con-
fusion. But we can clarify these tendencies accurately in terms of
general philosophy: we begin with psychoanalysis, which supplies
us with the Oedipus Complex (and its variations) and the subcon-
scious. O'Neill has no use for these in their modern semi-scientific
forms, so he goes back to earlier modes of thought. The Oedipus
Complex becomes the universal physiological impulse, which orig-
inates in Schopenhauer, and is the basis of Zola's "blood and
nerves" materialism. The subconscious becomes the soul of early
nineteenth century romanticism. This is a repetition of the earlier
dualism: the "blood and nerves" fight the spiritual ego, just as
God and the Devil fought for the soul of Faust. Goethe saw this
conflict clearly according to the thought of his time: Goethe ac-
cepted dualism, he accepted Hegel's absolute idea as a satisfactory
solution of man's relationship to the universe. But O'Neill cannot
accept this — because acceptance would mean acknowledging both
sides of the dualism. O'Neill insists on escaping from the corporeal
side altogether. So again he goes back to earlier forms of thought,
and again he finds his allegiance divided. In its extreme form, his
mysticism is as final as that of Hildegard of Bingen or Hugo of
St. Victor in the twelfth century, or of St. Theresa in the six-
teenth. But this brings the author no relief, because it is based

Eugene O'Neill 131

on a way of life and a pattern of thought which the modern man
can neither understand nor assimilate. So he doubles back to the
middle of the seventeenth century and combines personal mys-
ticism with Spinoza's pantheism which is impersonal and determin-
istic. This is as far as O'Neill's thought can go, and his nearest
approach to a rational philosophy is to be found in passages which
suggest Spinoza's conception of God as one substance inter-pene-
trating life and nature: "Our lives are merely strange dark inter-
ludes in the electrical display of God the Father!"* But O'Neill
cannot remain faithful to this idea, because it would mean accept-
ing the material world. The passage just quoted illustrates the
difficulty. Our lives are "dark interludes" ; "the electrical display"
is outside our lives. So O'Neill adopts a partial pantheism (which
is a contradiction in terms), a universality from which the universe
as we know it objectively is excluded. This leads him back to
Schopenhauer, whose emotional pessimism he adopts in its most
extreme form.

The special character of this circle of ideas is the consistent
dualism of pragmatism and mysticism. In terms of action, this
means the combination of non-logical conduct with the attempt
to explain this conduct in terms of the most sublime vagaries
about time, space and eternity. The cult of the sublime in modern
literature and drama is invariably accompanied by the denial of
standards of rational or responsible behavior; this is so inevitable
that it almost takes the form of a mathematical equation: the
emphasis on eternal beauty and truth is in exact proportion to the
need to justify conduct which may properly be called sub-human
because of its aimlessness, brutality or cowardice.

The behavior of O'Neill's characters is irresponsible, because
they have no conscious will. Spinoza denied free will, because he
believed in reason and causation as absolute. O'Neill is anti-intel-
lectual, so that in abolishing will and consciousness he finds him-
self in a vacuum. Medieval mystics believed in the will, and also
to some extent in consciousness, as a means of attaining knowl-
edge of God. The wave of anti-intellectualism, from Schopenhauer
to William James, began by denying consciousness, but accepting
will in the form of intuition or emotional drive. This was the
position taken in Nietzsche's prose poems or in Ibsen's last plays.
Pragmatism admitted the idea of will (the vnW to believe, and
the feeling of will as an aspect of immediate experience) , but the

* From the final act of Strange Interlude. Note that this closely parallels
Thomas Wolfe's "phantom flare of grieved desire, the ghostling and
phosphoric flickers of immortal time," quoted in a previous chapter.

132 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

function of the will was so limited as to be almost inoperative.

O'Neill clings to the will to believe; but his system of thought
leaves no room for either will or belief. In his plays, the life-
force is no part of life ; even emotion is negative, working in man's
own heart to accomplish his destruction. O'Neill, and many of his
contemporaries, conceive of fate in a manner which has no parallel
in any previous period of world literature or drama. In all pre-
vious epochs, man has been depicted exerting his will against objec-
tive forces. The modern fate is both in man and outside him; it
paralyzes his mind ; his consciousness and his will and his emotions
are his worst enemies. It has often been said that "whom the
Gods would destroy, they first make mad." This is not a denial
of the will, it is an assertion that man's will is his only weapon
against the hostility of his environment. The Gods cannot over-
come him until he is made mad; he is able to fight until some
power outside himself destroys his mind and purpose. But the
modern fate presupposes madness as man's natural state. It is not
a curse which descends upon him and weakens him at a decisive
moment of struggle (a sudden breaking down of the will under
pressure which is common in human experience) ; it is a pre-
condition, which makes the struggle useless, because even the
desire to struggle is aimless.

If O'Neill's plays conformed literally to these ideas, they would
not be plays at all. But his work possesses the power and drive
of a fine mind and a burning sincerity. The author's creative con-
sciousness and will are in conflict with the sterile thinking which
destroys both art and life. This inner struggle is evident in his
repeated efforts to dramatize the subconscious. This has led to
his interest in the problem of dual personality; he tries to use the
physical man as a means of showing us the subconscious man in
whom he is chiefly interested. In three plays, he has invented
devices for this purpose. In The Great God Brown masks are
used ; in Strange Interlude the asides are ostensibly used for the
same purpose. In Days Without End, the split between the two
selves is complete, and two actors play the two parts of the same
man.

The most interesting of these, as far as the conscious will is
concerned, is The Great God Brown. In the other two plays, the
asides and the split personality are merely ways of showing what
the characters think and want — ^which are aspects of the conscious
will. In The Great God Brown, O'Neill has seriously set himself
the task of building a play in which the conscious will plays no
part at all. The play deserves careful study, because it is the only

Eugene O'Neill 133

instance in dramatic history of a sustained attempt along these
lines by a competent craftsman. O'Neill's statement of his pur-
pose reminds us of Maeterlinck's desire to present the "intangible
and unceasing striving of the soul toward its own beauty and
truth." O'Neill says that he wishes to show the "background
pattern of conflicting tides in the soul of Man." This pattern is
"mystically within and behind" the characters. "It is Mystery —
the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand
as the meaning of any event — or accident — in any life on earth." *

Feeling is accepted as the fundamental principle of drama. The
"conflicting tides" can have nothing to do with either conscious
purpose or logic. Environment is discarded as a factor, because the
mystery applies to "any event — or accident — in any life on earth."
Evidently the use of masks is intended by the author to show us
what is "mystically within and behind" the characters. But this
brings us to the first difficulty : the masks do not, and cannot, show
us anything o^ the sort. When a character's mask is off, we see
his real self, the conscious desires which he is concealing from other
persons — but we cannot see anything else, because neither the
character nor the audience can attain consciousness of anything
else. O'Neill seems to realize this difficulty, and he is determined
'■Q overcome it. He chooses the only means by which it might
conceivably be overcome; he goes beyond dual personality and
shows us that the "background pattern of conflicting tides" is not
individual, but really universal. In a word, the soul has only a
partial individuality: it follows that the masks, and the personalities
behind the masks, are to some extent interchangeable.

Here we face another difficulty: making character interchange-
able does not change the character: we are still concerned with
conscious motives and aims — to shift them from one person to
another may confuse us, but it cannot introduce a new element.
In The Great God Brown, Dion Anthony represents two per-
sonalities. Both of these personalities are abstract: one side is the
pagan acceptance of life; the other is the "life-denying spirit of
Christianity." Brown also represents two personalities. As the play
proceeds all four of these personalities are scrambled. Dion dies in
Act III, Brown steals his mask, and decides to appear to Margaret,
Dion's wife, as the real Dion : "Gradually Margaret will love what
is beneath — me! Little by little I'll teach her to know me, and
then I'll finally reveal myself to her, and confess that I stole your
place out of love for her." Then he kisses the mask of Dion: "I

•Prefatory note to Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Broivn (New
York, 1926).

134 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

love 5^ou because she loves j^ou! My kisses on your lips are for
her!" (It is to be noted that, at this point, a f^fth personality, that
of Margaret, is scrambled with the other four). But this is not
all. Brown, masquerading as Dion, pretends that he (as Dion)
killed Brown (the real Dion). So the police come and kill Brown
thinking he is Dion.

The play proves that men without will and environment are not
men. As far as the plot has any meaning at all, it is based on
relationships which are factual and even obviously melodramatic.
It takes no dual, or plural, personality to explain that Brown loves
Dion's wife and wants to take his place. There is no mystery in a
situation in which a man is killed because he is mistaken for
another man. There is no additional meaning, no "background
pattern" which conforms to the author's intention ; the disorganized
expressions of purpose which slip from the characters almost in
spite of themselves, are all that distinguish them from lumps of
clay. This is evident in the lines quoted : Brown talks about what
he, as a person, will do in relation to other people.

The Great God Brown has genuine poetic power; it presents
O'Neill's confused philosophy with fervor and honesty. The play
is undramatic because the philosophy is undramatic. The poetry, as
such, has nothing to do with the characters. Like their personalities,
the poetry is interchangeable. The play has beauty because, in
spite of its confusion, it represents the author's consciousness and
will. But it lacks clarity or dramatic truth, because the author's
conscious will is concentrated on a refusal of reality.

O'Neill's mode of thought, which is manifested in its most
extreme form in The Great God Brown, determines the technical
arrangement of all his plays. His denial of reality is a denial of
logic. This makes unified dramatic development impossible. In the
plays following The Great God Brown, O'Neill does not persist
in his effort to depict only the "conflicting tides in the soul of
man" ; he tries desperately to find some means by which he can
apply his philosophy to the living world.

Strange Interlude is the most important work of O'Neill's later
period. Although there are mystic overtones in this play, the plot-
structure is rational, and the characters are modern men and
women whose problems grow out of definite conflict within a
definite environment.

I have already suggested that Nina Leeds is a replica of Hedda
Gabler. It may be objected that Nina is more unconventional, less
inhibited, more modern, than Ibsen's heroine. To be sure, there
is a superficial difference, because the conduct in each case is con-

Eugene O'Neill 135

ditioned by the conventions of the period. But in their attitude
toward these conventions, the tvs^o women are remarkably similar.
Both are free of moral scruples; but both are dominated by fear
of conventional opinion, and are never guilty of defying conven-
tions. Hedda sends a man to his death and burns his manuscript
without a qualm of conscience ; but she is terrified at the idea of a
scandal. Nina has no conscience in pursuing her emotional needs;
but she never has the courage to speak the truth. Both women have
unusually dull husbands ; both regard love as a right with which
nothing can interfere ; both have father complexes ; both are driven
by a neurotic craving for excitement; both have what O'Neill calls
"a ruthless self-confidence" ; both have a strong desire for comfort
and luxury, which motivates their acceptance of conventionality;
at the same time, both are super-idealists, hating everything which
is "ludicrous and mean."

Hedda fights to find an outlet for her will. Unable to accomplish
this within the restrictions of her environment, she dies rather
than submit. Nina never faces her problem in this definite form.
Like Shaw's Candida, she is able to achieve a sufficiently satis-
factory adjustment within her environment. But Candida expressed
her will through a free choice. Nina lives in an emotional trance ;
she never chooses or refuses ; her "ruthless self-confidence" does
not involve any choice of conduct; it is her way of justifying her
pursuit of emotional excitement, which leads her to accept every
sensation which is offered. In Act II, Nina confesses "giving my
cool clean body to men with hot hands and greedy eyes which they
called love." Throughout the play, her actions involve no inde-
pendent decisions; she lives for the moment, and follows any
suggestion which makes a momentary impression.

The story of Strange Interlude, expressed in its simplest terms,
is the story of a married woman who has a child by a man who
is not her husband. The plot is a very common one in the modern
theatre. Two plays which offer an interesting basis of comparison
are Philip Barry's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Paul Hervieu's
The Nippers. The three dramas present an identical point of view.
In the final scene of Hervieu's play (produced in 1895), the
woman says to her husband: "We are only two miserable beings,
and misery knows none but equals." At the close of Strange Inter-
lude, Nina says, " — to die in peace! I'm so contentedly weary of
life." And Marsden answers, speaking of himself as "dear old
Charlie . . . who, passed beyond desire, has all the luck at last."

Hervieu treats the situation as a social problem which must be
faced. The characters are forced to adjust themselves to their

136 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

environment under conditions which they themselves have created.
The play develops to a climax in w^hich the wife confesses the
truth.

In both Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Strange Interlude, one
looks in vain for any point of open conflict. In both plays, the
husband never discovers the truth. In Tomorrow and Tomorrow,
Gail Redman calls Dr. Hay, her child's father, to save the boy's
life by an operation. The cure is successful, there is a short love
scene, and the doctor leaves her forever. The tension created by
the mother's fear for her child's life has no logical connection with
the problem of the child's parentage. Dr. Hay speaks of Gail's
special emotional quality: "She wears her rue with a difference."
He also says that "emotion is the only real thing in our lives ; it
is the person ; it is the soul." Since emotion is an end-in-itself, it
need not express itself through the conscious will, and need have
no connection with the actual activity of the character. Gail has
neither the honesty to tell her husband the truth, nor the courage
to join her lover, but her emotion is her soul, and is therefore its
own justification.

In Strange Interlude, we find the same conception of emotion.
Marsden speaks of "dark intermingling currents that become the
one stream of desire." Nina speaks of her three men : "I feel
their desires converge in me ! ... to form one complete beautiful
male desire which I absorb." It is evident that Nina, like Barry's
heroine, "wears her rue with a difiEerence."

This emphasis on pure emotion is a pragmatic application of the
mysticism of The Great God Brown to the conduct of living
people. This accounts for the plot-structure of Strange Interlude.
The action rests chiefly on a sense of foreboding, the threat of
horrors which never materialize. In the first three acts, Nina
marries the dull Sam Evans, and intends to have a baby. She
learns that there is insanity in her husband's family. We then
discover that these three acts have been exposition to prepare for
the real event: since the threat of insanity prevents Nina from
having a child by her husband, she selects Dr. Darrell as the
prospective father. We watch eagerly for the consequences. But
one may say, literally, that there are no consequences. In Act V,
Nina wants to tell her husband and get a divorce, but Darrell
refuses. In Act VI, Darrell threatens to tell Sam, but Nina refuses.
In Act VII, the activity centers around the child (who is now
eleven) ; the boy's suspicions threaten to upset the apple cart. But
in the next act (ten years later) everybody is on the deck of a yacht

Eugene O'Neill 137

In the Hudson river watching Gordon win the big boat race:
"He's the greatest oarsman God ever made!"

Now let us consider the asides. It is generally assumed that these
serve to expose the inner secrets of character. This is not the case.
Nine-tenths of the asides deal with plot and superficial comments.
The characters in Strange Interlude are very simply drawn ; and
they are not at all reticent in telling their inmost feelings in direct
dialogue. For instance in Act HI, Mrs. Evans says: "I used to
wish I'd gone out deliberately in our first year, without my hus-
band knowing, and picked a man, a healthy male to breed by,
same's we do with stock." Coming from an elderly farm woman,
one would reasonably expect this to be an aside, but it is direct
dialogue. Mrs. Evans' asides (like those of the other characters)
are devoted to such expressions as "He loves her! ...He's happy!
...that's all that counts!" and "Now she knows my suffering...
now I got to help her."

Then are we to conclude that the asides are a whim, a seeking
after sensation ? Not at all. They serve a very important structural
purpose: they are used to build up a sense of foreboding. Again
and again there are comments like Darrell's in Act IV: "God, it's
too awful! On top of all the rest! How did she ever stand it!
She'll lose her mind too!" But the asides have a much deeper use;
in every scene, they foretell what is about to happen, and blunt
the edge of conflict. What might be a clear-cut scene is diluted
by needless explanations and by annotating the emotions.

Thus we discover that both the asides and the length of Strange
Interlude are dictated by a psychological need — to delay, to avoid
coming to grips with reality. The function of the asides is to
cushion the action and make it oblique. And this same obliqueness
creates the need of spreading the story over nine long acts.

Strange Interlude reaches no climax and no solution. But the
final scene contains a fairly thorough summing up of the author's
position. It is not enough simply to point out that the play ends
on a note of frustration. Frustration is negative, and tends to
become merely poetic whimpering. The sense of frustration which
we find in O'Neill is based, as we have seen, on a complex system
of ideas. The social application of these ideas is of the utmost
importance.

The ninth act begins with a scene between the two lovers,
Madeleine and Gordon : the essence of this scene is the idea of
repetition ; the saga of love and passion will be repeated. Marsden
enters and offers a rose to Madeleine, saying mockingly: "Hail,
love, we who have died, salute 5'ou !" One expects the playwright

138 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

to follow this line of thought, but he turns sharply away from it.
The action suddenly concentrates on Gordon's bitterness against
his mother, his feeling that she never really loved the man whom
he regarded as his father. Nina, tortured for fear Darrell will
tell the boy the truth, asks her son a direct question: "Do you
think I was ever unfaithful to your father, Gordon?" Gordon is
"shocked and horrified ... he blurts out indignantly : Mother, what
do you think I am — as rotten-minded as that!" Here is the germ
of a vital idea — if the conflict between mother and son were
developed. But O'Neill cuts it short at this point. Gordon leaves,
soliloquizing as he goes : "I've never thought of that ! . . . I couldn't !
...my own mother! I'd kill myself if I ever even caught myself
thinking ... !" Gordon, who represents the new generation, leaves
the stage with these negative words. Darrell then asks Nina to
marry him and she refuses: "Our ghosts would torture us to
death !"

Thus the idea of the repetition of life turns to the negation of
life. In all this, O'Neill disregards one simple fact — that Nina has
built her life on a lie, and that this accounts for all her troubles.
And her son, as he leaves the stage, tells us that he is just as
cowardly as his mother: "I've never thought of that!... I
couldn't!"

Here we see the conception of an absolute fate as it concretely
affects a dramatic situation. The fact that both mother and son
evade the truth is not regarded as personal cowardice, but as
destiny. Gordon does not face his mother and defeat her — as he
would be forced to do in life. He coddles his illusion and goes
away on his honeymoon. Since feeling transcends fact, it follows
that one preserves the quality of one's feeling even when it means
denying or avoiding reality.

The last scene of Strange Interlude contains a welter of un-
finished ideas which indicate the playwright's feverish uncer-
tainty. There are references to religion, science, womanly intui-
tion, "mystic premonitions of life's beauty," the duty "to love,
that life may keep on living," etc. The pain of the author's search
lends dignity to his confusion.

However confused or sublime a playwright's thought may
appear, it exhibits his own attitude toward his environment.
Nina's aimless and deceitful life is called beautiful because it is
lived for emotion. The last act tells us that the eternal aim of life
is to repeat the saga of emotion. But Nina's emotions are those of a
woman to whom security and leisure are guaranteed. Her emo-
tional life is dependent on the social structure. Everything which

Eugene O'Neill 139

she feels or thinks is designed to preserve the permanence of her
environment. This accounts for her intense conventionality, and
for her conviction that deceit is socially necessary. Again and again,
she tells us that all she seeks is happiness; her idea of happiness
is erotic. She has no interest in other people, no desire to exert an
influence on her environment. She pretends desperately to be a
woman without an environment, because this is the only condition
under which she can exist at all. If she came into contact with
reality, her whole world of leisure and sentiment would fall to
pieces. Her insistence on emotion is an insistence on a fixed social
system.

This meaning is increasingly evident in the trilogy, Mourning
Becomes Electra, which follows Strange Interlude. O'Neill's
mysticism leads him back to the world of reality; he is not satisfied
with showing the passive drift of emotion, as in Strange Interlude.
One must go beyond this ; one must show activity — this leads to a
neurotic vision of reality dominated by blood and force.

In Mourning Becomes Electra, O'Neill illustrates the Speng-
lerian conception of the modern intellect "overpowered by a grow-
ing sense of its Satanism." Here violence is not a necessity of the
action ; it is an end in itself. Charmion Von Wiegand points out
that "more normal alternatives of action were open to all the
characters than the one they chose of murder and blood or which
their author chose for them." * It is evident that the characters
have no choice whatever; the author's choice of murder and blood
springs from the need to justify cruelty and violence as the normal
conditions of our existence. The writer's fear of life springs from
disturbances and pressures in his environment; since the lack of
equilibrium in the environment is due to a process of change, the
first step is to invent an eternity ("the electrical display of God
the Father") in which change is meaningless; since one cannot
invent an eternity out of nothing, the author invents it out of his
own experience ; his eternity is a crystallization of the environment
in what appears to be a permanent form. Ibsen showed us the
decay of the middle-class family as part of a system of causes and
effects. The causes were increasing tensions in the social structure ;
the effects were the substitution of lust and greed, hate and egotism,
for more normal emotions. This is the environment against which
O'Neill rebels and from which he wishes to escape. But he tries
to build a world of abstract emotion out of the very emotions
from which he is escaping; an eternity of lust and greed, hate

* Charmion Von Wiegand, "The Quest of Eugene O'Neill," in Nevj
Theatre (September, 1935).

140 Theory and Technique of Playwritinq

and egotism. In Strange Interlude, emotion is abstract, a rarefied
desire for happiness; therefore Nina's lust and greed, hate and
egotism, are sentimentalized and take the form of aspirations.
Nevertheless, these are the only emotions of which she is capable.
But the playwright cannot stop at this point; he is driven by the
need to remedy the maladjustment between himself and his
environment; he must go back and try to explain the world in
terms of lust and greed, hate and egotism. This task was begun
in Desire Under the Elms, and continued in Mourning Becomes
Electra.

Mourning Becomes Electra is a much more realistic play than
Strange Interlude. The action is less diffuse and better integrated.
But the movement of events, in spite of its violence, evades
progression. The characters have no goal toward which they are
moving. Having no attainable social aims, it is impossible for them
to have attainable dramatic aims.

The idea of repetition as an emotional commentary on the blind-
ness of the life-force occurs throughout O'Neill's work. This idea
plays an important part in the concluding scene of Strange Inter-
lude. It occurs in its poetic form in Cybel's lines at the end of
The Great God Brown: "Always spring comes again bearing life!
Always again ! . . . spring bearing the intolerable chalice of life
again." In Mourning Becomes Electra, repetition is the basic struc-
tural pattern. The length of the triple scheme has no justification
dramatically, because it involves no development of the action. The
length is dictated by the need to prove that repetition is socially
inevitable. In this connection, one may recall the remark of
William James that there is nothing the principle of free will
could do "except rehearse the phenomena beforehand." The activity
of O'Neill's characters is a rehearsal of preconceived patterns ; the
will plays no part except as a repetition-compulsion, which gives
what James called a "character of novelty to fresh activity-
situations."

An understanding of the social direction of O'Neill's thought
clarifies the connection between Mourning Becomes Electra and
the two plays which follow — Ah Wilderness and Days Without
End. O'Neill being one of the most sensitive and most genuine
artists of our time, is horrified by the picture of reality which he
himself has drawn. Unwilling to accept "the intolerable chalice
of life" on these terms, he turns in two directions: to the con-
solations of religion, and to the regularities of small-town life in
the pre-war era. These plays do not present a positive denial of
torce and cruelty as emotional values ; such a denial would require

Eugene O'Neill 141

the Courageous analysis of reality which is the function of the
artist. Ah Wilderness and Days JVithout End are negative and
nostalgic; the social thought resolves itself into the Avish that
religious finality or tender family sentiments might be substituted
for the real vt^orld.

These plays are therefore among the w^eakest and most repeti-
tious of O'Neill's works. The structure oi Ah Wilderness is based
on threats of activity which are never realized. The play deals
with the pain of adolescence; Richard Miller resembles O'Neill's
other characters in that he has neither consciousness nor will in
regard to his environment. (Compare Ah Wilderness with Wede-
kind's powerful play, Spring's Awakening) . Richard's adolescent
struggle is merely a dreamy unawareness of an environment which
is essentially friendly. The suggestions of action never materialize:
Richard does not cohabit with the prostitute; his calf-love for
Muriel is exactly the same at the end as at the beginning. The
love scene on the beach could just as well be placed in Act I as in
Act IV. In fact, one can take any scene in the play and transfer
it to another position without creating the slightest dislocation in
the play's structure. Suppose the play opened with the dinner-table
scene which is now in Act II ? Would there be any appreciable
difference? The scene in which the father tries to advise his son
about the facts of life (Act IV) might logically follow the dis-
covery of the passionate poetry in Act I.

In Ah Wilderness, O'Neill returns to the conventional pseudo-
naturalism which is the accepted technique of the contemporary
drama. But the change is a superficial one. The pattern of ideas
which determines the structure oi Ah Wilderness is the same
pattern which we find in The Great God Brown, Strange Inter-
lude, Mourning Becomes Electro. We shall find this pattern re-
peated, with variations and modifications, throughout the modern
theatre. Few current plays go very deeply into the realm of the
subconscious; few deal with space and time and eternal sorrow.
But the playwright's treatment of his material is based on a
philosophy which duplicates O'Neill's. This is not a matter of
general attitudes toward life; it is the way the playwright's mind
actually works; it affects every situation he conceives and every
line he writes.

142 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

CHAPTER VI

THE TECHNIQUE OF THE
MODERN PLAY

"A PLAY lives by its logic and reality," says John W. Gassner.
"Conceptual confusion is the disease that halts its pace, dulls its
edge, and disturbs its balance." * As has been noted, the disease
is a nervous disorder, growing out of the playwright's maladjust-
ment to his environment. The technical symptoms, as diagnosed in
the case of O'Neill, are the following: (i) the characters are
governed by whim or fate, rather than by conscious will; (2)
psychic generalizations are substituted for specific acts of will ; ( 3 )
the action is illustrative rather than progressive; (4) moments of
conflict are diffused or retarded; (5) the action tends to follow a
pattern of repetition.

Ibsen avoided preparation, beginning his plays at a crisis, illumi-
nating the past in the course of the action. This retrospective method
has now been carried to a further extreme ; the crisis is diluted, and
the backward looking or expository material is emphasized. What
Freytag called the "erregende moment" or firing of the fuse, is
unconscionably delayed. William Archer once wondered what The
School for Scandal would be like "if it consisted of nothing but
the screen scene and two laborious acts of preparation." The
modern play often consists of elaborate preparation for a crisis
which fails to take place.

It is not my purpose in the present chapter to prove this point
by a complete survey of the dramatic field. It is enough for the
present to select a few plays of contrasting types, and to show the
influence of similar modes of thought and the resultant similarity
of structural characteristics. The detailed discussion of technique
in later chapters will include the more specific analysis of a number
of additional examples.

The following plays cover widely differing themes and back-
grounds, and are among the most distinguished products of the
English-speaking stage : The Petrified Forest, by Robert Sherwood ;

* John W. Gassner, "The Drama in Transition," in Neiv Theatre
(August, 1925)-

The Technique of the Modern Play 143

Both Your Houses, by Maxwell Anderson; Design for Living,
by Noel Coward ; The Silver Cord, by Sidney Howard.

In The Petrified Forest, the pattern of ideas with which we
have been dealing is projected in a very direct form. Alan Squier
is a tired intellectual who confesses that he has no purpose in life:
"I'm planning to be buried in the Petrified Forest. I've been evolv-
ing a theory about that that would interest you. It's the graveyard
of the civilization that's being shot from under us. It's the world
of outmoded ideas of Platonism — Patriotism — Christianity —
Romance — the economics of Adam Smith." This is a clear state-
ment of the problem, and we must admire Sherwood's courage in
putting the question so uncompromisingly. But the statement of a
problem is not sufficient ; the dramatist must show the working
out of the problem as it affects the shifting balance between man
and his environment. This Sherwood fails to do — indeed, he makes
no attempt to do so, because he forewarns us that Squier is a man
whose conscious will has atrophied. It is the function of the
dramatist to show us why, how and in what degree the will is
inoperative: Chekhov succeeded in exposing the conscious wills of
men and women whose lives are almost devoid of purpose. Squier
resembles many of Chekhov's characters; his futile idealism
reminds us of Trophimof in The Cherry Orchard, who says: "The
vast majority of the educated people that I know seek after noth-
ing, do nothing, and are as yet incapable of work. . . . They are all
serious, they all have solemn faces; they only discuss important
subjects ; they philosophize."

Yet the difference between Chekhov and Sherwood is the dif-
ference between dramatic art and dramatic attrition. Sherwood's
approach to his material is as static as the point of view of his
hero. The conception underlying the play is as follows: men are
drifting toward a doom over which they have no control; if we
are to be saved at all, we must be saved by the instinctive rightness
of our feeling (exemplified in the love story between Gabby and
Squier) ;*but in this world of chaos, the only men who are able to
act with instinctive decision and purpose are men who are desperate
and evil (as typified in the gangster). Thus Sherwood's thought
follows the time-worn circle: the philosophy of blood and nerves
leads to pessimism; the denial of reason leads to the acceptance of
violence.

The only definite action in The Petrified Forest is the killing
which takes place at the end of the play. The gangster and the
intellectual have an intuitive bond between them, an understanding
which has no rational basis. In the final scene, the gangster, as he

144 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

is escaping, turns and empties his machine gun into Squier as a
favor to hirtij because he instinctively realizes that this is what the
other man genuinely desires. This violent whim justifies the gang-
ster; it is accepted as what Hedda Gabler called "a deed of
spontaneous beauty."

From a structural point of view, the deed is neither climactic
nor spontaneous, because it is a repetition-situation. Every element
of this climax has been presented in the early part of the first act,
and has been repeated throughout the play. The first act conversa-
tion between Gabby and Squier reveals the sense of futility, the
girl's artistic aspirations, the dawning love between them — and the
fact that death offers the only solution. "Let there be killing!"
says Squier in Act I. "All evening long, I've had a feeling of
destiny closing in." When destiny does close in, it simply repeats
the pattern of human relationships and social concepts with which
we are already familiar.

The plot-structure centers around Squier and Gabby. Their
relationship undergoes no change. They feel drawn to each other
from the moment they meet; but this has no effect on them or
their environment. Gabby wants to study art and Squier wants
to die ; these conscious wishes form the thread which integrates the
action ; but blind fate contrives the solution without the exercise
of will on the part of either of the characters.

The play is not a study of an intellectual's mind and will, facing
a problem which he must solve, or die. The play is based on the
preconception that struggle is useless. Social causation is disre-
garded, and absolute necessity governs Squier's puzzled mind and
the gangster's brutal whim. Squier makes this clear:

squier: Do you realize what it is that is causing world
chaos ?

gabby: No.

squier: Well, I'm probably the only living person who can
tell you. It's Nature hitting back. Not with the old weapons —
floods, plagues, holocausts. We can neutralize them. She's fight-
ing back with strange instruments called neuroses. She's delib-
erately afflicting mankind with the jitters. Nature is proving
that she can't be beaten — not by the likes of us. She's taking the
world away from us and giving it back to the apes.*

As has been pointed out in the case of O'Neill, this conception
is socially conditioned; it involves the acceptance of man's fate on

* Brooks Atkinson speaks of this as "an observation worth making in
the presence of intelligent people" {Ne<w York Times, March 17, 1935)..

The Technique of the Modern Play 145

any terms which Nature (blind necessity, operating in us and
around us, causing events in which we take part but over which
we have no control) may dictate. Cruelty and violence seem to
play a necessary part in Nature's scheme. Since emotion is absolute,
it includes both good and evil ; the life-force operates through love
and violence, sentiment and cruelty, sacrifice and sadism. We find
this dualism in the final scenes of The Petrified Forest. Squier
finds love: "I think I've found the thing I was looking for, I've
found it here, in the Valley of the Shadow." As he dies. Gabby
says to him, "I know you died happy. . . . Didn't you, Alan? Didn't
you ?" Love has no positive value ; it gives Squier no wish to live,
and no strength for further conflict ; it is a mystic escape, which
gives him the immediate sense of union with a power higher than
himself. It also sanctifies the needless act of violence which causes
his death.

If we turn to an earlier play of Sherwood's, we find that the
system of ideas is identical, and produces an identical arrangement
of events. Waterloo Bridge takes place in London during the
world war. The play opens with a chance encounter between an
American soldier and an American girl who has become a pros-
titute. The love story of Roy and Myra is in every respect similar
to the later story of Squier and Gabby. Here again we have the
repetition of the pattern of sentiment, futility and doom. Roy is
more defiant than Squier, but the final scene offers salvation
through blood as the only solution. Roy says:

. . . The war's over for me. What I've got to fight is the whole
dirty world. That's the enemy that's against you and me. That's
what makes the rotten mess we've got to live in. . . . Look at
them — shooting their guns into the air, firing their little shells
at something they can't even see. Why don't they turn their
guns down into the streets and shoot at what's there? Why
don't they be merciful and kill the people that want to be
killed?

Roy asks for the very fate which Squier, in the later play,
receives from the gangster's bullet. But Myra convinces him that
he must accept the war :

ROY {passionately): You're good! I know it — I'll swear it
before God.

myra: All right, then, prove it to Him. Prove to Him that
I didn't break your life in two. Let Him see that I sent you
back to the lines, to fight the war, make Him know tl:at . . .

146 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Thus Roy achieves an immediate feeling of the goodness of love,
and Myra is sure that he will be content to die (the exact
equivalent of Gabby's lines in The Petrified Forest: "I know you
died happy.") Roy goes, leaving Myra alone on the bridge; she
looks up into the sky and an enemy plane drones overhead.* The
pragmatic acceptance of what isj regardless of reason or volition,
brings with it the intimation of an unreal world, in which emotion
is purified and goodness is intuitively known.

Both Your Houses is a realistic and spicily written account of
graft in the conduct of the national government. Here there are
no questions of an eternal character, no references to God or destiny
or nature, no violent and unresolved emotions. Alan McLean is a
political idealist who seeks definite remedies for definite abuses.

In this case, the individual's will is pitted against social necessity.
No metaphysical necessity is introduced as a final force against
which struggle is vain. One would therefore suppose that the inter-
action between the individual and the environment would be
dynamic and progressive. But when we examine the construction
of Both Your HouseSj we find that this is not the case. The state-
ment of the problem is static, and the conflict contains no element
of progression.

Anderson states the theme of his play with admirable clarity.
But here, as in The Petrified Forest^ the mere statement of a
proposition is insufficient. Both Your Houses contains a burning
indictment of American political methods; but this indictment lies
in the dialogue, and not in the action ; the movement of the play
consists in the repetition of human relationships and points of view
which are fully presented at the beginning. We are told imme-
diately in the first act that the deficiency bill for the Nevada dam
is crooked — Solomon Fitzmaurice says: "Fishy! My God, a little
honest smell of fish on that bill would hang over it like an odor of
sanctity." Alan's determination to fight the bill is also clear in the
opening act ; he announces that the projects included in the bill are
"wasteful, useless, extravagant, ridiculous — ." Sol explains to him:

. . . Don't you know about the government of the United
States ? . . . You can't do anything in Congress without arranging
matters. Everybody wants something, everybody's trying to put

something over for his voters, or the folks he's working for

You all come up to this Congress fighting mad, full of juice and
high purpose — just like him. , . .Yes, and it happened to me too,
and I was shocked and I started making radical remarks. Why,

* The same pattern of ideas, culminating in the same air-raid, is re-
peated by Sherwood in Idiofs Delight.

The Technique of the Modern Play 147

before I knew where I was, I was an outsider. So I began to
play ball, just to pacify the folks back home. And it worked.
They've been re-electing me ever since — and re-electing a fat
crook because he gets what they want out of the treasury, and
fixes the Tariff for 'em and sees that they don't get gypped out
of their share of the plunder.*

This first act statement covers the whole theme of the play. The
same material is repeated in the second act, and the final situation
is a further repetition. The language of the closing scene is more
intense, but nothing new is introduced, because nothing new has
developed in the course of the action. At the end, Sol again explains
that the Washington system is a system of plunder: "We can't
have an honest government, so let 'em steal plenty and get us
started again." He again points to the apathy of the public: "As
a matter of fact, the natural resources of this country in political
apathy and indifference have hardly been touched."

The dramatic construction is illustrative and not functional.
The hero's battle against corruption is a matter of his opinions,
and involves no solid human situation in which his conscious will
is tested under the pressure of events. The author tries to remedy
this weakness by the introduction of a subsidiary human-interest
plot: Simeon Gray, the heroine's father, is in danger of a jail
sentence if the appropriations bill is defeated. This situation has no
connection with the theme, except insofar as it illustrates the fact
that even an honest politician may become dishonest under suffi-
cient pressure. Since this fact is obvious, and since it has already
been clearly stated in Sol's first act analysis of Washington politics,
the revelation of Simeon Gray's guilt in Act II is merely an
artificial means of bolstering up a weak situation. But McLean's
struggle against graft is in itself so static, that the most decisive
moments of the drama are inevitably concerned with the sub-plot :
Act II ends with Gray's confession; Scene i of Act III ends with
a scene between Marjorie and McLean in which she pleads with
him to save her father and he refuses to change his course.

McLean's point of view in the final scene, after he has been
defeated in his fight against the politicians, shows the conceptual
confusion which obstructs the action :

. . . How can one speak treason about this government or Con-
gress? It's one vast, continuous, nation-wide disaster! . . . And I'm
not a red! I don't like communism or fascism or any other
political patent medicine ! . . . More people are open-minded
nowadays than you'd believe. A lot of them aren't so sure we
* I have combined several of Sol's speeches in Act I, Scene 2.

148 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

found the final answer a hundred and fifty years ago. Who
knows what's the best kind of government? Maybe they all get
rotten and have to be replaced. ... It takes about a hundred
years to tire this country of trickery — and we're fifty years
overdue right now. That's my warning. And I'd feel pretty
damn pitiful and lonely saying it to you if I didn't believe there
are a hundred million people who are with me, a hundred million
people who are disgusted enough to turn from you to something
else. Anything else but this.*

This is simply an intensified repetition of the problem stated in
the first act. It is a literary statement, because it does not face the
dramatic or human implications of the problem. These words are
supposed to sum up what McLean has learned during the course
of the play; but what he has learned has been purely illustrative,
and therefore has no emotional validity in terms of character.

If we analyze McLean's position, in an effort to discover what
it means in relation to his consciousness and will, we find a con-
tradiction which is at the root of McLean's conflict with his
environment: from a political standpoint, the contradiction is be-
tween a final belief in the status quo (the machinery of democracy
as it at present operates) and a final determination to change it.
McLean declares his faith in democracy — no political patent medi-
cines; he will appeal to a hundred million people. But the only
type of democracy with which McLean has had any experience,
and which has molded his point of view, is the very system he
wants to change.

In a broader sense, this is a contradiction between free will and
necessity, between the principle of permanence and the principle
of change. In order to change the world in which he lives, McLean
must use his conscious will ; but the first diflliculty which confronts
him is that he himself is the product of this world ; his aims and
prejudices and illusions are created by the environment and con-
tribute to the permanence of the environment. Thus in order to
release his will, to act meaningfully and with purpose, he must
attain a new consciousness of his environment; he must decide
what it is and how he wants to change it.

This problem contains the stuff of intense dramatic conflict : but
McLean's final speeches merely hint at the problem. The tone of
his declaration suggests decision; but what it actually contains is
a confession of a maladjustment between himself and his environ-
ment; the maladjustment is so serious that he is unable to face
the contradiction in his own mind or reach any decision. His only

* Again several speeches have been telescoped.

The Technique of the Modern Play 149

comfort is the feeling that a hundred million people are as dis-
gusted as he is, and are ready to turn to something else — "Any-
thing else but this" ! This is not a rational conception of change,
and it does not satisfy the individual's need for rational activity.
McLean must satisfy this need in himself ; a similar need exists
among the hundred million people of whom he speaks.

This is not a matter of political opinion; it is a matter of the
character's emotional life. If we consider McLean carefully, we
find that we do not know him as a person. He is a young man with
qualities and opinions, just as Shaw's characters are persons with
qualities and opinions. The play ends, as many of Shaw's plays
end, on a question. But it is not a complete question; McLean
does not ask: "How can I live and achieve integrity under these
conditions"? This would be an admission of his maladjustment
and a genuine tragic dilemma. But McLean's reasoning is both
pragmatic and final ; he denies the possibility of a rational solu-
tion— "Who knows what's the best kind of government?" But
he is convinced that the future is safe in the hands of men whose
qualities and opinions correspond to his own. If a majority of the
people agree with McLean, the country will be saved even though
none of them has any conviction as to "the best kind of govern-
ment." This is obviously nonsense; the very condition against
which McLean is fighting is brought about by the apathy or
uncertainty of people as to "the best kind of government." The
first problem which he must face, before he can convince others
or himself, is what kind of government he wants.

This illustrates the close connection between social analysis and
the analysis of character. The answer to this question is the only
adequate test of McLean's character ; it involves emotional decision
and introspection ; it involves the courage to face the "iron frame-
work of fact" and determine his own course in regard to it; the
way in which he meets this test reveals his faults and virtues, his
consciousness and will as a suffering and aspiring human being.
Failure to ask this question makes his character and problem so
thin that the whole center of the play must be padded out with
an irrelevant sub-plot.

Solomon Fitzmaurice is by far the most human character in
Both Your Houses; he has been emotionally affected by his environ-
ment, and has been forced to adjust himself to definite needs and
pressures. For this reason, he is the only person in the play who
talks in terms of social reality.

Writing in the last century, Ibsen displayed an understanding
of democratic politics which is more modern than Anderson's treat-

150 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

ment of the subject. An Enemy of the People and The League of
Youth expose the personal and social forces which underlie the
mechanism of government and which operate in a somewhat similar
manner in Washington today. Ibsen bases his analysis of social
causes and effects on the conviction that ideals are valueless and
meretricious — because they are the by-products of the social system
itself. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen draws a great portrait of
a liberal fighting for honest politics; but Dr. Stockmann learns
two things — that public opinion can be controlled by money, and
that "the liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom." Dr.
Stockmann himself remains a liberal at the end, but his position is
understandable and poignant because we see him making new deci-
sions and facing new forces. A study of Ibsen throws a great deal
of light on Both Your Houses, and on the specific difficulties which
McLean faces. Anderson has failed to touch these difficulties
(which are the core of his play), because his mode of thought is
retrospective and idealistic.

Anderson's method is ba ed on the belief that qualities of char-
acter are of final value and must triumph over a hostile environ-
ment. He takes no interest in social causation, because he assumes
that the environment can be changed whenever people wish to
change it. Thus ideals (the same ideals which Ibsen found so
reactionary and dangerous) become the basis of the drama. This
is evident in Anderson's historical plays, which interpret history
as a conflict of the passions and whims of exceptional people. The
fate of nations is decided by persons who know no necessity beyond
their own emotional needs. Since the emotions are timeless, man's
relationship to the universe is substituted for his relationship to
his environment; emotional drift is substituted for rational causa-
tion.

If we turn back and re-examine the quoted portions of McLean's
final appeal from this angle, we find that it is an expression of
feeling; McLean makes no decision as to any future course; he
makes no estimate of the vastness of the problem or the possible
difficulties. The appeal lacks intellectual toughness; it is neither
concrete nor individual; the things that McLean says might be
(and often have been) said by any honest man — or, for that
matter, by any dishonest politician. One hears similar statements
from all sides in every political campaign.

McLean is as helpless as the intellectual in The Petrified Forest;
Squier is a pessimist, because he regards necessity as absolute ; Mc-
Lean is an optimist, because he disregards necessity completely.
Both points of view are unrealistic ; in both cases, the solution does

The Technique of the Modern Play 151

not depend on man's relation to the real world, but only on his feel-
ings and thoughts.*

In a later play, Anderson goes back to the founding of the
Republic and examines the ideals which motivated the founders of
the nation. Valley Forge repeats the basic conception of Both Your
Houses; it therefore follows exactly the same plot construction.
Here again we have the contradiction between absolute faith in
the machinery of democracy and the conviction that democracy
fails to work. Washington weighs this problem in static terms.
He admits that "the government's as rotten as the sow-belly it
sends us." But he is opposed to the suggestion of a dictatorship ; he
shares McLean's opinion that the people have complete control ;
he says : "Whether it gets better or worse it's your own, by God,
and you can do what you please with it."

All of this is presented fully in the first act. No attempt is made
to examine the social forces that caused the revolution, that
affected Washington and all the men of his time, and determined
the form of government which they built. The action repeats the
problem presented in the first act. The middle portion of the
drama is padded with an irrelevant sub-plot; Robert Benchley re-
fers to this as "the spurious heart-interest," provided by the intro-
duction of "Mistress Morris, dressed as a British officer, on a
Viennese-operetta mission to Washington with a coy suggestion
that he forget business for a minute or two and revive an old
amour." t The playwright offers no explanation of this incident
beyond the observation of one of his characters (Howe) : "What
a strange, mad thing is a woman's heart!" But the explanation lies,
not in Mary's wayward heart, but in the fact that a diversion is
necessary to keep the play from dying of sheer exhaustion. Wash-
ington's character is so devitalized and over-simplified that some-
thing outside his real interests must be introduced to humanize
him. This indicates, as in the case of Shaw, that emphasis on
character as a thing-in-itself leads to a fatal weakening of the
character's living meaning — the character can only be understood
when we understand what he is up against, the totality of his
environment.

It is often said that the difference between comedy and other
forms of drama lies in the treatment of characterization, comedy

* In Winterset, this connection of ideas is strikingly revealed. In this
play, Anderson develops a final situation which is identical in every
respect to the situation in The Petrified Forest. The chaos of the modern
world is resolved in the combination of sentiment and violence ; romantic
love is justified and transfigured by an act of brutal destruction.

t The Neijj Yorker, December 29, 1934.

152 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

being distinguished by its devotion to pure characterization.
According to this theory, comedy requires a less integrated plot
and less careful organization of the material. Barrett H. Clark
says : "The best comedies . . . have plots vv^hich in the final analysis
are simply threads utilized by the dramatist to hold together his
gallery of portraits." * If this were true, the principles of dramatic
action could not be applied to comedy, and it vrould be necessary
to consider comedy as a separate form of art. This vrould be diffi-
cult, because it would take the wisdom of Solomon to tell where
comedy ends and drama begins. Fortunately, there is not the
slightest justification for the theory; ancient comedy is especially
distinguished by the complexity of its plot-structure. The best
comedies, both ancient and modern, are those in which the action
is progressive and tightly knit.

Design for Living is an unusually apt example of the use of
repetition as a substitute for progression. Noel Coward has built
his play around the idea of repetition, and has handled the design
of repeated situations with great skill. But his selection of this
theme springs from a social philosophy which denies the role of
the conscious will, and which regards pragmatic sensation as the
only test of conduct.

The repetition-compulsion is as strong in Coward's plays as it j»
in those of O'Neill. Everything that Gilda says sounds like an
epigrammatic version of Nina Leeds. She resembles Nina in her
aimless thirst for emotion, her excessive sentimentality, combined
with ruthless disregard of anything but her own feelings. Like
Nina, she requires three men; like Nina, she marries the conven-
tional man whom she considers a fool.

In the first act, Gilda is living with Otto. She spends the night
with his best friend, Leo. In the morning Otto discovers them
together, and leaves them together. In the second act, she is living
with Leo and spends the night with Otto. Now it is she who goes
away, leaving the men together. In the third act, she has married
the faithful friend, Ernest, and the two men come and take her
away. If one maps out the social framework of this story, and
endeavors to reconstruct the untold incidents which have a bearing
on the plot, one finds that the author has left out almost everything
that might explain or justify the action. What motivated Gilda's
first decision to be unfaithful to Otto? Why did she marry
Ernest? Why did the two men come to take her away from
Ernest? What will their triple relationship be like after their

•Clark, A Study of the Modern Drama.

The Technique of the Modern Play 153

final departure together? Homosexuality is an essential element in
the story, but it is only hinted at.

The author has neglected this framework of cause and effect,
because he believes that human behavior is irrational. Why and
w^herefor are of no consequence. The feeling of the moment is
beautiful because it is momentary. Thus the people inevitably come
back, again and again, to the feeling already experienced, to renew
the momentary sensation — and the only design for living is a design
of neurotic repetition. These people are completely sentimental
(because they depend entirely on feeling), and completely cynical
(because their feelings are continually proved contradictory and
valueless). Being deprived of conscious will, they are victims of
fate, which dictates the twists and turns of feeling which constitute
their lives.

It may be objected that this is a very solemn way to attack a
mad comedy. But the play would be far more comic if it were
more incisively developed. Far from revealing character, Coward's
brilliant lines serve to conceal character. There is no differentiation
between the two men. They are exactly alike ; and Gilda is exactly
like both of them. One can take very little interest in whether
Gilda loves one man or the other or both, because all three of them
have the same whims and sentiments.

otto: Do you have many rows?
gilda: Quite a lot, every now and then.
OTTO : As many as we used to ?
GILDA : About the same.

The triple characterization is superficial, because the author
shows us only impulses, and fails to expose motives. We have no
idea how Gilda would react to any fundamental problem, because
we do not see her tested in any situation which requires decision;
she drifts; she speaks of "Good old romance bobbing up again and
wrapping our crudities in a few veils." One wonders what she
would do in a dramatic situation — that is, a situation in which her
impulse could not find an easy outlet, because of conflict with
unavoidable needs and pressures.

Coward's inability to project a sustained characterization is par-
ticularly marked in the treatment of Ernest. In the first two acts,
he is depicted as the sympathetic friend. In the final act, he
unaccountably turns out to be an old fool. There is no reason for
the change beyond the arbitrary exigencies of the plot. One can
only agree with Ernest when he remarks in the last scene: "I never
could understand this disgusting three-sided erotic hotch-potch."

154 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Coward, being a skillful showman, is no doubt aware of his own
limitation. Indeed, he mentions it amusingly in Design for Living;
Leo, the playwright, complains that the critics call his plays thin:
"I shall write fat plays from now onwards. Fat plays filled with
very fat people!" But as we have seen, even a play which is as fat
as Strange Interlude may be thin and repetitious in conception.

