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What is a Play

Extract from The Theory of the Theatre by Clayton Hamilton

   A play is a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an    audience.

   This plain statement of fact affords an exceedingly simple definition of    the drama,—a definition so simple indeed as to seem at the first glance    easily obvious and therefore scarcely worthy of expression. But if we    examine the statement thoroughly, phrase by phrase, we shall see that it    sums up within itself the entire theory of the theatre, and that from this    primary axiom we may deduce the whole practical philosophy of dramatic    criticism.

   It is unnecessary to linger long over an explanation of the word "story." A    story is a representation of a series of events linked together by the law    of cause and effect and marching forward toward a predestined    culmination,—each event exhibiting imagined characters performing imagined    acts in an appropriate imagined setting. This definition applies, of    course, to the epic, the ballad, the novel, the short-story, and all other    forms of narrative art, as well as to the drama.

   But the phrase "devised to be presented" distinguishes the drama sharply    from all other forms of narrative. In particular it must be noted that a    play is not a story that is written to be read. By no means must the drama    be considered primarily as a department of literature,—like the epic or    the novel, for example. Rather, from the standpoint of the theatre, should    literature be considered as only one of a multitude of means which the    dramatist must employ to convey his story effectively to the audience. The    great Greek dramatists needed a sense of sculpture as well as a sense of    poetry; and in the contemporary theatre the playwright must manifest the    imagination of the painter as well as the imagination of the man of    letters. The appeal of a play is primarily visual rather than auditory. On    the contemporary stage, characters properly costumed must be exhibited    within a carefully designed and painted setting illuminated with    appropriate effects of light and shadow; and the art of music is often    called upon to render incidental aid to the general impression. The    dramatist, therefore, must be endowed not only with the literary sense, but    also with a clear eye for the graphic and plastic elements of pictorial    effect, a sense of rhythm and of music, and a thorough knowledge of the    art of acting. Since the dramatist must, at the same time and in the same    work, harness and harmonise the methods of so many of the arts, it would be    uncritical to centre studious consideration solely on his dialogue and to    praise him or condemn him on the literary ground alone.

   It is, of course, true that the very greatest plays have always been great    literature as well as great drama. The purely literary element—the final    touch of style in dialogue—is the only sure antidote against the opium of    time. Now that Aeschylus is no longer performed as a playwright, we read    him as a poet. But, on the other hand, we should remember that the main    reason why he is no longer played is that his dramas do not fit the modern    theatre,—an edifice totally different in size and shape and physical    appointments from that in which his pieces were devised to be presented. In    his own day he was not so much read as a poet as applauded in the theatre    as a playwright; and properly to appreciate his dramatic, rather than his    literary, appeal, we must reconstruct in our imagination the conditions of    the theatre in his day. The point is that his plays, though planned    primarily as drama, have since been shifted over, by many generations of    critics and literary students, into the adjacent province of poetry; and    this shift of the critical point of view, which has insured the    immortality of Aeschylus, has been made possible only by the literary    merit of his dialogue. When a play, owing to altered physical conditions,    is tossed out of the theatre, it will find a haven in the closet only if it    be greatly written. From this fact we may derive the practical maxim that    though a skilful playwright need not write greatly in order to secure the    plaudits of his own generation, he must cultivate a literary excellence if    he wishes to be remembered by posterity.

   This much must be admitted concerning the ultimate importance of the    literary element in the drama. But on the other hand it must be granted    that many plays that stand very high as drama do not fall within the range    of literature. A typical example is the famous melodrama by Dennery    entitled The Two Orphans. This play has deservedly held the stage for    nearly a century, and bids fair still to be applauded after the youngest    critic has died. It is undeniably a very good play. It tells a thrilling    story in a series of carefully graded theatric situations. It presents    nearly a dozen acting parts which, though scarcely real as characters, are    yet drawn with sufficient fidelity to fact to allow the performers to    produce a striking illusion of reality during the two hours' traffic of the    stage. It is, to be sure—especially in the standard English    translation—abominably written. One of the two orphans launches    wide-eyed    upon a soliloquy beginning, "Am I mad?... Do I dream?"; and such sentences    as the following obtrude themselves upon the astounded ear,—"If you    persist in persecuting me in this heartless manner, I shall inform the    police." Nothing, surely, could be further from literature. Yet thrill    after thrill is conveyed, by visual means, through situations artfully    contrived; and in the sheer excitement of the moment, the audience is made    incapable of noticing the pompous mediocrity of the lines.