Sidney Howard's play. The Silver Cord,* treats a psychological
problem with scientific care. Howard deals with a woman who is
driven by subconscious impulses of which she is unaware ; there is
nothing metaphysical about these impulses. Here we have an
approach to the subconscious which is in complete contrast to
O'Neill's approach. The Silver Cord therefore offers an excellent
opportunity for the study of the role of the conscious will as it
relates to the analysis of subconscious motivations.

Mrs. Phelps has two sons whom she adores so neurotically and
selfishly that she inevitably tries to destroy their lives. She succeeds
in separating Robert from the girl to whom he is engaged and in
tying him to her apron-strings forever. She tries to break up
David's marriage, but David's wife, Christina, has a mind and will
of her own. She forces David to choose between the mother and
herself, and in the end he chooses his wife. The dramatic conflict
in this story is clear-cut; the family relationships are typical of
the well-to-do middle-class family.

One's first impression of the play is that the characters are over-
simplified ; the portrait of Mrs. Phelps seems exaggerated and one-
sided. The exaggeration does not lie in the fact that she is brutally
intent on controlling the lives of her sons. This emotional fixation
is understandable. But we are puzzled because the way she goes
about it seems excessively direct. One wonders how a woman could
be so unaware of the horrible things she is doing, and the horrible
motives which are behind her conduct. This brings us to the crucial
question — the question of conscious will. We do not know how far
Mrs. Phelps is conscious of her own motives, how far she is sincere
or insincere, how she justifies herself in her own mind. Without
this knowledge we are unable to judge her character at all. The
author presents her as a woman driven by the furies of the sub-
conscious. She makes no decisions, because her course is fixed in
advance. Her actions are not progressive, but are illustrative and
spontaneous. For example, she kisses her sons with an emotion
which suggests sexuality; she cannot bear having David share the

*This is one of Howard's earlier plays. His later achievements as a
playwright are more mature, and are discussed in later chapters. Chapter
I of Part IV is devoted to a detailed analysis of Yello<w Jack.

The Technique of the Modern Play 155

bedroom with his own wife. Even when Hester, Robert's fiancee,
is drowning in the icy pond, she tries to call her sons back when
they go to save the girl. The dramatic meaning of these acts lies
in the degree of consciousness and will which accompanies the acts.
Unless we know this, there is no progression and no conflict.

This is apparent in the final act, in which the struggle between
the young wife and the mother comes to a head. Christina tells
Mrs. Phelps what we already know — that she is guided by emo-
tions which are destructive. But there is no development because
the two women simply state opposing points of view. The girl's
denunciation is a static summing up of the theme: "You're not
really bad people, you know, you're just wrong, all wrong, terribly,
pitifully, all of you, and you're trapped. ... I rather fancy myself,
now, as a sort of scientific Nemesis. I mean to strip this house
and show it up for what it really is." She calls Mrs. Phelps "a
type of self-centered, self-pitying, son-devouring tigress, with un-
mentionable proclivities suppressed on the side."

This speech exposes the inadequacy of the play's social logic.
The fact that these people are trapped tells us very little about
them — we want to know how they react to being trapped. Mrs.
Phelps apparently reacts by being a "son-devouring tigress." If this
is true, we can hardly excuse her on the ground that she is not bad,
but only pitifully wrong. She has become bad, and we must investi-
gate the causes. Middle-class family life does not turn all mothers
into "son-devouring tigresses." Then there must be differences in
character and environment which determine the actions of Mrs.
Phelps. These differences can only be expressed in terms of con-
scious will. If Mrs. Phelps is completely unconscious and unwill-
ing, there is no excuse for calling her a "man-eating tigress."

At the end of the play, Mrs. Phelps is left alone with Robert;
she talks to him about mother-love, "her voice growing stronger as
that deeply religious point of view of hers comes to her rescue" :

. . . And 3'ou must remember what David, in his blindness, has
forgotten. That mother love suffereth long and is kind ; envieth
not, is not puffed up, is not easily provoked; beareth all things;
believeth all things ; hopeth all things ; endureth all things ... at
least, I think my love does.

ROBERT {engulfed forever) : Yes, mother.

What does the author mean by mentioning a "deeply religious
point of view" in the final moments of the play? There is not a
line in the course of the drama which suggests that Mrs. Phelps
has a deeply religious point of view. Can we believe that this

156 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

speech at the end is an honest speech ? After Christina's attack and
her other son's desertion, the Bible quotations sound like hypocrisy.
But we have no way of judging. As we look back over the whole
action, we realize that we have never known Mrs. Phelps at all,
because the conscious will has been obscured by a "scientific
Nemesis."

This does not infer that there is any limitation upon the play-
wright's choice of theme, or his point of view toward his material.
The objection to The Silver Cord is based on the contention that
the author's understanding of his own purpose is not sufficiently
thorough. The mother-son relationship furnishes a vital theme.
Howard's approach is influenced by the theories of psychoanalysis.
These theories have thrown a new light on the emotional complexes
involved in such a situation. The playwright need not limit himself
to a superficial examination of these complexes. He can study them
as deeply as if he were a physician actually practicing psycho-
analysis. But he must deal with the subconscious in the way in
which the physician deals with it : he must find out how the psychic
impulses affect the organization of the will; if the physician can
bring nothing to consciousness, he can have no effect upon the
patient. His work consists in analyzing and changing the indi-
vidual's adjustment to his environment. Memory traces, if and
when they are brought to consciousness, show past adjustments to
earlier environments.

The error lies in treating the subconscious as a "scientific
Nemesis" — or any other sort of nemesis. In this sense, it is a mean-
ingless abstraction, because it is outside our rational understanding
of character and environment. In The Silver Cord, Howard indi-
cates the incest-wishes which underlie the mother's fixation on her
sons. He presents these as explanatory comments on the action.
Surely, one may say, the dramatist is permitted to explain human
behavior; if the drama deals with cause and effect, it ought to
delve as deeply as possible into psychic causation. To be sure ! But
the whole scheme of causation (including the incest-wishes, and
their possible origin in the pre-history of the race) lies in the
contact between the individual and the environment. This means
that the incest-wishes can be presented dramatically in two ways:
the idea of incest may be forced into consciousness, so that the
individual must face the conflict and reach a decision as to his
conduct. Or the idea of incest may be traced as an objective feature
of the environment. This is an infinitely more difficult task. It
means going deeply into the social and economic conditions, the
pattern of human relationships in childhood and family life, the

The Technique of the Modern Play 157

ideas and sentiments which affect that pattern, the ideas and senti-
ments which have made incest an objective possibility in this en-
vironment. It is conceivable (if the dramatist were skillful enough
and wise enough) that this aspect of the environment could be
traced far back into the past. In his social plays, Ibsen handles
psychic factors in this manner. To some extent, it must be admitted
that Howard uses this method in The Silver Cord. He shows that
objective causes exist. But he makes no attempt to dramatize these
causes, to show their impact on the characters, or to use the con-
scious will as a point of reference in determining the scope of the
individual's conflict with the environment.

The foregoing discussion seems to paint a distressing picture of
the modern drama. It may be well to remind the reader that the
purpose of this investigation is clinical. In tracing the course of
group-ideas and social concepts as they are manifested in struc-
tural technique, one is not concerned with the theatre's glamour
or its more superficial charms. A man may say that a woman is
beautiful, and that her appearance in evening dress makes his
heart beat faster. It may also happen that this beautiful woman
suffers from liver trouble, anemia, nervous indigestion and a
persecution mania.

A diagnosis of the theatre's diseases need not include a descrip-
tion of its appearance in evening dress. Such a diagnosis can give
little comfort to the sentimental theatre-lover. But to those who
love the theatre not only for what it is, but for its unlimited
possibilities of power and beauty, the only acceptable standards of
value are the most rigorous standards. If one approaches the con-
temporary drama pragmatically, it is very easy to assume that its
diseases are unavoidable. The only way in which one can judge
the drama's weaknesses or its possibilities is through the application
of positive standards of value, drawn from the theatre's history and
tradition. Viewed historically, the drama today is passing through
a retrospective period. William Lyon Phelps gravely assures us
that "No form of art has shown more striking or more rapid
development in America than the art of the playwright." * It is
true that a retrospective trend is often accompanied by a con-
siderable development of dexterity and smoothness. Indeed, this
is a necessity in order to conceal the lack of fresh themes or
meaningful social concepts.

But the development of an art means the broadening of its
intellectual scope, emotional depth, poetic richness, technical

* Introduction to The Pulitzer Prize Plays (New York, i935).-

158 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

variety and structural grace. The only modern American plays
which have displayed these qualities in any marked degree are
the plays of Eugene O'Neill's early period, the last of which,
The Hairy Ape, appeared in 1922. O'Neill's failure to achieve
mature stature as a dramatist is not a purely personal failure; it
is due to unfavorable conditions which have affected all the writers
of the period.

The patterns of thought which I have described are to be found
in the work of every contemporary playwright;* they are the
product of his education, background, habits of living, social
contacts.

But the ferment of new ideas is today excitingly evident. The
needs of the serious artist force him to break the mold of outworn
ideas, to think creatively. This is a difficult task and involves a
serious inner conflict. In order to think creatively, one must
understand the function of one's art and the principles which
govern the creative process.

* It goes without saying that my own plays exhibit these tendencies in
their most malignant form: Nirvana and The Pure in Heart are swamped
in mysticism; the ending of The Pure in Heart exhibits the typical com-
bination of sentiment and violence. Gentleivoman follows a pattern of
repetition in the presentation of a static relationship.

PART 3

DRAMATIC STRUCTURE

The study of the history of dramatic theory and tech-
nique indicates that the flaywrighfs approach to situation
and character is determined by the ideas which are preva-
lent in the playwright^ s class and tifne. These ideas repre-
sent a long process of cultural development ^ m^odes of
thought inherited from previous generations undergo
constant change and adaptation^ reflecting the m^ovement
of economic forces and class relationships.

The form which the playwright utilizes is also histori-
cally evolved. The European theatrical tradition has its
fountainhead in Greece: when the first actor^ ThespiSj
appeared in the sixth century b.c. as an answerer to the
choral passages in the ancient rites performed in honor of
DionysiuSj the drama emerged as the representation of a
story in pantomime and dialogue. With the developm^ent
of the play structure^ it was possible to formulate laws of
technique. It was already evident in the Attic theatre that
drama deals with actions of m^en and women, and that the
systefn of events m^ust have some sort of design or unity.
The two general principles of action as a reversal of fortune
and structural unity to round out the action and define
its limits were established by Aristotle.

These principles were lost in medieval Europe, because
the drama as a planned and acted imitation of an action
ceased to exist, and its place was taken by rural festivals,
religious ceremonies, and m^instrelsy. These were forms of
dramatic comm^unication, but they did not have a plot
structure in the Aristotelian sense. The Renaissance reap-
pearance of the play as an acted story coincided with the
rediscovery of Aristotle and acceptance of his theories.

359

l6o Theory and Technique of Playwriting

However y the theatre of Shakespeare and Lofe de Vega
and Calderon had a sco-pe and freedom of movement that
transcended the Aristotelian formula. The drama reflected
the awakening of a new faith in the power of science and.
reason and the creative will of m^an. The development of
capitalist society brought an increasing emphasis on the
human personality y and the rights and obligations of the
individual in a comparatively fluid and expanding social
system. The drama focussed attention on psychological
conflicty on the struggle of men and women to fulfill their
destiny y to realize conscious aims and desires.

The theatre of the later nineteenth century was charac-
terized y as Brunetiere observed in i8g4y by a "weakeningy
relaxing, disintegrating^^ of the will. Although the inde-
pendent theatre movement at the turn of the century
brought greater maturity and social consciousness to the
European and American stage y it did not recapture the
secret of the creative will.

We are not attempting to defme abstract and eternal
laws of dramatic construction. We are concerned with
principles that are applicable to the theatre of our timey
illuminating the relationship between contemporary forms
and the tradition from which they have evolved.

We therefore begin with a definition of the nature of
drama as it has developed in the modern period. Its most
essential and inescapable characteristic is the presentation
of a conflict of will. But the statement is too general to
have any precise meaning in terms of dramatic structure^
Chapter I seeks to provide a m^ore specif c definition of the
law of conflicty considering consciousness and strength of
will as factors in creating dramatic movement and bringing
the action to a meaningful climax.

Whaty theny do we mean when we speak of action? The
question is posed in Chapter II. In a sens^y any event may
be described as an action — a prize fghty picketers marchingy
the operation of a riveting machiney a world wary an old

Dramatic Structure ibi

lady falling ojf a street car, the birth of quintuplets. Obvi-
ously, these things, in a raw and unorganized state, do not
constitute dramatic action that meets the requirements of
effective stage presentation. If we restrict the term to events
that take flace within the framework of a play, we still
find that the word covers a fer-plexing confusion of inci-
dents. Everything that happens on the stage, entrances and
exits, gestures and movements, details of speech and situa-
tion, may be classified as action.

We must discover the functional or structural quality of
dramatic action. We find this quality in the progression that
moves the play toward a climax. The action explodes in a
series of ascending crises. The preparation and accompHsh-
tnent of these crises, keeping the play in constant movement
toward an appointed goal, is what we mean by dramatic
action.

Having reached this point, it is evident that we cannot
proceed further without analyzing the over-all structure of
the play. Discussion of conflict and action has only a limited
meaning as long as it relates to scenes and situations. We
keep referring to a goal or crisis toward which the play is
moving. But what is this goal and how is it related to the
events that lead to it? We are forced to return to the
Aristotelian probletn of unity. What holds the system of
events together? What makes it complete and organic?

Chapter III, "Unity in Terms of Climax," m^arks the
climactic point toward which we have been progressing in
the survey of theatre history and technique. The climax of
a play, being the point at which the struggle of the con-
scious will to fulfill its aim reaches its greatest intensity
and fnaximum scope, is the key to the play^s unity. It is
the root-action, determining the value and meaning of all
the events that have preceded. If the climax lacks strength
and inevitability , the progression must be weak and con-
fused, because it has no goal; there is no ultimate test
which brings the conflict to a decision.

1 62 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

The next two chapters deal with the playwright's method
of selecting and arranging the sequence of events leading
to the climax. Here we begin to relate the dramatic form-
more closely to the social philosophy on which it is based.
The root-action expresses the dramatist^s convictions con-
cerning man^s social destiny ^ the individuals mastery of his
fate or his inability to cope with ^^the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune." The antecedent action is an ex-
ploration of causes which involve social and psychological
judgments.

The exploration of causes leads the dramatist beyond
the area covered by the structure of the play. The lives
of the characters are not circum^scribed by the events that
take place before the audience. These people have histories.
The room which is open to the footlights is part of a house ^
which is on a city street or a country lane^ with a landscape y
a towny an expanse of people and events^ a worldy around
it. We can say that this extension of the stage action is
imagined and taken for granted. But the most effective
plays are those in which the outer frameworky the system
of events not seen by the audiencey is m-ost fully explored
and realized. The people of such a play have the dimen-
sion of reality y they have a life of their own, they come
out of a background that we can feel and understand.

Thereforey it is necessary to deal with the process of
selection from two aspects: in Chapter IV y it is studied in
terms of the stage-action. Chapter V analyzes the larger
frameworky in which the inner action of the play m^oves
and fromy which it derives its deepest reality.

CHAPTER I

THE LAW OF CONFLICT

SINCE the drama deals with social relationships, a dramatic
conflict must be a social conflict. We can imagine a dramatic
struggle between man and other men, or between man and his
environment, including social forces or forces of nature. But it is
difHcult to imagine a play in which forces of nature are pitted
against other forces of nature.

Dramatic conflict is also predicated on the exercise of conscious
will. A conflict without conscious will is either wholly subjective
or wholly objective; since such a conflict would not deal with
the conduct of men in relation to other men or to their environ-
ment, it would not be a social conflict.

The following definition may serve as a basis for discussion.
The essential character of drama is social conflict in which the
conscious will is exerted : persons are pitted against other persons,
or individuals against groups, or groups against other groups,
or individuals or groups against social or natural forces.

The first impression of this definition is that it is still too broad
to be of any practical value: a prize fight is a conflict between
two persons which has dramatic qualities and a slight but ap-
preciable social meaning. A world war is a conflict between groups
and other groups, which has deep social implications.

Either a prize fight or a war might furnish the materials for
a dramatic conflict. This is not merely a matter of compression
and selection — although both compression and selection are
obviously necessary. The dramatic element (which transforms a
prize fight or a war from potential material of drama into the
actual stuff of drama) seems to lie in the way in which the ex-
pectations and motives of the persons or groups are projected. This
is not a matter solely of the use of the conscious will ; it involves
the kind and degree of conscious will exerted.

Brunetiere tells us that the conscious will must be directed
toward a specific goal: he compares Lesage's novel, Gil Bias, to
the play, The Marriage of Figaro, which Beaumarchais made
from the novel. '^Gil Bias, like everybody else, wants to live, and
if possible to live agreeably. That is not what we call having a
will. But Figaro wants a certain definite thing, which is to prevent

163

164 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Count Almaviva from exercising on Susanne the seigneurial privi-
lege. He finally succeeds — and I grant, since the statement has
been made, that it is not exactly through the means which he had
chosen, most of which turn against him; but nevertheless he has
constantly willed what he willed. He had not ceased to devise
means of attaining it, and when these means have failed, he has
not ceased to invent new ones." *

William Archer objects to Brunetiere's theory on the ground
that, "while it describes the matter of a good many dramas, it does
not lay down any true differentia, any characteristic common to all
true drama, and possessed by no other form of fiction." f Archer's
objections seem to be chiefly directed against the idea of specific
volition: He mentions a number of plays in which he feels that
there is no genuine conflict of will. He contends that Oedipus and
Ghosts do not come within the limits of Brunetiere's formula. He
evidently means that the clash of wills between persons is not
sufficiently defined in these dramas. He says: "No one can say that
the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is undramatic, or the
'Galeoto fu il libro' scene in Mr. Stephen Phillips' Paolo and
Francesco; yet the point of these scenes is not a clash, but an
ecstatic concordance, of wills." X

This confuses a conflict between persons with a conflict in which
a conscious and definite aim has been set up in defiance of other
persons or social forces. To be sure, the "clash of wills" in the
balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is not between the two persons
on the stage. It would be absurd to suggest that the dramatist
arbitrarily confine his art to the presentation of personal quarrels.
Brunetiere never maintains that any such direct opposition is re-
quired. On the contrary, he tells us that the theatre shows "the
development of the human will, attacking the obstacles opposed to
it by destiny, fortune, or circumstances." And again: "This is
what may be called willj to set up a goal, and to direct everything
toward it, to strive to bring everything into line with it." § Can
there be any doubt that Romeo and Juliet are setting up a goal
and striving "to bring everything into line with it?" They know
exactly what they want, and are conscious of the difficulties which
they must meet. This is equally true of the tragic lovers in Paolo
and Francesco.

Archer's use of Oedipus and Ghosts as examples is of consider-
able interest, because it shows the trend of his thought. He says

•Brunetiere, opus cit.
t Archer, opus cit.
t Ibid.
§ Brunetiere, opus cit.

The Law of Conflict 165

that Oedipus "does not struggle at all. His struggles insofar as
that word can be applied to his misguided efforts to escape from
the toils of fate, are all things of the past; in the actual course of
the tragedy he simply writhes under one revelation after another
of bygone error and unwitting crime." *

Archer's objection to the law of conflict goes far deeper than
the question of specific acts of volition: although he disclaims any
interest in the philosophic implications of the theory, his own point
of view is essentially metaphysical ; he accepts the idea of an abso-
lute necessity which denies and paralyzes the will.

Archer neglects an important technical feature of Oedipus and
Ghosts. Both plays employ the technique of beginning at a crisis.
This necessarily means that a large part of the action is retro-
spective. But this does not mean that the action is passive, either
in retrospect or in the crucial activity included in the play's struc-
ture. Oedipus is a series of conscious acts, directed toward sharply
defined ends — the acts of men and women of strong will determined
to prevent an impending danger. Their acts lead directly to a goal
they are striving to avoid ; one cannot assume that the exercise of
the conscious will presupposes that the will accomplishes its aim.
Indeed the intensity and meaning of the conflict lies in the dis-
parity between the aim and the result, between the purpose and
the achievement.

Oedipus is in no sense a passive victim. At the opening of the
play he is aware of a problem, which he consciously strives to solve.
This leads him to a violent conflict of will with Creon. Then
Jocasta realizes the direction in which Oedipus' search is moving;
she is faced with a terrible inner conflict; she tries to warn
Oedipus, but he refuses to turn back from what he has willed;
come what may, he must trace his own origin. When Oedipus faces
the unbearable truth, he commits a conscious act: he blinds him-
self; and in the final scene with his two daughters, Antigone and
Ismene, he is still facing the purport of the events which have
crushed him; considering the future, the effect of his own acts
upon his children, the measure of his own responsibility.

I have already stated that Ghosts is Ibsen's most vital study of
personal and social responsibility. Mrs. Alving's life is a long,
conscious fight to control her environment. Oswald does not accept
his fate; he opposes it with all the force of his will. The end of
the play shows Mrs. Alving faced with a terrible decision, a
decision which strains her will to the breaking point — she must
decide whether or not to kill her own son who has gone insane,

* Archer, opus cit.

1 66 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

What would Ghosts be like if it were (as Archer maintains it
to be) a play without a conscious struggle of wills? It is very
difficult to conceive of the play in this way : the only events which
would be partly unchanged would be Oswald's insanity and the
burning of the orphanage. But there would be no action whatsoever
leading to these situations. And even Oswald's cry, "give me the
sun," would of necessity be omitted, since it expresses conscious
will. Furthermore, if no exercise of conscious will were concerned,
the orphanage would never have been built.

While denying that conflict is invariably present in drama,
Archer does not agree with the Maeterlinckian theory which denies
action and finds dramatic power in a man "submitting with bent
head to the presence of his soul and his destiny." Archer is well
aware that the theatre must deal with situations which affect the
lives and emotions of human beings. Since he disapproves of the
idea of a conflict of will, he suggests that the word, crisis, is more
universally characteristic of dramatic representation. "The drama,"
he says, "may be called the art of crises, as fiction is the art of
gradual developments." * While this is not an inclusive definition,
there can be no question that the idea of crisis adds something
very pertinent to our conception of dramatic conflict. One can
readily imagine a conflict which does not reach a crisis; in our
daily lives we take continuous part in such conflicts. A struggle
which fails to reach a crisis is undramatic. Nevertheless we cannot
be satisfied with Archer's statement that "the essence of drama is
crisis." An earthquake is a crisis, but its dramatic significance lies
in the reactions and acts of human beings. If Ghosts consisted
only of Oswald's insanity and the burning of the orphanage it
would include two crises, but no conscious will and no preparation.
When human beings are involved in events which lead to a crisis,
they do not stand idly by and watch the climax approach. Human
beings seek to shape events for their own advantage, to extricate
themselves from difficulties which are partially foreseen. The
activity of the conscious will, seeking a way out, creates the very
conditions which precipitate the crisis.

Henry Arthur Jones, in analyzing the points of view of Brune-
tiere and Archer, tries to combine them by defining a play as "a
succession of suspenses and crises, or as a succession of conflicts
impending and conflicts raging, carried on in ascending and ac-
celerated climaxes from the beginning to the end of a connected
scheme." t

* IbU.

t Introduction to Brunetiere's The Laiv of the Drama.

The Law of Conflict 167

This is a richly suggestive definition. But it is a definition of
dramatic construction rather than of dramatic principle. It tells
us a great deal about construction, particularly in the mention of
"ascending and accelerated climaxes." But it does not mention the
conscious will, and therefore throws very little light on the psy-
chological factor which gives these climaxes their social and emo-
tional 'significance. The meaning of the situations lies in the degree
and kind of conscious will exerted, and in how it works; the crisis,
the dramatic explosion, is created by the gap between the aim and
the result — that is, by a shift of equilibrium between the force of
will and the force of social necessity. A crisis is the point at which
the balance of forces is so strained that something cracks, thus
causing a realignment of forces, a new pattern of relationships.

The will which creates drama is directed toward a specific goal.
But the goal which it selects must be sufficiently realistic to enable
the will to have some effect on reality. We in the audience must be
able to understand the goal and the possibility of its fulfillment.
The kind of will exerted must spring from a consciousness of
reality which corresponds to our own. This is a variable factor,
which can be accurately determined by an analysis of the social
viewpoint of the audience.

But we are concerned not only with the consciousness of will,
but with the strength of will. The exercise of will must be suffi-
ciently vigorous to sustain and develop the conflict to a point of
issue. A conflict which fails to reach a crisis is a conflict of weak
wills. In Greek and Elizabethan tragedy, the point of maximum
strain is generally reached in the death of the hero: he is crushed
by the forces which oppose him, or he takes his own life in
recognition of his defeat.

Brunetiere concludes that strength of will is the only test of
dramatic value : "One drama is superior to another drama accord-
ing as the quantity of will exerted is greater or less, as the share of
chance is less and that of necessity greater." * One cannot accept
this mechanical formulation. In the first place, there is no way to
measure the quantity of will exerted. In the second place, the
struggle is relative and not absolute. Necessity is simply the totality
of the environment, and is, as we have observed, a variable
quantity, depending on social concepts. This is a matter of quality
as well as quantity. Our conception of the quality of the will and
the quality of the forces to which it is opposed determines our
acknowledgment of the depth and scope of the conflict. The highest
dramatic art is not achieved b}- pitting the most gigantic will

* Opus cit.

1 68 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

against the most absolute necessity. The agonized struggle of a
weak will, seeking to adjust itself to an inhospitable environment,
may contain elements of poignant drama.

But however weak the will may be, it must be sufficiently strong
to sustain the conflict. Drama cannot deal with people whose wills
are atrophied, who are unable to make decisions which have even
temporary meaning, who adopt no conscious attitude toward events,
who make no effort to control their environment. The precise de-
gree of strength of will required is the strength needed to bring
the action to an issue, to create a change of equilibrium between
the individual and the environment.

The definition with which we begin this chapter may be re-
examined and re-phrased as follows:

The essential character of drama is social conflict — persons
against other persons, or individuals against groups, or groups
against other groups, or individuals or groups against social or
natural forces — in which the conscious mill, exerted for the
accomplishment of specific and understandable aims, is sufficiently
strong to bring the conflict to a point of crisis.

CHAPTER II

DRAMATIC ACTION

THE definition which concludes the preceding chapter serves as a
starting point for the discussion of action. The major crisis which
brings the unified dramatic conflict to a head is not the only crisis
in the play : dramatic movement proceeds by a series of changes of
equilibrium. Any change of equilibrium constitutes an action. The
play is a system of actions, a system of minor and major changes
of equilibrium. The climax of the play is the maximum disturbance
of equilibrium which can take place under the given conditions.

In discussing Aristotle, we noted the importance of his treatment
of action, not as a quality of construction, but as the essence of
construction, the unifying principle at the core of the play. So far
we have not developed this point; we have examined the forces
which create dramatic conflict ; but we have not shown how these
forces take a definitive form; the statement that a play is a system
of actions leading to a major change of equilibrium is a generaliza-
tion, but it gives us very little clue to the structure of the system ;

Dramatic Action 169

it does not show us how the beginning, middle and end of the
system are determined.

In this sense, the problem of action is the whole problem of
dramatic construction and cannot be considered as a separate ques-
tion. However, it is well to give some consideration to the mean-
ing of action as a quality. This is important because it is the only
side of the problem which is considered in technical studies of the
drama. We are told that a bit of dialogue or a scene or an entire
play has the quality of action, or lacks the quality of action. Since
it is generally agreed that this quality is essential to drama, it must
be very closely related to the principle of action which unifies the
whole structure.

The present chapter deals only with action as a quality which
gives impact, life and color to certain scenes. St. John Ervine says :
"A dramatist, when he talks of action, does not mean bustle or
mere physical movement: he means development and growth."
Ervine regrets that people are slow to understand this : "When you
speak of action to them, they immeditely imagine that you mean
doing things." * There can be no question that action involves "de-
velopment and growth" ; but one can sympathize with those who
cling to the idea that action means doing things. If the conscious
will does not cause people to do things, how does it make itself
manifest? Development and growth cannot result from inactivity.

George Pierce Baker says that action may be either physical or
mental provided it creates emotional response. This is of very little
value unless we know what constitutes an emotional response. Since
what moves us in any action is the spectacle of a change of equili-
brium between the individual and the environment, we cannot
speak of any action as being exclusively mental or exclusively
physical ; the change must affect both the individual's mind and the
objective reality with which he is in contact. Such a change need
not involve bustle or violence, but it must involve doing something,
because if nothing is done the equilibrium would remain static.
Furthermore, the change of equilibrium does not happen mechan-
ically, at a given point; it is a process which includes the expectation
of change, the attempt to bring the change about, as well as the
change itself.

How are we to apply this principle to a particular scene or group
of scenes ?

Brunetiere defines action by going straight back to his point of
departure — the exercise of the conscious will. He says that the use
of the conscious will serves to "distinguish action from motion or

* Opus c'lt.

170 Theory and Technique of Playwriiing

agitation." But this is arguing in a circle. The conscious will is a
necessary reference point in studying action, but it cannot be con-
fused with the action itself. We examine the conscious will in
order to discover the origin and validity of the action. But we do
not see or hear the conscious will. What we see and hear is a
physical event, which must be defined in terms of seeing and
hearing.

Brunetiere explains what he means by action — as distinguished
from motion or agitation — by an illustration which is far from
convincing: "When you have two men earnestly intent on opposite
sides of some issue vital to themselves, you have a contest or play,
interesting, exciting or absorbing to watch." * I think we have all
seen the two men of whom Brunetiere speaks. They are frequently
visible in life, and they are also often to be found behind the foot-
lights, "intent on opposite sides of some issue vital to themselves."
To assume that therefore "you have a contest or play," is, to put
it mildly, optimistic.

A debate is not an action, however conscious and willing the
participants may be. It is equally obvious that a vast amount of
commotion may result in an infinitesimal amount of action. A play
may contain a duel in every scene, a pitched battle in every act —
and the spectators may be sound asleep, or be kept awake only by
the noise.

Let us begin by distinguishing action (dramatic movement) from
activity (by which we mean movement in general). Action is a
kind of activity, a form of movement in general. The effectiveness
of action does not depend on what people do, but on the meaning
of what they do. We know that the root of this meaning lies in
the conscious will. But how does the meaning express itself in
dramatic movement? How are we to judge its objective realization?

Is it possible that intense meaning may be expressed in the
dialogue of two persons who sit facing each other and who never
move during a considerable scene? Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or
not to be," is dramatically effective. Is it action? Or should it be
criticized as a static element in the play's development ?

Action may be confined to a minimum of physical activity. But
it must be noted that this minimum, however slight, determines
the meaning of the action. Physical activity is always present.
To be seated in a chair involves the act of sitting, the use of a
certain muscular effort to maintain the position. To speak involves
the act of speaking, the use of the throat muscles, movement of the
lips, etc. If a tense conflict is involved, the mere act of sitting

* Opus cit.

Dramatic Action 171

or speaking will involve a proportionately greater physical effort.

The problem of action is the problem of finding the characteristic
and necessary activity. It must involve physical movement (how-
ever slight) of a given quality and conveying a given degree of
expressiveness. In this connection, a study of the art of acting is of
special value to the playwright. The methods of Stanislavski and
Vakhtangov, in spite of their limitations, are of tremendous value
to the actor, because they assist him in finding the precise physical
activity which expresses the emotional direction, habits, purposes,
desires, of the character. The actor seeks to create the character in
terms of meaningful and living movement.

The playwright's problem is similar: he must find action which
intensifies and heightens the conflict of will. Thus, two persons
facing each other, not moving and speaking quietly, may offer the
exact degree of activity in a given scene. But the important thing
in the scene is not the slightness of the movement, but the quality
of it — the degree of muscular tension, of expressiveness. Even
though the scene may appear to be static, its static element is
negative. The positive element is movement.

Then what about speech? Speech is also a form of action.
Dialogue which is abstract or deals with general feelings or ideas,
is undramatic. Speech is valid insofar as it describes or expresses
action. The action projected by the spoken word may be retro-
spective, or potential — or it may actually accompany the speech.
But the only test of what is said lies in its concreteness, its physical
impact, its quality of tension.

The idea that speech can simply reveal a mental state is illogical :
the act of speaking objectivizes the mental state. As long as the
action remains in the mind, the audience knows nothing about it.
As soon as the character speaks, the element of physical activity
and purpose is present. If the speech is cloudy and lacks concrete-
ness, it will give us only a slight impression of consciousness and
purpose and will be a bad speech. Nevertheless we ask; why is
this man speaking? What does he want? Even if he assures us
that his mental condition is completely passive, we cannot believe
him : we still want to know why he is talking and what he expects
to get out of it.

There is also another important characteristic of action: this
may be called its fluidity. It is evident that action by its nature
cannot be static. However, if activity is repeated, or if its connec-
tion with other activity is not indicated, it may well give a static
impression. Action (as distinguished from activity) must be in
process of becoming; therefore it must rise out of other action,

172 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

and must lead to other, and different, action. Each change of
equilibrium involves prior and forthcoming changes or equilibrium.
This means also, that the timing of any action, the length of time
in proportion to the amount of activity, must be considered.

The situation in which two people sit facing each other and talk
quietly may now be judged in the light of several definite questions :
Are they merely sitting? Or is their sitting expressive of a certain
stage of conflict ? Does their sitting represent a change in their rela-
tionship to each other or to their environment? Are they sitting
because they are afraid to move? Or does the sitting give one or
the other an advantage in a struggle? Is the sitting intended to
exasperate or frighten or disturb the other party? Or are both
waiting for news, or for an event, so that they sit in order to con-
sole or strengthen one another?

The most serious question in regard to this scene is one which
can only be answered by viewing its progression in connection with
the scenes which precede and follow it, and in connection with the
play as a whole. The scene, in the various forms in which it has
been described, contains the expectation of a change in equilibrium.
If two people sit facing each other because they are afraid to move,
or because they wish to exasperate or frighten the other party, or
because they are waiting for news, the element of tension is un-
doubtedly present. But we must ask whether this tension leads to
anything? The scene must actually achieve a change of equilibrium,
both in relation to previous and following scenes and in relation
to the movement within the scene itself. If the scene does not pro-
duce such a change, the tension is false and the element of action
is lacking. Progression requires physical movement; but it also lies
in the movement of the dialogue, in the extension and development
of action through the medium of speech.

Hamlet's soliloquy can be considered in this light. His speech ex-
presses an imminent change of equilibrium, because he is deciding
whether or not to take his own life. This represents a new phase in
Hamlet's struggle, and leads immediately to another phase, because
the soliloquy is broken by the meeting with Ophelia. The language
makes the conflict objective, offering the problem in sharply defined
images. The physical activity expresses the tension: a man alone
on the stage, solitary, facing death. But the aloneness flows immedi-
ately from, and to, other action. If the action of the soliloquy were
maintained too long, it would become static.

Note the position of the suicide soliloquy. It is preceded by the
scene in which the King and Polonius plan to have Ophelia meet
Hamlet apparently by accident, while his enemies spy on the en-

Dramatic Action 173

counter: it is followed by the hotly emotional scene between
Ophelia and Hamlet, in which he realizes that she is betraying
him : "Are you honest ? . . . Are you fair ? . . . Get thee to a nunnery :
why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?"

Hamlet is often spoken of as a subjective play. Hamlet's will
fails him and he finds it difficult to achieve the tasks which are
forced upon him. But his attempt to adjust himself to the world
he lives in is presented in vigorously objective terms : he finds that
he cannot trust his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, that
even the woman he loves is deceiving him. So he turns desperately
to another phase of the problem, to probe the truth in regard to
his mother and his uncle, to prove and prove again the fact which
tortures him. This is dramatized in the violent activity of the play
within the play. Then, knowing the truth beyond all doubt, he is
forced to face the unbearable implications of the truth — in the
scene with his mother. Here again objective activity accompanies
the mental conflict: Polonius is killed; Hamlet compares the por-
traits of his dead father and his living uncle; the ghost enters to
warn Hamlet of his "blunted purpose," to counsel him to better
understand his mother: "O, step between her and her fighting
soul." This line is an extremely pertinent example of action-
dialogue. Although the idea is psychological, it is expressed in terms
of action. It presents an image, not of some one feeling something,
but of some one doing something.

Dramatic action is activity combining physical movement and
speech ; it includes the expectation, preparation and accomplish-
ment of a change of equilibrium which is part of a series of such
changes. The movement toward a change of equilibrium may be
gradual, but the process of change must actually take place. False
expectation and false preparation are not dramatic action. Action
may be complex or simple, but all its parts must be objective,
progressive, meaningful.

This definition is valid as far as it goes. But we cannot pretend
that it is complete. The difficulty lies in the words "progressive"
and "meaningful." Progression is a matter of structure, and mean-
ing is a matter of theme. Neither problem can be solved until we
find the unifying principle which gives the play its wholeness,
binding a series of actions into an action which is organic and
indivisible.

174 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

CHAPTER III

UNITY IN TERMS OF CLIMAX

"IT is a matter of no small difficulty," wrote Corneille in 1660,
"to determine what unity of action is." * Corneille continued :
"The poet must treat his subject according to 'the probable' and
'the necessary.' This is what Aristotle says, and all his commenta-
tors repeat the words which appear to them so clear and intelligible
that not one of them has deigned any more than Aristotle himself
to tell us what the 'probable' and the 'necessary' are."

This indicates both the scope of the problem and the direction in
which the solution must be sought. The playwright's choice of
theme is guided by his conception of the probable and necessary;
the determination to achieve a probable end arouses the conscious
will ; the "iron framework of fact" sets a necessary limit upon the
action of the will. Aristotle spoke simply of "a beginning, a middle
and an end." It is obvious that a play which begins by chance and
ends because two and one-half hours have passed, is not a play.
Its beginning and its end, and the arrangement of the parts in a
related design, are dictated by the need of realizing the social con-
ception which constitutes the theme.

The general principle that unity of action is identical with unity
of theme is beyond dispute. But this does not solve the problem —
because the conception of unity of theme is as abstract as the con-
ception of unity of action. In practice, real unity must be a synthesis
of theme and action, and we must find out how this combination
is achieved.

Many practical playwrights feel that construction is a matter of
shrewd application of a simple formula: Frank Craven (as quoted
by Arthur Edwin Krows) suggests: "Get 'em in hot water and
get 'em out again." Emile Augier advises the dramatist to "soak
j^our fifth act in gentle tears, and salt the other four with dashes
of wit." Bronson Howard speaks of playMnriting as "the art of
using your common sense in the study of your own and other
people's emotions."

Lope De Vega, writing in 1609, on The New Art of Making
Plays in This Jfe^ gave a brief but useful summary of construction :

* Clark, European Theories ci the Drana.

Unity in Terms of Climax 175

"In the first act set forth the case. In the second weave together
the events, in such w^ise that until the middle of the third act one
may hardly guess the outcome. Always trick expectancy." *

According to Dumas the Younger, "Before every situation that a
dramatist creates, he should ask himself three questions. In this
situation, what should I do? What would other people do? What
ought to be done ? Every author who does not feel disposed to make
this analysis should renounce the theatre, for he will never become
a dramatist." Since this is sound practical advice, it also has a
sound theoretical foundation. These three questions are of basic im-
portance, involving the playwright's point of view, the psychologj'
of the characters, and the social significance of the situation.

But Dumas sets no definite limits to the possibilities of "what
ought to be done?" A social analysis along these lines might be
applied to a series of diffuse and disorganized situations. Dumas
does not ask: how was the situation created in the first place?
What led the dramatist to remember or imagine this situation, and
to select it as a part of his dramatic structure? In this question —
covering the process by which the theme is conceived and developed
in the playwright's mind — lies the essence of unity.

If we turn to more theoretical discussions of technique, we find
that the origin and growth of the theme is either ignored or treated
as a mystery. In outlining his theory that "the drama may be
called the art of crises," Archer tells us that "a dramatic scene is a
crisis (or climax) building to an ultimate climax which is the core
of the action." The dramatic scenes are held together by sustained
and increasing tension. "A great part of the secret of dramatic
architecture lies in the one word, tension; to engender, maintain,
suspend, heighten and resolve a state of tension." f

George Pierce Baker says that sustained interest in a play depends
on "clearness and right emphasis" . . . and "a third essential quality,
movement ... a straining forward of interest, a compelling desire to
know what will happen next." And again, "there should be good
movement within the scene, the act and even the play as a whole." +

Freytag, with his customary grandeur, describes dramatic struc-
ture as the "efflux of will-power, the accomplishment of a deed and
its reaction on the soul, movement and counter-movement, strife
and counter-strife, rising and sinking, binding and loosing." §

Does this throw any light on what Aristotle called "the struc-

* Brewster translation, opus cit.
f Opus cit.
X opus at.
§ Opus cit.

176 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

rural union of the parts"? Tension, the "straining forward of
interest," "movement and counter-movement," are qualities of ac-
tion ; but they do not necessarily imply an action which is organic
and complete within itself. If Aristotle is correct in saying that
unity of the parts must be "such that, if any one of them is dis-
placed or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed,"
there ought to be some definite test of unity, by which we can
judge and discard "a thing whose presence or absence makes no
visible difference."

It is often thought that unity can be mechanically achieved
through the physical concentration of the material : the action must
be centered on one individual or closely associated group of in-
dividuals, or upon a single incident cr narrowly limited group of
incidents. But attempts of this sort defeat their own purpose.
Aristotle settles the matter with his customary lucidity: "For in-
finitely various are the incidents in one man's life which cannot be
reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man
out of which we cannot make one action."

The dramatist cannot "make one action," either by limiting the
scope of the play's movement, or by dealing with "one man's life."
Many plays attain the most intense thematic concentration in
handling a multiplicity of events and characters. For example,
The Weavers, by Gerhart Hauptmann, introduces different groups
of people in each act. The third act shows us a new set of char-
acters at the village inn. The fifth act takes us to old weaver
Hilse's workshop at Langen-Bielau, introducing Hilse and his
family who have played no part in the previous development of
the action. But the play gives the effect of harmonious and unified
construction. On the other hand, Both Your Houses, which deals
with a single slight anecdote, is unnecessarily diffuse.

The Russian motion picture. Three Songs About Lenin, covers a
vast field of activity, including incidents from Lenin's career, the
work and lives of the Soviet masses, and the effect of his death
upon people in all parts of the Soviet Union. Yet this picture is
compact, clear, orderly in construction.

The unifying force is the idea; but an idea, however integral it
may be, is in itself undramatic. By an apparently miraculous trans-
formation, the abstraction in the playwright's mind comes alive!
St. John Ervine says that "a play should be a living organism, so
alive that when any part of it is cut off the body bleeds!" * How is
this living entity produced ? Does the creator breathe the breath of
life into his creation through the intensity of his own feeling ? Is the

*Opus cit.

Unity in Terms of Climax 177

Hvingness of ft emotional rather than anatomical ? Or is the creative
process both emotional and deeply rational?

In Schlegel's critical writings, we find the contradiction between
the inspirational theory of art and the deep logic of the creative
process revealed in its clearest form. Schlegel demanded "a deeper,
more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity." He was right in saying
that unity "arises out of the primary and spontaneous activity of
the human mind." But he confused the issue by adding that "the
idea of One and Whole is in no way derived from experience."
How can anything be known or experienced, except through the
primary activity of the human mind ?

Although he declared that unity is beyond rational knowing,
Schlegel himself touched the heart of the problem and pointed the
way to a precise understanding of the way in which the idea of
dramatic unity is derived from experience. Unity of action, he said,
"will consist in its direction toward a single end ; and to its com-
pleteness belongs all that lies between the first determination and
the execution of the deed ... its absolute beginning is the assertion
of free will, with the acknowledgment of necessity its absolute
end." *

This seems to place the scope of the action within definite limits :
but the absolute beginning and the absolute end are merely fictions
unless we are able to reach a workaday understanding of the mean-
ing of free will and necessity as they operate in our experience. As
long as these concepts remain on a metaphysical plane, the limits
of the probable and the necessary are the limits of the universe.
This was the difficulty which Schlegel was unable to solve.

We have observed that the relationship between free will and
necessity is a continuously shifting balance of forces : this continuity
of movement precludes the idea of absolute beginnings or endings ;
we cannot conceive of an assertion of free will which is genuinely
free; this would be an unmotivated decision in an untouched field
of experience. When the will is asserted in a certain direction, the
decision is based on the sum-total of the necessities which we have
previously experienced. This enables us to form a more or less
correct picture of future probabilities, which governs our course of
action. Then the beginnings of an action are not determined merely
by the feeling that the will must be asserted ; the beginning of the
action is rooted in necessity just as firmly as the end — the end con-
stitutes the testing, the acceptance or rejection, of the picture of
necessity which motivated the beginning.

This leads us to a genuinely organic conception of unity: the

* Opus cit.

178 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

movement of the drama does not move loosely between the opposite
poles of free will and necessity: the determination to perform an
act includes the picture of how the act will look and what its ejfect
will be when performed: there is no dualism of the probable and
the necessary ; probability is what we imagine necessity to be before
it happens.

Therefore every detail of the action is determined by the end
toward which the action is moving. But this end is no more
absolute than the beginning: it does not represent necessity in any
final form: by necessity we mean the laws that govern reality;
reality is fluid and we cannot imagine it in any final form. The
climax of the play, being the point of highest tension, gives the
fullest expression to the laws of reality as the playwright conceives
them. The climax resolves the conflict by a change of equilibrium
which creates a new balance of forces: the necessity which makes
this event inevitable is the pla)avright's necessity: it expresses the
social meaning which led him to invent the action.

The climax is the concrete realization of the theme in terms of
an event. In practical playwriting, this means that the climax is the
point of reference by which the validity of every element of the
structure can be determined.

It is sometimes possible to state the theme of a play in a single
phrase: for instance, Wednesday's Child, by Leopold Atlas, deals
with the sufferings of a sensitive boy whose parents are divorced ;
this is an adequate statement of the theme which forms the unifying
motif of the drama. It is obvious that every scene of the play con-
tributes to the picture of the adolescent boy's suffering.

The action preserves the unity of theme : but does this mean that
the movement of the play is so closely knit that every turn of the
action is inevitable, that the removal of any part would cause
the whole to be "disjointed and disturbed" ? We cannot answer this
question by referring to the play's subject-matter or purpose: the
same theme might have been presented by another arrangement of
incidents. One might invent dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of
incidents, which would all have a direct bearing on the sufferings
of a sensitive child of divorced parents.

If we turn to the climax of Wednesday's Child, we have an
adequate means of testing the play's development: we no longer
ask vague questions about the theme. Rather we ask: What hap-
pens to the boy? What is the final statement of his problem in
terms of action? The playwright must have embodied his living
meaning, his consciousness and purpose toward the lives of his
characters, in the climactic event. Does every scene build toward

Unity in Terms of Climax 179

this final statement? Could any event be omitted without disjoint-
ing and disturbing the ending?

The last scene of Wednesday's Child shows Bobby Phillips
wearing a uniform in a military school, unutterably lonely but
bravely determined to keep a stifE upper lip. This is a genuinely
touching conclusion, but we immediately observe that the climax
itself is not completely realized. If the climax is the test of the
play's meaning, the climax must be clear enough and strong enough
to hold the play together: it must be an action, fully developed
and involving a definite change of equilibrium between the char-
acters and their environment.

The atmosphere of a military school and its social implications
must have a very direct bearing on Bobby Phillips' character. Since
the author has introduced the military school, he must face what it
means ; it represents a new stage in the relationship between Bobby
Phillips and his environment. In order to give this situation
dramatic meaning, we must understand it in connection with the
totality of the boy's previous experience. The author does not
project this problem: if we go back to earlier scenes, we find that
the action is not built in terms of the conclusion ; it is built in
terms of the relation of the boy to his parents; every scene does
not inevitably lead to the figure of the lonely child in a military
uniform. The ending is a way out, a trick of bringing down the
curtain. The fault does not lie in the fact that the ending is in-
conclusive. It is proper, and sometimes brilliantly effective, to end a
play on a question-mark. But we must know what the question-
mark means: we must see how it arises out of the given social
relationships, and to what alternatives it will lead. When the play-
wright asks a question, he must have an integrated point of view
toward his own question: otherwise, the question leads in all
directions, and the action is diffused instead of being concentrated.

The conceptual confusion exposed at the close of Wednesday's
Child causes the play to become weaker as it proceeds. The first
three scenes are tremendously exciting, because the author has suc-
ceeded in these scenes in presenting the child's consciousness and
will in relation to his environment. The masterly introductory
scene in the Phillips' dining room exposes the family conflict in
intense action ; we see the burden on the child's mind and we see
the web of necessity from which the parents are trying to extricate
themselves. The second scene, in a corner of the back lot, shows
the boy's poignant struggle to adjust himself among the other
children in the neighborhood. The third scene brings the struggle
of the parents to a climax; we are aware of the child overhearing

i8o Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the scene ; we see the problem through his consciousness and will.

From this point the progression is clouded. Destiny takes control
of the action ; the pathos of the child's position and the difficulties
of a solution are presented in terms of emotional drift: the social
problem, which is powerfully dramatized in the first three scenes,
is repeated in a static situation in the courtroom scene which closes
the first act. In the second act, the problem of the parents is em-
phasized; they are well-meaning but helpless; good will is sub-
stituted for will operating toward a conscious goal ; their kindly
intentions have no dramatic value because the real trouble lies in
the fact that they have ceased to be interested in the child: since
this is a passive attitude, it cannot create meaningful progression.
The scenes of the second act simply repeat the parents' problem,
accompanied by the repetition of the boy's bewilderment and need.
The dramatist assumes that necessity is absolute and that there is
no remedy for the situation. For this reason, the action becomes
less convincing; we are not sure whether or not a satisfactory
adjustment could have been created between the boy and one or
the other of his divorced parents, because the conscious wills of the
characters are not exerted toward such an adjustment. On the
other hand, if it is assumed that the child is unwanted, the dramatist
makes a mistake in devoting the greater part of his second act to
proving this negative conclusion; he should rather analyze the
boy's conscious will in his lonely attempt to adjust himself to new
facts. The final scene shows the boy's loneliness, but it shows it
negatively, as an emotion, because we have not entered deeply
enough into his mind to know how his consciousness and will react
to the new environment.