   In general, it should be frankly understood by students of the theatre that    an audience is not capable of hearing whether the dialogue of a play is    well or badly written. Such a critical discrimination would require an    extraordinary nicety of ear, and might easily be led astray, in one    direction or the other, by the reading of the actors. The rhetoric of    Massinger must have sounded like poetry to an Elizabethan audience that had    heard the same performers, the afternoon before, speaking lines of    Shakespeare's. If Mr. Forbes-Robertson is reading a poorly-written part, it    is hard to hear that the lines are, in themselves, not musical. Literary    style is, even for accomplished critics, very difficult to judge in the    theatre. Some years ago, Mrs. Fiske presented in New York an English    adaptation of Paul Heyse's Mary of Magdala. After the first    performance—at which I did not happen to be present—I asked several    cultivated people who had heard the play whether the English version was    written in verse or in prose; and though these people were themselves    actors and men of letters, not one of them could tell me. Yet, as appeared    later, when the play was published, the English dialogue was written in    blank verse by no less a poet than Mr. William Winter. If such an    elementary distinction as that between verse and prose was in this case    inaudible to cultivated ears, how much harder must it be for the average    audience to distinguish between a good phrase and a bad! The fact is that    literary style is, for the most part, wasted on an audience. The average    auditor is moved mainly by the emotional content of a sentence spoken on    the stage, and pays very little attention to the form of words in which the    meaning is set forth. At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a    while"—which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his    touchstones of literary style—the thing that really moves the audience in    the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's    plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to a world    grown harsh.

   That the content rather than the literary turn of dialogue is the thing    that counts most in the theatre will be felt emphatically if we compare    the mere writing of Molière with that of his successor and imitator,    Regnard. Molière is certainly a great writer, in the sense that he    expresses clearly and precisely the thing he has to say; his verse, as well    as his prose, is admirably lucid and eminently speakable. But assuredly, in    the sense in which the word is generally used, Molière is not a poet; and    it may fairly be said that, in the usual connotation of the term, he has no    style. Regnard, on the other hand, is more nearly a poet, and, from the    standpoint of style, writes vastly better verse. He has a lilting fluency    that flowers every now and then into a phrase of golden melody. Yet Molière    is so immeasurably his superior as a playwright that most critics    instinctively set Regnard far below him even as a writer. There can be no    question that M. Rostand writes better verse than Emile Augier; but there    can be no question, also, that Augier is the greater dramatist. Oscar Wilde    probably wrote more clever and witty lines than any other author in the    whole history of English comedy; but no one would think of setting him in    the class with Congreve and Sheridan.

   It is by no means my intention to suggest that great writing is not    desirable in the drama; but the point must be emphasised that it is not a    necessary element in the immediate merit of a play as a play. In fact,    excellent plays have often been presented without the use of any words at    all. Pantomime has, in every age, been recognised as a legitimate    department of the drama. Only a few years ago, Mme. Charlotte Wiehe acted    in New York a one-act play, entitled La Main, which held the attention    enthralled for forty-five minutes during which no word was spoken. The    little piece told a thrilling story with entire clearness and coherence,    and exhibited three characters fully and distinctly drawn; and it secured    this achievement by visual means alone, with no recourse whatever to the    spoken word. Here was a work which by no stretch of terminology could have    been included in the category of literature; and yet it was a very good    play, and as drama was far superior to many a literary masterpiece in    dialogue like Browning's In a Balcony.

   Lest this instance seem too exceptional to be taken as representative, let    us remember that throughout an entire important period in the history of    the stage, it was customary for the actors to improvise the lines that they    spoke before the audience. I refer to the period of the so-called commedia    dell'arte, which flourished all over Italy throughout the sixteenth    century. A synopsis of the play—partly narrative and partly    expository—was posted up behind the scenes. This account of what was to    happen on the stage was known technically as a scenario. The actors    consulted this scenario before they made an entrance, and then in the    acting of the scene spoke whatever words occurred to them. Harlequin made    love to Columbine and quarreled with Pantaloon in new lines every night;    and the drama gained both spontaneity and freshness from the fact that it    was created anew at each performance. Undoubtedly, if an actor scored with    a clever line, he would remember it for use in a subsequent presentation;    and in this way the dialogue of a comedy must have gradually become more or    less fixed and, in a sense, written. But this secondary task of formulating    the dialogue was left to the performers; and the playwright contented    himself with the primary task of planning the plot.

   The case of the commedia dell'arte is, of course, extreme; but it    emphasises the fact that the problem of the dramatist is less a task of    writing than a task of constructing. His primary concern is so to build a    story that it will tell itself to the eye of the audience in a series of    shifting pictures. Any really good play can, to a great extent, be    appreciated even though it be acted in a foreign language. American    students in New York may find in the Yiddish dramas of the Bowery an    emphatic illustration of how closely a piece may be followed by an auditor    who does not understand the words of a single line. The recent    extraordinary development in the art of the moving picture, especially in    France, has taught us that many well-known plays may be presented in    pantomime and reproduced by the kinetoscope, with no essential loss of    intelligibility through the suppression of the dialogue. Sardou, as    represented by the biograph, is no longer a man of letters; but he remains,    scarcely less evidently than in the ordinary theatre, a skilful and    effective playwright. Hamlet, that masterpiece of meditative poetry,    would still be a good play if it were shown in moving pictures. Much, of    course, would be sacrificed through the subversion of its literary element;    but its essential interest as a play would yet remain apparent through    the unassisted power of its visual appeal.

   There can be no question that, however important may be the dialogue of a    drama, the scenario is even more important; and from a full scenario alone,    before a line of dialogue is written, it is possible in most cases to    determine whether a prospective play is inherently good or bad. Most    contemporary dramatists, therefore, postpone the actual writing of their    dialogue until they have worked out their scenario in minute detail. They    begin by separating and grouping their narrative materials into not more    than three or four distinct pigeon-holes of time and place,—thereby    dividing their story roughly into acts. They then plan a stage-setting for    each act, employing whatever accessories may be necessary for the action.    If papers are to be burned, they introduce a fireplace; if somebody is to    throw a pistol through a window, they set the window in a convenient and    emphatic place; they determine how many chairs and tables and settees are    demanded for the narrative; if a piano or a bed is needed, they place it    here or there upon the floor-plan of their stage, according to the    prominence they wish to give it; and when all such points as these have    been determined, they draw a detailed map of the stage-setting for the act.    As their next step, most playwrights, with this map before them, and using    a set of chess-men or other convenient concrete objects to represent their    characters, move the pieces about upon the stage through the successive    scenes, determine in detail where every character is to stand or sit at    nearly every moment, and note down what he is to think and feel and talk    about at the time. Only after the entire play has been planned out thus    minutely does the average playwright turn back to the beginning and    commence to write his dialogue. He completes his primary task of    play-making before he begins his secondary task of play-writing. Many of    our established dramatists,—like the late Clyde Fitch, for example—sell    their plays when the scenario is finished, arrange for the production,    select the actors, and afterwards write the dialogue with the chosen actors    constantly in mind.

   This summary statement of the usual process may seem, perhaps, to cast    excessive emphasis on the constructive phase of the playwright's problem;    and allowance must of course be made for the divergent mental habits of    individual authors. But almost any playwright will tell you that he feels    as if his task were practically finished when he arrives at the point when    he finds himself prepared to begin the writing of his dialogue. This    accounts for the otherwise unaccountable rapidity with which many of the    great plays of the world have been written. Dumas fils retired to the    country and wrote La Dame aux Camélias—a four-act play—in eight    successive days. But he had previously told the same story in a novel; he    knew everything that was to happen in his play; and the mere writing could    be done in a single headlong dash. Voltaire's best tragedy, Zaïre, was    written in three weeks. Victor Hugo composed Marion Delorme between June    1 and June 24, 1829; and when the piece was interdicted by the censor, he    immediately turned to another subject and wrote Hernani in the next three    weeks. The fourth act of Marion Delorme was written in a single day. Here    apparently was a very fever of composition. But again we must remember that    both of these plays had been devised before the author began to write them;    and when he took his pen in hand he had already been working on them in    scenario for probably a year. To write ten acts in Alexandrines, with    feminine rhymes alternating with masculine, was still, to be sure, an    appalling task; but Hugo was a facile and prolific poet, and could write    very quickly after he had determined exactly what it was he had to write.