Perhaps a word of explanation is needed as to the use of the
term, climax. The reader may doubt whether the scene in the
military school may properly be called the climax of Wednesday's
Child. The climax is often regarded as a central point in the action,
followed by the "falling action" which leads to the denouement or
solution. A detailed analysis of "Climax and Solution" will be
found in a later chapter. For the present, it is sufficient to point
out that the term climax is used as covering the final and most
intense stage of the action. This is not necessarily the final scene;
it is the scene in which the final phase of the conflict is reached. I
believe the military school in Wednesday's Child represents the
highest stage of the boy's struggle, and must therefore be regarded
as the climax.

The centering of the action upon a definite goal creates the in-

Unity in Terms of Climax i8l

tegrated movement which is the essence of drama: it gives nev^^
meaning to the "clearness and right emphasis" and the "straining
forvi^ard of interest" of which Baker speaks. It gives practical
application to Archer's statement that the "ultimate climax" is
"the core of the action."

The principle of unity in terms of climax is not a new one ; but,
as far as I am aware, it has not been clearly analyzed or applied.
The nearest approach to a logical statement of the principle may
be found in John Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poesie: "As for
the third unity, which is that of action, the ancients meant no other
by it than what the logicians do by their finis, the end, or scope, of
any action ; that which is first in intention and last in execution." *

Many plaj'wrights have pointed to the necessity of testing the
action in terms of the ending. "You should not begin your work,"
said Dumas the Younger, "until you have your concluding scene,
movement and speech clear in your mind." Ernest Legouve gives
the same advice: "You ask me how a play is made. By beginning
at the end." Percival Wilde is of the same opinion : "Begin at the
End and go Back till you come to the Beginning. Then start."

The advice to "begin at the end" is sound as far as it goes. But
the author who attempts to apply this advice as a cut-and-dried
rule will get very meager results ; the mechanical act of writing the
climax first cannot be of any value unless one understands the
function of the climax and the system of cause and effect which
binds it to the play as a whole.

The laws of thought which underlie the creative process require
that the playwright begin with a root-idea. He may be unconscious
of this ; he may think that the creative urge springs from random
and purposeless thoughts ; but disorganized thought cannot lead to
organized activity; however vague his social attitude may be, it is
sufficiently conscious and purposive to lead him to the volitional
representation of action. Baker says that "a play may start from
almost anything ; a detached thought that flashes through the mind ;
a theory of conduct or of art which one firmly believes or wishes
only to examine ; a bit of dialogue overheard or imagined ; a setting,
real or imagined, which creates emotion in the observer ; a perfectly
detached scene, the antecedents and consequences of which are as
yet unknown ; a figure glimpsed in a crowd which for some reason
arrests the attention of the dramatist, or a figure closely studied;
a contrast or similarity between two people or conditions of life;
a mere incident — noted in a newspaper or book, heard in idle talk,

* Opus cit.

182 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

or observed ; or a story, told only in the barest outlines or with the
utmost detail." *

There is no doubt that a playwright may start with any of these
odds and ends of fact or fancy. He may complete an entire play
by spontaneously piecing together bits of experience and informa-
tion, without ever attaining the slightest understanding of the
principles which underlie his activity. But whether he knows it or
not, the process is not as spontaneous as it appears. The "bit of
dialogue," or "figure glimpsed in a crowd," or detailed story, do
not appeal to him by chance; the reason lies in a point of view
which he has developed as a result of his own experience ; his point
of view is sufficiently definite to make him feel the need of
crystallizing it; he wants to find events which have a bearing on
the picture of events which he has formed in his mind. When he
finds a "bit of dialogue" or a "figure glimpsed in a crowd" or a
story, he is not satisfied that this proves or justifies his point of view
— if he were satisfied, he would stop right there, and would not
be moved to further activity. What he seeks is the most complete
volitional representation of the root-idea. The root-idea is abstract,
because it is the sum-total of many experiences. He cannot be
satisfied until he has turned it into a living event.

The root-idea is the beginning of the process. The next step
is the discovery of an action which expresses the root-idea. This
action is the most fundamental action of the play ; it is the climax
and the limit of the play's development, because it embodies the
playwright's idea of social necessity, which defines the play's scope
and purpose. In searching for this root-action, the author may
collect or invent any number of ideas or incidents or characters;
he may suppose that these are of value in themselves ; but logically
he cannot test their value or put them to work until he has found
the fundamental event which serves as climax. The meaning of any
incident depends on its relationship to reality; an isolated incident
(in a play or in life) assumes a meaning for us insofar as it appeals
to our sense of what is probable or necessary ; but there is no final
truth as to probability and necessity; the system of incidents which
constitutes a play depends on the playwright's sense of what is
probable and necessary: until he has defined this, by defining the
goal and scope of the action, his efforts can have neither unity nor
rational purpose.

While the laws of living movement go forward from cause to
effect, the laws of volitional representation go backward, from
effect to cause. The necessity for this lies in the fact that the repre-
* Opus cit.

Unity in Terms of Climax 183

sentation is volitional; the playwright creates from what he has
known and experienced, and therefore must think back over his
knowledge and experience to seek out causes which lead to the goal
which his conscious will has selected. Thus the concentration on
the crisis and the retrospective analysis of causes which we find in
much of the world's greatest drama (Greek tragedy and Ibsen's
social plays) follow the logic of dramatic thought in its most
natural form. The extension of the action in the Elizabethan
theatre grows out of a wider and less inhibited social point of view,
which permits a freer investigation of causes. The dramatic system
of events may attain any degree of extension or complexity, pro-
vided the result (the root-action) is clearly defined.

There can be no doubt that many playwrights construct the
preliminary action of a projected drama without knowing what
the climax will be. To some extent, a dramatist may be justified
in doing this, because it may be his best means of clarifying his
own purpose. But he should be aware of the principles which guide
his effort, and which are operative whether or not he is conscious
of them. In developing preliminary incidents, he is seeking for the
root-action; uncertainty in regard to the root-action indicates un-
certainty in regard to the root-idea; the playwright who feels his
way toward an unknown climax is confused as to the social mean-
ing of the events with which he is dealing; in order to remedy this
conceptual confusion he must be aware of it; he must seek to
define his point of view, and to give it living form in the climax.
He is justified in writing preliminary material at random only
if he knows why he is writing at random ; much of this preliminary
material will prove useful, because it springs from the confused
point of view which the playwright is endeavoring to clarify ; but
when the playwright has cut through his confusion and discovered
the meaning and scope of the action, he must subject his work to a
rigorous analysis in terms of climax. Otherwise, the conceptual con-
fusion will persist ; the action will be spotty or disorganized ; the
connection between the events and the climax will be obscured.
It may happen, as in the case of a surprising number of modern
plays, that the author has inadvertently omitted the climax alto-
gether.

In using the climax as a reference point, we must remember that
we are dealing with living stuff and not with inorganic matter.
The climax (like every other part of the play) is a movement, a
change of equilibrium. The inter-relation of the parts is complicated
and dynamic. The climax serves as a unifying force, but it is not
static ; while the play is built in terms of the climax, every event.

184 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

every element of the action, reacts upon, remolds and revitalizes
the climax itself.

This is clear if w^e think of the playw^right as a person perform-
ing an act: to act without conscious purpose is irrational; to
change one's purpose while one is trying to accomplish it shows
weakness and confusion ; also, that the purpose was not sufficiently
analyzed before the act was undertaken. If it turns out that the
purpose cannot be accomplished, then the act must be abandoned.
(The playwright can show the failure of his characters, but he
cannot show his own failure to write a play.) But every step in
the performance of the act adds to one's understanding of one's
own aim and modifies its meaning and desirability.

Archer says of Ibsen's notebooks: "Nowhere else as far as I
am aware, do we obtain so clear a view of the processes of a great
dramatist's mind." * Ibsen's creative method, as he reveals it in
the notebooks, shows that he proceeds from the root-idea to the
root-action ; the development of the play consists in bringing every
incident into line with the climactic event. Ibsen's first step is
the statement of the theme in abstract terms. The social concept
underlying Hedda Gabler has already been mentioned. Ibsen states
the problem carefully and concretely: "Hedda's despair is that
there are doubtless so many chances of happiness in the world, but
that she cannot discover them. It is the want of an object in life
which torments her." f He then proceeds to develop a series of
brief outlines and snatches of dialogue. This material covers the
whole course of the play ; its evident purpose is to find the physical
action which expresses the theme.

When Ibsen has thus succeeded in creating his theme dynamic-
ally, he proceeds to his third task, which he describes (in a letter
to Theodor Caspari) % as "more energetic individualization of the
persons and their modes of expression." This process of revision
is certainly a process of "individualization" ; but it can be more
technically described as the process whereby the author coordinates
every incident of his play with the crisis which is to follow. We
find the early drafts of Hedda Gabler omit certain things which
are vital to a full understanding of Hedda's suicide. Mademoiselle
Diane is not mentioned in the first version; Hedda's jealousy of
Mrs. Elvsted's lovely hair, "I think I must burn your hair oH,
after all," is a later development. Both the jealousy motif and
the reference to Mademoiselle Diane are essential to the develop-

* Introduction to v. 12 of The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen.

t Ibsen, opus cit., v. 12.

t Quoted by Archer in his introduction to the notebooks (v. 12, ibid.)»

Unity in Terms of Climax 185

ment of the climax. Since Hedda's suicide must be the result of
her certainty that there are no available chances of happiness, every
moment of the action must contribute to her frustration and
desperation. It is significant that Ibsen's early plans seem to have
called for the manuscript being destroyed by Tesman instead of by
Hedda. This would throw the whole conflict out of balance ; it
would make Tesman a more active person, and Hedda more
passive. The whole tendency of Ibsen's original plans was to give
Tesman a more dynamic role. It was Tesman who lured Lovborg
to Judge Brack's party. This might have contributed to a more
interesting relationship between husband and wife ; but a develop-
ment along these lines would make Hedda's fevered search for
happiness less dramatic; it would not conform to Ibsen's root-idea
as he had outlined it. Hedda's despair is not due to the fact that
her marriage is unhappy; it is due to the fact that "there are
doubtless so many chances of happiness" which she is unable to
discover. The circumstances of Hedda's suicide, following the news
of Lovborg's death and the threats of Judge Brack, express this
root-idea. All of Ibsen's revisions are designed to intensify and
clarify the suicide.*

In the first plans, both Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted show far more
knowledge of the relationship which has existed between Hedda
and Lovborg. In the first act of the play as finally completed, Mrs.
Elvsted says, "A woman's shadow stands between Eilert Lovborg
and me." Hedda asks, "Who can that be?" and Mrs. Elvsted
replies, "I don't know." But in the earlier version, Mrs. Elvsted
answers directly: "It is you, Hedda." This knowledge on the part
of Mrs. Elvsted and Tesman might have great dramatic value in
the development of the play; the only test by which this element
can be accepted or discarded is its effect on the climax. Ibsen uses
this test: if people know about Hedda and Lovborg, it brings her
problem to an earlier and different issue; it means that, at an
earlier point in the action, her conscious will must be concentrated
on protecting herself and on solving this issue. But Ibsen wishes
to show that Hedda's conscious will is not centered on her rela-
tionship to Lovborg or to her husband ; "it is the want of an
object in life which torments her." Ibsen projects this problem
in concrete dramatic terms, because he shows that Hedda is con-
scious of the problem, and is straining her will to the utmost to
find a solution. In order to show the scope of this struggle, it is
better to keep Mrs. Elvsted and Tesman in ignorance of the past

* All material here referred to, covering Ibsen's earlier versions and
plans, is to be found in the notebooks {opus cit., v. 12).

1 86 Theory and Technique of Playwritiny

"comradeship" with Lovborg. This gives Hedda more opportunity
to explore the possibilities of happiness in her environment. The
circumstances of her death are therefore more inevitable and more
fully understood.

The same process is followed in the development of Ibsen's
other plays. In an early version of A Doll's House, the second act
ends on a note of dull despair: Nora says, ". . . no, no, there is no
going back now. {Looks at the clock) Five... seven hours till
midnight. Then twenty-four hours till the next midnight. Twenty-
four and seven? Thirty-one hours to live. {She goes out. Cur-
tain)." In the later form, Nora's hectic dancing of the tarantella
is introduced. Then the men go into the dining room, Mrs. Linda
follows, and Nora is alone: "Five o'clock. Seven hours till mid-
night. Then the tarantella will be over. Twenty-four and seven?
Thirty-one hours to live." Then Helmer calls her from the door-
way: "Where's my little skylark?" Nora goes to him with her
arms outstretched: "Here she is! {Curtain)." This ending of the
second act is clearly a great improvement simply as a matter of
dramatic strategy. But the invention of the tarantella, and espe-
cially the ironic lines between husband and wife at the end of
the act, bear a direct relation to the ending of the play.

The desperate dancing of the tarantella finds an answer, a
solution, in the desperate blunt honesty of Nora's departure. The
lines which close the second act in the earlier draft suggest hope-
lessness, suicide, futility. These lines do not build the tension
which reaches its breaking point in the historic slamming of the
door when Nora goes free. The lines which close the second act
in the later version are perfectly designed as preparation for the
scene which ends the play: "Where's my little skylark?" is di-
rectly linked to the final lines :

NORA: All, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would
have to happen.

HELMER : Tell me what that would be !

NORA: Both you and I would have to be so changed that —
Oh, Torvald, I don't believe any longer in wonderful things
happening.

helmer: But I will believe in it. Tell me? So changed
that — ?

NORA: That our life together would be a real wedlock.
Goodbye.

These lines, expressing the essence of the plas^vright's social
meaning, serve as a point of reference by which every scene, every
movement and line, of the play may be analyzed and judged.

The Process of Selection 187

CHAPTER IV

THE PROCESS OF SELECTION

THE principle of unity in terms of climax does not solve the
creative process of playwriting. It is the beginning of the process ;
the climax does not provide an automatic selector by which events
are sorted and arranged. How does the selection proceed? How
is tension sustained and increased ? What is the immediate causal
connection between the scenes? How about emphasis and arrange-
ment? How does the dramatist decide the precise order, or con-
tinuity, of events? How does he decide which are the big scenes,
and which of secondary importance, and the links between them?
How does he decide the length of scenes, the number of characters?
How about probability, chance and coincidence? How about sur-
prise? How about the obligatory scene? How much of the action
must be represented on the stage, and how much may be shown
in retrospect or in narrative form? What is the exact relationship
between unity of theme and unity of action in the play's pro-
gression ?

All of these twelve questions must be studied and answered :
the questions are closely inter-connected, and relate to problems
which may be grouped under two heads : problems of the selective
process, and problems of continuity (which is a later and more
detailed stage of the selective process).

Having defined the principle of unity, we must next proceed to
find out how it works: we must trace the selection and arrange-
ment of the material from the root-idea to the complete play.

A dramatist creates a play. However, one cannot think of the
play as being created out of nothing, or out of the abstract oneness
of life, or out of the great unknown. On the contrary, the play is
created out of materials which are very well known — materials
which must be familiar to the audience; otherwise the audience
would have no way of establishing contact with the events on the
stage.

It is not strictly accurate to speak of a dramatist as a person
who invents incidents. It is more satisfactory to consider his task
as a process of selection. One may conceive of the playwright as
some one who enters a huge warehouse, crammed with a supply

1 88 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

of possible incidents; theoretically, the contents of the warehouse
is unlimited; for each playwright, his field of choice is limited
by the extent of his knowledge and experience. In order to select
creatively, he must possess a high order of imagination ; imagina-
tion is the faculty of combining mental-images derived from
knowledge and experience so as to give these images fresh mean-
ings and fresh potentialities. These meanings and potentialities
appear to be new, but the newness lies in the selection and
arrangement.

"Every play," writes Clayton Hamilton, "is a dramatization
of a story that covers a larger canvas than the play itself. The
dramatist must be familiar not only with the comparatively few
events that he exhibits on the stage, but also with the many other
events that happen off-stage during the course of the action, others
that happen between the acts, and innumerable others that are
assumed to have happened before the play began." * If we examine
this statement carefully, we find that it suggests two problems
which are of fundamental importance in analyzing the selective
process. In the first place, what are these other events which are
assumed to have happened ? Theoretically, anything and everything
may be assumed to have happened. "The principle would seem to
be," says Archer, "that slow and gradual processes, and separate
lines of causation, should be left outside the frame of the picture." f
This is unquestionably true, but again we are in the dark as to
what these "slow and gradual processes" are. Are they simply
what the playwright mentions in the course of the action, or are
they any "separate lines of causation" which the audience chooses
to invent? The fact that the action takes place within a larger
framework of events is unquestionable; the extent and character
of this larger framework must be determined. In the second place,
Hamilton speaks of "a dramatization of a story" as if the story,
including all the events which may be assumed to have happened,
were already in existence, instead of being in process of becoming.
The mistake (a common one in all technical studies of the drama)
lies in confusing the making of the play with the thing to be
made. This is based on the notion that the playwright has a cer-
tain story to tell and that technique consists in the skillful arrange-
ment of an existing story.

The dramatist may frequently limit his field of selection by
constructing his play around a known event; he may dramatize
a novel or a biography or an historical situation. The ancient

* Opus cit.

t Archer, Playmahing, a Manual of Craftsmanship.

The Process of Selection 189

theatre dealt with stories which already existed ; the Greeks used
religious myths and semi-historical fables; the Elizabethans drew
largely upon romances and histories which had been told many
times. This in no way changes the nature of the process: insofar
as the dramatist only transposes material from one medium to
another, he is merely a literary hack: for example, dialogue may
be taken verbatim from a novel ; this task is not completely uncrea-
tive, because it requires the ability to select and arrange the
speeches. But the creative dramatist cannot be satisfied with the
repetition of dialogue or situations : having selected a novel or a
biography or an historical event, he proceeds to analyze this ma-
terial, and to define the root-action which expresses his dramatic
purpose ; in developing and remolding the material, he draws on
the whole range of his knowledge and experience.

Shakespeare used history and fable as foundations on which to
build the architecture of his plays; but he selected freely in order
to create a firm foundation ; and he built freely , following the dic-
tates of his own consciousness and will.

The process of selection cannot be understood if we assume that
the events to be selected are already known. As far as the process
is creative, no part of the story is ready-made ; everything is pos-
sible (within the limits of the playwright's knowledge and experi-
ence) and nothing is known. People find it curiously difficult to
consider a story as something which is in process of becoming:
confusion on this point exists in all textbooks on playwriting and
is a stumbling block to all playwrights. If the playwright regards
his story as a fixed series of events, he is unable to test the develop-
ment in relation to the climax. He will deny that this is possible.
He will argue somewhat as follows: How can we know anything
about the climax until we know its causes? And when we know
the causes, we know the play. "I intend to build a play," says this
imaginary dramatist, "about a situation which I find touching
and noteworthy. I am not prejudiced; I am interested in life as it
is; I shall investigate the causes and effects which lead to and
from the significant situation which I have chosen. This situa-
tion may or may not be the climax ; I shall work this out when I
come to it, and shall draw no conclusions until I have weighed all
the factors."

This is the logic of a journalist and not of a creator. One
cannot deal with a situation creatively simply by reporting it. As
soon as the playwright touches the situation creatively, he trans-
forms it ; regardless of its origin, it ceases to be a fact, and becomes
an invention. The author is not tracing a group of fixed causes;

190 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

he is selecting any causes he wants to select, drawn from every-
thing he has known or thought since the day of his birth. It is
absurd to maintain that the creator invents a situation, then in-
vents the causes which are supposed to lead to the situation ; and
out of this arrangement of his own invention, he draws con-
clusions as to the meaning of what he has invented.

Galsworthy says, "The perfect dramatist rounds up his charac-
ters and facts within the ring-fence of a dominant idea, which
fulfills the craving of his spirit." * The dramatist who is far from
perfect will also be led, consciously or unconsciously, to fulfill "the
craving of his spirit" in his choice of events.

Most people think that the play^vright is limited as to the choice
of dramatic events ("it must be so hard to think of situations"),
but that he is completely free in his interpretation of them. Of
course it is hard to think of situations, and this depends on the
power of the writer's imagination; but his choice of events is
rigidly controlled by his dominant idea. The field of selection is
comparatively free ; it is the dominant idea which holds the writer
down and inhibits him and prevents him from investigating the
whole field of possibilities.

Obviously it is desirable that the process of selection cover as
wide a field as possible. On the other hand, the wider the field
the greater the difficulties. Any event, however simple, is the result
of the action of enormously complex forces. The more freely the
dramatist investigates these forces, the more difficult it becomes to
reach a decision on the significance of the various contributing
events.

In order to proceed rationally in covering as wide a field as
possible, the dramatist must have a definite objective: a general
investigation of causes and effects without a clear point of ref-
erence is inevitably vague. If the dramatist has worked out the
root-action fully and in detail, he moves far more freely and
firmly through the complexity of possible causes. Plays with an
inadequate climax generally exhibit an over-simplified development
of causation : having no complete point of reference, the author has
nothing to guide him in the selection of events, and is forced to
deal only with the simplest causes in order to avoid hopeless
confusion.

Lessing described the selective process with brilliant psychological
insight: "The poet finds in history a woman who murders her
husband and sons. Such a deed can awaken terror and pity, and he
takes hold of it to treat it as a tragedy. But history tells him no

* Opus (it.

The Process of Selection 191

more than the bare fact and this is as horrible as it is unusual. It
furnishes at most three scenes, and, devoid of all detailed circum-
stances, three improbable scenes. What therefor does the poet do?

"As he deserves this name more or less, the improbability or the
meager brevity w^ill seem to him the greatest want in this play.

"If he be in the first condition, he will consider above all else
how to invent a series of causes and effects by which these im-
probable crimes could be accounted for most naturally. Not satisfied
with resting their probability upon historical authority, he will en-
deavor to construct the characters of his personages, will endeavor
so to necessitate one from another the events that place his charac-
ters in action, will endeavor to define the passions of each charac-
ter so accurately, will endeavor to lead these passions through such
gradual steps, that we shall everywhere see nothing but the most
natural and common course of events." *

This retrospective analysis is a process of transforming social
necessity into human probability: the root-action is the end of a
system of events, the most complete statement of necessity : the pre-
vious events seem to be a mass of probabilities and possibilities, but
when these are selected and arranged, we observe the rational
movement of needs and purposes which make the final situation
inevitable.

There is often an element of improbability in a climactic situa-
tion— because it represents the sum of the author's experience of
social necessity, and is therefore more intense and more final than
our day-to-day experience. The selection of previous events is de-
signed to justify this situation, to show its meaning in terms of
our common experience.

We have now answered the second of the points raised in regard
to Clayton Hamilton's description of the selective process : the field
of investigation is not a known field in a narrow sense ; it is as wide
as the playwright's whole experience. But the system of causes
which he is seeking is specific, and is related to a defined event.
Furthermore, he is not looking for a chain of cause and effect, but
for causes, however diverse, leading to one effect. This system of
causes is designed to show that the end and scope of the action is
inevitable,! that it is the rational outcome of a conflict between
individuals and their environment. But we have not yet touched
on the question of the larger framework: is the playwright select-

* Lessing, opus cit.

t Of course, this is not a final inevitability. When we speak of social
necessity and inevitability, we use the terms as signifying the author's
conception of reality. The play does not go beyond this conception.

X92 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

ing only the action which takes place on the stage ? Or is he select'
ing a wider system of action? If the latter is the case, how is the
wider system limited? Where does it begin and end? This is the
basis of the whole process of selection. In order to understand the
process, we must have a picture of the whole canvas of events with
which the playwright is dealing; we must know what he needs in
order to complete the inner and outer framework. This means
that we must return to the root-action (the beginning of the
process) and gain a clearer idea of its use in the co-ordination of
the action as a whole.

It may be well to select a specific event as an example of a
root action : suppose we take as our starting point a situation which
is characteristic of the modern drawing room play — a wife com-
mits suicide in order to remove herself from an unbearable triangle
situation, and to give freedom to her husband and the woman he
loves. This event occurs in The Shining Hour by Keith Winter.
Why has the author selected this incident? We are sure that it
has not been chosen because it is colorful or startling. It has been
chosen because it is the point of highest tension in an important
social conflict.

The mere fact that a woman commits suicide under these cir-
cumstances is not suflScient to give the situation value as a root-
action. The situation must be constructed and visualized in de-
tail. In examining the situation, in determining why it has been
chosen, the dramatist begins inevitably to search out the prior
causes ; at the same time he clarifies his own conception — he makes
sure that the event adequately embodies his social point of view,
that it means what he wants it to mean. He is not dramatizing
the event because of its isolated importance ; in fact, it has no
isolated importance. It has a moral meaning, a place in the frame-
work of society. It raises many broad problems, particularly in
regard to the institution of marriage, the relationship of the
sexes, the question of divorce, the right of self-destruction. It
must be borne in mind that these problems are not to be considered
abstractly; they have no value as generalized comments, or as
points of view expressed by the various characters. The event is not
isolated: it is connected with the whole of society; but it is also
not an abstract symbol of various social forces; it dramatizes these
social forces as they affect the consciousness and will of living
persons.

In other words, the playwright is not dealing with individuals
without an environment, or with an environment without indi-
viduals— ^because neither of these things is dramatically conceivable.

The Process of Selection 193

People sometimes speak of love or jealousy as "universal" emo-
tions : suppose we are told that the vi^if e's suicide is due to a simple
combination of love and jealousy, and that there are no other
factors. It is obvious that this is so "universal" that it is meaning-
less; as soon as we attempt to examine the woman as a person in
order to understand the reasons for her act, we are forced to
investigate all the environmental and psychological factors. To say
that her act is due to pure passion is as fantastic as to say that it
is due to pure respect for the British divorce laws.

The more we think about the woman as a persorij the more we
are forced to defend or accuse her, to find that her act is socially
justified or socially reprehensible. We do this because we are social
beings; we cannot think about events without thinking about our
own relationship to our own environment. The analysis suggested
by Dumas is not only desirable, it is unavoidable. We must ask:
"What should I do? What would other people do? What ought
to be done?" The playwright has chosen the situation as a means
of volitional representation ; his examination of it is not non-par-
tisan ; its meaning is determined by his will.

One's attitude toward such a situation might be stated in very
abstract terms as follows: (a) Emotion is the only meaning of
life; or (b) bourgeois society shows signs of increasing decay.
Here we have two different modes of thought which lead to dif-
ferent interpretations pf any social event. If we apply these atti-
tudes to the case of suicide, we have: (a) the wife dies as an act
of glorious self-sacrifice so that the two lovers may have their
shining hour; (b) the suicide is the neurotic result of the woman's
false conception of love and marriage, which finds its roots in the
decay of bourgeois society.

I do not mean to insist that the author's approach need be so
simply formulated, or follow such an obvious pattern, as the
examples cited. Social attitudes may be very diverse and very indi-
vidual. (The most serious charge against the modern theatre is its
use of frayed familiar patterns of thought, and the lack of what
Ibsen called "energetic individualization"). But however indi-
vidual the author's point of view may be, it must be intellectually
clear and emotionally vital (which is another way of saying that
it must be fully conscious and strongly willed). If this is the case^
the root-action takes a definite and detailed form: the way in
which the woman dies, the reactions of the other characters, the
surrounding circumstances, the place and time, are dictated by the
author's dominant idea. He does not choose a subject and super-
impose a meaning on it. Any meaning that is superimposed is

194 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

worthless dramatically. He does not draw a lesson from the event;
one may more correctly say that he draws the event from the
lesson. (The lesson which he wishes to draw is itself based on the
sum-total of his experience.)

The structure of the root-action does not so much depend on
the previous histories and activities of the characters as upon the
relationship of individuals to their environment at a given mo-
ment of supreme tension: if this moment is visualized, it tells us
so much about their characters that we are far better able to re-
construct their previous activities. If the conscious wills of the
characters are exposed under pressure, we know them as living
suffering human beings. The playwright cannot express his domi-
nant idea through types or persons with simplified qualities. The
creator does not stand aside and observe the situation he has
created. He is as closely involved as if the woman were his own
wife; she is a complex being because she has been selected by the
author (just as his wife has been selected) on account of her im-
portance to him.

There is nothing abstract about the ending of A Doll's House.
Nora's struggle vvith her husband is vividly emotional, highly
personalized. Yet this event derives from Ibsen's desire to say
something of historic importance about the emancipation of women.
Since he understands the problem clearly, he is able to present it
at its boiling point, at the apex of conflict. Does the climax achieve
its strength in spite of what Ibsen wants to say, or because of itf
Could he have expressed his social meaning through puppets? He
found the expression of his theme so perfectly in Nora's departure
that, as Shaw says, "The slam of the door behind her is more
momentous than the cannon of Waterloo or Sedan." *

Let us now turn to the climax of The Shining Hour and con-
sider it as a reference point in the play's action. The suicide takes
place at the end of the second act.f A barn catches fire accidentally
and the woman throws herself into the burning barn. The third act
deals with the effect of the event on the two lovers, and their final
decision that their love is great enough to surmount the tragedy.
The author's attitude is colored by romanticism, but he is not
whole-heartedly romantic. At moments he gives us a clear psycho-
logical insight into the neurotic side of his characters ; but he ends
up with the rather muddled idea that one must have courage and
it's all for the best.

* Dramatic Opinions and Essays.

t My use of a second-act situation as the root-action of The Shining
Hour is explained in tiie chapter on "Climax and Solution."

The Process of Selection 195

It is clear that the author has something definite to say; this
accounts for the vitality of the situation (he has felt his subject too
strongly to let it peter out in conversation). But he has not
analyzed or digested his own conception ; this accounts for the
fact that the suicide is fortuitous, and the third act is lengthy and
anti-climactic.

We do not feel that the wife's death is the only way out, that
she is trapped by forces which have exhausted her strength, that
there is no other escape.

If we go back to the earlier scenes of The Shining Hour, we
find that the development of the action is not built around the wife
at all, but about the man and the other woman. The play is, as its
title suggests, an intense love story. Are we then to conclude that
the playwright has either written the wrong play or the wrong
climax ? This is literally the case. Since the interest is concentrated
on the lovers, this interest cannot build to an action in which the
lovers, however deeply affected, play a passive role. The suicide
does not change the relationship between the lovers; it simply
shocks them; at the end of the play they go away together, which
they could also do if the wife were alive and well.

Although the lovers dominate the play, the wife's death is by
far the most eventful incident in the course of the action. It may
properly be called the root-action because it embodies the author's
dominant idea in a meaningful event. The meaning is confused,
but it is none-the-less discoverable. The idea of sacrifice is all-
important; the author does not prepare the suicide, because he
regards the spontaneous emotional act as its own justification.
Death is an emancipation; she frees herself from an intolerable
situation, but she also frees herself in an absolute sense. Thus
the effect of the act on the lovers is also double ; it not only frees
them physically, but metaphysically. The underlying mental pat-
tern follows the prevailing trend which we have analyzed at some
length. Keith Winter agrees with Philip Barry that "emotion is
the only real thing in our lives; it is the person; it is the soul."
The immediate sensation of emotion is justified because it is part
of a larger stream of emotion, the Bergsonian elan vital, the
stream of consciousness and unconsciousness. The lovers in The
Shining Hour have no choice. The wife also has no choice. In
Barry's Tomorrow and Tomorrow, emotion is negated and sacri-
ficed; at the same time, the fact that the wife and her lover feel
as they do is sufficient; their self-denial enriches their lives. In
The Shining Hour the same conception finds a more dramatic
formulation. The suicide (an act of supreme negation) releases

196 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the lovers, and affords a justification of their love. This mysticisro
is an evasion of the social problem: the real necessity of the death
lies in the fact that it lessens the responsibility of all the persons
concerned. The triumph of emotion permits the social order to re-
main unchallenged. Sacrifice is a way out without asking questions
or disturbing existing conventions. The neurotic discussions in the
final act, the confused emotionalism, are typical of a situation in
which nothing has been solved and in which there has been no
genuine progression.

The technical result of this clouded conception is the apparent
dualism of the play's action. The play takes the form of a series of
love scenes, in which the wife seems to play the part of a trouble-
some intruder. The climax seems to have been invented solely
because of its effectiveness as a dramatic explosion, and not because
of its value in terms of theme. However, a careful analysis re-
veals, as always in these cases, that the structural form is the prod-
uct of the playwright's social purpose.

This brings us back (after a long, but necessary digression) to
the process of selection. The trouble in The Shining Hour springs
from failure to use the climax as a reference point in the develop-
ment of the action. This climax, as the playwright has visualized
it, could not serve as a reference point. The incident is dramatic
enough and effective enough; but it is presented as an emotional
evasion of a problem, and not as the inevitable result of a social
conflict. If a situation is not caused by social forces, it is quite use-
less to attempt to trace social causes which are apparently non-
existent. To be sure, we can trace the emotional causes; but
emotions, in this general sense, are vague quantitatively and quali-
tatively; when one detaches feeling from social causation, one also
detaches it from reason ; if feeling springs from the soul, it may be
aroused by any external event or by none, and there is no need to
define its origin in terms of events.

The use of the root-action in the process of selection depends
on the degree to which it dramatizes the social meaning of an
event; it must show a change of equilibrium involving the rela-
tionship between individuals and the totality of their environment.
If it does not shov/ such a change, it cannot aid the dramatist in
an investigation of earlier stages of the conflict between these char-
acters and their environment. The social meaning of the root-
action may be both physical and psychological. For example, the
burning of the barn in The Shining Hour is accidental; the suicide
is also largely unpremeditated. If the physical event, the fire, were
given a social meaning, it would cease to be accidental, and would

The Process of Selection i()J

enable us to trace a prior series of events. The burning of buildings
in Ibsen's plays (in Ghosts and The Master Builder) indicates
the extraordinary significance which can be attached to such an
incident. The psychological condition which immediately precedes
the suicide lends itself to the most complex social analysis. Suppose
the act is the consummation of a suicide-wish which has been pre-
viously expressed ; it becomes imperative to trace the origin of this
wish, the external conditions which had awakened it and the
social basis for these conditions. On the other hand, suppose the
act is chiefly the result of the romantic idea of self-sacrifice ; there
must have been a long conflict in which this romantic idea struggled
against the realities of an unfavorable environment. The suicide
follows a long period of change and compromise and adjustment;
the woman has twisted and turned and suffered in the attempt to
escape disaster.

The ending of A Doll's House illustrates an action which com-
bines intense individualization with historic scope. When Helmer
says, "No man sacrifices his honor, even for one he loves," Nora
replies, "Millions of women have done so." We know that this is
true, that Nora is not alone, that her struggle is part of a larger
social reality.

This is the answer to the question of the larger framework:
the concept of necessity expressed in the play's root-action is wider
and deeper than the whole action of the play. In order to give the
play its meaning, this scheme of social causation must be drama-
tized, it must extend beyond the events on the stage and connect
these with the life of a class and a time and a place. The scope of
this external framework is determined by the scope of the play-
wright's conception: it must go back far enough, and be broad
enough, to guarantee the inevitability of the climax, not in terms
of individual whims or opinions, but in terms of social necessity.

Even the worst plays have, to a confused and uncertain degree,
this quality of extension. It is a basic quality of volitional repre-
sentation. It gives us the key to what one may call the predominant
physical characteristic of an action. An action (the whole play, or
any of the subsidiary actions of which it is composed) is a contra-
dictory movement. This contradiction may be described as exten-
sion and compression.

From a philosophic point of view, this means that an action
embodies both conscious will and social necessity. If we translate
this into practical terms, it means that an action represents our con-
centrated immediate will to get something done; but it also em-
bodies our previous experience and our conception of future

igiS Theory and Technique of Playwriting

probability. If we consider an action as a disturbance of equili-
brium, we observe that the laws of its movement resemble those
of a combustion engine : compression produces the explosion, which
in turn produces an extension of energy; the degree of extension
corresponds to the degree of energy. One may compare the com-
pression to the emotional tension generated; the extension is the
social upset which results from the release of the tension.

The principle of extension and compression is of the utmost
importance in studying the mechanics of dramatic movement. For
the present, we are concerned with it as it affects the play's organic
unity. This principle explains the relationship of each subsidiary
action to the system of events ; each action is an explosion of tension
which extends to other actions throughout the play. The root-
action possesses the maximum compression, and also the maximum
extension, unifying the events within the system.

But the play as a whole is also an action, which possesses as a
whole the qualities of compression and extension: its explosive
energy is determined by its unity as a whole ; and again, the degree
of extension, embracing a wider system of causation, corresponds
to the degree of energy produced.

The process can be clarified if we consider it in relation to the
exercise of conscious will. Every act of will involves direct con-
flict with the environment; but the act is also placed in a whole
scheme of things with which it is directly or indirectly connected
and with which the act is intended to harmonize. The individual's
consciousness reflects this wider scheme with which he wants to
bring himself into harmony; his volition undertakes the struggle
against immediate obstacles. The stage-action of a play (the inner
system of events) embraces the direct conflict between individuals
and the conditions which oppose or limit their will ; we observe
this conflict through the conscious vdlls of the characters. But
each character's consciousness includes his own picture of reality
with which he wants ultimately to harmonize his actions. If there
are a dozen characters in the play, a dozen pictures of ultimate
reality might be included or suggested: all of these conceptions
touch the social framework (the outer system of events) in which
the play is placed : but the only test of their value, the only unify-
ing principle in the double system of causation, lies in the author's
consciousness.

The root-action is the key to the double system: since it em-
bodies the highest degree of compression, it also has the widest
range of extension. It is the most intense moment of a direct con-
flict with immediate obstacles : the events which take place on the

The Process of Selection 199

stage are limited to this direct conflict. The beginning of this con-
flict is, as Schlegel pointed out, '"the assertion of free will." But
this assertion is far from being, as Schlegel said, an "absolute
beginning." The determination to fight obstacles is based on what
one thinks probable — a picture of future necessities which is de-
rived from one's experience of past and present necessities. The
climax sums up the results of this conflict, and judges it in regard
to the whole scheme of things.

There is often a great deal of uncertainty as to the exact mean-
ing of cause and effect : we assume that the whole question of the
rational connection of events is disposed of by a casual reference to
cause and effect. I earlier remarked that a play is not a chain of
cause and effect, but an arrangement of causes leading to one effect.
This is important because it leads to an understanding of unity:
if we think of indiscriminate causes and effects, the reference
point by which unity can be tested is lost. It is useful to consider
the root-action as the one effect which binds together the system of
causes. But this is merely a convenient formulation. Any action
includes both cause and effect; the point of tension in an action
is the point at which cause is transformed into effect. The exten-
sion of the action is not only its driving force in producing results,
but also its dynamic relation to its causes. The scope of its result
is the scope of its causes. The root-action is an explosion which
causes a maximum change of equilibrium between individuals and
their environment. The complexity and force of this effect depends
on the complexity and force of the causes which led to the ex-
plosion. The extension of the inner action is limited to the causes
which lie in the conscious wills of the characters. The extension
of the outer action is limited to the social causes which constitute
the framework of fact within which the action moves. For pur-
poses of analysis, we view this double system of events as a system
of caused: as it actually appears on the stage it appears as a system
of effects. We do not see or hear the exercise of the conscious will ;
we do not see or hear the forces which constitute the environment.
But the dramatic meaning of what we see and hear lies in its
causes: the total effect (as projected in the root action) depends
on the totality of causes.

Having considered the theory which underlies the playwright's
approach to his material, we can now proceed to investigate the
steps by which he selects and builds the wider framework which
encompasses the action.

200 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

CHAPTER V

THE SOCIAL FRAMEWORK

SUPPOSE we return to the specific situation mentioned in the
previous chapter. Let us assume that the suicide of a faithful wife
takes place under conditions which are dramatically ideal — the
situation suggests intense possibilities of pity and terror; the social
implications are far-reaching. But the system of causation which
leads to this event is still untouched; we are dealing only with
possibilities and implications, because the effect of the event can-
not be understood until its causes are dramatized.

The playwright knows the meaning of the situation ; the poten-
tial pity and terror are real to him. But he must prove that his
conception of reality is justified; he must show the whole scheme
of things which made this event true in the deepest sense.

The playwright is faced by an infinite multiplicity of possible
causes. He might very possibly begin by listing a number of ques-
tions in connection with the history of the event. Perhaps the most
superficial fact is the fact that the husband has fallen in love
with another woman. Many women do not kill themselves on this
account. We cannot analyze the psychological factors in the case
without discovering that far-reaching social and economic problems
must be investigated. It is evident that the wife's relationship to
her husband is of a special emotional character. This means that
her relationship to her environment is also of a special character.
We must make a study of the environment, her emotional attitudes
toward other persons, her heredity, education and economic status.
This in turn forces us to consider the heredity, education and
economic status of all the people with whom she is associated. Do
they earn their money, or live on income? What has been the
amount of their income during the past ten years, where does it
come from and how do they spend it ? What are their amusements,
their cultural experiences? What are their ethical standards and
how far do they adhere to these in practice ? What is their attitude
toward marriage and what events have conditioned this attitude?
What has been their sexual experience? Have they any children?
if not, why not?

These factors can be traced back through many years. But the

The Social Framework 20l

woman's personal history, psychologically and physically, Is also of
great interest: what has been the state of her health? Has she
shown any neurotic symptoms ? We want to know whether she has
shown any previous disposition toward suicide: when, and under
what conditions? We want to know about her girlhood, her
physical and mental activities as a child.

It may seem necessary to construct a similar personal history of
several of the other characters — particularly of the husband and
of the other woman. Each personal investigation leads us into a new
complex of relationships, involving differences in social and
psychological determinants.

This list seems forbidding, but it is only a hasty suggestion of
the possible lines of speculation which are open to the dramatist
in organizing his material. Aside from its incompleteness, what
impression does this list convey? The questions are not very specific,
and tend to be psychological rather than factual, static rather than
dynamic. But it is precisely objective, factual, dynamic events for
which we are searching. The field covered by these questions must
be covered — but it cannot be covered in this way. The attempt to
construct a complete history of everything which led to the moment
of climax would lead to the accumulation of a vast amount of
unmanageable data. If carried out uncompromisingly, such an
undertaking would be more ambitious than the whole life-work
of Proust.

The process of selection is not a narrative process. The play-
wright is not looking for illustrative or psychological material, but
for a system of actions ; just as the final climax sums up a maximum
change of equilibrium between individuals and their environment,
each of the subordinate crises is a change of equilibrium leading to
the maximum change. Each crisis is effective in proportion to its
compression and extension. No action of the play can be more
significant than the root-action, because in that case it would go
beyond the scope of the play.

A more or less narrative list such as the one outlined is only
useful as a means of suggesting the sort of events for which we
are searching — events which compress the emotional lives of the
characters in moments of explosive tension, and which extend as
far as possible in their effect on the environment.

In planning the wider framework of the play, the dramatist is
organizing material which is obviously less dramatic than the play
itself. Events which are assumed to have happened before the open-
ing of the drama, or which are reported during the action, or
which take place off-stage or between the acts, cannot be as vital

202 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

as the visible action behind the footlights. But it must not be sup-
posed that the outer framework is a shadowy fiction, covered by a
few vague references to the past lives of the characters and the
social forces of the period. Since the larger pattern of events repre-
sents the scope of the playwright's conception, it must be drama-
tized as fully as possible. The playwright who thinks of the ulti-
mate causes underlying his drama in narrative terms, will carry
over some of this narrative form into the stage-action. By visualiz-
ing these ultimate causes in meaningful and cumulative crises, the
plajrvi/right establishes the basis for the later and more detailed
selection of the stage-action. The reserve of events, behind and
around the play, gives sweep and sureness to the action, and gives
more meaning to every line of dialogue, every gesture, every
situation.

We now have two principles which give us additional guidance
in studying the pre-conditions leading to a climactic situation : ( I )
we are looking only for crises; (2) we are seeking to outline a
system of events which not only covers the inner action of the
play, but which extends the concept of social necessity (the whole
scheme of life in which the climax is placed) to the limit of its
possibilities. We find that some of these events show a much
greater explosiveness of conscious will than others: these are the
most dynamic events, those which cause the most serious changes
in the environment and which have the greatest driving force. But
these explosive moments are produced by other events, which are
less explosive because they involve a more impregnable social
necessity opposed to a less awakened conscious will. What is this
more impregnable social necessity and where does it come from?
It comes from still earlier explosions of conscious will which have
been sufficiently powerful to change and crystallize conditions in
this fixed form: it is this form of apparently impregnable social
necessity which defines the limits of the dramatic scheme. The
pla5avright accepts this necessity as the picture of reality in which
the play is framed. He cannot go beyond this necessity and inves-
tigate the acts of will which created it, because to do so would be
to question its ultimate value and to deny the concept of reality
as it is embodied in his climax.

The less explosive events are those which constitute the outer
framework: these events are dramatic and include the exercise of
conscious will ; but they are less dynamic ; they have less effect on
the environment ; they show the solidity of the social forces which
m.old the conscious wills of the characters and which are the ulti-
mate obstacles which the conscious wills must face.

The Social Framework 203

If we return to the list of questions concerning the wife's
suicide, and attempt to apply these principles, we find that we must
arrange the questions in groups and attempt to create a situation
which is the culmination of the social and psychological factors
involved. For example: What is the economic status of the family?
What has been the amount of their income during the past ten
years, where does it come from and how do they spend it ? We are
not interested in statistics, although statistics may be of value in
dramatizing the issue; but we must find an event which has the
broadest possible implications; the event need not be a financial
crisis; we are interested in the way in which money affects the
conscious wills of these people, how it determines their relationship
to people of their own class and those of other classes, how it colors
their prejudices, illusions, modes of thought. The root-action serves
as our reference point: the event must therefore embody the ele-
ments of the root-action : the woman's attitude toward suicide or
her fear of death, her sentimental attitude toward marriage and
love, her emotional dependence and lack of self-confidence. An
economic situation will serve to expose the social roots of these
attitudes.

The same principle applies in analyzing the childhood of our
leading character. We do not wish to find isolated or sensational
events which have some psj^chological connection with the climax ;
such a connection, isolated from the background, would probably
be static rather than dynamic. A woman's childhood is not a set
of major and minor incidents to be catalogued, but a process to be
considered as a whole. The key to this process is the fact that she
ended her life under certain known conditions. We assume that
the sum-total of this childhood is revealed in a basic conflict between
the child and its environment (in which other persons play a part) ;
we must consider both the other persons and the environment as a
whole. We know the final stage of the conflict. We want to
crystallize the earlier stages in climactic events.

If the background of the play is English middle-class country
life, we must consider the profound changes which have taken
place in this life: the heartbreak houses of the gentry shaken by
the European war; the armistice celebrated by people drunk with
weariness and hope; the breaking down of old social values; the
profound economic disturbances.

The plays of Ibsen show a remarkably thorough dramatization
of the outer framework. Events which happened in the past, in
the childhood of the characters, play a vivid part in the action.

In Ghosts Ibsen projects a whole series of crises in the earlier

204 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

lives of the characters. In the first year of her marriage, Mrs.
Alving ran away from her husband and oflEered herself to Manders,
but he forced her to return to her home; when her child was
born, she had to "fight doubly hard — fight a desperate fight so
that no one should know the sort of a man my child's father
was" ; she was soon faced with another crisis : her husband had an
illegitimate child, by the servant in her own house ; then she made
another desperate decision: she sent her son away at the age of
seven and never permitted him to return during the father's life.
On her husband's death, she decided to build and endow an
orphanage as a tribute to the memory of the man she hated
poisonously.

One is amazed at the concreteness of these events. The construc-
tion is powerful and the detailed action is sharply visualized. The
limit of the play's outer framework is Mrs. Alving's marriage.
Ibsen regarded the family as the basic unit of society. The root-
action of Ghosts, in which Mrs. Alving must decide whether or
not to kill her own son, raises a question which the author cannot
answer; it brings us face to face with the social necessity which
defines and unifies the action. The marriage marks the beginning,
and the ultimate extension, of the whole scheme. The essence of
the root-action lies in Oswald's question : "I never asked you for
life. And what kind of a life was it that you gave me?"

The concentrated conflict of will which is projected in the stage
action begins with Oswald's return from abroad. At this point the
wills become conscious and active: the conflict does not involve an
attempt to change the fixed structure of the family; it is a conflict
with lesser necessities in order to bring them in line with this
greater necessity ; the family, purged of vice and deceit and disease,
is the goal toward which the characters are struggling and the
test of the value of their actions.

In Hamlet the limit of the action's extension is the poisoning of
Hamlet's father, which the author presents in visual action through
the device of the play within the play. The problem with which
Shakespeare is concerned (and which had immediate social signif-
icance in his time) is the release of the will in action. The ability
to act decisively and without inhibitions was vital to the men of
the Renaissance who were challenging the fixed values of feudalism.
When Hamlet says, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us
all," he expresses the force of ideas and restrictions which are as
real as the "ghosts of beliefs" of which Mrs. Alving speaks. The
outer framework therefore presents a system of events created by
the passion and greed of people of strong wills. This is Hamlet's

The Social Framework 20!^

world, to the necessities of which he must adjust himself. Thus a
deed of violence constitutes both the end and the beginning of the
action and defines its scope.