   It was with all of the foregoing points in mind that, in the opening    sentence of this chapter, I defined a play as a story "devised," rather    than a story "written." We may now consider the significance of the next    phrase of that definition, which states that a play is devised to be    "presented," rather than to be "read."

   The only way in which it is possible to study most of the great plays of    bygone ages is to read the record of their dialogue; and this necessity has    led to the academic fallacy of considering great plays primarily as    compositions to be read. In their own age, however, these very plays which    we now read in the closet were intended primarily to be presented on the    stage. Really to read a play requires a very special and difficult exercise    of visual imagination. It is necessary not only to appreciate the dialogue,    but also to project before the mind's eye a vivid imagined rendition of the    visual aspect of the action. This is the reason why most managers and    stage-directors are unable to judge conclusively the merits and defects of    a new play from reading it in manuscript. One of our most subtle artists    in stage-direction, Mr. Henry Miller, once confessed to the present writer    that he could never decide whether a prospective play was good or bad until    he had seen it rehearsed by actors on a stage. Mr. Augustus Thomas's    unusually successful farce entitled Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots was    considered a failure by its producing managers until the very last    rehearsals, because it depended for its finished effect on many intricate    and rapid intermovements of the actors, which until the last moment were    understood and realised only in the mind of the playwright. The same    author's best and most successful play, The Witching Hour, was declined    by several managers before it was ultimately accepted for production; and    the reason was, presumably, that its extraordinary merits were not manifest    from a mere reading of the lines. If professional producers may go so far    astray in their judgment of the merits of a manuscript, how much harder    must it be for the layman to judge a play solely from a reading of the    dialogue!

   This fact should lead the professors and the students in our colleges to    adopt a very tentative attitude toward judging the dramatic merits of the    plays of other ages. Shakespeare, considered as a poet, is so immeasurably    superior to Dryden, that it is difficult for the college student unfamiliar    with the theatre to realise that the former's Antony    and Cleopatra is,    considered solely as a play, far inferior to the latter's dramatisation of    the same story, entitled All for Love, or The World Well Lost.    Shakespeare's play upon this subject follows closely the chronology of    Plutarch's narrative, and is merely dramatised history; but Dryden's play    is reconstructed with a more practical sense of economy and emphasis, and    deserves to be regarded as historical drama. Cymbeline is, in many    passages, so greatly written that it is hard for the closet-student to    realise that it is a bad play, even when considered from the standpoint of    the Elizabethan theatre,—whereas Othello and Macbeth, for instance,    are great plays, not only of their age but for all time. King Lear is    probably a more sublime poem than Othello; and it is only by seeing the    two pieces performed equally well in the theatre that we can appreciate by    what a wide margin Othello is the better play.

   This practical point has been felt emphatically by the very greatest    dramatists; and this fact offers, of course, an explanation of the    otherwise inexplicable negligence of such authors as Shakespeare and    Molière in the matter of publishing their plays. These supreme playwrights    wanted people to see their pieces in the theatre rather than to read them    in the closet. In his own lifetime, Shakespeare, who was very scrupulous    about the publication of his sonnets and his narrative poems, printed    a    carefully edited text of his plays only when he was forced, in    self-defense, to do so, by the prior appearance of corrupt and pirated    editions; and we owe our present knowledge of several of his dramas merely    to the business acumen of two actors who, seven years after his death,    conceived the practical idea that they might turn an easy penny by printing    and offering for sale the text of several popular plays which the public    had already seen performed. Sardou, who, like most French dramatists, began    by publishing his plays, carefully withheld from print the master-efforts    of his prime; and even such dramatists as habitually print their plays    prefer nearly always to have them seen first and read only afterwards.