On the other hand, the stage-action begins with the entry of
the ghost; this is the point at which Hamlet's conscious will is
awakened and directed toward a defined aim. The ghost represents
the justification of the aim ; he tells Hamlet that he is free to
commit this act within the framework of social necessity. He tells
him that the act is required in order to preserve the integrity of the
family. But the conception of the family is changing; this accounts
for Hamlet's confusion, for his inability to release his will; his
affection for his mother blinds him, he cannot wreak quick ven-
geance on her, and yet he cannot understand her ; he is puzzled by
the "rank corruption, mining all within" which defiles the society
in which he lives. He turns both to his mother and to Ophelia for
help and both of them fail him, because both are dependent, finan-
cially and morally, on the men to whom they are attached. This
too, is part of the "iron framework of fact" which Hamlet must
face. The root-action shows Hamlet conforming to necessity and
dying to accomplish his aim; his last words are devoted solely to
the world of action —

"I cannot live to hear the news from England ;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice."

The process of selection is fundamentally a process of historical
analysis. There is a direct analogy between the work of the
dramatist and the work of the historian ; the playwright cannot
handle his material satisfactorily if his approach is personal or
esthetic; on the other hand, the emphasis on social forces is likely
to be abstract. His work is greatly aided by the study of historical
events and the utilization of an historical method.

The old method of studying history was static and unhistorical
— a series of battles, treaties, the isolated whims and acts of out-
standing individuals. Plekhanov says of the historical views of the
French materialists of the eighteenth century: "Religion, manner?,
customs, the whole character of a people is from this point of view
the creation of one or several great persons acting with definite
aims." *

Fifty years ago, biographies of great men showed these heroes
performing noble deeds and thinking high thoughts against a fixed

* George Plekhanov, Essays in Historical Materialism, translation by
R. Fox (London, 1934).

2o6 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

background. Today the method of history and biography has under-
gone a great change. It is recognized that a satisfactory biography
must show the individual in relation to the whole epoch. The
tendency toward scandal and debunking is a minor indication of
this trend : as a substitute for making the person real in terms of
his time, he is made partially real in terms of his vices.

In dealing with an epoch, the historian (like the playwright) is
faced with a problem of selection: he must investigate personal
anecdotes, works of imagination and fact, journalistic comment,
military and civil records. He must find a pattern of causation in
this material. The pattern is dictated by the historian's conception
of the meaning of the events; the inter-connection and progression
(the view of history as a process rather than as an isolated collection
of meaningless incidents) depend on the historian's judgment of
values, his idea of the aim of the process.

If one examines an historical event, or group of events, one finds
that it is necessary to define the scope of the given action. In order
to understand the American revolutionary war, one must coordinate
the action in terras of the issue — the victory of the colonies — or in
terms of some larger and later issue. If we regard the end of the
war as the scope of the action, this throws a certain light upon
every incident of the conflict. It gives a key to the logic of events,
and also gives them color and texture. Both in a dramatic and in a
military sense, Valley Forge gains a special meaning from York-
town.

One cannot deal with a single incident in the American revolu-
tion without considering the complex forces involved : the per-
sonalities of the leaders, the aims of the American middle class, the
property relations in the colonies, the libertarian ideas of the
period, the tactics of the opposing armies. This does not mean that
one presents a confusing or over-balanced picture. It means that
the selection is made with an understanding of the relation between
the parts and the whole.

Suppose one chooses to examine one of the less heroic and more
personal aspects of the American war of independence : for instance,
Benedict Arnold's personal tragedy. Can one consider his act of
treason dramatically without considering the history of his time?
One of the most significant things about Benedict Arnold's death
is the fact that if he had died a little sooner he would have been
the greatest hero of the war ; the things which made him a traitor
were closely connected with the things which motivated the des-
perate magnificence of his march to Quebec. This is a fascinating
personal conflict, but it is as mad as a tale told by an idiot unless

The Social Framework 207

we know the historical background, the social forces which made
the revolution, Arnold's relation to these forces, what the revolution
meant to him, the culture and morals of his class.

The playwright may properly assume that he is dealing with a
segment of history (regardless of whether his story is based on fact
or invention). The playwright who feels that his characters are not
as historical as Benedict Arnold, that they are more detached and
less directly entangled in the whirlpool of history, is simply unfair
to his characters and the situations in which he places them.

Is one, then, to make no distinction between plays which deal
with known facts or famous personages, and those which concern
intimate domestic problems? This is exactly my point. In both
cases, the playwright must understand his characters in relation to
their period.

This does not mean that the play itself must contain references
and incidents which cover too wide an area. The whole point of
selection is to be selective ; the base of the action must be broad and
solid — the action itself may involve a meticulous choice of incidents.

In the theatre today, the tendency is toward plays which are
built, as it were, on stilts, which have no appreciable base. On the
other hand, the younger and more socially-minded dramatists, eager
to show us the width and depth of events, go to the other extreme.
Herbert Kline comments on this in connection with a review of
short pla5^s for working-class audiences : "The result is what may be
called the carry-all plot. For example, a play will attempt ... to
present the plight of oppressed and starving miners, the schemes
of the operators to keep wages down and dividends up, the support
of the miners' strike by the working class, the working conditions
of miners in the Soviet Union, and a number of other details
including an appeal to the audience for funds to support the mine
strike." *

Peace on Earth, by Albert Maltz and George Sklar, is, to some
extent, an example of the carry-all plot. The intention in such cases
is praiseworthy: the playwrights are endeavoring to enlarge the
scope of the action. But since the material is undigested, it remains
undramatized. History is not a rummage sale.

One can find many examples of historical method in plays which
are not at all sweeping in their action, but which deal with limited
domestic situations. For instance two English plays of the early
nineteen-hundreds have considerable historical scope; Chains, by
Elizabeth Baker (1909), and Hindle Wakes, by Stanley Houghton

* Herbert Kline, "Writing for Workers' Theatre," in Neiu Theatre
(December, 1934 )•

2o8 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

(1912). These are not great plays; they lack great depth or
insight ; nevertheless both are solidly built on a workmanlike
understanding of the social forces of the period.

Fanny's independence in Hindle Wakes, her flouting of the
moral code, has far less social meaning than Nora's declaration of
independence in A Doll's House. Nevertheless, Fanny is an historic
figure; her attitude toward the male, her integrity, her lack of
depth, her cheerful assurance that she can defeat the world — these
are the qualities of thousands of girls like Fanny; her rebellion,
in 1912, foreshadows the widespread rebellion, the brave but futile
gestures of the Greenwich Village era. When Fanny refuses to
marry Alan, who is the father of the child she is expecting, he
says, "I know why you won't marry me." She says, "Do you?
Well, spit it out, lad." Alan : "You don't want to spoil my life."
Fanny: "Thanks, much obliged for the compliment."

It is interesting to compare this with Shaw's treatment of sex
in Man and Superman, in which he shows us the "eternal" woman
in pursuit of her "eternal" mate. Shaw's discussions, in spite of
their brilliance, are always general, and his characterizations are
static, because he never achieves historical perspective. Hindle
Wakes is set realistically against the background of the 191 2 era:
the weaving industry, the paternalism of the employers, the
economic problems, the class relationships.

This is equally true of Chains, a carefully documented picture
of lower middle-class English life in 1909. The business and home
atmosphere, the habits, finances and culture, the futile desire to
escape, are exhibited with almost scientific precision.

In Soviet Russia today, there is wide discussion of the method of
socialist realism, a basic esthetic approach which breaks away from
both the romanticism and the mechanistic naturalism of the nine-
teenth century. I have avoided references to the Soviet theatre,
because my knowledge of it is limited ; only a few Russian plays,
and a few short articles on the theory of the theatre, have been
translated.

Socialist realism is a method of historical analysis and selection,
designed to gain the greatest dramatic compression and extension.
S. Margolin, in a discussion on "The Artist and the Theatre" *
describes socialist realism as it affects the work of the scene
designer: he must, he says, "look ever deeper into the manifold

phenomena of the living realities The Soviet spectator can be

impressed only by a generalized image which sheds light on the

* In VOKS (published by the Soviet Union Society for Cultural Rela-
tions with Foreign Countries, Moscow), v. 6, 1934.

The Social Framework 209

entire epoch ; this alone he considers great art. Naturalism, the
heritage of the bourgeoisie, is fundamentally alien to the tendency
of the Soviet theatre." The phrase, "a generalized image," is
vague ; the impression of an epoch is only possible when the action
projects the intense operation of the conscious will in relation to
the whole environment. This is illustrated by recent Russian motion
pictures; Chapayev and The Youth of Maxim present a personal
conflict which has sufficient extension to include "a generalized
image which sheds light on the entire epoch."

The scope of the action in Chapayev is limited to a particular
phase of the Russian revolution : the period of confused heroic
awakening of peasants and workers, rushing to the defense of their
newly acquired liberty, forging a new consciousness of their world
in the heat of conflict. Chapayev's death is selected as the point of
highest tension in this system of events.

The historical framework of the action is extremely complicated.
It is concerned with: (i) military struggle; (2) political back-
ground; (3) the social composition of the opposing forces; (4) the
individual ps5xhology and personal conflicts of Chapayev himself ;
(5) Chapayev's personal function in the military struggle, his
merits and faults as a commander; (6) the moral problem, which
concerns the individual's right to happiness as opposed to his revolu-
tionary duty.

Abstractly, this material seems too elaborate to be organized in
a single story. Yet this is exactly what has been done, and done
with such uncanny accuracy that the result is a very simple motion
picture. The material has been concretized by skilful selection. For
instance, the scene in which Chapayev demonstrates military tactics
by arranging potatoes on a table shows us more about how he leads
his troops than a dozen battles and maneuvers. Chapayev's character
combines a violent temper, boisterous good nature, crude appetite
for knowledge and childish conceit. All of this is concentrated in a
brief scene in which he discusses Alexander the Great with the
Commissar. What about the social points of view of the opposing
forces? The conflict between Furmanov and Chapayev about loot-
ing the peasants furnishes a key to the spirit of the Bolshevik army
(at the same time developing Chapayev's character). The atmos-
phere of the White army, the relationship between soldiers and
officers, is shown in a brilliant dramatic incident : Colonel
Borozdin's servant pleads for his brother's life ; the Colonel pre-
tends to grant the request and cynically confirms the death-sentence.
The military struggle is presented in scenes which are unfor-
gettably dramatic; for instance, *ue "psychological attack," in

2IO Theory and Technique of Playwriting

which the Whites advance nonchalantly smoking cigars. And what
about the moral problem? The delicate love story between Anna
and Pyetka crystallizes the bitter contradiction between personal
happiness and the great task to be performed. This is dramatized
with special force in the scene in which he makes love to her and
teaches her about the machine gun. The love story is not a side
issue. Love and youth are part of the revolution; but there is no
time for a sentimental idyl; the struggle must go on. Similarly,
there is no time to mourn when Chapayev dies under the raking
machine gun fire ; the Red Cavalry sweeps across the scene to
continue the struggle.

The Sailors of Cattaro, by Friedrich Wolf, tells the story of a
revolution in the Austrian fleet at the close of the world war.* The
fight is lost because the workers are inadequately prepared for the
task. But Franz Rasch goes to his death with a sure hope — the
workers are undaunted, they will prepare for future struggles and
future victories. Here we have a broad historical framework, cover-
ing two main fields of interest: the European war, especially in
relation to Austria; and the development of Austro-Marxism and
the Austrian labor movement.

The stage-action of The Sailors of Cattaro, although it follows
a single design, seems diffuse; we do not completely understand
the personal conflict of will as it affects Franz Rasch and the
other leaders of the rebellion. A great deal of the action happens
off-stage; these off-stage events are so closely connected with the
immediate action that the description of them seems insufficient.
The fault lies in the author's selection of his material (including
both the inner action and the wider system) : (i) the historical
background has not been successfully analyzed in dramatic terms,
and, since the background is not fully developed, the revolt tends
to be too universal — sailors (in general) rebelling against authority
(in general). (2) It follows that the conflict tends to express itself
in discussion; it is not crystallized in action. (3) Since the author
has not dramatized the crises which led to the revolt, the immediate
causes of the action (as distinct from the historical background)
seem thin and intellectualized. The play deals with workers who
are not fully prepared for their task, but we do not know enough
about them to know how far this is true. (4) Since the historical
forces and prior action are under-developed, there is an over-
emphasis on the personalities of the workers, on petty problems.

* The present discussion is based on Michael Blankfort's adaptation of
The Sailors of Cattaro as presented by the Theatre Union, in New York,
in the fall of 1934. I am not familiar with the original, which diflfers
from the adaptation in many respects.

The Social Framework 21 1

The hero is also over-emphasized ; his role is not analyzed in rela-
tion to events : Franz Rasch is presented abstractly as a noble per-
son rather than a fully understood person.

A comparison between tw^o plays by S. N. Behrman illuminates
the question of the historical framevrork as it affects the technique
of the drawing room play. Biography and Rain From Heaven are
identical in theme. Based upon the same conception, the difference
lies solely in the process of selection.

Both plays deal with the problem of the liberal in modern
society: in both the central figure is a woman of culture, vividly
honest, outspoken, tolerant. In both the woman falls in love with a
man who is involved in the hate and bitterness of current social
struggles. In both the climax is the same: the intense love story
comes to a point of inevitable separation. The woman is emo-
tionally torn, but she is true to herself. She cannot relinquish her
tolerance, and she cannot change the man she loves.

In Biography, the historical groundwork is neglected. The social
forces which underlie the action have no dramatic reality. As a
result, the scope of the action is so narrow that there can be no
progression ; the conflict between Marion Froude and Richard
Kurt is repetitious because it is based on fixed qualities of char-
acter. The basis of the conflict is the same in the last scene as in
the first. Marion describes herself as "a big laissez-faire girl."
Marion evidently had this attitude in her youth, because she tells
Leander Nolan, with whom she had her first affair, "I suspected in
myself a — a tendency to explore, a spiritual and physical wander-
lust— that I knew would horrify you once j^ou found it out. It
horrifies you now when we are no longer anything to each other."
Behrman characterizes his heroine very carefully, but it is perfectly
evident that he does not view her in process of "becoming." What-
ever might have caused Marion's "spiritual and physical wander-
lust," and how it might be affected by the world in which Marion
lives — these matters are rigorously excluded from the play. During
the course of the action, she comes in contact with outside forces,
but this contact merely exposes the difference of aims between her
and Nolan and the boy with whom she falls in love. In her final
scene with Kurt, she says, "You hate my essential quality — the
thing that is me." So this core of personality is static; it is in the
final analysis mystical, and therefore untouchable. In a stage direc-
tion, the author speaks of "the vast, uncrossable deserts between
the souls of human beings." Since these imaginary "deserts" are
assumed to exist, it follows that the actual contacts of the char-
acters are limited and sentimental.

212 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Kurt's background contains an explanation of his point of view;
he tells Marion of the incident in his childhood which motivates
his bitterness; since this incident is a genuine dramatization of
social forces, it leads to the most moving moment of the play, the
love scene which closes the second act. But there is no further
development in Kurt's character, nor is the possibility of further
development indicated.

Behrman tries to convince us that the social relationships pre-
sented in the stage action have more than their apparent extension
and meaning. Marion tries to explain Kurt's social point of view:
"To you these rather ineffectual blundering people s5rmbolize the
forces that have hurt you and you hate them." This shows that the
author's intentions are clear. This is what the people ought to do —
but they cannot do it as symbols; the social forces can only be
presented through crucial events.

The selection of events is confusing, and serves to weaken rather
than develop the meaning of the root-action. Marion has gained
considerable reputation painting the portraits of famous Europeans.
Richard Kurt is a young radical who is editor of a weekly maga-
zine, with a circulation of three million. These personal back-
grounds do not serve to initiate a serious conflict of wills; Marion's
career suggests Bohemianism and courage ; it does not suggest any
great degree of honesty and tolerance which (as we are repeatedly
told) are Marion's essential qualities. Kurt presents a much more
curious contradiction : how can a man who is an uncompromising
radical be the editor of a periodical with three million circulation ?
This is never explained. It follows that the stage-action resolves
itself into the discussion of an incident which has no social exten-
sion ; Kurt wants to print Marion's autobiography because it will
be sensational. The suggestion that the autobiography will serve
any social purpose is an absurdity. We are told that Kurt is "only
really at home in protest," but in a day of hunger marches, mass
unemployment, threats of fascism and war, his protest consists in
editing one of the largest magazines in the country and printing
the mildly scandalous story of a woman's life.

In Rain From Heaven, Behrman attacks the same theme ; but he
has grown to a more mature consciousness of the social forces
which motivate the conflict. The framework is not complete ; there
remains a tendency toward generalizations, and toward events
which are illustrative rather than dramatic. But the root-action
goes to the heart of a genuine problem ; the concept of social neces-
sity is defined and explored. Lady Wyngate is not an artificial
Bohemian ; she is a genuine liberal ; she knows what is going on in

The Social Framework 213

the world and she tries to do something about it. Hugo Willens
is a refugee from Hitler's Germany. Lady Wyngate sees that her
world is falling in ruins and she faces the fact bravely. There are
no "uncrossable deserts" in this play; there are living problems^ —
the threat of fascism, the growing racial prejudice against the
Jews, the desperation of capitalism, the drive toward war. When
the two lovers face each other, and Hugo decides to return to
Germany to enter the struggle against fascism, the decision is an
honest act of will.

It is valuable to trace the detailed selection of incidents in these
two plays: it is literall)'' true that every line and situation depends
on the way in which the social framework has been conceived.
Hobart Eldridge, the financier in Rain From Heaven, is simply a
revision of Orrin Kinnicott in Biography. Kinnicott bears a
satirical resemblance to Bernarr MacFadden, but his point of view
is not clearly presented. In Rain From Heaven, the financier
ceases to be a caricature and becomes a character, because his
activity is meaningful in social terms. Eldridge is doing exactly
what men of his sort are doing: he is helping to organize fascism,
and is doing it with a great deal of consciousness and will.

In Biography, the complication in the love story is furnished by
Nolan, who is engaged to Kinnicott's daughter but is in love with
Marion: Nolan is in politics and hopes to become a Senator with
the aid of the physical culture financier. In Rain From Heaven,
the other man who is in love with Lady Wyngate is Rand Eldridge.
He is a combination of two characters from Biography : Nolan,
and Tympi Wilson, the handsome young movie actor who appears
briefly in the second act of Biography. When a character makes
what seems to be an entirely pointless appearance in a play, one
may be sure that this character represents some unrealized purpose
in the back of the playwright's mind. This is the case with Tympi ;
the dumb popular movie hero turns up in Rain From Heaven as the
dumb popular hero of aviation; but he has acquired vital meaning:
he is the raw material of the Nazi storm troops. In Biography
Nolan is a stuffy hypocrite. He has no basic connection with the
heroine's problem. In Rain From Heaven, Behrman has developed
and analyzed the character; in combining him with the young
movie actor he has given him social meaning; as a result he
becomes real, three-dimensional, a person with emotions and with
a point of view.

The material in Rain From Heaven is not fully realized in
terms of action. The construction is not compact. Behrman's re-
markable knack for dialogue leads him into discursive discussions

214 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

and incidents. The fact that the play deals so abstractly with con-
temporary issues is due to a one-sided approach to these issues;
the idea of a destiny which overrides and paralyzes the human will
influences Behrman's method, leading him to treat the total
environment as an unknown and final power; the decisions of the
characters are jerky and incomplete; the impact of social forces
is shown in talk rather than in its deeper effect on the consciousness
and will. The characters are not fully realized; they have certain
qualities which cause them to struggle against the environment,
but the roots of these qualities are not exposed. We have noted
these tendencies in Shaw ; similar modes of thought give a Shavian
flavor to Behrman's technique.

Since the theme is not fully thought out, the various actions of
the play have only a vague connection with the root-action. The
various subsidiary stories are tangential, and are not unified in
terms of climax. The final separation of the lovers is genuinely
moving, but it is inconclusive. It is not the supreme moment of an
inevitable struggle, in which the deepest motives and feelings have
been dramatized. Being only partially developed, the situation is
only partially effective in terms of theatre.

The tendency to regard external forces (social, moral, political
or psychological) as final manifestations of destiny, is characteristic
of the modern man's relationship to his environment. Since one
cannot dramatize the environment as something which is static or
obscure, an abstract treatment of external forces destroys the
validity of the play's social framework. One finds this weakness in
many plays dealing with the struggles of the working class ; social
change is viewed mechanically or metaphysically, as if it were
accomplished by some rational inevitability or dynamic life force
greater than the totality of the wills involved.

In an authors' note to 1931 — Claire and Paul Sifton tell us that
the play is "concerned Vv^ith an individual in the tidal movement
of a people caught in a situation which they can neither explain,
escape or develop." Perhaps it is unfair to say that this phraseology
suggests O'Neill's "conflicting tides in the soul of man." But cer-
tainly "the tidal movement of a people" is made up of individual
and collective attempts to "explain, escape or develop" ; where these
attempts are absent there can be no tidal movement at all. The
stage directions for the first scene of 1931 — speak of "the ebb of
weariness, despair, blind pointless boredom and subconscious
desperation." If the authors had attempted to project anything oi
this sort, their play would be undramatic; but a great deal of the
movement of the drama is vibrantly alive and defiant. However

The Social Framework 215

the conflict lacks depth ; its extension is limited ; the framework
is too abstract to give the events their proper perspective.

In the first scene, Adam is fired from his job as a trucker in a
warehouse. He expresses his conscious strength and will ; he flexes
his powerful muscles: "Look at that. That's beans, that's ham-and.
That's women, that's gasoline. That's everything. I got it. I can
lift more boxes, more iron, more sacks, load 'em faster, check 'em
better, make more trips, do more work, than any of your damn . . ."
— and he goes to face the world. But as Adam's will breaks, as he
and the girl are crushed, the idea of a blind "tidal movement of
people" tends to mechanize the action. Since the social forces are
not accurately visualized, the psychological pressure is also vague.
We are not permitted to see what is going on in the minds of the
two central characters; they drift, unable to "explain, escape or
develop." At the end, when Adam says, "Might as well see what
those guys outside are after. , . . Christ, I hope it's something I can
get hold of with my hands," we cannot guess what this means in
terms of character. The decision is not crucial, because the picture
of reality has been documentary rather than fundamental; the
decision remains an incident rather than an explosive change of
equilibrium.

Yellow Jack, Sidney Howard's most noteworthy contribution to
the theatre,* is a remarkable example of historical selection covering
a wide field of events. Howard's perspective has definite limita-
tions. But Yellow Jack has a scope which is rare in the theatre.
This is undoubtedly due in some measure to the character of the
subject-matter. Dealing with the development of medical science
during a period of its most intensive growth, Howard seems to
have been deeply stirred by the possibilities of the material. The
greatness of the theme impelled Howard to find an appropriate
method of presentation. On the other hand, he might very easily
have treated the subject in an unhistorical way: as the struggle of
great "detached" individuals; or as a local-color story, drawing
heavily upon the atmosphere of Cuba in 1900; or as a story of duty,
self-sacrifice and passion, with an intense love affair between Miss
Blake and Carroll. These suggestions are not far-fetched ; these
are the methods of the modern stage. It is amazing that Howard
has, in one play, freed himself from these methods, and made some
progress toward a broader technique.

In speaking of a broader technique, I am not referring to the
physical arrangement of the stage in Yellow Jack. Howard explains
in a note that "the play flows in a constantly shifting rhythm of
♦Written in collaboration with Paul De Kruif.

21 6 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

light." This is an effective way of integrating the movement of the
scenes, and w^as brilliantly realized in Jo Mielziner's set and Guth-
rie McClintic's production. But a playwright's technical achieve-
ment is not measured by whether his play is in one scene or forty, or
whether he uses a constructivist set or a drawing room. The em-
phasis on the exterior trappings of a production is one of the more
foolish manifestations of the old form-and-content argument. The
number and kind of settings are dictated by the needs of the action ;
the playwright must also be guided, as Aristotle advised him, by
consideration for the limitations of the playhouse. Howard might
have restricted the movement of Yellow Jack to a single conven-
tional set without restricting the historical scope.

The important thing about Yellow Jack is its attempt to treat
the fight against yellow fever as a process, a conflict in which both
individuals and a whole epoch are concerned. Howard's limitation
lies in his emphasis on certain factors in the environment, and the
neglect of other lines of causation. This springs from the habit of
mind which was analyzed in the discussion of The Silver Cord.
Just as in the former play, the scientific revelations of psycho-
analysis are transformed into a "scientific Nemesis," so in Yellow
Jack the power of medical science is idealized and made cosmic.
The author is somewhat dazzled by the idea of "pure" science,
detached from the interplay of social and economic forces.

This inability to grasp the whole of his material is evident in
the final scene of the play. Here the conception of man's fight for
science should be expressed in terms of the deepest and most crucial
conflict: yet the last scene is static; Stackpoole, in his laboratory
in London in 1929, is explaining rather than fighting: "Reed took
the disease from monkey to man, Stokes took it from man to
monkey. Now we shall be taking it from monkey back to man."
It may be said that this is a summing up, that the core of the
action concerns the events in Cuba in igoo. But a summing up
pannot be less dramatic than the events of which it is the sum.

Yellow Jack reaches its climax in the scene in which the experi-
ment on the four privates is completed. But this climax is sus-
tained and carried over into the short scenes which follow. In the
scene of the experiment, the author has been very careful to avoid
bringing the action to a moment of maximum tension, thus per-
mitting the action to build through the following scenes, in West
Africa and London. One may say that it is the intention of these
final scenes to show that the fight for science goes on. But this is
the essence of the play. The author does not wish to tell us that
the fight for science goes on, but that it grows less important and

The Social Framework 217

hss dramatic. The final moments therefore should have been very
fully dramatized.

The first scene of exposition takes place in Stackpoole's labora-
tory in London, in January, 1929, and we return to this same
laboratory in the final scene. This opening is the logical point for
the beginning of the stage-action. By opening in 1929, the dramatist
shows us the routine of modern medical research in which mortal
danger is treated with heroic unconcern. From this the action
progresses to the dramatic struggles of the past ; we see the increas-
ing emotional force and meaning of the struggle as men fight
slowly to conquer the deadly germ.

But if we examine the first scene carefully, we find that it con-
tains many ideas which are never developed in the course of the
play. These ideas are of the utmost importance ; they are elements
of the social framework which are essential to our complete under-
standing of the action ; since they are introduced in this incomplete
form, they constitute mere hints which have no concrete value.

The introductory scene starts with an argument between Stack-
poole and a Major of the Royal Air Force and an official of the
Kenya Colony. The officials are objecting to the six-day quarantine
for plane passengers from West Africa going to Europe. The play-
wright is aware that Imperialism is in conflict with "pure" science
in the year 1929; he is feeling his way toward some use of this
conception. But he has not been able to crystallize this problem
dramatically. This weakens the framework of causation ; it narrows
the scope of the events in Cuba in 1900; we cannot understand
science in relation to man's life and aspirations unless we under-
stand the social and economic forces which affect the development
of science. There is evidently a connection between the British
governmental pressure in regard to the Kenj^a colony and the
economic interests of the United States in Cuba. But this remains
an association of ideas in the playwright's mind and is never
explained.

The climax exposes the conceptual uncertainty : a lonely scientist
talks to himself in a vacuum. Stackpoole's final speech casts its
shadow over every scene in the play; the action is weakened by
the fact that the root-action is not given its full emotional force
or extension.

The dominant principle which guides the process of selection is
the principle that the play's explosive force can be no greater than
the extension, the social implications, of the action. The social
frameworkj however vast it may be, is of no value unless it meets

21^ Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the requirements of dramatic action: it must be concrete, defined,
progressive.

The development of the stage-action is a further process of
selection and arrangement; the concentrated analysis and projec-
tion of events vrithin the social framework. This is a matter of
more detailed structural problems ; having determined the dynamic
forces which underlie the play's movement, the playwright turns
to the mechanics of construction.

PART 4

DRAMATIC COMPOSITION

In dealing with com^positiony we enter the fnore familiar
realm that has been surveyed and charted by countless
volumes on the technique of flaywriting. The headings
of the chapters J "Expositiony" ^^Dialogue" "Characteriza-
tiony" have the consoling ring of long usage.

But our approach is consistent with the structural analysis
developed in Part Illy and involves a further inquiry into
the social and psychological factors that govern the play-
wright^s selection and arrangement of his material. The
parts of the play are subordinate units of action. Each part
is related to the whole by the principle of unity in terms
of climaXy but each part also has its own life and m^eaningy
Us inner growth of tension maturing to a crisis.

The study of composition is the study of the detailed
organization of scenes and situationSy both in their internal
structure and in their relationship to the whole system of
events.

Chapter I utilizes a term borrowed from the tnotion pic-
ture: it is of interest that there is no word in the technical
vocabulary of the theatre that corresponds exactly to con-
tinuity; it describes the sequence or linkage of scenes. The
absence of such a term in theatre usage may be attributed to
the tendency to thi7tk of scenes and acts as separate entitieSy
without adequate attention to their fluidity and organic
fnovement. Continuity covers a number of the problems
raised at the beginning of the chapter on "The Process of
Selection" : the heightening and tnaintaining of tension y the
length of various sceneSy abrupt and gradual transitions^
probability y chancey <ind coincidence.

220 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

At the end of Cha-pter I, twelve princifles of continuity
are formulated. Having exa7mned the way in which scenes
are arranged and connected in general j we proceed to con-
sider the specific sequence of scenes which constitutes a
dramatic structure. Four chapters deal with four essential
parts of the structure: exposition^ progression^ the obliga-
tory sceney and the clim^ax.

Characterization is treated in m^any theatre textbooks as
the portrayal of qualities that are somehow m^ysteriously
assigned to a person whom the dramatist has invented.
These qualities have no clear relationship to the play^s
structurey and the actions in which the individual partici-
pates are only incidentally illustrative of the traits that
compose his character. Chapter VI seeks to dispel this illu-
sion, and to show that separate study of characterization
is m,isleading. The drama depicts people in action; every
moment of the presentation tests and explores the operation
of the conscious will; every moment is characterization,
and drama can have no other function or purpose.

Chapter VII takes a similar view of dialogue as an in-
divisible part of the play^s structure, which cannot properly
be detached from the action of which it is an essential por-
tion. The prosaic and uninspired speech in so m-any m^odern
plays expresses the befuddled and entangled will of char-
acters who have lost the ability to undertake decisive
actions.

Tart IV concludes with a brief and necessarily incon-
clusive chapter on the audience. Since a play derives its life
and meaning from the audiencey we are here entering a
whole new field of inquiry. The chapter is described as a
postscript; it might better be regarded as a fragnientary
preface to a book that may some time be written.

CHAPTER I

CONTINUITY

SINCE continuity is a matter of detailed sequence, the study of
continuity can best be served by the minute analysis of the move-
ment of a particular play. Yellow Jack is a solid example of play-
writing method, and is of special value because of its historical
background, which gives the student an opportunity to compare the
playwright's selection of incidents, both with Paul De Kruif's de-
scription of the Cuban events (from which Howard drew the plan
of his play), and with the wider field of historical source-material
which was accessible to the author.

Having already used Yellow Jack as an example of historical
selection, we can now begin at the point where the previous analysis
left off — dissecting each step in the development of the action.

The exposition is divided into three parts: London in 1929,
West Africa in 1927, and the first Cuban scenes (1900). What is
gained by this triple exposition? Each of these scenes serves a dis-
tinct purpose: the action in London shows the scope of the fight
against yellow fever and hints at the danger; the West African
incident dramatizes the danger, broadens the emotional meaning by
going more deeply into the conscious wills of men who are fighting
the battle of science ; the first Cuban scenes define the problem —
the specific conflict between man and his environment took place in
Cuba. It is to be noted that the conflict as the playwright conceives
it is not limited to the Cuban events. Since the action (not the
social framework, but the stage-action itself) transcends these
events, the exposition must present possibilities of extension which
are equal to the extension of the stage-action. For this reason, the
scenes in London and West Africa are necessary.

The curtain rises on a scene of direct conflict in regard to the
quarantine of passengers from West Africa. The argument is in-
terrupted when Stackpoole's assistant cuts himself on a pipette of
yellow fever germs. Quick action: Stackpoole who has had the
disease gives him some blood. Thus the danger, the human problem,
the unfinished struggle to cope with the disease — all these are
dramatically projected. There is a quick shift to West Africa,
eighteen months earlier ; the transition is cleverly accomplished ;
tom-toms beat in darkness ; the light grows slowly. Here again we

222 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

have the human equation, the lonely desperate men in the jungle;
and the scientific struggle: Dr. Stokes succeeds in giving yellow
fever to an Indian Rhesus monkey. Again darkness, and we hear a
quartette singing, "There'll be a hot-time in the old town tonight."
We are at Columbia Barracks, in Cuba in 1900,

Both these transitions are noteworthy in several ways : ( i ) The
use of sound as an adjunct to dramatic movement; (2) the value
of abrupt contrast, the tom-toms breaking in upon the London
laboratory, the nostalgic singing breaking into the jungle silence ;
(3) the value of crystallizing a place and time by means which
are unpretentiously simple and clear.

At the opening of the Cuban scene soldiers are crossing in sil-
houette carrying corpses on stretchers. The sense of death, of an
army destroyed by an unknown enemy, is strongly presented, and
helps to give the play its social depth. There is no element of meta-
physics in this threatening fate; the disease is an enemy to be
faced and defeated.

Here we have an interesting problem in selection : at what point
does the author pick up the struggle against yellow fever in Cuba?
The point v/hich he chooses is a moment of discouragement, when
the Yellow Fever Commission is disgusted and hopeless. This is
naturally the point which he must select: the cycle of conflict is

(a) recognition of difficulties and determination to overcome them;

(b) progressive development of struggle; (c) partial achieve-
ment; (d) new difficulties and increased determination. The open-
ing scene of Yellow Jack shows us a scientist facing a desperate
problem; then back to Africa, discouragement and accomplishment;
then back to Cuba, the beginning of another cycle.

So far the author has followed a very simple single line: he
traces the fight against yellow fever historically, showing its back-
ground and historical associations. But in the Cuban scenes he
must divide the play into two separate series of events, which merge
very much later in the action. Here lies one of the deepest reasons
for Howard's setting, for the arrangement of steps and platforms
upon which the action can shift with the shifting light. This enables
the author to conceal the fact that (until the final experiment) the
story of the four American privates is only very loosely connected
with the story of the American Yellow Fever Commission. The
movement on the stage makes the connection appear closer than
it is.

The first two scenes in Cuba are a continuation of exposition,
introducing the two separate lines of action. We see the fear of
the disease among the soldiers. Busch asks Miss Blake to look at

Continuity 223

his tongue. And above, on the center platform, the Yellow Fever
Commission is outlining the problem, "We were sent down here to
stop this horror ! To isolate a microbe and find a cure ! And we've
failed." This ends the exposition and begins the rising action, the
moment of transition being Reed's statement of the task which
must be undertaken ; the disease carrier must be found : "What was
it crawled or jumped or flew through that guardhouse window, bit
that one prisoner, and went back where it came from?"

It is interesting to note that there is no element of surprise in
the development of the play. The audience knows what "flew
through that guardhouse window." The tension derives from the
force of the conflict, not from uncertainty as to its outcome. There
is no artificial suspense as far as the story is concerned ; the tension
is sustained solely by the selection and arrangement of events.

The most serious problem of continuity in "Yellow Jack" is the
handling of the two separate lines of action : the group of soldiers
and the group of scientists. In this Howard has not been entirely
successful. Is this because it is undesirable to have two lines of
development which merge at a late point in the play? Not at alL
The handling of two (or many) threads of action is one of the
most usual problems of continuity.

In The Children's Hour, by Lillian Hellman, the construction is
disorganized because of the author's inability to handle the two
separate (but connected) actions: (i) the conflict between the
two women and the malicious child; (2) the triangular situation
between the two women and Dr. Cardin. But here again as in
Yellow Jack, the two lines of action are a necessity: the develop-
ment and inter-connection of these two series of events is the
whole core of the author's meaning. She has been unable to define
this meaning and bring it to a decisive head. The root of the
trouble is in the climax; the climax exposes the conceptual con-
fusion which splits the play into a dual system.

The diflSculty in Yellow Jack is of the same sort. Howard has
not clarified the activity of the four privates in relation to the
theme; their decision to sacrifice themselves in the yellow fever
fight is heroic but accidental. What does it mean? Human life
must be sacrificed in the great battle for science? To be sure. But
is the sacrifice of scientists, who risk their own lives consciously for
a conscious end, more, or less heroic, than the somewhat haphazard
heroism of the four soldiers ? Howard has not taken a decisive stand
on this question. The activity of the four privates tends to be
diffuse, idle talk. Since their later function is a somewhat passive

224 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

one, there is really nothing for them to do except talk and wait
their turn.

Howard has tried to give the four soldiers depth and meaning.
He has tried to show their economic and social point of view. But
their points of view are only loosely connected with the dramatic
problem. Their opinions are merely comments, which have no
driving force. The soldiers are the most static element in the play.

Howard's greatest achievement lies in the dynamic progression
of the struggle of the scientists to discover the germ carrier. The
characters of Reed and the other doctors are not very subtly or
deeply portrayed. Yet each scene has a mounting emotional power.
Each scene is a moment of crisis, selected and dramatized with the
greatest care ; each scene presents a serious human problem, but the
human problem is not allowed to obscure the social implications;
the conflict is observed, not from a single angle, but in its multiple
aspect. The activities involved in the fight against disease are very
varied : the man of science must have infinite patience and accuracy,
the slightest mistake may undo months of work ; he must doubt his
own conclusions and test them again and again ; he must be willing
to give his own life ; he must face the moral problem of taking the
lives of others when this seems necessary. The scientist is under
economic and social pressure ; he is interfered with by his superiors ;
he is often misunderstood by public opinion; he is often laughed
at and ignored. These forces constitute the totality of the environ-
ment, to which the scientist must adjust himself. In Yellow Jack,
we see this process of adjustment at its moments of maximum
tension.

The first important scene in the rising action is the visit to
Finlay whom every one has ignored : "For nineteen years science
has laughed at me. Major," says Finlay, "at the cracked old Finlay
and his mosquitoes." Reed replies, "Fm no stranger to waiting,
Dr. Finlay." One notes that the conflict in this scene is many-
sided ; Finlay's pride makes him oppose Reed ; but it is also clear
that he is afraid the others will steal his discovery and take the
glory. We see the pathos of Finlay's long wait, but we also see him
as grasping and bitter.

The scene with Finlay is the natural starting point of the rising
action ; his conviction that a female mosquito is the disease carrier
forces the doctors to face the problem of experiment on human
beings: here the author might easily have side-tracked his drama
into a personal conflict in regard to duty and conscience. But he
succeeds in presenting these men as men really are; with personal
fears and personal ambitions, living in a world whose prejudices

Continuity 225

and opinions cannot be ignored. Reed says, "They may send their
sons to be butchered in battle, but let one of you lift one finger
in this war and they will engulf you!"

The need of testing their theory on human beings leads in-
evitably to the final crisis, the experiment on the four soldiers.
What is the structure of the intervening events ? ( i ) The men
decide to experiment on themselves. (2) Major Reed is forced to
return to Washington ; the absence of the leader causes the care-
lessness which interferes with the certainty of the experiments. (3)
The crucial scene in which they realize that Carroll seems to have
caught yellow fever. (4) Carelessness makes the experiment un-
certain : Carroll had performed an autopsy on a man dead with
yellow fever, and thus there is no proof that the mosquito caused
the illness. (5) This forces Lazear and Agramonte to take a des-
perate chance: they invite a passing soldier, Private Dean, into the
laboratory; he lets one of the mosquitoes in the test-tubes bite him,
without knowing the reason. (6) Carroll seems to be dying. In a
very exciting scene, Lazear waits and hopes that Carroll will not
die in vain. The only thing that can justify his suffering is news of
Dean's illness, which will confirm the fact that the mosquitoes are
the source of the plague. The nurse comes in to ask the assistant
surgeon to look at a new case.

lazear: What's the soldier's name?

MISS BLAKE : Dean . . . William H, Troop A, Seventh Cavalry.
LAZEAR {turns to Carroll)'. We know! Do you get that!
We know!

But the fact that the doctors know is not sufKcIent. There is still
doubt; Lazear becomes ill without the aid of a mosquito. Now
that they have gone so far, they must prove their case in a public,
controlled experiment. There is no other way. This leads to (7) :
the demand for volunteers and the decision of the four soldiers
to risk their lives.

It is obvious that, until the final crisis, the four soldiers are
shockingly neglected in the action. But the continuity, as it con-
cerns the scientists, is masterly. Let us examine the anatomy of
these events : what happens is really a cycle of activity which may
be expressed as follows: a decision to follow a certain course of
action, tension developed in fulfilling the decision, an unexpected
triumph, and a new complication which requires another decision
on a higher plane. Each triumph is the culmination of an act of
will, which produces a change of equilibrium between individuals
and their environment. This change requires nev*^ adjustments, and

226 Theory and Technique of Playwritinq

makes the new complications inevitable. The play is laid out in
three such cycles. First cycle: They decide to experiment on them-
selves ; Major Reed's departure causes a complication ; the dis-
covery of Carroll's illness is a moment of triumph ; his carelessness
in having exposed himself is a new set-back. Second cycle: The
remaining doctors make a desperate decision — the brutal scene in
which they use Dean as an unsuspecting "hiunan guinea pig." This
seems unjustified ; as we see Carroll apparently dying we feel that
the whole thing is hopeless; at the moment of highest tension, the
news of Dean's illness brings triumph, followed by new doubts.
Third cycle: The great decision to make an orderly public experi-
ment; the four privates decide to volunteer; this is followed by
the crucial scene in which the four await their fate.

One thing is very clear about these three cycles: each one is
shorter than the previous one, the points of tension are more pro-
nounced and the explanatory action between the points of tension
is cut down. In the third cycle, the events are grouped closely
together and each event in the last cycle is itself a first-rate point
of crisis, involving a decisive act of will on the part of the char-
acters— the decision of the scientists, and the decision of the four
soldiers.

It must not be supposed that the pattern of Yellow Jack can be
imitated as an arbitrary formula. But the principle which underlies
the pattern is basic, and can be applied in all cases. The material
arranges itself in certain cycles. If we examine each of the cycles,
we find that each one is a small replica of the construction of a
play, involving exposition, rising action, clash, and climax. Having
selected the high points of the action, the plajrwright exercises great
care in preparing and building the tension, so that these scenes will
dominate. The high point of the first cycle is the discovery of
Carroll's illness. The high point of the second cycle is the scene at
Carroll's bedside. What are the technical means by which the
author increases the effect of these crises? First, he continually
emphasizes both the danger and importance of the event: we are
convinced that everything depends on one of the men being taken
ill and that illness will result in death. But telling us this is not
enough. The effect is increased by emphasizing the strain on the
characters. This may be described as increasing the emotional load.
Perhaps one can explain the technique by illustrating it in its
crudest form. For example, one character says, "I can't stand it,"
and another character says, "You must . . ." "I can't, I tell you, I'd
rather die," etc., etc. It is done, generally at the wrong time and
in the wrong way, in every moving picture.

Continuity 227

The most brilliant use of this device may be found in the plays
of Clifford Odets. He is extraordinarily skillful in heightening the
effect of a scene by underscoring the emotional strain. This is
entirely legitimate if the emotion grows out of the inner necessities
of the conflict. The only danger lies in the facile use of artificial
tension as a substitute for genuine development.

Increasing the emotional load may be accomplished in various
ways. It is sometim.es done by the repetition of words or movements
which create a rhythm. The tom-toms in Eugene O'Neill's The
Emperor Jones, are an example of the use of mechanical rhythm.
The man in the death-house in the first act of John Wexley's The
Last Mile who keeps repeating the one word "Hol-mes!" creates
an increasing physical tension which is also psychological; the
repetition exposes the man's diseased conscious will and thus gives
him dramatic meaning.

The development of tension must be unified in reference to the
point of climax toward which the tension is building. In Yellow
Jack, as the doctors experiment on themselves, it is clear that they
are almost at the breaking point. There are sudden quarrels.
Agramonte says: "I have come to the end of my patience now!"
When it is Carroll's turn to be bitten by a mosquito, he pushes
away the test-tube offered him: "Don't point that thing at me!''
(He selects No. 46, which had been fed on a case which had not
begun to develop ; this is the direct cause of his being taken ill.
The other mosquitoes had fed on later cases). As we proceed, the
men are almost at each other's throats. Carroll shouts furiously,
"This damn thing's got me crazy as it is! It's got me all off my
feed!" The other two look at the screaming man and they suddenly
realize that he has yellow fever. But the end of the scene is sud-
denly quiet, gaining an effect by a careful unemotional statement
of how much is involved: Lazear: *Tm scared to death." Agra-
monte: "What of? That Carroll's got yellow jack or that he
hasn't?" Lazear: "Both."

Thus the developing tension reaches a moment of maximum ten-
sion, in which the balance of forces is changed, and a new situation
is created which leads to a new series of tensions. This is not a
matter of presenting the natural flow of events; the activity must
be compressed and heightened; the speed of the development and
the point of explosion must be determined in reference to the
climax of the cycle and the climax of the whole play. The end of
the scene quoted shows the value of a sudden contrast of mood and
tempo — the moment of climax is marked by the abrupt cutting off
of the emotion and the use of understatement. The clarity of

228 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Howard's lines should also be noted. He states the essential issues
with workmanlike precision.

Transitions (both physical and emotional) are a difficult
technical problem. In Yellow Jack the soldiers are of great service
to the playwright in this connection. Although he has failed to
give them an organized part in the developing action, he uses them
effectively as a way of maintaining the movement of scenes — the
singing of old songs, the silhouette of men carrying stretchers, the
bits of conversation. These transitions illustrate two very important
features of continuity: (i) abrupt contrast, cutting a scene short
at a high point and sharply projecting activity of an entirely
different sort, preserving unity by the very vigor of the contrast;
(2) overlapping, the simultaneous presentation of two sorts of
activity, the second action being projected before the first action is
completed. Both of these devices are very clearly illustrated in
Yellow Jack; both (in various forms and with various modifica-
tions) will be found in the great majority of plays.

In the matter of transitions (and in other problems of con-
tinuity), the playwright can learn a great deal from a study of
motion picture technique. Arthur Edwin Krows points out that
the cinema makes extensive use of what he describes as the "cut-
and-flash" method: "The guiding principle is to 'cut' the main line
of interest and to 'flash' the lesser. . . . The principle of cut-and-flash
is a principle of the human mind itself. A person's brain is always
cutting and flashing ideas, one suggesting and strengthening the
other." *

The psychological value of contrast, and the use of subordinate
events in strengthening the main line of interest, suggests a very
wide field of inquiry, for which the motion picture offers invaluable
material. An important beginning in the analysis of motion picture
continuity has been made by V. I. Pudovkin, whose Film Tech-
nique is required reading for any student of the theatre. Pudovkin
uses the scene of the massacre of the mob on the great flight of
steps in Odessa, in The Battleship Potemkin, as an example of
Eisenstein's arrangement of incident: "The running of the mob
down the steps is rendered rather sparingly and is not especially
expressive, but the perambulator with the baby, which, loosed
from the grip of the shot mother, rolls down the steps, is poignant
in its tragic intensity and strikes with the force of a blow." f In
this, and similar instances of cutting, the effect is achieved by the

* Opus cit.

t V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique, translation by Ivor Montagu (Lon-
don, 1929).

Continuity 229

precise analysis of the relationship of the incidents and the precise
timing of the transitions. Pudovkin says: "For every event, a
process has to be carried out comparable to the process in mathe-
matics termed 'differentiation' — that is to say, dissection into parts
or elements." The incident of the perambulator is the root-action
of the events on the Odessa steps: it concentrates a maximum of
emotional compression and generates the greatest extension of
meaning.

A great deal of technical discussion is devoted to probability and
coincidence. Since there is no abstract probability, the test of the
probability of any incident lies in its relation to the social concept
embodied in the root-action. View^ed in this light, the question of
what is and is not plausible ceases to be subject to variable and in-
conclusive judgments, and becomes a matter of structural integrity.
Whether or not the audience accepts or rejects the social concept
underlying the play depends on whether or not the author's con-
sciousness of social necessity meets their own needs and expectations.
This is also true of any scene or character in the play. But the
validity of the scene or character in the dramatic scheme does not
depend on its relation to events in general, but on its use-value in
relation to the root-action. The purpose of the play is to prove that
the root-action is probable and necessary. Therefore nothing in the
play which is essential to the development of the climax can be
improbable — unless the climax itself is improbable.

The element of coincidence enters into any event : to assume that
we can eliminate coincidence in the presentation of an action is to
assume that we can attain knowledge of all the pre-conditions of
the action, A coincidence passes unnoticed if it conforms to our
idea of probability. The action of Yellow Jack is both historical
and probable. But even if every event were a direct transcription
from reliable historical sources, the believability of the combination
of events would depend, not on the accuracy of the transcription,
but upon the author's purpose and point of view.

Coincidence is to be found in every scene of Yellow Jack. Carroll
happens to select a certain test-tube; Dean happens to be dumb
enough to allow himself to be bitten by the mosquito in the labora-
tory. Lazear happens to catch yellow fever at an opportune mo-
ment. These events are both plausible and necessary, because they
contribute to the inevitability of the scheme of events.

There is an important distinction between physical improbability
and psychological improbability. We have repeatedly emphasized
the fact that a play embodies both the author's consciousness and
will. The resulting picture of reality is volitional and not photo-

230 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

graphic. Our visions and hopes are based on our experience; when
men imagine a strange place or a future paradise with hierarchies
of angels, they draw the picture in the colors and shapes of reality
as they know it. In the middle ages, the picture of heaven corre-
sponded to psychological probability; Dante filled heaven and pur-
gatory and hell with the citizens of Florence. The test of the
Divine Comedy is its psychological truth; it would be absurd
to question this truth on the ground that the events are physically
impossible.

The laws of thought enable us to intensify and extend our pic-
ture of reality. A play, conforming to the laws of thought, creates
conventions which violate physical plausibility without a qualm:
we accept actors as being imaginary persons ; we accept scenery as
being what it obviously is not ; we accept a series of events which
begin at eight-forty-five and end at eleven and which are repeated
nightly at the same time and place.

Many events appear implausible in the theatre of the past be-
cause they represent conventions which have become outmoded.
These conventions are not merely technical. Theatrical conventions
are the product of social conventions. We cannot judge these de-
vices by their physical probability, but by their meaning and pur-
pose. The potion which Friar Lawrence gives to Juliet so that she
may appear to be dead is the classic example of a device which is
described by technical writers as being inherently implausible.
Conventions of this sort were common in the Elizabethan theatre.
What really disturbs us about the incident today is our inability
to understand the social necessity which justified the friar's use of
the potion. We have the same difficulty in understanding the root-
action of Romeo and Juliet; the deaths at Juliet's tomb seem ex-
cessive and coincidental, because in our society these deaths would
happen for different reasons. If we examine the play historically,
if we endeavor to see it as it would have been seen by the audiences
of the period, we find that the web of causation is sure and
inevitable.

The ghost in Hamlet is another convention of the same kind.
In a recent production of Hamlet, the melancholy Dane spoke the
lines which are attributed to the ghost, thus giving the impression
that the apparition is the voice of Hamlet's subconscious. This
distorts Shakespeare's meaning, and obscures the valid role which
the ghost plays in the drama. By making the vision more natural, it
is made less real. A modern dramatist might very properly intro-
duce a ghost into a realistic play. He would not be so foolhardy
as to ask us to believe in the naturalness of the ghost ; but an actor

Continuity 23 1

in the role of a dead man may serve a real and understandable
purpose ; we must know what the dead man means, not as a symbol,
but as a factor in the living action ; if the effect on the action cor-
responds to reality as we know it, we accept the psychological truth
of the convention by which the effect is produced. (For example,
the purpose of the masks in The Great God Brown is instantly
understandable; we are all in the habit of hiding behind an im-
aginary mask on certain occasions, while at other times we speak
frankly and unmask ourselves. We accept the masks the moment
we see them; the difficulty in The Great God Brown lies in the
author's own confusion in regard to the end served by the use of
the masks ; we become gradually more confused, because he tries to
make them mean more than they do mean.)

The playwright who misunderstands the question of plausibility
will generally over-simplify and over-emphasize the immediate link
of cause and effect between events. He will be so anxious to invent
probable causes that he will neglect the scope of the action. If we
examine the coincidences in Yellow Jack, we find that the play
derives a great deal of its driving force from the directness of the
action and the disregard of explanatory detail. Major Reed's return
to Washington is an important incident in the early part of the
play; an inept playwright might worry about the reasons for the
Major's departure, and would interrupt the action to offer ex-
planations. He might also introduce an entire scene to explain
Private Dean's character, so as to increase the plausibility of the
scene in which Dean is used for the experiment. This would be
unnecessary because the essential causal relation is the relation be-
tween the event and the root-action of the play. The thing which
builds drama is the introduction of new causes which may or may
not grow out of the preceding action, but which change the conflict,
which introduce new obstacles, thus delaying and intensifying the
final conclusion. The notion that a play is an unbroken line of
cause and effect is a dangerous one, because it prevents the piling
up of diverse forces driving toward the climax. If Yellow Jack
consisted of a simple arrangement of direct cause and effect, it
would be far less complex and exciting.

One is apt to assume that Howard's treatment of the four
privates would be more effective if they were tied more closely to
the work of the doctors: the fault in the handling of the soldiers
lies in their connection with the root-action, and not in their con-
tacts with the doctors. Two or more lines of causation can be
entirely separate, provided they move toward a common goal. If
the activity of the soldiers were meaningful in relation to the

J.22 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

theme, their connection with the doctors would be clear even
though there were no inter-play of cause and effect between the
two groups until the moment of climax.

The complex action in Shakespeare's plays never fails to drive
forward toward a point of maximum tension. When these plays
appear diffuse to modern audiences, it is due to inadequate produc-
tions and failure to understand the conceptions on which the plays
are based. Shakespeare does not hesitate to introduce new elements
and separate lines of causation. The conflict is not a matter of
"one thing leading to another," but a great battle in which many
forces are martialed to a final test of strength. In Hamlet the
killing of the King comes only after Hamlet has made the most
desperate effort, has literally exhausted his mind and heart, in an
effort to find another solution. The introduction of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern introduces an entirely new factor ; the arrival
of the players is not caused by the preceding action, and turns the
play in another direction. The sending of Hamlet abroad, his
return and the scene at Ophelia's grave, are ways of developing
unexpected possibilities of the action, delaying and intensifying the
result.

"Retardation," says Krows, "should always add something to the
action proper." The pla3rwright, he continues, can achieve "power
in delay." * This is true, but the real power lies, not in the delay,
but in the introduction of new forces which create a new balance
of power and thus make the delay necessary and progressive. This
increases the tension, because it increases the possibilities of ex-
plosion which are inherent in the situation and which will explode
at the moment of climax.

It is customary to jpeak of tension as a somewhat mystic bond
across the footlights, a psychic identification between audience and
actors. It is far more enlightening to consider the word in its
scientific sense. In electricity it means a difference of potential; in
engineering it applies to the amount of stress and strain, which may
be carefully calculated.

In play-construction, tension depends on the tensile strength of
the elements of the drama, the degree of stress and strain which
can be withstood before the final explosion.

The principles of continuity may be summed up as follows : ( I )
the exposition must be fully dramatized in terms of action ; (2) the
exposition must present possibilities of extension which are equal to
the extension of the stage action; (3) two or more lines of causa-
tion may be followed if they find their solution in the root-action ;

* Opus cit.

Exposition 233

(4) the rising action is divided into an indeterminate number of
cycles; (5) each cycle is an action and has the characteristic pro-
gression of an action — exposition, rise, clash and climax; (6) the
heightening of the tension as each cycle approaches its climax is
accomplished by increasing the emotional load; this can be done
by emphasizing the importance of what is happening, by underlining
fear, courage, anger, hysteria, hope; (7) tempo and rhythm are
important in maintaining and increasing tension: (8) the linking
of scenes is accomplished by abrupt contrast or by overlapping of
interest; (9) as the cycles approach the root-action, the tempo is
increased, the subsidiary climaxes are more intense and grouped
more closely together, and the action between the points is cut
down; (10) probability and coincidence do not depend on physical
probability, but on the value of the incident in relation to the
root-action ; (11) the play is not a simple continuity of cause and
effect, but the inter-play of complex forces ; new forces may be
introduced without preparation provided their effect on the action
is manifest; (12) tension depends on the emotional load which the
action will bear before the moment of explosion is reached.

CHAPTER II

EXPOSITION

SINCE exposition is regarded as a matter of preparation, it is
frequently considered sufficient if the dramatist offers necessary in-
formation as quickly and clearly as possible. "There are certain
things," says Pinero, "which must be told the audience, as quickly
and conveniently as possible, at the outset of any play. Why not
tell these things quite frankly and get them over with?" Pinero
is as good as his word ; in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, we see
Aubrey Tanqueray having a little bachelor dinner with two of his
old friends, discussing himself and his approaching marriage with
wooden frankness.

Theatre textbooks recognize the dangers of static or unimagina-
tive exposition; but it is suggested that the dramatist must over-
come these dangers by his skill in handling undramatic material.
Baker says that the playwright "is writing supposedly for people
who, except on a few historical subjects, know nothing of his
material. If so, as soon as possible, he must make them understand :
(i) who his people are; (2) where his people are; (3) the time

234 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

of the play; and (4) what in the present and past relations of his
characters causes the story." * It is true that this information must
be conveyed; since the exposition is part of the play and is subject
to the rules of dramatic conflict, the information must be drama-
tized. Baker's points — the questions, who, where and when — are
included in the present and past relationships which cause the story.
If the dramatist is interested only in the story as he intends to
teli it in stage-action, and if he has failed to analyze the social
framework, he is sure to present the expository material in its
most static form. If one regards the beginning of the drama as an
absolute beginning, one cannot give dramatic vitality to the pre-
sentation of preliminary facts, however useful the facts may be.
Explanations are explanations, no matter how shrewdly they may
be concealed. As long as the opening scenes are regarded as ex-
planatory, they are sure to be dull or undeveloped ; the playwright
is looking ahead ; he is anxious to clear the ground and get down
to the serious business of the play.

But the beginning of a play is not absolute; it is a point in a
larger story; it is a point which can be clearly defined, and which
is necessarily a very exciting point in the development of the story
— because it is the point at which a dangerous decision is made.
This point was earlier described as the arousing of the conscious
will to concentrated conflict with a defined aim. Such a decision is
itself a climax of magnitude and cannot be covered by explanations.
On the contrary, anything which is descriptive reduces the sig-
nificance of the decision and obscures its meaning. Since this situa-
tion is the key to the play, a static or undeveloped opening will
infect the movement of the whole play.

In order to understand this decision, we must know its circum-
stances. The curtain cannot rise on a man making up his mind
concerning something we know nothing about. The term, exposi-
tion, as applied to the first cycle of the action is not altogether a
misnomer ; all action contains expository elements ; the climax of
the play is expository, because it exposes additional facets of the
situation, additional information and possibilities. The opening of
a play presents an individual or group of individuals who are un-
dertaking a momentous conflict which is forced on them by cir-
cumstances. It is apparent that these circumstances must be
dramatic; since the decision is so important that it covers all the
possibilities of the play, it must be the result of considerable changes
of equilibrium between the individuals and their environment.
These disturbances cannot be described, but must be seen and felt

* Opus cit.

Exposition 235

at the moment when their impact on the conscious will causes a
change or intensification of the individual's needs and purposes.

Since the exposition covers the possibilities of the drama, it must
be more closely connected with the root-action than any other part
of the play.

It is this connection which holds the play together ; as the scope
of the action is defined in the climax, so its scope is visioned in the
exposition. The unity of cause and effect which operates throughout
the play is essentially the unity between the exposition and the
climax. This leads us to a more exact understanding of the way in
which the selection of the play's point of departure is determined.
Having selected the climax as the embodiment of his conception of
necessity, the playwright will select for his opening, the event which
seems to him to embody the most direct and most real cause of this
necessity. Since the playwright's idea of causation is based on his
attitude toward his environment, the point at which he opens his
story reveals his social judgment. The climax shows what he wants
society to be within the limits of what he regards as its possibilities.
The exposition shows why he believes that these limitations are
final. This does not mean that the inevitability of the climax is
exposed in the first scenes ; if this were the case, there would be no
occasion for continuing the play. The opening scenes show the
setting up of a goal under conditions which make the setting up of
such a goal seem necessary. New information is presented and new
difficulties are added in the course of the play; there are progressive
changes both in the characters and the environment. But at the
moment of climax, we must be able to refer directly back to the
first scene ; the social causes which are manifest in the climax must
have been present in the original conditions ; the action is motivated
by a picture of reality which is proved more or less true or false
at the end; but however false the original picture of reality may
have been, it must have been framed in the same reality which is
made manifest at the end. The setting up of a goal at the beginning
of the play must have been caused by the same real forces which
dominate the climax. At the beginning of the play, we wish to
understand as fullj'' as possible why the conflict of will is necessary :
the past and present experience of the characters makes it necessary;
the opening action sums up this experience ; this creates the environ-
ment; the environment is enlarged as the play proceeds; but it is
the same environment ; the forces which determine the original act
of will are the forces which determine its conclusions. The opening
of the play is the point at which these forces have their maximum
effect on the will giving it the direction which is sustained through-

236 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

out the play. Causes introduced later are subordinate, because the
introduction of a stronger cause would change the conditions of the
action and would destroy the play's unity.

The arrangement of Yellow Jack, returning in the final scene
to the London laboratory which initiated the action, illustrates the
logical link of direct cause and effect between exposition and
climax. Howard embodies his idea of social causation (the motiva-
tions of the men of science and the social and economic conditions
under which they work) in the three scenes of exposition. But his
idea of social necessity (the inevitability of scientific conquest) is
less clear and therefore less dramatically projected.

This principle is not an abstraction ; like the principle of unity
in terms of climax, it applies directly to the practical tasks of the
playwright. The direct link between the climax and the exposition
is not a matter of what the author wishes and plans ; however
confused or disorganized the play may be, the link will be present
and can be analyzed.

The proof that this is the way one's mind works lies in thinking
about any event and noting the course of one's thoughts. If one
considers a murder, one visualizes the crime itself ; one immediately
asks why the crime was committed ; one turns back to find the
most fundamental cause of the act; having discovered this, one
reconstructs the intermediate lines of causation. Suppose one moves
forward and chooses a later moment of climax; the execution of a
murderer. In this case, the cause is self-evident; one's mind jumps
back from the picture of the man about to pay the penalty to the
picture of the act for which the penalty is being paid. These are
the two poles of an action, and the intervening events form a unit
of movement within these limits. Of course the killing is merely the
most obvious cause of the execution ; one might select many other
events before or after the murder as being the basic reason for the
execution. This depends on one's attitude toward the final situation,
on the lesson one draws from it — which determines one's opinion in
regard to its social cause.

The first cause (not first in time, but first in importance) may
be very close to the event in point of time, or very far from it.
George O'Neil's play, American Dream, ends with the suicide of
the wealthy intellectual, Daniel Pingree. The author believes that
this event is historically motivated; he turns back to the early
history of the family, and opens his play in 1 650.

In Hedda Gabler, the cause of Hedda's tragedy is the community
in which she lives. The play begins with the return to the com-
munity. The first lines are Miss Tesman's: "Upon my word, I

Exposition 237

don't believe they are stirring yet!" And Berta's: "Remember how
late the steamboat got in last night. And then, when they got
home! — Good Lord, what a lot the young mistress had to unpack
before she could go to bed,"

The exposition is less dramatic than in most of Ibsen's plays;
the conversation between Tesman and his aunt Julia is descriptive
and awkward. This is probably due to his intense concentration
on the character of Hedda, and his tendency to see every element
of the environment through her consciousness and will. But the
opening shows us that neither her marriage nor her renewed friend-
ship with Lovborg can be regarded as the direct causes of her
suicide. If Ibsen regarded Judge Brack's threats in the final scene
as being responsible for her death, the play would begin with a
scene indicating the relationship between Hedda and the Judge,
But Hedda's "want of an object in life" is conditioned by the com-
munity; Miss Juliana Tesman typifies the community, and the
action must commence with her.

The end of Strange Interlude shows Nina and Marsden to-
gether, ready at last "to die in peace!" The social cause of this
situation is Nina's father complex which she has transferred to
Marsden. The play opens with Marsden waiting for Nina in the
library of her father's home. In a long soliloquy, Marsden ex-
presses his feeling for Nina; then Professor Leeds enters and the
two men discuss the problem. All the causes, the sexual relation-
ships and emotions, which O'Neill regards as basic, are compactly
presented in this scene, and lead directly to the conclusion.

In John Wexley's They Shall Not Die, the closing courtroom
scene ends with a stirring attack upon the prejudice of the Alabama
court. Rokoff says: "There are hundreds of thousands of men and
women meeting in a thousand cities of the world in mass protest
against oppression and ownership of man by man . . . and over them,
you have no jurisdiction. . . " Nathan Rubin, the New York lawyer,
makes the final speech : "And if I do nothing else in my life, I'll
make the fair name of this state stink to high heaven with its
lynch justice ... these boys, they shall not die!" Idiot laughter is
heard from the jury room as the curtain descends. The dramatic
power of this ending is unquestionable. But there is a double con-
ception in these two speeches. We are told that the final word
lies with the men and women who are raising their voices in protest
in a thousand cities. But we are also told that the lawyer will
devote his life to exposing the rottenness of Alabama justice. These
two conceptions are not contradictory; but Wexley ends with the
lawyer's defiance and has so built the scene that <"he moment of

238 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

supreme tension lies in his declaration coupled with the horrible
laughter of the jurors. Dramatically this would be sound, if it
were completely realized in terms of the lawyer's character. But the
juxtaposition of the ideas shows that the relationship between the
individual and the social forces is not clearly conceived. If the
mass protest of vast numbers of people is the ultimate social force
which can defeat the lynchers, this balance of forces must be the
highest climactic moment which the play can reach, and the lawyer
must be placed within this scheme.

If we turn to the opening of They Shall Not Die, we find that
the first scene shows the flaw in the system of causation. The play
opens in the jail. On one side of the stage, three white prisoners,
Red, Blackie and the St. Louis Kid, are talking. On the other
side, we see the office, in which two deputy sheriffs, Cooley and
Henderson, are talking lazily. We are shown the atmosphere of
the South, the laziness, corruption, hatred and fear of Negroes;
thus the basic cause of the action is localized. The South which we
see in the first scene is the South of the idiot laughter; the South
whose fair name will "stink to high heaven," according to Rubin's
final speech. This is valid as far as it goes; but it neglects the
larger issues which are implicit in the case and which the play
touches in its strongest moments.

For this reason, the two lines of action in They Shall Not Die
lack any deep connection. The second act is in three scenes, the
first in Lucy Wells' home, the second in the Negro death cells in
Pembroke prison, and the third is again in Lucy's home.

The visit of Rokolf to the condemned Negroes and his promise
to help them is one of the best examples of scene-construction in
the modern theatre. But this event is not integrally linked to the
preceding and following scenes; the progression is casual rather
than inevitable. The necessity which ought to bind the separate
events is the goal toward which both are moving. The connection
between Lucy and the social forces which are battling for the
lives of the nine boys is personal and unclear, just as, in the root-
action, the lawyer's connection with these social forces is unclear.
The difficulty is reflected in the exposition, and affects every part
of the play.

The exposition is an action: the preparatory movement, like
other parts of the drama, is a cycle of events which has its inner
unity and defined limits. It exhibits the characteristic form of an
action, containing within itself exposition, rising action, clash and
climax.

The first lines of a play are expository, not only of the actior

Exposition 239

of the play, but of the expository situation within the play, which
quickly develops in tempo and intensity. Since the exposition deals
with the setting up of a conscious aim, the moment of highest
tension is the moment at which the decision is made. The decision
may be spoken or implied ; it may be due to the immediate circum-
stances, or it may have been previously made; a play does not
always begin with the forming of a brand-new line of conduct.
The purpose may have existed previously; but it is forced into the
open in the expository conflict; the climax of the exposition ex-
poses the meaning and scope of the decision, and thus creates a
change of equilibrium between the individuals and their environ-
ment. The first cycle of the rising action develops out of this
changed balance of forces.

The exposition may also be sub-divided into subordinate actions
which develop to subordinate climaxes. This division is especially
clear in plays in which the exposition covers several scenes or
several lines of causation. Yellow Jack is a case in point. Steve^
dore, by Paul Peters and George Sklar, is another example
of an exposition which is both complex and vivid. The play ends
with the united struggle of Negro and white workers against their
oppressors. The three opening scenes expose three lines of causation
which underlie the necessity of the root-action. Since the play's
climax shows the overcoming of the prejudice against the Negro
which is ingrained in Southern whites, the authors regard this
prejudice as the cause of the action. The play opens on a moment of
intense conflict which reaches its clima?^ in an hysterical outburst
of race prejudice. The curtain rises on a quarrel between a white
woman and her lover in a backyard in a poor district. There is a
physical struggle ; the man knocks the woman down and runs away.
In answer to her cries, figures creep out from neighboring build-
ings, asking who did it. Florrie, weeping desperately, answers,
"It was.., a nigger!" Blackout. This is not the end of the ex-
position, but only the first cycle of action within the exposition.
The second scene is the police line-up ; Florrie is trying to identify
her alleged assailant. In the line of Negroes, who are threatened
and brow-beaten, stands Lonnie Thompson who works for the
Oceanic Stevedore Company. Here we are introduced to a central
character; Lonnie's relationship to his environment is undergoing
a serious change as a result of the event which took place in the
previous scene. We see this change as it affects his conscious will
and forces him to a decision.

It may be claimed that the second scene, exposing the attitude
of the police and the social and economic roots of the action, is

240 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

more fundamental than the first scene. This shows that the au-
thors' conception of social causation is not fully defined. This
accounts for the looseness of the connection between the first scene
and the later action of the play. Florrie and her lover do not
appear again. In watching the later struggle with the lynch mob,
we tend to forget the event which motivated the action. The
event, in spite of its emotional effectiveness, has neither the com-
pression nor extension required. The weakness is evident in the
climax, which has abundant physical vigor and excitement, but
which shares the fault of the opening scene in being abrupt and
underdeveloped.

The third scene, in Binnie's lunchroom, introduces the Negro
background, the other important characters, and the question of
wages and organization among the stevedores. This brings the
action to a point of issue. Lonnie's words, "Well here's one black
man ain't satisfied being just a good Nigger," are the firing of the
fuse, the declaration of purpose.

These opening scenes, in spite of their structural imperfection,
prove the value of dramatic conflict as a means of conveying actual
information. Data which is presented statically can have no mean-
ing in terms of action. In Stevedore the curtain rises on a moment
of intense struggle ; the development is objective, progressive and
meaningful. An unusual amount of factual information is conveyed,
both as to characters, theme and social background. If one classifies
this information, and attempts to imagine a dialogue designed to
include all the necessary facts, one finds that such a dialogue would
be extremely long, difficult and dull.

We find an illustration of just such a dialogue in the opening
scenes of Peace on Earth. The arrest of Bobbie Peters, the strike
against war, the liberal atmosphere of the Owens' home, are the
materials of drama, but the situations have not been dramatized.
The exposition is static, and therefore necessitates such na'ive ques-
tions as Jo's: "Mac, don't tell me that longshoremen are idealistic
enough to go out and strike against war?"

Hindle Flakes is a play of a very di£Ferent sort which opens
on a direct conflict. The conditions of the action are exposed in
the conflict itself and lead to a declaration of will made necessary
by the accumulated experience of the character. Fanny Haw-
thorne's parents accuse her of spending the week-end with a man.
Her mother says, "As certain as there's a God in Heaven, we
know it!" Fanny answers, "Well that's not so certain after all" —
thus giving us a flash of insight into her character and her attitude
toward her parents. She then says she spent the week-end with

Exposition 241

Mary HoUins, and the two of them returned together. The answer
furnishes a dramatic shock which constitutes the first moment ot
climax in the inner movement of the exposition: "Mary Hollins
was drowned yesterday afternoon." Fanny's response is a break in
the mood, showing the changed condition and indicating the way
in which her conscious will adapts itself to the change: "Ah! My
poor Mary!" Fanny is not forced to change her line of conduct,
but she is forced to declare herself, and to intensify her determination
to follow her own will.

Modern playwrights are adept at tricks which gloss over the
explanatory character of exposition, giving the appearance of move-
ment without achieving meaningful or progressive action. For in-
stance, in A. E. Thomas' comedy. No More LadieSj the hero
has lost the heroine on a round of night-clubs and comes back to
her home without her. Sherry Warren's good-natured comments
on having mislaid Marcia give us a lively insight into their char-
acters and the relationship between them. But this conversation is
really static, because it is a summing up of certain experiences and
certain possibilities rather than an actual conflict. It is instructive
to compare this scene with the opening of Hindle Wakes. In the
earlier play, the dynamic activity is inevitable under the given
conditions. In No More Ladies the playwright has simply devised
a natural incident through which to tell the audience what he
thinks they ought to know.

The opening scene of Francis Edwards Faragoh's Pinzuheel
shows the remarkable compression and extension made possible by
the proper use of what may be called an expressionistic method.
Faragoh's treatment is non-naturalistic, but the scene is a dramati-
zation of reality as we know it.

Expressionism often seeks to create symbols as substitutes for
reality; this is invariably undramatic because it springs from a
subjective mode of thought, a tendency to regard the image of a
thing as more real than the thing itself. There are examples of
this tendency in the later action of Pinwheel. But the opening
scene projects individual wills in relation to complex social forces
with sharp clarity, and without subjective distortion. The curtain
rises on "a breathless process. A hurrying mob that has obscured
its component individuals. A whirlwind just now actuated by the
alarm-clock, — for it is morning." The people are rushing in and
out of subway booths at the rear of the stage. The confused voices
convey a wealth of meaning: "My radio set... the landlord...
she's a peach . . . Them Russians . . . Two weeks at the seashore . . .
Fifty dollars ... A hundred dollars . . . Two hundred dollars

242 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

. . . No real man wears suspenders," etc The action quickly

concentrates on the two girls hurrying to the office, and the Jane
meets the Guy.

THE jane: I gotta hurry... to work... (throws herself
against the wall of people, trying to break through. The wall
resists her).

THE GUY {is almost glued to her, takes hold of her arms
now) : Nobody can make you go to work when you don't feel
like it. You don't see me slavin', do you? You don't have to go
to work!

This touches the core of her will, and forces her to make a decision
iwhich changes her adjustment to her whole environment; she leaves
her job and goes to Coney Island with the Guy.

Since each part of the play is an action, each cycle of movement
includes expository material. It would be impossible to include all
the conditions of the action in the early scenes. At any point it
may be necessary to set a fuse which will explode at a later point.
Since the new forces which are introduced must be tested in terms
of the root-action, it follows that the conditions under which these
forces appear must be tested in terms of the conditions which moti-
vate the play as a whole. The introduction of persons, or incidents,
or objects, may be completely unexpected, but it must conform to,
and be subordinate to, the conditions embodied in the exposition.

If we return to Stevedore, we find illustrations of both the
proper, and improper, introduction of new elements. In the fourth
scene of the first act, a new character, the dock boss, is introduced.
The exposition has shown us that the Negroes work on the docks,
and anything introduced in relation to this activity is natural and
expected. However, another new character is introduced in Act II :
we suddenly meet the white union organizer. This brings in an
entirely new factor, for which we are not sufficiently prepared.
Here again, the detailed defect is related to a more serious weak-
ness in the structure of the play: since the white organizer plays
an essential role in the conflict, the authors are at fault in intro-
ducing him casually, and without earlier preparation. This affects
the latter part of the action: we never fully understand the white
organizer's relationship to the other characters, because no ground-
work for this relationship has been laid.

In Sidney Howard's Alien Corn, the second-act curtain rises
on Stockton cleaning a revolver. This activity is artificial; we
know that the gun is not being cleaned for its own sake, but that
the dramatist has an ulterior (and transparent) motive. Certainly

Exposition 243

there is nothing improbable in a man cleaning a gun ; but the inci-
dent is dramatically implausible because the conditions of the action
are not such as to make the introduction of the gun just what we
might expect under the circumstances. If the purpose which the
gun serves were inevitable in terms of the root-action, and if the
play's opening properly dramatized the basic causes of the root-
action, we would regard the gun as just what we might expect.

The great dramas of the past have invariably presented exposi-
tion in the form of active conflict. Greek tragedy opens with a
formal prologue, in which the historical events of which the play
is the culmination are outlined. This is descriptive but it is not
static; it is a record of actions which defines the scope of the
drama, and which leads to a point which concentrates the experi-
ence of the past in a decisive event. Donald Clive Stuart says:
"The Greek dramatist often opened his play with a scene which,
as in Antigone, would form the climax of the first act in modern
drama." * In Euripides, we find a tendency to dramatize the pro-
logue. In the Electra of Euripides, the prologue is spoken by a
peasant, coming out of his cottage at dawn on his way to work —
in marked contrast to the more heroic manner of Aeschylus and
Sophocles.

Aristophanes discards the formal recitation and defines the action
in a comic dialogue. Some of the more expository material is aimed
directly at the audience. A character says, "Come, I must explain
the matter to the spectators," and proceeds to do so. But this is
always accompanied by concentrated and meaningful activity. In
The Birds, two men appear carrying a jackdaw and a raven.
They are trying to find the realm of the birds, but the creatures
are giving them hopelessly contradictory directions.

EUELPIDES {to his jay) : Do you think I should walk straight
for yon tree ?

PISTHETAERUS (to his crow) '. Cursed beast, what are you
croaking to me ? ... to retrace my steps ?

EUELPIDES: Why, you wretch, we are wandering at random,
we are exerting ourselves to return to the same spot ; 'tis labor lost.

PISTHETAERUS: To think that I should trust to this crow,
which has made me cover more than a thousand furloughs !

EUELPIDES : And I to this jay, who has torn every nail from
my fingers!

The will is here being exerted in relation to the environment;
conditions are presented which force the characters to re-examine
and intensify their purpose,

* Opus cti.

244 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Shakespeare's plays are unequalled in the use of objective con-
flict in establishing the causes of the action. Macbeth begins with
the eerie scene of the witches, followed by the news that Macbeth
has won a great victory. Hamlet opens with the tableau of the
silent transit of the ghost. In both these cases, the extent of the
information conveyed is in proportion to the intensity of the ten-
sion created. Shakespeare's use of the supernatural is an important
aspect of his conception of social causation : the supernatural forces
do not inhibit the will, but encourage the characters to act, stimu-
lating their passions and desires. The ghosts and witches dramatize
the social pressures which drive men to exercise their will.

Many of Moliere's comedies begin with a violent quarrel. The
Doctor in Spite of Himself opens with husband and wife scream-
ing at each other: "Plague take the arrant ass".. "Plague take
the trollop" . . . "Traitor . . . Swaggerer . . . Deceiver . . . Coward . . .
Scamp . . . Rascal. . . ." Whereupon the man starts to beat her with
a stick. At the beginning of Tartuffe, old Madame Fernelle is
leaving her daughter-in-law's house forever; as the curtain rises,
she is shouting her opinion of every one in the house in unbridled
language.

The introductory comments in Hedda Gabler are not fully dra-
matized. But most of Ibsen's plays begin at a moment of conflict
which develops rapidly to a preliminary crisis. Ghosts begins with
the curious struggle between Regina and her supposed father.
Ibsen selects this point of departure because Alving's sexual de-
pravity is the aspect of the marriage which directly causes the root-
action. The social meaning of this aspect is concentrated in the
secret of Regina's birth ; her relationship to the family is the condi-
tion of the play's development. Ghosts could not begin, as Hedda
Gabler does, with the excitement attending the return of the lead-
ing character to the community; this would give the community a
weight which is not required for the climax of Ghosts.

CHAPTER III

PROGRESSION

SO far we have referred to the elements of an action as exposition,
rising action, clash and climax. In order to understand the play's
movement, we must examine these elements a little more carefully.

Progression 245

It is evident that the rising action is more extended and more
complex than the other parts of the play. We have dealt so far
with the meaning of the play, the basic cause and effect vi^hich are
outlined at the beginning and realized at the conclusion. But the
changes in character and environment vi^hich constitute the play's
progression lie in the rising action. This means that there are more
cycles of movement in the rising action ; the cycles are not only con-
secutive ; they over-lap and have varying degrees of extension. The
progression depends on the movement of these subsidiary actions.

If we observe an action as we actually perform it in our daily
experience, we find that any action (regardless of its scope) con-
sists in (a) the decision (which includes the consciousness of the
aim and of the possibilities of its accomplishment) ; (b) the grap-
pling with difficulties (which are more or less expected, because
the decision has included a consideration of possibilities) ; (c) the
test of strength (the moment toward which we have been heading,
when, having done our best to evade or overcome the difficulties,
we face the success or failure of the action) ; (d) the climax (the
moment of maximum effort and realization).

In a technical sense, the third of these divisions is the obligatory
scene. It may appear, at first glance, that the obligatory scene is
the same as the climax; but there is a very important difference
between the expected clash and the final clash. The former is the
point upon which we concentrate our efforts, and which we be-
lieve will be the point of maximum tension. This belief is based
on our judgment of our environment; but our judgment is not
one hundred percent correct. We find that our expectation has
been tricked, and that the clash toward which we have been work-
ing reveals a balance of forces which does not correspond to our
former picture of the situation. This leads to redoubled effort, to
a new and final test of possibilities.

The obligator}^ scene may, in certain instances, be almost iden-
tical with the climax in time and place; but there is a great dif-
ference in its function ; the difference is essential to our under-
standing of an action, because it is this contradiction between the
thing we do and the result of the thing we do which energizes the
dramatic movement. This contradiction exists in all the subordi-
nate cycles of action, and creates the progression. This is not a
matter of cause and effect — it is rather a sharp break between
cause as it seemed and effect as it turns out. This happens, in a
minor degree, throughout the course of the drama: the characters
are continually realizing differences between what they intended
and what is actually going on; they are thus forced t<" revise

246 Theory and Technique of Playwrifing

their consciousness of reality and increase their efEort; this is what,
literally, keeps them moving; the more important moments at
which such a recognition occurs are the obligatory scenes of the
various cycles of action. The break between cause and effect leads
to the actual effect, the culmination of the action. For this reason,
the climax invariably contains the element of surprise ; it is beyond
our expectation, and is the result of a break in the expected de-
velopment of the action.

This is the dramatic element in any situation, and constitutes
the most essential difference between dramatic action and human
activity in general. In the more prosaic activities of our daily lives,
there are no obligatory scenes; we do not pause to recognize any
sharp break between cause and effect; we simply adjust ourselves
and proceed to get the thing done, as best we can. We are inter-
ested in the results, rather than in the significance, of events. It is
only when we undertake actions of unusual scope that the sequence
is broken by the recognition of the difference between the prob-
abilities as we had estiiHated them and the necessities as they loom
ahead of us. When this happens, events become dramatic.

The action of a play intensifies reality, because even the more
minor breaks between cause and effect are emphasized in order
to maintain the play's movement. The degree to which the drama-
tist projects recognition and culmination in the subordinate crises
of the play, is the degree to which he makes the subordinate scenes
dramatic.

A play may contain any number of lesser cycles of action, but
these can invariably be grouped in four divisions; since the rising
action is the longest of the divisions and includes a larger number
of sub-divisions, the movement of the play is somewhat as follows :

Abcdef GH

A is the exposition; b c d e f are the cycles of the rising action;
G is the obligatory scene ; H is the climax. A may contain two or
more cycles of action. G and H are more concentrated, but may
also include several cycles. Since an action is our unit of move-
ment, we are able to divide any of the subordinate actions in the
same way. For example, c reaches a climax which is the culmina-
tion of a system of action of which the exposition, rising action,
and obligatory scene may be traced. The whole group, b c d e f also
constitutes a system, of which b may be the exposition, c and d the
rising action, e the obligatory scene and f the climax.

This would be comparatively simple if it were a matter of direct

Progression 247

sequence, if each division and cycle were complete in itself, begin-
ning where the other left off and proceeding to a climax. But the
action is woven of a multiplicity of threads which are unified
in terms of the play's root-action. The threads leading to any
subordinate climax are also unified in terms of this climax, but
these threads are woven through the other parts of the play.

Each subordinate climax has a certain compression and exten-
sion ; it has enough explosiveness to affect the root-action of the
play; this means that it has enough extension to affect the final
picture of reality embodied in the root-action ; its causes may there-
fore extend to any point within the limits of the play's framework.
If this were not the case, it would be impossible to introduce prior
or off-stage events, and each situation would be limited to an imme-
diate decision and unconditional results.

We therefore find that the culminating moment of any event
is the result of two separate systems of action : one represents its
compression, and is the result of the exposition, rising action,
obligatory scene and climax within the cycle; the extension is the
result of a wider system of a similar character. The play itself
is a compression of events in the stage-action ; and an extension of
events to the limits of the social frame-work.

The first act of Ghosts is a remarkable piece of construction
which may serve to clarify the way in which threads of action
culminate in a subordinate climax. The first act ends with the
climax of the exposition ; the climax is closely juxtaposed to the
moment of the break between cause and effect (which may be
called the obligatory scene), but the two points are clearly differen-
tiated. If we turn back and examine the exposition as a separate
and complete action, we see that it may be sub-divided as follows:

( 1 ) SUBORDINATE EXPOSITION, which concerns Regina and is
divided into three cycles:

(a) Regina's conflict with her father; (b) Regina's discussion
with Manders; (c) Manders and Mrs. Alving express their con-
flicting opinions in regard to Regina's future, ending with her
decision: "I have taken Regina into my charge, and in my charge
she remains. Hush, dear Mr. Manders, don't say any more about
it. Listen! Oswald is coming downstairs. We will only think of
him now."

(2) SUBORDINATE RISING ACTION, which dcvclops the Conflict
between Mrs. Alving and Manders, and which is also divided into
three cycles :

(a) the discussion of Oswald's life abroad, in which he speaks
of "the glorious freedom of the beautiful life over there"; (b)

248 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

this leads to the more direct conflict between Manders and Mrs
Alving, in which he accuses her of "a disastrous spirit of wilful-
ness," and which ends in his telling her that she is "a guilty
mother!" (c) Mrs. Alving's confession, building to her declara-
tion that the "purchase money" with which she was bought is
being put into the orphanage so that it shall not contaminate her
son.

(3) This brings us to the subordinate obligatory scene:
Mrs. Alving faces the split between her purpose and the
possibility of its accomplishment. She says: "After tomorrow, I
shall feel as if my dead husband had never lived in this house.
There will be no one else here but my boy and his mother" — and
in the dining room she hears Oswald making love to Regina, and
Regina's whispers, "Are you mad? Let me go!" *

(4) This forces Mrs. Alving to revise her judgment and re-in-
force her will. The moment of subordinate climax reveals
the necessity which underlies this preliminary system of events.
Regina is Alving's illegitimate child. From Mrs. Alving's point
of view, there is nothing ultimate about this necessity; it is
what she has long known and faced ; but the conditions are now
changed, and her aroused decision under these new conditions is
the basis of the whole action of the play.

It is evident that this system of events reveals all the character-
istics which we have described as characteristic of an action; the
subordinate exposition is closely linked to the subordinate climax;
every incident in the scheme is unified in terms of climax: the
rising action is more complex than the other parts; as the rising
action develops, the compression and extension increase; the de-
velopment is based on a decision as to possibilities which leads to
facing these possibilities, which in turn produces a point of maxi-
mum tension.

This is equally true of the subordinate divisions and cycles of
action: each is a unit which includes exposition, rising action,
clash and climax. But each also has an extension which goes be-
yond the limits of the stage action: the second cycle of the rising
action, (in which Manders and Mrs. Alving come into direct con-
flict), goes back to her visit to Manders in the first year of her
married life; this extension may also be analyzed as a system of

* The fact that the scene between Oswald and Regina takes place
offstage is absurdly awkward and constitutes a serious artistic blemish.
There is a reason for this: throughout the play, Ibsen evades the
dramatization of Regina's problem; an analysis of Regina's case would
involve class relationships which are outside the scope of the family
situation as Ibsen sees it.

Progression 249

action, which centers around Manders and is motivated by his
decision long ago to force her to return to her husband, and de-
velops the results of that decision to the culminating moment in
the present.

The third cycle of the rising action has a greater extension,
covering Mrs. Alving's marriage, the birth of her son, and the
story of her husband's profligacy. It therefore has a greater ex-
plosive force, and a more direct connection, both w^ith the climax
of the exposition as a vv^hole, and with the climax of the play as a
whole.

The modern playwright is especially weak in the handling of
progression. The use of patterns of repetition growing out of ret-
rospective modes of thought, has been discussed at some length.
Even such a brilliant dramatist as Clifford Odets has difficulty in
giving his plays enough extension and drive to establish genuine
progression. The scenes of his plays are more dynamic than the
movement of the play as a whole. In spite of his deep social aware-
ness, Odets fails to think out the full causal relationship between
the social forces as they exist in the environment and the decisions
of individuals as they come in conflict with these social forces.

Odets' awareness of his material is still instinctive, and as yet
insufficiently clear in terms of rational understanding. His most
emotional and highly colored passages are often those which are
most unsound dramatically. The root-actions of his plays expose
this weakness : the lyric escape of the lovers at the end of Awake
and Sing, and the call to strike at the close of Waiting for Lefty.

Odets deals with characters who think pragmatically. But his
approach to these people is somewhat unclear because he has not
overcome his own tendency to think pragmatically. In the exposi-
tion of Awake and Sing, the social maladjustments of each charac-
ter are indicated by a wealth of detail in regard to the character's
background. Much of this is humorous, relating to minor feelings
and complaints; this conveys a sense of oblique, half-realized emo-
tional protest. For instance, Ralph says : "All my life I want a pair
of black and white shoes and can't get them. It's crazy!" Abrupt
contrasts of ideas are used effectively: Jacob: "By money men the
interests must be protected. Who gave you such a rotten haircut?"

None of this material is extraneous. It enlarges the social frame-
work and gives us a carefully documented picture of character in
relation to environment. We learn that Ralph Berger was never
given skates as a child, but when he was ill nl the age of twelve,
his mother spent the last twenty-five dollars she had in the world
to get a specialist. This is an example of 1 prior event which ip

250 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

realized in dramatic terms and which is closely linked to the root-
action — the escape of Ralph and Hennie from their mother's in-
fluence. But in general the social framework of Awake and Sing
is not fully dramatized ; the reason for this is that the incidents are
detached bits of action which are not organized in cycles of move-
ment ; we get the intuitive reactions of the characters to the needs
and pressures of the environment, but we do not get inside the
characters.

Having exposed the possibilities of the action in the first act, the
author leaves his people exactly where he found them, in a state
of suspended animation. The events of the play are illustrative
rather than progressive. The contradiction between cause and
effect is not dramatized as it strikes the conscious wills of the char-
acters and drives them to revise and intensify their decisions. Per-
haps the most pivotal event of the play is Old Jacob's suicide. If
we trace the development of this action, we find that it has its
beginnings in the scene in the first act in which Jacob plays his
phonograph records to Moe ; the rising action building toward the
suicide is the series of conflicts between Jacob and Bessie, cul-
minating in the obligatory scene, the breaking of the phonograph
records. This is the most progressive movement of events in the
play, because it leads to a defined act; but it has no organic con-
nection with the play as a whole, as it is summed up in the root-
action. The grandfather's death does not make Hennie's running
away inevitable, nor does it clearly motivate Ralph's new courage
and understanding.

In the final act, Ralph says: "I grew up these last few weeks."
But how has he grown? His growth is not dramatized in any
specific conflict. He faces two problems (which have existed in
just the same form throughout the play) : his relationship with his
mother, and with the girl he loves. How does he solve these ques-
tions ? He remains in the house and gives up the girl, simply telling
us that everything is different.

Hennie's struggle against her mother's domination, her relation-
ship with her husband, her love for Moe, are not developed dra-
matically. She seems to take no responsibility for the pitiful deceit
of marrying a man whom she does not love and deceiving him in
regard to her child. She simply ignores this problem, or that she
has any part in it. Her last lines to her husband (in the final
act) are curiously insensitive: "I love you ..I mean it." Sam
replies : "I would die for you . . ." and leaves. It is clear that
Hennie is trying to comfort him; but the sentiment of these two
lines is false, closing a situation which is meaningless because it

Progression 251

has never been faced. Her relationship with Moe is also unclear,
based on no logical progression. Why does she decide to run away
with him at this point ? Has anything happened to make her under-
stand him or herself better ? What separated her from Moe in the
first act? She explains this as being due to her "pride." Are we to
believe that this pride (which is never dramatized or made fac-
tual) is stronger than the sexual and economic pressures which
would drive her to Moe the moment she realized she was to have
a child by him ? Certainly other factors might have prevented this,
but these factors must be grounded in social reality, as dramatized
in the framework of the action. Action cannot be motivated by
"abstract" sentiments, such as pride.

This is due to failure to analyze the conscious wills of the
characters and to build a system of causes which underlies the
acts of will. This in turn is due to a mode of thought which accepts
emotional drift as a substitute for rational causation. Instead of
basing his dramatic logic on the theory that "contradiction is the
p>ower that moves things," the author shows a tendency to show us
what William James calls a "series of activity situations," in which
the immediacy of sensation, the fleeting feeling of frustration or
anger or desire, takes precedence over the testing and carrying out
of decisions. We understand that Hennie lives in a pragmatic
world, that she plans nothing beyond the immediate moment, that
she is confused, desperate, irresponsible. But her drama lies in the
way in which her "pure experience" is continually tested and
wounded ; we cannot know Hennie through her moods ; we can
only know her through her attempts, however fleeting and unsatis-
factory, to reach decisions. Insofar as we see only her moods, we see
her as a person who is rootless, driven blindly by social forces
which are mysterious and fateful.

Thus there is a contradiction between the immediate sensation
(the projection of each event) w^hich is unsparingly real, and the
whole scheme which is blurred. The root-action dissolves in sex-
mysticism, which contains the double idea of love and force. Moe's
pragmatic ability to cope with immediate difficulties is violent,
sentimental, irrational, the emotional drive of a man who follows
the dictates of his "blood and nerves" : Moe : "You won't forget
me to your dyin' day — I was the first guy. Part of your insides.
You won't forget. I wrote my name on you in indelible ink!" And
again : "Nobody knows, but you do it and find out. When you're
scared the answer is zero."

One can well understand that Moe feels this way: but this
scene contains the solution of the action; Moe's appeal, and the

252 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

departure of the lovers which follows it, is as clearly the answer
to the problem of the middle class family in the Bronx, as Nora's
departure is the answer to the problem presented in A Doll's
House. But while Nora's escape is an act of will, the romantic
escape of Moe and Hennie is an act of faith. It is not conflict, but
the denial of conflict.

In Waiting for Lefty, Odets has made a tremendous advance.
Here there are no overtones of unresolved mysticism. But can it
be said that he has solved the structural fault, the lack of pro-
gression, which mars the previous play? On the contrary, he has
created a device which makes structural development to some ex-
tent unnecessary. There can be no question that the device is
admirably suited to the needs of the play. But there can also be no
question that the unity thus achieved is superficial. Each scene
crystallizes a moment of sharp protest, of crucial social anger. But
the arrangement of the scenes is somewhat fortuitous. The first
scene, Joe and Edna, may be regarded as the most significant, be-
cause it concerns the fundamental problems of the worker's family,
food and clothes for his children. The third episode (the young
hack and his girl) is also basic. The later scenes (the young
actor in the manager's office, the interne in the hospital) are of a
more special character, less closely related to the workers' struggle.
The emotional tension mounts as the play proceeds: this intensity
does not spring from the action, but from the increasingly explicit
statement of revolutionary protest, which therefore tends to be
romantic rather than logical, sloganized rather than growing out
of the deepest needs of the characters. The stenographer says:
"Come out into the light, Comrade." Dr. Barnes says : "When you
fire the first shot say, 'This one's for old Doc Barnes !' " This is
exciting, so exciting that it is impossible, at the time, to stop and
analyze it. One is swept along, swept by Agate's call to action at
the end : "Stormbirds of the working-class." But the development
which leads to this speech is not cumulatively logical, not based
on flesh-and-blood realities.

It is true that the depression has forced many technicians, actors,
doctors, to become taxi-drivers. But here we have a militant strike
committee made up largely of declassed members of the middle
class. One cannot reasonably call these people "stormbirds of the
working class."

The difficulty in Waiting for Lefty springs from the gap be-
tween the immediate impulses of the characters and the wider
frame-work of events. In each scene, the decision is impulsive ; it is
assumed that the social forces which create the decision are abso-

Progression 253

lute, and that the intuitive recognition of these forces is a moment
of supreme climax. Thus the moment of clash, of the break be-
tween cause and effect, is neglected.

One thing shows that the author is aware of this problem and
is feeling for a solution of it. The key to the problem lies in the
incident which breaks Agate's final speech — the flash of news
that Lefty has been found "behind the car barns with a bullet in
his head." Thus the title of the play is a stroke of genius, which
indicates Odets' instinctive flare for dramatic truth. It suggests
the need for a deep unity which is merely hinted at in the action.
Lefty's death is unprepared, undramatized. Yet it seems to be the
culmination of a series of relationships which are the core of the
action, the essence of the social conflicts around which the play
is organized.

Waiting for Lefty is smashingly effective without this fundamen-
tal progression. Till the Day I Die is a different matter : here the
playwright projects a personal conflict. Ernst Tausig's struggle
with his environment is not a moment of protest; it is a long
agony, in which his revolutionary will is strained to the breaking
point. The choice of this theme is significant, showing Odets'
progress. But he fails to develop the theme fully. With great
clarity, he shows us brief flashes of individuals. The method is the
same as in Awake and Sing, the emphasis on small fears, hopes,
memories. In the first scene Baum says: "I used to be a peaceful
man who planted tulips." Tilly speaks of her girlhood: "In
summer I ate mulberries from our own trees. In late summer the
ground was rotten where they fell."

But the figure of Ernst Tausig is pale against the background
of minor characters and startling scenes. The first four scenes deal
with the capture and torture of Ernst. In the fourth scene, the
Major tells him of the horrible plan to make his friends think
he is a stool pigeon. The fifth scene deals with his return to Tilly,
and the melodramatic incident of the detectives breaking in. The
sixth scene shows a Communist meeting at which it is decided to
blacklist Ernst. In the seventh scene, he returns to Tilly broken
in body and mind, and kills himself. Thus the sustained conflict,
the conscious will of man pitted against terrible odds, is omitted.
We see him only before and after. The crucial stage, in which his
will is tested and broken, occurs between scenes five and seven.