   In elucidation of what might otherwise seem perversity on the part of great    dramatic authors like Shakespeare, we must remember that the    master-dramatists have nearly always been men of the theatre rather than    men of letters, and therefore naturally more avid of immediate success with    a contemporary audience than of posthumous success with a posterity of    readers. Shakespeare and Molière were actors and theatre-managers, and    devised their plays primarily for the patrons of the Globe and the Palais    Royal. Ibsen, who is often taken as a type of the literary dramatist,    derived his early training mainly from the profession of the theatre and    hardly at all from the profession of letters. For half a dozen years,    during the formative period of his twenties, he acted as producing manager    of the National Theatre in Bergen, and learned the tricks of his trade from    studying the masterpieces of contemporary drama, mainly of the French    school. In his own work, he began, in such pieces as Lady Inger of    Ostråt, by imitating and applying the formulas of Scribe and the earlier    Sardou; and it was only after many years that he marched forward to a    technique entirely his own. Both Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and Mr. Stephen    Phillips began their theatrical career as actors. On the other hand, men of    letters who have written works primarily to be read have almost never    succeeded as dramatists. In England, during the nineteenth century, the    following great poets all tried their hands at plays—Scott, Southey,    Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Mrs. Browning,    Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, and Tennyson—and not one of them produced a    work of any considerable value from the standpoint of dramatic criticism.    Tennyson, in Becket, came nearer to the mark than any of the others; and    it is noteworthy that, in this work, he had the advantage of the advice    and, in a sense, collaboration of Sir Henry Irving.

   The familiar phrase "closet-drama" is a contradiction of terms. The species    of literary composition in dialogue that is ordinarily so designated    occupies a thoroughly legitimate position in the realm of literature, but    no position whatsoever in the realm of dramaturgy. Atalanta in Calydon is    a great poem; but from the standpoint of the theory of the theatre, it    cannot be considered as a play. Like the lyric poems of the same author, it    was written to be read; and it was not devised to be presented by actors on    a stage before an audience.

   We may now consider the significance of the three concluding phrases of the    definition of a play which was offered at the outset of the present    chapter. These phrases indicate the immanence of three influences by which    the work of the playwright is constantly conditioned.

   In the first place, by the fact that the dramatist is devising his story    for the use of actors, he is definitely limited both in respect to the kind    of characters he may create and in respect to the means he may employ in    order to delineate them. In actual life we meet characters of two different    classes, which (borrowing a pair of adjectives from the terminology of    physics) we may denominate dynamic characters and static characters. But    when an actor appears upon the stage, he wants to act; and the dramatist is    therefore obliged to confine his attention to dynamic characters, and to    exclude static characters almost entirely from the range of his creation.    The essential trait of all dynamic characters is the preponderance within    them of the element of will; and the persons of a play must therefore be    people with active wills and emphatic intentions. When such people are    brought into juxtaposition, there necessarily results a clash of contending    desires and purposes; and by this fact we are led logically to the    conclusion that the proper subject-matter of the drama is a struggle    between contrasted human wills. The same conclusion, as we shall notice in    the next chapter, may be reached logically by deduction from the natural    demands of an assembled audience; and the subject will be discussed more    fully during the course of our study of The Psychology of Theatre    Audiences. At present it is sufficient for us to note that every great    play that has ever been devised has presented some phase or other of this    single, necessary theme,—a contention of individual human wills. An actor,    moreover, is always more effective in scenes of emotion than in scenes of    cold logic and calm reason; and the dramatist, therefore, is obliged to    select as his leading figures people whose acts are motivated by emotion    rather than by intellect. Aristotle, for example, would make a totally    uninteresting figure if he were presented faithfully upon the stage. Who    could imagine Darwin as the hero of a drama? Othello, on the other hand, is    not at all a reasonable being; from first to last his intellect is    "perplexed in the extreme." His emotions are the motives for his acts; and    in this he may be taken as the type of a dramatic character.