One of the most moving moments in the play is that in the
sixth scene: the vote is taken, Tilly raises her hand, agreeing with
the others to make an outcast, a traitor, of the man she loves.
But here too the playwright fails to dramatize a progressive

254 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

struggle which gives meaning to Tilly's decision. We do not see
the conflict of will which leads to the raising of her hand. We
know she believes in his innocence, but we do not see this belief
tested, opposed to her party-loyalty, assailed by doubts. Therefore,
the raising of the hand is not really a decision, but a gesture.

|Odets remains more of a scenewright than a playwright. In
the creation of scenes he is unequalled in the modern theatre. One
more example: the unforgettable portrait of the liberal Major,
his struggle with his subordinate and his suicide, in scene four of
Till the Day I Die. But here again he dramatizes a moment of
maximum maladjustment, the quick breaking of an unbearable
strain. The progression within the scene is effective, because the
scene is unified in terms of its climax — of a complete change of
equilibrium between the individual and his environment. The
quick drive to the realization of such a change, the quick impact
of social necessity, is powerfully projected. But since this is not
the result of previous decisions and does not involve the making
ind testing of new decisions, there is nothing to carry over, to de-
velop a broader meaning and a deeper test of consciousness and
will.

Odets' conception of social change is still somewhat romantic;
it is seen as a vast force, the recognition of which constitutes a
personal regeneration. Thus he perceives the moment of explosive
anger, of realization and conversion. Indeed Waiting for Lefty is
a study in conversions. This is the source of its power. But Odets
will undoubtedly go beyond this to mastery of more profound and
more sustained conflict.

The neglect of progression in the contemporary theatre creates
a practical problem which the craftsman cannot ignore. The genu-
ine dramatic force of separate scenes, which makes the plays of
Odets continually exciting, is absent in many modern plays. The
essential moments of conflict exist only in embryo, in a delayed
or diluted form, or are missing altogether. Since tension depends
on the balance of forces in conflict, it seems reasonable to con-
clude that if conflict is avoided, tension will be fatally relaxed.
But the interest of the spectators must be sustained. It follows
that the drama of today has developed extraordinary facility in
maintaining fictitious tension. The most common method of sus-
taining audience-interest without progression is the use of sur-
prise. This device is employed unsparingly; it has, in fact,
become the basic technique of the modern drama.

In the Greek theatre the "reversal of fortune" was a vital
part of the tragic technique. Aristotle used Oedipus Rex as an

Progression 255

example: ''Thus, in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer
Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by
revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect." This turn
of events is linked directly to the climax of the drama.

Surprise by artifice, by consciously misleading the spectators,
is a very different matter. Lessing points out that surprises vrhich
are easily achieved "vv^ill never give rise to anything great." He
describes the sort of play vi^hich is "a collection of little artistic
tricks by means of vt^hich we effect nothing more than a short sur-
prise." * Archer makes a similar comment : "We feel that the au-
thor has been trifling with us in inflicting on us this purely mechan-
ical and momentary scare." t

One must bear in mind the distinction between surprise which
legitimately carries the action forward, and surprise which negates
the action. The distinction is not difficult to make : we recall that
one of the forms of reversal of fortune to which Aristotle referred
was the "anagnorisis" or recognition scene, the finding of friends or
enemies unexpectedly. Aristotle used this as a rather mechanical
formula, but when we examine Greek tragedy we find that the re-
versal of fortune is invariably accompanied by recognition of the
persons or forces which bring about the change. The messenger re-
veals himself, the effect is the opposite of what was expected, forcing
Oedipus to recognize a change and to face a new problem. We have
already pointed out that it is this recognition of the difference be-
tween what was expected and what takes place which drives the
action forward. In this sense, surprise is the essence of drama, and is
present in every movement of the action.

But recognition of the break between cause and effect is very
different from ignoring or evading the logic of events. "Nothing,"
says Lessing, "is more offensive than that of which we do not know
the cause." %

Surprise, employed without recognition of its cause or signifi-
cance, is used in two ways: one of these is the direct shock, which
consists in breaking off the action when a moment of conflict is
impending, leaving the audience to imagine the crisis which the
dramatist has avoided. The author then diverts attention by creat-
ing another series of promising events which are again broken off.
The other method is that of suspense by concealment: instead of
making open preparations which lead to nothing, the playwright

» Opus cit.

t Archer, Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship.

X Opus cit.

256 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

makes secret preparations which lead to something unexpected. But
since the audience has been consciously misled, the unexpected
event has no real significance and is merely a mechanical means of
shocking or diverting us.

The most famous example of a play in which the outcome is
concealed is Henri Bernstein's The Secret. Bernstein was a re-
markable craftsman, and this play is still of great interest as an
example of ingenious deception. The technique of The Secret was
a new and important thing at its time. Clayton Hamilton (writing
in 191 7) says of it, "Bernstein has brushed aside one of the most
commonly accepted dogmas of the theatre — the dogma that a
dramatist must never keep a secret from his audience." * There can
be no question that the mechanical methods of Bernstein and some
of his contemporaries have had much more influence than is gen-
erally realized. The connection between Bernstein and George S.
Kaufman is surprisingly close.

The most mechanical form of keeping a secret is that which
may be observed in crime melodrama and sex farces. In the crime
play, the finger of suspicion is pointed at all the characters in
turn, so that the audience may be illogically amazed by the revela-
tion of the real criminal. In the sex play, the question of who will
go to bed with whom, and who will find out about it, furnishes
exciting, if somewhat trivial, "straining forward of interest."

Misleading the audience may be very delicately done. The play-
wright cannot be accused of crude deception ; but he offers hints
which give a wrong impression ; he sustains his action by false
promises. Strictly Dishonorable, b}^ Preston Sturges, relates the
adventure of an innocent Southern girl who meets an opera singer
in a speakeasy and spends the night in his apartment. At the end
of the first act, the hero assures his visitor that his intentions are
"strictly dishonorable." Since the play proceeds directly to the
realization of this aim, without other obstacles than the whims of
the characters, the second act is an artificially extended obligatory
scene. There are excellent comic possibilities in the situation ; but
the comic elements lie in a genuine conflict, in which the social
points of view, personalities and habits of the two opponents would
be exposed in the course of a lively struggle. Sturges has not
developed these comic possibilities. The hero's declaration of pur-
pose at the end of the first act is misleading; suspense is sustained
by a series of twists: first surprise, the singer gets an attack of
conscience ; second surprise, the innocent heroine feels that she has
been duped and insists on being betrayed. The dramatist is at

* Opus cit.

Progression 257

liberty to repeat the trick ad nauseam ; the hero can change his
mind ; the heroine can change her mind. This may be called a con-
flict. Provided the vaccilation of the characters is skillfully pre-
sented, it is not unnatural. But it contains no suspense in the real
sense, because it is a struggle of whims and not of wills.

The most serious technical use of surprise in the modern theatre
is not revealed in the more or less mechanical trick of concealment.
The method of breaking off the action in order to avoid its cul-
mination is far more significant. The great master of this use of
surprise is George S. Kaufman. Kaufman is an expert technician,
but the key to his method lies in his constant employment of the
melodramatic twist. This device serves him exactly as the asides
in Strange Interlude serve O'Neill — to avoid conflict, to give the
action effectiveness without progression.

Merrily We Roll Along (written in collaboration with Moss
Hart) is by far the most interesting play in which Kaufman has
been concerned. There has been a great deal of comment on the
fact that this drama is written backward, beginning in 1934 and
ending in igi6. This has been described as a trick, a seeking after
sensation, an effort to conceal the play's weakness. It seems to me
that the backward method is an honest and necessary way of telling
this particular story. In fact, I venture to surmise that it would be
impossible to tell the story properly in any other way. The basic
theme of Merrily We Roll Along is an ironic looking backward
over the years since the European war. The reverse action is a
natural way of handling this theme — nor does it at all change the
principles of construction.

The selection of the climactic event in Merrily We Roll Along
is confusing. The action of the play shows the search for some-
thing vital which has been lost; the thing lost (the ultimate neces-
sity which determines the action) must be revealed in the climax.
Instead we find a young man on a platform, delivering platitudes
about friendship and service. There may be considerable disagree-
ment as to what is and what is not idealism ; most people will
agree that it manifests itself in courage, a willingness to face dan-
ger, to oppose accepted standards. But whatever idealism may
mean abstractly, it can have no dramatic meaning unless it is
crystallized in a moment of extreme tension which reveals the scope
of the conception. Since we never see Richard Niles express his
idealism in conduct, we have no way of knowing what sort of con-
duct it would involve ; there is no way of testing any of the de-
cisions in the play in relation to the system of events in which
they are placed.

258 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Since the decisions cannot be tested, we cannot see the clash
between expectation and fulfillment, and the action cannot pro-
gress. The fact that the plan of the play is a backward progression
does not affect this problem, but would intensify the irony of each
partial recognition of necessity in relation to events with which we
are already familiar.

The exposition shows Richard Niles (in 1934) at the height
of his success. The theme is cleverly introduced in a scene of
dramatic conflict: Julia Glenn, who has known Richard since the
days of his poverty, insults his guests and tells him that his ma-
terial success has destroyed him. We then proceed to an intense
scene between Richard and his wife, Althea. She is bitterly jealous.
She knows that he is having an affair with the leading woman in
his new play. The conflict between husband and wife is important,
and essential to our knowledge of the theme. However, instead of
developing this conflict, it is cut short by a melodramatic shock —
Althea throws acid in the other woman's eyes.

Thus the relationship between husband and wife in 1934 is
cut short, and we go back to the earlier stages of this relationship.
The play is constructed around the conflict between Richard and
Althea. She is used as the symbol of the luxury and cheap ambition
which gradually destroy Richard's integrity. We follow this process
back into the past as the play develops: in the final scene of the
first act (in Richard Niles' apartment in 1926), Richard is in the
earlier stages of his affairs with Althea. She is married to another
man. In this scene, Jonathan Crale, Richard's closest friend, warns
him against Althea, begs him to give her up. Crale leaves and
Althea comes to the apartment; here again is the beginning of an
emotional scene, in which the conflict between Richard and Althea
may be analyzed and dramatized. The scene is cut short, almost
before it has begun, by a melodramatic surprise — the news that
Althea's husband has shot himself.

Another line of causation is undertaken in the first act: the
conflict between Crale and Richard, the idealist and the oppor-
tunist. The first act shows us an interesting clash between the two
friends, and we are led to believe that we shall see the earlier
stages of this conflict. But in the following acts, they meet only
for brief moments and never in a dramatic scene. Thus the rela-
tionship between the two men is also a false lead.

What is the obligatory scene in Merrily We Roll Along, and
how is it handled? The decision which is presented in the exposi-
tion, and upon which the play is based, is Richard's falling in love
with Althea. The climax of the exposition (the throwing of the

Progression 259

add) concentrates our attention on the events which led to this
disastrous result. The expected clash toward which the action
moves is the beginning of the emotional entanglement with Althea ;
this is the point at which the possibilities of the action (the dis-
appointment and bitterness of Richard's later life) are revised in
accordance with a new vista of necessity (the ideals of his youth).

A great deal of skill is used in building up audience-expectation
in regard to this key-situation. The preparation leads us to expect
the scene at the end of Act II — in Althea's apartment in 1923, on
the night of the opening of Richard's first successful play. The
beginning of the love story is closely interwoven with the beginning
of Richard's successful career. Althea is the star of the play. So
far the authors have avoided any fully developed contact between
Richard and Althea. But at this point the love scene seems
inevitable.

The scene opens on the arrangements for the party which will
celebrate the first night of the play. There is a great deal of divert-
ing detail. The exits and entrances, the bits of characterization,
the movement of crowds, are skillfully conceived and directed. We
especially notice a tiger skin which is prominently placed on the
couch in Althea's apartment. In a previous scene we have been told
about this tiger skin ; it was used as evidence in the sensational
divorce in 1924; Richard's first wife found him making love to
Althea on the tiger skin.

The tiger skin is amusingly characteristic of the Kaufman and
Hart method. The playwrights pique our curiosity, they indicate
the approaching scene, they show us the exact spot where the love
affair will take place — but they bring down the curtain at a noisy
moment of Althea's party, the stage crowded with chattering
people in evening dress. The effect is a shock ; the cutting off of the
action on the noisy crowd is undeniably effective ; but the obligatory
scene is omitted.

The use of crowds in Merrily We Roll Along is of special
interest; the first act begins with a party in full swing, showing,
according to the principle of selection which governs the choice of
expository events, that the authors regard the people who come to
parties — the wealthy cynical upper-crust of New York profes-
sional people — as the fundamental social cause of the action. This
accounts for the substitution of the crowd-scene for the necessary
conflict of will at the close of the second act.

It is curious that a play which moves backward, and in which
we are told about events before we see them happen, should depend
for its effectiveness solely on surprise. By relying on this device,

260 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Kaufman and Hart have missed the greatest value to be derived
from the use of the backward method: the reversal of the life
process, enabling us to observe acts of will of which we know the
effects. Since the acts of will are omitted, the irony is sadly diluted.

Kaufman's brilliant superficiality is sometimes blamed on a
cynical approach to the art of the theatre, a willingness to sacrifice
serious meaning for effective showmanship. But his method goes
much deeper than this ; the question is not one of integrity, but of
the author's mode of thought which reflects his relationship to the
totality of his environment. There is no mysticism in Merrily We
Roll Along, but the mood is fatalistic: here the Nemesis which
afflicts the will is more mechanical than psychological. The treat-
ment suggests the stimuli and responses of behaviorism. The mate-
rial environment is so much stronger than the characters that their
actions are no more than a series of reflexes. A feeling of irresponsi-
bility is created, because whenever the characters undertake an
action, something outside themselves prevents its completion. Events
happen to them, suddenly, unaccountably, against their will.

The cutting of the action before it has come to a head is more
extensively used in comedy and farce than in other departments of
the drama. We touched on the question of comic progression in
dealing with Strictly Dishonorable; there seems to be considerable
misunderstanding as to the technique of comedy ; it is often thought
that comedy deals only with surfaces, and is less analytical than the
serious drama. But the essence of humor lies in exposing the
maladjustments between people and their environment. Allardyce
NicoU says, "The fundamental assumption of comedy is that it does
not deal with isolated individuals." It deals, as George Meredith
points out in his essay "On the Idea of Comedy," with men
"whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, preten-
tious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate;
whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run
riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities,
planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are
at variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten but
perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another;
whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice ; are false in
humility or mined in conceit, individuallj'', or in the bulk." *

Personal Appearance, by Lawrence Riley, is a frothy burlesque
about a glamour girl from Hollywood. Carole Arden invades the
Struthers' farmhouse on the road between Scranton and Wilkes-
barre: since sex is her specialty, she attempts to have an affair

♦George Meredith, An Essay On Comedy (New York, 1918).

Progression 261

with the handsome young automobile mechanic who is engaged to
Joyce Struthers. The obligatory scene is the scene in which the
seduction is attempted. The situation is similar to that in Strictly
Dishonorable, but here the woman is the aggressor and the man
is the defender of his virtue. This is a rich occasion for comic
analysis of character and social viewpoint.

We want to know how the man will react to Carole's blandish-
ments. We want to see him definitely resist or definitely give in.
We want to see the clash between the social standards of Holly-
wood and those of a Pennsylvania farm. This means that the root-
action must embody a defined point of view, which must achieve
the maximum extension and compression. We cannot derive sus-
tained laughter from consideration of these people as "isolated
individuals." Their "planning short-sightedly, plotting dement-
edly," can only be judged in relation to "the unwritten but
perceptible laws" of conduct.

The root-action of Personal Appearance is merely a repetition
of the opening situation — the actress leaves the farm exactly as she
found it. There has been no progression ; the attempted seduction
has been avoided.

The obligatory scene is therefore not dramatically humorous ;
it contains no genuine action ; the comedy derives solely from the
fact that the idea that the actress wants to seduce the man and
that he is unwilling, is itself amusing. But this idea has already
been outlined in the first act. The obligatory scene arouses expecta-
tion, because we wish to see the possibilities of the idea explored ;
we wish to see the characters test and revise their purpose as they
recognize the break between their expectation and reality. Failure
to develop the conflict to this point is a betrayal of the comic
spirit.

The second act builds to the moment when the two are left alone
together. But there is only a little preliminary sparring between
the movie queen and her intended victim. Then the situation is cut
short by the abrupt entrance of old lady Barnaby, Joyce's aunt.
Thus the playwright avoids a troublesome dilemma; if the man
gives in, a series of difficult complications must ensue. If he fails
to give in, under continued pressure, he must appear (at least in
the eyes of a majority of the audience) as something of a sap.
But this contradiction is the core of the play, exposing its social
meaning and dramatic possibilities. The playwright should pay
special attention to the difficulties inherent in his material, the
complications which seem to defy solution. These contradictions

262 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

expose the difference between expectation and fulfillment, and
furnish the motive-power for the play's progression,

Aristotle covered the question of progression simply and thor-
oughly. He spoke of tragedy, but his words apply to all dramatic
action — both to the play as a whole and to all its parts: "To be
about to act . . . and not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without
being tragic, for no disaster follows,"

CHAPTER IV

THE OBLIGATORY SCENE

THE function of the obligatory scene has been discussed in dealing
with progression. Francisque Sarcey deserves credit for the theory
of the obligatory scene ; but he failed to develop the idea in relation
to any organic conception of technique. Archer defines the obliga-
tory scene as "one which the audience (more or less clearly and
consciously) foresees and desires, and the absence of which it may
with reason resent." * Sarcey says, "It is precisely this expectation
mingled with uncertainty which is one of the charms of the
theatre."

These comments are important, because they both stress the
principle of expectation as it affects the audience. The sustained
interest vdth which the spectators follow the action may undoubt-
edly be described as "expectation mingled with uncertainty." The
degree of expectation and uncertainty are variable. But the decisive
point toward which the action seems to be driving must be the
point concerning which there is the greatest expectation and the
smallest uncertainty. The characters of the play have made a
decision ; the audience must understand this decision and must be
aware of its possibilities.

Spectators look forward to the realization of the possibilities,
to the expected clash. The judgment of the audience as to the
possibilities and necessities of the situation may differ from the
judgment of the characters. The playwright strives to make the
action appear inevitable. We assume that he does this by carrying
the audience with him, by stirring their emotions. But the specta-
tors are moved by the progression of the action only insofar as they

•Archer, Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship.

The Obligatory Scene 263

accept the truth of each revelation of reality as it affects the aims
of the characters.

Since the spectators do not know what the climax will be, they
cannot tesit the action in terms of climax. They do test it in terms
of their expectation, which is concentrated on what they believe
to be the necessary outcome of the action — the obligatory scene.

Archer feels that the obligatory scene is not really obligatory:
he warns us against the assumption "that there can be no good
play without a scene a faire." To be sure, he is using the term in
a narrow and somewhat mechanical sense. But no play can fail to
provide a point of concentration toward which the maximum
expectation is aroused. The audience requires such a point of con-
centration in order to define its attitude toward the events. The
dramatist must analyze this quality of expectation ; since the obliga-
tory scene is not the final outcome of events, he must convince the
audience that the break between cause and effect as revealed in
the obligatory scene is inevitable.

Just as the climax furnishes us with a test by which we can
analyze the action backward, the obligatory scene offers us an
additional check on the forward movement of the action. The
climax is the basic event, which causes the rising action to grow
and flower. The obligatory scene is the immediate goal toward
which the play is driving. The climax has its roots in the social
conception. The obligatory scene is rooted in activity; it is the
physical outgrowth of the conflict.

Where do we find the obligatory scene in Yellow Jack? What
is the expected clash in this play? It is the point at which the four
soldiers face the issue, the possibility of sacrificing themselves for
science. This scene is handled far less effectively than the earlier
scenes of Yellow Jack. It does not drive the action forward,
because it does not involve a break between expectation and ful-
fillment. It cannot do so, because the soldiers have made no previous
decision or effort. They are unprepared for the act of will which
they are called upon to perform. Furthermore, since the play has
followed two separate lines of action, it would seem inevitable that
these two lines merge completely at this point: this would mean
that the scientists play an active part in the decision of the four
privates. The fact that the doctors are only indirectly involved in
the decision, and that Miss Blake, the nurse, acts as a rather
awkward connecting link, serves to weaken the emotional impact.

In The Children's Hour, by Lillian Hellman, we have a weak
climax (Martha Dobie's suicide) which is preceded by a strong

264 Theory and Technique of Playwrlting

obligatory scene (the close of the second act, when the demoniac
child is brought face to face with her two victims).

If we examine the climax of The Children's Hour; we find that
it ends in a fog. It is impossible to find emotional or dramatic
meaning in the final crisis. The two women are broken in spirit
when the last act opens. Their lives are ruined because a lying
child has convinced the world that their relationship is abnormal.
Martha confesses that there is really a psychological basis for the
charge: she has always felt a desperate physical love for Karen.
Dr. Cardin, Karen's fiance, who has loyally defended the two
women, talks over the problem with Karen and she insists that
they must break their engagement. But all of this is acceptance
of a situation : their conscious wills are not directed toward any
solution of the difficulty — it is assumed that no solution exists.
Martha's suicide is not an act which breaks an unbearable tension,
but an act which grows out of drifting futility. There is a feeling
of acid bitterness in these scenes which indicates that the author is
trying to find expression for something which she feels deeply. But
she has not dramatized her meaning.

The rising action of The Childrejis Hour is far more vital than
its conclusion. But the weakness of the climax infects every minute
of the play. The scenes between the two women and Dr. Cardin
in the first act are designed to indicate Martha's jealousy, her
abnormal feeling for Karen. But the idea is planted awkwardly;
the scenes are artificial and passive because they have no inner
meaning. The relationship between Martha and Karen cannot be
vital because it has no direction ; it leads only to defeat.

The rumor started by the neurotic child constitutes a separate
(and much stronger) story. The child, Mary Tilford, hates the
two teachers. In revenge for being punished, she runs away to her
grandmother. Not wishing to return to the school, she invents the
yarn about the two wom.en. They deny the story, but it is believed.
Now the first thing we notice about this series of events is that it
is too simple. Several critics have asked whether it is plausible for
the child's grandmother, and other witnesses, to so quickly accept
her testimony. Certainly there is nothing fundamentally impossible
in two lives being ruined by a child's gossip. The situation gives us
the impression of being implausible because it is not placed in any
solid social framework. This is evident in the inconsequentiality
of the suicide at the end. The root-action lacks adequate compres-
sion and extension. Without a social framework, we cannot gauge
the effect of the child's gossip on the community : we do not know
the conditions within the community; we have no data as to the

The Obligatory Scene 265

steps by which the scandal is spread and accepted. Therefore the
psychological effect on the two women is also vague, and is taken
for granted instead of being dramatized.

What would be the effect on the construction of The Children's
Hour if Martha's confession had been placed in the first act instead
of the third? This would permit unified development of the
psychological and social conflict; both lines of action would be
strengthened. The confession would have the character of a deci-
sion (the only decision which gets the action under way at present
is the child's act of will in running away from school). A decision
involving the two women would clarify the exposition ; it would
enlarge the possibilities of the action ; the conflict of will engendered
by the confession would lead directly to the struggle against the
malicious rumors in the community. The inner tension created by
the confession would make their fight against the child's gossip
more difficult, would add psychological weight to the child's story,
and greatly increase its plausibility. This suggestion is based on the
principle of unity in terms of climax: if Martha's suicide had been
correctly selected as the climax, the exposition must be directly
linked to this event and every part of the action must be unified
in its connection with the root-action. Martha's emotional problem
will thus be dramatized and woven through the action. In order to
accomplish this, her confession must be the premise, not the
conclusion.

The rising action of The Children's Hour shows the danger of
following a line of cause and effect which is so simple that it is not
believable. The indirect causes, the deeper meanings, are lacking —
these deeper meanings are hidden (so successfully hidden that it is
impossible to find them) in the final scene.

In spite of this, the play has a great deal of forward drive. The
author's sincere way of telling her story brings her directly (with-
out serious preparation but with a good deal of emotional impact)
to the obligatory scene: Mrs. Tilford is shocked by her grand-
daughter's' story. She telephones to all the parents to withdraw all
the children from the school. Martha and Karen come to protest.
They demand to be confronted with the child. Mrs. Tilford at
first refuses. ( Here it almost seems as if the author were hesitating,
trying to build the event more solidly). When she is pressed, Mrs.
Tilford says that being honest, she cannot refuse. One senses that
the author's honesty is also compelling her (a little against her
will) to face the obligatory scene. The drive toward the obligatory
scene is over-simnlified, but effective, because it shows the child's
conscious will se'.tJng up a goal and striving to bring everything

266 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

in line with it; the second act progresses by projecting a series of
breaks between the possibilities of the child's decision and the
actual results of it. Our expectation is concentrated on the obliga-
tory scene, which embodies the maximum possibilities as they can
be foreseen.

But the author cannot show us any rational result of this event,
because she has achieved no rational picture of the social necessity
within which the play is framed. The last act turns to the familiar
pattern of neurotic futility, faced with an eternal destiny which can
neither be understood nor opposed. One is reminded of the lines in
Sherwood's The Petrified Forest: Nature is "fighting back with
strange instruments called neuroses. She's deliberately afflicting
mankind with the jitters." The attitudes of the characters in the
closing scenes of The Children's Hour, and particularly Martha's
confession of feeling, are based on the acceptance of "the jitters" as
man's inexorable fate.

The play ignores time and place. The prejudice against sexual
abnormality varies in different localities and under different social
conditions. We are given no data on this point. Only the most
meager and undramatic information is conveyed concerning the
past lives of the characters. This is especially true of the neurotic
child. The figure of the little girl burning with hate, consumed
with malice, would be memorable if we knew why she has become
what she is. Lacking this information, we must conclude that she
too is a victim of fate, that she was born evil, and will die evil.

But the detailed activity, especially in the first two acts, shows
that the playwright is not satisfied with this negative view of life.
The scheme of the play is static, but the scenes move. In the rela-
tionship between Karen and Martha, the author strains to find
some meaning, some growth in the story of the two women. She
wants something to happen to her people; she wants them to
learn and change. She fails; her failure is pitilessly exposed in the
climax. But in this failure lies Miss Hellman's great promise as a
playwright.

The Children's Hour illustrates the importance of a thorough
analysis of the connection between the obligatory scene and the
climax. The root-action is the test of the play's unity; the forward
drive and the arousing of expectation are vital; but the concentra-
tion of interest on an expected event cannot serve as a substitute
for the thematic clarity which gives the play its unity.

Wherever the link between the obligatory scene and the climax
is weak, or where there is a direct break between them, we find
that the forward movement (the physical activity of the characters)

Climax 267

is thwarted and denied by the conception which underlies the play
as a whole.

CHAPTER V

CLIMAX

I HAVE constantly referred to the climax as the controlling point
in the unification of the dramatic movement. I have assumed that
this event is the end of the action, and have given no consideration
to the idea of falling action, wherein the cycle of events is con-
cluded through catastrophe or solution. For instance, what is the
logic of saying that Hedda's suicide is the climax of Hedda Gabler?
Phis seems to confuse the climax with the catastrophe; far from
being generally accepted, the assumption that the final scene is the
climax is contradicted by a large body of technical theory. It is
customary to place the climax at the beginning — not the end — of
the final cycle of activity; it presumably occurs at the end of the
second act of a three-act play, and may frequently be identified
with the event which I have defined as the obligatory scene. Fur-
thermore, I seem to have been guilty of certain inconsistencies : in
The Shining Hour, the suicide of the wife occurs at the end of
the second act — why should this be termed the climax of The
Shining Hour? If this is true of Keith Winter's play, why is it not
equally true of other plays?

Freytag's famous pyramid has had a great (and unfortunate)
influence on dramatic theory. According to Freytag, the action of a
play is divided into five parts: "(a) introduction; (b) rise; (c)
climax; (d) return or fall; (e) catastrophe." The falling action
includes "the beginning of counter-action" and "the moment of
last suspense." The rising action and the falling action are of equal
importance. "These two chief parts of the drama are firmly united
by a point of the action which lies directly in the middle. The
middle, the climax of the play, is the most important place of the
structure; the action rises to this; the action falls away from
this." *

Freytag makes an interesting analysis of the structure of Romeo
and Juliet. He divides the rising action into four stages : ( i ) the

• Opus cit.

268 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

masked ball; (2) the garden scene; (3) the marriage; (4) the
death of Tybalt. He says that "Tybalt's death is the strong break
which separates the aggregate rise from the climax." The climax,
he tells us, is the group of scenes beginning with Juliet's words,
"Gallop apace you fiery footed steeds," and extending to Romeo's
farewell, "It were a grief, so brief to part with thee; farewell."
This includes the scene in which the Nurse brings Juliet news
that Tybalt has been killed, and the scene in Friar Lawrence's cell
in which Romeo laments "with his own tears made drunk," and
the Friar chides him :

What, rouse thee, man ! thy Juliet is alive . . .
Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed,
Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.

After seeing Juliet, Romeo is to escape to Mantua and await
further word from the Friar.

It is very curious that these two scenes should be termed the
climax of the play. To be sure, there has been a marked reversal of
fortune in the story of the lovers, but this reversal has already
happened — in the scene in which Tybalt is killed and the Prince
pronounces his sentence of banishment against Romeo. The two
scenes which Freytag calls the climax show the emotional reaction
of the lovers to what has already taken place. These two scenes
are comparatively passive; they do not show the intensification of
decision with which the lovers meet the changed conditions ; this
intensification occurs in the scene which follows, the parting of
the lovers. Far from indicating a point of supreme tension, the
two scenes are really an interlude, preparing for the greatly in-
creased momentum of the coming action: Romeo's departure and
the plans for Juliet's marriage to Paris.

What is the essential conflict in Romeo and Juliet? It is the
struggle of two lovers for the fulfillment of their love. Can the
killing of Tybalt be regarded as the high point of this conflict?
On the contrary this event is the introduction of a new factor,
which makes the struggle more difficult. The inevitable drive of
the action is toward the open fight between Juliet and her parents,
the attempt to force her to marry Paris. Tybalt's death has not
changed this situation; it simply creates an additional obstacle.
The fact that Romeo is banished and the marriage with Paris is
so close, brings the conflict to a new level. But the tension is not
relaxed. Even when Romeo fights with Paris outside Juliet's tomb,
the outcome of the action is uncertain.

Climax 269

The high point of Shakespeare's conception lies in the death of
the lovers. The fact that they would rather die than be separated
is what makes their death inevitable and gives it meaning. It is
customary to regard Romeo and Juliet as a play of "eternal" pas-
sion. But it has a definite thesis, a thesis which has become so much
a part of our social habits and ways of thinking that one finds it
repeated and vulgarized in a thousand plays and motion pictures:
the right to love! In the Elizabethan period, this idea expressed
the changed morality and changed personal relationships of the
rising middle class. To crj^stallize the idea, the lovers must be put
to the supreme test. They must overcome' every obstacle, including
death. The scene in the tomb is the core of the idea, it is both the
crisis and the catastrophe.

Modern textbooks are a little vague in dealing with climax and
catastrophe. The theory of the equal-sided pyramid is passed over
lightly. There seems to be a feeling that the term "falling action,"
is misleading" and that tension must be sustained until the final
moments of the action. Brander Matthews represents the move-
ment of a play as a steadily ascending line. Archer recognizes that,
in general, the highest point of the action is near the conclusion :
"It is sometimes assumed that the plajrwright ought always to
make his action conclude within five minutes of its culmination ;
but for such a hard and fast rule I can find no sufficient reason." ^
Henry Arthur Jones speaks of "ascending and accelerated climaxes
from the beginning to the end of a connected scheme."

On the other hand. Archer points out that many plays have what
he describes as an "unemphatic" last act; he feels that in certain
cases an anti-climactic conclusion is proper and effective. He men-
tions Pinero's Letty in this connection, saying that the final act is
obviously weak, but it "does not follow that it is an artistic
blemish."

Of course one must grant that there is a great difference between
emphasis and commotion. A dramatic crisis is not signified by
screaming, shooting, or tearing a passion to tatters. The climax is
not the noisiest moment ; it is the most meaningful moment, and
therefore the moment of most intense strain. Can this moment
ever be followed by continued action, by a denouement, catastrophe,
or untangling of the knot?

Barrett H. Clark says that "the climax is that point in a play
at which the action reaches its culmination, the most critical stage
in its development, after which the tension is relaxed, or unraveled,
. . . The audience Kas only to wait and see 'how it all turns out.'

*Aicher, Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship.

270 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

... In Hedda Gabler, the climax is Hedda's burning of the 'child/
Lovborg's MS. ; that is the culminating point of those events, or
crises, in her life with which Ibsen, either in the play, or before it,
is concerned. From that point onward, we see only effects; never
again does the action rise to so high a point. Hedda's death itself
is simply the logical outcome of what has gone before, and that
was foreshadowed in the first and succeeding acts." *

But the whole action of Hedda Gabler^ from the time the curtain
first rises, is "the logical outcome of what has gone before." Is it
true (as Clark says) that the tension is relaxed, and that in the
fourth act "we see only effects"? In the fourth act, Judge Brack
brings the news of Lovborg's death, and the information that the
pistol found on him was Hedda's pistol. Are these events the
results of the burning of the manuscript ? No. Prior to burning the
manuscript, Hedda has already deceived Lovborg about it, and has
given him the pistol and ordered him to use it. This is the obliga-
tory scene: from the beginning, the action has been driving irre-
sistibly toward the open conflict between Hedda and Lovborg. But
Hedda is apparently stronger. She wins this fight. This intensifies
her will and enlarges the possibilities of the action. The burning
of the book is a new decision, the beginning and not the end of the
climactic cycle. In the last act, Hedda faces a new and more power-
ful combination of forces. It is not the fact that she has sent
Lovborg to his death that destroys Hedda. It is the fact that she
herself is caught in a web from which she cannot escape. She is
unable to save herself because of her own inner conflict. She
expresses this in the fourth act: "Oh what curse is it that makes
everything I touch turn ludicrous and mean" ? Here she is under a
deeper and more terrible strain than in the burning of the manu-
script. If this were not the case, if the burning of the book (and
sending Lovborg to his death) were the culmination of the action,
the play would be concerned with remorse. But it is not concerned
with anything of the sort. There is not a hint of regret in Hedda's
conduct.

A study of Ibsen's notebooks confirms the fact that the author
did not regard the burning of the book as the culmination of the
action. The astonishing thing is that he seems to have intended at
one time to have Tesman throw the book into the fire. It would be
curious indeed if Ibsen knew so little about his own story of a
woman's tragedy that he considered a climax in which she took
no part!

The notebooks reveal another fascinating sidelight on this scene :

* Clark, A Study of the Modern Drama.

Climax 271

in an earlier version, Hedda separates the manuscript and burns
only part of it: she "opens the packet and sorts the blue and white
quires separately, lays the white quires in the wrapper again and
keeps the blue ones in her lap." * Then she "opens the stove door ;
presently she throws one of the blue quires into the fire." Then
she throws the rest of the blue quires into the flames. There is no
indication of what Ibsen intended by the blue and white quires,
or why he discarded the idea. But it shows that he did not regard
this situation as the culmination of an unbearable emotional crisis,
which sealed Hedda's doom. He felt for certain meanings and
overtones in the scene. He imagined his heroine as dividing the
manuscript and deliberately choosing certain pages.

Hedda Gabler shows us a constantly ascending series of crises.
Hedda fights for her life until she cracks under the increasing
strain. To divide the climax and the denouement is to give the
play dual roots and destroy the unity of the design.

Every conflict contains in itself the germs of solution, the crea-
tion of a new balance of forces which wull in turn lead to further
conflict. The point of highest tension is necessarily the point at
which the new balance of forces is created. This is the end of the
development of any given system of events. The new balance of
forces, new problems, new conflicts, which follow, are not within
the scope of the theme which the pla}rwright has selected.

The idea of continuing an action beyond its scope is a violation
of the principles of dramatic action. If this is done, the solution
must be passive and explanatory, in which case it has no value in
terms of action; or else the balance of new forces must involve
new elements of conflict: new forces are brought into play, in
which case the continued conflict would require development in
order to give it meaning, thus leading to another climax — which
involves a different theme and a different play.

The idea of "falling action" has meaning only if we regard the
system of dramatic events as absolute, an arrangement of emotions
detached from life, governed by its own laws, and moving from a
fixed premise to a fixed conclusion. The base of Freytag's pyramid
is idealist philosophy: the action rises from the categorical impera-
tive of ethical and social law, and descends at another point in
the same line of conduct. The conclusion can be complete, because
the principles of conduct revealed in the conclusion are final. The
action requires no social extension ; in the end, the threads of
causation are tied together, and the system of events is closed.

This cannot be the case if we accept Lessing's statement that

* Ibsen, opus cit., v. 12.

272 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

"in nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, every-
thing changes with everything, everything merges from one to
another." To be sure, the plaj^wright, as Lessing says, "must have
the power to set up arbitrary limits." But it is the purpose of his
art to achieve the maximum extension within these limits. He is
dealing with the stuff of life. He molds this stuif according to his
consciousness and will. But he defeats his purpose if he detaches
this material from the movement of life of which he himself is a
part. This movement is continuous, a movement of endless crises,
of endless changes of equilibrium. The point of highest tension
which the dramatist selects is the point which is most vital to him;
but this does not mean that the life process is arrested at this point.

If we view the drama historically, we find that the choice of the
point of climax is historically conditioned. For instance, Ibsen saw
the structure of the bourgeois family breaking and going to pieces
at a certain point; this point was the ultimate significance of the
situation to him, and he necessarily used this as the point of refer-
ence in his dramas. But history moves ; today it is fairly evident
that what Ibsen saw as the end of the process is not the end ; thus,
Nora's defiance and Hedda's suicide seem far less conclusive today
than under the social conditions with which Ibsen dealt. Nora's
departure is historical, not contemporary, just as Romeo and Juliet
in their marble tomb are historical, not contemporary.

At the end of Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, are the lines:
"Meet Heaven and Earth, and here let all things end." But all
things do not end. All things are in process of growth and solution,
decay and renewal. A conflict may involve increasing tension or
decreasing tension. But since the life process is continuous, decreas-
ing tension is a period of preparation, the germination of new
stages of conflict.

The principle that the limit of dramatic conflict is the limit of
increasing tension does not imply that the climax must occur at a
precise moment in relation to the end of the play.

It is natural to speak of the climax as a point of action. This
gives the correct impression that it is closely knit and sharply
defined. But it is not necessarily a point of time. It may be a
complex event ; it may combine several threads of action ; it may be
divided into several scenes; it may take a very abrupt or a very
extended form.

It is also obvious that many plays violate the principle that the
action cannot "fall" or move in any direction beyond the climax.
There are many borderline cases, in which several events might
be regarded as the climax. It is generally safe to assume that the

Climax 273

final situation constitutes the root-action, even though it may be
obviously weaker in a dramatic sense than earlier crises. However,
in such cases, we must also consider that the lack of a defined
climax springs from lack of a defined meaning, and that the
author may have misplaced the root-action at some earlier point
in the play.

A special question arises in regard to classical comedy. In the
great comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere, the complications reach
a point of crisis which is often followed by formal explanations in
the closing scenes. This unravelling is of a purely mechanical
nature, and there can be no question that it is undramatic. It
cannot be described as "falling action" because it is not action at
all. The structure of classical comedy is based on a series of involve-
ments which become more and more hopeless, but which contain
the seed of their own solution. At the point of highest complication
the knot is cut. This is the end of the conflict. The artificial con-
clusion, the extended discussion of previous mistakes and disguises,
is often unnecessary and always undesirable. Modern comedy has
fortunately escaped from this awkward convention (although there
are vestiges of it in the farce and the mystery play).

In The Shining Hour, the climax comes in the middle of the
play and is followed by a series of negative scenes. One is forced
to regard the wife's suicide as the limit of the action : if one
attempts to place the climax in the final act, one finds that every
event in this act refers back to the suicide and is really a part of
it. We are dealing here with a resume of what has happened — like
the explanatory scenes in the old comedies.

However, a climax which is extended over an entire act may be
quite legitimate. Dodsworth, dramatized by Sidney Howard from
the novel by Sinclair Lewis, is an example. It concerns the dissolu-
tion of a marriage. At the opening, Dodsworth and his wife start
for Europe, leaving the successful mediocrity of the manufacturing
town of Zenith. Differences of character and point of view develop.
Fran, the wife, is neurotic, dissatisfied, looking for something she
can't define. The "setting of the fuse" occurs at the end of Act I:
in London, Fran has an innocent flirtation with Clyde Lockert.
She tells Dodsworth about it and he is amused ; but she is fright-
ened ; she no longer feels sure of herself. The adventure forces her
to reconsider her adjustment to her environment, and to make the
decisions on which the play is based.

In Act II, the conflict between Fran and her husband develops.
Her psychological stress is shown in an effective line: "You're
rushing at old age, Sammy, and I'm not ready for old age yet."

274 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

So she sends him back to America, and she gets entangled in a
serious love affair. The play gathers momentum as it moves tow^ard
the obligatory scene — Dodsw^orth confronts his w^ife and her lover.
He wants a show-down ; he wants to know whether she wishes a
divorce; he lays down the conditions on which they can continue
to live together.

In the beginning of the third act, Dodsworth is making an
effort to win his wife back; but she becomes involved in another
affair, with Kurt von Obersdorf. In this scene the maximum tension
is developed ; she tells Dodsworth she wants a divorce and will
marry Kurt. Dodsworth leaves her. This separation is really the
limit of the action; however, the playwright, with remarkable
technical virtuosity, succeeds in stretching this event over four sub-
stantial scenes. Dodsworth goes to Naples; he meets Edith Cort-
wright, he becomes devoted to her ; back in Berlin, Kurt's mother
prevents his marriage to Fran ; she desperately telephones to Dods-
worth, who reluctantly agrees to meet her and sail for New York,
although he is in love with Edith. When he meets Fran at the
steamer, he reaches the decision which has been inevitable through-
out the act, and leaves her as the boat is about to sail. Thus the
suspense is maintained until the last five seconds of the play.

The separation at the end of the play is a repetition of the
separation in the first scene of the last act. In the intervening
scenes, two entirely new elements are introduced: Kurt's mother,
and the relationship between Dodsworth and Edith Cortwright.
But do these elements affect the basic conflict between Fran and
her husband ? No, because everything which genuinely concerns
this conflict has already been told. The fact that her lover has a
mother gives Fran a new problem, but it does not affect her funda-
mental conflict with her environment. She will undoubtedly fall
in love with someone else of the same sort. The fact that Dods-
worth finds another woman is convenient, but it does not motivate
his leaving his wife. He leaves her because it is impossible for them
to live together, which is abundantly clear in the first scene of the
third act.

The whole third act might have been compressed in a single
scene; all the elements of the act, Kurt's mother, Edith Cort-
wright's honest affection, Dodsworth's realization of his wife's
shallowness, his feeling that he must stick by her and his decision
to leave her — these elements are aspects of a single situation. The
author takes a single scene of separation, breaks it to show the
various issues involved, and comes back to finish the scene.

One cannot say with finality that Howard's method is un-

Climax 275

justified. The arrangement of the last act in five scenes has certain
advantages. The form is more narrative than dramatic, but sus-
pense is maintained ; the fact that the new love story (w^ith Edith
Cortvi^right) is introduced almost as a separate plot gives it a
certain substance which it might otherwise lack.

On the other hand the bringing in of new elements diffuses the
final tension between husband and wife; the situation has less
compression and less extension; their separation becomes more
personal and less significant.

Stevedorej on the other hand, offers an example of a climax
which is treated literally as a point of time. The point of supreme
tension is the moment in which the white workers come to fight
side by side with the Negroes against the lynch mob. This raises
the struggle to its highest level and also contains the solution of
this phase of the struggle. The coming of the white workers is
introduced as a melodramatic punch just as the curtain is descend-
ing.

Is this abbreviated treatment of the climax a fault? Since the
climax is the core of the social meaning, it is obvious that this
meaning cannot be expressed in the form of a single shout of
triumph at the close of a play.

The authors have insufficiently analyzed and developed the root-
action. John Gassner * speaks of "the assumption in Stevedore that
the union of white and Negro workers in the South is child's play.
... I submit that this is not only an unjustifiable over-simplification
of a problem but that this weakness affects the very roots of the
drama."

The over-simplification of the root-action means that the system
of causation leading to it is not fully developed. Much of the
action of Stevedore consists in the repetition and stretching out of
the obligatory scene. The decision which motivates the conflict
occurs in Lonnie's statement in the third scene of the first act:
"Well here's one black man ain't satisfied being just a good
Nigger." The next phase of the action is clear-cut; Lonnie's
defiance of the white bosses gets him into immediate trouble. The
obligatory scene is therefore sharply indicated: we foresee that
Lonnie's plight will force the Negro workers to face the issue —
they must either be slaves or fight for their rights. This in turn
leads to the intensification of their will and the final clash — the
coming of the white workers — which is both unexpected and inevit-
able. There are very complex forces involved in this situation: in

* John Gassner, "A Playreader on Play^vrights," in Neiv Theatre
(October, 1934).

276 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

order to realize the full possibilities of the theme, it would be
necessary to dramatize these complex forces in all their emotional
and social richness. But the playwrights have chosen to emphasize
one phase of the problem, and to repeat it with increasing intensity,
but without development. In the first act, Lonnie calls directly on
the workers to fight: "Lawd, when de black man gwine stand up?
When he gwine stand up proud like a man?" The demand is
repeated in the same terms in the second act, and the reaction of
the workers is exactly the same. Since the theme is repeated, the
physical activity is also repeated: in the second scene of Act II,
Lonnie is hiding; he is almost caught and escapes. In the next
scene (in Binnie's lunch-room), he is hiding again; again he is
almost caught and again he escapes. The situation is repeated in
the first scene of Act III.

These recurring scenes are effective because the subject matter
is poignant, and the social meaning is direct. The playwrights also
make skillful use of the device of increasing the emotional load.
For instance, in the first scene of Act III, Ruby becomes hysterical,

refusing to believe that Lonnie is still alive: "He's dead They

killed him You just trying to fool me, that's all." Her hysteria

has no meaning in the development of the story; it happens
artificially at a convenient moment, in order to give emotional
value to Lonnie's entrance.

The final decision of the black workers to "stand up and fight"
comes in the third act. Here the obligatory scene (which has been
stretched out over the entire play) comes to a head. Lonnie tells
the preacher that it's no time to depend on religion ; he tells the
cowardly Jim Veal that there's no alternative, no use in running
away. This is a strong scene; but its force is diluted by the fact
that it has already been offered to us piece-meal.

Stevedore is an epoch-making play, sounding a new note of
vitality and honesty in the American theatre, and exploring im-
portant contemporary material. Yet the structure of Stevedore
reveals that the authors have not completely freed themselves from
a static point of view. Instead of showing growth through struggle,
the struggle is shown within fixed limits. The union of white and
Negro workers seems easy because it is the result of social forces
which are not concretized — and which therefore seem mechanical.
The characters seem thin and two-dimensional; we do not see the
impact of the environment on their conscious wills. The play
abounds in homely, telling details of character. But the people do
not change; they follow a pre-determined line of conduct.

The climaxes of two recent plays by Elmer Rice offer a valuable

Climax 277

index of the playwright's development. The root-action of We the
People lacks dramatic realization. The scene presents a lecture
platform from which people are delivering speeches. The speakers
make an appeal to our social conscience; we the people must make
our country a land of freedom: "Let us cleanse it and put it in
order and make it a decent place to live in." This is a stirring
appeal ; but since it does not show us any principle of action which
corresponds to the abstract statement, we cannot test its value as a
guide to action. The climax does not define the scope of the system
of events, because it leaves us completely at a loss as to how the
characters in the play will react to this appeal. Since there is no
tension, there is also no solution.

The development of We the People consists of a series of scenes
which are effective as separate events, but which are illustrative
rather than progressive. Since the climax is an intellectual state^
ment of a problem, the play consists of an intellectual exposition
of the various phases of the problem. More than two-thirds of the
play may properly be regarded as expository. Again and again, we
go back to the lower middle-class Davis home ; in the seventh scene,
things are getting worse; in the ninth scene, they have taken a
boarder and the bank holding their investments has closed ; in the
eleventh scene, things are still worse. Finally, in the thirteenth
scene, there is definite activity, a reaction to the necessities of the
environment — the father is asked to lead a march of the unem-
ployed. Davis' decision to lead the march is believable, because we
have seen tlie hunger and misery of the family. But the decision
lacks depth, because the man's conscious will is not exposed. And
once Davis becomes active, we never see him again !

The use of ideas as substitutes for events is illustrated in the
eighth scene. Steve, the Negro servant, says that he has been read-
ing H. G. Wells Modern Utopia, and talks about Negro oppression
in general terms. This is a minor incident, but it is a striking
instance of the author's method. The Negro has no value as
a person beyond his comment on a book he has read.

On the other hand, the root-action of Rice's later play. Judg-
ment Day, is violent, abrupt, vital. The structure of this play is
also in sharp contrast to that of We the People. The most
significant thing about the final situation in Judgment Day is its
dual character : the great revolutionist, who is supposed to be dead,
appears suddenly in what is obviously intended to be a court room
in Hitlerized Germany, although the play is set in a fictitious
country. At the same time, the liberal judge shoots the dictator.
This double climax reflects a contradiction in Rice's social point

278 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

of view: he recognizes the deadly nature of the conflict in the
courtroom; he sees that the working-class leader plays an important
part in this struggle; he sees the weakness of the liberal position,
but he has an abiding faith in the liberal's ability to think and act.
He therefore introduces the working class leader as a dominating
figure — ^while at the same moment the honest liberal destroys the
dictator.

This contradiction permeates the play. The two threads of action
which lead to the double climax are not clearly followed. The
action af the judge in shooting the dictator is almost totally unpre-
pared. It is hinted at during the deliberations of the five judges at
the beginning of Act III : the liberal Judge Slatarski says : "Gentle-
men, I am an old man — older than any of you But while there

is the breath of life in me, I shall continue to uphold my honor
and the honor of my country." This brief rhetorical formulation
gives no insight into the man's character, or the mental struggle
which could possibly lead him to the commission of such an act.