   In the means of delineating the characters he has imagined, the dramatist,    because he is writing for actors, is more narrowly restricted than the    novelist. His people must constantly be doing something, and must therefore    reveal themselves mainly through their acts. They may, of course, also be    delineated through their way of saying things; but in the theatre the    objective action is always more suggestive than the spoken word. We know    Sherlock Holmes, in Mr. William Gillette's admirable melodrama, solely    through the things that we have seen him do; and in this connection we    should remember that in the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from which    Mr. Gillette derived his narrative material, Holmes is delineated largely    by a very different method,—the method, namely, of expository comment    written from the point of view of Doctor Watson. A leading actor seldom    wants to sit in his dressing-room while he is being talked about by the    other actors on the stage; and therefore the method of drawing character by    comment, which is so useful for the novelist, is rarely employed by the    playwright except in the waste moments which precede the first entrance of    his leading figure. The Chorus Lady, in Mr. James Forbes's amusing study of    that name, is drawn chiefly through her way of saying things; but though    this method of delineation is sometimes very effective for an act or two,    it can seldom be sustained without a faltering of interest through a    full-grown four-act play. The novelist's expedient of delineating character    through mental analysis is of course denied the dramatist, especially in    this modern age when the soliloquy (for reasons which will be noted in a    subsequent chapter) is usually frowned upon. Sometimes, in the theatre, a    character may be exhibited chiefly through his personal effect upon the    other people on the stage, and thereby indirectly on the people in the    audience. It was in this way, of course, that Manson was delineated in Mr.    Charles Rann Kennedy's The Servant in the House. But the expedient is a    dangerous one for the dramatist to use; because it makes his work    immediately dependent on the actor chosen for the leading role, and may in    many cases render his play impossible of attaining its full effect except    at the hands of a single great performer. In recent years an expedient long    familiar in the novel has been transferred to the service of the    stage,—the expedient, namely, of suggesting the personality of a character    through a visual presentation of his habitual environment. After the    curtain had been raised upon the first act of The Music Master, and the    audience had been given time to look about the room which was    represented    on the stage, the main traits of the leading character had already been    suggested before his first appearance on the scene. The pictures and    knickknacks on his mantelpiece told us, before we ever saw him, what manner    of man he was. But such subtle means as this can, after all, be used only    to reinforce the one standard method of conveying the sense of character in    drama; and this one method, owing to the conditions under which the    playwright does his work, must always be the exhibition of objective acts.

   In all these general ways the work of the dramatist is affected by the fact    that he must devise his story to be presented by actors. The specific    influence exerted over the playwright by the individual performer is a    subject too extensive to be covered by a mere summary consideration in the    present context; and we shall therefore discuss it fully in a later    chapter, entitled The Actor and the Dramatist.

   At present we must pass on to observe that, in the second place, the work    of the dramatist is conditioned by the fact that he must plan his plays to    fit the sort of theatre that stands ready to receive them. A fundamental    and necessary relation has always existed between theatre-building and    theatric art. The best plays of any period have been fashioned in    accordance with the physical conditions of the best theatres of that    period. Therefore, in order fully to appreciate such a play as Oedipus    King, it is necessary to imagine the theatre of Dionysus; and in order to    understand thoroughly the dramaturgy of Shakespeare and Molière, it is    necessary to reconstruct in retrospect the altered inn-yard and the    converted tennis-court for which they planned their plays. It may seriously    be doubted that the works of these earlier masters gain more than they lose    from being produced with the elaborate scenic accessories of the modern    stage; and, on the other hand, a modern play by Ibsen or Pinero would lose    three-fourths of its effect if it were acted in the Elizabethan manner, or    produced without scenery (let us say) in the Roman theatre at Orange.