Rice's approach to his material is unclear, and his historical
perspective is limited. But his eyes are open, and his work shows
constant growth. His characters possess will power and are able
to use it. The difficulty, in Judgment Day, lies in the fact that
Rice is still unable to see history as a process: he sees it as the
work of individuals, who possess varying degrees of integrity, honor
and patriotism. He regards these qualities as immutable ; the dicta-
tor is a "bad" man who is opposed by "good" men. Thus the action
is limited and thrown out of focus. The courtroom is removed
from our world, placed in an imaginary country. The characters
are given queer names. Dr. Panayot Tsankov, Dr. Michael Vlora,
Colonel Jon Sturdza, etc. This creates an efFect of artificial remote-
ness : when Lydia's brother says he comes from Illinois, he is asked :
"Do they hang people there from the limbs of trees as they do in
the streets of New York ?" Instead of bringing the drama close to
us, the playwright deliberately sets it apart.

Rice has been much influenced by prevailing modes of social
thought. He emphasizes immutable qualities of character; he be-
lieves that these qualities are stronger than the social forces to
which they are opposed. Since Judgment Day is a conflict of qual-
ities, it has no developed social framework.

Nevertheless Judgment Day possesses an abounding vitality.
There is no avoidance of conflict, but rather a succession of crises
which are more violent than logical. The lack of preparation, the
violence of the action, give the impression that the author is strain-
ing for concreteness, for a sharper meaning which he is as yet

Characterization 279

unable to unify and define. This accounts for the abrupt but
illogical vigor of the dual climax.

The climaxes of Ibsen's plays illustrate the remarkable clarity
and force which can be compressed in the final moment of breaking
tension. Just before Oswald's insane cry, "Give me the sun," at
the end of Ghosts, Mrs. Alving has said, "Now you will get some
rest, at home with your own mother, my darling boy. You shall
have everything you want, just as you did when you were a little
child." The recognition of his insanity which follows this, com-
presses Mrs. Alving's whole life — all she has lived for and is ready
to die for — in a moment of unbearable decision.

The ends of Shakespeare's plays have a similar compression and
extension. Othello's magnificent final speech reviews his life as a
man of action and builds to its inevitable culmination :

Soft you ; a word or two before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know't —

No more of that. — I pray you, in your letters.

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice ; then must you speak

Of one that lov'd not wisely, but too well ;

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand.

Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu'd eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood.

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this ;

And say, besides, — that in Aleppo once.

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog,

And smote him, — thus.

He strikes the dagger into his own heart.

CHAPTER VI

CHARACTERIZATION

THE theatre is haunted by the supposition that character is an
independent entity which can be projected in some mysterious way.

280 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

The modern dramatist continues to do homage to the unique soul;
he feels that the events on the stage serve to expose the inner being
of the people concerned, which somehow transcends the sum of the
events themselves.

The only thing which can go beyond the system of action on the
stage is a wider system of events which is inferred or described.
Not only is character, as Aristotle said, "subsidiary to the actions,"
but the only way in which we can understand character is through
the actions to which it is subsidiary. This accounts for the necessity
of a solid social framework; the more thoroughly the environment
is realized, the more deeply we understand the character. A char-
acter which stands alone is not a character at all.

W. T. Price says: "Character can be brought out in no other
way than by throwing people into given relations. Mere character
is nothing, pile it on as you may." * One may also point out that
mere action is nothing, pile it on as you may. But character is
subordinate to the action, because the action, however limited it
may be, represents a sum of "given relations" which is wider than
the actions of any individual, and which determines the individual
actions.

Baker distinguishes between illustrative action and plot action.
This is the essential problem in regard to characterization : can
illustrative action exhibit aspects of character apart from the main
line of the play's development ?

In the dock scene in the first act of Stevedore^ a great deal of
the activity seems to illustrate character rather than carry forward
the plot: Rag Williams shadow-boxes with a mythical opponent;
Bobo Williams dances and sings. In Ode to Liberty (adapted by
Sidney Howard from the French of Michael Duran), we find
another typical case of apparently illustrative action: the end of
the first act shows the Communist who is hiding in Madeleine's
apartment settling down to mend a broken clock. A man mending
a clock is performing an act. The act exhibits character. But the
incident seems to stand alone. Mending a clock does not necessarily
involve conflict. It does not necessarily throw the man "into given
relations" with other people.

A play is a pattern involving more than one character. The
conduct of every character, even though he is alone on the stage,
even though his activity seems to be unrelated to other events, has
meaning only in relation to the whole pattern of activity.

When the Communist mends the clock in Ode to Liberty, the
significance of the act lies in his relationship with a number of

* Oj>us cit.

Characterization 281

people: he is hiding from the police, he is in the apartment of a
beautiful woman. Detached from these relationships, performed
as a bit of vaudeville without explanation, his act would have no
meaning at all. But one must still ask whether the act is illustrative
or progressive? Would the plot move on just as well if the man
did not mend the clock? And if so, is the action permissible as a
bit of characterization?

If one considers the principle of unity, it is obvious that illus-
trative action as an independent commentary on character is a
violation of unity. How can one introduce anything (however
small) "whose presence or absence makes no visible difference" in
relation to the whole structure? If this were possible, we would
be compelled to throw away the theory of the theatre which has
here been developed — and begin all over again.

One may apply the test of unity to any example of so-called
illustrative action. The mending of the clock in Ode to Liberty
involves decision and carries the action forward. The incident
defines and changes the intruder's relationship to Madeleine; this
is absolutely necessary in order to build the events of the second
act. Furthermore the clock, as an object, plays an important part
in the story; Madeleine later breaks it to prevent the Communist
from leaving.

The attempt to deal with characterization as a separate depart-
ment of technique has resulted in endless confusion in the theory
and practice of the theatre. The playwright who follows Gals-
worthy's advice in endeavoring to make his plot dependent on his
characters invariably defeats his own purpose; the illustrative
material, introduced with a view to character delineation, obstructs
the characters — instead of being character-material it turns out to
be unwieldy plot-material.

Since the role of the conscious will and its actual operation in
the mechanics of the action have been exhaustively analyzed, we
can here limit ourselves to a brief survey of some of the more
usual forms of illustrative action : these are : ( i ) the attempt to
build character by excessive use of naturalistic detail; (2) the use
of historical or local color without social perspective; (3) the
heroic, or declarative, style of characterization; (4) the use of
minor characters as feeders whose only function is to contribute to
the effectiveness of one or more leading characters; (5) the illus-
tration of character solely in terms of social responsibility to the
neglect of other emotional and environmental factors; (6) the
attempt to create audience sympathy by illustrative events.

(i) George Kelly, who is a skillful craftsman, tries to bring

282 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

character to life by showing us a multiplicity of detail which is
unified only in terms of the author's conception of the character,
Craig's Wife, the most interesting of Kelly's plays, projects a
portrait against a background which is observed with the utmost
care ; but both the social framework and the stage-action serve only
to pile up unrelated minutiae of information; instead of increas-
ing the livingness of the character, the illustrative events prevent
decision and therefore prevent the meaningful development of the
individual.

(2) Gold Eagle Guy, by Melvin Levy, is a play of a very
different sort; the action is robust and highly colored; but the
social framework is designed only as an ornamentation around the
personality of Guy Button. As a result, the passions and desires of
the character are diluted ; we see an environment and we see a man,
but we fail to see the inter-action between them ; the character is
conceived as something which is seen through the events, as stars
are seen through a telescope.

(3) Archibald MacLeish's Panic attempts a portrait on an
heroic scale. But here again the supposedly titanic figure of the
central character is ineffective because the events are illustrative,
and are intended as an abstract background for McGafferty's con-
flict of will. MacLeish deals directly with contemporary social
forces. But he sees these forces in terms of time and eternity:

It is not we who threaten you! Your ill is
Time — and there's no cure for time but dying!

The influence of the Bergsonian conception of the flow of time is
evident. MacLeish says that he attempts to "arrest, fix, make ex-
pressive the flowing away of the world." At the same time, his
emphasis on the will as man's ultimate salvation is as emphatic as
Ibsen's. In Panic, as in Ibsen's last plays, the individual will is
merged in the universal will.

MacLeish describes McGafferty as "a man of will; who lives
by the will and dies by the will." But McGafferty's actions are
limited and chaotic, and exhibit no sustained purpose. He chides
his business associates; he argues with the woman he loves. He
kills himself. His self-destruction is caused by something outside
himself ; he is forced to die because a blind man predicts his doom.
This is not the result of a struggle of wills. The blind man's power
is itself mystic, expressive of the flow of time. The action has no
unifying principle, because it is simply illustrative of "the flowing
away of the world."

Characterization 283

(q.) The law that progression must spring from the decisions
of the characters applies not only to the leading figures, but to all
the subordinate persons in the drama. The neglect of this law
often leads the playwright to make a curious distinction between
the leading characters and the subordinate persons in the story : two
or three central figures are seen purely in terms of character, the
attempt being made to subordinate the action to the presentation
of what are supposed to be their qualities and emotions. But all the
minor characters are treated in exactly the opposite way, being
used as automatons who are shuffled about to suit the needs of the
leading persons.

A minor character must play an essential part in the action;
his life must be bound up in the unified development of the play.
Even if a few lines are spoken in a crowd, the effectiveness of
these lines depends on the extent to which the individual is a
part of the action. This means that he must make decisions. His
decisions must affect the movement of the play; if this is the case,
the events react upon the character, causing him to grow and
change.

In Stevedore, the members of the group of Negroes are in-
dividualized by dialogue and bits of action. But their emotional
range is very limited. Their actions are to some extent illustrative.
One cannot say that the development of the play would be in-
conceivable without each of these characters, that the presence or
absence of each would make a "visible difference" in the outcome.
Thus the action as a whole is limited ; if the emotions of the minor
characters were more fully explored in terms of will, the plot-
structure would have a greater extension ; the emotional life of the
leading characters would then be deeper and less one-sided.

In The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur have
created a lively group of reporters ; but they have only two dimen-
sions, because they are not deeply involved in a unified plot. There-
fore, in spite of the apparent commotion, there is no movement;
the reporters are simply a fresco of persons painted in the acts of
swearing, cracking jokes, squabbling.

(5) The over-simplifying of the characters, which is to be noted
in Stevedore, is a defect which may be observed in the majority
of plays dealing with working-class themes. The heart of the
trouble is an inadequate analysis of the conscious will ; although the
social forces are seen clearly and concretely, the actual activity of
the characters is illustrative of these forces, because it fails to
dramatize the relationship between the individual and the whole
environment. Black Pitj by Albert Maltz, shows that the author is

284 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

aware of this problem, and is making an effort to achieve a wider
range of characterization and emotion. For this reason, Black Pit
is the most important effort that has yet been made in the field of
proletarian drama. The play tells the story of a coal miner who
betrays his fellow-workers and becomes a stool-pigeon. The web of
causation in which Joe Kovarsky is caught is fully presented ; but
the events lack their full meaning and progression because the
decisions which drive the action forward are not dramatized.

The exposition shows Joe Kovarsky's marriage ; he is immediately
dragged to prison on a charge growing out of his militancy in a
strike. He returns to his wife three years later. One naturally asks :
how has he changed? What has this ordeal done to him? There
is no indication that prison has had any effect on him at all. Thus
there is no preparation for any later change.

Throughout the play, Joe is driven by events. He is a weak man,
but his weakness is not made poignant. Even a weak man is driven
to a point where he is forced to make a decision. This moment of
the weak man's decision, when circumstances trap him and he can-
not avoid committing an act is, both dramatically and psycholog-
ically, the key to progression — it is therefore also the key to the
character. A weak man fights under pressure — and unless he fights,
according to his own powers and in his own way, there is no
conflict.

The two most important scenes in the play are the last scene of
Act I (in which the mine superintendent first gains control of
Joe), and the end of Act H (in which the superintendent forces
Joe to tell the name of the union organizer). In both these decisive
moments, Joe is passive; the author is careful to tell us that the
character is irresponsible, that circumstances are too much for him.
Thus the character seems less real, and the circumstances seem
less inevitable.

The root-action of Black Pit shows Joe disgraced, cursed by his
own brother, leaving his wife and child. But the scope of this
situation lies in Joe's coming face to face with the meaning of his
own acts. His recognition of what he has done is essential : this
recognition must also be an act of will, a heart-wrenching decision
forced by the increasing tension between the man and the social
conflict in which he is involved. Even if a man's character is dis-
integrating, he is capable of passionate realization of what he has
become ; perhaps this is the last act of will of which he is capable.
Without it, recognition of the dramatic and social meaning is
slurred.

His brother's recognition is not enough. Joe's admission that he

Characterization 285

"feel like to die" is not enough. He simply admits his fault like a
small child and asks his brother what to do: Tony tells him he
must go away. If Tony is the only one who understands and feels
what has happened, then the play should be about Tony. Joe's
separation from his wife and child lacks tragic depth because here
again the conscious will is untouched ; we have no idea what Joe is
going through because he takes no part in the decision. Instead of
emphasizing the horror of Joe's crime, this tends to mitigate it.
To tell a man to leave the wife and child whom he loves is un-
impressive, and implausible. To have him decide to do so, to have
the decision torn from his broken mind, might be vitally dramatic.

(6) We now come to the most widespread, and most pernicious,
form of illustrative action — the substitution of a sentimental appeal
for sympathy for the logical development of the action.

The idea that the playwright's main task is to gain sympathy
for his leading characters (by fair means or foul), is a vulgariza-
tion of a genuine psychological truth : the emotional participation
which unites the audience with the events on the stage is an im-
portant aspect of audience psychology. "For the time being," says
Michael Blankfort,* "the audience places its bets on some person
in the play. Identification is more than sympathy with that char-
acter; it is a 'living in the character' — what writers on esthetics
call 'empathy.' " The principle of "empathy" is obscure, but there
can be no question that the emotional experience of the audience
is a sort of identification. However, the dramatist cannot induce
this experience by an appeal to the sentiments and prejudices of the
audience. Identification not only means "more than sympathy," but
something which is essentially different from sympathy. To show
us a distorted view of a character, to convince us that he is kincj
to his mother and gives candy to little children, does not cause us tG
live in the character. Identification means sharing the character's
purpose, not his virtues.

In Elmer Rice's Counselor-at-Law and in Sidney Howard's
Dodsworth, the insistence en sympathetic traits devitalizes the
leading characters. In Dodsworth the cards are stacked in favor
of the husband and against the wife. There is a great deal to be
said on Fran's side, but the dramatist invariably places her in a
bad light. Dodsworth moves in a glow of kindness and good-
nature, which is created by activity which is only incidental to the
action. Even when he exhibits a strain of bad temper (in the fourth
scene of Act II) a bit of charm is immediately introduced as a
counter-weight.
* Neiu Theatre, November, 1934.

286 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

The factors which give Fran an excuse for her conduct are
ignored. Her desire to live, to run away from old age, may be
cheap and absurd, but it is also tragic. For instance, there is a
sexual side to the problem: In the final scene of Act II, Fran
(in her lover's presence) tells her husband that he has never been
a satisfactory lover. Thus something which is a justification of her
conduct is introduced in such a way that it makes her appear
additionally cruel. Let us assume that her cruelty is itself char-
acteristic. Then one may demand that the playwright go more
deeply into the causes for this cruelty, that he show us how she
has become what she is. In doing this, he would both explain and
justify the character.

The one-sidedness of Dodsworth dilutes the conflict and weakens
the construction. The immediate cause of this is the conscious
attempt to win sympathy. But the deeper cause is the dramatist's
belief that qualities of character are detachable, and that charm or
kindliness can be superimposed on actions that are not intrinsically
charming or kindly. Sometimes the charm is supplied by the actor,
whose consciousness and will may make up for the deficiencies of
authorship.

It is generally admitted that the main problem of characteriza-
tion is progression. "The complaint that a character maintains the
same attitude throughout," says Archer, "means that it is not a
human being at all, but a mere embodiment of two or three char-
acteristic which are fully displayed within the first ten minutes
and then keep on repeating themselves, like a recurrent decimal." *
Baker remarks that "the favorite place of many so-called dramatists
for a change of character is in their vast silences between the acts."

Baker says: "To 'hold the situation,' to get from it the full
dramatic possibilities the characters involved offer, a dramatist
must study his characters in it till he has discovered the entire
range of their emotion in the scene." f It is undeniable that the
dramatist must discover the entire range of emotion under the
given circumstances. This applies not only to each situation, but
to the whole structure of the play. But if emotion is viewed simply
as a vague capacity for feeling which the character may possess,
it follows that the range is limitless ; it also follows that the emo-
tion projected may be illustrative or poetic, and have no meaning
in the unified development of the play.

The scope of emotion within the dramatic scheme is limited by
the scope of the events: the characters can have neither depth nor

* Archer, Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship.
t Opus cit.

Dialogue 287

progression except insofar as they make and carry out decisions
which have a definite place in the system of events and which
drive toward the root-action which unifies the system.

CHAPTER VII

DIALOGUE

LEE SIMONSON, in his entertaining book, The Stage is Set,
complains of the lack of poetry in the modern theatre. The play-
wright fails, he says, to make his characters "incandescent and
illuminating at their climactic moments because of his inability or
unwillingness, to employ the intensifications of poetic speech." *

This is largely true. But one cannot suppose that it is due en-
tirely to the perversity or sterility of contemporary playwrights.
The mood and temper of the modern stage are reflected in the dry
phrasing and conventionality of the dialogue. The material with
which the middle-class theatre deals is of such a nature that "the
intensifications of poetic speech" would be an impertinence. One
cannot graft living fruit on a dead tree. If a playwright believes
that the ideals of youth find their full expression in a speech at a
college graduation (in Merrily We Roll Along) one may be quite
sure that the words used to express these ideals will not be
"incandescent and illuminating."

Simonson notes the symptoms of the disease, but he ignores the
cause and cure. He also assumes that the American theatre is com-
pletely destitute of poetry. This is far from true. One need only
mention the early plays of Eugene O'Neill, the work of John Dos
Passos, Em Jo Basshe, Paul Green, George O'Neil, Dan
Totheroh; Children of Darkness by Edwin Justus Mayer-, Pin-
wheel by Francis Edwards Faragoh. In approaching the question
of style in dramatic speech, one must give due consideration to
what has already been accomplished.

It must be understood that we are not here dealing with poetry
in the narrow sense. MacLeish says of blank verse that "as a
vehicle for contemporary expression it is pure anachronism." t
Maxwell Anderson has failed sadly in attempts to breathe life into

*New York, 1932.

t Introduction to Archibald MacLeish, Panic (New York, 1935).

288 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Elizabethan verse forms ; the result is dignified, fluent, uninspired.

If poetic forms are to develop in the modern theatre, these forms
must evolve out of the richness and imagery of contemporary
speech. The first step in this direction is to clarify the nature of
dramatic dialogue. There is a general tendency to regard speech as
a decorative design which serves to embellish the action. In many
plays, the words and the events seem to run parallel to each other,
and never meet. However "decorative" the words may be, they are
valueless unless they serve to drive the action forward.

Speech is a kind of action, a compression and extension of action.
When a man speaks he performs an act. Talk is often called a
substitute for action, but this is only true insofar as it is a weaker,
less dangerous and more comfortable kind of action. It is obvious
that speech requires physical effort; it comes from energy and not
from inertia.

Speech has enormously broadened the scope of man's activity.
In fact, without it, organized activity would be impossible. By
speech man is able to accomplish more, to act more extensively.
This is elementary — but it enables us to realize the function of
speech in the drama. It serves, as it does in life, to broaden the
scope of action ; it organizes and extends what people do. It also
intensifies the action. The emotion which people feel in a situation
grows out of their sense of its scope and meaning. They are con-
scious of the possibilities and dangers which are inherent in the
situation. Animals are apparently incapable of any considerable
emotion because they do not grasp the scope of their acts.

The crises of which a drama is composed grow out of a complex
series of events. Dialogue enables the plaj^wright to extend the
action over the wide range of events which constitutes the play's
framework. The awareness of these other events (derived from
speech and expressed in speech) increases the emotional stress of
the characters, achieving the compression and explosion which is
action.

To realize this intensity and scope, poetic richness is a necessity.
For this reason, I begin this chapter with a reference to poetry.
Poetry is not simply an attribute of dialogue, which may be present
or absent. It is a quality which is indispensable, if dialogue is to
fulfill its real purpose. Speech puts the actual impact of events into
words: it dramatizes forces which are not seen. To do this effec-
tively, to make these other events visible, requires language which
is incandescent. This is not a matter of "beauty" in general; but
of achieving the color and feel of reality. Genuinely poetic speech
produces a physical sensation in the listener.

Dialogue 289

The structural limitations of a play bear a close relationship to
the style of dialogue. For example, in Stevedore the language is
honest and vigorous, but it lacks richness; it fails to sufficiently
extend the action. This is also a structural defect. The emotions
of the characters, the fullness of the story, are also limited.

Those modern dramatists who have achieved a degree of poetic
quality are those veho have attempted to bring substance and social
meaning into the theatre. If one examines the vrork of some of the
men I have mentioned, one finds that their plays (particularly in
the case of Dos Passos and Basshe) lack structural unity. Critics
often assume that there is a natural opposition between poetic
license and the prosaic neatness of the "well-made play." Many of
these so-called "well-made plays" are not well-made at all, but are
as weak in construction as in language. On the other hand, the
work of Dos Passos and Basshe, in spite of its faults, is tre-
mendously alive ; the story-telling is diffuse, but it attains isolated
moments of great compression and extension. The style of writing
reflects the uncertainty of the action. In The Garbage Man, Dos
Passos tries to dramatize the economic and social forces of the
world around him and ends up, literally, in eternal space. These
are the closing lines of the play :

TOM : Where are we going?

jane: Somewhere very high. Where the wind is sheer white-
ness.

TOM: With nothing but the whirl of space in our faces.

One finds throughout Dos Passos' work the contrast between
his extraordinary physical perception and his unresolved mysticism.
The ending of The Garbage Man is a denial of reality; people
"with nothing but the whirl of space" in their faces can have
little meaning for us who remain (whether we like it or not)
among the sights and sounds and smells of the visible world. This
ending is accompanied by the double pattern of escape and repeti-
tion which we have traced in so many modern plays : Tom becomes
free by an act of intuitive emotion: he drums on the moon. Thus
he transcends his environment; he goes beyond reason, he enters
the starry world of infinite time and space. At the same time, we
find the statement that life is an endless and dull repetition.

Jane asks: "Will it always be the same old treadmill?" Again
she says: "But the creaking merry-go-round of our lives has started
again, Tom. We're on the wooden horse together. The old steam
piano is wheezing out its tune and the nine painted ladies are all

290 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

beating time. Faster and faster, Tom. Ahead of us the dragon,
behind us the pink pig." This illustrates the contradiction between
the realistic trimmings ("ahead of us the dragon, behind us the
pink pig") with which Dos Passos decks his thought, and the retro-
spective quality of the thought itself.

We find this idea of repetition again in the root-action of
Fortune Heights: Owen and Florence have lost everything; he
says: "All we want to do's to dope out some way to live decent,
live, you and me and the kid. Gettin' rich is a hophead's dream.
We got to find the United States." As they go down the road, a
car drives up, the real estate agent "steps out of the office, and a
man and woman who look as much as possible like Owen and
Florence without being mistaken for them step out of the car."

There are traces of this repetition-idea throughout the action of
Fortune Heights; but there are many scenes in the play which
attain depth and insight, which break through the conceptual con-
fusion and drive the action forward with desperate energy. As a
result of this contradiction, Dos Passos is a playwright whose work
shows unequalled dramatic potentialities and who has never written
an integrated play.

It is in dealing with factual experience, with sights and sounds
and smells, that Dos Passos' dialogue attains genuine poetic value:
for example, the Old Bum in Union Square in The Garbage Man:
"I been in Athabasco an' the Klondike, an' Guatemala an' Yuca-
tan, an' places I never knowed the names of. I was a year on the
beach at Valparaiso, till the earthquake shook the rotten Xovm
down round my ears, an' I've picked fruit along the Eastern Shore,
an' run a buzzsaw up on the Columbia River." One need hardly
point out that this speech is an extension of action. So is this, when
the Old Bum talks about the "guys on the inside track": "They
set each other up to banquets in rooms where everything's velvet
an' soft an' sit there eatin' pheasants an' French peas an' Phila-
delphia poultry, an' beautiful young actresses come up out o' pies
like the blackbirds an' dance all naked round the table."

George O'Neil's work is bleaker and less exuberant than that
of Dos Passos, but one finds the same inner conflict. The lines are
compressed, beautifully worded — but blurred by a large vagueness.
For instance, in American Dream: "Can't you hear the earth?
It goes on and on — in the dark, like the sea — like our hearts."
Or, "There's bread here, but no breath, and that is the evil of
the world."

One also finds this dallying with infinity in Basshe. For example,
in The Centuries; "On your brow are impressed the memories that

Dialogue 291

cling to earth" . . . or . . . "Your head is a planet searching for a
hiding place."

If mysticism were the whole content of these playwrights'
thought, their work would be as remote as the fog-drenched dramas
of Maeterlinck. But the remarkable thing about these American
authors is their confused but intent awareness of reality : they fight
their way toward a knowledge of the living world ; they fight
against their own limitation.

Poetry is too often regarded as an obstruction between the writer
and reality, rather than a sharper perception of reality. Shake-
speare's poetry soars, but it never escapes. In recent years, only
the plays of J. M. Synge have attained the turbulent realism of the
Elizabethans. Synge says: "On the stage one must have reality
and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern
drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of
the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich
joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good
play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or an apple,
and such speech cannot be written by any one who works among
people who have shut their lips on poetry." *

Synge refers to the highly-colored speech of the Irish peasants
about whom he wrote. Are we to conclude that joy has died and
that we live "among people who have shut their lips on poetry"?
To any one who has opened his ears to the cadences of American
speech, the question is absurd. Dos Passos has been very successful
in catching what is "superb and wild" in the reality of American
talk. Basshe has given us the full flavor of the East Side in The
Centuries. More recently, Odets has found gaiety and warmth and
singing beauty in American speech.

The only speech which lacks color is that of people who have
nothing to say. People whose contact with reality is direct and
varied must create a mode of speech which expresses that contact.
Since language grows out of events, it follows that those whose
talk is thin are those whose impression of events is pale and ab-
stract. Then what about the popular myth of the "strong, silent
man of action"? Such a man (if and when he exists) is the ideal
of the upper-class leader, not emotionally involved in the events
which he controls.

"Good dialogue," says Baker, "must be kindled by feeling, made
alive by the emotion of the speaker," t Emotion divorced from real-
ity is inhibited emotion, which therefore cannot be expressed. Freud

♦Preface to The Playboy of the Western World (New York, 1907).
t Opus cit.

292 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

and others maintain that inhibited emotion finds inverted ex-
pression in dreams and fantasies. These fantasies are also a form of
action. It is conceivable that this material may be used in literature
and drama (for instance, the dramatic nightmare in James Joyce's
Ulysses). However, v\^hen we analyze fantasies of this type, we
find that what makes them intelligible is what connects them with
reality. An individual's dream of escape may be satisfactory to him,
but its social meaning lies in knowledge of what he is escaping
from. As soon as this knowledge is supplied, we are back in the
field of known events. The theatre must deal with emotion which
can be expressed — the fullest expression of emotion comes from
men and women who are aware of their environment, uninhibited
in their perceptions.

The stage today is largely concerned with people whose main
interest is escape from reality. The language is therefore thin and
lifeless. When the middle-class playwright attempts to achieve
poetic handling of mythical or fantastic subjects, his speech remains
colorless: he is afraid to let himself go; he is trying to hide the
link between fantasy and reality.

In the past fifteen years, the theatre has made a desperate e£Fort
to find more colorful material, more vibrant speech. Playwrights
have discovered the lively talk of soldiers, gangsters, jockeys, chorus
girls, prizefighters. The stage has gained tremendously by this —
but the approach to this material has been limited and one sided;
dramatists have looked only for sensation and cheap effects, slang
and tough phrases, and they have found exactly what they were
looking for. There is also singing poetry in common speech ; it
grows out of moments of deeper contact with reality, moments
that are "kindled with feeling."

Today, in a period of intense social conflict, emotions are corre-
spondingly intense. These emotions, which grow out of daily
struggle, are not inhibited. They find expression in language which
is heroic and picturesque. To be sure, this is not a world of the
"rich joy" of which Synge speaks. There is exaltation in conflict;
there is also fierce sorrow. This is equally true of the plays of
Synge: Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World
can hardly be described as happy plays.

Among "refined" people (including "refined" playwrights)
there seems to be an idea that all workers talk alike — just as all
prizefighters, or all chorus girls, are supposed to talk alike. The
speech of American workers and farmers is very personal and
varied. It ranges all the way from repetitious slang to moments
of startling beauty. No dramatist can ignore the task of capturing

Dialogue 293

the richness, the unrivalled dramatic possibilities of this speech.

In Panicj MacLeish uses poetry as something quite apart from
action. MacLeish (like Dos Passos and so many others) is at
war with his own mysticism. He seeks the visible world with an
emotion which illuminates his poetry. Thus, although he is unable
to project conflict in dramatic terms, his poetry is so dynamic that
it serves as a substitute for action; it contains a life of its own
which is objectively real, and separate from the actions on the stage.

In his preface to Panic, MacLeish explains that blank verse is
too "spacious, slow, noble, and elevated" for an American theme;
that our rhythms are "nervous, not muscular; excited, not delib-
erate; vivid, not proud." He has therefore evolved "a line of five
accents but unlimited syllables." In the choruses he uses a line of
three accents. The result is noteworthy. MacLeish points the way
to a new and freer use of dramatic poetry. All that stands in the
way is the barrier (which he himself has erected) between speech
and action.

In discussing poetry, we have neglected the usual technical quali-
ties of dialogue : clarity, compression, naturalness. Are we to ignore
Baker's advice that "the chief purpose of dialogue is to convey
necessary information clearly" ? This depends on what we mean by
"necessary information." Information can be very accurately and
tersely conveyed by a set of statistics. But the facts with which a
play deals are not statistics, but the complex forces which are
behind statistics. Baker also speaks of the need of emotion in
dialogue, but he fails to analyze the relationship between emotion
and information. Indeed, as long as emotion is regarded abstractly,
there is bound to be a gap between the conveying of facts and the
expression of feeling. This is the gap between action and character
which has already been noticed.

When we understand the complexity and emotional depth of the
information which must be conveyed in dialogue, "the intensifica-
tions of poetic speech" become a necessity. The fullness of reality
must be compressed without losing color or clarity. To do this
requires a great poetic gift. Poetry is not undisciplined : it is a very
precise form of expression. It is, in fact, the prosiness of O'Neill's
later plays that causes them to be over-written. The early sea plays
are far more poetic — and also possess more clarity and conciseness.

Ibsen's mastery of free flights of poetry is showni in Peer Gynt.
In the prose plays, he consciously compresses and restricts the
language. The dialogue lacks rich images and brilliant color, be-
cause the people are inhibited and unimaginative. Yet the speech
is never thin ; some of the quality of Peer Gynt is found in all the

294 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

plays — a poetic concentration of meaning, as in Oswald's cry for
the sun. In examining Ibsen's notebooks, one finds that his revision
of lines was always intended to sharpen clarity, and at the same
time to deepen the meaning. In an earlier version of A Doll's
House, the lines between Nora and her husband, when she dis-
covers that he has no intention of sacrificing himself to save her,
are as follows:

nora: I so firmly believed that you would ruin yourself
to save me. That is what I dreaded, and therefor I wanted to
die!

helmer: Oh, Nora, Nora!

nora: And how did it turn out? No thanks, no outburst of
affection, not a shred of a thought of saving me.*

In the final version, Ibsen has wrought a remarkable change:

nora: That was the miracle that I hoped for and dreaded.
And it was to hinder that that I wanted to die.

helmer: I would gladly work for you day and night, Nora —
bear sorrow and want for your sake — but no man sacrifices his
honor, even for one he loves.

nora: Millions of women have done so.

It is evident that the revision has accomplished several things:
the conflict is better balanced, because Helmer defends his point of
view. Instead of crying, "Oh, Nora, Nora!" he tells us what he
wants and believes. Nora's answer, which in the earlier version is
personal and peevish, becomes a deep expression of emotion; it
shows her growing realization of her problem as a woman ; it ex-
tends the conflict to include the problems of "millions of women."

Although the language of the Broadway theatre is unpoetic, it
often exhibits remarkable technical dexterity. It excels in natural-
ness and hard-boiled brassy humor. The dialogue in Maxwell
Anderson's modem plays is full of pith, hardness, derision. But
when Anderson turns to history, his blank verse ignores reality and
deals in noble generalities. In Elizabeth the Queen, Essex says :

The God who searches heaven and earth and hell
For two who are perfect lovers, could end his search
With you and me . . .

This reflects Anderson's conception of history; events are pale com-
pared to the feelings of great individuals. He reaches the conclusion
that events hardly exist. In Mary of Scotland, Elizabeth says:
* Ibsen, opus cit., v. 12.

Dialogue 295

It's not what happens

That matters, no, not even what happens that's true,

But what men believe to have happened.

But when Anderson deals with contemporary themes, we find
phrases like these in Both Your Houses: "Of course illicit passion
may have raised its pretty tousled head" . . . or . . . "The girls are a
hell of a lot fresher on Long Island than down there at the naval
base where the gobs have been chasing them since 181 2."

Anderson's work exposes the inner contradiction which has been
discussed in regard to Dos Passos and MacLeish. However Mac-
Leish and Dos Passos endeavor to solve the contradiction, and
therefore offer a chaotic but emotional view of the modern world.
In Anderson the split is much wider and the conflict is concealed.
He finds a comfortable escape in the past, satisfied with what he
may "believe to have happened." When he views the present, he
sees only the surface of events; his idealism makes him harsh and
bitter; but his irony is not deeply emotional.*

The Front Page is a masterpiece of rough-and-tumble dialogue.
A reporter asks over the telephone: "Is it true, Madame, that you
were the victim of a peeping Tom?" The dialogue is all action:
"Drowned by God ! Drowned in the river ! With their automobile,
their affidavits and their God damn law books!" ... "Get him to
tell you sometime about how we stole old lady Haggerty's
stomach ... off the coroner's physician." The flow of events is as-
tonishing: a car ran into the patrol wagon and the cops came
"rolling out like oranges." A Negro baby was born in the patrol
wagon. The Reverend J. B. Godolphin is suing The Examiner
for one hundred thousand dollars for calling him a fairy. This is
action with a vengeance. But there is neither emotion nor unity.
The information conveyed is exhaustive; but one has no test of
whether or not it is necessary. Instead of showing us the connection
of events, Hecht and MacArthur are endeavoring to impress us
with their lack of connection.

The vitality of the lines in The Front Page derives both from
their inventiveness and their suddenness. The technique is a very
special one: the characters do not so much answer each other as
talk in opposition to each other. Violent contrasts are stressed, and
at several points the lines are scrambled in a very effective way :

wooDENSHOEs: Earl Williams is with that girl, Mollie
Malloy! That's where he is!

♦Anderson has attempted to resolve this contradiction in Winterset,

296 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

hildy: Can you imagine — this time tomorrow I'd have been
a gentleman. {Diamond Louie enters.)

LOUIE: Huh?

wooDENSHOEs: She sent him a lot of roses, didn't she?

hildy: God damn it, the hell with your roses. Gimme the
dough. I'm in a hell of a hurry, Louie.

LOUIE: What are you talkin' about?

WOODENSHOES: I'll betcha I'm right.

One finds the same dialogue method employed to express the
confusion of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet drama, Armored Train
i6-4g, by Vsevolod Ivanov.* Uncle Simon is talking about the
office where he has been promised a job. The room has a seismo-
graph in it:

SIMON: A seismograph for measuring earthquakes. There
must be some reason for it.

NizELASOV: Varia, I was down by the sea just now thinking
of you. There were two corks tossing about in the breakers and
as I watched them I thought they might be us.

varia: What queer ideas you get. Haven't the furnishing men
arrived yet. ... Aunt Nadia, haven't the furnishers arrived yet?

nadia: They're coming today. I am going to have all the
walls hung with Chinese silk.

The importance of both the above examples lies in the fact that
the characters express their will toward their environment in con-
crete terms. The confusion comes from the intentness with which
each pursues the line of potential action which occupies his con-
sciousness. This also accounts for the dramatic quality of the scenes.

A speech or group of speeches is a subordinate unit of action,
and exhibits the form of an action : exposition, rising action, clash
and climax. The decision which motivates the action may relate to
a past, present or potential event; but it must rise to a point of
clash which exposes the break between expectation and fulfillment,
and which leads to a further decision. The first act of John Wex-
ley's The Last Mile takes places in the death-house of a prison;
the men in the cells are all condemned to death; Waiters, in cell
number seven must pay the penalty immediately, while Red Kirby
has thirty-five days to live :

kirby : Seven, if it was possible for me to do it, I'd give you
half of mine, and we'd both have seventeen and a half days
each. I wish I could do it.

* Translated by W. L. Gibson-Cowan and A. T, K. Gi-ant (London,
1933).

Dialogue 297

WALTERS : You wouldn't fool me, would you, Red ? This ain't
no time to do that.

kirby: Not right here in town with my shirt on. Of course
I got no way to prove my statement to you. I can see why you
find it hard to believe ; but just the same, I would do it. I wish
it was only possible, because I hate like Hell to see you go, Seven.

WALTERS: I wish you could do it. Red, if you ain't kidding
me?

MAYOR : He ain't, he'd do it. I believe him.

WALTERS : Ya all think so, guys ?

d'amoro: Seven, we all think he means what he says.

WALTERS {Breathing deeply) : Well, thanks a lot, Red.

In this scene the declaration of will is potential : but the
dramatist has made this potentiality intensely moving because he
has shown the straining of the characters toward some realization,
some means of testing the decision : the exposition is Kirby's first
statement ; the rising action develops from Walter's desperate need
of proving the validity of the offer. When Walters asks : "You all
think so, guys?" he is testing the decision in terms of reality as it
exists within the narrow confines of the death-house. This reaffirms
his own decision, his attitude toward his approaching death.

The problems of dialogue technique are identical with the prob-
lems of continuity. The units of action (single speeches or unified
groups of speeches) may be tested in relation to the root-action of
each unit ; the decision and progression may be analyzed.

Compression is not only achieved by hot violent words, but by
sudden contrasts, by breaks, pauses, moments of unexpected calm.
For instance, in JVe the People, the scene in which Bert and Helen
have gone to Senator Gregg to plead for help for Helen's brother
ends with a bit of commonplace conversation :

BERT {To Weeks, the Senators Secretary) : I wonder if you
could tell us how to get out to Mount Vernon.

weeks: Why no I really couldn't. I've never been out there
myself.

BERT : You haven't ?

weeks: No, but I'm sure any policeman can tell you how
to go.

bert: Well, thanks, goodbye.

HELEN: Good day.

weeks: Good day. {They go out). Curtain.

The same mode of understatement is used in Peace on Earth.
At the end of Scene 3, in the first act, when Owens goes out with

298 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Mac to investigate the strike, Jo, his wife, tries to prevent his
going. In this case, Owens' decision is the basic decision which
leads to the play's climax:

jo: Pete, you listen to me — {He puts his hands over his
ears. She pulls them away. He kisses her.)

OWENS : So long.

JO : Pete, if you get hit with a club I'll divorce you.

OWENS : All right, see if I care. Come on, Mac. Be back soon,
Josie.

MAC : See you in church, Jo.

jo: See you in church.

The lines quoted from JVe the People and Peace on Earth are
dramatically effective, and the use of the unexpected understate-
ment is justified. But both quotations illustrate the peculiarly
pedestrian quality of American stage speech. There is not a hint of
illumination in the lines. The same effect of sudden calm might
have been achieved in sharply poetic phrases. This would not affect
the naturalness of the words. In fact, the poet would endeavor to
heighten the naturalness, to enforce the commonplace simplicity
which is the purpose of the scenes. For instance, in We the People,
the fact that Bert and Helen want to go to Mount Vernon has far
more possibilities of compression and extension than have been in-
dicated. In the scene in Peace on Earth, Jo's line, "See you in
church," is commonplace without being characteristic or imagina-
tive. In order to dramatize the commonplaceness of this moment,
with all the potentialities and dangers which are inherent in its
commonplaceness, one would require a line so poignant in its sim-
plicity that it would awaken our pity and terror. Yet the quality
of the scene, the good-natured uneventful leave-taking, would be
preserved.

Dialogue without poetry is only half-alive. The dramatist who is
not a poet is only half a dramatist.

CHAPTER VIII

THE AUDIENCE

THIS chapter is a postscript. During the course of this book, I
have restricted myself to the analysis of the playwriting process,

The Audience 299

and have referred to the production process rarely and briefly. It
has seemed to me that my method required this limitation; the
problems of audience response have been hinted at only obliquely,
because these problems go beyond the scope of the present in-
vestigation.

The audience is the ultimate necessity which gives the play-
wright's work its purpose and meaning. The laws by which the
dramatist creates his product are determined by the use to which
the product is to be put. The purpose of the drama is communica-
tion: the audience plays, not a passive, but an active part, in the
life of a play. Dramatic technique is designed to achieve a maximum
response. If a playwT^right is not seeking to communicate with his
fellow men, he need not be bound by unity or logic or any other
principle, because he is talking to himself, and is limited only by
his own reaction to his own performance.

The laws of volitional thinking are binding upon the audience
as well as the dramatist; the audience thinks and feels about the
imaginary events in terms of its own experience, just as the
dramatist has created the events in terms of his experience. But
the audience approaches the events from a different angle: the
play is the concentrated essence of the playwright's consciousness
and will ; he tries to persuade the audience to share his intense
feeling in regard to the significance of the action. Identification
is not a psychic bridge across the footlights ; identification is accept-
ance, not only of the reality of the action, but of its meaning.

I have chosen to analyze the dramatic process by beginning with
the plajovright; one could reach many of the same conclusions by
beginning with the audience. But an attempt to define dramatic
theory by an analysis of audience response would be a far more diffi-
cult task, because it would involve many additional problems.
The attitudes and preoccupations of the audience in observing a
play are far more difficult to gauge than those of the playwright
in creating the play. At every moment of the production, the
various members of the audience are subject to an infinite variety
of contradictory influences, depending on the architecture of the
playhouse, the personalities of the players, the persons in the sur-
rounding seats, the reports which have been circulated about the
play, and a thousand other factors which vary from one perform-
ance to the next.

All the factors mentioned are social and psychological deter-
minants. The playwright is also subject to all these variable factors
in writing the play — indigestion, love, an automobile accident, an
■altercation over a debt, affect his relationship to his material. But

300 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

the result, the play as it is written or produced, is a comparatively
fixed object; the production involves the work of many persons
besides the playwright ; the production is never the same, and each
performance is to some extent a new event. Nevertheless, the play
itself, as a unified conception, is sharply enough defined to furnish
reliable data concerning its function and the process by which it is
created. The psychological and social determinants can be checked
and tabulated.

Suppose we consider the one question of attention. The degree
to which the playwright has been preoccupied with other matters
during the preparation of the drama may or may not disturb the
unity of the finished product; but we can judge the product ac-
curately as a summary of the playwright's thought, without worry-
ing about the author's day-to-day moods during its composition.
But the preoccupations of the individual members of the audience,
the degree to which their attention is concentrated or diffused,
determines their participation in the dramatic events.

There are no data on which to base a study of audience response
under various conditions. The extent to which the participation is
active or passive, the responsiveness to different sorts of stimulation,
the inter-connection between group and individual reactions, the
way in which the emotional response affects the conduct and habits
of the spectators — all of these are social and psychological problems
concerning which almost nothing is known.

Professor Harold Burris-Meyer, of Stevens Institute of Tech-
nology, has been carrying on experiments for four years in order
to determine the physiological reactions produced by the "dramatic
use of controlled sound." It has been discovered that the varying
pitch and intensity of an arbitrarily chosen sound can "stimulate
physiological reactions so violent as to be definitely pathological." *

To attempt a premature appraisal of audience psychology with-
out the necessary scientific groundwork is likely to lead one to
assume that the contact between the audience and the stage is
established from above, like Communion in church.

Most theories of dramatic art begin with the statement that the
audience is the dominant factor. Having established this truth
(which is so self-evident that it needs no elaboration), the theorist
frequently finds himself unable to proceed: since he has made no
investigation of the audience, he accepts it as an absolute — he
pictures a final and changeless audience, to be accepted and feared,
to be appealed to, flattered or cajoled. This leads to vulgar com-
mercialism or to extreme estheticism. "It is an indisputable fact,"
* Neiv York Times, April 30, 1935.

The Audience 301

wrote Francisque Sarcey, "that a dramatic work, whatever it may
be, is designed to be listened to by a number of persons united and
forming an audience, that this is its very essence, that this is a
necessary condition of its existence." * Sarcey's emphasis on the
audience led him to develop the theory of the obligatory scene,
which has a special bearing on audience psychology. But since
Sarcey regarded the Parisian audience of the eighteen-seventies and
eighties as the perfect image of an absolute audience, he accepted
Scribe and Sardou as absolute dramatists. Modern criticism has
followed Sarcey in the categorical acceptance of the audience and
the consequent negation of dramatic values.

Gordon Craig goes to the opposite extreme, and wants to ignore
the audience completely: "Once let the meaning of the word
Beauty begin to be thoroughly felt once more in the Theatre, and
we may say that the awakening day of the Theatre is near. Once
let the word effective be wiped off our lips, and they will be ready
to speak the word Beauty. When we speak about the effective, we
in the Theatre mean something which will reach across the foot-
lights." t Here we have in capsule form the whole history of the
esthete in the theatre: he starts with beauty, and ends, uninten-
tionally and probably against his will, without an audience.

H. Granville-Barker comes nearer to the heart of the matter —
because he recognizes the social function of the drama. His book
on The Exemplary Theatre is one of the few modern works which
sees "the drama as a microcosm of society" : "Dramatic art, fully
developed in the form of the acted play, is the working out — in
terms of make-believe, no doubt, and patchily, biasedly, with much
over-emphasis and suppression, but still in the veritable human
medium — not of the self-realization of the individual but of society
itself." X This points to an understanding of the way in which the
audience functions: "If the audience is a completing part of the
play's performance obviously its quality and its constitution matter.
Not the least of the tasks of any theatre is to develop out of the
haphazard, cash-yielding crowd a body of opinion that will be
sensitive, appreciative, and critical."

Thus the audience is a variable factor ; and since it plays a part
in the play, its composition must be considered. The playwright
IS not only concerned with the opinions of the audience ; he is also
concerned with its unity and arrangement.

* Sarcey, A Theory of the Theatre, translated by H. H. Hughes (New
York, 1916).
t Opus at.
JH. Granville-Barker, The Exemplary Theatre (London, 1922).

302 Theory and Technique of Playwriting

Being so clear about the audience, Granville-Barker is also led
co a realization of its class character. Since he is himself a repre-
sentative of the middle class, he sees the theatre as part of the
machinery of capitalist democracy, doing work which is similar to
that of "press, pulpit, politics — there are powers these lack that the
theatre can well wield." Since the theatre performs these respon-
sible functions, he believes that the class line must be strictly drawn
in the selection of audiences; "There is indeed a social distinction
which the good theatre must rely on : it can only appeal to a leisure
class."

We cannot consider the audience without considering its social
composition: this determines its response, and the degree to which
its response is unified.

The playwright's interest in his audience is not only commercial,
but creative : the unity which he seeks can only be achieved through
the collaboration of an audience which is itself unified and creative.

In the early nineteen-twenties, the more rebellious spirits in the
theatre talked of breaking down the walls of the playhouse; the
moldy conventions of the drawing room play must be destroyed;
the drama must be created anew in the image of the living world.
These declarations were vitally important; but those who at-
tempted to carry out the task had only an emotional and confused
conception of the living world of which they spoke. They succeeded
in making a crack in the playhouse walls, through which one
caught a glimpse of the brightness and wonder which lay beyond.

This was a beginning: the serious artist who caught a fleeting
glimpse of the free world knew, as Ibsen knew in 1866, that he
must "live what until now I dreamt" that he must leave the mist
of dreams and see reality "free and awake." This could not be
done by selecting bits of reality piecemeal or by building a dramatic
patchwork of fragmentary impressions. Since the drama is based on
unity and logic, the artist must understand the unity and logic
of events. This is an enormously difficult task. But it is also an
enormously rewarding task : because the real world which the artist
seeks is also the audience of which he dreams. The artist who
follows Emerson's advice to look for "beauty and holiness in new
and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill,"
finds that the men and women who are the stuff of drama are the
men and women who demand a creative theatre in which they
may play a creative part.

A living theatre is a theatre of the people.