   Since, in all ages, the size and shape and physical appointments of the    theatre have determined for the playwright the form and structure of his    plays, we may always explain the stock conventions of any period of the    drama by referring to the physical aspect of the theatre in that period.    Let us consider briefly, for purposes of illustration, certain obvious ways    in which the art of the great Greek tragic dramatists was affected by the    nature of the Attic stage. The theatre of Dionysus was an enormous edifice    carved out of a hillside. It was so large that the dramatists were obliged    to deal only with subjects that were traditional,—stories which had long    been familiar to the entire theatre-going public, including the poorer and    less educated spectators who sat farthest from the actors. Since most of    the audience was grouped above the stage and at a considerable distance,    the actors, in order not to appear dwarfed, were obliged to walk on stilted    boots. A performer so accoutred could not move impetuously or enact a scene    of violence; and this practical limitation is sufficient to account for the    measured and majestic movement of Greek tragedy, and the convention that    murders and other violent deeds must always be imagined off the stage and    be merely recounted to the audience by messengers. Facial expression could    not be seen in so large a theatre; and the actors therefore wore masks,    conventionalised to represent the dominant mood of a character during a    scene. This limitation forced the performer to depend for his effect mainly    on his voice; and Greek tragedy was therefore necessarily more lyrical than    later types of drama.

   The few points which we have briefly touched upon are usually explained, by    academic critics, on literary grounds; but it is surely more sane to    explain them on grounds of common sense, in the light of what we know of    the conditions of the Attic stage. Similarly, it would be easy to show how    Terence and Calderon, Shakespeare and Molière, adapted the form of their    plays to the form of their theatres; but enough has already    been said to    indicate the principle which underlies this particular phase of the theory    of the theatre. The successive changes in the physical aspect of the    English theatre during the last three centuries have all tended toward    greater naturalness, intimacy, and subtlety, in the drama itself and in the    physical aids to its presentment. This progress, with its constant    illustration of the interdependence of the drama and the stage, may most    conveniently be studied in historical review; and to such a review we shall    devote a special chapter, entitled Stage Conventions in Modern Times.

   We may now observe that, in the third place, the essential nature of the    drama is affected greatly by the fact that it is destined to be set before    an audience. The dramatist must appeal at once to a heterogeneous multitude    of people; and the full effect of this condition will be investigated in a    special chapter on The Psychology of Theatre Audiences. In an important    sense, the audience is a party to the play, and collaborates with the    actors in the presentation. This fact, which remains often unappreciated by    academic critics, is familiar to everyone who has had any practical    association with the theatre. It is almost never possible, even for trained    dramatic critics, to tell from a final dress-rehearsal in an empty house    which scenes of a new play are fully effective and which are not; and the    reason why, in America, new plays are tried out on the road is not so much    to give the actors practice in their parts, as to determine, from the    effect of the piece upon provincial audiences, whether it is worthy of a    metropolitan presentation. The point is, as we shall notice in the next    chapter, that since a play is devised for a crowd it cannot finally be    judged by individuals.

   The dependence of the dramatist upon his audience may be illustrated by the    history of many important plays, which, though effective in their own age,    have become ineffective for later generations, solely because they were    founded on certain general principles of conduct in which the world has    subsequently ceased to believe. From the point of view of its own period,    The Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher is undoubtedly one of the    very greatest of Elizabethan plays; but it would be ineffective in the    modern theatre, because it presupposes a principle which a contemporary    audience would not accept. It was devised for an audience of aristocrats in    the reign of James I, and the dramatic struggle is founded upon the    doctrine of the divine right of kings. Amintor, in the play, has suffered a    profound personal injury at the hands of his sovereign; but he cannot    avenge this individual disgrace, because he is a subject of the royal    malefactor. The crisis and turning-point of the entire drama is a scene in    which Amintor, with the king at his mercy, lowers his sword with the    words:—

                                                                                But there is    Divinity about you, that strikes dead    My rising passions: as you are my king,    I fall before you, and present my sword    To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will.

   We may imagine the applause of the courtiers of James Stuart, the    Presumptuous; but never since the Cromwellian revolution has that scene    been really effective on the English stage. In order fully to appreciate a    dramatic struggle, an audience must sympathise with the motives that    occasion it.

   It should now be evident, as was suggested at the outset, that all the    leading principles of the theory of the theatre may be deduced logically    from the axiom which was stated in the first sentence of this chapter; and    that axiom should constantly be borne in mind as the basis of all our    subsequent discussions. But in view of several important points which have    already come up for consideration, it may be profitable, before    relinquishing our initial question, to redefine a play more fully in the    following terms:—

   A play is a representation, by actors, on a stage, before an audience, of a    struggle between individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than    by intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action.