INDEX

Abbey (Dublin), 83
Acting, 114, IIS, 120, 171
Action, 162

Aristotle's theory, 4-7, 37, 42

as a system of events, 238, 239, 245-249,

296, 297
as change of equilibrium, 169, 172, 173,

198, 201, 22s
denial of action, 56, iii, 166
distinguished from activity, 170-173, 246
dramatic action defined, 168, 173
dual lines of causation, 196, 222, 223,
231, 232, 238, 239, 263-265, 277, 278
extension and compression, 197-199, 204,

208, 229, 240, 241
illustrative, 280-285

in relation to character, 4-7, 37, 280, 281
scope of, 177, 182, 183, 191, 197, 199,

206, 209, 211, 231, 271, 286, 288
stage entrances, exits, gestures, move-
ments, speech, situation, 161
unity of, 3. 6, 11, 23, 37, 42, 43, 126,
168, 174, 176-187, 199, 235, 236, 252,
253, 266, 267, 271, 281, 283, 289,
301, 302
Advancement of Learning (Bacon), 14
Aeschylus, 7, 8, 243
Agnosticism, 26, 61, 62
Ah Wilderness (O'Neill), 140, 141
Alien Corn (Howard), 242
All My Sons (Miller), xxvi
American Dramatist, The (Moses), 53
American Dream (O'Neill), 236, 290
American Negro Writer and His Roots, The

(Mayfield), xxi
Analysis of Play Construction and Dramatic

Principles (Price), 125, 126, 280
Anderson, Maxwell, 143, 146-151, 287, 294,

29s
Anderson, Robert, xix
Andreyev, Leonid, 56, 57
Androcles and the Lion (Shaw), 112
Anouilh, Jean, ix, xi-xii, xiv, xvi
Eurydice {Legend of Lovers^, xi
Rehearsal, The, xii
Romeo and Jeannette, xi-xii
Waltz of the Toreadors, xii
Antigone (Sophocles), 243
Aicoine, Andre, 57, 58
Antoine's Theatre Libre (Paris), 83
Apollo of Bellac, The (Giraudoux), x

Appia, Adolphe, 120

Archer, William, 53, 74, 76, 87, 118, 124,

125, 142, 164-166, 17s, 181, 184, 188,

255, 262, 263, 269, 286
Arden of Feversham (sometimes attributed

to Shakespeare), 17
Aretino, Pietro, 13
Ariosto, Lode vice, 12
Aristophanes, 9, 243
Aristotle, 3-10, 18-22, 24, 37, 42, 159, 168,

174, 176, 216, 254, 255, 262
Armored Train 16-4P (Ivanov), 296
Arnold, Benedict, 206, 207
Ars Poetica (Horace), 10, 11
Arsene Lupin (Leblanc), 13
Art and inspiration, 7, 32, 41, 114, 123, 127
Artaud, Antonin, xiv

Theatre and Its Double, The, xiv
Assumption of Hannele, The (Hauptmann),

57
Atkinson, Brooks, ix, 144
Atlas, Leopold, 178-180
Attention, 300
Attic theatre, 159
Audience, 3, 55, 83, 167, 169, 187, 220,

229, 232, 243, 256, 262, 285, 298-30^
Auger, Emile, 174
Awake arid Sing (Odets), 89, 249-253

Baby Doll (Williams), xvii

Back to Methuselah (Shaw), 112

Bacon, Francis, 14, 15, 24, 25, 99

Baker, Elizabeth, 207, 208

Baker, George Pierce, 123, 125, 169, 17s,

181, 233, 234, 286, 291, 293
Balcony, The (Genet), xiv
Bald Soprano, The (lonescu), xiii
Baldwin Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy'

chology, 100
Balzac, Honore de, 48-51, 53
Barber of Seville, The (Beaumarchais), 3a
Barrie, James M., no
Barry, Philip, 135, 136, 19s
Basshe, Em Jo, 287, 290, 291
Battle of Angels (Williams), xvii
Beach, Joseph Warren, 48
Beasley, E. C, 22
Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron at,

29, 30, 163
Beckett, Samuel, ix, xii-xiv
Waiting for Godot, xii-xiii

303

304

Index

Becque, Henri, 50

Behaviorism, 88, 92-96, 98, 260

Behaviorism (Watson), 93, 94

Behrman, S. N., 211-214

Benchley, Robert, 151

Bentley, Eric, The Dramatic Event, xxix

Bergson, Henri, 62, 63, 78, 90, 91, 102,

114, 122, 19s, 282
Berkeley, George, 24, 26
Bernard of Clairvaux, 103
Bernard, Claude, 51, 52
Bernstein, Henri, 50, 256
Beyond (Hasenclever), 120
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud), 94-

96
Biography (Behrman), 21 1-2 13
Birds, The (Aristophanes), 243
Bismarck, Otto, 45, 54
Black Pit (Maltz), 283-285
Blank verse, 287, 293
Blankfort, Michael, 210, 285
Boileaux-Despreaux, Nicholas, 18
Both Your Houses (Anderson), 143, 146-

151, 176, 29s
Bourgeoisie, 83, 84
Brand (Ibsen), 64-67, 70, 76, 77, 79, loi,

108
Brandes, Georg, 9, a, 36, 38, 40, 41, 60,

61, 70
Brecht, Bertolt, vii, xxiii-xxvi, 120

Caucasian Chalk Circle, The, xxiv

"epic" theory, xxiv-xxvi

Good Woman of Setzuan, The, xxiv

Mother Courage, xxvi

Three-Penny Novel, xxv

Three-Penny Opera, The, xxiv
Brewster, William T., 18, 174
Brieux, Eugene, 50, 57
Brill, A. A., 94

Broadway (Abbott and Dunning), no
Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 38, 58-60, 87, 88,

163, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170
Brustein, Robert, Commentary, xix

Harper's, xix
Burris-Meyer, Harold, 300
Bus Stop (Inge), xix
Butcher, S. H., 3
Butler, Samuel, 113
Byron, Lord George Gordon, 40, 41

Caesar and Cleopatra (Shaw), iii
Calderon la Barca, Pedro, 11, 17, S9
'"iligula (Camus), x-xi, xiii, xix, xxxi
Camille (Dumas fils), 53
Camus, Albert, ix-x, xiii, xxxi

Caligula, x-xi

Fail, The, x
Candida (SJjaw), 101, 109, 13s

Capital (Marx), 46

Carlyle, Thomas, 100

Caspari, Theodor, 184

Categorical imperative, 28, 34

Cat on a Hot Tin Rooj (Williams), xvii

Castelvetro, Lodovico, 4

Caucasian Chalk Circle, The (Brecht),

xxiv
Cause and effect, 9, 16, 23, 38, 47, 80, 92,
104, los, 113, 139, 153, 156, 182,
189-191, 199, 231-236, 245-247, 250,
252, 255, 263, 265
Causes, exploration of, 162
Cenci, The (Shelley), 40
Centuries, The (Basshe), 290, 291
Cervantes y Saavedra, Miguel, 17, S9
Chains (Baker), 207, 208
Chapayev, 209
Characterization, 220

growth and progression, 16, 37, 79-81,

208, 276, 283, 284, 286
heroic style, 282
in Chekhov, 11 5-1 17
in relation to action, 4-6, 37, 123, 280,

281
in terms of conscious will, 97, 115-117,
131, 134, 149, 15s, 198, 250, 251, 260,
282-284
minor characters, 283
over-simplification, 21, 154, 283-285
socially conditioned, 27, 38, 69, 79, 80,
149-151, 156, 208, 211, 215, 282, 283
sympathy, 285, 286

treated as a grouping of qualities, 38, no,
III, 114, 115, 150, 214, 277, 278, 286
Charles II (of England), 20
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C, 28
Chayefsky, Paddy, xix
Chekhov, Anton P., xxiii, 58, 115-117, 124,

143
Cheney, Sheldon, 12, 13, 31
Cherry Orchard, The (Chekhov), 116. 143
Chicago (Watkins), no
Chikamatsu, puppet plays, xxvi
Children of Darkness (Mayer), 287
Children's Hour, The (Hellman), 223, 263-

266
Childress, Alice, Trouble in Mind, xx
China, theatre of, xxvi
Cinematic action, 283
Clark, Barrett H., 4, 10, 11, 19, 28, 29,
44, 49, SS-57, 112, nS, 119. 15:1, I74.
269, 270
Climax, as poiiit of reference, 175, ly^-i&j,

189, 190, 194, 196, 199, 203, 2J4,

21(5, 217, 229, 232, 254, 263-266, a6y,

273-279
in Elizabethan drama, x6
in Greek tragedy, 8, 8o„ 165

Index

30s

in Ibsen, 80, 82, 142, 165

in relation to denouement, 180, 267-273

in relation to exposition, 216, 217, 235-

238
subordinate climaxes, 246-249
Ciarman, Harold, vii
Coincidence, 229-231
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 38, 39, 43, 44,

122
Collected Plans (Miller), xxvii-xxviii, xxxi
Come Back, Little Sheba (Inge), xix
Comidie Humaine, La (Balzac), 48
Comedy, 9, 12, 151, 152, 256, 260, 261,

273
Comical Revenge, The, or Love in a Tub

(Etheredge), 20
Commedia dell'Arte, 12, 14, 19, 28
Communication, 299, 300
Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels),

45
Composition, 219
study of, 219
Compression of action, 197-199, 201, 202,

204, 208, 229, 240, 241, 247-249, 261,

264, 27s, 288, 289, 297, 298
Comte, Auguste, 61
Conditioned Reflexes (Pavlov), 93
Conflict, deferred or avoided, ii, in, 136,

137, 141-153, 179, 180, 19s. 254, 258-

262
of will, 5, 6, 16, 37, 38, 43, 59, 107, 126,

160-168
Conscious will, see Will
Continuity, 187, 219, 220-233, 297
Contrast, 228, 233, 249
Contribution to Political Economy, A

(Marx), 46
Conventions of drama, 11, 230, 231, 302
Corneille, Pierre, 4, 11, 18, 19, 80, 174
Counselor-at-Law (Rice), 285
Coward, Noel, 75, 143, 152-154
Craig, Edward Gordon, 4, 120, 121, 301
Craig's Wife (Kelly), 117, 282
Craven, Frank, 174
Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century

(Brandes), 70
Crises, drama as a series of, 166-168, 175,

201-204, 210, 225, 226, 246-248, 271
Critic and the Drama, The (Nathan), 123
Criticism, modern, 12, 22, 31, 32, 88, 114,

121-123, 127, 301
nineteenth century, 41-43, 60
Renaissance, 17, 18, 20
Shaw as dramatic critic, 107-110
Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 26, 28
Cromwell (Huso), 43
Crucible, The (Miller), xxviii-xxx
Cummings, E. E., 120
Curel, FraD.fpl<: gi* 57

Cycles of action, 222, 225-227, 233, 246-
249, 296, 297

Dante, Alighieri, xxiii, 230

Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The (Inge),

xix
Darwin, Charles, 45, 51, 61
Days Without End (O'Neill), 130, 132,

140, 141
Death of a Salesman (Miller), xxvii
De Kruif, Paul H., 215, 221
De la Poisie Dramatique d. Monsieur

Grimm (Diderot), 29
Dear Friend (Maupassant), 13
Decision, as having force of action, 225,

226, 234, 239, 242, 247-254, 257, 258,

262, 263, 265, 268, 270, 273-277, 279,

281, 283-285, 296, 297
Decline of the West, The (Spengler), 102,

103
Decorum, 10, 11
Descartes, Rene, 24, 99
Design for Living (Coward), 75, 143, 152-

154
Desire Under the Elms (O'Neill), 140
Development of the Drama, The (Mat-
thews), 12, 60
Development of Dramatic Art, The

(Stuart), 9, 243
Devil's Discipline, The (Shaw), 207
Dewey, John, 105, 128
Dialectic method, 35-38, 45-47, 57, 65, 79,

102, 104, 126
Dialogue, clarity, 227, 293
emotion, 291-294
indivisible part of structure, 220
in relation to action, 171, 288-299, 292-

296
in relation to will, 296, 297
value of understatement, 297, 298
Diderot, Denis, 26-30
Dionysius, 159

Discourse on Method (Descartes), 25
"Discovering the Theatre" (lonescu),

Tulane Drama Review, xiv
Divine Comedy, The (Dante), xxiii, 230
Doctor Faustus (Marlowe), 15, 34
Doctor in Spite of Himself, The (Moliere),

244
Dodsworth (Howard), 273-275, 285, 286
Does Consciousness Exist? (James), 90
Doll's House, A (Ibsen), 57, 71-74, 81

186, 187, 194, 208, 272, 294
Don Quixote (Cervantes), 18
Dos Passes, John, 85, 86, 287, 289-291,

293, 295
Drama and the Stage, The (Lewisohn), 123
Dramatic Event, The (Bentley), zzix

3o6

Dramatic Opinions and Essays (Shaw), no,

194
Dramatic revolt, 83, 84
Dramatic structure, 220
Dramatic Technique (Baker), 123 125, 169,

I7S, 181, 234, 286, 291, 293
Dreyfus case, 58
Dryden, John, 20, 21, 24, 181
Dual lines of causation, 196, 222, 223, 231,

232, 238, 239, 263-265, 277, 278
Dual personality, 132
Dualism of mind and matter, 26-28, 34, 35,

42-44, 61, 62, 64, 65, 98-106, III, 130
Duerrenmatt, Friedrich, ix, xii

Visit, The, xii, xviii
Dumas fils, Alexandre, 52, 53, 17s, 181, 193
Duran, Michael, 280
Dynamo) (O'Neill), 130

Eithteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
(Marx), 47

Eisenstein, S. N., 228

£lan vital, 62, 63, 78, 90, 91, 19s

Electro (Euripides), 243

Eliot, T. S., XV

Family Reunion, The, xv
Murder in the Cathedral, xv

Elizabeth the Queen (Anderson), 294

Elizabethan drama, 12, 14-18, 82, 167, 183,
189, 291

Elizabethan verse forms, 288

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 100, 128, 302

Emilia Galotti (Lessing), 27

Emotion, 51, 52, 62, 78, 80, 89, 90, 101-
104, 132, 136, 138, 139, 14s, ISO, 193,
19s, 196, 251, 271, 291-294

Empathy, 285

Emperor and Galilean (Ibsen), 70

Emperor Jones, The (O'Neill), 227

Enchanted, The (Giraudoux), x

Enemy of the People, An (Ibsen), 74, 150

Enfantin, Barthelemy, 51

Engels, Friedrich, 45-47

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (God-
win), 40

Entertainer, The (Osborne), xvi

Environment, 6, 15, 27, 37, 38, 63, 65, 68-
70, 71, 79-81, 95-98, 100, 107, 109-
III, 116, 128, 133, 134, 138, 139, 146,
148-151, 156, 157, 167, i68, 192, 193,
196, 200, 214, 224, 225, 23s, 260, 289

Epic theory (of Bertolt Brecht), xxiv-xxvi

Ervine, St. John, 169, 176

Essay on Comedy, An (Meredith), 260

Essay Concerning the Origin of Human Un-
derstanding (Locke), 25

Essay of Dramatick Poesie, An (Dryden),
20, 21, i8i

Essay on the Theatre (Goldsmith), 28

Index

Essay on Tragedy (Hume), 7

Essays in Historical Materialism (Plekhaa-

ov), 205
Essays in Radical Empiricism (James), 90,

92
Etheridge, George, 20
Eugenie (Beaumarchais), 29
Euripides, 7-9, 42, 243
European Theories of the Drama (Clark) , 4,

10, 11, 19, 28, 29, 44, 49, 55, 174
Eurydice (Anouilh), xi
Exemplary Theatre, The (Granville-Barker),

301, 302
Exposition, 48, 217, 221-223, 232-244, 247-

249, 259, 265, 277, 284
Expressionism, 42, 44, 56, 119, 120, 241
Extension of action, 172, 183, 197-199, 201,

202, 204, 205, 209, 212, 215, 217, 221,

229, 232, 240, 241, 247-249, 261, 264,

271, 272, 27s, 283, 288-290, 294, 298

Factors, social and psychological, that gov-
ern selection and arrangement of ma-
terial, 219

Fall, The (Camus), x

Family, the, 7, 8, 154, 155, 204, 205, 248,
252

Family Reunion, The (Eliot), xv

Fanny's First Play (Shaw), 112

Faragoh, Francis Edwards, 241, 287

Farce d'un Pardonneur, 14

Farquhar, George, 20

Farrell, James Thomas, 85

Fate, 7, 52, 59, 70, 72, 100, 103, 131, 138,
142, 144, 153, 156, 214, 222, 260, 266

Father, The (Strindberg), 57

Faulkner, John, 85

Faust (Goethe), xxix, 33-35, 40, 67, 68,
130

Fergusson, Francis, The Idea of a Theatre,
xxiii

Feuerbach (Engels), 46, 47

Fielding, Henry, 13

Film Technique (Pudovkin), 228, 229

Fils Naturel, Le (Diderot), 29

Form and content, 6, 38, 54, 55, 216

Forms of dramatic communication, 159

Fortune Heights (Dos Passos), 290

Framework of causation, 200-218

Frederick the Great, 39

Frederick William III, 39

Free Stage Society (Berlin), 57

Freie Biihne (Berlin), 83

Freud, Sigmund, xxxi, 88, 94-96, 129, 130,
291

Freytag, Gustav, 54-56, 59, 121, 124, 142,
175, 267 268, 271

Front Page, The (Hecht and MacArthur),
no, 283, 29s

Ind

ex

307

Fry, Christopher, xiv-xv

Lady's not for Burning, The, xv
Furies, The (Aeschylus), 8

Galsworthy, John, 11 7-1 19, 190, 281
Garbage Man, The (Dos Passos), 289, 290
Garden District (Williams), xvi-xvii
Gassner, John W., 142, 275
Genet, Jean, ix, xiii-xiv, xvi

Balcony, The, xiv

Maids, The, xiii-xiv
Gentlewoman (Lawson), 158
George Burnwell (Lillo), 28
Getting Married (Shaw), 112
Ghosts (Ibsen), 64, 71-74, 77, 81, 83, 164-
166, 197, 203, 204, 244, 247-249, 279,
294
Gibson-Cowen, W. E., 296
Gil Bias (Lesage), 13, 163
Giraudoux, Jean, ix-x, xii

Apollo of Bellac, The, x

Enchanted, The, x

Mad Woman of Chaillot, The, ix-x, xii

Ondine, x
Class Menagerie, The (Williams), xvi
Godwin, William, 40
Goethe, J. W. von, xxix, 2, 7, 27, 28, 31,

33-35, 40-43, 54, 67, 71, 80, 130
Gold Eagle Guy (Levy), 282
Goldoni, Carlo, 28

Goldoni, a Biography (Chatfield-Taylor), 28
Goldsmith, Oliver, 28
Good Woman of Setzuan, The (Brecht),

xxiv
Gorelik, Mordecai, New Theatres for Old,

XXV

Gorki, Maxim, 13

Gosse, Edmund, 20

Gourmont, Remy de, 63

Gozzi, Carlo, 125

Grant, A. T. K., 296

Granville-Barker, Harley, 301, 302

Great God Brown, The (O'Neill), 132-134,

136, 140, 141, 231
Green, Paul, 287
Greene, Maxine, "A Return to Heroic

Man," Saturday Review, xxx
Gresset, J. B. L., 11

Hairy Ape, The (O'Neill), 58

Hamburg Dramaturgy (Lessing), 21-24, 3°.

191, 2SS, 271, 272
Hamilton, Claytoii, 80, 118, 188, 191
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 14, 16, 34, 88, 170,

172, 173, 204, 205, 230, 232, 244
Hansberry, Lorraine, xx

Raisin in the Sun, A, xx-xxi
Hart, Moss, 257-260
**arvey, William, 24

Hasenclever, Walter, 120

Hauptmann, Gerhart, 57, 176

Hayden, Philip M., 59

Heartbreak House (Shaw), 112

Hecht, Ben, 283, 295

Hedda Gabler (Ibsen), 52, 57, 64, 71, 75-

77, 109, 134, 13s, 144, 184-186, 236,

237, 244, 270-272
Hegel, Georg, 2, 7, 24, 34-39, 45, 54, 59-61,

64, 6s, 79, 88, 89, no, 130
Hegelian dilemma, 2
Heine, Heinrich, 39, 40, 71
Hellman, Lillian, xxvi-xxvii, 223, 263-266
Little Foxes, The, xxvii
Watch on the Rhine, xxvii
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 26, 40
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 41
Hervieu, Paul, 50, 135
Heywood, John, 14
Hildegard of Bingen, 130
Him (Cummings), 120
Hindle Wakes (Houghton), 207, 208, 240
Historical approach, 8, 21, 36, 37, 47, S9.

60, 205-213, 215, 222, 278
History of English Literature (Taine), 17,

60
History of European Philosophy (Marvin),

90, 104
Hobbes, Thomas, 24, 92
Hobson, Harold, ed.. International Theatre

Annual, No. 4, ix
Holbach, P. H. D., Baron de, 26
Horace, 10, 11, 18, 20
Houghton, Stanley, 207, 208, 240
House of Satan (Nathan), 123
How to Write a Play (Ervine), 169, 176
Howard, Bronson, 174
Howard, Sidney, 88, 143, 154-157, 215-217,

221-231, 236, 239, 242, 263, 273-275,

28s, 286
Hughes, H. H., 301
Hughes, Langston, Mulatto, xx
Hugo of St. Victor, 100, 130
Hugo, Victor, 43-45, 49, 54
Humboldt, Charles, 8s
Hume, David, 7, 24, 26, 61

Ibsen, Henrik, xxiii, 2, 14, 38, 61, 63-82.

86, 90, loi, 113, 117, 131. 139, I42«

193, 282, 302
Brand, 64-67, 70, 76, 77, 79, 108
characterization, 79-81
Doll's House, A, 57, 71-74, 81, i86.j

187, 194, 197, 208, 272, 294
Emperor and Galilean, 70
emphasis on conscious will, 66, 70, 71,

83, 84, 108, 109, 129, 130, 13s
Enemy of the People, An, 74, 150

3o8

Index

Ckoffs, 64, 71-74, 77. 81, 83, 164-166,
197, 203, 204, 244, 247-249, 279, 294
Hedda Gabler, 52, S7, 64, 71, 75, 77,
109, 134, 13s, 144, 184-186, 237, 244,
270-272
John Gabriel Borkman, 81
idealism, 15, 74, 150
League of Youth, The, 64, 68-70, 79, 80,

ISO
Master Builder, The, 33, 64, 76, 77, 197
notebooks, 64, 74, 109, 184-186, 270, 271,

294
Peer Gynt, 57, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 75,

79, 80, 108, 293
Pillars of Society, 70
Rosmersholm, 74, 75
treatment of climax, 80-82
When We Dead Awaken, 31, 64, 76-78,

81, 82, 129, 130
wad Duck, The, Ti, Ti
Iceman Cometh, The (O'Neill), xxii
Idea of a Theatre, The (Fergusson), xxiii
Idealist philosophy, 25-28, 35, 61, 271
Identification, 285, 299
Illustrative action, 280-285
Increasing the emotion load, 226, 227, 233,

276
Independent Theatre (London), 83
Independent Theatre in Europe, The (Anna

Irene Miller), 83
Independent theatre movement in America,

84
Independent theatre movements, 83
Individualism, Old and New (Dewey), 105,

128
Inevitability, 191, 195-197, 214, 229, 235,

250, 262, 263, 284
Inge, William, xix
Bus Stop, xix

Come Back, Little Sheba, xix
Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The, xix
Picnic, xix
Inn of Tranquility, The (Galsworthy), 117,

190
lonescu, Eugene, ix, xiii-xiv
Bald Soprano, The, xiii
"Discovering the Theatre," Tulane
Drama Review, xiv
Irish theatre, 84
Isherwood, Christopher, tr , Three-Penny

Novel (Brecht), xxv
Ivanov, Vsevolod, 296
Ives, George Burnham, 44

James, William, 62, 85, 89-94, 100, 105,

131, 140, 251
Japan, theatre oi, xxiv, xxvi
/. B. (MacLeish), xix-xx
Jew of Malta, The (Marlowe), 16

Johan Johan (Heywood), 14

John Gabriel Borkman (Ibsen), 81

Jones, Henry Arthur, 166, 269

Jonson, Ben, 17

Josephson, Matthew, 50, 51, 59

Joyce, James, 292

Judgement Day (Rice), 277

Juno and the Paycock (O'Casey), xxiv

Kant, Immanuel, 24, 26, 28, 34, 35, 35,

54, 104, no
Kaufman, George S., 256-260
Kazan, Elia, xxv
Keats, John, 40, 41
Kelly, George, 117, 281, 282
Kline, Herbert, 207
Krows, Arthur Edwin, 125-127, 174, 228,

232
Krutch, Joseph Wood, 46, 78, 122

Lady's not for Burning, The (Fry), xv
Lamarck, J. B. P. A. de Monet de, 51, 113
Last Mile, The (Wexley), 227, 297
Law of the Drama, The (Brunetiere), 59,

60, 163-170
Lazarillio of Tormes, 13
League of Youth, The (Ibsen), 64, 68-70,

79, 80, 150
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature

(Schlegel), 19, 4i-43> i77
Legend of Lovers (Anouilh), (U. S. pro-
duction of Eurydice), xi
Legouve, Ernest, 181
Leibnitz, G. W. von, 25
Lenin, V. I., 176
Lesage, Alain-Rene, 163
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 21-24, 27-29,

3i, 36, 37, 41, 42, 190, 2SS, 271,

272
Letty (Pinero), 269
Levy, Melvin, 282
Lewis, Sinclair, 273
Lewisohn, Ludwig, 122
Liberalism, 105, 129, 150, 211, 212, 278
Lillo, George, 28
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts,

New York City, ix
Little Foxes, The (Hellman), xxvii
Living quality of drama, 127, 176, 183
Locke, John, 25, 61
Long Day's Journey into Night (O'Neill),

xxii
Look Back in Anger (Osborne), xv-xvi,

xix
Look Homeward, Angel (Wolfe), 103, 13I
Lope de Vega, 17, 18, 59, 159, 174
Louis XIV, 19, 52, 55
Louis XVI, 30

Index

309

louis Philippe, 45, 53
Loyalties (Galsworthy), 118

MacArthur, Charles, 283, 295

Macbeth (Shakespeare), 244

MacClintock, Beatrice Stewart, 11

MacEwan, Elias J., 54

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 12-14, 16, 82

MacLeish, Archibald, xix, 282, 287, 293
/. B., xix-xx

Madeleine Perat (Zola), 52

Madwoman of Chaillot, The (Giraudoux),
ix-x, sii

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 36-58, 122, 133, 166,
291

Magnitude, 3

Maids, The (Genet), xiii-xiv

Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Lit-
erature (Brandes), $i, 36, 41, 60

Mainstream ("The Novel of Action"), 85

Maistre Pierre Pathelin, 12

Mallarme, Stephane, 63

Maltz, Albert, 207, 240, 283-285, 297, 298

Mammonart (Sinclair), 15

Man and Superman (Shaw), 109, 112,
208

Margolin, S., 208

Marlowe, Christopher, 15, 16, 34, 273

Marriage of Figaro, The (Beaumarchais),
30, 163

Marvin, Walter T., 90, 104

Marx, Karl, xxii, 39, 45-47

Mary of Scotland (Anderson), 294

Masefield, John, 122

Masks, O'Neill's use of, 132-134

Master Builder, The (Ibsen), zi, 64, 76,
77, 197

Matthews, Brander, 4, 12, 60, 87, 124, 269

Maupassant, Guy de, 13

Mayer, Edwin Justus, 287

Mayfield, Julian, The American Negro
Writer and His Roots, xxi

McCarthyism, xxviii

McCarthy, Mary, Sights and Spectacles, ix

McClintic, Guthrie, 216

Medieval Mind, The (Taylor), 100

Meditations (Descajrtes), 25

Mei Lan-fang, xxiv

Meredith, George, £60

Merrily We Roll Along (Kaufman and
Hart), 257-260, 287

Middle class, x, xiii, 12-17, 25. 29-33, 4i,
45, 57, 58, 63, 71, 72, 76, 77, 107,
108, III, 203, 209, 302

Mielziner, Jo, 216

Miller, Anna Irene {The Independent Thea-
tre in Europe), 83

Miller, Arthur, xxvi-xxxii
All My Sons, xxvi
Collected Plays, xxvii-xxviii, xxxi
Crucible, The, xxviii-xxx
Death of a Salesman, xxvii
View from the Bridge, A, xxx, xxxii
Mrs. Warren's Profession (Shaw), 107, 108
Mitchell, Roy, 4
Modern Utopia (Wells), 277
Moliere, J. B. P., i, 12, 19, 20, 28, 244,

273
Montage, xxvi
Montagu, Ivor, 228
Montesquieu, Charles, Baron de la Brede at

de, 61
Moscow Art Theatre, xxv, 83, 115
Moses, Montrose J., 53
Mother Courage (Brecht), xxvi
Mourning Becomes Electra (O'Neill), 130,

139-141
Mulatto (Hughes), xx
Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot), xv
Murray, Gilbert, 8
Musset, Alfred de, 44
Mysticism, 51, 56, 58, 70, 75, 90, 100-104,

106, 120, 121, 123, 130, 131, 133, 136,

139, 145, 146, 156, 196, 211, 251, 252,

260

Napoleon III, 53

Nathan, George Jean, 123

Nation, The, 78

Negro, in the theatre, xx-xxi

Neighborhood Playhouse, 84

New Art of Writing Plays in this Age, The

(Lope de Vega), 18, 174
New Theatre, 114, 139, 142, 207, 275, 285
New Theatres for Old (Gorelik), xxv
New York Times, 121, 144, 300
New Yorker, The, 151
Newton, Isaac, 18, 25, 36
Nicoll, Allardyce, 16, 17, 56, 260
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 62, 66, 90, 102, 131
1Q31 — (Claire and Paul Sifton), 214, 215
Nippers, The (Hervieu), 135
Nirvana (Lawson), 158
No More Ladies (Thomas), 241
No plays (Japan), xxiv
Notebooks (Ibsen), 64, 74, 109, 184-186,

270, 271, 294
Notes and Lectures (Coleridge), 43
Notes for Mahagonny, in Willett, John, The

Theatre of Bertolt Brecht, xxv
Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Har-

denberg), 100
Novel, the, contemporary theatre resembles,

85
"Novel of Action, The" {Mamstream) , 85

3IO

Index

Obligatory scene, S3. 54. 187, 245-248, 250,
254, 258, 259, 261-267, 270, 274-277,
301
O'Casey, Sean, viii, xxiii-xxiv, 84
Juno and the Paycock, xxiv
Plough and the Stars, The, xxiv
Red Roses for Me, xxiv
Silver Tassie, The, xxiv
Ode to Liberty (Howard), 280
Odets, Clifford, 89, 227, 249-254, 291
Oedipus complex, 130
Oedipus Rex (Sophocles). 164, 165, 254,

255
Off-Broadway theatre, viii
Off-stage events, 188, 191, 192, 201-204,

210, 249, 250
Ondine (Giraudoux), x
On the Art of the Modern Theatre (Craig),

121, 301
O'Neil, George, 236, 287, 290
O'Neill, Eugene, viii, xxi-xxiii, 52, 68, 75,
86, 89, 120, 129-142, 152, 154, 158,
214, 227, 231, 237, 257, 287, 293
Iceman Cometh, The, xxii
Long Day's Journey into Night, xxii
Origin of Species (Darwin), 45, 61
Orpheus Descending (Williams), xvii-xviii
Osborne, John, xv-xvi
Entertainer, The, xvi
Look Back in Anger, xv-xvi, xix
Othello (Shakespeare), 279
Our Lan' (Ward), xx
Our Theatres in the Nineties (Shaw), xxxii

Panic (MacLeish), 282, 287, 293

Pantheism, 89, 131

Paolo and Francesca (Phillips), 164

Pardoner and the Frere (Hey wood), 14

Pareto, Vilfredo, 104, 105

Paris Commune, 49, 50, 58, 60, 68

Pavlov, I. P., 93

Peace on Earth (Maltz and Sklar), 207,

240, 297, 298
Peer Gynt (Ibsen), 57, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71,

75, 79. 80, loi, 108, III, 113, 293
Plre de Famille, Le (Diderot), 29
Pernet qui va au Vin, 14
Personal Appearance (Riley), 260, 261
Peters, Paul, 239, 240, 243, 275, 276, 280,

283, 289
Petrified Forest, The (Sherwood), 142-146,

ISO, 151, 266
Phelps, William Lyon, 157
Phillips, Stephen, 164
Philosophy, pighteenth century, 24-28
modern, 89-91, 98-106
nineteenth century, 34-39. 4S-47. 61-63

Philosophy of History, The (Hegel), 3S-3?.

39
Picnic (Inge), xix
Pillars of Society (Ibsen), 70
Pinero, Sir Arthur, 233, 269
Pinwheel (Faragoh), 241, 287
Plato, 35

Plausibility, 4, 23, 191, 229-231, 243, 265
Playboy of the Western World, The

(Synge), 291, 292
Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship

(Archer), 53, 87, 119, 124, 125, 142,

164-166, 175, 181. 188, 255, 262, 263,

269, 286
Playwriting for Profit (Krows), 125, 126,

174, 228, 232
Plekhanov, George, 205
Plot, synonymous with action, 6
Plough and the Stars, The (O'Casey), xxiv
Pluralistic Universe, A (James), 91
Poetics (Aristotle), 3-10, 42, 168, 174, 176,

216, 254, 255, 262
Poetry, in dramatic speech, 287-293, 298
Pollard, Alfred W., 14
Polti, Georges {Thirty-six Dramatic Situa-
tions), 125
Positivism, 61, 62
Potemkin, 228

Power of Darkness, The (Tolstoy), 57
Pragmatism, 62, 85, 91-93, 103-106, 120-

124, 128, 131, 136, 146, 149, 152,

157, 249, 251
Price, W. T., 125-127, 280
Principia (Newton), 36
Principles of Playmaking, The (Matthews),

124
Principles of Psychology (Spencer), 61
Probability, 4, 23, 191, 229-231, 243, 265
Problems of the Playwright (Hamilton),

80, 118, 188
Progression, 136, 137, 140-148, 152, 154,

155, 171-173. 178, 187, 196, 211, 224,

232, 244-262, 266, 277, 281, 283, 286
Progression in cycles, 222, 225-227, 233,

246-249
Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 40
Property relations in Ibsen, 65, 66, 71-73
Proust, Marcel, 116, 201
Provincetown Players, 84
Psychoanalysis, 92, 94-96, 98, 129, isS
Psychology, development of modem, 88,

90-98
Pudovkin, V. I., 228, 229
Pulitzer Prize Plays, The, 157
Pure in Heart, The (Lawson). 158
Purgation of emotions, 3, 19, 22, 55
Pygmalion (Shaw), 112

Quintessence of Ibsenism (Shaw), loS

Index

3"

Racine, Jean, ix, ii, 80

Rain from Heaven (Behrman), 211-214

Raisin in the Sun, A (Hansberry), xx-xxi

Ray, Lucile, 125

Realism, 31, 32, 44, 48, 49, 57, 58, 91

Red Roses for Me (O'Casey), xxiv

Repetition patterns, 140-148, 152, 158, 180,

249, 261, 276, 289, 290
Respectful Prostitute, The (Sartre), xi
Restoration comedy, i, 12, 20
Retardation, 232
"Return to Heroic Man, A" (Greene),

Saturday Review, xxx
Reversal of fortune, 4, s, 254, 2SS. 268
Rheinische Zeitung, 39
Rice, Elmer, 276-278, 285, 297, 298
Riders to the Sea (Synge), 292
Riley, Lawrence, 260, 261
Rising action, 245-247, 263-268
Robinson, Robert (on Tennessee Williams),

New Statesman, xviii
Romanticism, 27, 31-34, 39-4S, SO, Si. 54-

56, 60, 72, 79, 99, 119, 130, 184, 208
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 16, 126,

164, 230, 267-269, 272
Root-action, 183-186, 189-196, 198, 199,

201, 203, 204, 212, 214, 229-234, 238,

242-244, 247, 249, 250, 261, 264-266,

273. 275, 277, 284, 286
Root-idea, 181-184, 187, 190, 193-19S
Rose Tattoo, The (Williams), xvii
Rosmersholm (Ibsen), 74, 75
Rougon-Macquart series (Zola), so. Si
Russell, Bertrand, 95
Russia, Moscow Art Theatre, 84
Russian theatre, 47, 121, 208, 209, 290

Sailors of Cattaro, The (Wolf), 210
Saint-Evremond, Ch. M., Sieur de, 18, 19,

SS
Saint Joan (Shaw), 113
Saint-Simon, Count C. H., 51, 61
Saint Theresa, 130
Sand, George, 44

Sarcey, Francisque, 9, 53, 54, 262, 301
Sardou, Victorien, 52, 53, 82, 301
Saroyan, William, 85
Sartre, Jean-Paul, ix, xi, xiii

Respectful Prostitute, The, xi
Sceiie a faire, see Obligatory scene
&csses and situations, organization of, 219
Schelling, F. W. J., 4
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 19, 30, 41-44.

122, 177, 199
Schiller, Friedrich von, 27, 28, 31, 34, 35.

40, 41. 54, 72
School for Scandal, The (Sheridan), 142
Schopenhauer, A., 38, 51, 62, 66, 87, 89,

90, 112, 130, 131

Science and the Modern World (White-
head), IS. 90
Scope of action, 177, 182, 183, 191, 197,

199, 206, 209, 211, 231, 271, 286, 288
Scribe, Eugene, 52, S3, 80, 82, 301
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The (Pinero), 233
Secret, The (Bernstein), 256
Shakespeare, viii, xxii-xxiii, 5, 11, 14-18,

22, 34, 41, 80, 99, 126, 160, 170, 172,

173, 189, 204, 205, 230, 232, 236, 244,

267-269, 272, 273, 279
Shakespeare festivals, Stratford, Connecti-
cut, ix
Stratford, Ontario, ix
Shaw, George Bernard, xxxii, 57, 71, 78,

86, 107-113, lis, "7, 129, 135, 151,

194, 208, 214
Our Theatres in the Nineties, xxxii
Shelley, Mary, 40

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 40, 41, 43, 72, 109
Sheridan, R. B., 142
Sherwood, Robert, 142-146, 266
Shining Hour, The (Winter), 192-196,

267, 273
Sibree, J., 35
Sidney, Sir Philip, 17, 18
Sifton, Claire, 214
Sifton, Paul, 214

Sights and Spectacles (McCarthy), ix
Silver Cord, The (Howard), 88, 143, 154-

157, 2x6
Silver Tassie, The (O'Casey), xxiv
Simonson, Lee, 287
Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, The

(Shaw), 113
Sinclair, Upton, 15

Situation and character, approach to, 159
Sklar, George, 207, 239, 240, 243, 275, 276,

280, 283, 289, 297, 298
Smollett, Tobias, 13
Social framework, xxix, 152, 188, 191, 192,

197-218, 234, 247-251, 264, 266, 278,

282
Social influences, eighteenth century, 21-23,

29, 30, ii
Greek drama, 7-9

nineteenth century, 45, 50, 57, 58
Renaissance, 12-20
Social superstructure, 47, 74
Socialist realism, 47, 208, 209
Sophocles, xxiii, 7, 8, 164, 165, 243, 234,

25s
Soul, nineteenth century conceptioa of the,

32, 40, 42, 43, SI. 54-56, 60, 62, 64,

68, 70, 79. 89-91, 94, 95, n*. ii4.

119, 129, 130, 136, 175. 195. 196,

280
Soviet theatre and film, 84
Speech, prosaic and uninspired, 220

312

Ind

Spencer, Herbert, 6i

Spengler, Oswald, 102-105, 123, i39

Spinoza, B., 25, 26, 89, 90, 131

Spring's Awakening (Wedekind), 57, 141

Stage Is Set, The (Simonson), 287

Stage Society, London, 57

Stanislavski, K. C, 114, 115, 120, 171

Stanislavsky method, viii, xxv

Stevedore (Peters and Sklar), 239, 240, 243,

275, 276, 280, 283, 289
Stimulus and response, 92-94, 96, 260,

300
Strange Interlude (O'Neill), 75, 131. i32i

134-141, 152, 154, 237. 257
Streetcar Named Desire, A (Williams), xvi
Strictly Dishonorable (Sturges), 256, 260,

261
Strife (Galsworthy), 118
Strindberg, August, 57
Stuart, Donald Clive, 8, 243
Study of the Modern Drama, A (Clark),

57, 112, 118, 119, 152, 270
Sturges, Preston, 256, 260, 261
Style, defined by Aristotle, 4
Subconscious, dramatic use of the, 89, 94-

96, 119, 129, 132, 154, 156, 214, 230
Subjective approach, 25, 32, 42, 43, 47, 55,

56, 65, 114, lis, 241
Suddenly Last Summer (Williams), xvi
Supernatural, use of the, 230, 231, 244
Surprise, 24, 187, 246, 254-257
Suspense, 222, 255, 267, 274
Sutro, Alfred, 56

Sweet Bird of Youth (Williams), xvi-xx
Symbolism, 42, 119, 120, 212, 231, 241
Symonds, John Addington, 14
Sympathy, 126, 285, 286
Synge, J. M., 29, 84, 292

Taille, Jean de la, 11

Taine, Hippolyte, 16, 17, 60, 61

Tamburlaine the Great (Marlowe), 15, 273

Tariuffe (Moliere), 19, 88, 244

Taylor, H. 0., 100

Technique of the Drama (Freytag), 54-56,

121, 17s, 268
Technique of the Drama (Price), 125
Tempo, 233
Tension, 172, 175, 176, 186, 192, 194, 198,

199, 207, 223-227, 232, 233, 248, 252,

255, 257, 264, 265, 268-270, 277
Terence, 20

Theatre and Its Double, The (Artaud), xiv
Theatre, The (Cheney), 12, 13, 34
Theatre Guild, 84
Theatre libre, 57, 58
Theatre of Bertolt Brecht, The (Willett),

xxiv
Theatre Union, 210

ex

Theatres, decline in number in New Vort

City, 1931-1959, viii-ix
Theatrical tradition, European, 159
Theme, selection of, 175, 181-186

theatrical, 1930-1960, vii-xxxii

anger (in England), xiv, xvi

castrated hero, the, xvi-xx

guilt, burden of, ix-xii, xxix

imagination, theatrical, xxiii

loss of identity, xii-xiv

unity of, 174, 176, 178, 187, 196, 214,
271
Theory of Drama, The (NicoU), 16, 17,

56, 260
Theory of the Theatre, A (Sarcey), 301
Thirhse Raquin (Zola), 49-52
Thespis, 159

They Shall Not Die (Wexley), 237, 238
Thirty-six Dramatic Situations (Polti), 125
Thomas, A. E., 241
Thorndike, Ashley H., 5
Three-Penny Novel (Brecht), xxv
Three-Penny Opera, The (Brecht), xxiv
Three Songs About Lenin, 176
Till the Day I Die (Odets), 253, 254
Time (Williams), xvii
Time and Free Will (Bergson), 62, 63
Toller, Ernst, 120
Tolstoy, Leo, 57, 127
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Barry), 135, 136,

195
Too True to be Good (Shaw), 113
Totem and Taboo (Freud), 94
Totheroh, Dan, 287
Tragedy (Thorndike), 5
Tragedy of Nan, The (Masefield), 122
Transcendentalism, 27
Transition, 221-223, 228, 229
Treasure of the Humble, The (Maeterlinck),

56, 122, 133, 166
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Hu-
man Knowledge (Berkeley), 26
Trouble in Mind (Childress), xx
Twentieth Century Novel, The (Beach) ^ 4S
Tyll Eulenspiegel, 13

Ulysses (Joyce), 292
Unity, 219

of action, 3, 6, 11, 23, 37, 42, 43, 126,
168, 174, 176-187, 199, 235, 236, 252.
253, 266, 267, 271, 281, 283, 289,
301, 302
Aristotelian problem of, 161
of place, 4, 12, 20
of time, 3, 4, 12, 20
Ursule Mirouet (Balzac), 48

Vakhtangov, E. B., 114, ryi
Valla, Giorgio, 10

Index

313

Valley Forge (Anderson), 151

Varieties of Religious Experience, The

(James), 91, 100
View from the Bridge, A (Miller), xxx, xxxii
Violence, philosophy of, 102, 103, 122, 123,

139, 143-14S, iSi, is8, 251
Visit, The (Duerrenmatt), xii, xviii
VOKS, 208

Volitional representation, 181-183, 197, 299
Voltaire, Frangois, 4, 11
Von Wiegand, Charmion, 139

Waiting for Godot (Beckett), vii-viii, xii-

xiii
Waiting for Lefty (Odets), vii, 249, 252-

254
Waltz of the Toreadors (Anouilh), xii
Ward, Theodore, Our Lan' , xx
Was Europe a Success? (Krutch), 46
Washington, George, 151
Washington Square Players, 84
Watch on the Rhine (Hellman), xxvii
Waterloo Bridge (Sherwood), 145, 146
Watson, John B., 93, 94
We the People (Rice), 277, 297, 298
Weavers, The (Hauptmann), 57, 176
Webb, Sidney, 113
Wedekind, Frank, 57, 141
Wednesday's Child (Atlas), 178-180
Well-made play, the, 52-54
Wells, H. G., 277
Werther (Goethe), 42
Wexley, John, 227, 237, 238, 297
What Is Art? (Tolstoy), 127
What Is Enlightenment? (Kant), 39
When We Dead Awaken (Ibsen), 31, 64,

76-78, 81, 82, loi, 129, 130
Whitehead, Alfred North, 14, 90
Widowers' Houses (Shaw), 57
Wild Duck, The (Ibsen), 71, 74
Wilde, Percival, 181
Will, conceived emotionally, 51, 89, 90, 131,

132
conscious will, 84, 87, 88, 94-98, 115-

117. 131-134, 149, 153-157. 163-171.

179, 180, 250, 251, isj. 264, 277,
281-284
free will and necessity, 37; 38, 47, 62,

89-92, 140, 177, 178, 197, 198
Ibsen's emphasis on will, 66, 70, 71, 75,

78, 108, 109, 129, 135, 185
in relation to environment, 134, 148,
212, 243, 253, 2S4, 296, 297
Willett, John, The Theatre of Bertolt

Brecht, xxiv
Williams, Tennessee, xvi-xix, xxi, xxxi
Baby Doll, xvii
Battle of Angels, xvii
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, xvii
Garden District, xvi-xvii
Glass Menagerie, The, xvi
Orpheus Descending, xvii-xviii
Rose Tattoo, The, xvii
Streetcar Named Desire, A, xvi
Suddenly Last Summer (screen version.

Garden District), xvi
Sweet Bird of Youth, xvi-xxi
Time, xvii
Winter, Keith, 192-196, 267, 273
Winterset (Anderson), 151, 295
Wolf, Friedrich, 210
Wolfe, Thomas, 103, 131
Woman Killed With Kindness, A (Hay-
wood), 17
World as Will and Idea, The (Schopen-
hauer), 38
Wundt, Wilhelm, 93
Wycherley, William, 20

Yellow Jack (Howard), 215-217, 221-232,

236, 239, 263
Young, Stark, 122
Youth of Maxim, The, 209

Zakhava, V., 114, 115

Zimmern, Helen, 22

Zola, Emile, 49-54, S8, 59, 61, 65, 71, 90,

130
Zola and His Time (Josepbson), 49, 50,

59

I

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Shakespeare and the Elizabethans by Henri Fluchere (0501-8)

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Paradox of Acting by Diderot and Mas^s or Faces? by William Archer (0504-0)

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Hazlitt on Theatre ed. by William Archer and Robert Lowe (0507-9)

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Moliere: The Man Seen Through the Plays by Ramon Fernandez (0520-4)

Greek Tragedy by Gilbert Norwood (0521-2)

Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare ed. by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. (0522-0)

The Poet in the Theatre by Ronald Peacock (0523-9)

Chekhov the Dramatist by David Magarshack (0524-7)

Theory and Technique of Playtvriting by John Howard Lawson (0525-5)

The Art of the Theatre by Henri Gheon (0526-3)

Aristotle's Poetics with an Introduction by Francis Fergusson (0527-1)

The Origin of the Theater by Benjamin Hunningher (0528-X)

Playwrights on Playtvriting by Toby Cole (0529-8)

The Sense of Shakespeare' s Sonnets by Edward Hubler (0530-1)

The Development of Shakespeare' s Imagery by Wolfgang Clemen (0531-X)

Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage trans, by David Magarshack (0532-8)

Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form by Lionel Abel (0533-6)

The Seven Ages of the Theatre by Richard Southern (0534-4)

The Death of Tragedy by George Steiner (0535-2)

Greek Comedy by Gilbert Norwood (0536-0)

Ibsen: Letters and Speeches ed. by Evert Sprinchorn (0537-9)

The Testament of Samttei Beckett by J. Jacobsen and W. R. Mueller (0538-7)

On Racine by Roland Barthes (0539-5)

American Playwrights on Drama ed. by Horst Frenz (0540-9)

Hon/ Shakespeare Spent the Day by Ivor Brown (0541-7)

Brecht on Theatre ed. by John Willett (0542-5)

Costume in the Theatre by James Laver (0543-3)

lonesco and Genet by J. Jacobsen and W. R. Mueller (0544-1)

Commedia dell' Arte by Giacomo Oreglia (0545-X)

The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play by John Russell Taylor (0546)

Beyond Broadtvay by Julius Novick (0547)

For a complete list of plays (including the New Mermaids and Spotlight Drama-
books series), please write to Hill and Wang, 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York
10011.

DATE DUE

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UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

3 1262 04756 3753

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THEORY AND TECHNIQUE

OF PLAYJVRITING

by JOHN HOWARD LAWSON

The original edition of this work has become the stand-
ard hook in the field — a brilliant and comprehensive
study of what a play is. Mr. Lawson has written, for this
edition, a long introductory essay on the theatre since
the war.

Critical comment on earlier editions:

John Gassner —

"This is beyond doubt the most incisive and illuminat-
ing treatment of playwriting as a dynamic art. There is
no page in this study that is not stimulating or provoc-
ative, and I know of no better corrective for tepid or
inconsequent dramaturgy in the English language.
Mr. Lawson's book is extraordinarily valuable for play-
wrights and for students and teachers of the drama."

Saturday Review of Literature —

"Carefully reasoned, closely knit, sound, comprehen-
sible, and extremely stimulating. I do not know of any
other work on playwriting which handles the immensely
difficult subject so well."

The Los Angeles Times —

"So fruitful in results that little can be noted in a review
beyond its practical value for playwrights, critics, and
playgoers. No work of recent years has contributed so
generously toward an understanding of playmaking."

Hill and Wang, New York

ISBN 0-8090-0S25-5
cover design by Saul Lambert